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Honest opinions on your Fascinates Battery Life!

sean76

Android Expert
May 5, 2010
4,459
779
NYC
OK I would really like some honest sound offs about the battery life on the Fascinate...I'll go first to get it rolling!

After about a week with it, I'll say mine pretty much sucks! Its like its gotten worse...LOL! Seriously my evo and incredible both had better battery life. I tried going with out moving wallpaper today and it was about the same, example.....left my house at about 10am this morning with a fully charged battery, with some moderate use I was down to 20 percent by 2:30? Not good in my book so far, so I'm wondering if I got a lemon?

Also...Did anyone's phone come with the battery already installed inside the device? Mine did, and I've never seen that, the battery is usually in plastic wrap. Got it from a corporate store in NYC!
 
Returning tomorrow...I didn't think this was to normal! However, everything else is pretty much good, GPS locks right away, and no lag issues at all with the phone. Going to have to take a chance on a new one, and hope for a good one. I know for a fact just about all devices come without the battery installed, and even still I would keep it if the battery life was good...oh well!
 
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Returning tomorrow...I didn't think this was to normal! However, everything else is pretty much good, GPS locks right away, and no lag issues at all with the phone. Going to have to take a chance on a new one, and hope for a good one. I know for a fact just about all devices come without the battery installed, and even still I would keep it if the battery life was good...oh well!
Agreed. Something was fishy there. To answer your original question mine has been stellar and it got even better once I removed some of the bloatware clogging up resources
 
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I activated it on my own when I got home and at first I thought they forgot to put a battery in. However everything was sealed, the front screen protector was on and had not been takin off and then put back on, I'm nuts I could tell! It really looked like it came from the factory that way, but I highly doubted. Hopefully there's no issues with the next one.
 
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I take mine off the charger at 7am'ish and have about 20% left by 8-10pm with light use during the day and heavier use at night after work (5pm - 8/10pm).

I'm not happy with the battery life.. but not disappointed either. I may have gotten slightly better battery life with my Blackberry 9650, but it had a postage stamp sized screen and barely picked it up beside for a text message/email. I'm constantly playing with this phone and know that this awesome screen and 1ghz processor needs to be fed.
 
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Mine has been great...I am on #2 cycle drain/recharge (I know, I know, many people will say don't need to condition, but....)...and today I got 18+ hours of pretty heavy use...In my opinion, that's outstanding!!!! :)

That's outstanding, alright.

Mine might be pretty close to that, but I haven't yet had it drain down to past 48% after 5am to 9pm use.

By "use" I mean on all that time, but with only about eight or ten phone calls, 50 or so texts, a lot of web browsing (probably about two hours if all sessions added together, haven't checked yet) with some of that looking at videos on Funny Videos, Funny Clips & Funny Pictures | Break.com, and Tetris for 15 minutes or so.
 
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I've been using mine very lightly during the day, and using JuiceDefender to turn off mobile data when I don't need it. I take it off the charger at about 8AM and it's usually gone by about 10PM. It's ok, but if I ramp up my usage and play a game or watch a movie or use 3g the battery drops very quickly. Even making a call drops it way too quickly - I was on a 20 minute call this morning and the battery dropped almost 10%. The fact that I've heard people on here say they use theirs really heavily all day and have 50% left at night makes me feel like something is up. I know someone earlier in the thread said they were exchanging theirs - Would it be just the battery that is faulty, or the whole phone? I was thinking about getting a second battery anyway, and I'm wondering if the new battery would make things better.
 
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The fact that I've heard people on here say they use theirs really heavily all day and have 50% left at night makes me feel like something is up.

;) "..something is up.." as in lying? Exaggerating? ..etc.

Given a non-defective device or battery, what is really "up" is the difference between configuration from user to user, and usage, of course.

My Fascinate with its 48% end of day battery life could be the Fascinate with 12% end of day battery life in your hands.

I do not use the goofy "live" (read=annoying) wallpapers, GPS is off unless I know I am going to need it, apps are never updated in the background (weather, etc) as I update as soon as I go into an app like news or weather, etc.

I know somebody who likes to leave her home screen on all day long so that people can see it and marvel at its coolness.. and yes, she complains about battery life. ;)
 
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The culprit for my battery life may be Weather Bug extreme. I had the 3 day forecast on my home screen, with updates set for every couple of hours? The thing is I had the same app and widget running on my Nexus one and had no problems at all with battery life. I also do not have it running in the background in the app draw, so its odd if it is indeed killing my battery. I took it off for today, and have the brightness for the phone and web browser set at 50%...my phone is pretty clean and does not have a lot of running Alps, just Facebook and gmail set to sync on auto....We shall see how I do today!
 
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I've been using mine very lightly during the day, and using JuiceDefender to turn off mobile data when I don't need it. I take it off the charger at about 8AM and it's usually gone by about 10PM. It's ok, but if I ramp up my usage and play a game or watch a movie or use 3g the battery drops very quickly. Even making a call drops it way too quickly - I was on a 20 minute call this morning and the battery dropped almost 10%. The fact that I've heard people on here say they use theirs really heavily all day and have 50% left at night makes me feel like something is up. I know someone earlier in the thread said they were exchanging theirs - Would it be just the battery that is faulty, or the whole phone? I was thinking about getting a second battery anyway, and I'm wondering if the new battery would make things better.

