I get about 12 hours out of my Epic. Heres how.

**youngpro83** · #1 (**permalink**) 10-01-2010, 10:51 AM

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.

revaaron · #2 (**permalink**) 10-01-2010, 10:56 AM

I get 8am to midnight most days that I don't go out of network and all I did was install juice defender and turn off everything but 3G. that's 16 hours and I think that is way too little. I want 24hrs out of a phone.

**youngpro83** · #3 (**permalink**) 10-01-2010, 11:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by revaaron

I get 8am to midnight most days that I don't go out of network and all I did was install juice defender and turn off everything but 3G. that's 16 hours and I think that is way too little. I want 24hrs out of a phone.

Yes man I feel the same way!! I had a BlackBerry that lasted days!! I am hoping this new updated that Samsung is soon to release will allow us to have even longer battery usage. And yeah going out of network kills the battery tremendously. Juice defender is definitely a must have app for battery saving. I went from 8 am to about 1030 yesterday. I probably could have squeezed another 30 minutes or an hour out of my phone but I was playing sniper vs sniper and that requires data or wifi so it kinda killed the last juice my battery had left.

revaaron · #4 (**permalink**) 10-01-2010, 12:03 PM

I have only turned wifi on once. my treo lasted almost 2 days. my mogul would be 24+hrs. my tp would get almost 24hrs. my tp2 would get 18+hrs. now my epic with everything turned on is 4-8hrs and with everything off is 14-ish hours. THEY ARE GOING BACKWARDS!

I wish that for people like us, they would make the body 2-5mm thicker and put all that space to battery. a 2100mah would give me close to amount of time I want out of this thing. and if you get an "extended" battery (like with my 3000mah tp2 battery) most of the space inside the backcover is lost space (probably not to cover the radios)

playaed · #5 (**permalink**) 10-08-2010, 09:56 PM

Dude, I used most of your tips and it worked unbelievably well. I had to drop $5 on juice defender ultimate but it's well worth it. My phone was off the charge at 6:30am and it's 7pm now and I still have 3/4 of the battery left. Thanks man!

**youngpro83** · #6 (**permalink**) 10-09-2010, 10:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by playaed

Dude, I used most of your tips and it worked unbelievably well. I had to drop $5 on juice defender ultimate but it's well worth it. My phone was off the charge at 6:30am and it's 7pm now and I still have 3/4 of the battery left. Thanks man!

Hahaa!! GReat deal bro!! Have you already updated to the new DI18? If not, Darren has started a thread with the link to download and update. I am conducting some new test to see how my battery holds up with the new update minus juice defender. Then I will see how much battery I get with it enabled. I will post back here with what I find so that those who are curious to know what the results are will have some idea about the new update and its proclaimed battery life enhancements. Glad I could have been of help to you.

blazinazn · #7 (**permalink**) 10-11-2010, 07:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by youngpro83

Hahaa!! GReat deal bro!! Have you already updated to the new DI18? If not, Darren has started a thread with the link to download and update. I am conducting some new test to see how my battery holds up with the new update minus juice defender. Then I will see how much battery I get with it enabled. I will post back here with what I find so that those who are curious to know what the results are will have some idea about the new update and its proclaimed battery life enhancements. Glad I could have been of help to you.

12 hours seems kinda low...I posted this over at XDA:

Getting some excellent battery life after the update.

I'm at 21 + hours and I still have 50% battery life.

I'm rooted and running stock. I have removed a bunch of bloatware though. I have startup auditor to block the DRM thing on restarts. I have tried updating the PRL and Profile a few times over the past 20 hours but it always failed. I understand that this resets the radio and actually helps with the TWS bug. No juice defender, no set CPU.

I usually go this route to reset the radio rather than doing the airplane mode trick. Although, I just type in *#4636*1111# in the dial pad and go to phone information. Then I hit "run ping test" once or twice until the Set Preferred network type down at the bottom says unknown. If you wait a few hours and go back to it, it'll be reset to the default setting of WDMC or whatever.

Anyways, I know some people have said that the battery meter is off but still. 21 hours without a charge is darn good in my book. Since last unplugged, I've used my phone to text and email quite a bit. Did some light browsing and made a few phone calls.

**youngpro83** · #8 (**permalink**) 10-11-2010, 10:03 AM

Yeah man like I said I was testing out the new update without any task killers or juice defender and my battery last longer than ever. I can't say how long it would have stayed on because I unplugged at 8am and went to the zoo and took a hell of a lot of pictures and made some calls to meet up with some friends of mine who were lost, played some games online while waiting in line for zoo tickets, downloaded some games in the process and tried some and uninstalled some, used my gps, and when I got home at around 10pm I had 2 bars left when I checked my battery from the camera. Freaking amazing! I probably won't even install juice or atk at all. My battery life is great. So basically I went about 14 hours with moderate use and still had 50% battery left to go before it finally died. I didn't even get a pop up about low battery. If anyone wants to test the new update with juice please post ur results. I'm curious to know how its working for u.

LoUiZiAniMaL

blazinazn · #9 (**permalink**) 10-11-2010, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by youngpro83

Yeah man like I said I was testing out the new update without any task killers or juice defender and my battery last longer than ever. I can't say how long it would have stayed on because I unplugged at 8am and went to the zoo and took a hell of a lot of pictures and made some calls to meet up with some friends of mine who were lost, played some games online while waiting in line for zoo tickets, downloaded some games in the process and tried some and uninstalled some, used my gps, and when I got home at around 10pm I had 2 bars left when I checked my battery from the camera. Freaking amazing! I probably won't even install juice or atk at all. My battery life is great. So basically I went about 14 hours with moderate use and still had 50% battery left to go before it finally died. I didn't even get a pop up about low battery. If anyone wants to test the new update with juice please post ur results. I'm curious to know how its working for u.

LoUiZiAniMaL

I did notice better battery life without using ATK but I didn't really measure it. The screen shot in my previous post was without using ATK. I did install watchdog from the market to alert me if any program is taking up too much memory.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the battery life on this thing.

**youngpro83** · #10 (**permalink**) 10-11-2010, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blazinazn

I did notice better battery life without using ATK but I didn't really measure it. The screen shot in my previous post was without using ATK. I did install watchdog from the market to alert me if any program is taking up too much money.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the battery life on this thing.

Watchdog? So Ive heard some good and bad about that. And it tells you if you are taking up too much money?? LOL. Memory? Anyways. After installing the new update, I did let my battery die and then I did a wipe data. Then charged it fully and it helped with battery a lot!!! I can actually enjoy using my phone without worrying about my phone dying on me in the middle of the day. I will try watchdog and see how it works out. Thanks for the info.