Powersaving / extend battery life
On rooted and non-rooted Note 4 devices.
There are quite a few battery saving tools on the playstore market. However, most of these tools only use what your device can already do by itself. Besides that, it is one more app that can and will consume power so the overall effect of these apps is very limited.
Here is a lot of stuff you can do by yourself to save power and increase battery life. Although most forum users will already have some knowledge on the way your phone works I will begin this post with the most obvious tips on power saving.
Obviously, the list below is a list of possibilities, and not a list of stuff you should do immediately while reading this post. Just look carefully which functions you really use which you don’t. Every option can save a little bit of battery, but together they make quite a difference.
I am quite a heavy user and at this point my phone can do 1,5 to 2 full days without a charge.
General:
1 Turn your GPS of if you are not using it
2 Turn your Wifi of when not using it
3 Turn your Bluetooth of when… (you get the idea)
4 Same goes for NFC
System settings:
Display and wallpaper:
Use auto brightness and set it to your liking. There 10 different levels of auto brightness. I have found that level 2 or 3 is not only sufficient but friendlier to my eyes.
If you really want to get most out of your battery, it’s possible to have a completely black wallpaper image. Black doesn’t take any power so this will save you a lot during a full day of work. I always have one black wallpaper in my preferred wallpaper list.
Smart stay. With smart stay on, the device will stay on while looking at it. Now you can reduce the screen time out mode to 15 seconds. Actually works pretty well and saves a lot of power.
Activate auto adjust screen tone.
Turn daydream off.
Turn led indicator off.
Touch key light duration on “always off” or 1,5 seconds.
Increase touch sensitivity off.
Lockscreen:
It really helps if your lock screen just has a black wallpaper.
Unless you really need to, don’t make your screen lock too complicated. The fingerprint scanner seems pretty cool but really isn’t. It often takes several swipes to get it to work and that takes power as well.
Personally I use non at home and a simple pattern outside. I use the tasker app to automate this but I will talk some more about specific apps after the general settings.
Multiwindow:
Although the multi-window function is one of the things that makes the Note series the king of Phablets, a lot of users hardly ever use these functions. If you are one of these users, turn this function off. The hone keeps checking which apps you can or can’t use in this function evertime you open an app, or open your recent apps. This takes power and CPU.
Even if you are a multi window user, the 2 listed options:
Open in split screen view & pop up view shortcut aren’t used by many. If you don’t use them, turn them off.
S pen:
Same thing here, look at the options You really use during the day.
I do find Air command a very useful function and personally I always keep it on. If you don’t use it, you know what to do by now.
Under Air view there are the following options to turn off if not used by you:
Information preview / Preview info, extend text, or enlarge pictures hovering over them
Icon Labels / View the labels of icon by hovering over them
List scrolling / Scroll up or down by holding the pen over the edge of the screen
Link preview / Hovering over a link will show you a preview of the page
Air menu / Hover the pen over the action or attach button to add content or contacts
Motions and gestures:
Again. Turn everything off that you are not using.
Direct call / By bringing the phone to your ear it will call the contact on the screen
Smart alert / Device will vibrate when you pick it up to notify you about missed calls and messages
Mute/pause / I don’t think this option will affect your battery life
Palm swipe to capture / I have no idea who thought this would be a good option to add. Turn it off if you agree.
Cloud:
I have rooted and installed ROMS and apps on many phones of friends. What seems odd to me is that most people have at least 3 cloud storage spaces were the automatically store all their pictures. Some them even had 4 or 5 without realizing.
1 Samsung account,
2 Picasa / google,
3 Dropbox.
One of these will do just fine. You can have more but just don’t let them auto-upload your camera pics. If every picture you take has to upload to 3 or more different cloud spaces, your device will be working more than it should have to.
Backup data:
Same story. Pick one. Stick to it. Don’t have 3 backup accounts.
