Maximizing battery life

[Uejji]

Hey guys. I've been visiting this website and forum for a while now, but I decided to register so I could post this.

Like all other G1 owners, I suffer from notoriously short battery life. I calibrated the battery which helped somewhat. I also went and bought a $20 external USB charger from Radio Shack which I intended to tether to the phone when I need a couple of extra hours of battery life.

Last night I stayed over at my girlfriend's house and I had forgotten my charger at home. I use my G1 as my alarm clock so I needed to ensure that my phone lasted through the night, so here what I did and the results I received.

I already had the applications "Toggle Settings" and "Watts" downloaded from the Market. I've had both for a while, and Watts does need a few hours of sample time before it starts graphing your battery charge level over time.

We went to bed about 9:00 pm, and I used Toggle Settings to turn off wifi, 3G networks, GPS, GPS (Wireless), Bluetooth and Auto Sync. You can turn these settings off through the Settings application, but Toggle Settings puts them all in one application for easy toggling. I turned the screen off and went to sleep.

The alarm woke me up at 6:00 am -- 9 hours later -- and the battery icon was still solid green. I opened up Watts and checked the charge level and it was above 90% -- probably about 92 or 93%.

I was thoroughly impressed. At that rate the phone could likely last 4 or 5 days on a single charge. I don't know what the major battery culprit is on the phone, or if there even is a single setting that uses so much battery as opposed to all of them using a good deal of battery. However this definitely puts the phone on par with my old Nokia 6133 for standby battery life, even with the stock battery.

With the 15% extra Ah battery one could expect 5 to 6 days, and up to 10 days if not more with the double capacity battery.

Some of you probably figured this out already, but I just thought I'd share for everyone who is frustrated about the battery life.

[rodknnee]

ok so what did u actually do to get better battery life your not really explaining what went on to make it better.

[Uejji]

I turned off several features of the phone that I didn't need at the time and that you probably don't need all the time, too.

It seems that the major battery culprits are the wifi and autosync. It's obvious when the GPS is running because its icon shows up in the notification bar, but it seems that the wifi is constantly scanning for access points which does use up a bit of battery life. Also I don't know how often autosync attempts to sync, but there is a major difference when it is off.

You can test it for yourself by downloading Watts, letting it run for a few hours to sample data, then try turning off the wifi and autosync for a couple of hours, then comparing your battery level curve.

With these two settings off and the screen off (such as when I'm at work, I keep the phone on vibrate, I don't need the wifi and it's not as important to have push synch from Google at the time) it uses about 1% of battery level per hour. But with these on and the screen on about 40% brightness. I get more like 15-20% per hour, which causes the battery to run down to nothing in a little over 5 hours.

My old Nokia 6133 had separate "profiles" that you could switch to to enable and disable certain functions of the phone based on the profile. It would be great if someone wrote an application like this for the G1. Or maybe one exists already and I've just overlooked it.

[Salku]

ima try to confirm this tomorrow at the office see if this is true

[Uejji]

Sure. It's pretty simple to do. I think anyone with a G1 should give it a try. Maybe somebody will be happy enough with the results that they won't have to spend even more money on another battery. I know I spent $20 on an external battery that's now pretty useless to me.

It shouldn't be a problem to have wifi and auto-sync off in some situations you would also have the screen off and the phone silenced. Although I think that the wifi radio might turn off anyway when the screen is off.

[Uejji]

Another update on this topic.

The other day I downloaded a new app from the Market called WiSync. It purports to disable auto-sync automatically when a wifi connection is not established. I've tried this out and it seems to work pretty well. Even when you are on a wifi network you can turn the screen off and it will disconnect the wifi and thus disable auto-sync, thus maximizing your battery life.

Again if you try this out you can definitely see the difference in Watts.

[Salku]

Originally Posted by Uejji Another update on this topic. The other day I downloaded a new app from the Market called WiSync. It purports to disable auto-sync automatically when a wifi connection is not established. I've tried this out and it seems to work pretty well. Even when you are on a wifi network you can turn the screen off and it will disconnect the wifi and thus disable auto-sync, thus maximizing your battery life. Again if you try this out you can definitely see the difference in Watts.

I turn off the auto sync and it does shows difference, but since I got that gigantic battery now it added more life into my phone lasting me about 18 hrs in a day now

[Dharkaron]

Originally Posted by Uejji My old Nokia 6133 had separate "profiles" that you could switch to to enable and disable certain functions of the phone based on the profile. It would be great if someone wrote an application like this for the G1. Or maybe one exists already and I've just overlooked it.

Power manager should do what you want. Do a search for power and it should be the second one in the list. I have heard it said that having the active monitor on that it drains the battery faster but i havent tested that.

[Uejji]

I've tried power manager but it's not the same. Power manager works based on your power status, but what I was talking about was a switchable profile. There are times that the phone is not plugged in that I'd like wifi and autosync to be on (if I'm actively using it and chatting with someone on IM) and other times I'd like them to be off (I'm at work or some other quiet environment where I won't be checking my phone for email or messages).

Wifi turns off when you turn the screen off, but autosync stays on. WiSync does a good job though of disabling autosync when wifi is off.

Today I've had my phone off its charger since 8 AM. It's now 4:11 PM (CST) and with on-and-off wifi usage I'm now barely at 81% or 82% (from Watts) battery life, as anytime I have the screen off, wifi and autosync turn off.

With this usage trend I could expect around 34 hours battery life, having good usage of wifi and autosync when I want it and minimum battery usage when I don't. Not quite as good as 4 or 5 days with everything off, but certainly much better than 5 - 6 hours I was getting at first.

[jman316]

i have battery manager which is not probably the same but works quite good! Yesterday (my first day with the phone) the battery seemed quite poor (so i ended up not using the phone in case i lost the battery) but then again i suppose it needs to be charged a few times before it starts to work properly

[Uejji]

The best way to calibrate the phone's battery meter is to let the phone run until it turns off due to lack of power. The first time I did this, the phone ran on 0% battery for about half an hour before finally shutting off. This won't improve your runtime, but it will improve the accuracy of the battery charge meter.

[jman316]

i intend to let it run untill it doesnt power up again. hopefully then the apps will be able to control things better then!!

ive only had the phone for one day. today is my second day. Its only run out once.

[Uejji]

I took a screenshot of Watts to demonstrate my general battery curve lately.



I took the phone off the charger at about 6:40 this morning and didn't get it back onto the charger until about 12:10 pm. So after 6 1/2 hours it was at about 73% (estimating based on the graph).

So after 6.5 hours it lost about 27% charge, which is 27/6.5=~4.154%/hr with pretty moderate wifi usage. At this average it would take right at 24 hours to drain the entire battery.

I'm not in a 3g market, and I am using WiSync to turn the autosync off when wifi turns off, and since wifi turns off when the screen is off, so does autosync. You can see the steeper slopes in the graph when I had the screen on and wifi and autosync turned back on.

Just some demonstration that this does work.

[raukodur]

This very good, thank you for the info. Will have to check out these applications.

[Uejji]

I read my post again and realized that I got the time wrong. Obviously 6:40 AM to 12:10 PM is 5 1/2 hours and not 6 1/2 hours. That still estimates the phone at nearly 20 1/2 hours battery life though. That's still plenty of time to get through your day and get it back on your charger with plenty of battery life left at the end of the day if you don't need everything on the phone on all the time.