[youngpro83]

Okay so I figured a lot of people who are new to the Epic world have been getting pretty poor battery life as I did when I first got my Epic. I even thought about taking it back and using my TP2 again, but I have searched and tweaked my phone to the point where I now am getting about 12-14 hours of use out of my Epic. Keep in mind that I do moderately browse the web, play games, make calls, and constantly text and check my twitter and facebook. This is what "I" do so please no negative feedback on my methods. Ive done this to my wife's Epic when she first got it and she was able to leave her phone off the charger after a full charge all day, over night and half the next day and didnt need to charge until late that evening so something is definitely working here.

1. First I let the battery die until I get the pop up that my battery is low and needs to recharge.

2. I then go into the settings and privacy and clear the phone. I seen the thread about this and so I tried it. Not sure if it contributes to better battery life, but I thought Id give it a shot. Ive done this on both mine and my wife's Epic.

3. I then plug the phone up once it has rebooted, and I dont take it off the charger until it as fully charged.

In the mean time I am downloading the following apps. Juice defender-Ultimate ( I know some say it kills more battery and some say it works wonders, I say it works)
Here are my Juice defender settings (Thanks to daddy something for his settings thread):
Timeout: Do nothing
Schedule: Enable data/wifi for 5m every 2h
Night: Keep data/wifi disabled 2am-5am
Battery: Keep data/wifi disabled while below 10%
Traffic: Leave data/wifi enabled while 5kb/30s
Peak: do nothing
Apps: do nothing
Screen: Leave data/wifi enabled while screen on
Location: Keep wifi disabled while distance >xxxm (this number will vary)

I also have data with prefer wifi. And I NEVER turn my wifi off. I dont know if this really helps but I never turn it off. Juice defender will turn it off and on by itself. I keep it enabled at all times. You can do this by pulling down the menu from the top and enable the wifi.

4. I then go into settings/ sounds and display and turn off the pulse notification light, disable audible touch tones, disable audible selection, and I turn the vibration intensity down to anything less than default. I have mine set to just a tiny vibrate. I also disable auto brightness and slide it ALL THE WAY DOWN. Phone is still visible and this will save a lot of screen usage.

5. I then go to location and I turn off the GPS satellites. I only use them when I need GPS. I make sure I turn it off after I am done using it.

6. I go into account and sync and turn off auto sync. You can turn off background sync but then will need to enable it to use the market place. I just keep that one enabled. It will even give you a pop up about how it saves you battery and what the cons are for having it disabled.

I also have weather widget and toggles installed and they give you some handy toggles for brightness and other settings and I use that as well. I turn the brightness down to 5%. I always keep the phone dim.

7. I make sure that my facebook, twitter, myspace, etc. Pretty much anything that auto updates are TURNED OFF. You can usually do this by opening the app and going into settings and turning the notifications off. They will update each time you open the app instead of constantly in the background.

8. I also have a free app from the market place called startup auditor which will allow you to kill apps that start automatically and sometimes on their own. You can find these apps that are constantly running by going into settings/applications/running services. Then going into start up auditor and making sure you disable them. It also will tell you if it is safe to disable and what other functions are going to be effected. I only have about 4 or 5 services running constantly that I do not close. If I see something that I know I can close safely without any negative effects then I do so.

9. I also use the system program monitor. You can find this in the samsung widgets. I am constantly checking this and making sure it says 0 apps running.

Basically I try to prevent ANYTHING from running in the background other than juice defender and some other apps I use to speed up and keep my phone running smoothly, IE: advanced task killer (some are against this, but I personally dont have any problems) With task killer I have it set to kill apps when my screen goes black so it isnt constantly running and trying to kill apps. I also use Hot reboot which helps speed things up, and cachecleaner for root users is a good one too. Neither of these 2 apps run in the background so I like them.

Also anything that constantly updates such as the samsung buddy now widget, I dont use. Nor do I use the samsung feeds and updates widget. I do however use weather widgets that come with my clocks but I dont have them updating every hour or 3 hours. I have it set to update every 6 hours or if I need to know the current weather than I just manually update it.

10. Lastly I use all dark wall paper. I actually have a city life wall paper that is black and white found on the Zedge app. The only white are the tiny lights from the building windows of the city. The darker the better is what I heard so thats what I try and use.

Also when charging the phone, I try to allow my battery to die as much as possible before charging again. This is how I found out how long the battery lasted. I was waiting for it to die so I started playing with it and making calls and browsing the web even more and to my surprise it lasted a full 13 hours.

I hope this helps those with poor battery life. I always keep in mind that this is a phone and although it has some cool stuff to play around with, there comes a price for constantly playing with and not just using the phone.