Accessibility:
Vision and hearing / Turn off unless you need them
Dexterity and interaction :
• Assistant menu / Off
• Air wake up / Off
• Press and hold delay / 0.5 seconds
• Interaction control / Off
Direct access / Off
Answering / ending calls / Look at what suits you best. Picking up quickly will save battery over the phone ringing longer.
Powersaving:
Whats in a name ha? The powersaving mode can be adjusted which means you can get to saave power in the way you find most efficient.
The options are:
1 Restrict background data.
• This option limits the stuff you can do on your phone rather drastically. Dowloading content, viewing multi media and sending messages. Personally I never use this as this makes my phone just as useless as a phone with an empty battery
2 Restrict performance, which has 4 sub options:
• 1 CPU performance / This machine has enough power to do pretty much everything with this option on except for some high performance games perhaps.
• 2 Screen output / Usefull to have turned on when in need of extra battery life.
• 3 Turn off touch key light / Usefull to do when needing power.
• 4 Turn of GPS / Which I already only turn on when needed.
3 Grayscale Mode
• This option doesn’t affect your performance but just makes you entire phone black and white. This grayscale mode saves a lot of power and you will still be able to do all the work stuff like browsing, mailing, texting, etc…
Ultra power saving mode:
In this mode your phone can last for several days but its use is very limited. You can browse the web, call and text but that’s pretty much it.
I think this would come in very handy if the end off the world has come, all power is gone, and you want to be the very last person to send a text
Just kidding. If this is what gets you home on a few percent of power, it comes in very handy.
Look at the standby time when you turn it on. It’s amazing how long a phone can last in this mode.
Widget use:
Widgets can save or cost you power. There are very useful widgets that give you quick access to wifi, GPS, Bluetooth and other power saving stuff on your home screen. Besides easy access you will become more awre of the fact that you have a lot of stuff on that really doesn’t need to ben on at the moment.
Other widgets can cost you lots of power and data. This mainly depends on the amount of data the widget has to download and the refresh interval. For example: If you have a Facebook widget on one of your home screens that refreshes every 15 minutes, that means it will go and download new content from facebook every 15 minutes. This costs you data (when not on Wifi), but also battery life.
So look carefully at the widgets you use before installing them on your homescreens if you want your battery to last.
Launchers and home screens:
By organizing your favorite and most used applications you will be able to open them faster and so it will shorten your screen on time.
Personally, I think you should be able to open every app within 2 seconds. If you have many apps, and the only way to open them is scrolling to several pages of app drawer, your doing something wrong.
The beauty of Android is the fact that it is the most customizable system out there so use it! Combine widgets, apps, shortcuts, and folders until you have everything within reach.
When using TouchWizz launcher, it really helps to turn of Briefing on your home screen. This makes the phone slower and it costs battery life and data usage.
Many Samsung users have come to terms with the fact that TouchWizz will never be the best launcher out there (And that’s the understatement of the [email protected]&1ng century).
That’s why most heavy users will install a third party launcher as a home screen replacement. The one most used is probably Nova Launcher.
Playstore link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.launcher
Youtube tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO52dfFm40o
I have found after installing this launcher and setting it up, my battery life increased with 7-9% on a full days use. At this point I haven’t figured out if this is only because I navigate more efficiently, or that there are other reasons aswel.
The benefit of a third party launcher is more customization for your home screens and app drawer (such as making categories is the app drawer and such). But also to have gesture control, for example: Have apps open when swipning up or down, with one or multiple finger, double tap, home button and so on.
This gives you much easier and faster acces to your most used apps.
Other usefull apps for powersaving:
Tasker is an app that lets you automate tasks on your phone. For example letting your phone detect when you are at home, and automatically turn on wifi, turn of GPS and your lockscreen pattern.
Tasker does not have to let GPS run for these task and can also turn everything around when you leave home. The amount options on tasker is pretty much unlimited and these automated tasks can save a lot of power thus increasing battery-life .
