Help Battery Issue Galaxy S2

[Brumcentral]

Hi

Used my phone from 9am this morning, for the stopwatch function as I was using it to time students presentations, by 12 it was almost fully drained and I had to plug it in to recharge.

How can I save the battery drain to make it last longer, I am aware that when using my iphone for this, it would have used only 20% Only I use my phone a lot to watch media on when I am travelling,have managed to get at least 6-8 hours video out of an iphone on long haul flights and a battery time of only 3 hours worries me.

cheers

 

[Quboid]

That doesn't sound right!

Check the battery usage to see what is using it all. From the home screen, to go Menu > Settings > About Phone > Battery usage to see what's using it.

 

[executiverocker]

Mine was charged fully at 8am, after a day of "normal" usage, web surfing, emails, bit of gaming etc it is now on 65%.

 

[Teknik]

mine was unplugged at 10am, looking at my battery usage, i've had my wifi on constantly and i've had average signal most of the time.
I've got 74% battery now.
Worrying thing is that my highest usage other than the android bits is that maps was sitting at 15%
Although looking at this battery screen it looks like it doesnt reset each time its unplugged from the charger. There are live wallpapers listed on here i only tried briefly.

 

[KING LUFF]

have a look at the battery usage, get a screenshot and post it for all of us to see / help with!

 

[blagger]

Mine is

Android System 54%
Dialer 41%
Cell Standby 3%
Wifi 2%
Phone Idle 2%

The battery seems to last quite well for the day but definetly needs a recharge every night. Happy with that.

 

[bayhota]

Can you recharge the battery when using it? Cause it doesnt work for me

 

[Brumcentral]

Hi

at the moment, it is
android system 63%
dialer 31%
cell standby 3%
wi fi 2%

had to plug phone in at 4pm for 1.30 hrs, it was on last dregs now at 12am and ive not really used phone other than to look at my twitter stream( probably 30 minutes in total) and make a 4 minute call

 

[Brumcentral]

bad quality screenshot

 

[Uber-Duper]

Hey there, how new is the phone?

Some new batteries need to cycle a few times before you'll get the most out of it.
After it has charged, unplug it, then plug it in again, and it will charge for a few more minutes. This increases the charge on new batteries. Do this once after every charge for a few days. you'll find the battery will come good.

Or, you might have a defective battery, which happens sometimes.
Check the apps you have running to make sure u're only using what you need.
turn WIFI, GPS and Bluetooth off and only use them when u need to.
Give the Battery 3 days and if it's still no good, then take it back.

Also possible that the Phone itself has a memory leak in the OS, or a hardware fault.
Try a new battery first, then the next step will be to replace the entire handset.

 

[Brumcentral]

Hi

I brought the phone new, last Thursday, it has never really held a charge

 

[Uber-Duper]

Hi

I brought the phone new, last Thursday, it has never really held a charge

Wow, yeah definitely take it back. Sounds like it's a dud.

 

[jinwons]

Battery issue always pops up whenever new smart-phone is released. I haven't seen any single exception in android phones. Some early units can get defective battery too. As folks learn how to use battery and settings on phone properly, this issue usually subsides although there is some general trend between brands and models. Samsung phone is generally good on power management and battery life.

 

[Lembo]

bad quality screenshot

View attachment 18154

btw, you can take a screen grab by holding down the middle key then the power ;-)

 

[Uber-Duper]

btw, you can take a screen grab by holding down the middle key then the power ;-)

OMG I wanted to know if that was possible!!!

You read my mind man

Thanx ;P

 

[Gearu]

btw, you can take a screen grab by holding down the middle key then the power ;-)

I was just thinking as I was reading through this thread, If I was going to make a phone, I'd put in a screen cap option in clever places.
+2 points Samsung

 

[Cooky]

Hello, im a bit of a newby to all this, i hope someone can help...?

Ive had the GS2 for just over a week and ive experienced really poor battery life, typical performance is about 5 - 6 hours from fully charged, with very light usage (example: sending approx 5 texts, sending a couple of tweets and aprox 5 mins browsing - usually on wi-fi with a good signal).

Ive turned off live wall papers and experimented with turning off wi-fi and GPS when i dont have them available.

Weather updates every 6 hours twitter every 2 hours and i have push mail set up. Other than this theres not much I can see thats turned on.

I read on an xda forum that toggling flight mode on and off 3 times might help but didnt get any success. I also read there that doing a factory reset can solve the issue, i tried this but again to no avail.

If anyone has any advice id be really grateful as i love this phone but i cant get a days use out of it, even with light usage.

Ive noticed on my battery monitor that 'Android OS' is consistently the highest power user, usually around 40%-50%, screen seems to be around 10%-20%.

Oh also, i fully discharged the battery before re-charging for the first 3 times. I use the wall charger to charger not the USB

Any feedback advice would be much appreciated.

 

[ardchoille]

Hello, im a bit of a newby to all this, i hope someone can help...?

Ive had the GS2 for just over a week and ive experienced really poor battery life, typical performance is about 5 - 6 hours from fully charged, with very light usage (example: sending approx 5 texts, sending a couple of tweets and aprox 5 mins browsing - usually on wi-fi with a good signal).

Ive turned off live wall papers and experimented with turning off wi-fi and GPS when i dont have them available.

Weather updates every 6 hours twitter every 2 hours and i have push mail set up. Other than this theres not much I can see thats turned on.

