Help Battery Life Test

tuftslax · Sep 1, 2010

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone knew of a technique to test their own battery in a similar manner such as seen on the recent phone comparison test:

Android Battery Test Reveals Droid X Lasts Longest, AMOLED Handsets Trail

I would love to use their app that they used but I dont believe its available anywhere. The reason I ask this is because I truly think the biggest drain on the phone is powering that huge screen. I'm pretty skeptical about my phone and its battery life. I use an extended battery now but with my standard there was NO WAY I could have my phone screen on 40% brightness and OVER 7 HOURS! I just cant fathom that. I got maybe 3 hours of screen time with 10% brightness.

I understand that obviously this didnt stress the cpu or take into account radio functions, but I know for example with my extended I have left my phone on for 5 hours and I only dropped 10% and that is with no use. Therefore I have found my battery drain comes significantly from the display which I think is consistent with most users.

I kind of want to know for comparison use, all phones should use the same amount of battery to perform a test like that, no?

bigbadwulff · Sep 1, 2010

Best test is every-day use.
I turn the screen off as fast as I can after each use. The screen uses the most battery. If it's off, you're saving your battery.
I also toggle Wi-Fi and GPS on when I actually use it.
Screen timer set to go off at 30 secs or 1 minute, depending on my mood.
Other than that I let the phone do it's own thing.

bosox2k1 · Sep 1, 2010

bigbadwulff said:
Best test is every-day use.
I turn the screen off as fast as I can after each use. The screen uses the most battery. If it's off, you're saving your battery.
I also toggle Wi-Fi and GPS on when I actually use it.
Screen timer set to go off at 30 secs or 1 minute, depending on my mood.
Other than that I let the phone do it's own thing.

you don't really need to worry about gps--unless you are using a program that utilizes it. Otherwise it shuts it off. I used to toggle it off all the time, but now I keep it on and I get the same amount of battery life. As I am sure you know, you can tell it's being used by the little satellite icon in the notification bar. If you don't see that, don't worry about battery drain

tuftslax · Sep 1, 2010

Gps toggle is important for the non froyo users because they need to watch out for the sleep bug...

vr4 · Sep 1, 2010

i wouldnt mind seeing the test run again with the X on froyo just to see if anything changes...

tuftslax · Sep 1, 2010

bigbadwulff said:
Best test is every-day use.
I turn the screen off as fast as I can after each use. The screen uses the most battery. If it's off, you're saving your battery.
I also toggle Wi-Fi and GPS on when I actually use it.
Screen timer set to go off at 30 secs or 1 minute, depending on my mood.
Other than that I let the phone do it's own thing.

The best test isn't every-day use there are countless variables that affect battery life, I'm talking about testing one of them. I'm not asking this because I'm debating about buying the phone, I'm curious as to the screen power draw comparatively to other Xs since I have the phone. I dont think my screen would stay on for 7 hours straight on 40% brightness but apparently that is what their test showed.

I've ranted before how people dont include the screen on time in their battery life reports. They just give the percentage which means nothing. I want to know if people with 24 hour battery lives are using their screen for 5+ hours. "Heavy" use is subjective and means nothing.

Vihzel · Sep 1, 2010

As expected.

tuftslax · Sep 1, 2010

What's expected?

Vihzel · Sep 1, 2010

tuftslax said:
What's expected?

That the Droid X would have the best results out of those phones. Regardless of what they were able to achieve, I expected the Droid X to perform either the best or very close to the best. I hope that there was no foul play or anything. From what I've seen with how they tested it... it seems reasonable. I get a crazy amount of battery life on my X.

zemerick · Sep 2, 2010

Vihzel said:
That the Droid X would have the best results out of those phones. Regardless of what they were able to achieve, I expected the Droid X to perform either the best or very close to the best. I hope that there was no foul play or anything. From what I've seen with how they tested it... it seems reasonable. I get a crazy amount of battery life on my X.

That depends on your definition of foul play. They specifically admit that the test was biased toward LCD screens due to the large amount of time displaying white ( which is very different in real world. ) It would have been better to have the screen set to never time out, and sit at the home screen while streaming Pandora with the mobile network and such on ( but standardized across the phones. ) Then you would probably see a complete flip of the AMOLED and LCD.

Which really says one thing: How you use it, is BY FAR the biggest factor in battery life.

vr4 · Sep 2, 2010

zemerick said:
That depends on your definition of foul play. They specifically admit that the test was biased toward LCD screens due to the large amount of time displaying white ( which is very different in real world. ) It would have been better to have the screen set to never time out, and sit at the home screen while streaming Pandora with the mobile network and such on ( but standardized across the phones. ) Then you would probably see a complete flip of the AMOLED and LCD.

Which really says one thing: How you use it, is BY FAR the biggest factor in battery life.

Most of the use of my phone is also on white/light background so its very useful to me. Until the web itself goes all emo it will always be "biased" towards lcd

tuftslax · Sep 2, 2010

Another thing people brought up is the brightness is subjective, 40%k is not the same actual brightness on a all phones.
More importantly, does anyone think their screen will last that long?

tuftslax · Sep 2, 2010

Another thing people brought up is the brightness is subjective, 40%k is not the same actual brightness on a all phones.
More importantly, does anyone think their screen will last that long?

thehikingdude · Sep 2, 2010

tuftslax said:
I use an extended battery now but with my standard there was NO WAY I could have my phone screen on 40% brightness and OVER 7 HOURS! I just cant fathom that. I got maybe 3 hours of screen time with 10% brightness.

I was experiencing the EXACT same thing. I got (begged) Verizon to swap out the battery and my battery life more than tripled. No doubt I had a bad battery.

deadinside · Sep 2, 2010

The battery life is pretty good in these, I can use it decently for atleast 4 hours. Calls, E-mail, Maps, Web and listening to Mp3's and still have about 70% of battery life before attempting to charge it.
Yesterday I had it worked down to about 50%, but it was never on a charger all day at work and same normal use that I have always done. so there was about 11 hours it was not being charged from the moment I left, until I got home.

I was surprised by this.

But I also use fast reboot pro several times a day to close out apps after I use several

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