Battery Life is great

[junglizste]

Picked up the phone yesterday. let it charge all day at work. And after heavy usage from 5-midnight, standby from midnight to 8 and light usage this morning, I still have 25% battery... after 17 hours, 7 of which I literally did not put the thing down.

I'd say that's pretty damn good for a super phone.

I know my Evo lost 15% battery on the 30min drive to work. If I unplugged it in the morning it was dead before I went to sleep. Pretty much the reason I returned it, It's not a 4G phone if 4G sucks so much juice you have to leave 4G turned off all the time.

 

[pantlesspenguin]

I completely agree. This is my first android phone, coming from a blackberry. I was fully preparing myself for the battery to be utter crap, & I was GREATLY surprised.

 

[WxAxGxS]

Picked up the phone yesterday. let it charge all day at work. And after heavy usage from 5-midnight, standby from midnight to 8 and light usage this morning, I still have 25% battery... after 17 hours, 7 of which I literally did not put the thing down.

I'd say that's pretty damn good for a super phone.

I know my Evo lost 15% battery on the 30min drive to work. If I unplugged it in the morning it was dead before I went to sleep. Pretty much the reason I returned it, It's not a 4G phone if 4G sucks so much juice you have to leave 4G turned off all the time.

I bought mine yesterday morning and I've already had to charge twice.... I'm assuming that's because this phone's reception where I live is apparently piss poor :-( No dropped calls yet, but I can't even make calls in one of the buildings where I work (never had the issue before and my stupid iPhone 4 loving coworker has full signal)...

 

[junglizste]

I let mine charge off to 100% before ever using it. I know it's not supposed to make a difference on Lipo batteries, but i think it does.

2 hours of standby and a couple min of facebooking and I've only lost 2%.

I think it'll go a full 24 hours.

 

[03machme]

sweet i know i have to charge even my G1 when im at work in the evenings if i use it at all during the day

 

[Robinelli]

I don't know what the deal is? I had a mytouch slide before and never got as much battery life as other users. Now I have this phone, and AGAIN have less battery life??? Could it be related to the number of apps on it? Or the type of charger (I am using a wall charger)? It seems a lot of people use the other types of chargers. I have had my phone unplugged since 7:45am and I highly doubt it will make until 5pm. I am at 60 something percent already and based on my last phone, once it makes it to 20% it dies pretty amazingly fast after that. Please help me figure out what I am doing wrong? I have wifi, bluetooth, and GPS all turned off. I also have all of the syncs turned on manual (I believe I have done all of them) I appreciate any insight, I really do. Thanks!!

*edited to add I have used it light to moderate today.

 

[junglizste]

I don't know what the deal is? I had a mytouch slide before and never got as much battery life as other users. Now I have this phone, and AGAIN have less battery life??? Could it be related to the number of apps on it? Or the type of charger (I am using a wall charger)? It seems a lot of people use the other types of chargers. I have had my phone unplugged since 7:45am and I highly doubt it will make until 5pm. I am at 60 something percent already and based on my last phone, once it makes it to 20% it dies pretty amazingly fast after that. Please help me figure out what I am doing wrong? I have wifi, bluetooth, and GPS all turned off. I also have all of the syncs turned on manual (I believe I have done all of them) I appreciate any insight, I really do. Thanks!!

*edited to add I have used it light to moderate today.

This happened with my EVO, but not with my girlfriends evo. When we first got them, she let it charge over night and i just ripped mine open and went to town. I was bitching about the battery and she said she had no issues. The phones were configured identically and if anything, she is a heavier user than I. I think letting it charge for 8 hours before you ever use it really helps.

other than that widgets, live wallpapers, leaving GPS on, leaving wi-fi on and not letting it auto brightness all have a negative impact on battery.

being in a bad reception area for long periods of time can do it too... but my vibrant is in a cellphone dead zone the whole time I'm at work and it doesn't seem to care.

 

[Robinelli]

Are all icons on the screen called widgets? I have 26 apps/widgets plus the buddies now application on my screens. I am only using screens 2-5. If it would help the battery though, I could trash at least half of those. Would that help?

 

[junglizste]

Are all icons on the screen called widgets? I have 26 apps/widgets plus the buddies now application on my screens. I am only using screens 2-5. If it would help the battery though, I could trash at least half of those. Would that help?

Icons don't matter, widgets do. Widgets are generally larger than an icon. some take up the whole screen. scrap these... especially the samsung ones. they kill the battery and make the phone laggy.

 

[Robinelli]

Thanks. So the Buddies Now would be a widget that would take a lot of battery power? What do you use for contacts you talk to often? Do you assign speed dial?

 

[Nickk]

Aside from turning off samsung widgets, do you guys recommend anything else to conserve battery? I use my phones heavily throughout the day so I need as much juice conserved as possible.

 

[iPenguin]

Aside from turning off samsung widgets, do you guys recommend anything else to conserve battery? I use my phones heavily throughout the day so I need as much juice conserved as possible.

Well I'm an Incredible owner, and you might have heard of our infamous battery issues... But anyway, I would suggest turning off auto-brightness and setting a preference somewhere a little lower than 50%. As vivid as the Vibrant's display is, you would hardly be able to tell a difference in appearance after a while. But of course when you pull out the phone to show off Avatar... then full brightness is a must.

 

[junglizste]

24 HOURS!

10% left.

 

[Robinelli]

Crazy!!!! 24 hours? Mine is now at 6%. It has been unplugged since just before 8am and it is now 5:30pm. Let's say it lasts till 6 pm... that's 10 hours. Maybe it will improve though. I fully discharged it yesterday and let it charge over night. I am doing that again tonight and then again tomorrow.

