Samsung Fascinate Battery Dies Too Quickly

[Coalcracker]

Why does it seem like my fascinate battery kicks the bucket fast. I turned off my live wallpaper... Didn't help, then I turned my brightness all the way down... Didn't help, then I turned off the automatic data transfer... That didn't help either!! I barely use my phone at work but by night time my phone is blinking red! Any suggestions?

[Dad-Bill]

Are you sure that Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS are off?

[Coalcracker]

Yeah I leave all three of those off as well. I think I need a larger battery but they are thick and bulky.

[KSGerber]

Do you use task manager to shut off active applications that you are not using? If you have WIFI off and GPS off the only two things I can think off is either you have a bad battery that discharges too quickly or you spend lots of time in a place with no signal or a very weak signal. The phone will use more power to stay linked to a very weak signal or constantly try to connect if there is no signal.

[Coalcracker]

Yeah I make sure that task manager is showing that nothing is running. You may have something with the low signal though because I'n my area were I live I usually only get one to two bars.

[Dad-Bill]

Same here, in my area I only show 1 or 2 bars. I've been told the strength indicator with eclair 2.1 isn't very accurate, go figure! Go into settings, location & security and be sure that VZW location services and standalone GPS services are not checked. These are not needed unless using the GPS. Actually when using GPS I only have checked the standalone GPS services and Google location services.

Instead of using the built in task manager, I use an app called NetQuin Android Booster which is very good for stopping tasks from running except for those that automatically restart themselves. NetQuin also has a good anti-virus called NQmobile Anti-virus.

[RunSilent23]

Let me guess.  You owned a Blackberry before the Fascinate, right?

[Dad-Bill]

No, before the fascinate, my first kinda smartphone, I had a LG shine. Why do you ask?

[RunSilent23]

My question was directed at Coalcracker.

[gsp10]

My first smart phone was a palm pre why you ask?)

[Indianchief]

I have found that my battery lasts longer if I turn off the phone and charge it while it is off.  Don't know why that is or why it works but it does.  This was addressed by a previous thread.  Hope it works for you.  Have a nice day.

[rosey99]

Mine was horrid at first as well.  Then I got a profile manager (profile settings) to manage things like screen brightness, gps, wireless, vibrate, sync,  etc...  Make sure your gmail sync is either off or set to a very minimal update period.  Same with facebook and other e-mail.  Also trying to access internet when you have a bad signal kills the battery too.  Now I'm good pretty much from 6am until I go to bed at 11.  There are some days when it's at maybe 20% at the end of the day but more often about 30% or so left.  I've found there are two big battery drains.  One is constant vibrate for messages of any kind.  Try to minimize that.  The next drain are run away programs.  It's possible to have a program that pegs your CPU.  I had this happen and when it does, your battery goes down faster than a...ok...no lewd joke there, but it kills the battery!  Get a CPU/Process monitoring program like process monitor or system panel.  They will show you if your CPU is working too much.  If you just can't figure it out...backup your stuff, wipe the phone and start over.  See how it runs without any additional programs.  

At any rate, it's 100% normal with any smart phone to have the battery last maybe a day max under moderate use.  

[DonM]

I'll throw my 2-cents in as well.

The low bars may be a clue to some battery drain. If your are at the edge of coverage then the phone's radio may actually be losing connection and then looking for a signal from a tower or even switching back and forth between two different towers. This radio activity will increase battery useage.

Check any apps you have installed, they may be regularly updating, this will increase batt useage. Some apps don't play well together, even from the same source. I have Google Maps installed. I installed Google Earth too and my battery useage increased about 30%. I went from about a day and a half between charges to less than a day. I removed Google Earth and battery drainage went back to normal.

Android phones supposedly don't react well when a task manager is used to turn off apps. This is a big battery eater because Android will restart an app if it thinks the app is needed. This kill/restart/kill/restart cycle will increse battery useage because the app is always drawing full power due to the fact it isn't allowed to "idle". Following is an email I sent to a coworker:

Here is a summary:

• Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when more memory is needed.
• Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when it’s done doing what it needs to do.
• Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when you haven’t returned to it in a long time.
• Most services (while possibly running in the background) use very little memory when not actively doing something.
• A content provider is only doing something when there is a notification for it to give. Otherwise it uses very little memory.
• Killing a process when it isn’t ready only causes it to have to reload itself and start from scratch when it’s needed again.
• Because a task is likely running in the background for a reason, killing it will only cause it to re-spawn as soon as the activity that was using it looks for it again. And it will just have to start over again.
• Killing certain processes can have undesirable side effects. Not receiving text messages, alarms not going off, and force closes just to name a few.
• The only true way to prevent something from running at all on your phone would be to uninstall the .apk.
• Most applications will exit themselves if you get out of it by hitting “back” until it closes rather than hitting the “home” button. But even with hitting home, Android will eventually kill it once it’s been in the background for a while.

