Drastic Increase in Battery Life...

[akarol]

Well, I was messing with some of my options attempting to increase battery life as much as possible and discovered that if I turn the "Use Wireless Networks" option to OFF in the "Security & Location" settings I get a drastic increase in battery life. I am still at around 90% and I've been using the phone since 9:00AM here and there. I figured that having this option enabled would cause the phone to constantly search for wireless networks and that could be a huge battery drain.

Personally, I don't really see much of a necessity for WiFi since we have 3G now. It's more than sufficient for anything I'd want to do with my phone. Besides, if there is really a need for it I can always manually enable it.

Let me know if you notice any significant difference in battery life.

[tread]

by default, gps is turned off and wifi is turned on when you take the phone out of the box... so yes, disabling the wifi once you get your phone will make a difference

[nogdolan]

Okay I just finnished charging my battery for the second time today so I will see what happens from here. "4:45am until 12pm Pacific"

[dkw0417]

THe option they are refering to is one of the methods the phone can use to determine your location in the maps. It will trianglelate off of cell towers or wifi hot spots to determine your location. The other wifi option is for surfing the web different use. I turned the one he is talking about off just to force my phone to use GPS to see if it would be more accurate.(it is and I don't get false locations anymore, as long as teh gps can actually get a fix) If that helps battery life that is an added bonus.

[bizarro_stormy]

Use locale to turn on/off wifi based on certain locations

[hoobashoot]

i useed anycut to make a shortcut to the wifi settings so i can turn it off and on as needed

[akarol]

What's the verdict guys?

Good to hear that the WiFi option is just for GPS locating, even less of a necessity for me. ;)

[dherna]

So the question is, what uses less battery... wifi or 3g?

[tread]

wifi, 3g uses a considerable more amount of battery on any phone...

[Zdeuce4]

i bet wifi uses less... leaving 3g on i charged my phone twice yesterday.. i left it off today.. im still on charge 1 and i turned 3g back on 20 minutes ago

[implosive_disgorgence]

I've turned off all of my power suckers. I came off the charger at 4:00pm and its now 11pm and I have a little more than 60% left

Better than the first day. But since I'm not using wifi gps or 3g I still expect a little better

[akarol]

WiFi uses a lot more battery than 3G would ever use. Are you guys serious?! How do I know? Enable WiFi and disable 3G, your phone won't last more than 3 hours. That is, if you're actually using the WiFi connection.

[Zdeuce4]

i used 3g and my phone made it 2 hrs. no exaggeration...


side note.. we should be able to use the functions the phone was made for without having to worry about a fast dying battery. my friend can use his iphone all day on 3g and listen to music and be ok. tmobile/htc need to step itup

[poky]

my friend can use his iphone all day on 3g and listen to music and be ok. tmobile/htc need to step itup

Wow...that is impressive. Your friend should share his secret with PC World, Walt Mossberg, CNET, etc. (http://gizmodo.com/5025309/round-up-nine-iphone-3g-battery-life-test-results) None of them were able to get more than 5 hrs 50 min out of their iPhones. Amazing!

[Technickal]

you guys are tripping, wifi sucks WAAAYY more battery

And it should help, its just like on my iPod, I had wifi on and it died in 2 hours

wifi on drains more

[cbun]

I would suggest "calibrating" the battery once at first; let it drain completely. I'm no expert at this, but I believe that, out of the box, the phone doesn't exactly know where 0% is. I say this because, right now, my phone has shown that my battery went down from 21% to 20% in 2 hours of normal usage...

[mikeyrokschicago]

I would suggest "calibrating" the battery once at first; let it drain completely. I'm no expert at this, but I believe that, out of the box, the phone doesn't exactly know where 0% is. I say this because, right now, my phone has shown that my battery went down from 21% to 20% in 2 hours of normal usage...


They type of battery used in the G1 does not need the "calibrating" you wrote about.

[NismoG35]

There is allot of different ways to save battery on the phone. Turning off GPS,3g and lowering your screen brightness will make a big difference. I think it all boils down to what you really need on at what time of the day. You can use Locale to change that.

For example when i am at work, i do not surfing and only texting and voice. Hence i set locale to turn off 3g and also keep wifi off. When i am out of work i set it to turn it back on. Since am at work about 9 hours of my day i see a huge difference.

