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average readings?

nebler

Android Enthusiast
Aug 9, 2010
302
10
Cornwall UK
Any good after 10hours, down to 65%? Average use, with Nova Launcher.
 

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Come on them, how do you do it :)

Reading, research, testing and common sense.

The Samsung Galaxy 2, out-of-the-box, is designed to work for, and please, everyone. It has lots of app's and processes that some of us never use, or want. If you don't believe me, then just go to... Settings > Applications > Running and look at what is actually running on your phone at any given time, not to mention the cached processes, which, whilst they are not using any juice, are lurking, ready to fire up.

There is an excellent post by Hawker, here, that explains how you can save an awful lot of juice on an un-rooted phone by just changing some of your settings.

Also, think about app's. Not all app's are equal. Some will suck the life out of your phone. Some are better than the built-in ones that come with the phone. For instance... lets take the built-in digital clock and Accuweather that comes pre-installed. Not bad app's. They sit on your Home screen and run 24/7, updating your location and downloading the latest weather information. However, do you need to know what the weather is like when you are asleep? There is, for example, Fancy Widgets on the Play Store, that you can replace these with... that is a lot more configurable, has lots of individual clock and weather skins and, best of all... can be put into night mode, automatically, whereby it does not constantly contact and download location and weather information when you don't need it. Thus, not only saving you battery but data as well for the 6 or 8 hours that you do not need it.

OK, so it might only save you 1% battery in 24 hours... now multiply that by 20 app's!

Rooting, without a doubt, is the biggest performance enhancer and battery saver.

It allows one to close down built-in processes that you do not use, permanently. As an example, two built-in processes that are constantly running on your phone are Wi-Fi Sharing and Wi-Fi Sharing Manager. nothing to do with the day-to-day use of your Wi-Fi and a feature that most of us never use and yet, there they sit in the background, working away and are one of the biggest consumers of power on your phone. I have about 46 built-in app's that are, "frozen", so that they do not run and use battery, data and CPU. See, here.

Being rooted also means that you can have your pick of, say, the best modems worldwide. The modem is the driver that handles your phone and data signal. If you have a modem that is struggling to find and keep a signal it will not only give you poor call and data quality, it will consume a lot more battery. After testing around 30 of Samsung's modems, (they release different one's for different locations and network carriers), I found that although I am with Vodafone, UK, their modem gave me an OK signal. However, the Orange, UK, modem, for the, "P", variant phone offers a much better signal.

The same thing applies to the very heart of your phone, the kernel. This is what controls most of the operations on your handset. By default, the stock Samsung kernel has to be, "all things to all men", and is, if you like, the family saloon car of kernels.

There are a number of custom kernels that are, "pimped", or tweaked, that can offer much better performance, speed and a lot less battery drain.

The same goes for the ROM or firmware that is on your phone, some of which are far superior, IMHO, to that which comes as stock. The one I am using looks identical to the stock firmware but runs faster and lighter and consumes less battery.

Bear in mind that a lot of these developers spend thousands of hours taking apart the various software components and improving on them in a way that Samsung, and even Android, could never afford to do.

The list goes on... GPS enhancements that are accurate to within 2 or 3 metres within 10 seconds, customisable icons, transparent status bars, enhancements from the S3 and other Galaxy models not to mention that Jelly Bean custom ROM's have been available for about 3 months already. The ability to take, "nandroid", backups, (complete mirror images of your whole phone, firmware, app's, settings, the whole shooting match.), in less than 5 minutes and which can be restored in the same time. Thus allowing you to experiment with various aspects of your phone to increase battery saving and performance without too much fear of losing everything.

OK, I confess, my earlier screenshot was of, what I would term, light usage. My average, medium, usage would be around 20-24 hours and heavy usage would be about 14-18 hours. Compare that to the 8-12 hours medium usage out-of-the-box that I used to get and you can see that my battery life has more than doubled.

However, all this comes at a price. There is no magic formula that I could give each and everyone to immediately double their battery life as there are so many variables from location, app's installed, network carrier and usage. Above all, it is down to reading, research and trial and error.

Not glad you asked now nebler? :D
 
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Rooting is not for me just yet as I really don't have the time to learn how, maybe one day.

A popular misconception is that rooting your phone is a long and extremely complicated process. It isn't. It is just flashing a rooted kernel.

True story. There is a rather attractive divorcee who lives locally. I visited her and her 13 year old son. He wanted to root his phone to get the ROM I was using. Thinking that this was a good way to get my feet under the table and look good in his eyes, I brought up that rooting guide for him and told him to read it thoroughly and carefully, thinking that he would call on me to help him.

One bottle of wine and 90 minutes later he proudly produced his phone that he had rooted from scratch, including downloading and installing Odin and the rooting kernel!

In the words of Dick Dastardly from Whacky Races... "Drat!... and double drat!"
 
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