yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Captivate General] TimF:
If you want to increase your battery life,

1) Stop using Live wallpapers, set your background to solid black. (the screen does not use any energy displaying black pixels)

2) Turn off power saving mode

3) Uncheck auto adjust brightness and set it to its lowest setting.

4) Let the phone drain the battery all the way down. The phone should shut itself off, then leave it on the charger until it is fully charged. do this a couple of times.

This is how I have mine set up.

My phone was up for about 28 hours with moderate use. streamed pandora for 2 hours while exercising, browsed the web for a few hours, checked email, made phone calls, used xda app, played games. At hour 26 I still had 16% power, I wanted to drain the battery again so I set the screen to max bright loaded up the electric blue live wallpaper and set the screen timeout to 30 minutes. The phone finally shutoff about 2 hours later!

I doubt mfg date has anything to do with it. I got my phone the second day it was available so it had to have been one of the first batches.
[Captivate General] Fortune090:
I've just recently done a bunch of changes to help my battery life, and have been using my current charge as a test, and I'm seriously amazed...

Black background

lowest brightness

power saving off

actually stopped using a task killer and set up Autostarts instead. (look at the Vibrant tips thread posted here)

Using launcherpro

Believe that's it...

Took my phone off the charger about 24 hours ago, and have only plugged it in to my computer to sideload apps or do some changes in adb shell.

Charge is still at 72%....

Display 43%

Cell Standby 23%

Phone idle 15%

Voice calls 12%

Handcent SMS 4%

Android System 4%
[Captivate General] kennethpenn:
My battery lasts roughly 24 hours. That's with about 7-8 Engadget checks per day, some XDA app usage, a couple of snapshots of my cat, texting all day, G-Mail sync on all the time, and about 3-4 hours of leaving WiFi on.

That's incredible. Better than some of my dumb-phones. I'm sitting here at 3:46AM after taking it off the charger at 1:15 PM with 45% battery life.
[Captivate General] Fortune090:
Sitting here about 14 hours later. Phone hasn't even seen any sort of charge. Been texting all morning, had an alarm set up to wake up so it was on all night, used the market for a bit, was on fb/browser, etc, and I'm still at 35% with roughly the same usage percentages as before. I HIGHLY recommend every starts using some power-saving settings. Yeah, it looks pretty with all the extra stuff, but who are you trying to impress? Just switch it to fancy-mode whenever you're trying to show it off to all the iPhone users out there. ;)
[Captivate General] focalguy:
Just exchanged mine yesterday. One thing I noticed with the old one was that the battery usage would not update properly. Sometimes after having it unplugged for 30 minutes, it would still show the statistics from the day before saying it had been unplugged for 5 hours. Other times it would be correct for a while and say 4 hours when I knew it had been 8.

With the new phone I am going to leave it completely stock for a day or two and monitor battery life. I am also using the low screen brightness and turning off GPS (although I did both these with the old phone and it didn't seem to help much). Today is going well. 5hrs and 77% battery left with using email a few times.
[Captivate General] life2monkeys:
IDK, my battery life had been okay, but today I made it about 11 hours with minimal to moderate usage (some texting and browsing, no streaming or anything) I was hearing some people say they are only losing 1-3% overnight on standby...WTF? how do you achieve this? I am losing about 4-5% per hour on standby, and while the phone is on and being used (mostly calls and google searches) I lose about 1-2% per minuete. this is with GPS turned off and no live wallpaper. I love the phone to death and would never return it and get a different phone, but do you think this might be worth exchanging for a new unit? (I have already returned an iPhone 4 to get the captivate, would at&t be difficult about me switching this one out?)
[Captivate General] focalguy:
AT&T didn't even look at my phone when I brought it in to exchange. If you just explain to them the problem with the battery life they should offer a new battery or if one is not in stock they should just replace the phone.
[Captivate General] Bjd223:
I loose very little over night maybe like 3-4%. I do a 'Kill all tasks' before I set it down for the night. I also have background sync (gmail only) on and weather to update every 4 hours. I also turn off Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.
[Captivate General] life2monkeys:
Ya I'm definatly exchanging today, I had mine at 84% when I went to bed last night at about 1am and by 10 this morning i was down to 45%with only sync on, and with pretty Mich zero usage I am already at 30%
[Captivate General] phishie:
And you've already done a few full discharge/charge cycles and a factory reset? I had the rapid battery drain issue before I did a factory reset but haven't noticed it since. I have a max of 10% battery drain overnight.

