sean76

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!

tats_06

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!!!!

__________________
Samsung Fascinate
Rooted | CWM Recovery | jt kernel

http://www.mydroidworld.com

boss1197

Sounds like you may have got one someone returned, when they opened mine they had to install the battery. My battery life has been good, much better than the Eris I had. It's been unplugged since about 11AM and it's used around 50% and that is with fairly heavy use. Also with WiFi and GPS on the whole time.

sean76

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!

saps

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

sean76

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.

EliC

Battery life ROCKS. This really is the strongest point on the phone for me. I only charge every other day and could probably stretch to a third day.

mastamoon

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.

rwrife

I can easily get through the day and sometimes almost 2 days with light to moderate use.....I'm using Tasker to control when the push email, gps & wifi is on and have the screen brightness set pretty low.

Frisco

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.

shazbonk

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.

Frisco

"..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.

sean76

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!

SirKronan

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.

shazbonk

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.

Last edited by shazbonk; September 21st, 2010 at 09:34 AM.

Frisco

Syncing is sure another culprit in slurping up battery life; especially when a sync loop begins.

Kierik

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.

mastamoon

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.

ckochinsky125

My battery life has been really good easily getting me through a whole day with checking email, a lot of texting and web browsing.

Gevis

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.

rushmore

I do not have one so do not know. That said, I challenge anyone to be more accurate and subjective-free with their post about something as subjective as battery life

Nice device, none the less.

Kierik

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.

shazbonk

Yeah, i don't get a very good 3g signal at work and I partially blame that for some of my excessive battery drain. I've been looking for a way to force the phone to only use 1x instead of 3g, but haven't found anything that works yet.

rogue_slc_vzw_rep

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

Last edited by rogue_slc_vzw_rep; September 21st, 2010 at 02:40 PM.

ReverendOD

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.

II Kings 9:20

You guys are doing much better than my D1. I get about 14 hours to red with only moderate use. 20 -30 min of talk or less, check several emails, no text, BT off, GPS on but no Navi function, no live wall paper. I have gone with the absolute minimum to keeping everything on and it seems to make little difference- battery life on the D1 ain't great. Once the battery goes to half green it's done, it is on yellow in an hour just sitting in my pocket. At half green, I have less than an hour of use. I am hoping for more with the SF.

I can turn lots if things off like email sync, GPS, etc but I HAVE A FRIGGIN SMART PHONE! If I wanted to keep email sync off and check when I get to the desk top at home after work I could get a $35 flip phone, call it a day, and save my $30 a month data charge. What is the point of nice live wall paper, instant email, texting, GPS that does not require me to turn it on after I do a voice search because I forgot it was turned off, etc. etc. - If I can't use it as it was designed and realize all of it's attributes- why bother. All of these tricks to get more battery are fine but I think more battery is needed and skip all of the tricks that make the smart phone a pretty flip phone.

Last edited by II Kings 9:20; September 21st, 2010 at 09:42 PM.

Vihzel

My battery has been quite good on the Fascinate. I've also only been using live wallpapers.

EliC

Currently at 2d 14h with 24% battery life remaining with lite to moderate use.

TheAlmightyDrew

How?!?!

yankeeboy

I have had similar positive results. First time in 4 months I haven't had to walk around with a charger...Battery is similar to a Blackberry for me - hard to kill

rogue_slc_vzw_rep

I almost bought a blackberry because battery life was so abysmal with my Droid 1. I can compare my curves battery life to the fascinates easily.

SirKronan

I just logged 48 hours solid from last plug in. I can't believe that. I gave it relatively light use, just to see how good the standby was, but I still placed quite a few calls, lots of texting and played a few games on it. I don't expect it to do that with heavier use, but it will certainly get me through just about any normal day, not needing a mid-day charge. This takes less time to get a full charge than the Eris or the Droid X, but only by about 20 min. Still, more convenient.

After 48 hrs, I only had 5% left though. Usage was less than what I usually do, but still quite a lot. I am really enjoying this phone.

I will try to do more accurate logs of what I do, because my battery analyzer doesn't work. For example, in the middle of the day today, I had 40-something percent left, and it had been well over a day since I had it plugged into anything whatsoever. I opened the battery meter and it said "Unplugged for 26 seconds ...." Yeah right.

Even though my battery meter is lying, I certainly am not. I am as surprised as all crap that the Fascinate has anywhere near the battery life that my Droid X had, and while providing a screen that's easier to read in the sun.

saps

Nice SK. Best I got was maybe a 32-34 run. That is, Saturday morning 7am off the charger thru 3-4pm Sunday. Saturday was lighter use but Sunday I was riding the wifi and espn scorecenter app following the pigskin stuff while simultaneously listening to espn radio app which had my Skins on. She finally gave up the ghost but Sunday was definitely a heavy day. I can see 48 hours with light-moderate use out of this baby.
I don't even blink thinking if I will make it home when I leave in the morning. I usually am still above 40% when I go to sleep

tats_06

Here is an interesting find I discovered....while trying to run battery down, I got it down to 0% and was still able to browse web and use the phone for like 5 minutes till it completely shut down!!!! I call that amazing!

saps

Well part of that is inaccuracy in the battery prediction or whatever its called. The first 20% seems to go fast and the last 20% seems to last a lot longer. I remember once of the first times I drained her all the way down my 5% warning came on and the battery app told me 20 minutes of talk time which is about right for this device and its 6-7 talk time rating but I got 32 minutes. I every 5% was 32 minutes of talk that'd be over 10 hours which I doubt this thing can do. Those battery apps and widgets are pretty darn good but sometimes they are a tad off

tats_06

Could be...I was just checking in the settings. I don't use Widgets because they drain battery more than are helpful. But either way, I am happy. Right now I am at 5% with 27 hours unplugged. I will take that. All I care about is so I get thru the day not worrying of phone dying on me.

