Four days’ charge on an Android | Hacker News Reader

Four days’ charge on an Android

techfounder.net

35 pointspytrin44 comments

> Cycled the battery. After running the battery calibration app, I let the battery drain all the way to 0% (phone shutdown) and then charge it back to 100%.

This is bad advice if you want your battery to last longer until you need to buy a new one.

Full discharge cycles might give you a slightly longer charge for the next cycle but they reduce the overall lifetime of the battery as much as 3-4 drain/charge cycles between 20% and 80%. A battery that continually runs 0% to 100% drain/charge cycles will only live 300-400 cycles, versus a 20% to 80% battery that may live 1200 cycles.

You might think the tradeoff in battery lifetime versus charge duration is worth it but as the battery loses lifetime, its maximum charge will be reduced so you'll quickly have shorter charge durations.

I've seen this advice floating around the internet before, and while I agree with the lower limit, who the hell charges their phone to just 80%? I just plug the phone in at night and let it charge to 100% while I sleep. Is there even an option on smartphones to do anything different?

I have a battery monitor that plays a sound when it gets to a certain level, then I unplug it.

I charge it when I'm at the computer.

This is done just once in order to finish calibration. It shouldn't be done more than a few times if possible.

They're getting 4 days by basically not using the phone.

Yep, these stats don't matter at all until he gives screen on time. Current (last 12 months) phones tend to manage about 6 hours of screen-on time, and the LG G2 in particular appears to be getting some fantastic numbers.

Yep, look at those blue tick marks at the bottom of the graph. That shows the periods of time that the phone was active in some way (screen on, wifi on, network use, etc). From the graph, it seems like that was pretty much never.

By contrast, here's what my phones same battery readout looks like:

[0] http://i.imgur.com/4IC70y4.png

[1] http://i.imgur.com/kW9t1du.png

EDIT: Something to note about my battery life: I've used my phone a lot today, as can be seen from the photos, and I'm only down to %84 battery since charging it last night. The reason for that is because I bought an after market battery for my phone that increases it's capacity nearly x3. I find the added size not just manageable, but preferable. The extra weight and size in my hand makes the phone more hefty, which is exactly what I like.

All you need to know is he used the browser for 8 minutes and gmail for 9 minutes over 3 1/2 days.

Hmm, that's weird. Mine has no tick marks, just a solid blue line. I did use it a lot today, but maybe some app was preventing it from sleeping completely?

I got ~40 hours yesterday on my HTC one X by doing nothing special. My phone still had 6% left when I plugged in.

The 2 days prior to that have been busy days at work for me and I have used the phone for ~3 hours (1 hour phone calls, 2 hours browsing / reading stuff).

I did not disable any radios. I was on lte the entire time, bluetooth was enabled, my email and twitter were syncing as well.

Perhaps Android 4.3 (and hence CM10.2) have improvements for battery life after all ?

Are you using the dual core evita or the quad core international version?

Strange, but im on 28/9 build of cm10.2 and I barely last 3/4 of a day with half my radios off.

I have the dual core evita. Using 26/9 nightly.

> I got ~40 hours yesterday

Did you have the same yesterday I did? My Tuesday was only 24 hours.

“This includes turning off radios when there is no data activity and other services as needed. ”

Yeah, right… Forget about push notifications, push emails, IM, video/VoIP calls, background updates.

Why not get a feature phone then? It lasts weeks between charges.

it's not that you don't receive them you just may not receive them in real time or if it switches to edge then you will

I use my Android like that. No need to have radio active when I'm near a desktop or laptop computer all day. I still use HDSPA+ when I'm outside for lunch or wifi in the evening in bed, but I turn it on/off at those times. No need to drain the battery all day.

I set up the same system in Tasker: it is actually very surprising how well it works.

Mind giving a quick explanation as to how/what rules you use?