Now I'm just suspicious of my battery life while browsing the web/streaming music/voice calls.
[Captivate General] TimF:
I seriously doubt it's a problem with the phone. I was getting crappy performance at first but since I did the discharge thing my battery life has been phenomenal.

I am going on 32 hours without charging and my Bat is still at 34%.

try the discharge trick, remember that you need to let it stay on the charger until the phone says that the battery is fully charged.
[Captivate General] SiL3nTKiLL:
ive lost about 35% in 6 hours (says about 6 hours since unplugged)....is that a decent amount?
[Captivate General] focalguy:
I let mine discharge completely, plugged it in until it was fully charged and then turned it on again. Left it on at night and it was dead in the morning about 8hrs later. Let it charge again most of the day (eventually turned it back on while charging because I needed to use it) and unplugged it in the evening and it still lost about 50% in a matter of 3 or 4 hours with no streaming and just occasional emails and texts.

Replaced the phone and battery performance was much better. I don't know if it's the battery or the phone but something is working better. Now, the only thing is I haven't rooted or installed any other apps yet because I want to get a baseline battery performance and slowly add things and see if something causes much lower battery life.
[Captivate General] tytdfn:
Please do update us with the results and can you tell how much display usage you can get before the phone hits say %10? Mine is usually anywhere from 2 to 3.5 hours
[Captivate General] Byrus:
I just received 2 cheapo batteries from ebay. The first 1 was 60% charged when I put it in. I'll report back with results.
[Captivate General] Anthonok:
You guys with crazy awesome battery life must not use your phone at all. Granted the past few days my battery does seem to be lasting longer but i think its cause im getting out of the shiny new device mode.
[Captivate General] navimban:
My batt lasts for about 14 hrs. I use about 1-2 hrs of internet and instant messaging. Music player for about 1 hr. Account sync runs on background. My phone was manufactured on jul 1 2010.

I got this fone from amazon.

Where do u guys get the replacement? Samsung or amazon?
[Captivate General] DFieldFL:
I agree. Could the people that have ~24 or more battery life tell us what your doing. What apps do you have installed or are you running with stock apps w/ no new apps installed? I have be cycling my battery for the whole week (about 5 full discharges/recharges) and now luck. This morning I just unrooted, removed non-stock apps, and did a factory reset. I am going to see how it runs today but I doubt it is going to be much better than ~14 hours.
[Captivate General] mterrence5:
Did you just do the discharge exercise or did you factory reset the phone as well?

I have done a discharge everyday this week and I can not get more than 12 hours with light texting, email, and web.
[Captivate General] mwxiao:
Agree. I just can't image how people get more than 18 hrs of battery life. They must have lowest brightness, no background, no widgets and no syncing. They must just turn on their phone once every other hour only to make sure the phone is still alive. And even like this, I am still not sure if it will last 24 hrs... someone above posted with 32 hrs of usage and still had 34% left. How in the world is that possible?
[Captivate General] mwxiao:
A piece of my own experience: kill AT&T processes. It helps a lot.
[Captivate General] TimF:
A couple of days after I rooted my phone I uninstalled a few apps that I shouldn't have and I restored to stock using the ODIN One click mothod but I never performed a factory reset from the settings menu.

Besides the tweaks that I mentioned in previous posts, My phone is rooted and I have several apps installed including a lot of the system monitoring apps. One of these apps is the "Startup Manager" app it lets you disable apps that start during bootup.

As far as usage goes, I'm not on it all day long but I send a good amount of time using it. I have gmail sync set to update every 5 minutes or so, I spend an hour or two a day browsing the internet, I stream music with pandora for at least 2 hours a day, and I check up on these forums using the XDA App and standard phone stuff like calls and texting. The key is probably turning off auto brightness and setting your birghtness to its lowest setting. I am indoors most of the day so the lowest setting is enough for me.

