As I said, I'm a noob when it comes to not the Galaxy Note but also the Android Operating system. Before switching to Android in April, I was stuck on iOS (iPhone 4) for more than 2 years; before that was the good old Symbian OS on a Nokia N95 8 GB. So far, since making the switch, the experience has been great. Themes, ringtones, tons of customization are just some of the things that are easily possible with "jailbreaking" on my former device.
That being said, I'm still adjusting to my new phone even after 3 months. Thats why I'm starting this thread; I need help on a few questions. So, here it goes (I did search for a lot of these, but no solid solutions) -
1. One of the great things about my old phone was the battery life. Even after using the phone's music function, checking facebook/emails/news/weather every now and then, I would still have around 60%~80% juice left after an 8~10 hour shift at work. None of that on the Note. Just having the 4G running leaves me with around 40%~50% juice after work, with no hard usage like going on the web, or using my phone as a music player. How come? I understand that most of the juice is used by the big-ass display; but there is a still a huge consumption even when the display is not turned on at all. I recently came across a term called deep sleep on the forum; I'm not sure if my phone goes to that or not. How do I check (keep in mind that I'm a noob; I installed CPU Spy, Battery Spy and BetterBatteryStats, but what am I looking for. I'll include a pic from all these apps)? Basically, how do I increase battery life?
2. Charging/Data cables - I dont understand this.. I have included a picture of 3 cables. The 1st one of my brother's from an old HTC phone. This is the only cable I can use to transfer date to and from my phone; that too with a lot care because if I move my phone around, the connection gets lost and I cant even charge my phone unless I unplug the cable, put my phone in a stationary position and replug the cable. The 2nd one is the cable I use to charge my phone. I cant use it to transfer data (I guess because of the little head converter); again, with this cable I cant move my phone around. I have to keep the phone screen-up for it to charge; cant pick it up or move it around or no charge. The 3rd cable is useless. It came with a pair of bluetooth head set. I cant transfer data, nor charge my phone. On some cables, my phone shows its charging; but it either charges very very slow, or shows its at a 100%, but as soon as I take the cable out, the % goes down to 60~85. The phone seems to charge fine on a car charger I have (not a USB car charger, this one has no removable parts). I think it might be the USB port on my phone, but not sure.
3. The 4th picture is of the Go Task Manager widget. Currently its showing 239 MB of RAM free. I closed Battery Spy, and it came down to around 300~325 MB free. Does Go Launcher take a lot of memory? How can I free more RAM? Didnt the Galaxy Note have 1 GB of RAM; what happened to the remaining 305 MB of RAM?
4. ROM - FLOODED = the only word I can use after I saw the Android Development section. So many choices. Is it worth flashing my phone with one of these? Which one do you recommend? Is the one for CyanogenMod good? What exactly does Nightly Built mean?
5. Flashing the phone with a custom ROM voids the warranty, right? Does the "flashing counter" thing work (I read somewhere that there's an easy way of flashing the counter in Recovery to 0)? I included a pic of a crack thats on my screen (long story short, I dropped my phone screen down on a rock). I'm about to send it to AT&T (since I have insurance from them) for the screen (hopefully they'll send me a new one, which will fix the whole charging/data transfer problem too). Will they check the counter too? Should I flash the counter? I have to pay $200 for a claim, be it water damage, accidental damage, theft, loss, etc; if they do check the counter, should the just drop the **** out of the phone so it dosnt work at all?
Long read, I know. Just wanted to cram in as much information as possible so that I can get answers as soon as possible. Any and all answers will be appreciated. Thanks a lot for taking the time to read through the whole thread and replying (if you do).
Ways to increase battery life:
- I hear using wifi as much as possible instead of data is a huge improvement as well as turning off auto sync and you can turn wifi off when the display is off. Also the typical of having it on a low brightness, finding out if you have any rogue apps that are causing more drain than they should. The last resort is to get either multiple batteries or an extended one with a different back case. Aside from those things, you are only going to get so much on time display from the note. I get on average 3.5 hours and can push my phone to about 22 hours from 100%. Milestone 6 Rom, KingKangKernel 5
About the cables:
- Buy a new usb cable. If you ever intend on modifying your phone or even transferring any time of data, you are going to NEED to have a secure and trustworthy connection. And by a new wall adapter. (most phone cables come with the little adapter head for outlets so just make sure it comes included). Pop it off for computer use, and pop it on for wall use. There are a ton of threads about those in the accessories section so you may want to give that a peek. They also have info there about possible substitution batteries.
Ram:
-I don't understand this too much because haha I suck with some techy stuff. But I believe that touchwiz uses a lot of the ram (could be completely wrong) But, I know that a lot of those apps that you are never going to use AT&T(insert name here) apparently constantly are using power and resources. I used to try to clear the ram all the time and it never really went down. Haha sorry I can't help more with this part.
Roms:
- Milestone 6 with KingKangKernel5 ALL THE WAY!!! I would be willing to walk you through the process step-by-step with all the files and such that you would need if you'd like. Other than that, you need to have an idea of what you want before going to the development side of things. Do you want Touchwiz, OC, UV, BLN (YOU WANT BLN lmao), miui, cm9, cm10 (haha), aokp, aosp, aocp, a stock feel, customization out the ying yang. Decide all this stuff and then your choices will narrow drastically to about two or three. From there, it is easy to experiment and possibly decide you had your requirements all wrong and start the process from the beginning haha.
Warranty:
- Get your next insurance claim through BB (best buy). Their black tie protection covers anything as many times as you want without that 200 dollar fee (might as well get a new phone at that ridiculous price!!!) for only ten dollars a month. : D
-Don't know how AT&T does their insurance stuff but I feel if your issues are physical (scratch/ port) that they have no reason to deny you a claim even if there is proof of modification because rooting doesn't crack your screen or break your port. Hahaha, but they can be uptight so I would suggest possibly getting the claim first and then delving into the developmental side of things. There is an odin flashable zip to bring your counter back to 0. I have never tried it personally but many people have had a ton of success with it so I would suggest checking out that thread and just reading carefully what other people do so that you do not make a mistake with anything.
Hope this helps. Hahahahaha, sorry it's so long.
Custom roms improve batt life greatly because on a stock phone u have tons of apps running in the background if u root and flash a rom u can freeze all of them that u want plus now we can over clock our kernels to make r note fly as far as the rom for u ....well u just have to try them diff strokes for diff folks lol i use cm9 roms alot u got to remember ur note has a huge screen so its gonna pull more batt...i also use jucie defender ultimite ...bigjoe has a super everything thread for this phone u can find all ur answers there
sent from memosphere remix
1. Battery life varies strongly with usage, in CPUSpy each bar represents how much time the phone processor has spent at each speed. The more time spent at lower speeds the better for your battery life.
If you scroll to the bottom of the list the lowest speed should either be: 384 MHz or Deep Sleep
The phone only enters Deep Sleep if the phone screen is off, and no apps are calling for CPU time. This speed saves the most battery. Rogue apps could be preventing your phone from sleeping. BetterBatteryStats is a tool to help you discover these apps and either: change your usage patterns or uninstall them.
Check CPUSpy first. If Deep Sleep is not at the bottom, or its bar is relatively small then check BetterBatteryStats for the rogue app.
However even if it's in Deep Sleep if you get around the city a lot during the day the phone will be switching radio towers often, switching uses quite a bit of battery. If you stay in a single place for a while you should be able to leave it on a desk for 8 hours and find that you have lost none or almost no battery at all (Such as at night when you are sleeping).
This is a "4G" phone, carrier coverage is spotty and if you are in an area with bad reception or poor coverage, your phone's radio must switch to a higher power level to maintain a connection with the cell tower thus using more battery. 4G towers are more sparse, and therefore 4G has worse coverage compared to your previous phones.
2. You should be using the cable included with your phone. Charging cables obviously will not carry data. But data cables will do both, get yourself a good cable.
3. Don't worry about ram at all. Android has one of the finest ram management systems out there. The phone has 1 GB of ram, 200-300 MB is reserved for the kernel and kernel processes. Therefore you actually have around 700MB, the phone uses the remaining space to caches apps and other required data so that your experience is more fluid and "Lag-free". Not to mention the ram background services and apps are using. Which brings me back to my original point. Don't worry about it, fiddling with it could ruin your experience with the device and use more battery. Don't use apps to clear it, Google has already stated that this doesn't do much.
4. The original rom is your best bet if you want all of the features of the phone. Cyanogenmod is your second choice, Cyanogenmod does not have S-pen support and some of the services provided from Samsung. Cyanogenmod is very lightweight and is the most popular choice among all android devices.
Nightly-Built means that the rom is basically updated every night, so that you can receive the latest features and improvements. You can check every day and there will be a new update for your phone with the latest additions and fixes. However not all nightly builds are stable, but they are reliable at the moment.
5. The counter only counts when you use ODIN to flash bootloaders and kernels I believe. When most of us say "flashing" we mean flashing through ClockWorkMod or CWM for short. CWM does not advance the counter I believe. There are no reports of anyone being denied warranty because of the counter. Do not flash the counter reset, this does count as a "flash" and it is still detectable by AT&T.
tutusinghsohi said:
As I said, I'm a noob when it comes to not the Galaxy Note but also the Android Operating system. Before switching to Android in April, I was stuck on iOS (iPhone 4) for more than 2 years; before that was the good old Symbian OS on a Nokia N95 8 GB. So far, since making the switch, the experience has been great. Themes, ringtones, tons of customization are just some of the things that are easily possible with "jailbreaking" on my former device.
That being said, I'm still adjusting to my new phone even after 3 months. Thats why I'm starting this thread; I need help on a few questions. So, here it goes (I did search for a lot of these, but no solid solutions) -
1. One of the great things about my old phone was the battery life. Even after using the phone's music function, checking facebook/emails/news/weather every now and then, I would still have around 60%~80% juice left after an 8~10 hour shift at work. None of that on the Note. Just having the 4G running leaves me with around 40%~50% juice after work, with no hard usage like going on the web, or using my phone as a music player. How come? I understand that most of the juice is used by the big-ass display; but there is a still a huge consumption even when the display is not turned on at all. I recently came across a term called deep sleep on the forum; I'm not sure if my phone goes to that or not. How do I check (keep in mind that I'm a noob; I installed CPU Spy, Battery Spy and BetterBatteryStats, but what am I looking for. I'll include a pic from all these apps)? Basically, how do I increase battery life?
