Help Battery Life

[Mr Mufakka]

Is it just me or is the battery on these things not the greatest? I've even taken some measures to try and prolong the battery (turn off live wallpaper, brightness turned all the way down, rarely have wifi on [thanks TMobile HSPA+]) and I still can't seem to make it a day before the phone needs a charge.

I'm not sure how one really describes how much they're on the phone but I'd say I'm on it less than the average user. Hard to say really.

Anyway, didn't know if it was just me or what. I've been letting the battery run all the way down and then charging it overnight.

 

[nathanscott1985]

contact samsung about replacing the battery, so fa the new one hold the charge a lot better, even with 3g and gps turned on

 

[Danny75]

After the fourth full charge sunday night, turning my phone on today its showing 20% battery life left! So going into my fourth day now, I do turn my phone of around 10pm -11pm then back on at 8ish
I suppose i'm a average user. A few texts and calls a day, check emails when out and a little internet surfing, and some other bits here and there.
As a side note I've not experienced much lag (but I'm not running lots of apps at once) and gps works fine when I've used it, I have the 16g model.

Was worried about the battery and thought I'd get a day to 2 max. Mine seems to have woken up since the last charge so I'm hoping it will carry on, to be honest if I can get 2 days before a charge then I'll be happy with it.

As Nathan said maybe worth contacting samsung as it can't be right going on the amount you use the phone.

 

[bobtodd]

I was getting less than a day at first, but after a few full drain/recharge cycles I can get almost 36 hours out of a full charge. I'd consider myself a fairly intensive user, too - a few hours browsing, gaming, messing about every day, several calls and texts and navigating me to the chippy, just for a laugh.

 

[All-a-Mort]

Can we clarify something? When people are writing about letting the battery drain down before fully recharging it in the hope of improving its capacity to hold a charge, are we talking letting the battery literally run out and so turn the phone off before charging, or just until the meter says say 10%< or so? (obviously it won't say 10% without a battery time app).

 

[big_mike]

I recently went on holiday.
I wanted to use my phone as an mp3 player and camera (bit of e booking to)some browsing on the hotel wifi
To make my battery last i turned off all the updates for widgets ETC) turned of 3g, took out sim card, switched off live wallpaper.
i would say i managed to get a good 36 hours even with 16 or so hours of music playing and the other things i mentioned.

 

[Geryatrix]

Can we clarify something? When people are writing about letting the battery drain down before fully recharging it in the hope of improving its capacity to hold a charge, are we talking letting the battery literally run out and so turn the phone off before charging, or just until the meter says say 10%< or so? (obviously it won't say 10% without a battery time app).

The standard phone will give the battery percentage without having to download an app. Just go to settings-about phone-status.

As far as I'm aware to condition the battery, you need to run the phone until it switches off, and then fully charge it, this is one cycle. You need to do at least 5 cycles before the battery will give its full capacity.

 

[bobtodd]

Yes - correct. Run the phone until it powers itself off completely, then charge to 100%

 

[big_mike]

oh i haven't 'conditioned' my batt guess ill give it a go.

cheers guys

 

[All-a-Mort]

Likewise I haven't conditioned mine since I got a few weeks ago. Will be interested to see if this makes a difference. Of course now I'm desperately trying to run the battery down fully, so I can charge it before tomorrow morning.

 

[blazeplacid]

turn off widgets, wifi when not in wifi area, close apps

battery life is much improved

 

[Darkplek]

Just going to jump in here and say that lithium ion batteries have no memory effect so should not need a deep recharge cycle to condition them... Far as i've read from a few online sources you actually do more harm than good by discharging them fully and then fully recharging them. (In some cases if they get totally depleted it actually kills the battery for good). It's better to just charge them little and often.

From what i've observed on my Galaxy, wifi eats the battery at an alarming rate, even when it's meant to turn off with the screen... My battery stops dropping at all, nearly, with wifi off. (3g/data is also off)

 

[bobtodd]

Aha - good info, thanks. I've read conflicting instructions in various places. My battery seems to be doing fine, so I've done something right - but I've tried every method I've come across up to now so it was more by luck than judgement

 

[MrTony]

I let my battery run down until the phone turned off my itself yesterday. I was charging it with my Blackberry charger, which, come to find out, is a 550mAh. The charger that comes with the Captivate is a 700mAh. I charged it all night and this morning disabled Task Killers and JuiceDefender (which I still love) just to see raw battery performance. I have used it a little more than I did yesterday and I'm sitting at 54%, as where yesterday I was at 57% at this time (I love JuicePlotter!). I guess that's an improvement with no managers loaded, I'll keep at it for a few days.

 

[dsjr2006]

Yes - correct. Run the phone until it powers itself off completely, then charge to 100%

Lithium Ion batteries do not require conditioning, they actually can be damaged by going to a fully discharged state.

 

[big_mike]

imagine if the screen wasn't super amoled, would be even more of a battery killer.

