Samsung Galaxy S II

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Discussion

ZesPak

Original Poster:

24,421 posts

195 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
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Aviz said:
Dave200 said:
I must say that, despite considering myself a relatively heavy user, I have few complaints about the stock battery.
In a typical day I will either watch a film on the 30min bus ride to work (or listen to music if I'm cycling), have it connected to the office wifi all day sending texts/whatsapp, while all the time email, weather and news/sport widgets are regularly updating, then I'll probably use it again on my journey home, and call/text/whatsapp in the evenings. All of this leaves it typically in the 30-40% battery range when I come to plug it in at night.

What do others do with theirs?
You sound like me smile. That sounds like a fairly typical day for me too. And last night it had just over 40% when i plugged it in at 11pm. I usually unplug it about 7am ish.
yes Same here, pretty heavy user, calling on bluetooth, watching youtube...

I usually end the day with 20-30% left. I manage to drain that in an half hour by watching some youtube movies in bed smile.

Dave200

3,581 posts

219 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
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Anyone got any thoughts on decent ear-bud headphones with media integration? Would ideally like to have music on, next/prev track, and volume as a bare minimum.

chris.mapey

4,778 posts

266 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
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Aviz said:
chris.mapey said:
Does running Tasker not rinse your battery? GPS must be on all the time, surely, or else how does it trigger the location based stuff?
Location can be via cell tower, gps or wifi. GPS is a heavy drain, which is why I have mine to only come on when I launch certain apps. Tasker hardly uses any battery if you use it sensibly, obviously asking it to do loads of stuff based on gps location all day would be a drain.
Cheers for that, sounds v.good.

LukeSi

5,753 posts

160 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
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Turn data off. It uses so much battery.

GreigM

6,726 posts

248 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
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LukeSi said:
Turn data off. It uses so much battery.
Unfortunately without data its no longer a "smart" phone and kind of pointless..

dontfollowme

1,158 posts

232 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
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With my HTC I used to leave the charger plugged in when the phone was fully charged. Is it OK to do this with the Galaxy?

TameRacingDriver

18,048 posts

271 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
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If peoples batteries are running down so fast despite not heavy use, then it means one of a couple of things, generally. Either an app is running in the background, or the signal (3G signal, generally) is weak or none-existent, and the phone keeps trying to keep hold of a signal. That will drain any phone.

For those with battery drain issues, make sure you're running the latest firmware, investigate to see if any apps are causing a drain (ones that are running in the background, syncing all the time, widgets etc), and finally, if that doesn't come back with a good result try Juice Defender as it will disable 3G when the phone is asleep which can make quite a good saving.

Richyvrlimited

1,824 posts

162 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
quotequote all
TameRacingDriver said:
If peoples batteries are running down so fast despite not heavy use, then it means one of a couple of things, generally. Either an app is running in the background, or the signal (3G signal, generally) is weak or none-existent, and the phone keeps trying to keep hold of a signal. That will drain any phone.

For those with battery drain issues, make sure you're running the latest firmware, investigate to see if any apps are causing a drain (ones that are running in the background, syncing all the time, widgets etc), and finally, if that doesn't come back with a good result try Juice Defender as it will disable 3G when the phone is asleep which can make quite a good saving.

I do have poor signal, but my 3GS coped fine....

Juice defender helped slightly on my phone, now it barely scrapes in at lasting a day!

Tycho

11,554 posts

272 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
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Richyvrlimited said:
Dave200 said:
I must say that, despite considering myself a relatively heavy user, I have few complaints about the stock battery.
In a typical day I will either watch a film on the 30min bus ride to work (or listen to music if I'm cycling), have it connected to the office wifi all day sending texts/whatsapp, while all the time email, weather and news/sport widgets are regularly updating, then I'll probably use it again on my journey home, and call/text/whatsapp in the evenings. All of this leaves it typically in the 30-40% battery range when I come to plug it in at night.

What do others do with theirs?
Mine would be dead by lunchtime if I tried that trick.

Everything off and virtually zero use all day = 50% drop is battery life.

Watching a film would kill the battery in double quick time.
there has to be an app running all the time, I have everything on and get 1 or 2% battery use per hour.

TameRacingDriver

18,048 posts

271 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
quotequote all
I very rarely get longer than a day but I am a pretty heavy user so its expected. On standby its around 1% per hour with 3G on. I went round my friends house once, where he gets a poor signal and the phone just seem to hemorrhage battery life.

Generally speaking, about 4 hours screen on time and I'm spent and thats with a custom ROM and kernel.

Its not a great phone on battery life, but its adequate with a little bit of management. The upcoming S3 is said to be likely to have a significantly better battery life (not that it'll matter to me as I've got until the end of the year before my contract is up).

Glade

4,256 posts

222 months

Tuesday 24th January 2012
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I guess this has already been answered, but I couldn't find it.

Getting a Samsung Galaxy S 2 tomorrow...

Have downloaded Kies, and had it scan my itunes folder for music.