To increase battery life you can do a few things. Obviously, use as low brightness as you can stand using, and also try to use wallpapers with lots of black, as black pixels do not draw any power on amoled displays. Next, from your CPU spy pic it looks like a rogue may be holding your device in partial wake lock, as your 384 MHz stage has twice the time of your deep sleep stage. Uninstall any apps you dont need, like benchmarks and other one time use apps like that. Also, if you have stuff constantly syncing, that will drain battery with the screen off too. If you need push email, leave sync on, but change the sync settings of less essential apps to manual sync only, so your phone only syncs those when you use the app. Along with the syncing, if you are in an lte area, data usage will eat much more battery than the iphone for the same data usage. Lastly, if you have crappy cell service, that will also contribute to faster drain.
2. Charging/Data cables - I dont understand this.. I have included a picture of 3 cables. The 1st one of my brother's from an old HTC phone. This is the only cable I can use to transfer date to and from my phone; that too with a lot care because if I move my phone around, the connection gets lost and I cant even charge my phone unless I unplug the cable, put my phone in a stationary position and replug the cable. The 2nd one is the cable I use to charge my phone. I cant use it to transfer data (I guess because of the little head converter); again, with this cable I cant move my phone around. I have to keep the phone screen-up for it to charge; cant pick it up or move it around or no charge. The 3rd cable is useless. It came with a pair of bluetooth head set. I cant transfer data, nor charge my phone. On some cables, my phone shows its charging; but it either charges very very slow, or shows its at a 100%, but as soon as I take the cable out, the % goes down to 60~85. The phone seems to charge fine on a car charger I have (not a USB car charger, this one has no removable parts). I think it might be the USB port on my phone, but not sure.
Buy the stock Samsung wall charger/cable. It will do wonders for you. Solid connection, full speed charging, and data transfer.
3. The 4th picture is of the Go Task Manager widget. Currently its showing 239 MB of RAM free. I closed Battery Spy, and it came down to around 300~325 MB free. Does Go Launcher take a lot of memory? How can I free more RAM? Didnt the Galaxy Note have 1 GB of RAM; what happened to the remaining 305 MB of RAM?
Don't worry about ram usage, android as an os manages it just fine by itself. No need to constantly kill apps or use task killers other than the stock one if you absolutely need to kill something. Constantly killing apps/clearing ram can actually decrease your battery life as well, as constantly killing and restarting apps uses far more resources than leaving them running. Also, if you're constantly killing apps that have push syncing or interval syncing, they will just restart anyways, essentially just killing battery every time you clear ram. Lastly, use as few Widgets as possible. They are nice and pretty, but unless you need them they're just another service that is running, and will slow down your launcher performance if you have too many.
4. ROM - FLOODED = the only word I can use after I saw the Android Development section. So many choices. Is it worth flashing my phone with one of these? Which one do you recommend? Is the one for CyanogenMod good? What exactly does Nightly Built mean?
Remember, there's no rush, and no "best rom", so just take your time reading how to flash each rom, and try each one out that looks appealing to you. Nobody can tell you what will suit you best, and since all of the roms are great around here, you really can't go wrong trying any of them until you find what fits you best. Custom roms are totally worth it, as they have all of the fat trimmed and are really fun to play with. Be careful though, you may find yourself developing an addiction after you get the hang of things. =].
5. Flashing the phone with a custom ROM voids the warranty, right? Does the "flashing counter" thing work (I read somewhere that there's an easy way of flashing the counter in Recovery to 0)? I included a pic of a crack thats on my screen (long story short, I dropped my phone screen down on a rock). I'm about to send it to AT&T (since I have insurance from them) for the screen (hopefully they'll send me a new one, which will fix the whole charging/data transfer problem too). Will they check the counter too? Should I flash the counter? I have to pay $200 for a claim, be it water damage, accidental damage, theft, loss, etc; if they do check the counter, should the just drop the **** out of the phone so it dosnt work at all?
Yes, flashing roms does void your warranty but only temporarily. You can set it back to stock firmware again and be just fine returning or replacing it. People have also returned their phones with the counter tripped, as it seems that as of right now, neither att or Samsung cares about it. Have you flashed anything yet? If not, get your phone replaced before you do just to be sure, then when you get your new one back, you can have already read and downloaded everything you need to root and rom it as soon as you get it back. =].
Long read, I know. Just wanted to cram in as much information as possible so that I can get answers as soon as possible. Any and all answers will be appreciated. Thanks a lot for taking the time to read through the whole thread and replying (if you do).
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Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2
tutusinghsohi said:
3. The 4th picture is of the Go Task Manager widget. Currently its showing 239 MB of RAM free. I closed Battery Spy, and it came down to around 300~325 MB free. Does Go Launcher take a lot of memory? How can I free more RAM? Didnt the Galaxy Note have 1 GB of RAM; what happened to the remaining 305 MB of RAM?
4. ROM - FLOODED = the only word I can use after I saw the Android Development section. So many choices. Is it worth flashing my phone with one of these? Which one do you recommend? Is the one for CyanogenMod good? What exactly does Nightly Built mean?
5. Flashing the phone with a custom ROM voids the warranty, right? Does the "flashing counter" thing work (I read somewhere that there's an easy way of flashing the counter in Recovery to 0)? I included a pic of a crack thats on my screen (long story short, I dropped my phone screen down on a rock). I'm about to send it to AT&T (since I have insurance from them) for the screen (hopefully they'll send me a new one, which will fix the whole charging/data transfer problem too). Will they check the counter too? Should I flash the counter? I have to pay $200 for a claim, be it water damage, accidental damage, theft, loss, etc; if they do check the counter, should the just drop the **** out of the phone so it dosnt work at all?
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Click to collapse
Ok first keep in mind I came to android with almost the same background as you and about the same time.
Question 3: anything with Go in the name I have seen huge team usage... also custom Roms will be a great thing for your ram you will see big changes if you go with anything like AOKP AOSP or AOCP. These are as close to basic unmodified android as you will find with little to no extras.
4: cyanogen mods are good in my opinion, nightly builds are not finals they are updated nightly... as for a Rom I tried a few and have found my favorite is the collective builds.they just came out with the AOCP (newly updated coming soon) and there is one member of the team that likes ultra slim builds and he slims them down to the bear bones. When ready to flash give them a shot.
5: flashing will void warranty, with that said so did the crack you have. This counts as physical damage. So insurance is the best option. I do agree best buy ins is great but as you have att ins might as well use it. With a crack screen I think you will get a different device to fix charge port but will most likely get refurb phone. I would root and flash with this one so you can do it and IF anything goes wrong you need an instant replacement any way and your not out anything
Other 2 questions I didn't feel I was the one to answer nor am I a expert on any of this, just the info I have
Sent from my AoCP Note
Battery life isn't the greatest on the Note, but it's acceptable. If you use it a lot, the battery will drain. You can try using a different CPU governor (lulzactive, smartassv2, etc. in custom kernels) to improve battery life or just use powersave (which decreases performance but improves battery life). You also have to account for the huge screen which is OLED, not LCD. With an LCD (like the iPhone 4 has) there is an array of white LED's that illuminate the screen. There's probably 8 or so of them. The LCD glass is a color filter which colors the white light from the backlight. The LCD itself uses little power, and the LED backlight only has 8 or so LED's. The Note uses an AMOLED screen (Active-Matrix Organic LED) in which each individual pixel is four independent LED's (RGBG). They're small LED's and use little power on their own, but you have 1280x800x4 of them (well, not quite due to the pentile arrangement staggering pixels). When they're all on (white screens) it uses a lot of power, especially when brightness is up. On the plus side, when they're all off (dark screens) they use much less power. To save power on an AMOLED, use a darker background/theme.
As for RAM usage, the Note has 1GB and you really don't need to worry about checking it. Android manages RAM very well, especially when it has 1GB to work with. When you leave an app in Android it isn't closed, merely pushed back in an application stack. Only when Android determines that RAM is filling up does it start removing stale apps from this stack.
Personally I've used my Note with many different cables without issue. The included Samsung charger and cable work very well, and I think has the most solid connection of all of them, but I've had success with a cord from my Archos media player as well as my HP TouchPad tablet. The TouchPad's wall charger also gives a slight charging boost as it provides more power (2A vs. 1A) but the Note's highest charge rate is around 1.1A so you don't see a huge difference. It does need a bit more than a standard 500mA USB port provides, so if you plan to charge it off your PC or a 500mA charger, you need to turn off the screen and leave it off, otherwise the screen will eat up the power, leaving none for the battery.
My favorite ROM is CyanogenMod 9. This is a built-from-scratch (Google's source + modifications) ROM that includes a lot of nice features while retaining the stock Android look and feel. I personally do not like TouchWiz or the customizations that Samsung added to their Note ROMs but many people do. It's all about personal preference. A nightly build means that a new release of the ROM is posted (usually by an automated system) every night. This is what CyanogenMod uses for most devices, as their project has many developers and is constantly updating. You don't need to update every day, but a nightly ROM means that you always have access to the latest updates if you want them.
As for the flash counter, I would warranty the phone before flashing a custom ROM. I generally don't take warranty into account on my tech purchases because with all the hacking I do it's often void, but usually if you restore the stock firmware they will fix hardware issues obviously not caused by your ROM flashing..
Thank you all for the quick replies.
Regarding the cable, I've come across this on amazon - /gp/product/B007JZGO6S/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&smid=AR2TEZS0WRV7S
Good to buy?
@Ph0n3D0rk - Thank you. Due to the short battery life I've been experiencing, I always use my phone on brightness all the way down with "Automatic Brightness" option turned off. I only have 200 MB per month data, so wifi's the only way to go . I've been looking into extra (or extended batteries); maybe soon. I read into Milestone 6; seems pretty interesting. I might give it a go (maybe when I get the replacement). I'll private message you about it.