 

[Evil Peter]

Lithium Ion batteries do not require conditioning, they actually can be damaged by going to a fully discharged state.

I've heard that it's necessary to do that to calibrate the battery and it will never get fully discharged anyway since it shuts off automatically before then. There's a lot of contradictory information being spread on battery issues though.

 

[TCC]

I've heard that it's necessary to do that to calibrate the battery and it will never get fully discharged anyway since it shuts off automatically before then. There's a lot of contradictory information being spread on battery issues though.

I think this is correct.

Li-Ion batteries do not have a memory issue, you are best off topping them off whenever you can, even for just 10 minutes if you get the chance.

However, every so often they do need to run down to their Low Voltage Cutoff (LVC) so the circuitry that keeps track of high and low voltage can stay calibrated. This is the part I am not clear on as my experience with Li-Ion batteries is from RC Aircraft where we use separate reliable LVC's that don't need calibration. But it is true that if the battery were allowed to discharge below its minimum voltage (about 3V per cell) it would be damaged. The circuitry in the phone should prevent that from happening and turn the phone off before it goes below about 3.2V

The slower you charge the battery the better for longevity, that is why you should always use the charger supplied as charging a li-Ion battery too fast can damage it.

There is also an issue of multiple cells, but I don't think that applies to phone batteries as most of them are probably single cell batteries. If there were multiple cells in our batteries there would be a cell balancing issue where you need each cell to get charged to the proper voltage. The only way to address that is with a cell balancer and the proper leads coming off the battery so you can address each cell individually, no amount of discharge/recharge would balance the cells.

 

[Mr Mufakka]

Just an update. I've been using Task Killer a bit for frequently to kill off random apps. I usually never have wifi on (getting 3-4 Mbps download speeds thanks to TMobile's new network). I also never have the GPS on. Battery life appears to be a bit better but I still couldn't go more than a day with charging. I really wish I could keep GPS on.

Earlier in the thread, someone mention contacting Samsung. Any details on this? Contact info etc.

 

[bobtodd]

Just call your mobile operator and tell them you're having battery problems. I did it with mine, went through a list of questions with them and a new battery was in the post to me the same day.

 

[Evil Peter]

I think this is correct.

Li-Ion batteries do not have a memory issue, you are best off topping them off whenever you can, even for just 10 minutes if you get the chance.

However, every so often they do need to run down to their Low Voltage Cutoff (LVC) so the circuitry that keeps track of high and low voltage can stay calibrated. This is the part I am not clear on as my experience with Li-Ion batteries is from RC Aircraft where we use separate reliable LVC's that don't need calibration. But it is true that if the battery were allowed to discharge below its minimum voltage (about 3V per cell) it would be damaged. The circuitry in the phone should prevent that from happening and turn the phone off before it goes below about 3.2V

The slower you charge the battery the better for longevity, that is why you should always use the charger supplied as charging a li-Ion battery too fast can damage it.

There is also an issue of multiple cells, but I don't think that applies to phone batteries as most of them are probably single cell batteries. If there were multiple cells in our batteries there would be a cell balancing issue where you need each cell to get charged to the proper voltage. The only way to address that is with a cell balancer and the proper leads coming off the battery so you can address each cell individually, no amount of discharge/recharge would balance the cells.

So if that is true it would be better charging through the USB port of a computer rather than doing it with the supplied charger, as the USB port delivers half the mA of the real charger?

 

[big_mike]

Just call your mobile operator and tell them you're having battery problems. I did it with mine, went through a list of questions with them and a new battery was in the post to me the same day.

was it actually any better?

 

[TCC]

So if that is true it would be better charging through the USB port of a computer rather than doing it with the supplied charger, as the USB port delivers half the mA of the real charger?

If that is the case (I don't have an SGS yet), then ya, it would be better to charge it via the usb port. The main reason being heat generation, but there are also just straight chemistry reasons.

A good Li-Ion charger for the RC world lets you select the charging amperage and best practice is to use the lowest charging amperage you reasonably can. It is just a trade off, speed of charging v. battery longevity (and safety to some extent).

 

[Evil Peter]

If that is the case (I don't have an SGS yet), then ya, it would be better to charge it via the usb port. The main reason being heat generation, but there are also just straight chemistry reasons.

A good Li-Ion charger for the RC world lets you select the charging amperage and best practice is to use the lowest charging amperage you reasonably can. It is just a trade off, speed of charging v. battery longevity (and safety to some extent).

Yes, a USB port gives you 500mA while a charger will go up to 1000mA. I would guess that all USB-charged phones get 1000mA chargers.

The question is probably how much the longevity is changed by that difference. I guess it would have to be quite a bit as it already takes quite a while to charge the phone at 1000mA and batteries aren't that expensive.

 

[EarlZ]

Im hoping for a 3rd part charger that has those options, so atleast i can leave the charger connected overnight and probably when I wake up the battery is close to 95% charged.