Playstore link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm
Youtube tutorial(s):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzY9te12UI0&list=PLjV3HijScGMynGvjJrvNNd5Q9pPy255dL
Tasker is not an easy to use in 2 minutes app. It will take some time and effort to really get into it, but beside winning a lot of battery life, it will let you automate pretty much anything you can think of.
Rooted users:
For rooted users there are many more options to save power and increase battery life.
I am just going to mention a couple:
• Limiting your CPU frequency. Your note 4 has a surplus of power and you will never need it all unless you play high performance games. You can limit the frequency completely, or make profiles that change the frequency as your battery level decreases. Personally I use the app SetCPU to do this.
Playstore link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mhuang.overclocking
• Freezing or uninstalling bloatware. A lot of stuff on your android phone you will never use. I always use Chrome as my browser so I won’t keep the original browser Samsung gave me on my phone. This goes for many apps. I use 2 applications to freeze and/or uninstall apps from my phone to free up memory, RAM and save battery life:
SD Maid (also limited functions for non rooted users)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.thedarken.sdm
Titanium Backup (also the best backup app I have found sofar)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackup
Both these apps let you freeze and uninstall bloatware. Be carefull though! Do not just start deleting everything that doesn’t look familiar, or you will get in trouble.
Freeze apps first and see if ervything keeps working. Then make sure you do a Nandroid backup within TWRP or CWM recovery before definitely uninstalling apps.
There are several lists available on the web which show what can possibly be frozen and/or deleted. This is one I found quite useful:
http://www.reddit.com/r/galaxynote4/comments/2pgiib/the_ultimate_list_of_removablefreezable_bloatware/
Custom ROMs:
There are many custom ROMs that are more friendly for your battery then the stock firmware. However, if you are new to rooting and installing custom ROMS please be carefull and watch the tutorials before you start flashing away.
A good site to begin is:
http://galaxynote4root.com/
From XDA Senior Member:
Zedomax (Profile http://forum.xda-developers.com/member.php?u=2447605)
Many thanks Max. You are the one that got me hooked on this stuff!
Suggestions:
If you have any suggestions or comments on this subject, feel free to share them below.
great post thank you!! I wonder if you could share how much did you limit the CPU and if you you'd recommend any ROM there is plenty of them but which one worked the best for you? Thank you very much
CPU and ROM
mefistos said:
great post thank you!! I wonder if you could share how much did you limit the CPU and if you you'd recommend any ROM there is plenty of them but which one worked the best for you? Thank you very much
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man.
I have the CPU set on 1728 MHz without any lag or problems even with multitasking. Only when playing games I push it up to the max.
At this moment I use 2 ROMs:
Alliance V2.2: This one is most customizable and you'll keep all the touchwizz functions. (I do recommend a third party launcher like NOVA or Action Launcher 3 to get rid of the lag TW still has).
CM12 official: This is more friendly to your battery, but you'll have to install CM Spen addon and Note buddy or Spen control to get some Spen functions working. The latest nightlies hardly have any bugs (I haven't experienced any).
Willem1975 said:
Thanks man.
I have the CPU set on 1728 MHz without any lag or problems even with multitasking. Only when playing games I push it up to the max.
At this moment I use 2 ROMs:
Alliance V2.2: This one is most customizable and you'll keep all the touchwizz functions. (I do recommend a third party launcher like NOVA or Action Launcher 3 to get rid of the lag TW still has).
CM12 official: This is more friendly to your battery, but you'll have to install CM Spen addon and Note buddy or Spen control to get some Spen functions working. The latest nightlies hardly have any bugs (I haven't experienced any).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't really play games so I am alright with 1728
I was actually wondering how does CM works with S Pen thank you for the info I will definitely try both of them
Willem1975 said:
Powersaving / extend battery life
There 10 different levels of auto brightness. I have found that level 2 or 3 is not only sufficient but friendlier to my eyes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you explain how to change the auto brightness level? All I see is the "auto" checkbox and that's it. No way to adjust the auto brightness level. I can adjust the brightness manually though, but that isn't "auto".
