This is a guide of how I have managed to massively extend my battery-life on the Optimus 2x. I personally use instant messaging like whatsapp and talk, and everybody should where possible, so I don't believe in turning off data during the day to save battery (sms is so 1999)! This are my recommendations to tune your battery-life from unacceptable to at least acceptable times (1 workday with quite high usage).
Items found to work especially well on the Optimus 2x P990
Use WiFi whenever you can, but disable when there are no networks you can join
- 3G seems to be by far the biggest drainer of battery-life, and WiFi idle seems to consume very, very little power. Make sure WiFi is *not* disabled when the screen turns off. Make sure to switch it off when you're not able to use a WiFi network however, to stop it scanning.
Set Network-Type to GSM (auto)
- Use the default dialer and select *#*#4636#*#*, select phone information and select GSM auto (PRL). Still allows for hsdpa data, not the maximum highest speed, but still quick enough for usage and extend battery life of some networks massively. If you want to be even more agressive, turn it to 2g only, but I find this too slow for casual surfing or internet usage, but if you only need it for instant messaging it should be good enough.
Disable gestures and orientation sensing
- Disable the specific gestures in the gestures menu and disable orientation by the button on the notification bar. Spare parts detects minutes of activity of the sensors during normal usage where it's not actually needed, so simply disable it when not using it from the notification bar (which is easy to do without switching apps anyway).
Make ABSOLUTELY sure your RIL matches your baseband
This is crucial. Without a matching RIL file (lge-ril.so in /system/lib) is ok, otherwise you will have a massive drain and problems with networks disconnecting all the time. Use LG GetRIl in the market to fix this if you cannot do it manually.
Check if your MicroSD card is detected when installed!
- I have issues sometimes with my MicroSD card being plugged in but not deteced, which causes my MicroSD card to become very hot, and my battery to empty in 3/4 hours completely. Reboot or remove and reinstall when it happens. Generally try to keep your phone keep as cool as possible, hot temperatures will decrease your battery-life.
Conventional and standard items for Android phones:
Check partial-wake usage in Spare Parts to find fauly apps!
- Check once in a while if there are any dodgy apps keeping your phone awake, causing your idle power consumption to be pretty bad!
Discharge your phone in a pattern of 100% to 20% and recharge
- Keeping cycles like this where possible, especially just after resetting battery statistics or installing a new rom, will eventually mean your battery will stay better for a longer period and you will notice your battery-life should be ok.
Make sure the minimum number of apps are running as services
- Go to Applications, Active services and find which unused apps you can disable.
Turn off Wireless Network Location if you are not using it
- Go to Location and Security, and disable use wireless networks.
Make sure not to use a task killer, especially not with automatic killing
- Sometime a taskkiller can be good to stop a app that hangs or causes issues, but make sure to not make it a default practice. To optimize battery usage, please tune the min/max of free memory managed by Android subsystem itself. Download Minfreemanager from the market, and set empty app to 96mb and content provider to 64mb and make it stick after reboots. This should make sure your phone will not slow down after a while of usage and enough inactive/idle apps are closed in the background.
Set Facebook / Twitter sync to once every 2 hours or more
- Make sure you don't let your phone sync that often, better to update it manually when you want to see it instead of syncing that often. Especially with Twitter having push now your direct messages will still turn up instantly even with slow synctimes for non-direct messages.
Watch out with Picasa sync
- Great feature, but dangerous since if it decides to start syncing when you are not on WiFi with bad reception, since it will mean it will sync potentially for a long time, destroying battery-life unexpectedly. There should be an option to sync this only on 80%+ battery only on WiFi but there isn't any, unfortunately.
Disable Google Latitude in Maps if not used
- If you need a longer battery-life, make sure you tell Latitude in Google Maps to not update your location (also see the point of network location), and make sure you sign out of it as well (so it doesn't update in the background if you are not using it).
I will update this and looking for good suggestions, please let me know especially about network-type GSM auto (PRL) and if it makes the same huge difference on your side. Also, another note, I am using 0405 baseband since I find best battery-life bundled with the RIL from a Vodafone Spain 0405 RIL as shared here.
Good luck improving your battery-life!
wapz said:
I will update this and looking for good suggestions, please let me know especially about network-type GSM auto (PRL) and if it makes the same huge difference on your side.
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Im trying it out, but just an observation, the setting goes back to WCDMA prefered when you reboot the phone. Any way to make it stick?
Just shut down the phone and restarted and setting has not returned to WCDMA preferred on mcr fr19 but stayed on GSM auto (prl).
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App
I think that if you tick 2G only on and off again it will go back to WCDMA Preferred.
Rusty! said:
I think that if you tick 2G only on and off again it will go back to WCDMA Preferred.