@JB calhoun - Thank you. I've started looking into different kinds of ROMs. Is it possible to try out 2 different types or ROMs at the same time? What I mean is that say if I install CM9, then I want to try Milestone 6; will I have to remove CM9 to try Milestone 6? Also, does installing a new ROM every time (almost all instructions say to do a "Wipe data/factory reset") means all my data (on the phone ofcourse and not on the SD card) will be lost? I'm mainly worried about my text messages and whatsapp conversations (I think all other data settings are saved by Google, and reapplied once the app is installed back again, right?)
@SkyStars - Thank you. I tried using BetterBatteryStats, but I have no idea what I'm looking for. Should I be looking at Processes, Partial Wakelocks, Other or Kernel Wakelocks; and then what in these? I've heard a lot about CyagnogenMod. When you say it does not support S-pen, does it mean that the phone has no use for it at all? Can we still maneuver the screen with it, or take screenshots? Or does it just stop working? So, I should stay away from flashing the counter? My counter (I think) right now says 4.
@welchertc - Thank you. I found out about keeping a black wallpaper to decrease battery use a few weeks ago; I've had a black wallpaper since. I'll remove useless apps, then lets see what happens. Is the link I provided in the beginning ok, or should I search for something else? I was wondering about killed apps popping up after some time (Facebook for example). I have email sync turned off. I've been trying to turn off sync for a few apps, but some of them dont give me such an option (eg. The Drudge Report). I have started looking for some ROMs. But I ask you the same question I asked JB about ROMs - Can I have only 1 ROM at a time? And, will have to erase everything every single time? The warranty problem's the same with Apple. Just like you said, it seems to be the same with Apple - just reinstall the stock iOS, and you're ready to go (I had my iPhone changed after I went back to stock from a jailbroken firmware after it also developed battery issues; the new phone I received was brilliant in the battery department). I think my counter is up to 4.
@spade1031 - Thank you. Milestone 6 is an AOKP release. I'll look into the other releases you've mentioned as well. I've been using the Go Launcher because I tried AWD, and didnt like it. Any other nice ones out there? (But maybe I wont need them after a ROM install).
@CalcProgrammer1 - Thank you for the very informative and in-depth writing. What exactly is a CPU governor? If it is what I think it is, then I think I used one back when AT&T hadnt rolled out ICS, and I had (somehow) rooted the older version. I installed an app (dont remember the name) that basically let me create profiles in which I could set the max and min CPU usages; is that it? So I shouldnt worry about closing apps using any witget? The reason I ask is because the phone tends to get a bit slugish when a lot of apps are open, and available RAM (as shown on Go Taskmanger is around ~75 MB). I'll try not closing any apps from now on and note the difference. If I do go with CyanogenMod, what exactly will I be losing in terms of TouchWiz? I have flashed before (tried ICS before it officially came out), so my flash now is at 4. Should I take a chance and turn it in as is and see if they still change it; or should I try flashing the counter before turning it in?
Once again, thanks everyone for the replies.
tutusinghsohi said:
Thank you all for the quick replies
@spade1031 - Thank you. Milestone 6 is an AOKP release. I'll look into the other releases you've mentioned as well. I've been using the Go Launcher because I tried AWD, and didnt like it. Any other nice ones out there? (But maybe I wont need them after a ROM install).
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Dude your gonna hate me but this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1538926
Best launcher for the Note? Has a ton of info.. most people will still use a custom launcher after a Rom but it is all personal pref. I like apex (got the paid version) nova isn't bad but not for me... I'm now playing with sslauncher, like this as landscape and portrait can be set 2 different ways and has text icons built in and also NO GRID you have to follow for the icons
Sent from my AoCP Note
spade1031 said:
Dude your gonna hate me but this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1538926
Best launcher for the Note? Has a ton of info.. most people will still use a custom launcher after a Rom but it is all personal pref. I like apex (got the paid version) nova isn't bad but not for me... I'm now playing with sslauncher, like this as landscape and portrait can be set 2 different ways and has text icons built in and also NO GRID you have to follow for the icons
Sent from my AoCP Note
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a lot for the link.. I'm going through the thread now..
Go Launcher is alright (for now) because of all the widgets they make.. They turn out pretty crappy when used with other launchers..
Just tried Nova Launcher. Seemed good, but I think I've gotten used to Go Launcher.. But I will definitely make a switch soon..
Also, one of the very first replies to the thread you posted about suggests overclocking. Will I be able to do that when installing custom ROMs?
Regarding how to read Better Battery Stats, the developer of the app is very active on xda and you can actually get help reading the logs from the app on the app thread on xda.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809
Make sure you read the OP to see how to post the logs and also it'll give you insight into how to understand what the app is telling you.
tutusinghsohi said:
@welchertc - Thank you. I found out about keeping a black wallpaper to decrease battery use a few weeks ago; I've had a black wallpaper since. I'll remove useless apps, then lets see what happens. Is the link I provided in the beginning ok, or should I search for something else? I was wondering about killed apps popping up after some time (Facebook for example). I have email sync turned off. I've been trying to turn off sync for a few apps, but some of them dont give me such an option (eg. The Drudge Report). I have started looking for some ROMs. But I ask you the same question I asked JB about ROMs - Can I have only 1 ROM at a time? And, will have to erase everything every single time? The warranty problem's the same with Apple. Just like you said, it seems to be the same with Apple - just reinstall the stock iOS, and you're ready to go (I had my iPhone changed after I went back to stock from a jailbroken firmware after it also developed battery issues; the new phone I received was brilliant in the battery department). I think my counter is up to 4.
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To turn off all auto syncing, like I do, Just go into accounts and sync under settings and there should be one box or slier to uncheck to turn off all auto syncing. You can also leave it on and configure your individual accounts such as email, twitter, and facebook to sync automatically or not. =]
And yes, you can only truly run one ROM at a time. You could make a nandroid of one ROM, flash another and configure it, then nandroid the second once you have it set up, then keep restoring those two nandroids every time you want to switch. Although that is pretty ineffective if you like to keep switching things up on your homescreens, as the nandroids stay exactly the same.
You also don't need to erase everything per se. All of your pictures and stuff are a good idea to backup, to your computer or an sd card, if you're flashing a rom that requires a full wipe. Your apps and app data will be wiped, so definitely buy titanium backup pro if you haven't already, as that will allow you to restore all of your apps between flashes. Also, there are various sms backup apps, though I've never used one so I can't recommend any. email you can obviously resync quite easily, same with contacts once you have them all synced to your gmail account. Other than that, about the only thing you can't restore afaik is exactly how you have your homscreens/wallpaper setup.
tutusinghsohi said:
4. ROM - FLOODED = the only word I can use after I saw the Android Development section. So many choices. Is it worth flashing my phone with one of these? Which one do you recommend? Is the one for CyanogenMod good? What exactly does Nightly Built mean?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is really only like 3-4 unique roms in there. The majority of them are peoples themed versions one of those.
CM9 is by far the smoothest but I am having problems with GAPPs 7/19 build. Im currently running AOSPxXx until I can sort out the GAPPs issues Im having.
tutusinghsohi said:
Thanks a lot for the link.. I'm going through the thread now..
Go Launcher is alright (for now) because of all the widgets they make.. They turn out pretty crappy when used with other launchers..
Just tried Nova Launcher. Seemed good, but I think I've gotten used to Go Launcher.. But I will definitely make a switch soon..
Also, one of the very first replies to the thread you posted about suggests overclocking. Will I be able to do that when installing custom ROMs?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To be honest I tried overclocking only once am I was on a super light weight Rom, with that I didn't see much improvement but I have noticed the people do see am improvement are also using bigger Rom s. Again I'm sure you will see this many times more you are on here "flash it and find out" the reason is no one has done every combo out there. But over clicking will help at times just keep in mind your not happy with the battery now? And your gonna run your phone harder? Lol
Sent from my AoCP Note
Just wondering how it going? Get your new phone? Flash anything? If so what and what do you think of it?
Sent from my AoCP Note
My two words of advice is
1. Get extra batteries/wall charger I bought 3 batteries and charger for like 12 bucks
2. Get cm9 its amazing
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda app-developers app
My personal impression regarding Go launcher is that its very complete (widgets included) but for my experience its a heavy battery drainer so unfortunately i had to uninstall it
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda app-developers app
Related
PLEASE MOVE THIS THREAD TO GENERAL MY APOLOGIES
I know battery life issues have been talked to death but...Here's a new perspective:
so I have been doing some experimenting with my amaze in terms of battery life and asking my friend who works at T-mobile regarding his SGS2...He says his battery life seems to be pretty crappy too, marginally better than the amaze....so, I hard reset my phone and I did not sign into google, left my phone on airplain mode, basically I did not set up anything...I turned off wifi, and data everything was truned off...I went for 10 hours with only 2 percent battery drainage...then I signed into google....and in a matter of 10 minutes I went from 98 percent to 92... Watever is eating the battery up is not the phones hardware fault or the screens fault... I turned off background data sync and it seemed to make little difference...It seems the google programs or any program that needs internet connect regardless of syncing or not will have significant effect on your battery life...between 4g and wifi I saw little difference in battery life drainage...my phone signal is completely green so I cannot blame the signal... I cannot possibly kill gmail, market, maps etc...these are programs I use constantly...lets hope with the ICS update some of these sofware issues will resolve...
google needs to start managing applications better and not leave a bunch of applications running in the forground and background...
I've heard different theories regarding task killers...some say it actually worsens battery life since programs keep wanting to restart and some say it saves battery life...can anyone elaborate on this? I have juice defender ultimate, it seems to make minute difference in battery life as well.
PLEASE MOVE THIS THREAD TO GENERAL MY APOLOGIES
Display is the biggest factor obviously and then its data transfer or anything that has to do with transmitting signal.
like every other phone the 100% lasts for a long time then after it drops it drops quickly. So your analyses is flawed since it already dropped from 100% and then you switched data on. There are apps that are constantly sending data and the sense UI kills the battery a lot too. Thats why AOSP roms are better for battery life.
Juicedefender helps
setcpu helps
managing your apps helps
changing your background to black helps
I've tried juice defender, um... I would suggest you read about instructions on flashing a custom ROM I'm on quiksense and when 2.0 comes out I heard xboarder's got some really nice improvements with the 1.4.1 version I almost doubled my battery life. My phone used to go down to 50~60 idle over night, now it's about 90~ idle over night.
