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Ok, there has been lots of talk about the battery mines been pretty good but all the talk makes me test things out... So I ran a test to see which was accurate the battery indicator in the notification bar or the battery % and seems like the indicator is accurate and the % is off.... usually the indicator displays more than the % which we all know... so I tried it and believe it or not my phone stayed on 5% for an hour without budging then took another 45 min to get down to 1% before I plugged it in... let it charge to full and after 14 hours its showing 60% almost matching the indicator in the notification bar... if there is anyone else willing to test this out and see if they can duplicate my results please do and post your results here but do not let your phone die plug it in when it hits 1% I don't want anyone taking any chances with their phones...
 
I have had phone batteries die before with no ill effects. Do you think something might happen to the Vibrant if the battery runs out?:thinking:

No I don't but since I am posting a request to see if anyone will help me duplicate my results and I am a mod it's better to be safe than sorry... so DO NOT LET YOUR BATTERY HIT 0% saftey first :D
 
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Here is a list of things I've done that seems to increase battery life on the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant.

In my opinion the phone has great battery life. However, if you are making the switch from something like a BB Bold 9700, then yes the battery life will shock you a little.

Most people on here who report horrible battery life probably just baught their phone and are using it like crazy. First day I had my phone, I used it non stop, browser, Avatar, Live Wallpapers, GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi...the works. This is not typical, so as you get over the "wow my new phone" phase...here are some things to do to increase battery life. I am just posting ideas that I learned from reading around, self trial, and blogs.

Okay:
Live Wallpapers Turn Them Off. Drains like Crazy.

Wallpapers with Bright colors Off. Instead..take a picture with your finger over the camera, this will take a pitch black photo, set this pitch black photo as your wallpaper. Super Amoled uses less battery to display black. It also looks really cool with a black background. (Read that on this forum I think, who ever originally posted this idea thank you, it seems to decrease the screen usuage on the battery indicator).

Doing the above steps, has taken my display usage down to 20 percent. It was previously at 68 percent battery usage. To install the battery use app. Go to an available home screen, press the screen, hold it down for a few seconds, then click on shortcuts, then scroll down to settings, then click on battery use. This puts the app icon conveniently on one of your 7 home screens. Now click it, and it shows what the battery is using most of its energy on.
Turn off all non-important syncs such as weather, news, only required ones. For example I only run GMail sync. When I want the weather or news update, I just do a 1 time sync refresh.

Bluetooth off unless needed

Wifi Off unless needed

GPS off. Some say GPS doesn't use battery, unless it is actively being used. I don't know, I just leave it off, unless I'm using navigation.

Haptic Feedback off

Brightness set to minimum... helps a lot!
There is a second Brightness setting for the stock browser...set that to minimum also. Go into your browser, then brightness settings.

Random noises, system sounds, vibrations, keypad click sounds, all of that off.

Set your display to turn off quickly, for example 15 seconds instead of 1 minute.

Let your battery drain almost fully a few times, and do a full charge before unplugging. This appears to help me keep a full charge.

When on the go, minimize streaming video, pandora, music players, avatar, etc. Common sense but some people don't realize some things use more battery than other things.

This last one is optional, no proof it really works. Install Advanced Task Killer and kill tasks all day.

Other common sense stuff. Have a car charger with you. If you have a laptop at work or school, carry the usb charger, plug it into your computer and charge on the go. Buy extra batteries. Purchase a portable charging unit. It is a device that stores charge portabily, then you plug it into your phone, and it transfers the charge to your phones battery.

If you have any more suggestions, add them to the list.

Personally I think, leaving everything running still gives me great battery life on this phone. As long as you get over your initial few days of massive use, the battery should be fine with everything turned on. If you want super battery life, do the steps above, it helps.
 
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No I don't but since I am posting a request to see if anyone will help me duplicate my results and I am a mod it's better to be safe than sorry... so DO NOT LET YOUR BATTERY HIT 0% saftey first :D

I've forced my vibrant to turn on even when it auto shut off because the battery was low. To the point where I forced on so many times the phone stopped turning on, meaning the battery was compeltely dead. The battery then still took a full charge.

Is this what you were refering to?
 
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Here is a list of things I've done that seems to increase battery life on the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant.

In my opinion the phone has great battery life. However, if you are making the switch from something like a BB Bold 9700, then yes the battery life will shock you a little.

Most people on here who report horrible battery life probably just baught their phone and are using it like crazy. First day I had my phone, I used it non stop, browser, Avatar, Live Wallpapers, GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi...the works. This is not typical, so as you get over the "wow my new phone" phase...here are some things to do to increase battery life. I am just posting ideas that I learned from reading around, self trial, and blogs.