Auto brightness levels
spexwood said:
Can you explain how to change the auto brightness level? All I see is the "auto" checkbox and that's it. No way to adjust the auto brightness level. I can adjust the brightness manually though, but that isn't "auto".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When pulling down your notifications, you'll see a slider and a checbox as you can see see in thee pic below. (It might look different becausse I'm running Alliancerom).
If the checkbox is ticked, you can adjust the slider for different levels of autobrightness. Without the checkbox ticked, you change the screen brightness directly.
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"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Willem1975 said:
When pulling down your notifications, you'll see a slider and a checbox as you can see see in thee pic below. (It might look different becausse I'm running Alliancerom).
If the checkbox is ticked, you can adjust the slider for different levels of autobrightness. Without the checkbox ticked, you change the screen brightness directly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm on stock and with Auto checked, it becomes unchecked when you adjust the slider. Thus, adjusting the slider only forces it into manual brightness.
Edit: and I'm on the n910a
Didn't know that. Did not spend much time on stock. Sorry....
spexwood said:
I'm on stock and with Auto checked, it becomes unchecked when you adjust the slider. Thus, adjusting the slider only forces it into manual brightness.
Edit: and I'm on the n910a
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nothing like that happens on the snapdragon one. And i can bet it shouldn't happen on Exynos as well. This feature has been the same for years, and has worked very well; there is no reason to change it on any variant now.
Recheck that your rom is not messed up.
maksharma231 said:
Nothing like that happens on the snapdragon one. And i can bet it shouldn't happen on Exynos as well. This feature has been the same for years, and has worked very well; there is no reason to change it on any variant now.
Recheck that your rom is not messed up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My firmware is via ATT OTA, so it isn't messed up. I can't even flash anything since the n910a isn't rootable. The way my brightness slider is now is also how it was on Kitkat, and all ATT models are like mine.
It's just that when you mentioned the different auto brightness levels, I thought that maybe there was something I was overlooking in my settings. Apparently not, since your type of autobrightness was apparently adjusted by ATT.
spexwood said:
My firmware is via ATT OTA, so it isn't messed up. I can't even flash anything since the n910a isn't rootable. The way my brightness slider is now is also how it was on Kitkat, and all ATT models are like mine.
It's just that when you mentioned the different auto brightness levels, I thought that maybe there was something I was overlooking in my settings. Apparently not, since your type of autobrightness was apparently adjusted by ATT.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup, must be ATT setup, although it makes much more sense the default android way.
Wonder why they decided to change it
My battery life on my note 4 is truly awful and I genuinely have no idea what's doing it, without fail it'll die like half way through the day when I only really use it for reddit and WhatsApp, I've heard by a lot of people that snapchat is really bad for battery. Whenever I look at these battery apps they never seem to tell me though, my screen on time is always atrocious and everyone else is getting like 6 hours, I use alxedandr rom btw, I also get lags here and there and I have no idea why can anyone help
Drizzy xS said:
My battery life on my note 4 is truly awful and I genuinely have no idea what's doing it, without fail it'll die like half way through the day when I only really use it for reddit and WhatsApp, I've heard by a lot of people that snapchat is really bad for battery. Whenever I look at these battery apps they never seem to tell me though, my screen on time is always atrocious and everyone else is getting like 6 hours, I use alxedandr rom btw, I also get lags here and there and I have no idea why can anyone help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most people are having problems with Google Play services drain. It's causing poor battery life because it's stopping the phone from deep sleeping. Sign out of Google Play in the accounts page in settings, then reboot the phone and sign back in again. Uncheck all the items you don't want to sync for Google.
I'm on lollipop and did a cache wipe straight after installing AND uninstalled the Facebook app. I've got 40% remaining after 12.5 hours. Boc3 seems to be really stable.
If you are having problems with battery drain I suggest you go to settings>application manager>running and kill tasks from there.