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mine definitely does not stick and i havent toggled 2G or anything else...
Thanks for the advice, seems to have done the trick for me. There seems to be very little speed difference with GSM auto set, I'm sure the improvement in battery life will compensate for the decrease in speed
Just restarted the phone and the network was reset to wcdma preferred
However good tutorial
Inviato dal mio Optimus 2X usando Tapatalk
Make sure not to use a task killer, especially not with automatic killing
- Sometime a taskkiller can be good to stop a app that hangs or causes issues, but make sure to not make it a default practice. To optimize battery usage, please tune the min/max of free memory managed by Android subsystem itself. Download Minfreemanager from the market, and set empty app to 96mb and content provider to 64mb and make it stick after reboots. This should make sure your phone will not slow down after a while of usage and enough inactive/idle apps are closed in the background.
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It's not saving. Goes back to old values.
Click on menu button and choose save and apply at reboot.
Not sure why the wcdma settings keep being restored for others. Are you guys using cm7 or stock/mcr?
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App
wapz said:
Click on menu button and choose save and apply at reboot.
Not sure why the wcdma settings keep being restored for others. Are you guys using cm7 or stock/mcr?
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App
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CM7 (Well MIUI, but it's based on CM7). It's very annoying.
wapz said:
Click on menu button and choose save and apply at reboot.
Not sure why the wcdma settings keep being restored for others. Are you guys using cm7 or stock/mcr?
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App
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xAdaM-- said:
CM7 (Well MIUI, but it's based on CM7). It's very annoying.
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For the ones having the problem that wcdma settings keep being restored, just enble 2g radio only first, from the wireless menu. Later repeat the indicated steps and reboot. Did the trick for me.
crime_of_heart said:
For the ones having the problem that wcdma settings keep being restored, just enble 2g radio only first, from the wireless menu. Later repeat the indicated steps and reboot. Did the trick for me.
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sounds excellent! hope somebody can come back with any input on GSM auto (PRL) experiences, for me it really improved battery-life with a couple of hours.
wapz said:
[*]Make ABSOLUTELY sure your RIL matches your baseband
This is crucial. Without a matching RIL file (lge-ril.so in /system/lib) is ok, otherwise you will have a massive drain and problems with networks disconnecting all the time. Use LG GetRIl in the market to fix this if you cannot do it manually.
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I agree with you in all points - except for this one! I could not believe it myself but it has turned out that I get the best battery life on my O2x using this combination:
- MoDaCo FR19
- Baseband 0530
- RIL 0622
Baseband 0622, which is actually recommended for FR19, was horrible for me regarding battery life! I was surprised to see this non-matching combination provide a far better experience! Also, no problems with connectivity or call quality whatsoever. I'm on Vodafone Germany, for what it's worth.
Interesting. Do you see any dialer wake in spare parts at all? I notice I recently got android system playing up quite a lot, no idea what is causing it :-(
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App
Yes, I see the Dialer show up in Partial Wake Usage. It's on first or second place, but the blue bar is not very long though, maybe 3-4 mm.
Dialer usage seems to increase after 3-4 days of uptime, strangely...
This was missed in the original post so let me add my two cents worth.
To save even more battery, I would as well, advise paying some attention to screen brightness and wallpaper/theme selection.
In my experience, you can save 20 to 30 mAh by turning off Auto Brightness and setting it to something lower. The auto brightness control in O2X is overly bright and dismal in its operation. It barely changes in response to varying light conditions.
For this, you need an automation app called Tasker, or something similar. I use Tasker to control all manner of things including all the network situations mentioned in the first post of this thread. For saving battery in relation to screen brightness, I use Tasker to set screen brightness to 70 during the day, and to turn it down to 50 during the night. You can adjust these to your own preferences. But, as mentioned above, running these values saves me about 20 to 30 mAh of power when the screen is on.
In general, selecting darker wallpapers and themes will also help you save some power. Many messaging and email apps, for example, will give you a choice of a dark or light theme. If they do, I always choose a dark theme to ensure minimal power consumption.
My two cents worth
abwyatt said:
This was missed in the original post so let me add my two cents worth.
To save even more battery, I would as well, advise paying some attention to screen brightness and wallpaper/theme selection.
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Not a bad point, thanks. I am using a low manual brightness, is there maybe a brightness bar widget so you can tune it manuallly directly from a homescreen? That would be great.
And of course you must be crazy to use live wallpapers. Why would you want to make your battery last shorter and your homescreen slower and more annoying to look at?
wapz said:
Not a bad point, thanks. I am using a low manual brightness, is there maybe a brightness bar widget so you can tune it manuallly directly from a homescreen? That would be great.