Okay:
Live Wallpapers Turn Them Off. Drains like Crazy.

Wallpapers with Bright colors Off. Instead..take a picture with your finger over the camera, this will take a pitch black photo, set this pitch black photo as your wallpaper. Super Amoled uses less battery to display black. It also looks really cool with a black background. (Read that on this forum I think, who ever originally posted this idea thank you, it seems to decrease the screen usuage on the battery indicator).

Doing the above steps, has taken my display usage down to 20 percent. It was previously at 68 percent battery usage. To install the battery use app. Go to an available home screen, press the screen, hold it down for a few seconds, then click on shortcuts, then scroll down to settings, then click on battery use. This puts the app icon conveniently on one of your 7 home screens. Now click it, and it shows what the battery is using most of its energy on.
Turn off all non-important syncs such as weather, news, only required ones. For example I only run GMail sync. When I want the weather or news update, I just do a 1 time sync refresh.

Bluetooth off unless needed

Wifi Off unless needed

GPS off. Some say GPS doesn't use battery, unless it is actively being used. I don't know, I just leave it off, unless I'm using navigation.

Haptic Feedback off

Brightness set to minimum... helps a lot!
There is a second Brightness setting for the stock browser...set that to minimum also. Go into your browser, then brightness settings.

Random noises, system sounds, vibrations, keypad click sounds, all of that off.

Set your display to turn off quickly, for example 15 seconds instead of 1 minute.

Let your battery drain almost fully a few times, and do a full charge before unplugging. This appears to help me keep a full charge.

When on the go, minimize streaming video, pandora, music players, avatar, etc. Common sense but some people don't realize some things use more battery than other things.

This last one is optional, no proof it really works. Install Advanced Task Killer and kill tasks all day.

Other common sense stuff. Have a car charger with you. If you have a laptop at work or school, carry the usb charger, plug it into your computer and charge on the go. Buy extra batteries. Purchase a portable charging unit. It is a device that stores charge portabily, then you plug it into your phone, and it transfers the charge to your phones battery.

If you have any more suggestions, add them to the list.

Personally I think, leaving everything running still gives me great battery life on this phone. As long as you get over your initial few days of massive use, the battery should be fine with everything turned on. If you want super battery life, do the steps above, it helps.


Well gee, i agree some things can be turned off but if you turn off EVERYTHING, you may as well just get a basic flip phone or something. My iPhone is the very first one. It has gone from firmware 1.1 to 3.1.2 and has had many updates in between. It is laggy now because the CPU is slow to what it can do now and the battery isnt as big as the Vibrants and it lasts almost as long and i didnt ever turn off wifi or bluetooth. Granted if the test provided in this thread helps when we drain it down to 1%, then there is even more life than what we think.

Im not saying i think the battery stinks. I think it is pretty good and will be very good if the indicator and % can get in sync. Only things i turn off are wifi when not at home and bluetooth. But i shouldnt have to nearly turn my brightness off(i have it set to auto and it is less than half anyways) and im not taking a picture of a black screen. Having nice wallpaper is part of having a nice 4" screen.

I know your trying to help but imo doing all that is ridiculous.
 
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Well gee, i agree some things can be turned off but if you turn off EVERYTHING, you may as well just get a basic flip phone or something. My iPhone is the very first one. It has gone from firmware 1.1 to 3.1.2 and has had many updates in between. It is laggy now because the CPU is slow to what it can do now and the battery isnt as big as the Vibrants and it lasts almost as long and i didnt ever turn off wifi or bluetooth. Granted if the test provided in this thread helps when we drain it down to 1%, then there is even more life than what we think.

Im not saying i think the battery stinks. I think it is pretty good and will be very good if the indicator and % can get in sync. Only things i turn off are wifi when not at home and bluetooth. But i shouldnt have to nearly turn my brightness off(i have it set to auto and it is less than half anyways) and im not taking a picture of a black screen. Having nice wallpaper is part of having a nice 4" screen.

I know your trying to help but imo doing all that is ridiculous.

And.....how are you supposed to appreciate a SUPER AMOLED screen when it's just black?:thinking:
 
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And.....how are you supposed to appreciate a SUPER AMOLED screen when it's just black?:thinking:

That posting is for people who absolutely need to maximize battery life. Like my post also says..leaving everything on still gives good battery life. Also a black wallpaper actually looks cool..all the application icons pop against the black.
 
