Battery problems, quirks and issues: Read first.

[jason81]

First off... my name is Jason, and I just joined the forum.

Like most of you... I too have been having battery issues with my moment (Best phone ever by the way). I have been folowing this thread. Today I talked to Samsung, and Sprint today... and it basically comes down to this. Both tried to convince me that I have a defective battery, and when I told the Sprint rep that this is a widespred problem, she said that she had not heard anything about this issue.... so maybe Sprint is not working on a solution..... Just thought I would let everyone know what I was told

 

[Adrift]

Adrift, what type of task manager are you running? Are there any apps that you would specifically NOT recommend?

Not running any task manager, I would recommend stopping the weather widgit that comes with the phone (actually turning off the "follow me" GOS tracking function). Just so everyone knows I am not skimping on apps.
Apps I have installed :
3D Compass
Abduction!
Armadillo Roll
Backgrounds
Bank of America
Battery Graph
Battery Widgit
CowPotato
Facebook
Flashlight
FxCamera
Gem Miner
GoogleSky Map
GPS Speedo
GPS Status
Handcent SMS
Hyperspace Lite
Hypnotic Spiral
Labyrinth Lite
Layar
LED Scroller 2
Magic Marker
MyTracks
Pandora
Picsay
Ringdroid
Runstar
Slimeball Lite
Spectrek Lite
Speed Forge 3D demo
Super-G Stunt
Tone Picker

 

[decalex]

Hmmmmm...brighten screen to the fullest setting, download Droidlive and stream music via evo (not wifi) and crank up the volume. Then see if you can set this in the bacground and play a 4 hr long movie in high quality. Or just turn on your video camera and put it on standby. Theses might drain your battery faster.

Playing a movie is a good idea! thanks. For last night, I turned on all of the bells and whistles, turned off screen timeout and ran the game SpeedForge 3D-- then I just set the phone down. Since the racing game uses the accelerometer, that little ship spun round n round.. for at least 3 hours (at 15%) till the phone died. I'll try streaming music next time. This is def a first for me -- but the battery life really is excellent..

 

[chibucks]

I actually exchanged my first moment for another one because I was convinced that the 1-4 hour battery life was a defective phone. Turns out it was probably operator error. Still not having much luck with keeping a charge despite reading this thread. I'm not the most tech savvy, so, I'm going to pose a few questions to get my Moment on track, a new users guide so to speak. Hope this helps others in a similar spot.

1 If having poor battery life, where do I want to look in the Spare parts app? I know I want to look at the awake time under Battery history to see if programs have been running and not letting it sleep when it's supposed to, but is there a way to tell which programs are the problem?

2 How do I do a factory reset and when is it advisable?

3 What are known problem apps / known safe apps in terms of running when they aren't supposed to?

4 What apps / setup are people with better battery life using? Which task managers are people with better battery life using and how are they configuring them? I have three different ones, Advanced Task Killer Free, Task Manager 1.10.9 and Advanced Task Manager (paid) and am sure they would help more if I could pick the best one and configure it better.

5 Is using wifi when possible going to save or cost you battery life?

6 I would post the apps I have installed but I forget how to see the list of what you've downloaded. Does anyone remember this?

Thanks to anyone who can help on this! I love this phone and don't want to return it due to battery isssues! Again, after all of this is straightened out, perhaps it could be stickyed as a new user / less tech savvy user guide to get your Moment on track. In the meantime, I'll keep charging and try to top off with the USB! Thanks, Mike

Mike,
I'll try and answer a few of your questions...

1 & 2 - I'll have to default to others on this one - I haven't used Spare Parts or Factory Reset yet
3 - I know the Weather Widget that comes with the phone (especially if you have location on) drains quite a bit - also, if you use your browser and have pages that autorefresh and such, those drain as well - I'd kill those applications using ATK or comparable task manager. Also, i have a quick menu to turn on/off bluetooth, GPS, & wifi when I need them.
4 - I've been using ATK (Advanced Task Killer) and it's been great. I basically will just kill everything it tells me to. I've heard that if something is supposed to be on, it'll turn on automatically later. For me, I think this has definitely saved my battery life - I remember a couple of times the phone getting a little hot because I had so much background apps running.
5 - I think it depends on your phone connection (EVDO, etc) - but if you're at home, I'd use WIFI - just don't have it on and roaming when you don't have a known connection.
6 - Goto Marketplace > Downloads and you can see - or else you can download Quick Uninstaller and it'll show a list of all your applications

 

[TheEsupremacy]

Regardless what anyone else tells you or you read on the net, there is little to no additional need to "power condition" a current manufacted battery. Letting these batteries drain to "dead" will shorten the life. That I DO know.

