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What kind of battery is in this phone?

ardchoille

Android Expert
Mar 8, 2011
3,683
1,940
Seattle
What the heck are they using for a battery in this thing? I bought this phone on Friday morning and its now Tuesday afternoon. I've charged the phone twice, I keep WiFi and GPS on, screen timeout is set at 2 minutes, brightness is set at 50%, and I still have 42% left on the battery. And I've been using it heavily.

Is this phone equipped with a new type of battery?

I've owned android devices since the HTC G1 and I don't understand how this battery life is possible.
 
It's actually not a battery. There are tiny hamsters running on tiny hamster wheels inside the phone.

The batteries in the RAZR HD and the RAZR MAXX HD are huge (2530 / 3300 mAh). Parlay that with a power efficient CPU and radio and you have yourself one fine piece of hard to kill equipment.


Edit: I'm on 11 hours with streaming Pandorda over bluetooth for an hour and listening to mp3s for another hour. I still have 85% left. My Galaxy Nexus would have been dead by now.
 
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It's combination of couple of things.
First, the battery size is pretty big. Even the regular Razr HD's 2530mAh is still relatively bigger one than most other phone's regular battery. Secondly, the S4 SoC (processor/modem in one chip) is made in 28nm semiconductor process and it's vastly more power efficient compared to last generation processor, LTE modem from 45nm or older process. Lastly, the Android has gotten better in power management as well with ICS, JB.

As a battery tip, I noticed that biggest battery hitter in JB is often google+ and/or location based services in google now if you are using them. If that bothers you, you may turn off sync on google+ and turn off all location report/tracking settings in google now/map.
 
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It's actually not a battery. There are tiny hamsters running on tiny hamster wheels inside the phone.

The batteries in the RAZR HD and the RAZR MAXX HD are huge (2530 / 3300 mAh). Parlay that with a power efficient CPU and radio and you have yourself one fine piece of hard to kill equipment.


Edit: I'm on 11 hours with streaming Pandorda over bluetooth for an hour and listening to mp3s for another hour. I still have 85% left. My Galaxy Nexus would have been dead by now.

Yeah, the best I ever got out of my Evo 4G and Samsung Vibrant was 34 hours, so both of them would have been dead by now.
 
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It's combination of couple of things.
First, the battery size is pretty big. Even the regular Razr HD's 2530mAh is still relatively bigger one than most other phone's regular battery. Secondly, the S4 SoC (processor/modem in one chip) is made in 28nm semiconductor process and it's vastly more power efficient compared to last generation processor, LTE modem from 45nm or older process. Lastly, the Android has gotten better in power management as well with ICS, JB.

As a battery tip, I noticed that biggest battery hitter in JB is often google+ and/or location based services in google now if you are using them. If that bothers you, you may turn off sync on google+ and turn off all location report/tracking settings in google now/map.

I've been leaving all location/tracking services on. If this is the kind of battery life I can expect from this device I'll leave them on.

I figure it this way; I have to sleep every 24 hours, and I can't use the phone while I sleep, so I may as well charge it. I'm happy as long as the battery life is good for at least 24 hours. I was just very surprised with this battery.

The good thing about this is that the battery life is typically 400 charges, so this equates to double or triple the overall battery life if we only have to charge them every two or three days.
 
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I seriously love this battery coming from a Bionic that would die after 6 hours (If I never used anything).

My question is, should I be charging it every night? On most days, there is normally around 40% left when I go to bed. Is it bad to charge it before it dies? I like waking up with the battery at 100%, but I dont want to ruin the battery over time by charging when its only half dead.
 
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I seriously love this battery coming from a Bionic that would die after 6 hours (If I never used anything).

My question is, should I be charging it every night? On most days, there is normally around 40% left when I go to bed. Is it bad to charge it before it dies? I like waking up with the battery at 100%, but I dont want to ruin the battery over time by charging when its only half dead.

From what I understand these batteries don't like to be used to the point of being empty - I don't let mine go below 10% I've never had a problem with charging a Li-Ion battery every night regardless of how much is left.
 
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From what I understand these batteries don't like to be used to the point of being empty - I don't let mine go below 10% I've never had a problem with charging a Li-Ion battery every night regardless of how much is left.

On another site I've read that it's helpful to occasionally recalibrate the battery meter with the actual battery levels. Apparently with partial discharges followed by charges that don't get to 100% charge the battery meter readout and the actual status of the battery charge can be different. Here's how it was suggested it be accomplished:

1. Use your phone until the battery shows 10% - 15% charge
2. Power down your phone
3. With phone powered off, fully charge your phone, preferably overnight
4. Power up your phone and use as normal.

Then:

5. Use your phone until the battery shows 10% - 15% charge
6. Power down your phone
7. With phone powered off, fully charge your phone, preferably overnight
8. Power up your phone and use as normal.

Do this procedure every couple of months.
 
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On another site I've read that it's helpful to occasionally recalibrate the battery meter with the actual battery levels. Apparently with partial discharges followed by charges that don't get to 100% charge the battery meter readout and the actual status of the battery charge can be different. Here's how it was suggested it be accomplished:

1. Use your phone until the battery shows 10% - 15% charge
2. Power down your phone
3. With phone powered off, fully charge your phone, preferably overnight
4. Power up your phone and use as normal.

Then:

5. Use your phone until the battery shows 10% - 15% charge
6. Power down your phone
7. With phone powered off, fully charge your phone, preferably overnight
8. Power up your phone and use as normal.

Do this procedure every couple of months.

That sounds like yet another case of someone guessing. It's always best to charge the phone while it's powered off.. that way it gets fresh stats from a full battery at boot up.
 
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I unfortunately have to leave my phone on at all times through the night for work purposes, but maybe I will try that sometimes.

But it seems like its not necessarily a bad thing to charge it every night, even when its not completely drained.

Well, the good thing about Android is that it doesn't need to reboot often. Another good thing is that these batteries don't suffer from the memory effect that plagues NiCad batteries.
 
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The Ard is back in the house!! What's up buddy? :)

A good friend of mine just got the Maxx, he's been pounding it, actually abusing the battery, and he gets well over 30 hours.

This guy streams Pandora at work, all day long. Talking 8 to 10 hours straight, and its playing through the phone speaker. I was very impressed when I looked at his battery stats.
 
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The Ard is back in the house!! What's up buddy? :)

A good friend of mine just got the Maxx, he's been pounding it, actually abusing the battery, and he gets well over 30 hours.

This guy streams Pandora at work, all day long. Talking 8 to 10 hours straight, and its playing through the phone speaker. I was very impressed when I looked at his battery stats.

Yes. I'm back.. and happy to be home again :)

The recent Droid RAZR family of phones have huge batteries. I just bought my Droid RAZR HD and the battery life was close to 40 hours out of the box. I really hope the other manufacturers are taking note of this.
 
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Almost two days of use and the battery is still at 26%.. I can't get over this.
 

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