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Well gee, i agree some things can be turned off but if you turn off EVERYTHING, you may as well just get a basic flip phone or something. My iPhone is the very first one. It has gone from firmware 1.1 to 3.1.2 and has had many updates in between. It is laggy now because the CPU is slow to what it can do now and the battery isnt as big as the Vibrants and it lasts almost as long and i didnt ever turn off wifi or bluetooth. Granted if the test provided in this thread helps when we drain it down to 1%, then there is even more life than what we think.

Im not saying i think the battery stinks. I think it is pretty good and will be very good if the indicator and % can get in sync. Only things i turn off are wifi when not at home and bluetooth. But i shouldnt have to nearly turn my brightness off(i have it set to auto and it is less than half anyways) and im not taking a picture of a black screen. Having nice wallpaper is part of having a nice 4" screen.

I know your trying to help but imo doing all that is ridiculous.
I Dont see why turning wifi, Bluetooth, and things like unnessesary active syncs off is ridiculous . I am happy your iPhone ran all day. I think its more ridiculous to have unnessesary things running when not in use and drain your battery for no reason. I never said don't use Bluetooth for example, I said have it off when not needed. By your rational I should just leave my air conditioner on just because its a feture in my car, even though it uses more gas and I may not even need it on, cause turning what I don't use off is just ridiculous?

The only extreme thing I said was the black background, you don't have to do anything, but doing that took my display usage down to twenty percent from sixty eight. I've been surfing the net, calling, checking email, watched an hour and half of avatar last night, and I'm still on a single charge..and looks like I have about forty percent left.

By the way if you haven't noticed yet the phone itself prompts you to turn certain things off when battery is low.
 
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I Dont see why turning wifi, Bluetooth, and things like unnessesary active syncs off is ridiculous . I am happy your iPhone ran all day. I think its more ridiculous to have unnessesary things running when not in use and drain your battery for no reason. I never said don't use Bluetooth for example, I said have it off when not needed. By your rational I should just leave my air conditioner on just because its a feture in my car, even though it uses more gas and I may not even need it on, cause turning what I don't use off is just ridiculous?

The only extreme thing I said was the black background, you don't have to do anything, but doing that took my display usage down to twenty percent from sixty eight. I've been surfing the net, calling, checking email, watched an hour and half of avatar last night, and I'm still on a single charge..and looks like I have about forty percent left.

By the way if you haven't noticed yet the phone itself prompts you to turn certain things off when battery is low.

I am curious about this. Why would changing the background to black have such an impact on your battery life? When you are surfing the internet or watching avatar the homescreen is not showing anyway? It seems like the amount of time spent on the homescreen would be minimal. If it makes that big of a difference though, I'd be interested in doing it when I'll be away from my charger for an extended amount of time. How many extra minutes a day does it give you on your charge?
 
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I Dont see why turning wifi, Bluetooth, and things like unnessesary active syncs off is ridiculous . I am happy your iPhone ran all day. I think its more ridiculous to have unnessesary things running when not in use and drain your battery for no reason. I never said don't use Bluetooth for example, I said have it off when not needed. By your rational I should just leave my air conditioner on just because its a feture in my car, even though it uses more gas and I may not even need it on, cause turning what I don't use off is just ridiculous?

The only extreme thing I said was the black background, you don't have to do anything, but doing that took my display usage down to twenty percent from sixty eight. I've been surfing the net, calling, checking email, watched an hour and half of avatar last night, and I'm still on a single charge..and looks like I have about forty percent left.

By the way if you haven't noticed yet the phone itself prompts you to turn certain things off when battery is low.

I didnt say turning off Bluetooth and wifi were ridiculous. But turning off brightness, system sounds(there is no LED notification), not using backgrounds, turning screen shutoff to 15 seconds..i think that is ridiculous. I cant stand it when my screen goes off so quick. So no, i dont think the only extreme thing you said was the black background. I think it is extreme to turn off notifications too. GPS wont matter, it only gets used when it needs to search for a satelite.
And the AC comparison isnt very good either. That will just cost you money. Im not ripping what you said , i just dont see why we would spend money for a phone that does a lot of things to just shut them off or use it minimul because we have to worry about the battery. It was almost to the point that you might have said to just turn the phone off til you need to make a call or check an email....lol

I do have a car charger if i need to charge it up some so im not worried myself. I like the live backgrounds but those do take up too much battery life and i am fine with just a background and i dont know if you noticed, but your App screen is already black. Which is why i like to have a nice background on the home screen.
 