Teo032 said:
Display is the biggest factor obviously and then its data transfer or anything that has to do with transmitting signal.
like every other phone the 100% lasts for a long time then after it drops it drops quickly. So your analyses is flawed since it already dropped from 100% and then you switched data on. There are apps that are constantly sending data and the sense UI kills the battery a lot too. Thats why AOSP roms are better for battery life.
Juicedefender helps
setcpu helps
managing your apps helps
changing your background to black helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Juicedefender did help but then I was missing all my google talk messages, google voice messages, google voice voicemails and a bunch of stuff...ever going through the settings and setting it up to recheck background data every 5 minutes did not work with J/D...so I stopped using it...I need my data to come through...whats the point of having a phone if you can't get notification and use the features meant to.... I used to be a strickly no bloatware simplistic out of the box google experience guy...thus my nexus one...I LOVED IT...then dropped it and not worth fixing. nexus S was dissapointing, so is the galaxy nexus...I hate all the bloatware, and all the customizations t-mobile makes to the phone...like t-mobile inscription on the phone, t-mobile startup screen...etc...yes I know I could root and change all that stuff...honestly I just don't feel like going through all that crap!!! and also void my warranty...I don't undestand howcome the iphone is never branded!!!???/ wtf....I buy a phone and it's mine why does it have to come with a logo of the company....IT'S MY PHONE. THEY SHOULD INSCRIBE MY NAME ON IT. as for the bloatware I figured out how to temproot and freeze programs... I don't think you can change the startup screen to the original HTC one with temp root...damn T-mobile...you used to be so much better...
seansk said:
Juicedefender did help but then I was missing all my google talk messages, google voice messages, google voice voicemails and a bunch of stuff...ever going through the settings and setting it up to recheck background data every 5 minutes did not work with J/D...so I stopped using it...I need my data to come through...whats the point of having a phone if you can't get notification and use the features meant to.... I used to be a strickly no bloatware simplistic out of the box google experience guy...thus my nexus one...I LOVED IT...then dropped it and not worth fixing. nexus S was dissapointing, so is the galaxy nexus...I hate all the bloatware, and all the customizations t-mobile makes to the phone...like t-mobile inscription on the phone, t-mobile startup screen...etc...yes I know I could root and change all that stuff...honestly I just don't feel like going through all that crap!!! and also void my warranty...I don't undestand howcome the iphone is never branded!!!???/ wtf....I buy a phone and it's mine why does it have to come with a logo of the company....IT'S MY PHONE. THEY SHOULD INSCRIBE MY NAME ON IT. as for the bloatware I figured out how to temproot and freeze programs... I don't think you can change the startup screen to the original HTC one with temp root...damn T-mobile...you used to be so much better...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
use JD ultimate and set the apps to work with screen off.
you can get a telus or wind model without the tmobile branding
i think you can change the bootanimation with temp root because it's just a file? I'm not exactly sure about that one though.
apple sells their iphone to ATT
as htc sells their phone tmobile
tmobile probably request a branding on it with a higher cost.
att probably reject the higher cost because they're already losing money when buying the iphone from apple (i think i remember i read it awhile ago) and make money off data plans.
Teo032 said:
use JD ultimate and set the apps to work with screen off.
you can get a telus or wind model without the tmobile branding
i think you can change the bootanimation with temp root because it's just a file? I'm not exactly sure about that one though.
apple sells their iphone to ATT
as htc sells their phone tmobile
tmobile probably request a branding on it with a higher cost.
att probably reject the higher cost because they're already losing money when buying the iphone from apple (i think i remember i read it awhile ago) and make money off data plans.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did use JD ultimate with those apps enable, NO GO, MAYBE I SHOULD RESTART AND GIVE IT ANOTHER TRY...its only when that program requests it that it can initiate the data line, otherwise if someone sends you a text i will not get it since both wifi and data line are cut off permenantly during screen off that is how it saves battery....enabling programs are good for things such as pandora etc...once they end a playlist or something it automatically turns off....this is what I understood from the explaination...i temp rooted and removed some bloatware...hopefully I can change the startup screen as well, perhaps through adb push
P.S. where do I download the original HTC boot animation and sound and what folder is it in to push into? thanks
seansk said:
I did use JD ultimate with those apps enable, NO GO, MAYBE I SHOULD RESTART AND GIVE IT ANOTHER TRY...its only when that program requests it that it can initiate the data line, otherwise if someone sends you a text i will not get it since both wifi and data line are cut off permenantly during screen off that is how it saves battery....enabling programs are good for things such as pandora etc...once they end a playlist or something it automatically turns off....this is what I understood from the explaination...i temp rooted and removed some bloatware...hopefully I can change the startup screen as well, perhaps through adb push
P.S. where do I download the original HTC boot animation and sound and what folder is it in to push into? thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for JD you want to click on the app thing twice so it goes to enable/screen off not just enabled. But yeah i noticed that sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't
not sure where the bootanimation and sounds is it at, i never played with it. You should check out the themes section, you can download the zip and browse through where it goes.... other than that there might be other threads with the instructions on where it's at.
You may want to try an AOSP based rom, (if you rooted)
I was getting 18 hours of use with 36% left, Medium usage (ie browsing, texting)
Teo032 said:
for JD you want to click on the app thing twice so it goes to enable/screen off not just enabled. But yeah i noticed that sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't
not sure where the bootanimation and sounds is it at, i never played with it. You should check out the themes section, you can download the zip and browse through where it goes.... other than that there might be other threads with the instructions on where it's at.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ya i clicked twice enable/screen off...still no go for those particular programs i tested and tested it....oh well..my batterly life is not bad at all...besides I have a car kit which charges it in the car. once i started using the thing tho, battery drains fast...its no mystery its got a big screen bigger than my old N1 which used to be amoled and this is lcd...also this uses 4g which consumes significantly greater battery...faster processor etc....its not a mystery!!! they need to come up with a new battery technology soon!!!!
So a series of questions-
I am new to sense, and I'm not sure what sense is.. if I get a senseless rom, does that just take away the stock launcher and associated widgets? Will it still have the battery section, power saver options, and other things like that in the settings that I haven't seen in other phones? More or less the question is what is the difference between sense and senseless roms?
I saw a screen bleed solution here and was wondering if I can make it automated(each boot) by putting the suggestion in a script and having it run by script manager "at boot" and "with root"?(if this does work, it may help others if anyone wants to perm get rid of softkey lights)
I'm still redoing the batterystats to see if I get better battery life, but I am seeing what people are talking about battery life wise- anyone have any tips specific to the amaze? I think juice defender has an automated 2g when screen off feature, but I'm not sure if the 4g is one of the big drains.. I ordered a spare battery, but I still wouldn't mind getting this as efficient as possible. I seem to have wakelocks down to a minimum, so I am not sure what the big drains are..
I am not sure I like the built in contacts apps and such, is there a way to pull one from a different rom or phone, or is this htc or sense specific and can't be done?
and last-- I have yet to use a spare battery, but my understanding of batteries is that the batterystats file is specific to the battery-- If I copy the battery stats file for the original and make a new one for a spare battery(and switch the file when switching batteries) will this yield better results? If so, I have considered making an app or a script that does this.. and it makes sense to me that the file is battery specific(hence why I hear of horrible life of spare batteries)..
I know this is a bunch of questions, and trust me I have searched.. but if anyone has any insights or answers I'd appreciate it! I'd like to get into development or app development, but I realized there is quite a bit about htc phones I don't know about-- though thankfully unlocking bootloader, flashing recovery and roms was pretty straight forward.. thanks to all the great info in these forums
Silentbtdeadly said:
So a series of questions-
I am new to sense, and I'm not sure what sense is.. if I get a senseless rom, does that just take away the stock launcher and associated widgets? Will it still have the battery section, power saver options, and other things like that in the settings that I haven't seen in other phones?
I saw a screen bleed solution here and was wondering if I can make it automated(each boot) by putting the suggestion in a script and having it run by script manager "at boot" and "with root"?(if this does work, it may help others if anyone wants to perm get rid of softkey lights)
I'm still redoing the batterystats to see if I get better battery life, but I am seeing what people are talking about battery life wise- anyone have any tips specific to the amaze? I think juice defender has an automated 2g when screen off feature, but I'm not sure if the 4g is one of the big drains.. I ordered a spare battery, but I still wouldn't mind getting this as efficient as possible. I seem to have wakelocks down to a minimum, so I am not sure what the big drains are..
I am not sure I like the built in contacts apps and such, is there a way to pull one from a different rom or phone, or is this htc or sense specific and can't be done?
and last-- I have yet to use a spare battery, but my understanding of batteries is that the batterystats file is specific to the battery-- If I copy the battery stats file for the original and make a new one for a spare battery(and switch the file when switching batteries) will this yield better results? If so, I have considered making an app or a script that does this.. and it makes sense to me that the file is battery specific(hence why I hear of horrible life of spare batteries)..
I know this is a bunch of questions, and trust me I have searched.. but if anyone has any insights or answers I'd appreciate it! I'd like to get into development or app development, but I realized there is quite a bit about htc phones I don't know about-- though thankfully unlocking bootloader, flashing recovery and roms was pretty straight forward.. thanks to all the great info in these forums
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try asking one at a time.
If you were a developer you would have answers to all those questions
All android phones and roms will have the basic settings sections, power, wireles, syn etc. besides that Every rom is different and has different things...The only way to know is to unlock your bootloader, flash custom recovery then root your phone, and install custom roms...there is no way to explain every single detail of every single rom...it would take a a user manual and no one has time to write a user manual everytime they make a rom. to familiarize yourself why don't you start by reading the READ ME FIRST SECTION, I spent so much time making that and no one reads it.
If you are switching batteries why would you even need battery stats any more??? the only reason people calibrate their battery is to get more battery life out of ONE BATTERY and not have to change it. Two battery is always going to give you more life obviously, no matter what the stats.
for screen bleed try using screen filter app from the market.
