Honest opinions on your Fascinates Battery Life!

[larry0071]

Likely it depends on your interpretation of "modern to medium usage" as compared to others. Like I would say this, if you use the phone to talk as a phone for maybe 30 min a day, send maybe 30-50 texts a day, and spend about 30 min on data connections... be it internet, Vcast, Market, Facebook... you should easily get a 16-18 hour day out of the device with some room to spare. If your plan is to watch a full episode of House/Bones or similar 1 hour TV show and you find yourself hitting every forum you can think of for hours and hours during the day, you better have a charger in the car, at work and at home.

When I am busy at work and go out in the plant for 4-6 hours and then spend a couple hours busy doing reports.... I barely touch my phone. On these days I go to bed and plug it in with 40%-60% remaining depending on what I did in the evening. Now granted, I live with my wife and kids, so once I get home I don't have a great use for my phone and it tends to get tossed on the counter in the kitchen where I will grab it now and again to peek at facebook or see if any of my goons (what my wife calls my pals) have texted me. I have a netbook that lives in the living room, and another on the headboard of my bed, so I don't typically set around surfing the net on my phone.

Much of these discrepancies in battery life stem from the fact that usage amounts and self proclaimed ratings of usage is a very subjective thing. I say I am a moderate user, or a user that tends to spend too much time on the stupid thing every day! To me a light user would be like I described on my busy days at work.

A heavy user I would say is like what I did this evening with 2.5 hours of non stop Vcast, plus hitting facebook up and also downloading 6-8 new apps, plus I was in and out of some forums for maybe a total of 15 min. I had the battery nearly dead after this electrical beating and I think that the required recharge was plainly acceptable and warranted.

So you see, I take it with a grain of salt as I read these kinds of very subjective threads. A persons expectations may be unreasonable, a persons use may be excessive to others but seen directly in line to him/her... it is all subject to interpretation.

 

[spinnum]

Are you AC/wall charging? Worst case should be like 3 hours. USB could take 4-5+ especially if you dont turn the screen off.

Little bit of both actually. Three hours is pretty long IMHO, I was accustomed to the Ipod Touch which charges pretty quickly. I am happy with the battery life of the SF, I use it quite a bit and it can last typically the whole day.

 

[jinwons]

Likely it depends on your interpretation of "modern to medium usage" as compared to others. Like I would say this, if you use the phone to talk as a phone for maybe 30 min a day, send maybe 30-50 texts a day, and spend about 30 min on data connections... be it internet, Vcast, Market, Facebook... you should easily get a 16-18 hour day out of the device with some room to spare. If your plan is to watch a full episode of House/Bones or similar 1 hour TV show and you find yourself hitting every forum you can think of for hours and hours during the day, you better have a charger in the car, at work and at home.

When I am busy at work and go out in the plant for 4-6 hours and then spend a couple hours busy doing reports.... I barely touch my phone. On these days I go to bed and plug it in with 40%-60% remaining depending on what I did in the evening. Now granted, I live with my wife and kids, so once I get home I don't have a great use for my phone and it tends to get tossed on the counter in the kitchen where I will grab it now and again to peek at facebook or see if any of my goons (what my wife calls my pals) have texted me. I have a netbook that lives in the living room, and another on the headboard of my bed, so I don't typically set around surfing the net on my phone.

Much of these discrepancies in battery life stem from the fact that usage amounts and self proclaimed ratings of usage is a very subjective thing. I say I am a moderate user, or a user that tends to spend too much time on the stupid thing every day! To me a light user would be like I described on my busy days at work.

A heavy user I would say is like what I did this evening with 2.5 hours of non stop Vcast, plus hitting facebook up and also downloading 6-8 new apps, plus I was in and out of some forums for maybe a total of 15 min. I had the battery nearly dead after this electrical beating and I think that the required recharge was plainly acceptable and warranted.

So you see, I take it with a grain of salt as I read these kinds of very subjective threads. A persons expectations may be unreasonable, a persons use may be excessive to others but seen directly in line to him/her... it is all subject to interpretation.