Just play around with the settings and see what works best for you.

[probigeorge11]

i bet wifi uses less... leaving 3g on i charged my phone twice yesterday.. i left it off today.. im still on charge 1 and i turned 3g back on 20 minutes ago
i totally agree, you always hear about 3G chips suckin way more battery life than wifi

[cbun]

They type of battery used in the G1 does not need the "calibrating" you wrote about.

in that case, my phone sucks at reporting battery life. 21% down to 17% in about 3 hours seems odd.

[_SoCal_]

this may be hard to get use to..but, even though you set the backlight off to be 15 sec. whenever you are not using it, hit the red button(which turn off your screen) this save your battery at least

[ANDROIDJIM]

Well, I was messing with some of my options attempting to increase battery life as much as possible and discovered that if I turn the "Use Wireless Networks" option to OFF in the "Security & Location" settings I get a drastic increase in battery life. I am still at around 90% and I've been using the phone since 9:00AM here and there. I figured that having this option enabled would cause the phone to constantly search for wireless networks and that could be a huge battery drain.

Personally, I don't really see much of a necessity for WiFi since we have 3G now. It's more than sufficient for anything I'd want to do with my phone. Besides, if there is really a need for it I can always manually enable it.

Let me know if you notice any significant difference in battery life.


Wow...great find!! I just wrote a novel on my frustrations and I can tell this already has helped!!! The phone seems to be running faster too!! Thanks!!

[Givanlg5]

I am constantly on my phone using the net, texting, instant messengers and all that good stuff and it only lasts about 2 hours and its tellin me to connect my phone to charger. This sucks. I used to complain bout my sidekick batter life only lasting about 6 hours, but now Im starting to miss it.... I hope they do something about this battery problem and soon

[tiki]

" Use locale to turn on/off wifi based on certain locations"

Thats a good idea- i'm gonna set that up right now.


Does anyone know if theres a way to get the phone to shut the screen off, but NOT lock?

ie: i can just tap it and itll be back?

[cbun]

" Use locale to turn on/off wifi based on certain locations"

Thats a good idea- i'm gonna set that up right now.


Does anyone know if theres a way to get the phone to shut the screen off, but NOT lock?

ie: i can just tap it and itll be back?

Wrong thread, but I wish there was the option too.

[newarkdanny]

I was browsing through here last night when i came across this thread:

http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f41/drastic-increase-in-battery-life-4210/


Well, I was messing with some of my options attempting to increase battery life as much as possible and discovered that if I turn the "Use Wireless Networks" option to OFF in the "Security & Location" settings I get a drastic increase in battery life. I am still at around 90% and I've been using the phone since 9:00AM here and there. I figured that having this option enabled would cause the phone to constantly search for wireless networks and that could be a huge battery drain.

Personally, I don't really see much of a necessity for WiFi since we have 3G now. It's more than sufficient for anything I'd want to do with my phone. Besides, if there is really a need for it I can always manually enable it.



So i went ahead an tried his advice, i turned off "use wireless networks" and i had also already had my gps turned off for a couple days, and i must say this helps your batter life ALOT. The battery life is now really decent, woke up 8 this morning with 100% battery life, have played games, dl apps, sent txt, etc etc, its 11:00am now and am at 86% percent battery life, which is alot better than what i was getting in pervious days.

so i recommed that if you want to conserve batter life, you follow that advice, the thread goes into more details on why exactly this works

[nogdolan]

I did this yesterday and I have not seen much improvment at all

[Drengrish]

I'll give it a try. The battery life has been really crushing my experience with the phone. I cant wait for some of the updates to come through.

[senor360]

That's good advice. I followed the same thing when I had both the original iPhone and the 3G version. When not in use, turn them off. What I'm missing though on the G1 that my CRAPberry had was one single, easy to reach spot to turn all those functions (Bluetooth, wifi, 3g, sat, etc) off. I think I read a thread where someone was trying to create a shortcut to it using a downloadable app, but haven't caught up with the thread to see if they've made it work.

[Absolute]

Well, I was messing with some of my options attempting to increase battery life as much as possible and discovered that if I turn the "Use Wireless Networks" option to OFF in the "Security & Location" settings I get a drastic increase in battery life. I am still at around 90% and I've been using the phone since 9:00AM here and there. I figured that having this option enabled would cause the phone to constantly search for wireless networks and that could be a huge battery drain.