THERE ARE MULTIPLE THREADS ON BATTERY WHY DON'T YOU USE THE SEARCH FUNCTIONS???...and READ THE READ ME FIRST...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1358954&highlight=battery+life
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1419618&highlight=battery+life
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1321290&highlight=battery+life
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1424610&highlight=battery+life
seansk said:
Try asking one at a time.
If you were a developer you would have answers to all those questions
All android phones and roms will have the basic settings sections, power, wireles, syn etc. besides that Every rom is different and has different things...The only way to know is to unlock your bootloader, flash custom recovery then root your phone, and install custom roms...there is no way to explain every single detail of every single rom...it would take a a user manual and no one has time to write a user manual everytime they make a rom. to familiarize yourself why don't you start by reading the READ ME FIRST SECTION, I spent so much time making that and no one reads it.
If you are switching batteries why would you even need battery stats any more??? the only reason people calibrate their battery is to get more battery life out of ONE BATTERY and not have to change it. Two battery is always going to give you more life obviously, no matter what the stats.
for screen bleed try using screen filter app from the market.
THERE ARE MULTIPLE THREADS ON BATTERY WHY DON'T YOU USE THE SEARCH FUNCTIONS???...and READ THE READ ME FIRST...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1358954&highlight=battery+life
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1419618&highlight=battery+life
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1321290&highlight=battery+life
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1424610&highlight=battery+life
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sigh. I did read the posts that were just stickied, and I am not new to android at all.. but I know one of the dangers to being a new name to a new part of the forum is to have people assume you're ignorant or don't know how to search. I unlocked and flashed a new rom within 30 minutes of getting home with my phone, so trust me, I'm not ignorant.
That said-- I know all the answers to battery saving that aren't phone specific. If I am looking for anything, it would be what is specific to the amaze that causes the drain. If it is the 3g/4g then I may be able to use something like juice defender to offset that. I have every extra feature off on my phone, have all the wakelock issues solved, and that makes me think that the drain is radio/signal based.
Also, what I have observed is that people who use multiple batteries(on multiple types of phones) say they get 8-12 hours per battery- and with a correctly calibrated battery they may get 14 or more.. rather than just throw extra batteries at the problem(and have worse life for each battery), I'm trying to think of a way to get the most out of each. If I was going to go camping for a weekend(or just not be able to charge), it would be nice to get it done with just one or two spares.
As far as asking about SENSE- I'm new to htc. I don't know what part of the rom IS sense, but it sounds like you know even less than I do. If the only real difference is no bloat roms, no sense widgets, no stock launcher, cool.. if it means that some of the extras in the settings I haven't seen on non-htc phones aren't there.. that would be good to know.
I appreciate when people respond who actually have an answer, but I don't appreciate when someone doesn't have an answer(or maybe you don't understand the questions) and wants to talk down to someone for asking.. I'll just assume you are used to talking to noobs who may frustrate you.
Silentbtdeadly said:
So a series of questions-
I am new to sense, and I'm not sure what sense is.. if I get a senseless rom, does that just take away the stock launcher and associated widgets? Will it still have the battery section, power saver options, and other things like that in the settings that I haven't seen in other phones? More or less the question is what is the difference between sense and senseless roms?
I saw a screen bleed solution here and was wondering if I can make it automated(each boot) by putting the suggestion in a script and having it run by script manager "at boot" and "with root"?(if this does work, it may help others if anyone wants to perm get rid of softkey lights)
I'm still redoing the batterystats to see if I get better battery life, but I am seeing what people are talking about battery life wise- anyone have any tips specific to the amaze? I think juice defender has an automated 2g when screen off feature, but I'm not sure if the 4g is one of the big drains.. I ordered a spare battery, but I still wouldn't mind getting this as efficient as possible. I seem to have wakelocks down to a minimum, so I am not sure what the big drains are..
I am not sure I like the built in contacts apps and such, is there a way to pull one from a different rom or phone, or is this htc or sense specific and can't be done?
and last-- I have yet to use a spare battery, but my understanding of batteries is that the batterystats file is specific to the battery-- If I copy the battery stats file for the original and make a new one for a spare battery(and switch the file when switching batteries) will this yield better results? If so, I have considered making an app or a script that does this.. and it makes sense to me that the file is battery specific(hence why I hear of horrible life of spare batteries)..
I know this is a bunch of questions, and trust me I have searched.. but if anyone has any insights or answers I'd appreciate it! I'd like to get into development or app development, but I realized there is quite a bit about htc phones I don't know about-- though thankfully unlocking bootloader, flashing recovery and roms was pretty straight forward.. thanks to all the great info in these forums
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Sense:
Just a user interface customed by HTC. It features are: Peoples widget (a contact widget with more features), Friend Stream widget (updating your social network contacts' status - like Pure Messenger) Weather with HTC's signature animations - you can use Beautiful Widget to replaced this) Flip Clock (Again, HTC signature and popular - beautiful widget and some other apps copied this from Sense due to its popularity). Anyway, one can always find an alternative widget to replaces every single Sense's widgets if he/she chose to do so.
I myself dont like many part of Sense (contact and dial app included) yet still using QuikSense and now BulletProof because I like the Beat Audio hack and the Sense lock screen.
I used ADW launcher and frozen most of Sense related apps (same thing as un-installing them) yet the power saver option still available to me, so, basically I am running a Sense Rom without Sense (in a way) and if you are planning to use a Senseless rom and can not find the power saving option that you like, you can always install Sense base rom with alternate 3rd party apps as I do to avoid the annoying of staring at something you don't like .
2. Screen bleed:
I forgot I have that problem - it really doesn't bother me that much though - so no command from me on this matter
3. Battery status:
My battery status/reading from Battery Widget and Current widget seems to gave me wrong reading and I guess it's due to the act of using two different batteries so I tended to agreed with you on this matter. Your idea seem like a good idea and it maybe helpful (Battery Widget Pro also giving user the option to do something similar too - differrent batteries).
As we all already known, battery hog came from (1) Rogue apps (2) User setting/syncing) (3) Signal/radio scanning and (4) Displaying and my own experiment showed me that if I happened to be in a weak 4G signal coverage areas then my battery will drained fast. We can tracked down rogue app and setting a correct syncing to save battery but we can not avoid using the display so the last option (to me) to save battery is turn-on wi-fi or switching to a 2/3G if you are in a weak 4G signal area
---------- Post added at 02:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:11 AM ----------
seansk said:
Try asking one at a time.
If you were a developer you would have answers to all those questions
All android phones and roms will have the basic settings sections, power, wireles, syn etc. besides that Every rom is different and has different things...The only way to know is to unlock your bootloader, flash custom recovery then root your phone, and install custom roms...there is no way to explain every single detail of every single rom...it would take a a user manual and no one has time to write a user manual everytime they make a rom. to familiarize yourself why don't you start by reading the READ ME FIRST SECTION, I spent so much time making that and no one reads it.
If you are switching batteries why would you even need battery stats any more??? the only reason people calibrate their battery is to get more battery life out of ONE BATTERY and not have to change it. Two battery is always going to give you more life obviously, no matter what the stats.
for screen bleed try using screen filter app from the market.
THERE ARE MULTIPLE THREADS ON BATTERY WHY DON'T YOU USE THE SEARCH FUNCTIONS???...and READ THE READ ME FIRST...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1358954&highlight=battery+life
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1419618&highlight=battery+life
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1321290&highlight=battery+life
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1424610&highlight=battery+life
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am highly suggesting you to change your language and/or the way you wrote/communicates with other.
On the internet and in any forum, writing in capital means you are yelling at peoples and that considering rude.
Writing a guide and had it stickied by a moderator doesn't automatically give you the right to yell at peoples when they asked for helps and/or discussing/opening topics.
Didn't Binary told you to change your languages/caps. in your writing BEFORE he approved and stickied your post?
Well comare the sgs ii and the amaze, the sgs ii has much better battery life because TW isnt as bulky and doesnt use as much RAM as Sense. i prefer Sense because it looks so much better, more UI friendly, etc. and more. With a stock ROM it would be much better on battery. I say this from experiance, ive owned HTC phoens since the G1 and there is a difference in batterylife and speed. if you notice the sgs ii is much faster as well when benchmarking and has the same internals (CPU/RAM/GPU). If you want a good looking interface with good HTC integrated apps then keep sense, if you need battery life then id get a senseless ROM because you are using less RAM and resources, etc = better battery life.
Personally i love Sense and i prefer it even if it makes battery life worse.
antiquezip said:
1. Sense:
Just a user interface customed by HTC. It features are: Peoples widget (a contact widget with more features), Friend Stream widget (updating your social network contacts' status - like Pure Messenger) Weather with HTC's signature animations - you can use Beautiful Widget to replaced this) Flip Clock (Again, HTC signature and popular - beautiful widget and some other apps copied this from Sense due to its popularity). Anyway, one can always find an alternative widget to replaces every single Sense's widgets if he/she chose to do so.
I myself dont like many part of Sense (contact and dial app included) yet still using QuikSense and now BulletProof because I like the Beat Audio hack and the Sense lock screen.
I used ADW launcher and frozen most of Sense related apps (same thing as un-installing them) yet the power saver option still available to me, so, basically I am running a Sense Rom without Sense (in a way) and if you are planning to use a Senseless rom and can not find the power saving option that you like, you can always install Sense base rom with alternate 3rd party apps as I do to avoid the annoying of staring at something you don't like .
2. Screen bleed:
I forgot I have that problem - it really doesn't bother me that much though - so no command from me on this matter
3. Battery status:
My battery status/reading from Battery Widget and Current widget seems to gave me wrong reading and I guess it's due to the act of using two different batteries so I tended to agreed with you on this matter. Your idea seem like a good idea and it maybe helpful (Battery Widget Pro also giving user the option to do something similar too - differrent batteries).
As we all already known, battery hog came from (1) Rogue apps (2) User setting/syncing) (3) Signal/radio scanning and (4) Displaying and my own experiment showed me that if I happened to be in a weak 4G signal coverage areas then my battery will drained fast. We can tracked down rogue app and setting a correct syncing to save battery but we can not avoid using the display so the last option (to me) to save battery is turn-on wi-fi or switching to a 2/3G if you are in a weak 4G signal area
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the feedback, I've owned beautiful widgets for a while now, so I was using those with golauncher ex and am pretty happy. If those are the main things that are sense, I can live without
Louder ringing in pocket, some of the low power functions and a few other things seemed pretty cool, so I was just trying to figure out if those would be lost on the senseless roms.. and I also don't like the stock dialer and contacts.