Also, if you are in an area with weak signal, battery life will suck because your phone's radio is constantly polling the towers looking for a better connection.

Don't just kill them, root and uninstall them using Titanium Backup. There are several threads on how to do this, but be cautious with what you uninstall.
[Captivate General] DFieldFL:
After I made the changes stated in my last post the I have seen a decent increase in battery life. At 9:30am I pulled my phone off the charger (100% charged) and since then I have setup my google syncing (mail, contacts, cal), installed Battery Widget, updated/installed google maps, and installed/setup google voice. It is 11am now and I am at 98% battery life. I am going to try and not install any other apps for the rest of the day and see what happens. I will report back this afternoon.

I am starting to think one of the apps I installed was syncing like crazy and draining my battery.
[Captivate General] gtg465x:
In no particular order, here's my setup. With light use (few phone calls, few texts and gchat messages, checking email every once in a while, some light internet browsing and market browsing) I can go about 60 hours on a single charge. With heavy use (long calls, lot of internet browsing, navigation, listening to pandora, and some gaming) I can still make it a full day, but will need to charge every night.

1) Rooted

2) Installed Titanium Backup to remove the apps below. After removing them, I uninstalled Titanium because it runs in the background.

AT&T FamilyMap

AT&T Hot Spots

AT&T Maps

AT&T Music

AT&T Navigator

AT&T Radio

Instant Messaging

Mobile Banking

Mobile Video

Where

YPmobile

3) Reset phone

4) applied 1st speed fix

5) Ran through full battery cycle a couple times

6) Settings

-Disabled power saving mode

-set wifi sleep policy to never

-kept brightness on auto

-browser brightness set a couple notches below half

-turned use wireless networks for location on

-keep gps off unless using navigation

-google sync enabled

-facebook sync enabled, set to once a day

-set emails to download every 15 minutes

7) Homescreen

-using launcherpro plus

-using a static wallpaper, not live

-using the following widgets: launcherpro bookmarks, launcherpro people, beautiful widget home with weather set to update every hour, and switchpro

8) Apps

-I have Advanced task killer installed, but set it not to start or run in background. Only use it to see what's going on every once in a while or to kill a misbehaving app

-I uninstalled slacker radio because it insists on running in the background even after being killed. Use pandora instead.

-Lots of other apps installed, but none that really do anything in the background.
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
A few of my own tips from past Windows Mobile days hold true to the new Android phones as well.

1. The screen is the biggest battery consumer. It you have to leave screen on all the time or checking out things all the time, it will drain the battery very fast.

2. The 3G data transfer is the second biggest battery drainer. Keep the background data transfer to the minimum. For this reason, I never use any POP email account on the phone. I have setup my phone to use GMail Push and Exchange Push. And setup Gmail server to retrieve POP emails for me then push down to my phone.

3. Don't install all kinds of junk apps. You never know what they are doing in the background. I only install ones I REALLY REALLY need and from the reputable developers. I found most apps in the market place are from rookies who really have no clue how to properly write software. I've learned my lesson in WM days. And don't want mess with those apps and end up require hardreset.

4. If your phone is in a weak signal spot, it will drain more battery because the phone tries very hard to maintain a cell signal.

I've my phone setup with both Gmail push and work email exchange push. A few udpates from weather, facebook and stock (only refresh them once per couple hours). At the end of the work day, I have 50% or more battery left that includes about 2 hours of podcast playback during my commute. This is inline with or better than my other smartphones.
[Captivate General] DFieldFL:
@gtg465x

Thanks for your post. I really appreciate the effort. As I stated right above your post, I am starting to see an increase in battery life. I have one question though. You said you have the email download every 15min. How do you set the email download frequency? I can not seem to find it in the settings?