And of course you must be crazy to use live wallpapers. Why would you want to make your battery last shorter and your homescreen slower and more annoying to look at?
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Yeah, good additional point that I missed about the live-wallpapers
I use a small app called Quick Settings which installs in the pull-down notification screen to quickly adjust screen brightness if I need to override the auto settings I set in Tasker.
PS. You might want to update your first post with the info about controlling screen brightness since many users are ignorant of the default auto-brightness setting, AND your post is very useful and I see it being referred to as a solution quite often. I was made aware of this thread from way over at Modaco. Good work!
Hope the moderators will stick this thread to the top of the forum.
I thought dark wallpapers are more needed for devices with amoled displays. 2x has got a lcd am i right?
Dont know if it that important for it then...
abwyatt said:
Yeah, good additional point that I missed about the live-wallpapers
PS. You might want to update your first post with the info about controlling screen brightness since many users are ignorant of the default auto-brightness setting, AND your post is very useful and I see it being referred to as a solution quite often. I was made aware of this thread from way over at Modaco. Good work!
Hope the moderators will stick this thread to the top of the forum.
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I will update it soon. Where did you see it referenced on MoDaCo?
pa.pn2 said:
I thought dark wallpapers are more needed for devices with amoled displays. 2x has got a lcd am i right?
Dont know if it that important for it then...
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Yes, correct. But nobody said we should use one in this topic, we only discussed live wallpapers
Hi guys! We have had reports of the app having issues controlling the wifi scanner and background data schedules on some devices.
We really need testers with root (but its not necessary if you just want to test the wifi scanner).
You can get some info on the app below. But what we really need is some testing! You can download it for free and then try using the wifi scanner and intervals, as well as the background data schedules.
If you find your device has issues, click "Write to us" to send logs. Please make sure you describe which issues you have - scanner or background data!
Thanks very much!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wireless Power Chief
Wireless Chief is an application designed to control the wifi and data radios in your device, as well as many related functions like background data and autosync.
It can be used to save power or minimize data usage, and works either by reading the screen state, the battery state or on a completely custom schedule.
All data and sync options require root access. There is no other may to manipulate the radios.
Features:
- Turn features on or off depending on screen state
- Disable wifi if no known network is available
- Change wifi scan intervals and scan attempts
- Schedule autosync and background data
- Force autosync on wifi only
- Disable wireless radio features according to battery level
- Watched active download state, disabling the service until a download completes
If you have any issues, please leave comments in this thread or better yet use the "Write to us" dialog in the application's settings.
Versions:
Locked: All Screen state options are free
Unlocked: Full functionality, including Battery and Scheduled profiles
Market link:
https://market.android.com/details?id=fahrbot.apps.wirechief
Screens:
sounds neat .. will give it a shot ...
Did you have a chance to test as described above?
I've purchased the app and have been testing it for a about a week with root access enabled.
Currently using only the screen profiles since working with multiple profiles enabled seems to overwrite my screen profile settings. It would be nice to have some more options like for example only using the scheduler settings when the screen is OFF, this way I could use both.
I'm currently having a lot of problems with the app though which is making it not as useful as it could be.
Biggest problem would probably be that the app loses focus after a while. It just stops working all together until I reopen the app, then it works fine again for a while before I have to repeat the procedure. Similar apps use a notification in the status bar to keep the app alive, maybe this could fix it?
Another big problem I've come across is some weird behavior with syncing. First I had my "Screen Off" profile set to "Sync Disabled" and "Screen On" "Sync Enabled". This would result in my phone starting to sync as soon as my screen would get turned on. I noticed similar behavior with setting it to "scheduled". So now I just disabled sync on all profiles because this is costing my almost as much battery as the app is saving.
I've also noticed some issues when I spent a long time configuring the settings. For example yesterday I was testing some different configurations. I then got to playing with the "Activation times" for enabling or disabling wifi/data and when I set it to 30 seconds it would still use the previously set 0 seconds value. I then cleared app data from Android application settings, set the value to 30 seconds again and it would work. This is a minor issue because I will probably just set these once and not fiddle around with it anymore.
I will continue testing for now but if the first 2 problems remain I will have to fall back to using Easy Battery Saver app. I would love to keep using the Chief though, I really like the concept.
I'm using a SGS2 running on CheckRom RevoHD6 (GB2.3.6), tried different kernels with similar results (stock, neak, redpill). Also wiped my phone and did a reinstall of CheckRom but also this didn't help.
If you need more details on my testing let me know.
Hello,
I bought this one hoping it would do what I wish... But now I am not quite sure.
I just want an application that toggles on/keeps it for a while/toggles off autosync in given periods. Yes, this program can do it but I am unable to prevent it to switch my Wifi on.