Lots of stuff purchased on iTunes/downloaded on iPhone is DRM protected.

Does this mean I can't play my music on the SGS2??

ZesPak

Original Poster:

24,421 posts

195 months

Wednesday 25th January 2012
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dontfollowme said:
With my HTC I used to leave the charger plugged in when the phone was fully charged. Is it OK to do this with the Galaxy?
I plug mine in every night, even sometimes when it's still at 60%, and it's usually fully charged in the night, while it stays plugged in for several hours 'till I wake up. Never had any problem tbh.

Dave200

3,581 posts

219 months

Wednesday 25th January 2012
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LukeSi said:
Turn data off. It uses so much battery.

Disagree strongly with this. I have either wifi or h+ data connection running all day long and have no issues with battery life. I can only think that there is some underlying setting or app which is causing such high drain. To those experiencing this, please check thoroughly what you have running and how often apps (like email and news widgets) are set to update.

GreigM

6,726 posts

248 months

Wednesday 25th January 2012
quotequote all
Glade said:
I guess this has already been answered, but I couldn't find it.

Getting a Samsung Galaxy S 2 tomorrow...

Have downloaded Kies, and had it scan my itunes folder for music.

Lots of stuff purchased on iTunes/downloaded on iPhone is DRM protected.

Does this mean I can't play my music on the SGS2??
Use doubletwist http://doubletwist.com/ to remove the DRM first....some instructions here:
http://www.lostintechnology.com/how-to/how-to-remo...

R60EST

2,364 posts

181 months

Wednesday 25th January 2012
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I use what I need as and when I need it . Bluetooth only on for hands free in the van. Wifi or data switched on if I want to browse or check email and then switched off when I've finished. GPS + data only on the rare occasion I need to use it as a sat nav.

I also use task manager a couple of times per day to close all / end all and clear the ram after I've used several different apps / functions.

Doing this gives me 24 - 48 hrs battery life. Before doing things this way I was getting 12 hrs max for the same amount of actual use.

Glade

4,256 posts

222 months

Thursday 26th January 2012
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24 hours with my Phone - it's brilliant. Nice big screen, responsive.

I've come from a iPhone 3G which was snail slow running iOS4.

The difference for me is that Android can do much more, but not as standard. Seems like a minefield finding all the apps. And you need to have 20 to do all the different fancy things.

Is it common to have several apps running in the background all the time... tasker, some SMS notification app, maybe a battery management app, swype keyboard etc??

What's the best 4-icon "switcher" widget? I love having the ability to knock off wifi, GPS, Bluetooth from the home screen - couldn't to that on my iPhone! the standard power management widget with 8 icons is too big though.

LocoBlade

7,621 posts

255 months

Thursday 26th January 2012
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Since its had an active SIM, mine has dire battery life too. Its a brand new work phone so I hardly have anything installed on it, initially I was waiting for the SIM to be delivered so i charged it up and it sat in my drawer for about 5 days with WiFi, bluetooth and GPS all switched on (but unconnected), and it still had about 40% after all that time, but since the SIM went in its been awful. At the moment other than push exchange mail to monitor my work email (rarely used for writing mail) I hardly use it. WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS is now off, I sometimes don't take/make any calls in a day and the same with texts, yet it hardly lasts a day basically on standby, much worse than both my wife's HTC desire and my iPhone 4

Richyvrlimited

1,824 posts

162 months

Thursday 26th January 2012
quotequote all
LocoBlade said:
Since its had an active SIM, mine has dire battery life too. Its a brand new work phone so I hardly have anything installed on it, initially I was waiting for the SIM to be delivered so i charged it up and it sat in my drawer for about 5 days with WiFi, bluetooth and GPS all switched on (but unconnected), and it still had about 40% after all that time, but since the SIM went in its been awful. At the moment other than push exchange mail to monitor my work email (rarely used for writing mail) I hardly use it. WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS is now off, I sometimes don't take/make any calls in a day and the same with texts, yet it hardly lasts a day basically on standby, much worse than both my wife's HTC desire and my iPhone 4
Exactly how mine is

hyperblue

2,800 posts

179 months

Thursday 26th January 2012
quotequote all
Glade said:
What's the best 4-icon "switcher" widget? I love having the ability to knock off wifi, GPS, Bluetooth from the home screen - couldn't to that on my iPhone! the standard power management widget with 8 icons is too big though.
Just drag down the top bar, you can turn them off in there smile

ZesPak

Original Poster:

24,421 posts

195 months

Thursday 26th January 2012
quotequote all
hyperblue said:
Glade said:
What's the best 4-icon "switcher" widget? I love having the ability to knock off wifi, GPS, Bluetooth from the home screen - couldn't to that on my iPhone! the standard power management widget with 8 icons is too big though.
Just drag down the top bar, you can turn them off in there smile
yes


Had a widget for these on my previous Android handset, but don't really need it on the SGS2, it's much easier in the notification bar. Esp the GPS: open google maps, oops, slide bar, tap GPS and you're good to go.