EDIT:

I fully agree with rookie programmer apps. That is when I did a full reset on the phone so things are starting to look promising.
[Captivate General] fastfro:
my battery drains insanely quick. I tried listening to music at work yesterday and it went from 80% to 20% (guess) in 2 hours. Then with the 2 hours left of work it died from just checking twitter and a few text. I made it home put it on charge and didnt turn it on or unplug it till it told me it was at 100%. I unplugged it at 1am, and let it chill with me till 3am when i went to bed. It still had full charge. I killed the process before i went to sleep. I wake up at 10am and its completely dead! I have it on charge now and its almost a 1/8th charged. I have auto brightness turned off. I have gps turned off. I have the brightness as low as it will go. I have a dark colored background and its not live. Ive noticed before that when i listen to music on the phone the battery drains extremely fast. I assume its from twitter running in the background while playing the music but i dont know. I kill task on a regular basis the only thing i leave running is the clock and twitter. I just dont see how my phone barely last 8 hours and like 4 when i play music. Im constantly letting it die completely and fully charging it before cutting it on. Im gonna try the factory reset when it fully charges. If it doesnt help Ill return it to att.
[Captivate General] life2monkeys:
Found out a large part of the issue was Facebook, things had gotten a lot better after I installed version 1.3, Facebook even acknowledged that this update had a battery draining error, 1.3.1 is out now, much better
[Captivate General] jwkicklighter:
That's good to hear. Been unplugged for 3 hours, already at 58%. Only done some browsing and app installing over wifi... We'll see if a few more discharges help though. I also followed other advice in this thread.

It's now at 57% just from writing this post.

Sent from my Samsung Captivate.
[Captivate General] SiL3nTKiLL:
i think battery life for me is being robbed cuz of my signal, i always have 1 or 2 bars MAX
[Captivate General] grinr:
I was just about to post this also. The Factory Reset was only the accidental cause of the battery restoration - the real cause was getting rid of Facebook.

Post FR, I reinstalled everything I had before and as of this morning I am at 22 hours since last charge and 48% battery, with hours of music playing and txting and phone calls and email (gmail and exchange) yesterday (work day).

The day before, I installed facebook and it ANNIHILATED my battery. Literally 5% per hour drained away just sitting there black-screen. So no Facebook for me.
[Captivate General] mwxiao:
That's why I don't like (or hate) Android's multitasking. It's ridiculous when you have to do ALL this crap to just have one day of battery life.
[Captivate General] TimF:
I don't use twitter or the Android facebook app.

The Facebook app for android is a P.O.S. anyway and it directs you to the mobile site when you try to open any posts. WTF, why not just sign into the mobile site in the first place.
[Captivate General] life2monkeys:
Push notifications, that is why for me anyway, although I suppose email accomplishes that......
[Captivate General] fastfro:
I couldn't let it fully charge had to leave the house. But i unistalled Facebook and i turned off the vibrate touch thing. My battery is at 67% right now.
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
That only applies to POP3 accounts. But checking every 15min will drain your battery real fast.

Instead, I use Gmail server to check my POP3 accounts frequently for me then push to my phone.
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
You must have something other than music player that drains battery that quick. I can watch a 1-hour MP4 video and my battery only went down 10% to 13%. Are you using the built-in speaker or use a headphone? Obviously, using the built-in speaker will drain more battery.
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
Even with the new 1.3.1 Facebook app that fixed the battery issue, reports are that it will disable your Facebook sync feature built in the Captivate/Galaxy S.
[Captivate General] jwkicklighter:
Just uninstalled FailBook... I'll post results later.

Sent from my Samsung Captivate.
[Captivate General] fastfro:
I use my headphones. I dunno what else it could be. I have some things running in the background with it. But i play the music and cut the screen off and stick it in my pocket. So it should be in sorta standby.

My display is still using 72% of my battery but as of now i have 46% of my battery.

I've posted here 2 times checked twitter 1 time and been texting.
[Captivate General] Kaik541:
If you have auto-brightness disabled, that's because if you actually slider your finger left/right across the drawer, you can manually control the brightness.

I've found a combination of this and the pull down drawer widgets to make the need for a power control widget of any sort all but nullified for our phones.
[Captivate General] fastfro:
In 3 hours 50 mins Im down to 9% battery left. Display still took 72% of the battery usage. Gonna try the factory reset
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
Did you do anything that keeps the display up all the time?