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FWIW, I have drained the Vibrant to the point of it auto shutting off, and I turned it on a couple more times after that until the battery was so dead that it refused to turn on at all. Charged it that night, no problems.

I think there's a lot of superstition when it comes to battery use. People resort to witchcraft and rumors to try to get more life. Contrary to popular belief, most batteries do NOT have battery memory. You don't need to do silly things like depleting them completely to get a full charge. See this article:

Memory effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The battery inside the Vibrant is a Lithium polymer, not a nickel cadmium (the only type of battery affected by battery memory problems).

I run live wallpapers, use full brightness, and don't buy into any of the hand-wringing over battery use. If you're so worried about running out, just buy an extra micro USB cable for charging at work/school/wherever. Or if you're a true road warrior type, I'm sure you can purchase a spare battery or two.

All the above is my opinion, no offense meant to any of the fine users of this forum. :)
 
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So, basically. You have battery indicator installed and at first. Indicator was accurate while the default one wasn't showing the correct "bar" per say. Then you drained it down to 1%, charged it full, and now the default is almost accurate when compared to battery indicator?

Did I get that right? Gotta make sure so I can test this out.

Also, something to keep it mind. If you "overcharge" it, the percentage on the phone can be wrong and a restart of the phone will fix that problem. Still wasn't able to reproduce this, but I thought I would just mention it.
 
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So, basically. You have battery indicator installed and at first. Indicator was accurate while the default one wasn't showing the correct "bar" per say. Then you drained it down to 1%, charged it full, and now the default is almost accurate when compared to battery indicator?

Did I get that right? Gotta make sure so I can test this out.

Also, something to keep it mind. If you "overcharge" it, the percentage on the phone can be wrong and a restart of the phone will fix that problem. Still wasn't able to reproduce this, but I thought I would just mention it.

You got it right, the indicator in the notification bar ALWAYS showed more than the % so yes I drained to 1% then charged fully and they seem to be in sync as far as accuracy goes and think thats the issue most of us were or are having so i am seeing anyone else can duplicate the results...
 
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You got it right, the indicator in the notification bar ALWAYS showed more than the % so yes I drained to 1% then charged fully and they seem to be in sync as far as accuracy goes and think thats the issue most of us were or are having so i am seeing anyone else can duplicate the results...


Did this this morning. Once it got to 5%, a little while later the battery indicator was blinking and it told me to charge it up before it goes out and thats when i pluged it in.
Didnt help,.... Battery indicator is at more than 3/4 right now and it says 60%.
 
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Did this this morning. Once it got to 5%, a little while later the battery indicator was blinking and it told me to charge it up before it goes out and thats when i pluged it in.
Didnt help,.... Battery indicator is at more than 3/4 right now and it says 60%.

so still the same issue ok... still not sure which is accurate though cause mine took an hour and 45 min to go from 5% to 1% but battery indicator seemed correct since it lasted so long at such a low %.... wish I was a better coder and could just write a fix but I have no idea what the exact issue truly is....
 
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I didnt say turning off Bluetooth and wifi were ridiculous. But turning off brightness, system sounds(there is no LED notification), not using backgrounds, turning screen shutoff to 15 seconds..i think that is ridiculous. I cant stand it when my screen goes off so quick. So no, i dont think the only extreme thing you said was the black background. I think it is extreme to turn off notifications too. GPS wont matter, it only gets used when it needs to search for a satelite.
And the AC comparison isnt very good either. That will just cost you money. Im not ripping what you said , i just dont see why we would spend money for a phone that does a lot of things to just shut them off or use it minimul because we have to worry about the battery. It was almost to the point that you might have said to just turn the phone off til you need to make a call or check an email....lol

I do have a car charger if i need to charge it up some so im not worried myself. I like the live backgrounds but those do take up too much battery life and i am fine with just a background and i dont know if you noticed, but your App screen is already black. Which is why i like to have a nice background on the home screen.

You know you are obviously taking what I wrote out of context. I was only trying to help. I also said turn those things off when you don't need them. It doesn't take a Phd to know that having fullbrightness on will drain your battery. You flat out basically called my ideas ridiculous.

Also my AC comparison was perfect. I wasn't refering to saving money. I was refering to the inconveniece of having gas running out, being similar to battery running out on your phone. Just to clarify, electricty isn't free either. Maybe your mother pays your electricity bills, but I pay my own. When you plug your Vibrant into the outlet to charge up, you are paying for that, or maybe your mother is.

