My Battery life

As I mentioned in my first post today, my battery life ranges anywhere from 20-30 hours. For most people that probably sounds great, and quite frankly I think it is. I also think that for many users, those numbers are achievable. However, there are certainly going to be power users and others who will never get close, and for them, having a charger or second battery handy is going to be necessary. If you don't have access to WiFi during the day, do a lot of streaming, or keep your phone's screen on for 5 hours a day, you are probably going to fall into that category.


First, lets talk about 'typical usage'. For me, a day starts with my phone coming off the charger at about 7am. 


Usually its showing about 98%. That is not unusual and nothing is wrong with your phone if it never seems to reach 100%. These devices are smart and designed to prolong the life of the battery by not overcharging. Once the phone hits 100% it actually stops charging and will slowly drain to 94% before trickling back and forth at around 92-96%. Chances are, when you pick up your phone in the morning its not going to read 100%. And even if it does, its not really at 100%! Also, if you've ever noticed how the first 10% seems to drop off really quickly, you might want to take a look at this article which explains why, or tune in to Dianne Hackborn's Google+ feed where she notes that 

Dianne HackbornJan 13, 2012

+1

Once you get above 90%, I would stop worrying about it. I think most if not all devices need to go through charge/discharge cycles while fully charged to keep the battery life good, so when it is "charged" it will actually be ramping up and down to do that. How this is shown to the user varies across manufacturers, and there is really no clearly right solution -- if you show them the actual changes in level they start complaining and getting concerned about their battery not being at 100%, so it is good to just show it at 100% at this point but then you are giving a little white lie about the actual level.

My day usually lasts about 16 hours before I plug back in.  For me, 85% of the day I spend connected to WiFi with only about 2 hours on 4G. This is really the key to my long battery life. The more time you spend on 4G or even 3G, the faster your battery drains. As for my normal usage, I would say that I average about 2 - 2 1/2 hours of screen on time, <20 minutes of talk time. I rarely stream videos and occasionally listen to a couple of hours of Sirius radio (screen off).  I think its fair to describe my usage as 'moderate' or fairly standard. 


So, that's a typical day for me, but I thought I would also include some stats on my "best day" and "worst day".


Best Day Ever! - I ran over 29 hours on the stock battery, stock ROM, stock kernel. 29 1/2 hours on battery. about 27hrs on wifi, 2hrs on 3g/4g. 2hrs 45min screen on time. about 5 minutes talk time. No streaming. Brightness at 10% except brief periods in direct sunlight.

Worst Day ever! - Only got 14.5 hours. 2:45 screen on. 2:00 streaming Sirius via 4G. 0:45 of talk time. I really hit on all most of the big drains that day!

So that's it for my day, in my next post I'll focus on finding battery drains and solving battery issues.



- DnT