Perfect recipe for great battery life (BB)…

I am running:

BB 0.4
ChevyNo1 1.25 ULV Kernel
Black Glass Theme

Juice defender has default settings, wifi off GPS off, auto brightness, sync off (run it when needed)

Currently at 60% battery with 14h since unplugged.

 

I've actually not set my phone to stay on all the time since last flash. This is what it currently says (I've only checked a few emails and had a few calls):

13 hours and 30 minutes since unplugged...30% remaining
1) Display = 48%
2) Voice calls (54 minutes) = 33%
3) Cell standby = 5%
4) Phone idle = 4% (no time without signal)
5) Wi-fi = 4%
6) Sweeter Home = 4%
7) Android System = 2%
8) Android OS = 2%

102%!!! Maybe I do have a magic battery.

I don't know what "stock", absolute minimal usage means for battery. For my home theme, it's @12-13 hours (with screen on min always on). My display would be @ 80%, meaning everything else by itself "bleeds" 20% so in theory if I never turned it on I'd see 60+ hours, probably more since some of that 20% would be even less.

Whatever capacity is, call it 14 hours of "on time" with 0% brightness....I know voice calls are about 2.5X actual time, so a 1 hour voice call would eat about 2.5 hours of "on time" potential, or @ 17%.

The only real battery conservation tips I can think of are:
1) no task killer
2) display settings
3) make sure an app isn't excessively polling or updating (some email apps can poll every 5 minutes, some RSS/new services can update every 5 minutes - an hour or more between updates is probably more than sufficient)
4) wifi on-time (and to a much lesser extent, I think, bluetooth)
5) volume on voice calls and music player
6) alerts, both volume and vibration (could see some leak if you get a lot of texts and emails)
7) scale down your home theme

tips 4-7 offer minimal upside, perhaps 10% in total but probably more like 5%, maybe 1 hour of additional usage time.

Would like to see a "wifi on-demand" program which could be beneficial. There has been some debate that leaving wifi on could save battery if you have a lot of apps that poll or update. But again I don't like to turn it on/off all the time but there is opportunity to save there (I have used locale to turn it off when set flat on a desk and on when I pick it up, takes maybe 10 seconds but it's pretty close to a good solution).

 

This.

There COULD be, however, if Google would open that module to developers. They haven't because of security issues. The two issues I'm referring to are the inability to change brightness without physical doing it in the settings or through a widget. The other is the sleep/unlock feature.

What I'm saying is, if developers had access, you could in fact set the phone to sleep on being set on a table and wake on being picked up. Location and orientation-based settings could change your brightness (automatic isn't optimal for my preference).

Those two tweaks would offer big battery savings to power users, and the phone has the capability but to-date Google has not allowed it. No one uses their phone constantly, but the power users don't like to mess with waking and unlocking, but an auto-sleep/auto-wake feature could probably double battery life or more for most AND THAT would get you through the day on a single charge.

 

Wouldn't polling the accelerometer on a second by second basis to see if the phone has been moved be a major juice drain our am I missing something?

 

Good question. I think when I had this set in Locale that app would use maybe 2-4% of my battery, but I don't remember exactly. Less than 8%, certainly. So for turning wifi on/off, maybe a wash, but for auto sleep/auto wake the phone the battery savings are simply huge. My guess would also be it doesn't "poll" every second but maybe there's a push signal from the accelerometer. My experience is that polling and monitoring use minimal resources, the potential to offer major savings is there.

This is just a hard discussion to make apples-to-apples. When I say 2-4% of my battery, that's with my display always on chewing up 70-80%. So for me I'm talking 15-20 minutes of "on usage" potential wasted, but if used sleep mode more it might become an hour of potential wasted however you're talking 15-20 minutes of 12 hours capacity vs. 1 hour of 36 hours capacity. If I could get 20-30 hours or so with how I want my phone to operate I'd be content as that would get me through a day and at 30 hours would save me if I forgot to charge overnight.

For me, this discussion begins and ends with how to get the most out of my phone while getting 24 hours, give or take 6, on a single charge. I see charging overnight as no hassle or issue, that's the hurdle the smartphone makers should be targeting. I realize sleep mode does that but it's not always the preferred setting.

 

Push is key. Routing all your email and messaging through Google push is what Big G wants you to do. And they hope you think it's your idea to save battery, lol.

Evil ****.

But hardware elements like gps and accellerometer need firmware "push" adjustments to optimize sacred battery life.

 

Try out Y5 battery saver... It remembers network cells and turns on your WiFi automagically when you're within range and turns it off when you're out of range.

I agree with display eating a lot of battery, however I have been running different ROMs, from BB v.1 @ 20 hours, to BB v.4 where it's around 10... There are many other factors. I think one thing people should include is what widgets (mainly ones that update on a time-based schedule)/apps they run on a constant basis. I was running eBuddy consistently, and it would greatly reduce battery life, even with the battery saver option checked.

I run:
Beautiful Widgets' Beautiful Home
FML Widget
TFLN Widget
Jorte
Power Control
AudioManager Pro
Slideshow Widget
Music
Task Killer (set to auto-kill darn near everything)

I had Battery Left running to gauge my life expectancy, but I'm going to run it without now and see if I can improve my battery life. Also moved from stock BB kernel to P3 1GHz LV kernel.

Apparently I have 102% battery as well.

 

I don't have much of substance to add yet as I haven't done any real extensive battery testing, but I wanted to thank everyone who is putting together good replies to this thread. There's some very useful information.

Lately I've been hooked on live wallpapers (which I never really did on 2.1 ROMs) but I've noticed that Beautiful Widgets Weather LWP takes up 7-8% of battery at the end of a cycle, even though I'm still getting 14-16 hours with moderate usage (a couple hundred texts, a few voice calls, an hour or two total of web/twitter/facebook browsing) on BB 0.4 with Chevy's LV 1.0 gHz kernel.

I'm sure eliminating the LWP would do wonders, and toying with Juice Defender would probably help even more.

I've never used a task killer, but do like toying with the clock speed and profiles on setCPU. Maybe I'll see what it's like to not use that on BB 0.4 once, given the experience some have had.

 

I've got some good ideas that I'm going to try and see if they help.

To many of the posters here that come across as if their practices are "the answer" to everyone's battery issues, please remember that all droids are not created equal. Two phones bought at the same outlet on the same day, can have a VAST difference in battery use. I know this for a fact. Two people with the exact same set up will most likely have totally different results.

That being said, take other's advice as just that, advice, and try things out, but there is no definite answer for everyone. I have not found a kernel over 1Ghz that runs flawlessly except for P3 SV 1.2Ghz.

I've been looking for the elusive battery life since BB1.0 where it nearly doubled, but then at one point disappeared on a restore. I'm always trying new things, new settings and app combinations trying to get more life while also maintaining a smooth running phone.

 

OFF-TOPIC: Maybe it's just hyperbole and you're not the only one, but how are people even doing anything with their days if they're averaging A COUPLE HUNDRED texts during a 14-16 hour period?? That's more than one text every 5 minutes (200 texts/16 hours). Who are you even talking to? About what? Why not just call? Sheesh.

 

A couple hundred was probably hyperbole on my part. I just checked Handcent and I sent 42 text messages yesterday, and received 55. That's still a lot, but not a couple hundred.