Thanks for sharing your experience.
I guess I was a little vague on what I meant by moderate use. What you described in the first paragraph is surely medium usage to me as I don't do that much texting on my phone, typically less than 5 a day. And I usually do about half hour of phone talk and 20~30 minutes of web browsing in a day. I occasionally use the camera as well. I guess this is considered to be very light, moderate use for most folks here. According to your experience, it looks like Fascinate will easily go over 20 hours per charge with this kind of usage.

 

[saps]

Thanks for sharing your experience.
I guess I was a little vague on what I meant by moderate use. What you described in the first paragraph is surely medium usage to me as I don't do that much texting on my phone, typically less than 5 a day. And I usually do about half hour of phone talk and 20~30 minutes of web browsing in a day. I occasionally use the camera as well. I guess this is considered to be very light, moderate use for most folks here. According to your experience, it looks like Fascinate will easily go over 20 hours per charge with this kind of usage.

Yeah based on that usage you will easily get 20 hours, in fact you could even get into that 38+ category where you could charge every other day, Im not even kidding. 5 texts, 30 minutes of calls, 30 minutes web browing and a few pictures is a 2 day battery life on the SF

 

[SirKronan]

Yeah based on that usage you will easily get 20 hours, in fact you could even get into that 38+ category where you could charge every other day, Im not even kidding. 5 texts, 30 minutes of calls, 30 minutes web browing and a few pictures is a 2 day battery life on the SF

There is so much you can do to tweak out this phone to stretch it even further. Put your eReader in night mode, for example. It will sip power, but it's still very visible.

 

[lasportsfan]

Have you tried keeping the brightness all the way down? Mine is never above 0 indoors. At night/in the dark I could do with an even lower setting if there was one.

Yes I have my brightness set to 0. Also background data, auto sync and haptic feedback off.

My fascinate takes like 3 hours to charge whereas my iphone 4 is a lot faster. That's a bummer.

I noticed this too. I plugged my phone in with about 9% left and took a 3 hour nap and it was still not fully charged.



From reading most of the posts I would definitely say I am a heavy user. I am constantly multitasking; browsing the net while playing music or streaming or watching videos on the web. I also have a aquarium live wallpaper and lots of widgets on my phone. So my short battery life is probably justified. I just can't fathom how anyone with even light use gets 2 days use out of ANY smartphone. For example I just unplugged my phone after it was fully charged and left it untouched for a little over 2 hours and it is already down to 93%. So like I said maybe my battery is faulty. It should also be noted that sometimes I use a 3rd party charger when I am away from home and I have read somewhere that sometimes they do not charge the battery properly. Whatever the case I still love my phone and will not give it or live wallpapers up for anything!

 

[GoBruins]

My battery life:

Light-Moderate use, mostly on wifi, ultimatejuice and most importantly, Dirrk's 1000LV Voodoo Kernel

 

[SirKronan]

Yes I have my brightness set to 0. Also background data, auto sync and haptic feedback off.



I noticed this too. I plugged my phone in with about 9% left and took a 3 hour nap and it was still not fully charged.



From reading most of the posts I would definitely say I am a heavy user. I am constantly multitasking; browsing the net while playing music or streaming or watching videos on the web. I also have a aquarium live wallpaper and lots of widgets on my phone. So my short battery life is probably justified. I just can't fathom how anyone with even light use gets 2 days use out of ANY smartphone. For example I just unplugged my phone after it was fully charged and left it untouched for a little over 2 hours and it is already down to 93%. So like I said maybe my battery is faulty. It should also be noted that sometimes I use a 3rd party charger when I am away from home and I have read somewhere that sometimes they do not charge the battery properly. Whatever the case I still love my phone and will not give it or live wallpapers up for anything!