I'm gonna have to check out battery widget pro, what I was suggesting was an app idea, if someone else has already done it.. well definitely good to know.
The screenbleed isn't a big deal to me, I was using screen filter by last night.. but I also have no desire to have the softkeys backlit, I'm pretty sure I'll remember which is which
stratax said:
Well comare the sgs ii and the amaze, the sgs ii has much better battery life because TW isnt as bulky and doesnt use as much RAM as Sense. i prefer Sense because it looks so much better, more UI friendly, etc. and more. With a stock ROM it would be much better on battery. I say this from experiance, ive owned HTC phoens since the G1 and there is a difference in batterylife and speed. if you notice the sgs ii is much faster as well when benchmarking and has the same internals (CPU/RAM/GPU). If you want a good looking interface with good HTC integrated apps then keep sense, if you need battery life then id get a senseless ROM because you are using less RAM and resources, etc = better battery life.
Personally i love Sense and i prefer it even if it makes battery life worse.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been running bulletproof for the last 2 days, I've never had a htc before, so figured I would try out sense first. Probably going to try senseless tomorrow. Sucks you have to wait a few days eh stratax? When are you getting yours in?
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Silentbtdeadly said:
I've been running bulletproof for the last 2 days, I've never had a htc before, so figured I would try out sense first. Probably going to try senseless tomorrow. Sucks you have to wait a few days eh stratax? When are you getting yours in?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I cant stand stock for some reason, i just get bored and i hate having to use 3rd party apps. its nice to have the HTC integrated ones, since they work great. Yeah it does suck, but i am happy to be getting the Amaze
Silentbtdeadly said:
So a series of questions-
I am new to sense, and I'm not sure what sense is.. if I get a senseless rom, does that just take away the stock launcher and associated widgets? Will it still have the battery section, power saver options, and other things like that in the settings that I haven't seen in other phones? More or less the question is what is the difference between sense and senseless roms?
I saw a screen bleed solution here and was wondering if I can make it automated(each boot) by putting the suggestion in a script and having it run by script manager "at boot" and "with root"?(if this does work, it may help others if anyone wants to perm get rid of softkey lights)
I'm still redoing the batterystats to see if I get better battery life, but I am seeing what people are talking about battery life wise- anyone have any tips specific to the amaze? I think juice defender has an automated 2g when screen off feature, but I'm not sure if the 4g is one of the big drains.. I ordered a spare battery, but I still wouldn't mind getting this as efficient as possible. I seem to have wakelocks down to a minimum, so I am not sure what the big drains are..
I am not sure I like the built in contacts apps and such, is there a way to pull one from a different rom or phone, or is this htc or sense specific and can't be done?
and last-- I have yet to use a spare battery, but my understanding of batteries is that the batterystats file is specific to the battery-- If I copy the battery stats file for the original and make a new one for a spare battery(and switch the file when switching batteries) will this yield better results? If so, I have considered making an app or a script that does this.. and it makes sense to me that the file is battery specific(hence why I hear of horrible life of spare batteries)..
I know this is a bunch of questions, and trust me I have searched.. but if anyone has any insights or answers I'd appreciate it! I'd like to get into development or app development, but I realized there is quite a bit about htc phones I don't know about-- though thankfully unlocking bootloader, flashing recovery and roms was pretty straight forward.. thanks to all the great info in these forums
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Click to collapse
I apologize for comming off angry. Something pissed me off today and got 3 hours of sleep.
Honestly I havn't flashed all the roms. Here's how could explain this to you better. AOSP is the pure google version of android...usually google flaship phones have these such as the nexus one, the nexus S series, and galaxy nexus. I believe the G2X also has a pure google version of android.
Each company such as samsung or HTC customizes these roms to their liking and puts it on their phone...sometimes they add features, widegers, eye candy, extra settings. HTC calls their User interface (UI) that they use Sense, samsung calls theirs touchwiz and so on.
Senseless rom takes some parts of sense out of sense and leaves some parts in I believe, this is what I remember from reading that thread. In the thread it usually tells you the major things that have been taken out, and things that have been put in
for you screen bleed solution the only way I have seen is to turn down or off the button lights using "screen filter" from the market.
4G is one of the biggest drains on the newer phones. I have juice defender Ultimate but stopped using it. under normal stock settings in juice defender when you turn off the screen it turns off both wifi and wireless data...so you could only basically get phone calls, sms, and mms. Things such as Gmail push, facebook updates, google voice updates etc will not be allowed while phone is off...is why I stopped using it. You could change settings to turn data on during screen off or, turn wifi on, etc. but that would defeat the purpose of the program, turning off wifi and data network is the biggest things that let juice defender save battery.
Biggest drains again are, 4g data, wifi, and screen. You can tweak these under the wireless and network settings.
Technically you could remove the contact and dialer app, titanium backup will let you do this. But I warn you against doing this I believe since parts of it are integrated into the rom. freezing apps is a much better idea. You could download dialers from the market currently I use excontacts with ICS them on it. You could other dialers. But I believe that actual contact editing and contacts cannot be completely removed from sense, you would have to flash a different rom to get the AOSP dialer and contacts, or other ones.
My understanding of lithium ion batteries is that they have NO Memory unlike older batteries, It is pointless to charge the battery for 12 hours the first time...there is no trickle charge on lithium ions. In my own honest opinion/experience battery statistics make no difference in battery life, but others can correct me if I am wrong, this is where people say calibration makes a difference, I really don't know. It's also very hard to do a controlled test of a battery, since phone uses different things at different times, network connections, wifi. all that stuff.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_increase_the_runtime_of_your_wireless_device
P.S. updating to the newest update from HTC on my phone solved my overheat and battery issues.
P.S.S switching to other launchers will take away you ability to use sense widgets and customizations, since they are part of the sense launcher.
seansk said:
I apologize for comming off angry. Something pissed me off today and got 3 hours of sleep.
Honestly I havn't flashed all the roms. Here's how could explain this to you better. AOSP is the pure google version of android...usually google flaship phones have these such as the nexus one, the nexus S series, and galaxy nexus. I believe the G2X also has a pure google version of android.
Each company such as samsung or HTC customizes these roms to their liking and puts it on their phone...sometimes they add features, widegers, eye candy, extra settings. HTC calls their User interface (UI) that they use Sense, samsung calls theirs touchwiz and so on.
Senseless rom takes some parts of sense out of sense and leaves some parts in I believe, this is what I remember from reading that thread. In the thread it usually tells you the major things that have been taken out, and things that have been put in
for you screen bleed solution the only way I have seen is to turn down or off the button lights using "screen filter" from the market.
4G is one of the biggest drains on the newer phones. I have juice defender Ultimate but stopped using it. under normal stock settings in juice defender when you turn off the screen it turns off both wifi and wireless data...so you could only basically get phone calls, sms, and mms. Things such as Gmail push, facebook updates, google voice updates etc will not be allowed while phone is off...is why I stopped using it. You could change settings to turn data on during screen off or, turn wifi on, etc. but that would defeat the purpose of the program, turning off wifi and data network is the biggest things that let juice defender save battery.
Biggest drains again are, 4g data, wifi, and screen. You can tweak these under the wireless and network settings.
Technically you could remove the contact and dialer app, titanium backup will let you do this. But I warn you against doing this I believe since parts of it are integrated into the rom. freezing apps is a much better idea. You could download dialers from the market currently I use excontacts with ICS them on it. You could other dialers. But I believe that actual contact editing and contacts cannot be completely removed from sense, you would have to flash a different rom to get the AOSP dialer and contacts, or other ones.
My understanding of lithium ion batteries is that they have NO Memory unlike older batteries, It is pointless to charge the battery for 12 hours the first time...there is no trickle charge on lithium ions. In my own honest opinion/experience battery statistics make no difference in battery life, but others can correct me if I am wrong, this is where people say calibration makes a difference, I really don't know. It's also very hard to do a controlled test of a battery, since phone uses different things at different times, network connections, wifi. all that stuff.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_increase_the_runtime_of_your_wireless_device
P.S. updating to the newest update from HTC on my phone solved my overheat and battery issues.
P.S.S switching to other launchers will take away you ability to use sense widgets and customizations, since they are part of the sense launcher.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I figured you may be having a bad day, we are all entitled to that. I'm sick, long day in classes(college), and sick and tired of being sick and tired..
I know a little more than I feel like your reply is aiming for, sense goes all the way to how you copy and paste.. So I was asking more about what is considered "senseless".
And random fact about android and the batterystats file.. The battery is stand alone, but the os decides what to report as the current charge and when to stop charging based on that file. I can upload a file as an example if needed. To the best of my understanding, using. Different batteries changes the file that tells the os when to stop charging, and what percentage to report at what maH. As you continue to use different batteries that file becomes less accurate and will stop charging sooner, and will drop faster as it is confused at what maH to report what %. If you ever see it change by more than 1% at a time, your battery stats file is inaccurate.
But that is just my understanding. I've researched it as much as I can, but.. It isn't an easy thing to get a definitive answer about.
Here is a battery history file, can't remember what makes it, but it is very much like what the battery stats file refers to. If you open that battery stats file in a text editor, you will see it refers to many things.. and if you delete that file you will see big changes in how your battery works.. That is the simplest proof that is matters
Sent from my HTC Amaze 4G using XDA App
Have you read my thread it is called
FAQ for the HTC Amaze 4G. Read Frequently Asked Questions before you post a question!
hasoon2000 said:
Have you read my thread it is called
FAQ for the HTC Amaze 4G. Read Frequently Asked Questions before you post a question!
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Click to collapse
Lol, yes, I read your post.. feel free to throw some of the answers you would give me into it, but trust me.. it leaves more questions I imagine would be asked frequently. I am asking for something more detailed than "how do I get better battery life"..
Silentbtdeadly said:
Lol, yes, I read your post.. feel free to throw some of the answers you would give me into it, but trust me.. it leaves more questions I imagine would be asked frequently. I am asking for something more detailed than "how do I get better battery life"..