I also took the widgets off late this afternoon and changed the screen brightness. I actually took the brightness off of auto and turned it ALL the way down and the weird thing is, I can't tell at all on the screen. I wonder if I did something wrong b/c it doesn't look any dimmer and I am really sensitive to light (typically need full light to see things). Anyway, I made these changes halfway, or later, in the day, so perhaps I'll see even better batter results tomorrow.

 

[Robinelli]

Ok I just checked the display and it wasn't all the way down. It was around 30% for some odd reason. I turned it all the way down and it still seems plenty bright.

 

[niharG]

I'm not getting very good results with vibrant battery life. After 8 hours of moderate use (25 minutes talking, occasionally checking social feeds, email) with wifi on for about 2 hours and gps off), brightness at MINIMUM, I'm down to 15%.Battery use shows the screen using 38%. Almost wish I could make it dimmer!

 

[iPenguin]

I'm not getting very good results with vibrant battery life. After 8 hours of moderate use (25 minutes talking, occasionally checking social feeds, email) with wifi on for about 2 hours and gps off), brightness at MINIMUM, I'm down to 15%.Battery use shows the screen using 38%. Almost wish I could make it dimmer!

Hmm... what is the rest of your battery profile looking like? Posting that could help someone maybe identify your problem?

I would imagine if it isn't 3g/data standby, then it is most likely some kind of syncing. And while I don't have this particular phone, 8 hours is around what is average. That's actually pretty decent for most smart phones. :/

 

[junglizste]

26 hours. Going to die any minute. About 30 min talk. Hourly facebook/email checking. 5 min video record. Couple min youtube... Reading news on the can. Facebook set to auto check only every 3 hours. Auto brightness. Min haptic. No widgets.

 

[Robinelli]

You have a crazy battery!!! LOL!!! Auto brightness??! What does your battery use look like? Just curious. Mine said 60% use to battery until I dimmed it. After that my voice calls took the lead.

 

[aci78]

yeah, I am only about 6 hours or less in to this use, and it's almost dead. Granted, I've been watching avatar, checking FB, watching Youtube, etc, but it's all over wifi. Isn't that supposed to be easier on battery life?

 

[yummytyson]

After 2 days of battery draining, I've been using my phone for about an hour downloading apps, games, playing around with them and re-organizing the icons and I am already down to 79% =/ I plan on draining it completely for another day so hopefully it will make a difference.

 

[Robinelli]

Well I have to say I am SHOCKED! My phone lasted me today from 9:30am until 11:45pm... That's 14 hours! Granted it was light use compared to the previous day and a half. But still! On the Mytouch slide it would die in 9 or 10 hours even without me using it! So I am stoked. Tonight is my 3rd night fully discharging and recharging so I am hoping for even more battery power tomorrow. Ideally I'd like it to last a full day 7am-11pm with moderate use and not need to be charged in between. If it could do that I'd be very happy with it.

 

[aci78]

Well I have to say I am SHOCKED! My phone lasted me today from 9:30am until 11:45pm... That's 14 hours! Granted it was light use compared to the previous day and a half. But still! On the Mytouch slide it would die in 9 or 10 hours even without me using it! So I am stoked. Tonight is my 3rd night fully discharging and recharging so I am hoping for even more battery power tomorrow. Ideally I'd like it to last a full day 7am-11pm with moderate use and not need to be charged in between. If it could do that I'd be very happy with it.

Yeah, that doesn't seem like asking for too much in my opinion. Wierd to see the big swing in battery lives from each user, unless some people are over/under exaggerating usage.

 

[yummytyson]

After 2 days of battery draining, I've been using my phone for about an hour downloading apps, games, playing around with them and re-organizing the icons and I am already down to 79% =/ I plan on draining it completely for another day so hopefully it will make a difference.

To update on this, the rest of the day was pretty light-medium usage, played a couple of games, browsed the web, took a few pictures and watched about 10-15 minutes of avatar to start draining my battery and I am now at 14% and my phone has been unplugged for 14 hours. I wouldn't say the battery life is amazing, but then again the phones I've had were the Rokr, Razr, Sidekick LX, Rokr E8 so I haven't had another smart phone to compare it with. It is a HUGE improvement over my Sidekick though.

 

[pgittins]

My Vibrant is far too new for me to have had time to evaluate the battery charge capacity so I am going to limit my comments to care and feeding of the lithium ion type battery it uses.

I recently spoke to a factory engineer about the best way to insure this type of battery has a long life and his suggestion was to recharge the battery at the 50% level. He explained that this particular battery chemistry seems to live best with this type of treatment.

I have seen a lot of comments by folks who are fully discharging their batteries in the mistaken belief that this will improve battery capacity. This is both false and potentially a lethal practice for any of the lithium based batteries. The full discharge and recharge (exercise) practice was actually implemented for use with Nickel Cadmium (NiCad) batteries which are not used with any cell phone I know of.

One thing you might consider when dealing with your battery charge / discharge is the ambient temperature. I am aware of at least three battery chemistries that do not like temperature extremes. One of these is Nickel metal Hydride and another is Lithium Ion / Lithium Polymer. Lead Acid batteries are also not very happy when they are cold.

One tidbit of information you may find useful is that a completely dead Lithium battery looks like a dead short to a battery charger. Once you get a battery to the completely discharged point, most chargers will see the short circuit and simply not permit a charge. While I am aware of a technique which can "wake up" a "dead" battery, I will not share it because the same technique has been known to blow the batteries up. You really don't want the experience of the fireball an exploded lithium battery can produce.

Fortunately when a phone is reporting a discharged battery it means the battery is too low to run the phone. It does not mean the battery is completely discharged.