Welcome to my "You can pry live wallpapers from MY COLD DEAD HANDS" club!! Idling with the screen off, mine doesn't drop that much. In about two hours from a full charge it will maybe drop 2-3%. I would very specifically review all power saving settings you can possibly apply. If you're rooted, you might consider one of the undervolted kernals like the poster below:

My battery life:

Light-Moderate use, mostly on wifi, ultimatejuice and most importantly, Dirrk's 1000LV Voodoo Kernel

OH YEAH BABY.

 

[saps]

My battery life:

Light-Moderate use, mostly on wifi, ultimatejuice and most importantly, Dirrk's 1000LV Voodoo Kernel

3 and a half days and you still have 9% left. Yeah that's ridiculous. To be fair that has to be fairly light use. I mean you do have 67% going to idle and standby. Still that does show the benefit of requiring 75 less mv.

 

[jinwons]

Yeah based on that usage you will easily get 20 hours, in fact you could even get into that 38+ category where you could charge every other day, Im not even kidding. 5 texts, 30 minutes of calls, 30 minutes web browing and a few pictures is a 2 day battery life on the SF

Thanks. Now I'm pretty much assured that Fascinate will last a little longer than Ally under similar condition, usage. I forgot to mention that I also check emails every one or two hours in addition to what I said about my daily usage. But I don't think that will put too much strain on it to reduce the battery life noticeably.

 

[saps]

Thanks. Now I'm pretty much assured that Fascinate will last a little longer than Ally under similar condition, usage. I forgot to mention that I also check emails every one or two hours in addition to what I said about my daily usage. But I don't think that will put too much strain on it to reduce the battery life noticeably.

Yeah don't expect multiple days but expect the whole day from your battery

 

[MutantCheese]

What's the point of having a 1ghz processor if you are going to underclock it? I have a 166mhz PDA that lasts several days but can't get out of it's own way. Is that what we are trying to do here?

 

[saps]

What's the point of having a 1ghz processor if you are going to underclock it? I have a 166mhz PDA that lasts several days but can't get out of it's own way. Is that what we are trying to do here?

Im inclined to think your way too [H]. I mean Im running an 1.2GhzOC'd kernel myself, admittedly its also undervolted.
However, if you don't need that power; if you are merely texting, or emailing or playing Angry Birds or whatever and dont need the full Ghz and/or need the extra battery life there is a justification for underclocking and undervolting.
Also realize the SF does not run at 1Ghz most of the time it also throttles down as low as 100Mhz when the phone is sleeping. It only makes sense if you dont need the power not to waste it, especially when you are not using it. When the phone is called upon it ramps up when it doesnt it steps it down

 

[SirKronan]

Im inclined to think your way too [H]. I mean Im running an 1.2GhzOC'd kernel myself, admittedly its also undervolted.
However, if you don't need that power; if you are merely texting, or emailing or playing Angry Birds or whatever and dont need the full Ghz and/or need the extra battery life there is a justification for underclocking and undervolting.
Also realize the SF does not run at 1Ghz most of the time it also throttles down as low as 100Mhz when the phone is sleeping. It only makes sense if you dont need the power not to waste it, especially when you are not using it. When the phone is called upon it ramps up when it doesnt it steps it down

Exactly. With SetCPU you can scale it to meet your needs. That's why some people are getting even better battery life when overclocked. They also have it automatically underclock, and often are running undervolted kernals as well.

 

[saps]

Exactly. With SetCPU you can scale it to meet your needs. That's why some people are getting even better battery life when overclocked. They also have it automatically underclock, and often are running undervolted kernals as well.

Yeah it is hard to quantify exactly how much battery life has improved but I will testify that there is a noticeable increase in battery life. I throw the number of 20% out but that is more of an impression than hard data. Mind you that's with the 1200lv. 1000Lv no doubt is even a bit better yet

 

[wowser]

I don't understand how you get such great battery life with "Cell Standby" being so high.

Cell Standby is what is killing my battery life. I don't understand why either since i'm in areas where i used to get great signal with my Blackberry Tour. Why is the phone losing signal so frequently??? My "Time without signal" is very high.

