[Galaxy Note 3 General] ryanrazer:
Know your battery & maximize it [Lithium-Ion]​

I understand each has it's own way of fighting this never-ending battle, since battery is something we can never have enough of. It's always good to squeeze an hour more or prolong the healthy live of a battery as much as possible. Some are lucky to have removable battery so we can replace it with ease, while others with uni-body design smartphones are pretty much stuck (unless you wanna spend some relatively big bucks) with the one their phone came with. So maintaining it is quite important.

"There is no black and white in the battery field, only many shades of gray. The battery behaves much like us folks — it’s a black box with a mind and mood of its own; it’s mystical and unexplainable. For some users, the battery causes no problems at all; for others it’s nothing but a problem."

Isidor Bauchmann

Anyways, let me share you my way of taking care of a battery and my settings that I use to extend battery life as much as possible (my Screen on Time SS bellow). Again, it is the way

i use, operate. It's far from perfect.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on batteries nor Android, it's simply knowledge/info what I gathered through my time with Android smartphones. Everything I know I read somewhere (article on net or post right here on XDA or some other forum.)

Nothing you'll see here is my credit!

First I'm going to cover maintenance (charging), then my software setup, and lastly a way of "calibrating" a battery.

1. MAINTAINING Li-Ion battery

Let me just say there are many theories out there about how to maintain a battery. I've seen many times that you should charge the to max (100%) and discharge them to min (0%) as batteries have so called "memory", thus you wan't to fully charge&discharge so that battery doesn't get "lazy" or rigid. This is just wrong. Misconceptions like that are very common! Some guy even said it was written in product manual when he bought a video camera back in 2005. Guess that Canon just printed "common" knowledge back in 2005.

The fact is, batteries are prone to age due to corrosion! We can influence that ageing with proper care...

The fact is that you should keep your battery state between 20-80%... Charging your battery to 100% and discharging it to 0% is considered stressful for the battery. Also, fast-charging is not the best way of charging. Pushing higher voltage is also more stressful for the battery and chemical reactions within, than charging it with lower voltage. Yes, "fast-charge" with higher voltage will speed up the Stage 1 of a charge and reach 70% of a charge quicker, but Stage 2 - saturation charge will take longer. If you are in a hurry and need some juice, that's good and comes in handy. New devices like Note4, Nexus6 and others promote fast-charge and brag how fast can you charge your phone to 70% (like just in 35 minutes you'll reach 70%). You might notice that in-fact phone says 70% when you unplug your phone from the charger, but battery will probably also drop faster than normal. That is because Stage 1 was complete in a very short time, but Stage 2 (saturation charge) never kicked in.

But as said, full charge is not even preferable for Li-Ion based batteries. I'd say you should make a full charge when you know your day will be long. But if possible, on a daily basis you should keep the battery level from 20-80%. That way you won't put battery through much stress and prolong overall battery life. Also, using a lower amped/voltage charging is preferable. I often charge my phone with computer via USB cable. It takes 4 hours or even more to charge my Note 3, but this way it is way less stressful for the battery. Some battery manufacturers intentionally limit chargers to stop charging after Stage1, to prolong overall battery life.

Also, when battery is charging it heats up and battery gets agitated so battery readings can be a little off. It needs to cool down so it reaches equilibrium and battery readings will be accurate again. This might sometimes explain why battery seems to unreasonably drop and after some light usage it stays on certain percentage or drop with normal rate... (battery level readings can be accurate to certain extent....)

So to sum up: slow charge and keeping battery percentage off of extremes are 2 things your battery will appreciate...

Also, temperature is also an enemy. We'll get to that in 2nd topic below.

2. MY SOFTWARE/HARDWARE Setup

First of all, a base for a good battery life is good ROM and battery efficient kernel. If those are bad, you'll have hard time (maybe even impossible) to reach a good run. I happen to use [MENTION=2332422]temasek[/MENTION] ROM & kernel that happen to be very battery efficient.

If you are root, you should take that advantage and install some apps that will help you with battery life.

I (and many others...) use these:

- wakelock detector

- faux clock ,

- Battery Stats plus,

- and Better battery Stats for keeping an eye on apps that eat your battery the most.

You can use wakelock detector to see if there is any app that is preventing your phone to go to deep sleep thus draining your battery by keeping CPU at a higher rate. If you have a wakelock blocker built in your ROM great, if not you can try wakelock terminator. I haven't tried it as it is a built-in function in Temasek's ROM. Also, i think i shouldn't be even mentioning how much of a battery hog a display is. Keep your brightness as low as possible, turn Wi-Fi on when you need it as well as data connection, GPS and NFC. I only turn those on when needed.

There's also well known myth about clearing Recent's from RAM. Don't do that. Re-loading apps from storage to RAM over and over again is time & electricity (battery) consuming. Keep those apps in RAM, Android does hell of a good job managing it. It's not like Windows environment (or any OS for devices with unlimited electrical supply - not battery driven). Good cellphone reception is also worth mentioning. Avoid areas with low reception as phone tends to constantly search for new cell towers with better receptions - huge battery hog.

The second one is a kernel tweaker. There are plenty out there. I use this one (a good purchase, one of the best i've done) as it has a ton of options. I think the best way of sharing my settings is via Screen Shots. They are attached below.

Sure there are plenty of options to tailor to your needs. Choosing a suitable governor for your needs is essential, however there are some settings i (and many others) would advise you to stick to.

CPU Hotplug intelliplug (instead of stock MPDecison)

Intellithermal Thermall manager (instead of stock one) + lowering Temperature as seen in SS below

Battery Throtling with values seen in SS below

Here is where you can limit your battery to reach higher temperatures than healthy level. If your battery gets too hot while charging (or use) you should unplug the charger (or discontinue heavy task). Not only for the sake of battery but phone overall...

There are other apps that prolong (or at least say that they do) like Greenefy (probably the most efficient one, and loved one by most users), battery saver and others..... I do not use those.

Edit:

3. "CALIBRATING" BATTERY

I put that in quotation marks as it is not (at least i haven't found) scientifically confirmed. However, from time to time i tend to preform this treatment... As stated before, fully charging&discharging is not the top-best treatment for batteries. It lasts longer in a short term but shortens it's healthy life in long term. But from time to time i do put my battery to this stressful cycle. It could be a placebo effect not really helping at all... Even more, as stated above, fully charging and discharging is not advised because it puts battery through a lot of stress!

Drain the battery complitely flat (phone shuts itself down)

Put your AC cord in and let it charge for arround 3 hours while phone is OFF

Unplug and turn your phone ON

Let it rest for some half an hours (don't use it, you don't want to put too much stress to battery))

Put AC kable back in and charge it for another 30 minutes or so

"Super-charging" your phone like that ought to calibrate your battery. This shouldn't be done on a regular basis as you put your battery level to extreme thus stressing it.... As said, it is unconfirmed method but i tend to do it from time to time (once every 2 months).

Again, this is something that has not been tested. It might be a placebo or smth. However, here is the source: http://forums.androidcentral.com/htc-one-s/174458-how-calibrate-battery.html

This method is for nickel cadmium batteries who suffer memory effect. Thanks to reddit user r/Saicotic for informing about my misinformation.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is it. This is what i've learned about batteries and how i do it. It is by no means a perfect set-up! Please let me know if you know about a better set-up (kernel tweaks), any good app or any other info on how to extend battery life.... Please let me (us) know.

SS:

Main source of info: http://batteryuniversity.com/

Screen shots in a .rar file if you can't open those...