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you know I think It's the fact that a few of us like hasson, binary xboarder, just get the same things over and over and over and over and over and over. We just get in the mode of linking to those stickies. It can get tiresome, I don't know how binary does it. I've only been doing it for about a week now, It gets frustrating at times, we don't mean to lash out, but many people, i'm not saying you, but many others just come in without looking at anything and just ask a question, same questions over and over, they're just too lazy to look around or want a quick fix. or they pm us I need to root my phone can you help me!! It is infuriating when you spend time making pages to help and get those PM's.
seansk said:
you know I think It's the fact that a few of us like hasson, binary xboarder, just get the same things over and over and over and over and over and over. We just get in the mode of linking to those stickies. It can get tiresome, I don't know how binary does it. I've only been doing it for about a week now, It gets frustrating at times, we don't mean to lash out, but many people, i'm not saying you, but many others just come in without looking at anything and just ask a question, same questions over and over, they're just too lazy to look around or want a quick fix. or they pm us I need to root my phone can you help me!! It is infuriating when you spend time making pages to help and get those PM's.
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Click to collapse
we? us? who PMs you lol?
Felinos11 said:
we? us? who PMs you lol?
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I pitched in to help since binary was getting overwhelmed with PM's so I posted in his how to root thread that people can contact me if they have problems. I'm just trying to help get the community a little bigger, I practice dentistry part time dentist, no full time for me cause economy is bad and oversaturated with them, and chronic medical illness
I don't claim to know not nearly as close to binary, xboarder and some others...but atleast I can help some of the noobs. I love and have always loved technology
seansk said:
I pitched in to help since binary was getting overwhelmed with PM's so I posted in his how to root thread that people can contact me if they have problems. I'm just trying to help get the community a little bigger, I practice dentistry part time dentist, no full time for me cause economy is bad and oversaturated with them, and chronic medical illness
I don't claim to know not nearly as close to binary, xboarder and some others...but atleast I can help some of the noobs. I love and have always loved technology
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Click to collapse
lol cool I was just wondering if there was some other dev page for the amaze and I didn't know cuz as far as ive noticed here there is only a xboarder and a binary keeping the dev stuff alive
I have an old Nexus One doing nothing and was thinking of using it as an mp3 player.
How much of the android os can I remove to basically just have it functioning as an Android mp3 player?
Removing the phone functions and other apps should give me extra battery right?
Lol just buy a mp3 player.
Sent from teh epic pony using XDA Premium
Byrono said:
Lol just buy a mp3 player.
Sent from teh epic pony using XDA Premium
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And where will the fun in that be?
Stripping down the system can help you learn about how it works, and skills and experience you'll gain may serve you, long after the device has been recycled.
This is why he has posted the question in a developer forum, and not a fan one.
On topic
Seems like a neat idea, but as far as removing the phone functionality to gain extra battery? Why not just use Airplane mode? You'd never know when you might need just a phone.
Other than that, I'm sure that you can remove most of it (the apk's that is), and i suppose you could make a script to startup Music.apk upon boot.
I know that the emulator is slow on most normal PCs, but I'd advise trying what you want on the emulator first, just in case. You can even make a list of what you are removing as you go, so you'll know what can break the system, and what isn't going to have any effect.
Thanks kurdo_kolene didn't think about airplane mode!
Think I'm going to have to play around with this the weekend to see what can go and what has to stay!
My nexus one has a broken power button so swapping out the sim cards is not possible unless I have a charger to power it back up. So I had no plans of putting a sim card in it but since airplane mode should shut all the radios off it should be fine to leave the basic phone functions as it is.
Just flashed [ROM][AOSP][2.3.7] OxygeN1mod FINALE! [2011.12.10] which already is pretty barebone
But I went about removing apps until it wouldn't boot... But it still boots
59mb RAM used / 315mb free on boot.
Launcher has just 4EXT Recovery, Browser, Downloads, Market, PowerAMP, Root Explorer, Settings and Superuser!
Removed all the phone, contacts, sms/mms, calendar, email the lot and all is fine.. Expect when I removed the Phone.apk and had to reboot but no problems since.. Will have to fully charge the battery and see how long it will play music constantly now!
I would guess that a big part of those 59 MB is allocated to the dalvik runtime. I've used DSL on an old PC and after boot it used 25-35 MB RAM.
Pretty impressive nontheless.
If mplayer made a native version for arm devices, that could be used without a launcher, that would be even better.
You might want to install Android Terminal, in case you need to reboot and you're away from the PC.
Thread moved to Q&A due to it being a question. Would advise you to read forum rules and post in correct section.
Failure to comply with forum rules will result in an infraction and/or ban depending on severity of rule break.
Yer sorry mods I see the other forum after i posted but couldn't find a way to move it myself...
Anyway I was planning to test the standby time but I think I might just skip that now...
94% after 1d 13h 49m
Phone idle - 95%
Display - 5%
So I'm going to drain the battery then do a full charge and leave it playing music till it dies and see how long I can get of continues music!
Also the phone signal bar in the battery stats is a full yellow bar... What does that mean?
The others are small little blue bars next to Awake and Screen on...
That's pretty good.
I'd wager that the longer the display is off, the better battery life you're gonna get.
I have personally seen ho the huge display on my Streak 5 drains the battery without doing anyting even marginally intensive.
stewart1988 said:
I have an old Nexus One doing nothing and was thinking of using it as an mp3 player.
How much of the android os can I remove to basically just have it functioning as an Android mp3 player?
Removing the phone functions and other apps should give me extra battery right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am also looking for the same, i also need camera, so my device ll be an mp3 player + camera
could please upload the rom you customized?
pretty much based on size and its waterproof feature. I do a lot of hunting, fishing and snowmobiling. I primarily plan to use this device for GPS and mapping and wondering if I can rely on it in favor of my Garmin Dakota 20. There's not much on the web that addresses its capabilities in this specific manner. Will I be disappointed? Are there specific ROMS available that might improve my experience in using the device in this manner? I'd obviously be interested in optimal battery life. I did order a couple of spare 1800mAh batteries and standalone charger in hopes of getting me through a solid day on the trail.
HemRoyd said:
pretty much based on size and its waterproof feature. I do a lot of hunting, fishing and snowmobiling. I primarily plan to use this device for GPS and mapping and wondering if I can rely on it in favor of my Garmin Dakota 20. There's not much on the web that addresses its capabilities in this specific manner. Will I be disappointed? Are there specific ROMS available that might improve my experience in using the device in this manner? I'd obviously be interested in optimal battery life. I did order a couple of spare 1800mAh batteries and standalone charger in hopes of getting me through a solid day on the trail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are some roms, who improve battery life, don't know about gps. But if you install another rom, you will void your warranty and you won't be able to flash the specific original rom for your region, cause for most devices there's only the generic rom to flash (shouldn't be a problem if you have to take it to service, just that you know)...
If you want to use the active instead of your garmin, you will have to find a very good navigation app, because as I think, you need something for area where are no streets, too. And most navigation apps haven't got this feature...
I have an active myself. If you want to keep it down to it's basic functions (which is basically already set as an outdoors device) i would suggest that you don't upgrade to ics and keep the original gingerbread software which has far less battery draining than any ics based rom. About the GPS, i used it severalk times for travbelling and never for tracking so don't know how it works in deep thick woods, but always had speedy lock on and precise navigation. Unlike above user stated most navigation (one with offline maps would probably be best) apps are for trekking and offraod activities, what you can do is modify your gps.conf file to make it specific to your region or area so satellite lock time will be much improved. Just search the forum for gps speed fixes, there's also a patch for agps to help increase satellite locking time.
I own this phone and wanted to do the same as you.
All setups i tried were not stable. sometimes the external power cable got disconnected, sometimes just the app closed.
after months of testing, i reverted to gamin products as they offer a much more rugged and robust hardware. I never managed to track > 20 hours on my active-phone.
Sent from my Pro using xda premium
Thanks for all of your input folks.
I did receive the phone on Friday and had a chance to check it out over the weekend. My first impression is that it has a comfortable size and mass to it and I do not mind the screen size at all. It seems quite speedy and the (Gingerbread) OS operates like butter. I did have difficulty getting the GPS function to lock at first. After prolonged attempts, it wasn't until I installed an app called GPS Test did it finally lock - not quite sure what the difference was, perhaps AGPS may have been responsible. Since then however, I have been attempting to maintain GPS-only locating as I am certain that data would not be available in the majority of my usage areas. I looked at most of the GPS Mapping/Tracking apps and settled on the paid version of AlpineQuest - excellent app. I got my waypoints from my Garmin loaded onto my SD card and was quickly navigating the trails in the woods behind my house. Great stuff!
I got just over 8hrs of solid use out of the first charge on the stock battery, so the phone should keep up with a full day on the trails. I have also ordered a couple of spare batteries and standalone charger for backup. Since this first day of use, I have been using the GPS Test app exclusively to verify my satellite lock prior to using AlpineQuest. I did notice that after prolonged non-usage or following a charge cycle I did have some difficulty locking on to the satellites, however each time it was solved with a phone reboot - after which the GPS Test app would lock on within seconds (even inside the house). Each time I was in airplane mode with WiFi off. I will have to monitor the satellite locking for consistency before I am all in with this device but so far I am quite please with its (stock) performance.
the phone & the user may be active, but the battery is certainly not. the display is not that bright under bright sunlight situations :X
hi, i have the active as well and so far i am pretty satisfied.. not VERY satisfied due to Battery life.. but without that issue, I am satisfied...
I have dropped this baby 4 times already on concrete (2 waist level 2 chest level) and the phone just bounced without any cracked screen (it does have some dents on the silver lining around the screen though), but i can guarantee that this phone is shock proof because on those 4 times, the phone did not even turn-off or restart or even battery breaking out from its case...
I do not do trails but so far, the NavFree app has been very good to me with my driving direction needs... easy locking with GPS and pretty good directions...
Try also searching for build.prop tweaks in the development area of this forum because i think it can help in the phone's performance and a little bit of battery life.. i can do intermittent non-heavy image/flash website surfing and the battery could last more than 8 hours and if I just have my phone on stand by (just waiting for messages and calls and reply to them) battery could last more than 24 hours...