Personally, I don't really see much of a necessity for WiFi since we have 3G now. It's more than sufficient for anything I'd want to do with my phone. Besides, if there is really a need for it I can always manually enable it.

Let me know if you notice any significant difference in battery life.

I just did this this morning...and the battery life is much much better. Not where I'd like it, but still a lil suttin suttin....and by a little i mean maybe 100% better than before.

[Jorsher]

Nice, I didn't really pay attention to that setting. Will try it out.

Fingers crossed!

[Infinatenothing]

That's good advice. I followed the same thing when I had both the original iPhone and the 3G version. When not in use, turn them off. What I'm missing though on the G1 that my CRAPberry had was one single, easy to reach spot to turn all those functions (Bluetooth, wifi, 3g, sat, etc) off. I think I read a thread where someone was trying to create a shortcut to it using a downloadable app, but haven't caught up with the thread to see if they've made it work.
search for the anycut thread we are getting closer

[aviators99]

I don't want to ever turn off 3G, because it is getting my GMail and GMail chat messages all the time, and I want that to be as quick as possible. I have tried turning off "use wireless networks" in the location settings, so we'll see how that works.

[doobio]

I was very pleased with the battery life I got. I used the phone all day yesterday and it lasted until this morning. The phone is very good on standby. And I had GPS, Wifi and 3G turned on.

I'm not a super huge phone addict so I think I will be very happy with this phone as long as I charge it every night or other night. :cool:

[jayroam]

wifi off, 3g off, bluetooth off, wireless networks for location off. battery life seems better, but now I've rendered the phone gimpy. Did I buy this phone for all of those features???

[akarol]

Glad it's helping everyone out! :D

[hawtseks]

i used 3g and my phone made it 2 hrs. no exaggeration...


yeah but was wifi off? even if you're not using the connection, just having the wi-fi turned on, searching for networks, will drain you battery.

[geedup]

you would think google would have tried to kill the phone leaving gps, wifi, bluetooth, 3G, and many other apps running when they ran their baseline tests...they would of def had a great idea of how the battery life would be on the phone....their battery specs must of come from not doing anything except making and recieving a couple calls!! with everything off, i don't even get the proclaimed 5 hours talk time on my g1(and that spec is while running 3G)...uggggh

[geedup]

wifi off, 3g off, bluetooth off, wireless networks for location off. battery life seems better, but now I've rendered the phone gimpy. Did I buy this phone for all of those features???

exactly couldn't of said it better...i'm going back to my curve until the next droid is released...i don't understand how google thought it was okay to put something like this knowing it was bugged

[fragnet]

I noticed before with other phones that the closer you live or work near a cell tower the longer your battery will last. It doesn't have to transmit at higher power levels just to reach the cell tower.

[kanariya]

you would think google would have tried to kill the phone leaving gps, wifi, bluetooth, 3G, and many other apps running when they ran their baseline tests...they would of def had a great idea of how the battery life would be on the phone....their battery specs must of come from not doing anything except making and recieving a couple calls!! with everything off, i don't even get the proclaimed 5 hours talk time on my g1(and that spec is while running 3G)...uggggh

If you can find me a phone that can last a full day with ALL those features turned on.

I only have 3G on and I get ~15hrs with moderate usage.

[isaac65]

Well, I don't know about the battery life yet, but immediately after I turned off WiFi in "Security & Location" I noticed a large improvement in the phone's speed and performance, especially while viewing webpages and going from the browser to the home screen. It used to take a long time for the homescreen to come up after using the browser. Now it's pretty much instant. I'll report back on the battery life.

[jtuaz0n]

i noticed a increase on my g1's battery life also. i turned my brightness all the way down and checked use only 2g networks, my phone seemed to last me the whole day.

[isaac65]

Anyone else notice the performance increase like I did? I'm very curious now cause I think its awesome! I'm even more happy with my G1 now! :D

[bharani16]

http://www.getandroidapk.com/2011/05/28/how-to-increase-battery-life-in-android-phones/
gives some of the useful methods to increase your battery life by atleast half a day to one day.:cool: