i know why battery life sucks so much!

[marcjen]

Originally Posted by cappy

According to my own reading and several others, Data On but not transmitting has no effect at all on discharge. Interesting. Maybe you are on to something that is affecting others who are reporting sub-par battery life. Could it have something to do with a weak signal and the roaming that you mentioned? Or maybe Juicy's ROM? To drop 10% in an hour the discharge rate would have to be 130mA to 140mA ABOVE 57mA. Are you seeing that? If you are reading from NuePower, add 100mA. So your reading from NuePower would have to be 57+130+100=287mA. Easy to check.

I'm not running NuePower, just the Juicy 2.2 Rom. The battery life was poor even with the stock Sprint Rom.

Tomorrow, I'm gonna throw on Juicy 2.4. After that I'll load NuePower. I'll need to keep data and direct push on throughout the week, but I can do some testing at night perhaps with NuePower to test output with Data on/off and Push on/off.

[foxnews]

Originally Posted by marcjen

I'm not running NuePower, just the Juicy 2.2 Rom. The battery life was poor even with the stock Sprint Rom.

Tomorrow, I'm gonna throw on Juicy 2.4. After that I'll load NuePower. I'll need to keep data and direct push on throughout the week, but I can do some testing at night perhaps with NuePower to test output with Data on/off and Push on/off.

I used three customed Rom and they all have the same battery drain. since all Roms here are based on Ghetto/Tobeychris Kicken, they all are very close in term of battery usage.

[the7thson]

1. Anyone else notice this: Charge the phone for as long as you want till you're satisfied it's actually 100% charged. I've charged mine for 12+ hours. Make sure the charging lights aren't "breathing" but rather just steadily on. Now that your phone is charged, unplug it from the charger. Within 2-3 minutes, I can watch my battery level go down to 94% or 93%. Then it stays steady there for a while. I've tried this several times with 2 phones and 2 batteries and it's always the same.. what gives?

2. Also, I was at a concert last night so I decided to try using the phone for pics/video. My battery was about 80% walking out of my place. I then used the GPS for about 30 minutes while in the car and then walked in to the show and used pics and video a little bit. About 5-6 minutes of video about 25 pictures later, the battery was down to 17%!!! The phone was on the whole time, no BT, no data, no nothing else. Then I switched the phone radio off and continued to take more pics and video and the battery stayed at 17% forever... Does this mean that phone radio was consuming all the battery and taking pics/video doesn't do anything to the battery at all?

I hate to be so negative, but what good is a device that can do all this but only do it for a few hours at best?

[the7thson]

I think the battery indicator and the programs (nuepower/sysinfo) we're using to measure/calculate the battery are not really that accurate.

The best tests would probably test for continuous use:

1. Only phone radio on, all other radios off. Make the longest phone call you can make and wait for the phone to completely die.
2. Same thing, except use a bluetooth headset for the call.
3. Phone radio on, don't actually make any phone calls. Just use wi-fi constantly until the phone dies.
4. Phone radio on, use GPS continuously until the phone dies.
5. Phone and data on, no calls made/received. See how long the phone will stay in standby with the screen off until the battery is dead.

I think tests like these will probably be the only conclusive ones since our battery meters are likely not very accurate and neither are the progs we're using to measure with.

Either way, I'm glad there's a lot of active discussion at least. That's the only way we're going to get anywhere is with the collective effort. Keep it up everyone!

[schettj]

Yeah just one more heads up - signal strength will indeed make a big difference in your battery life. If your phone loses signal and starts searching for a tower, it's burning mA like a stock broker looking at a 700 billion dollar bailout

So if you're noticing you flip in and out of roam often, or you know you're in a marginal signal area, your battery life will be far lower then someone else with an identically configured device but in a very good EVDO signal area. I mention EVDO because that too is far more battery friendly then 1X data. If for no other reason that to send/receive the same number of bytes the radio has to be ON vs Dormant a lot longer in 1X mode....

[cappy]

Originally Posted by the7thson

I think the battery indicator and the programs we're using to measure/calculate the battery are not really that accurate.

The best tests would probably test for continuous use:

1. Only phone radio on, all other radios off. Make the longest phone call you can make and wait for the phone to completely die.
2. Same thing, except use a bluetooth headset for the call.
3. Phone radio on, don't actually make any phone calls. Just use wi-fi constantly until the phone dies.
4. Phone radio on, use GPS continuously until the phone dies.
5. Phone and data on, no calls made/received. See how long the phone will stay in standby with the screen off until the battery is dead.

I think tests like these will probably be the only conclusive ones since our battery meters are likely not very accurate and neither are the progs we're using to measure with.

Either way, I'm glad there's a lot of active discussion at least. That's the only way we're going to get anywhere is with the collective effort. Keep it up everyone!

I noticed the same thing with my battery when charging this morning and others have commented as well. When the pad stopped flashing today, I took the device off of the charger. Battery went down almost immediately to 97%. So I plugged it back in and the pad flashed for another 15 or 20 minutes. When I disconnected, battery went down to 98%. Plugged in one more time and got another 20-25 minutes of flashing. Disconnected and it stayed at 100% for a few minutes, then dropped to 99%. Don't know what this tells us.

I agree with your suggested tests and have done #1 and #5 already. I am working on a variation of #2 now. The best way to understand how this battery works and what draws power when is to hold all except one thing constant and get the results.

I did learn a lot from the posts this weekend. When I get a little time, I will right up my conclusions. I do think that it is possible to manage use in such a way that one can use all of the features of the device when needed and still obtain satisfactory battery life. But we will never be able to use all of the features all of the time and expect the battery to go beyond a few hours.

Regarding your phone radio drawing all of the battery, I don't think so. Perhaps the battery was not correctly reporting or something else was going on. Based upon the data provided in this thread, I am confident that having the Phone radio on draws only minimal power. There might be an issue with searching for towers or roaming due to weak signal though.

[cappy]

Originally Posted by the7thson

I think the battery indicator and the programs (nuepower/sysinfo) we're using to measure/calculate the battery are not really that accurate.

They probably are not accurate regarding the battery reading. There is probably some interpolation going on. That may be why the stock battery reads in increments of 10%.

The power draws may not be accurate in an absolute sense either. But I have spent enough time looking at my readings and the others that have reported to conclude that the readings are consistent. Same settings, same draw reported from all 5 phones in the list of readings.

[tg1.0]

If anyone is using a password, make sure that your device and its various hardware turn off properly. See issue #2 in this thread of mine.

I've tested it some more and I seem to have found the following:

• If you have a password on a timeout delay, the device doesn't fully suspend until the timeout. The screen is off, but the CPU is active. The power meter reports 13 mA if you turn on the screen and check the meter quickly. (To see this reading, you may have to wait for about 15 seconds while the screen is off.)
• If you have a password and you have turned on the Bluetooth or WiFi radio since you last restarted your device, the radio remains on whenever the CPU is active. (I'm not sure if this is also the case with the cellular radio or the GPS.)
• The power meter reading is based on what hardware the device thinks is on. Thus, if a radio is on when the device reports that it is off, the power meter is incorrect.

Note that I am not 100% sure of my observations, and some of these issues could be unique to my device and software configuration. However, I think it is certainly worthwhile for others to test for these issues. The BT and WiFi radios each make their own unique radio noise, which you can hear at the lower AM radio frequencies if you hold your device next to your AM radio's antenna.

These issues should be totally eliminated if you remove your password and restart your device.

[cappy]

Good find. This may partly explain why some report poor battery life. I have never used the password and this may have exempted me from unexplained poor battery. My device, so far, has been good.

[bigdaddie]

I just ran my phone idle for 7 1/2 hours. Just the phone and data connection on (BT and WiFi off). My battery went from 100% to 34%, doing nothing! No phone calls etc. I do have email set to check every 2 hours.

Pretty sad.