Link to articles:

A general explanation

http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/

A reprint of a a Google engineer’s blog

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/04/multitasking-android-way.html

[mdram4x4]

at times i have a fast battery drain, i have traced it down to weatherbug, it gets stuck and eats the battery up, turning off and back on fixes this, i use @ 25% from 6am to 10pm when its running right

go to menu>settings>about phone>battery use

and see whats using your battery

[roachman55]

I have been saying this since I got phone I turn everything off except auto sync and just playing around with phone checking Facebook and another ste i have to charge  three times in a day and Don M i dont understand all of what you wrote like Google earth if I have it installed but dont use it and does not show im using in task manager how can it use battery. I need some eduction here because battery even runs down 20% over night with everything turned off other then sync which I dont know what its syncing and if i even need to have on. Thank you

[DonM]

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roachman55 wrote:

I have been saying this since I got phone I turn everything off except auto sync and just playing around with phone checking Facebook and another ste i have to charge  three times in a day and Don M i dont understand all of what you wrote like Google earth if I have it installed but dont use it and does not show im using in task manager how can it use battery. I need some eduction here because battery even runs down 20% over night with everything turned off other then sync which I dont know what its syncing and if i even need to have on. Thank you

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I was just offering up possible solutions, I didn't say if you have Google Earth installed it will drain your battery faster. I and others have seen that having both Google Earth and Google Maps installed together seems to cause faster battery usage. Having only one or the other doesn't seem to do that.

mdram4x4 had a very good suggestion. Go to menu>settings>about phone>battery use. Focus your attention and efforts on whatever category shows the biggest drain. Making a change and keeping an eye on battery drain will also let you know if the change helped.

A 20% drain over 8 hours or so is about normal, that would be a battery life of 40 hours. Charging three times a day isn't normal.

Sync is only needed if you are syncing email, contact lists, calendar, etc... with Outlook or Google or other outside sources, if you aren't doing that then you don't need sync-turn it off. If you do need sync try increasing the time between syncs. Also check any programs like Weatherbug or anything that might occasionally update online and if you find an app updating increase times between updates or like mdram4x4 mentioned pay attention to them in case the app is having issues. Plus if you are using anything like Advanced Task Killer try turning it off to see if battery life improves.

Extending the battery life on a smartphone is more art than science, a lot of guesswork, testing and sometimes modifying user behavior is involved.

 I use my phone moderately or less and get about a day and a half total use from one charge. I charge the phone every night. That is only way I can guarantee the phone staying charged throughout the day. If I use the phone a lot, I will be lucky to make it throught the day. My stepboy's Thunderbolt can drain a battery far faster than I can on a Fascinate. It's the nature of the beast and until there is a major battery technology breakthrough we are going to be fighting this battle.

[Macii]

Mine is the exact same. Went back to factory settings. No applications except the pre-installed. Turned off wifi, GPS, bluetooth, all background data. Go to airplane mode when not using it. Turned the brightness down, turned animation off, screen timeout to the lowest. Phone on Idle.... 57% The battery life is mainly horrible because the pre-installed applications auto-run. and there is no off switch. Oh... and that Advanced Task Killer, DONT INSTALL. The application is BUGGY!!! Infact one of the first things they ask when you call tech support is... Is Advanced Task Killer installed? My answer... " If you have to ask that because so many people use it that shows that those auto-run applications you have are causing problems. FIX IT "

[Pac10family]

I'm a new fascinate user - but not a new smartphone user.  I charged my phone fully and left the house this morning at 9am, and by 3pm, with two short phone calls, a couple internet browsing sessions ( short; as in looking for the name of a fastpitch bat) and scrolling through email.......... the phone battery is near dead.

When I look at the detail, it tells me that 76% of the battery drain is from 'display'....  ???   What am I doing wrong - or rather, what should I be doing differently, so that I can have that 76% to actually "use" my smartphone?

[magsgundah]

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Pac10family wrote:

When I look at the detail, it tells me that 76% of the battery drain is from 'display'....  ???   What am I doing wrong - or rather, what should I be doing differently, so that I can have that 76% to actually "use" my smartphone?

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Off the top of my head.

Turn off the live wallpaper if it's on.

Turn down the brightness.

Set a shorter screen sleep interval.

[nickjr]

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Pac10family wrote:

I'm a new fascinate user - but not a new smartphone user.  I charged my phone fully and left the house this morning at 9am, and by 3pm, with two short phone calls, a couple internet browsing sessions ( short; as in looking for the name of a fastpitch bat) and scrolling through email.......... the phone battery is near dead.

When I look at the detail, it tells me that 76% of the battery drain is from 'display'....  ???   What am I doing wrong - or rather, what should I be doing differently, so that I can have that 76% to actually "use" my smartphone?

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Also check what services are running in the background (Menu,settings, applications, running services, and close those you do not need, when you restart the phone, they will come back .

[#21]

We are aware of multiple problems with users having the display take up their battery life even while phone is in standby mode after the Froyo 2.2 update .  This is being investigated by our product research team, and we will update everyone with a fix once one is provided to us. 

Thanks for everyone's patience while we research this issue to get to the bottom of things.