 

[decalex]

....

2 How do I do a factory reset and when is it advisable?
....

I can get this one: From Home, hit Menu > Settings > SD Card & Phone storage > Factory Data Reset (erases all data on phone).

Good luck and backup anything u need to keep!

 

[decalex]

Regardless what anyone else tells you or you read on the net, there is little to no additional need to "power condition" a current manufacted battery. Letting these batteries drain to "dead" will shorten the life. That I DO know.

Honestly, I'd rather have a shorter overall battery life with an accurate meter.
Actually no, I'd rather have infinite battery life and not need a meter, but until we can use kinetic energy to power our devices, I'll stick with this.

 

[ragingbull2k2]

charged all night with the a/c unit... disconnected and took 2 more hours to go back from 90% to 100% with the usb... as soon as I disconnected, right back down to 90%... not sure what to think, lol... gotta go to work but maybe it will be better tomorrow...

Joey

 

[abrahan]

Apps I have installed :
3D Compass
Abduction!
Armadillo Roll
Backgrounds
Bank of America
Battery Graph
Battery Widgit
CowPotato
Facebook
Flashlight
FxCamera
Gem Miner
GoogleSky Map
GPS Speedo
GPS Status
Handcent SMS
Hyperspace Lite
Hypnotic Spiral
Labyrinth Lite
Layar
LED Scroller 2
Magic Marker
MyTracks
Pandora
Picsay
Ringdroid
Runstar
Slimeball Lite
Spectrek Lite
Speed Forge 3D demo
Super-G Stunt
Tone Picker

nice list. thnx for the fxcamera app.

 

[civicmon]

Have you used spare parts to check the % of time your phone is actually running? That was one of my biggest issues at first, some app was causing my phone to run 95% of the time and draining my battery really quick.

Now, after clean up my apps and doing a handful of full discharges I am doing pretty good. Yesterday it came off the charger at 10am and was at 50% when I got home from the bar after midnight with moderate usage all day.

I have Spare Parts but I can't exactly tell what's draining the memory. I also have a bunch of programs downloaded and I try to ensure they're not actively on. I've noticed that I do get much better battery life with the background data off, but that negates any benefit of having an "android" phone with syncing to Google.

The top four programs according by usage time are:

Home
Market
Gmail
Browser

Not exactly anything that would be downloaded from the Market. The 5th program, flickr droid, is about 1/10th in usage time compared to Home.

So, something is very amiss here. I'm awaiting a call from Sprint Retentions but at this rate, I'm much better off elsewhere.

 

[funker]

Thanks everyone for the helpful information! I did a factory reset. When I reinstalled apps I refused the user agreement for the weather channel and put the link in the trash. Instead, I installed the "Where" app and use the weather and movies info along with traffic restaurants and more rather than weather channel and other apps I had before. I put only one task manager back on, Advanced Task Manager and told it to let the following programs run: Voice Control, com.samsung.internal, Settings, Carrier.iqagent, Gmail, Calendar, Alarm Clock and Advanced Task Manager. I put the widget to end other programs running on the main screen. After my phone got to 90 percent on wall charge, I put it on the usb. It was taking forever, so I shut the phone off and let it finish charging via USB. It suddenly finished fairly quickly. I was very skeptical but I took it off the charger and powered it back on... I have been at 100 percent for OVER TWO HOURS !!!!

I didn't turn the gps on, because Where doesn't need it. I also didn't put the football scores app back on because I found it always running in the background. I'll just use ESPN instead.

Apps installed:
Contacts Group U
Poke A Mole
Arkanoid
Metor Breakout Lite
Pac Man
Hotblox
CB Blackjack
Battery Graph
Spare Parts
Where
Shazam
Unit Converter-Convertpad
Tip Calculator (with Coffee cup picture)
Color Flashlight Fun Flashlight
Quick Settings
Youmail
Dolphin Browser
Advanced Task Manager
EZ-30!Crosswords 1, 2 and 3
ShopSavvy

It dropped to 80 percent while I was writing this, but it seems like we're getting on the right track!

