[Galaxy Note GT-N7000 General] CSharpHeaven:
Galaxy Note has a large enough battery to standby for days (Official: 32 days on 3G, 40 days on 2G) without tweakings or modings. On ICS Stock ROM on airplane mode, during the night, a 100% battery remains 100% the morning after. I don't know what else I could have asked for a better battery performance out of my phone.

To get the best performance out of any smartphone one has to layout the expectations first and then become technically educated with the basics "properly" before changing usage habbits.

Laying out the expectations

Choosing a 5.3" device when smaller screen sizes were already available dictates the specific requirements one had. These could be physical (i.e., big hands, bad eyes), usage (i.e., reading and writing for long period of times, playing games, watching videos), or seeking differentiation (i.e., showing off, standing out).

When you know why you purchased Galaxy Note then we can move on to the technical stuff.

Technical - Basics

Bigger screens draw more power, the brighter the screen is the more power it needs. These are scientific facts and Galaxy Note's screen by no means is power efficient.

Web Browsing is the most, if not one of, task intensive job one can execute with his or hers Galaxy Note. Often Original Note scores poorly in web browsing benchmarks and this is not down to the screen size alone. When the CPU has the right sets of instructions corresponding tasks are performed much faster and with more power effiency. In my opinion the Exynos CPU used in Original Note does not support the crucial instructions in regards to the Web Browsing related processes and something is wrong with the internal flash disk components, be it software, hardware or both. Samsung has so far resisted in releasing its Exynos's source codes and I'm suspicious they have something to hide.

On the other hand, Note II offers excellent Web Browsing benchmark results, even better than the newly released Qualcomm 600 CPU. The battery capacity in Note II is not twice as Original Note but battery performance is almost twice as much in many respects. The overclocked Mali-400, 440MHz from 266MHz, in Note II should drain battery more but the CPU which is based on the same ARM architecture (ARMv7, ARM Coretex-A9) provides far better power efficiency. Thanks to the smaller semiconductor in Exynos 4412 (SGIII and Note II) which is 32nm versus SGII and Note's Exynos 4210 which is 45nm. The smaller nm number is the lower power consumption is.

There is no magic wand that can make Original Note more power efficient as it is. So no matter one does there is no way web browsing can be streched by more than 10 to 15 minutes in low screen brightness, period. Four hours is what we all get.

Change of habbits

Now that we understand there is a power capacity that cannot be stretched we however, can change habbits to get the maximum performance out of Note.

I adamantly opposed any software utility as a solution to extend the battery performance. They come at a cost which is not justified. I don't wish to go through the details but a simple daily reboot which is also recommended by the manufacturers will do the job these software claim to do. These apps mainly free memory while consuming battery.

Be sensible in choosing apps, be responsible in managing them. Once you realise the real reason you own a smartphone your choice for apps will be narrowed down anyway. Monitor the impacts of the newly apps on RAM and overall performance of your phone and then decide whether the app stays or goes.

Google Play app is a culprit to many issues. Literally Google Play is connected to various services for different reasons. One of GP's job is to check for app updates. The more apps installed the more battery is consumed to run the checks, download the updates, and finally installing them.

Be smarter than your smartphones.

---------- Post added at 03:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:27 AM ----------

If you are rooted, uninstall gmaps updates first then remove GMS_Maps.apk from /system/app folder. Reboot and reinstall it from Google Play as downloaded app. Good Luck!