I am getting exceptional battery life on my Exynos
just quickly, is there any way to like reset the battery life physically?
ie in the old days, we would often let the battery run flat out, and recharge fully and run flat out a couple times.
and it'll basically give you the best longest battery life after doing this.
I think I just discovered a fix after updating to 5.0, I am running stock just for the info, all I did was boot into recovery and wipe cashe partition about 3-4 times and that seemed to have worked very well battery life is back to normal. Can someone who has this problem confirm?
joe1blue said:
I think I just discovered a fix after updating to 5.0, I am running stock just for the info, all I did was boot into recovery and wipe cashe partition about 3-4 times and that seemed to have worked very well battery life is back to normal. Can someone who has this problem confirm?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What was your previous battery usage like for heavy, moderate and low usage?
Gold3nCloud said:
What was your previous battery usage like for heavy, moderate and low usage?
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Click to collapse
It was strangely very bad after I updated to stock 5.0, I would lose about 2% every 15min I mean very bad to the point that I was about to do a factory reset.
KK only
For those who cannot identify the battery drain source from the battery setting, disable your alarm clock. The stock alarm clock is causing a huge drain, and it hides itself in the Android System. Not even wake detector could detect it. I did a search, but couldn't find anyone talking about it. My SOT drops by an hour with the alarm clock on.
So, I just upgraded to Android 9 and I use a lot of widgets for various news feeds, weather, baseball scores, etc. Most of my widgets are not refreshing (even when prompted on the widgets) or even loading (unless I take them off the homescreens and replace them).
This is happening with Falcon Pro, Tweetcaster, MLB At Bat, Eye In The Sky Weather, and Talon.
Please help me.
Happens to me with Timely, in fact, the app (alarm) does not even work at all and caused me a few missed days at work. But they haven't updated it for quite a while.
The problem is that in Device Care, we cannot white list apps anymore like we did in Oreo.
PlutoDelic said:
Happens to me with Timely, in fact, the app (alarm) does not even work at all and caused me a few missed days at work. But they haven't updated it for quite a while.
The problem is that in Device Care, we cannot white list apps anymore like we did in Oreo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course you can!
Go into App-Info and enable background usage
Also
Disable Battery Optimization in App-Info
Reaper1337 said:
Of course you can!
Go into App-Info and enable background usage
Also
Disable Battery Optimization in App-Info
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My screen options don't look like that.
There aren't options like the ones you've listed.
Dankees said:
So, I just upgraded to Android 9 and I use a lot of widgets for various news feeds, weather, baseball scores, etc. Most of my widgets are not refreshing (even when prompted on the widgets) or even loading (unless I take them off the homescreens and replace them).
This is happening with Falcon Pro, Tweetcaster, MLB At Bat, Eye In The Sky Weather, and Talon.
Please help me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you using mobile data or wifi?
I've found so far there's a difference.
My sports side panel only seems to update on wifi.
So I'm guessing it's a permissions thing?
Dankees said:
My screen options don't look like that.
There aren't options like the ones you've listed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to enter this menu
Reaper1337 said:
Of course you can!
Go into App-Info and enable background usage
Also
Disable Battery Optimization in App-Info
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All the apps that i want to be able to talk on the background have the background allowance. And i am reluctant to disable battery optimization.
But that was not my point. On Oreo, you could black list apps (always sleeping) and white list apps (do not put to sleep) on device care/maintenance. In Pie, you can only black list.
Nevertheless, i think in my case it's the Apps fault. Last update was prior Pie release. However, the widget many times is at least an hour or two behind (a clock widget from the same app).
Thanks for the feedback.
I get your point.
You are right, the white-list is no more.
I had a similar problem with my widgets.
Using my settings above fixed it.
You can disable battery Optimization without hesitation, if the app itself does not suck your battery.
I configured, HD widgets for example, usage and have the same battery usage with and without battery Optimization.