OTOH, I purposefully watched about two hours of video, 1 hour of mp3 and 1 hour of GPS tracking try to run down my battery for some other testing. At the evening, 12 hours after I unplugged my phone, there is still 35% of juice left.
[Captivate General] DFieldFL:
At 9:30 this morning I started with 100% and now (8:30pm) I am at 44%. I said I wouldn't download anymore apps but I did. Oh well... I downloaded grooveshark, Pandora, xda, chomp sms, and bump. I talked on the phone for a total of maybe 30 min, texted a couple people, used xda app frequently to checking back to this thread mostly, and listened to Pandora while I ran (1hour). I have yet to install FB or twitter. So far so good. :) I will post back if things change.
[Captivate General] jwkicklighter:
Already down 5% in 1 hour. Downed 3 apps over wifi and sent a few texts. No Fbook. Twitter syncs once an hour... This rate seem normal?
[Captivate General] cheese74:
Hi, just to clarify, which speed fix is this?
[Captivate General] jwkicklighter:
Visually watched it drain from 84% down to 81%. When I plugged it in, the meter immediately changed to 78%... Any ideas?
[Captivate General] Mrpotato00:
If u guys still talking bout the display try using a wallpaper with alot of black. I read somewhere that amoled doesn't display any black, I'm using half black wallpaper and my display is at 39%.
[Captivate General] jwkicklighter:
Please try reading the rest of this thread. Already posted numerous times.
[Captivate General] nerdgenius:
Well my problem has been with the battery is voice calls. I can have 90% battery and talk for 50 minutes and my phone will drop to 35%. Voice calls on usuage has been a staggering 60% or more of usuage. I run an auto kill task manager. I discharged the phone twice. I have auto sync off gps off. My background is an all black wallpaper. I tried getting into the engineering screen to change to force edge during the day but access is denied. I am rooted. Do you think it could be the battery?
[Captivate General] ViniD:
I was having the same problem but realized it could be due to low signal in the area, when u have low bars it eats up your batttery quicker. I have herd that if you change your SIM card it may help with the issue but not sure, I still have to try that.
[Captivate General] Windycity35:
32 hours have elapsed since last unplugged, and got 39% battery life left. Lookin' good! :) Setup: ATK running (set to aggressive auto-kill), 5-8 minutes of Google map, 10 minutes of sending text messages, received 4 phone calls @ 1 min ea. call, surfed web for about 3-5 minutes, browsed Android Market app for 4 minutes, and Twitter app running)
[Captivate General] fastfro:
I dont keep the display going. today ive gotten better use but it says my display has been up for a total of 49 mins today, its lasted me 13.5 hours with 13% battery left, the display is using 50% now.

I have restored it and used a different screen layout now and i have no widgets at all or anything on the home screen. its lasting pretty good but i havent used the music player today either. ive had wifi on for half the day today. its doing well but this is light usage compared to what i usually do.
[Captivate General] nerdgenius:
Thing is i have strong 3g signal wherever i go. Usually 4-5 bars. Lowest i seen was 2 bars. I only seen edge when traveling to a rural area. I noticed during peak hours the network bogs down to dial up speeds in some cases i know edge will be faster. Number 1 reason a phone is a phone is to make calls. With the usage im currently getting look like i will get about 2 hrs talk time or less. The box says a quite more. I will enjoy that, because my charger is not always available. Im mad att disabled the engineering screen especially when their 3g network is so over rated and below standard. Edge seems a little more mature to me for calls.
[Captivate General] nbohmer:
Initially I had VERY poor battery life with the captivate (4 or 5 hours off charger.) I'm an experienced smart phone user so I knew what to adjust so I made a few changes.

After auto adjusting brightness, setting ATK to agressive and shutdown apps when the screen shuts off and stopping my widgets from syncing I got about 6 hours...not much better.

Yesterday I turned of sync for my email accounts (gmail and exchange) and I was able to get over 17 1/2 hours (instead of 6.) My usage was pretty heavy. A lot of camera/video, facebook and twitter, picture uploads web browsing throughout the day.

It seems that the sync is the killer here. I need it for work during the week but I'm going to play with the settings. If you are using push email try shutting it off to see your results.
[Captivate General] gatersaw:
Cell standby battery useage: >80% in all coverage areas.

Remedy: Turn on GPS.

Outcome: Cell Standby <30% in good to weak coverage areas.

Sidenote: Use Wifi as it uses much less battery than 3g.