 

[CriticalCritic]

Apps I have installed :
Armadillo Roll

This looks like it might be an interesting game, but it's not working for me. Have you tested it? Is it running for you?

 

[funker]

Since I've had to do both a factory reset and return another Moment, anyone who's worried about losing apps or contacts from this, I have good news. After you set the phone up, any apps you've already paid for are recognized as paid for, you just need to download them again! Also, as long as you've synced your contacts to gmail, they'll all come back also! Plus, you don't need to pay Sprint's $2 per month charge to backup your contacts, since they already back up to your google account!

Still at 40 percent power and almost 6 hours in! I know that could be better, but it's a record for me, so I'm pretty excited about the prospect of hopefully getting even better battery life over the next few charges and being able to keep this phone that I've fallen in love with!

 

[Adrift]

This looks like it might be an interesting game, but it's not working for me. Have you tested it? Is it running for you?

Yeah, it's not compatible at this time. I've been meaning to email the Devs about it. It was fun, but way too glitchy on Hero. Speedforge 3D was the same way on Hero, but is really smooth on Moment, so I'm hopeing for similar results.

 

[marcusb]

Anyone else getting a popup that says: A username and password are being requested by http://forum.e46fanatics.com. The site says: "We\'ll Be Back Shortly"

when loading this page?

 

[CriticalCritic]

Yeah, it's not compatible at this time. I've been meaning to email the Devs about it. It was fun, but way too glitchy on Hero. Speedforge 3D was the same way on Hero, but is really smooth on Moment, so I'm hopeing for similar results.

Yeah, I am really impressed with Speedforge! I think this is evidence that we can expect an N64 emulator to be coming soon (Hopefully!).
Currently, the Moment is the only phone with the minimum hardware to run an N64 emulator comparable to PJ64.

 

[ed3165]

Glad to say after getting my moment sunday and letting battery go dead lasted me a full 24 hours and just had to plug her back in. So far im loving it

 

[jayford00]

Regardless what anyone else tells you or you read on the net, there is little to no additional need to "power condition" a current manufacted battery. Letting these batteries drain to "dead" will shorten the life. That I DO know.

I was an Electronics Technician in the Navy and when we had to do our maintenance on the UPS(s) of the severs and switch gear it was required for us to kill the battery, service and then power up the equipment. I've seen a great improvement in battery life since conditioning my battery.

 

[marcusb]

Ok, so I am not sure what I am doing wrong.. I have the same apps/widgets (with the exception of Battery Graph.. and I've removed Locale completely) that I had on my hero. I've tried draining the battery til it won't come on (which is annoying since below 15% OS seems to reboot if you try t do anything like browse the market or a webpage.. though oddly other things don't effect it at all).. I drained again and "topped off" with the USB and today I received pretty much no phone calls. According to spare parts my usage since about 5:50AM is:

Running 12.3%
ScreenOn 8.6%
Phone On 0.9%

Also, GPS is on but not being used by any app. WiFi was on when I was at home and BT has been off all day. I reset the phone this morning before unplugging so no apps used the previous day effected anything.

I've barely even used this thing over the past twelve hours.. but after 12 hours I'm at 15%! If this doesn't last me until 9:30 or 10ish like the hero did (although the hero would usually have 15-20% left.. I usually plugged it in for the night anyway) what are my options.. or what do you all recommend? Do I just need to try try again? Is there a technique I've missed?

 

[souljah335]

Are you sure you don't have any applications on that might be draining your battery. Try running task killer from time to time.

 

[marcusb]

Are you sure you don't have any applications on that might be draining your battery. Try running task killer from time to time.

I have run task killer.. but again- nothing has really changed since the hero in what I use except battery graph which I have uninstalled before to see if it effected the life but it didn't seem to change too much. I have advanced task killer but I don't see anything running that shouldn't be and I do occasionally kill unneeded apps though. I am 100% sure nothing is running that shouldn't be.

I've even doubled the update time of all my widgets compared to when I had the hero.. it has lasted longer today but still I don't think this is very good battery life.

 

[souljah335]

how many times did you drain??

 

[marcusb]

About 3 or 4 complete drains. Only one by "topping off" though. That seems to have produced the most results.

 

[souljah335]

If you think it keeps getting better than i would continue untill it doesn't.

 

[marcusb]

I guess it's like stretching guitar strings.. just gotta keep tuning until it holds.