Aullios

mine's been pretty bad while I'm at work.. but that's probably because of the spotty cell reception. I unplugged it at 5:15 am and now at 10:10 am it's already at 54%

very light use.. gps and wifi are off of course.. anybody have any tips to improve it?

Kierik

I think signal strength is key to battery life with any phone. I have only seen 3G and 3Gd (i am new to verizon so i am unsure what this is). Normally i have 2-3 bars in my work and the download speed is between 500kbs and 1.3mbs.

saps

Yeah seriously, 14-16 hours of the device doing what I want when I want it is enough for me. Im 13 days into ownership and frankly I usually still have 30%+ when I go to sleep at night depending on usage that day. I was worried about battery life before I had this device because I know some guys who have Captivates and they both complained about battery life. Maybe they're just always on there's which I think they are and maybe they haven't done the tweaks I have but this thing should really get you a full day

saps

Sadly there is little you can do to improve your reception other than being in better reception zones . You are very correct to say that reception searching really can drain the battery

saps

Very much agreed. Also I have yet to hear anyone say what that D in 3GD is for

Aullios

the problem is that I work in a giant Faraday cage

SirKronan

Turning off background syncing crap made the biggest difference for me on the Droid X and on the Fascinate. I have all the email accounts set to only check when I hit the sync button manually. The Fascinate is the easiest phone I've had for disabling wifi, GPS, etc. without having to be on your home screen, and without taking up homescreen space with a stupid power widget. When you drop down the notification menu, you've got simple access to instantly turn that stuff on when you need it. I use the GPS only 2-3 times a week. So I need it, but not every day, all day. Why keep it on? I only use wifi at the office and at home. I can enable/disable wifi easily on this very ergonomic phone with one hand while I buckle/unbuckle my seatbelt with the other. It's not even an inconvenience! And boy do I get ridiculously good battery life with this phone!!

Make sure you have brightness set to auto, and the power saving screen features enabled as well. It might be a little dimmer than normal indoors, but as soon as the light sensor sees the bright sunlight outside, it cranks up that brightness all the way for you to be able to see it, regardless of power saving settings being enabled.

auntjulie

My husband and I both got the Fascinate last week. His battery was fine. They had problems from the get-go with mine. They couldn't get the backup assistant to work and my email wouldn't work either, plus I kept getting that com.google process error.

My battery was completely dying after 4 hours (which was 59 minutes of talk time). Last Friday I had to charge it 3 times in one day. Each time I charged it, even after 4 hours, it still wasn't completely charged.

I called the store and the sales girl told me it was normal for the phone to charge for 4 hours. Tech support told me however, that it wasn't normal and to take the phone back. After tolerating her huffiness and 2 hours of waiting, I got a new Fascinate and the battery is unbelievable! I charged the phone on Monday night and I still have about 1/4 battery left.

My husband has had no problems whatsoever and I haven't had any problems with this new one. I think the first one I got was a lemon.

saps

Agreed. Glad your new one is as it should be. Sadly, your story confirms the all to common theme that whilst the CS reps at *611 are terrific, the in store reps often times give customers a sub-optimal experience.

II Kings 9:20

D1 stinks, can't wait to get the SF. My D1 is dead: off the charger at 0620 and dead at 1600. less than 10 hours. About 15 min talk, cleared 30 emails, live wall paper, BT off, GPS on but no Navi. Again, half green battery to yellow in 30 min and then to red in another 15-20 min.

ChiTownJim

I'm really not having good life at all infact I'm extremely disapointed . I have been getting 16-24hrs on my stock Incredible battery. And with similar use on the fascinate I got 8hrs and it completely died on day one , and today I'm at 9.5hrs with 15% left. I was really hoping I'd be seeing similar if not bettery life then my Incredible granted I'm rooted with some tweaks for better battery life It's still slightly worse then what I was getting when my DI was stock on 2.1

sean76

Took my battery about 5/6 days to condition. I was getting pretty crappy battery life out of the box! As of yesterday I got about 11hrs out if it with heavy use, and that was still with 15% left when I got home. Right now I'm at 50% and I took it off the charger at 8am...so I'll see how far this charge takes me.

ChiTownJim

Yeah I'm holding judgment for at least a week. It's just disapointing because I'm not even using the phone , it's on my second line as my Incredible is still on my primary line. I took both off the charger at the same time and my Incredible sits now at 64% and my Fascinate is now at 12% . And I've been giving the Incredible the bulk of use, hopefully next week will be better forsure

Billy_617

mine WAS amazing... it kinda sucks right now ? im trying to figure out something..