Am I reading the graphs correctly that it states that in 3 days OP only used Chrome and Gmail for roughly 9 minutes each? Yeah... don't use your phone, and OH MY GOSH, the charge lasts forever!

Not sure what those numbers mean - perhaps it's CPU time. I use chrome and Gmail for about 30-40 minutes every day.

If you don't use much mobile data turn off 3G/4G, letting 2G take care of voice and slow data.

This saves much power.

Not sure if this is the place for this but with my Galaxy Note 2, I generally get about a day and a half with moderate to heavy use, including not charging it overnight. I generally charge it overnight every other night and sometime plug it in for a few hours during the day.

I have not tweaked any of the settings and seldom use the battery saver option. I never use Bluetooth as I have no need for it. None of my apps are authorized for GPS except Google maps or FourSquare--I just have no need for most apps to know where I am. I do make sure to turn off wifi when I am outside of my home and using cellular data. If there is a weak cell signal and wifi available, I will turn it on. This isn't scientific but I feel going in and out of wifi signals does drain the battery.

S2 is at least 2 years old. Whatever battery (1650 mAh) it came with is probably due to be replaced anyway.

Just get an extended battery such as Qcell [http://www.amazon.com/QCell-Samsung-SGH-i777-Extended-Compat...] (a whooping 3600 mAh!) and have same 4 days charge with all the updates/gps/bluetooth/etc enabled, all the time.

I'm very satisfied with the battery life of my HTC One. I use it quite a bit during the day (a few sessions of Duolingo per day, HN frequently, the odd email/chat, etc) and it's still at 40-50% at night (I charge it anyway when I'm asleep, though).

It's currently been on battery for 18 hours and it's still at 23%, and this includes listening to audiobooks for an hour in the car, etc. It's pretty great.

tl;dr if you hardly touch your phone, it lasts longer between charges.

What's your screen on time? Most phones will get 4 days easily if you never use them...

I installed BatteryStats just now, and added a few screenshots to show more detailed usage data. It says screen is at ~20% - so about 20 hours of screen time.

I highly doubt that, unless you have some truly shocking 3rd party extended battery. The screen has taken 20% of the battery life but it doesn't mean 20% of 4 days = the amount of time the screen was on. I suggest you press Screen in Settings > Battery and then reporting that. The screen is the single biggest juice sucker in modern smartphones.

Yes, you are correct, my bad :) Clicking on screen in the Settings -> Battery says screen time on is 4h 32m. So I guess in a 4 day cycle I get to a little over 5h

If I would keep screen off, turn off any updates and receive no calls I'm pretty sure I will get a week with out any special roms or apps. But what's the point to have a smartphone then?

I hate post like this, no one cares how long your phone last when you never use the thing. At least once a week theres a post like this over on /r/android & /r/nexus4

Depends on how are you using your phone and what applications you are running. Try to use G-maps and facebook for a couple of hours and your battery will be empty.

Like I say in the article - mileage will vary depending on usage, and GPS still sucks the battery. However, 4 days on normal usage is a nice achievement :)

Are you using TaskKiller? I use it to monitor "suspicious" services on my Adnroid. That helped me to disable many "old" apps that just run-out my battery.

I used to use TaskKiller for memory clearing purposes. Haven't used it since I upgraded to CM 10

I am working on data sync service, mainly sync data between cloud and mobile. 30% of apps installed on my Android do data sync. This thing is killing battery.

I still have a G1 with an extended battery, and it gets charged once-twice a week. I use it fairly regularly, so it's not jst standby.

Underclock, people, underclock :)

Don't play Ingress.

I bought an EasyAcc 12,000 mAh power bank mostly for ingress....

Yep :) I have something similar. Very useful when you travel somewhere.

I use my macbook air which is usually in my bag when I travel to charge my phone. It will charge via usb even when the computer is in standby.

Many players in my neck of the woods use Ankers. I find I can get by with just my Note II.

What's your screen-on time in minutes or hours?

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