I read on an xda forum that toggling flight mode on and off 3 times might help but didnt get any success. I also read there that doing a factory reset can solve the issue, i tried this but again to no avail.

If anyone has any advice id be really grateful as i love this phone but i cant get a days use out of it, even with light usage.

Ive noticed on my battery monitor that 'Android OS' is consistently the highest power user, usually around 40%-50%, screen seems to be around 10%-20%.

Oh also, i fully discharged the battery before re-charging for the first 3 times. I use the wall charger to charger not the USB

Any feedback advice would be much appreciated.

Here's how I extended my battery life:
1. Turn off refresh in all apps like twitter and facebook. You can manually refresh data in an app when you launch it and having an app refresh while you sleep is a waste of resources in my opinion. One exception to this might be gmail

2. Get rid widgets that constantly poll for information. These are widgets that are constantly pulling in information, such as weather, which uses more battery life. Again, you can manually refresh information when you launch an app.

3. If your phone has a Super AMOLED screen use a darker theme. Super AMOLED screens don't use power to draw black pixels.

4. Don't use a task killer or battery monitor.. they're constantly using battery life.

5. Calibrate your battery. Use the phone until it shuts off due to lack of power. While the phone is off charge it to 100%. Repeat these steps a few times. You'll begin to see that the battery life will laster longer each time. I was turning everything on (wifi, bluetooth, GPS, etc.) to get this done faster and found that it became more difficult to intentionally run the battery down each time.

I've done these things on three different phones and always see battery life improve.

 

[Cooky]

Thanks ardchoille.

I'll give your hints a try. I had to exchange the phone yesterday as it got so bad.

Id have thought that that my battery should last longer even with a few of those things turned on, but will give it a try.

Thanks again.

 

[trick202]

Here's how I extended my battery life:
1. Turn off refresh in all apps like twitter and facebook. You can manually refresh data in an app when you launch it and having an app refresh while you sleep is a waste of resources in my opinion. One exception to this might be gmail

2. Get rid widgets that constantly poll for information. These are widgets that are constantly pulling in information, such as weather, which uses more battery life. Again, you can manually refresh information when you launch an app.

3. If your phone has a Super AMOLED screen use a darker theme. Super AMOLED screens don't use power to draw black pixels.

4. Don't use a task killer or battery monitor.. they're constantly using battery life.

5. Calibrate your battery. Use the phone until it shuts off due to lack of power. While the phone is off charge it to 100%. Repeat these steps a few times. You'll begin to see that the battery life will laster longer each time. I was turning everything on (wifi, bluetooth, GPS, etc.) to get this done faster and found that it became more difficult to intentionally run the battery down each time.

I've done these things on three different phones and always see battery life improve.

On a phone of this standard/pricepoint I find it sad that so much functionality has to be sacrificed for the sake of battery life.
Disabling a lot of what makes Android great is not an ideal solution.

 

[Uber-Duper]

In the design, the battery was sacrificed for external aesthetics.
The Lithium batteries in these devices have shorter lives if left to completely discharge. They were meant to be charged constantly and not left to go flat.

Sometimes it's possible to get a dodgy battery. If power is a problem, the battery can be replaced for a larger one with greater capacity. The phone will be 4mm thicker..

 

[mrvirginia]

On a phone of this standard/pricepoint I find it sad that so much functionality has to be sacrificed for the sake of battery life.
Disabling a lot of what makes Android great is not an ideal solution.

well, tbh, Android has more going on in the background versus other mobile OS'es. i don't think you need to disable everything. frequency of pushing/pulling data does need to be lessened. some stuff is just unnecessary. what stuff, exactly, is different from user to user.

i no longer have a fb account. i have weather set to refresh every hour. and i have my twitter account set up to send me a text when someone replies or sends me a direct message so i don't need that to refresh either. and of course i have my google stuff syncing.

i get more than a day on one charge on my Evo
SGS2 will be a breath of fresh air regarding battery life for me. i expect to get 2 days on a single charge.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Hey Guys,

My battery dropped 85% overnight, and I'm quite alarmed by that. The weird part is that during the first days I had the phone, I had a live wallpaper and loads of widgets on my homescreen and the battery was doing fine. I removed most oft he widgets yesterday and also put in a dark still wallpaper - yet the battery seems to have taken a major hit.

I checked the battery usage and it says 81% is Android OS usage, while the other numbers are all below 5%.

The only widgets I have running at the moment are ministocks (I have 5 ministock widgets on the homescreen), the weather and a clock. Email is running as well, Wifi is on, 3G is off.

Any ideas?

 

[Lol mahmood]

Hey Guys,

My battery dropped 85% overnight, and I'm quite alarmed by that. The weird part is that during the first days I had the phone, I had a live wallpaper and loads of widgets on my homescreen and the battery was doing fine. I removed most oft he widgets yesterday and also put in a dark still wallpaper - yet the battery seems to have taken a major hit.

I checked the battery usage and it says 81% is Android OS usage, while the other numbers are all below 5%.

The only widgets I have running at the moment are ministocks (I have 5 ministock widgets on the homescreen), the weather and a clock. Email is running as well, Wifi is on, 3G is off.

Any ideas?

Have you updated the firmware yet? The latest update fixes the bug that sees Android OS using so much battery.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Have you updated the firmware yet? The latest update fixes the bug that sees Android OS using so much battery.

Yes.

I'll play around with the settings today and try to figure out the cause. I reckon it's data being shifted through to perhaps the stocks widget - as there's not much else happening on the phone right now.