 

[oneiztoomany]

Exactly. With SetCPU you can scale it to meet your needs. That's why some people are getting even better battery life when overclocked. They also have it automatically underclock, and often are running undervolted kernals as well.

do u need to root to use SetCPU?

 

[nitsuj17]

do u need to root to use SetCPU?

yup its a root app

 

[oneiztoomany]

anyone getting good battery life who is not rooted? lol. seems like everyone on this site has rooted their phone... i would like to thing i'll get decent battery life without having to root it.

 

[saps]

anyone getting good battery life who is not rooted? lol. seems like everyone on this site has rooted their phone... i would like to thing i'll get decent battery life without having to root it.

Oh yeah absolutely. The stock SF has good battery life. We have observed 5-6hours of straight constant use, screen on and transmitting data is the norm. So yeah if you use your phone 30 minutes per hour that should give you 10-12 hours of use. 20 minutes per hour should net you 15-18 hours. These of course are ranges and screen brightness, signal strength, live wallpapers, etc can and will affect these numbers to varying degrees.

 

[nitsuj17]

how new is your phone @oneiztoomany?

it usually takes a few charge cycles to break in a battery as well.

On my droid x it took a week of the phone being dead by noon before it magically was great and lasting 2 days.

My sf is tougher to judge because I had issues the first day where I was on/off charging, but it has noticeably gotten better even with root.

 

[SirKronan]

anyone getting good battery life who is not rooted? lol. seems like everyone on this site has rooted their phone... i would like to thing i'll get decent battery life without having to root it.

There are tweaks you can do to help it a good deal. Turn of auto syncing everywhere possible. Shut off animations. Saps says don't use live wallpaper. Set screen to auto, or lowest setting, and make sure power saving features are enabled in display settings.

There certainly is more you can do if you're willing to root, though.

how new is your phone @oneiztoomany?

it usually takes a few charge cycles to break in a battery as well.

On my droid x it took a week of the phone being dead by noon before it magically was great and lasting 2 days.

My sf is tougher to judge because I had issues the first day where I was on/off charging, but it has noticeably gotten better even with root.

Honestly, my Fascinate and DX only took about 2-3 charge cycles (about two to three days) to start getting performance I was extremely impressed with. Some say it doesn't matter so much with these new memory free batteries. Others still recommend you run it completely dead and then give it a nice long charge a couple of times to break it in.

 

[nitsuj17]

There are tweaks you can do to help it a good deal. Turn of auto syncing everywhere possible. Shut off animations. Saps says don't use live wallpaper. Set screen to auto, or lowest setting, and make sure power saving features are enabled in display settings.

There certainly is more you can do if you're willing to root, though.



Honestly, my Fascinate and DX only took about 2-3 charge cycles (about two to three days) to start getting performance I was extremely impressed with. Some say it doesn't matter so much with these new memory free batteries. Others still recommend you run it completely dead and then give it a nice long charge a couple of times to break it in.

thinking back now, last saturday Id had the phone for 3 days...took it off teh charger at noon, was on the browswer for 2 hours and played some games and it was completely dead by 9 pm. Today I've had kinda light use by my standards but Ive been off charger since 7 am and I'm at 74%. So it doesnt take long but it does kick in at some point.

 

[saps]

thinking back now, last saturday Id had the phone for 3 days...took it off teh charger at noon, was on the browswer for 2 hours and played some games and it was completely dead by 9 pm. Today I've had kinda light use by my standards but Ive been off charger since 7 am and I'm at 74%. So it doesnt take long but it does kick in at some point.

True but also remember you are undervolted as well. Admittedly, thats not going to be worth more than 20% in my estimation but still.
Its very true on light days I often go to bed with this thing at well over 50% 16 hours after I pull it off the charger

 

[earsly]

Wondering if I have a bad battery or my cell reception really does suck. My phone lasted almost 24 hours. 43% of the battery drained due to voice calls. The calls added up to 45 minutes. This can't be right???