Check your software settings thoroughly. If you really want to sip battery, disable all that background data stuff and auto email checking, syncing, etc. I have mine set to only do those when I want to (which I do at the end of the day anyways) and it made a HUGE difference in battery life for me on my Droid X and on Fascinate - even made a noticeable difference on the Eris.
 
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;) "..something is up.." as in lying? Exaggerating? ..etc.

Given a non-defective device or battery, what is really "up" is the difference between configuration from user to user, and usage, of course.

My Fascinate with its 48% end of day battery life could be the Fascinate with 12% end of day battery life in your hands.

I do not use the goofy "live" (read=annoying) wallpapers, GPS is off unless I know I am going to need it, apps are never updated in the background (weather, etc) as I update as soon as I go into an app like news or weather, etc.

I know somebody who likes to leave her home screen on all day long so that people can see it and marvel at its coolness.. and yes, she complains about battery life. ;)

By "something is up" I just meant with my battery. I have live wallpaper off, gps off, wifi off, bluetooth off, screen at lowest brightness, no auto sync, and JuiceDefender turning off mobile data unless I open an application that needs it. Also have SetCPU throttling down the cpu when phone is idle.
 
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Check your software settings thoroughly. If you really want to sip battery, disable all that background data stuff and auto email checking, syncing, etc. I have mine set to only do those when I want to (which I do at the end of the day anyways) and it made a HUGE difference in battery life for me on my Droid X and on Fascinate - even made a noticeable difference on the Eris.

Syncing is sure another culprit in slurping up battery life; especially when a sync loop begins.
 
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I run touchwiz, live wallpapers and GPS non-stop. I take it off the charger around 9am and by 5-6pm i still have 50-60% left after moderate use. I have attempted twice now to kill the battery before i go to sleep but i gave up both times. With Volume blaring panadora streaming, maps navigating, bluetooth on, wifi on, and video playing it took me 20min to drop it 4%. I left the phone unplugged a few nights ago and it dropped 4% after 7 hours. I am very pleased with this battery after coming off my Nexus one that lasted barely a day.
 
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I run touchwiz, live wallpapers and GPS non-stop. I take it off the charger around 9am and by 5-6pm i still have 50-60% left after moderate use. I have attempted twice now to kill the battery before i go to sleep but i gave up both times. With Volume blaring panadora streaming, maps navigating, bluetooth on, wifi on, and video playing it took me 20min to drop it 4%. I left the phone unplugged a few nights ago and it dropped 4% after 7 hours. I am very pleased with this battery after coming off my Nexus one that lasted barely a day.

How is your signal strength for wifi(if used) and cell signal? I find at work my phone will die much quicker because I get really bad signal. Battery lasts a bit better at home, but signal strength is still an issue with this phone compared to my Bold. Hoping these Samsung fixes and FROYO really help us out in this department. The wifi antennae is horrid compared to my laptop and/or BB.
 
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I use pandora about 3 hours a day, watch 1-5 youtube videos. PLay an assortments of games, mess around with GPS and then look up movie times and all that.

Usually lasts fine from 8am-12am. No issues. About the same battery life as my Eris or a little better. Not an issue at all, I charge my phone every night and would even if it was a dumb-phone.
 
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How is your signal strength for wifi(if used) and cell signal? I find at work my phone will die much quicker because I get really bad signal. Battery lasts a bit better at home, but signal strength is still an issue with this phone compared to my Bold. Hoping these Samsung fixes and FROYO really help us out in this department. The wifi antennae is horrid compared to my laptop and/or BB.

Most of my wifi use is in my living room which is a pretty poor signal and my Verizon signal while at home is decent 2 bars, at work it fluctuates between 2 bars and 0 bars but i always have good data rates when i run a speed test. For those having battery problems are you fluctuating between 3g and the other network? I know this is why my friend with a DINC with extended battery only lasts a work day, he sits in a dead zone in our building. Unlike on my nexus one i have not done a single thing to conserve the battery besides Auto brightness(even the lowest setting is bright enough for me). when i first got the phone and drained the battery i did do the batter over charge trick that is recommended for the EVO. That is charge it to 100% while off, turn on and charge to 100%, turn off and charge to 100%. I repeated this 6 or 7 times. But i was getting amazing battery life for the half charge the phone came with. I had 47% to start at 1pm and after heavy use and a long 45min phone call I had managed to get it to 5% at 6pm. that last 5% took an hour to kill with Pandora blazing, wifi/bluetooth on and for the last 3% map navigation. I have not experienced the phone heating up that others have mentioned but any heat is energy (battery) wasted.

Part of the reason why Nexus Ones have such horrible battery life was that T-mobile's 3G signal does not penetrate buildings well and you jump from 3G to edge alot and this just drains the battery like nothing else.
 
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My battery life has been impressive. My phone came off the charger at 6:45 am. Over a hundred texts yesterday, 3 hours or so of web browsing off and on, about an hour worth of calls and Pandora for about 40 minutes and I got home at 5:30 with 40% left.

Screen was mostly at lowest setting, Bluetooth was on for 20 minutes and GPS was on all day
 
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I have been watching it today. While playing podcast constantly, woot watched running durring a woot off, screen at %5, GPS and WiFi off after 3:40min im sitting at %47 battery left. so figure 7-8 hours of constant MP3 playing along with someother activities is not bad really. My zune only played mp3's and has the same life.
 
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