Help Battery Life vs SGSII

maybe a mod should put this into the vs sgII thread?

the battery life on most of today's dual core phones will suck.

at the same time, i am not the type of person who goes and disables half the stuff that makes their smartphone a smartphone just to save battery... but there are still some things you can do to be sensible.

ensure your sync mode is set to sync as infrequently as you need, but obviously no less frequently than that.

ensure brightness is manually controlled (power bar).

turn off haptic feedback if you don't need it.

turn off wifi when you don't need it (again, easily done in power bar).

experiment with switching between gsm, wcdma, and dual mode (this will depend on where you live/work/travel etc).

try some battery conditioning tricks.

see if any apps are running on a constant basis in the background (e.g. using constant data flow) and change settings so that they don't.

all these little things will add up and give you an extra 50%

Batteries with both the Sensation and the GSII are pretty hit and miss...just depends on the handset.

But the general idea is that the GSII is supposed to be better. Some review sites say that they are equal, some say that the GSII does fair better and you can get 2 days of moderate usage out of the phone.

The GSII also has smart, underclocking so when the screen is off, and not it use, it is under clocked to 200Mhz and then as soon as the screen goes on, it is clocked back up to 1.2Ghz. I believe this is what could be gibing giving it the upper hand.
(however the sensation could have this)
Any sensation users know if there is something similar on the Sensation??

managerxxx said:

Thanks for the replies so far. I've switched from the inbuilt 'pull' email client to the gmail 'push' app which seems to have made a massive difference. The phone has been used now for almost 13 hours and I still have over 60% battery. Don't get me wrong, it's still poor compared to my work Blackberry but it's making me reconsider my thoughts of jumping ship to the SGSII.

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Just one thing to remember. This device is in a WHOLE DIFFERENT LEAGUE in comparison to all BBs. Are good, but they are merely business. SGSII allows you to do SO MUCH more and Android also just broadens the horizons on what you can do on your phone. Just remember when comparing the device - and remember there will soon be official and unofficial battery extenders in the market very soon.

I think another reason the SGSII has better battery performance is that it comes with a bigger battery - 1520 mAh vs. 1650 mAh. Combine that with the difference in screen and the battery issue weighs pretty heavily in the Samsung's favor. I think I'm still going for the Sensation. I'll just do like I do now and get spare chargers for work and the car. It would be nice if HTC made an extended battery for the Sensation like they did for the T-Bolt. It would be tricky with the way the cover of the Sensation is designed, but it would be nice to have the option.

Glad you've solved your problem, but for future reference, email every 5 mins isn't "light" use

managerxxx said:

Hi

I'm new to HTC and Android but I'm shocked at the batter life on my sensation. I struggle to get 16 hours use out of a full charge and I'm a light user - e.g 10 mins calling, 10 minutes browsing, email checking every 5 mins, a couple of texts, etc.

I know that the dual core will inevitably eat battery but if I'm barely getting a day's use from the phone without doing anything heavy I'm worried that I'm going to get caught with a flat battery sooner or later.

How does this compare to other users and will this be any better on the SGSII as I'm tempted to return the phone to VF.

Thanks

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Battery capacity for Samsung Galaxy S2 has 1650mAh compare to SGS 1500mAh.
Whereas Sensation at 4.3 inch uses 1500mAh, I surelythink HTC is not giving its customer the best. A lots of HTC users complaining of lousy batt life.

managerxxx said:

Thanks for the replies so far. I've switched from the inbuilt 'pull' email client to the gmail 'push' app which seems to have made a massive difference. The phone has been used now for almost 13 hours and I still have over 60% battery. Don't get me wrong, it's still poor compared to my work Blackberry but it's making me reconsider my thoughts of jumping ship to the SGSII.

Click to expand...

Hiya, I've only had my HTC Sensation for 4 days and the battery life has been very short and the phone was out of battery every evening so far! Which is weird because I dont use it a lot when Im at work and it runs out so quickly!

Anyway, Im new to Android (and Im blonde lol) so Im not sure how to switch from the inbuilt 'pull' email client to the gmail 'push' app. Could you please explain how to do it? I need to try it! coz other than that I love the phone and dont want to change it

I find the best way is to turn off all background syncing, turn off the "Enable always-on mobile data", make sure that your wifi goes to sleep after 15 minutes, make sure that all your apps have no syncing at all, so basically everything is manual.

After that I'd use it for a day and see how good the battery is and then slowly turn on things that you want to sync until you reach a happy medium of battery life and smartphone features.

daivik said:

The GSII also has smart, underclocking so when the screen is off, and not it use, it is under clocked

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every android phone does this (and i'd imagine every smartphone in general)

General consensus is the SGSII has a better battery, but not by much. And medium/heavy users probably wont find much difference between them.

For light users, it will last a day easily, as long as you manage your apps smartly.

The OTA update to 2.3.4 (vodafone uk) seems to have really sorted out my battery life...even with wifi on most of the time it's definitely handling the juice better. I've also been messing with Tasker to automatically change phone states etc depending on the time. I can now get a couple of days out of a full charge. Don't forget to check your Power Saver settings.