Wifi checkboxes are unchecked, only scheduled autosync state is set as I wish. But it keeps turning Wifi on while I am at home, I can't override it off manually.
Hi, I've just downloaded this, I'll try it out as much as I can tomorrow. Hopefully if this conserves battery well enough I'll want to keep this phone more
Sent from my Desire HD using xda app-developers app
What happened...Any testing still goin on?
MyCanSeeYou said:
Hi, I've just downloaded this, I'll try it out as much as I can tomorrow. Hopefully if this conserves battery well enough I'll want to keep this phone more
Sent from my Desire HD using xda app-developers app
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Just saw this app...looks like it may be making a comeback with some new developers. I just DL it and am in the process of testing it out... will post some results soon...
Hi,
I've been having some really weird Wifi behaviour since 4.2.1.
I'm using stock Rom, rooted, and I have Wifi sleep policy set to "only when charging", so it should go to sleep when idle.
I think something is waking it up, not sure what. And it's struggling to go back to sleep (or at least this is what it looks like).
Attached is the really weird graph of the battery stats, you can see an example of how Wifi is switching on/off like crazy. Also attached BBS logs from idle. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Sounds like maybe a rogue app doing something to wake,maybe a sync issue.Try shutting off auto sync and see if it helps.
Sent from my SGH-I927 using xda app-developers app
So far no luck, but this was my assumption too. Any way to track down the rogue app?
Id maybe start with obvious ones like facebook and apps that have wifi permissions.I cant really say as I dont know what you using.Also if you are using an email client that accesses wifi to sync.
Sent from my SGH-I927 using xda app-developers app
I've found Wifi doesn't turn off for 5-15 minutes and sometimes NEVER since ICS. I personally use Tasker to turn off wifi at screen off, but Green Power or Setting Profiles Lite are two other options to do this, and actually do it.
IMO, if your device is going into deep sleep, it should be fine for battery and otherwise.
As far as the Wi-Fi behaving that way, look at Google maps, latitude and location reporting. They're the problems for me and I'm working on them as well.
Try diagnostic apps which tell you which app is using your Wi-Fi and check it out..
Sent from my Nexus 7
Hi,
Is there any application available, that turns on wifi at defined time and start sync apps(likes whatsapp)?
I'm using "Silence" to turn wifi on automatically at certain times, but as sometimes my phone is idle (deep sleep) it keep that way and doesn't start the connection...
Try tasker. I'm sure you could make a profile for it. But be warned, there's a bit of a learning curve.
Sent from my HTC One using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Thanks
Tasker can deffinately do this but if you want something more intuitive and with the same then i would also recommend Automagic.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.gridvision.ppam.androidautomagic
Personally i used Tasker for a long time til i found Automagic and imho its much easier to setup and configure and also has much more trigger and action options then tasker (but this could be subjective on my part).
I just noticed these issues today usage no different from the past weeks. 1st is I noticed battery drained really quickly with no indication. 2nd is music the equilizer would not work. Idk if the 2nd one deals with the whole ram management issue but it does come back and it's like it's turned half way down
Lots of threads in the forums re: battery drain. For me, my biggest hitters were (1) the stock email app sync and (2) wifi scanning.
I'd suggest going into stock email app settings if you use it and turn sync to manual long enouh to see if it has an impact and make sure your wifi's always allow scanning is unchecked. Then do some reading imto other causes people are niting.
oh, and android 101: shut off location when ur not using it.
Not sure about the EQ but I thought it only works with the stock music app.
jeff_roey said:
Lots of threads in the forums re: battery drain. For me, my biggest hitters were (1) the stock email app sync and (2) wifi scanning.
I'd suggest going into stock email app settings if you use it and turn sync to manual long enouh to see if it has an impact and make sure your wifi's always allow scanning is unchecked. Then do some reading imto other causes people are niting.
oh, and android 101: shut off location when ur not using it.
Not sure about the EQ but I thought it only works with the stock music app.
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Also, use an automation app such as Tasker to control syncing, wifi, etc.
Yea it didn't die on me today which is good. Will try that tasker
My biggest battery drain was with Google wallet, specifically the NFC Tap & Pay. It's almost as if the Wallet app gets an exclusive hold on the NFC radio & doesn't let go... Finally had to just turn off the NFC radio & the battery drain is much better. .
I have a 300mbps DL and 20+ upload and a 5ghz modem. My s5 has no problem showing 100-200mbps on the speed test app, but my s6 is barely hitting 80mbps. But in real life situations its less then 1mbps. There will be long periods of time for Pandora to load the next song without skipping as well as overall growing the internet is slow. I'm outside my 14 days so I'm hoping its a bug. And that damned screen rotation issue.... My battery has been stellar. But I don't text much or make too many calls from it.