[ZTE ZMAX Guides, News, & Discussion] br0adband:
I know this will be out of place considering the concerted effort going on right now to discover something to get us root access on the Zmax but, I figured it couldn't hurt to post something really cool. I haven't seen much said about the battery life on the Zmax - it's well known that it has a 3400 mAh battery in it and that should of course translate into some damned fine battery life overall. I recently owned an LG Tribute which has an 800x480 LCD display + a Snapdragon 400 SoC + a lowly 2100 mAh battery in it but the first time I tested it for straight battery life I got 7 hours and 55 mins (from 100% down to 3%) of SOT (that's Screen On Time for those not in the know) and was freakin' impressed as hell. If only that Tribute wasn't tied to Sprint and CMDA only, I swear...

Anyway, fast forward to me getting a Zmax the other day for $50 (traded a Moto E 2015 + the cash since I couldn't use the Moto E - it was service provider locked to Cricket and they wouldn't do Jack for me to remove it). I mucked around with the Zmax for the first day or so, realizing that there's no root, nothing of any real use going on save for the basics and whatnot.

I decided to do a battery life test today which basically means:

- The Zmax had already been in use on battery before I actually decided to see how far I could get it to go, I can't say precisely how much I used before I decided to start this however (that's the one thing I forgot to keep track of)

- I then set the brightness for typical operation at 30% give or take (since the Zmax doesn't show specific brightness percentages)

- keep the cellular radio on, in LTE mode (I use T-Mobile), but WiFi enabled since I'm at home and stay connected to my Cox account in that manner

- use TuneIn Radio (free) to stream music for 60 mins, this is the first actual activity so I'm ensuring the WiFi is being utilized - after the first hour I close TuneIn Radio out so from that point on the WiFi is being used for basic background sync duties when needed

- after the first hour I then fire up MX Player Pro (purchased) and point it to the Movies folder where I have 5 movies in 720p format (that matches the resolution of the Zmax basically): American Sniper, Smokin' Aces, Jupiter Ascending, Jumper, and The A-Team Extended Edition (all told the playback time for all the movies back to back is roughly 9 hours and 45 mins overall) and set the brightness at 12 which is about 75% when MX Player Pro has focus with the volume at 20 (of 30, using the Hardware+ decoder)

- during all that I occasionally will check email, check Hangouts messages, etc - movie playback stops when MX Player Pro loses focus but the screen is always on obviously

So, that's the battery run-down test for me.

What kind of results have I had?

The pics speak for themselves, basically.

As I'm finishing this post and about to attach the pics, it's at 10% left - no battery saver mode or power management has been put into use during this whole process - and at 10 hours 40 mins SOT and it's still going. I figure it'll get to 12 hours before I really need to plug it in around 1-2% left.

Damn, this thing is awesome. And again, this is without any kind of battery saver actions, power management adjustments, nothing at all - imagine what we might be capable of achieving with a root and a custom kernel of whatever kind that allows for undervolting (potentially) as well as whatever else we could manage. This is utterly fantastic for me given it's coming up on 11 solid hours with the screen on the entire time.

Absolutely amazing.

We now return you to the thread in progress. :D

ps

Yes I know just playing videos isn't a major massive drain on the device considering the hardware acceleration that happens, my next intended test for this will be something that stresses the WiFi and the browser for extended periods and see what happens then. I figured 7-8 hours easily, perhaps more. Regardless, I for one am very damned satisfied at this moment with this battery life and what might be possible.