Widgets not refreshing since Samsung update
I'm having the same issue...HD Widgets, Evernote, Business Calender (all widgets I've had for years and love) are not refreshing after I "wake" my phone or reboot. If I remove the widget from the screen and re-add them, they work fine...but I'm not about to do that every time my phone sleeps for a while. This is on my Galaxy Note 8 running Android 9.0.
Is there a fix? Thx
Dankees said:
So, I just upgraded to Android 9 and I use a lot of widgets for various news feeds, weather, baseball scores, etc. Most of my widgets are not refreshing (even when prompted on the widgets) or even loading (unless I take them off the homescreens and replace them).
This is happening with Falcon Pro, Tweetcaster, MLB At Bat, Eye In The Sky Weather, and Talon.
Please help me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, for the apps I want to use widgets for, I need to turn off "Optimize Battery Usage" in the app's options?
OK, I think I've got it working now.
But, my Proximity Screen Off app keeps stopping.
One more pie related annoyance, what a pity
I have the above settings but several widgets still not working e.g. Google Fit. A cheeky app that still tracks you even with permissions denied.
Anyway, I have a Galaxy A10 Android 9.
It's become a major bugbear for me.
Can it be fixed? I can only update widgets when I manually go into the apps.
Cheers,
Anthony
I just wanted to make a quick rundown of things I do to phones, even if they have a large battery.
- Go into app info, then battery, then enabled "Background Restriction" for apps that don't need to have fast notifications. I do this for apps like XDA, Feedly, Amazon etc. Given enough time Adaptive battery will do this for you, but I go in manually for any new apps or ones that I still might use frequently. (UnRooted)
- Download Naptime and enable aggressive doze. Also play around with the experimental features. I disabled location when Doze mode is enabled. (UnRooted)
- Download Servicely from the same dev. I disabled apps when my screen turns off and whitelist phone, messaging apps and other high importance apps. (Root)
- Use Tasker to automate Battery Saver Mode when your screen turns off and disable it when the screen comes back on. Naptime can also do this in the experimental settings, but I use Tasker to trigger it based on conditions like battery percentage, etc. (UnRooted)
- Install the Universal GMS Doze in Magisk. Combining this with Naptime really helps for standby. (Root)
- Install AdAway from F-Droid. This is a small thing, but less data use for pulling ads means better battery. It's a stretch, but the other benefits are no more ads! (Root)
This is what I've got done so far. Once custom kernels are released I'm going to use the Franco kernel app to make per app customizations to underclock the CPU and GPU for apps like Messages and other lite apps to really squeeze more battery.
With these optimizations I can easily make a full day. I haven't gotten a solid SOT number yet as I change in my car through Android Auto most days, but I really want to test a day completely off a charger to see what it's like.
Again, these are things I do on even large phones like the OnePlus 7 Pro and it's almost doubled my battery life on phones. Plus, these are set and forgot things and should only require a little bit of setup.
I hope this helps yall eek out some more battery out of our awesome devices! I can start to use the phone without worrying about battery anxiety.
Or you can just enable battery saving, and don't optimize apps you really need.
That's true, and I have it enable when the screens off. I'm not sure is restricting background use AND battery saver are doubling up and helping save more battery, but I want the option to have a light theme, so restricting battery for apps gives me that option
So, on my old OneOlus 7, i would simply start the app, lock it from recent apps drawer, minimise it, and it'd run in the background for as long as i wanted. Even if i played a game or do anything, the app would run no issues.
On Rog 3, the app is closed randomly after 10 seconds or 5 minutes.
I have every background restriction i could find, disabled. Armoury Crate has Memory cleaner disabled as well.
Any method to keep an app running minimised in background guys?
Add the app to OptiFlex.
In app settings:
- Background Restriction = Disabled- Battery Optimization = Disabled- Background app management = Disabled
Also, if you need the app to automatically start on every boot/reset, add it in Auto Start Manager.
That's it.
Already did all these.
It's still beeing closed damn it