If you think you can have wifi on, bluetooth, full brightness, surf the web all day, make calls, check emails, have weather syncs, email syncs, news syncs, etc etc and still be able to wake up 6 AM to be at work, and then go to bed at night with a full charge on any of these new super Android phones, then you are mistaken. Any super android phone from Vibrant, Evo to Droid X requires you manage your settings properly to attain the battery life you desire.

I'm through with this.
 
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You know you are obviously taking what I wrote out of context. I was only trying to help. I also said turn those things off when you don't need them. It doesn't take a Phd to know that having fullbrightness on will drain your battery. You flat out basically called my ideas ridiculous.

Also my AC comparison was perfect. I wasn't refering to saving money. I was refering to the inconveniece of having gas running out, being similar to battery running out on your phone. Just to clarify, electricty isn't free either. Maybe your mother pays your electricity bills, but I pay my own. When you plug your Vibrant into the outlet to charge up, you are paying for that, or maybe your mother is.

If you think you can have wifi on, bluetooth, full brightness, surf the web all day, make calls, check emails, have weather syncs, email syncs, news syncs, etc etc and still be able to wake up 6 AM to be at work, and then go to bed at night with a full charge on any of these new super Android phones, then you are mistaken. Any super android phone from Vibrant, Evo to Droid X requires you manage your settings properly to attain the battery life you desire.

I'm through with this.

No, i agreed with a couple things and im not ripping YOU. Just that if we turned off ALL that stuff to conserve, there wouldnt be a need for a phone like this.
This isnt the first phone ive had like this so i know i cant have the brightness all the way up and wouldnt want it that way anyways. Mine isnt even halfway up. I do like to keep bluetooth on but since i can pull own the widgets/settings so easy, i can turn it off no problem now.

And i havent lived with my Mother since 1989.....just so you know :D
 
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So after having my Vibrant for a few days, I have noticed the following things about the battery indicator.

The indicator only changes at intervals that don't match the percent. For example, the indicator will display as a full battery until I hit 79%. No matter what, 100%-80% the indicator looks the same. Below, I will give a chart for what I have noticed so far:

Indicator: (Percent)
Full: (100%-80%)
~4/5 Full: (79%-60%)
~3/5 Full: (59%-39%)
1/2 Full: (39%-21%)
~1/4 Full: (20%-15%)
~1/9 Full: (14%-5%)
Empty: (4%-Dead)

Just to be clear, the battery is static during all of the percentage intervals. There is no visible difference between 79% and 60%.
 
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I callibrated my battery when I got the phone. Just checked and the battery shows 75% full but my battery icon app (which is the more accurate one) says 55%.

I should add that my phone has been off of the charger since 8:30am and has been used moderately today. The increase in my battery showed up after I changed my GPS settings (the phone hack trick) . I have no idea how the 2 could be connected. I kept my GPS off before and still do now. It's weird.
 
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Well I was having alot of lag issues so I did a factory data reset last night, charged the phoned completely, and then went to bed with the phone on standby. After about 9 hours later the battery had gone down to 77% in just standby. I did not install any apps after the reset and just took screen brightness down to minimum (off of auto), disabled animations,left the default wallpaper, disabled background data,etc.

How is it that the battery went down so much in just idle status? In comparison before I did the factory reset I had a live wallpaper, a weather/clock widget on homescreen, had like 10 apps installed, and had Advanced Task Killer set to Autokill when screen was off. With those settings in 10 hours of standby overnight the battery only went down 6%. I'm assuming that ATK does seem to work otherwise there must be some sort of processes going on the background that is draining my battery in just standby mode.

I'm thinking of installing ATK again and see what happens. I'm thinking it's normal for 6 percent in 10 hours, but not 1/4 of the battery gone in 10 hours in just standby mode. What do you guys think?
 
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Ok, there has been lots of talk about the battery mines been pretty good but all the talk makes me test things out... So I ran a test to see which was accurate the battery indicator in the notification bar or the battery % and seems like the indicator is accurate and the % is off.... usually the indicator displays more than the % which we all know... so I tried it and believe it or not my phone stayed on 5% for an hour without budging then took another 45 min to get down to 1% before I plugged it in... let it charge to full and after 14 hours its showing 60% almost matching the indicator in the notification bar... if there is anyone else willing to test this out and see if they can duplicate my results please do and post your results here but do not let your phone die plug it in when it hits 1% I don't want anyone taking any chances with their phones...

I tried this twice, but to no avail. The battery indicator in the notification bar is still annoyingly inaccurate with respect to that actual % remaining. Not a huge issue, but one of those niggling bothers to be certain. :( Now...about that damn GPS problem...:rolleyes:
 
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