I have to ask you though, were those 1800 batteries better than the 1200 ? I was also thinking of buying spares...
rullean said:
I have to ask you though, were those 1800 batteries better than the 1200 ? I was also thinking of buying spares...
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I haven't got them yet, but these are the one's I ordered.
I'm on the .62 build so looks like I have to flash an earlier firmware just to get root. I'd really like to get rid of some of this extra crap and get link2sd going. If you are rooted, what firmware are you running? I just hope the GPS performs just as well on an earlier build.
HemRoyd said:
I haven't got them yet, but these are the one's I ordered.
I'm on the .62 build so looks like I have to flash an earlier firmware just to get root. I'd really like to get rid of some of this extra crap and get link2sd going. If you are rooted, what firmware are you running? I just hope the GPS performs just as well on an earlier build.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you have to tell me if you notice some increase in battery life with those 1800's...
regarding rooting, i followed this procedure with no problem: http://talk.sonymobile.com/message/241059
just follow it step by step.. also, if you are not aware, you have to flash the kernel using the flashtool before you can flash the rom through CWM.... in anyway, you should not be afraid of bricking your phone because I was able to always restore my phone through that link's procedure.. however, pls do not take my word on it because what works for me might not work for you even if we have the same phone... we still might have a different stock.. so rooting your phone is always at your own risk (my disclaimer, hehehe)...
regarding rom, i find the free experia rom's quite good... after initial loading of the rom, i got more than 400mb free internal space.. so they did remove a lot of bloated apps that you dont really use...
just as side note: i installed cm10 fxp138 on my active and the battery lasts for 36hours and more. i really like 4.1 jb.
Update
OK, so I am rooted and remain locked. I ended up flashing stock 4.0.2.A.0.42 and then this ROM:
ROM][GB][ALL MDPI] HASA v5 [2.3.7][27/9/12]
My prayers have been answered! This ROM is fast and lean! Thanks very much to sandy7 for his work on this! I followed his instructions exactly as in his first post, however did not need to install the revised camera lib as I had no issues with the camera. I've had absolutely zero issues and love the speed.
Now for the battery life. I finally got the spare batteries I mentioned in the previous post (shipped from China). My initial observation is that these batteries smoke the stock one by a large margin. I still need to spend a little more time on this ROM to be certain. As mentioned before, my goal is to replace my standalone GPS unit with this phone. I am not using phone or data, so I am in airplane mode all the time. I am using wifi a bit. With the stock battery I got about 1 day and 12 hours of standby and light use on wifi and gps with 10% remaining. On the replacement battery I got 3 days and 16 hours with 35% remaining before I decided to try the stock battery again. The stock battery began to drain as soon as I put it in and was down to 85% within the first hour. I don't know, perhaps these stock batteries are junk? I am open to suggestions on how to properly do a test and comparison.
omg.. really? so those china batteries work for you? damn.. I want those.. i will buy those..
First... Im new to this site and somewhat new to andriod
I recently purchased note 3 and i love what it can do...additionally, I purchased the gear 2 to match the phone. The problem is, I haven't switch phones yet due to some issues that im not liking.. Coming from an iphone 5s, I like the idea of having that freedom and not being tied down to apples controlling ways however, there may be some rhyme and reason to it?? Anyway, I bought the note 3 in hopes that I can break out of the iphone once and for all... but heres what im facing...
I have 3 email accounts configured on the device
Every time i click on message or I get an email notification, I click on it, it starts loading... the problem is, just to display the inbox takes about 30 seconds to load...once It loads the inbox, I can open the mail with no problem but I noticed a lag.. every time i i switch mail boxes
Battery life sucks!! brand new phone and the battery sucks and I can't figure out why!
The iphone 5s that I have, is really good on battery and i use it check emails on regular...especially my work emails (Exchange)...sometimes go on line check a few things and the phone can last me just about the whole work day without charging!!
I was hoping can do the same on the note 3 but unfortunately, thats not the case.. I've done a test and carried my both phones all day did just about the same tasks and i noticed a significant drop in battery, while the iphone does it effortlessly!
Now, im not hear to bad mouth the note 3... I really want to switch but these things are preventing me from activating the phone...
Everyone that I speak to that has the phone, are all experiencing long battery life and no issues like mine... so im turning to you guys to help me...
My last android phone was the EVO and i had to sell it because the battery life was soo bad, I was carrying two batteries and an extra charger just to prevent it from completely draining.. I had others suggest to me to turn off this and that...eventually my phones was as useless a flip phone. All that power that needs to be constantly charging... I cant have that.
I've even rooted the phone
SM-N900P
Andriod Version 4.4.2
HELP!!!
rmontero01 said:
First... Im new to this site and somewhat new to andriod
I recently purchased note 3 and i love what it can do...additionally, I purchased the gear 2 to match the phone. The problem is, I haven't switch phones yet due to some issues that im not liking.. Coming from an iphone 5s, I like the idea of having that freedom and not being tied down to apples controlling ways however, there may be some rhyme and reason to it?? Anyway, I bought the note 3 in hopes that I can break out of the iphone once and for all... but heres what im facing...
I have 3 email accounts configured on the device
Every time i click on message or I get an email notification, I click on it, it starts loading... the problem is, just to display the inbox takes about 30 seconds to load...once It loads the inbox, I can open the mail with no problem but I noticed a lag.. every time i i switch mail boxes
Battery life sucks!! brand new phone and the battery sucks and I can't figure out why!
The iphone 5s that I have, is really good on battery and i use it check emails on regular...especially my work emails (Exchange)...sometimes go on line check a few things and the phone can last me just about the whole work day without charging!!
I was hoping can do the same on the note 3 but unfortunately, thats not the case.. I've done a test and carried my both phones all day did just about the same tasks and i noticed a significant drop in battery, while the iphone does it effortlessly!
Now, im not hear to bad mouth the note 3... I really want to switch but these things are preventing me from activating the phone...
Everyone that I speak to that has the phone, are all experiencing long battery life and no issues like mine... so im turning to you guys to help me...
My last android phone was the EVO and i had to sell it because the battery life was soo bad, I was carrying two batteries and an extra charger just to prevent it from completely draining.. I had others suggest to me to turn off this and that...eventually my phones was as useless a flip phone. All that power that needs to be constantly charging... I cant have that.
I've even rooted the phone
SM-N900P
Andriod Version 4.4.2
HELP!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Welcome back to the wonderful world of Android. My name is Topher and for the next 5 minutes or so, I'll be your guide to getting the most out of the Note 3. Sometimes, in order to help you, I'll need more information, so I'll ask questions. Since I end up writing very long responses, I'll try to bold all of my questions so they stand out more easily... I'm not internet-yelling at you in those instances.
Ok, introductions are now out of the way, let's try to get your phone working as you want it. I've grouped your questions/concerns into various groups so that we can address each one individually.
E-mail lag
You mentioned that you have a few different accounts, what e-mail services are you using? I ask because if all of the accounts are gmail, you can use the gmail app, which I find deals with the transitions a bit better than the original e-mail app that Samsung has.
If you have various services (yahoo, gmail, outlook, etc), a good option is CloudMagic. There are good reviews on the app and have gotten good reviews from blogs.
Another option (although probably less appealing) is using a distinct e-mail app for each service. Yahoo has an app, so does Outlook.
Battery Life
This is a big black box, since it's tough to say exactly what's causing it. I can typically get between 15-18 hours of battery life before I have to charge it up (I typically will charge when it drops below 30%). I've listed the various ways that I've seen that can help (or hurt) battery life below.
Signal Strength
For me, this is the number-one cause of battery drain. If I'm in an area with solid 4G signal, my battery life is great. It's a lot worse when I'm in areas where my phone is constantly switching between 4G and 3G (thanks a lot, Sprint!). The main cause is that, when searching, the phone boosts power to the radios and they just end up using more juice.
Also, having Bluetooth, GPS, and Wifi on (but not connected to anything) all the time will increase battery usage. These radios are regularly searching, so turning them off can help out.
One thing about Wifi, though... Being consistently connected to Wifi will significantly increase battery life, since you have a solid data connection and the phone doesn't need to search 4G and 3G bands as regularly in order to have service.
Screen Brightness
TThis is one item that is typically overlooked in terms of battery life. With high phone usage (games, internet, answering XDA questions), I've seen my battery drain 15% in under an hour when using high brightness. If I lower the brightness to half or lower, the battery drain is as low as 5% per hour.
Leaving the brightness on Auto is ok, but I've found that adjusting it myself is easier (I have a slide bar in the notification panel) and more effective in terms of battery life (you're not using an additional sensor to read the ambient light levels).
Rogue Apps
One cause of battery drain is wakelocks. Basically, when you're not using your phone, it's supposed to go to into "sleep mode," where the CPU and radios aren't drawing much power. A phone call, e-mail sync, or other things cause a wakelock and basically wake the phone up.
Rouge Apps are ones that cause a lot of wakelocks that eat up a lot of battery life. Once way to counter-act them is to find out which ones they are. Nowadays on Android, the battery info screen (Settings -> General -> Battery) gives good, detailed information on battery usage.
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From this screen, obviously the fact that I had my screen on all the time is what caused the battery drain. I had it on full brightness, which didn't help. Also, during that time, I was checking out the various cat memes on Reddit, so that was also active and using up CPU strength and battery (but not nearly as much as the screen).
If you click on the graph, you get this screen:
This one shows the various system resources that were using up battery life (not associating them with apps). As you can see, there were times where I was driving through an area with little-to-no cell service (again, thanks Sprint). In those times, it's likely that my phone was using up more battery. But the biggest drain (when the graph really dips down) is when I have the screen on and when the phone is awake (obviously, those cat photos aren't going to view themselves!). If you see in your graph that there's a lot of battery drain when the screen is off, you might have a Rouge App causing a lot of wakelocks.
If you have a lot of wakelocks, you can find out which apps are causing them using an app like Better Battery Stats. This was developed mostly when the Android Battery screen gave little-to-no information, so you might not get as much additional info as you'd like, but it's a good app to keep in your back pocket when investigating wakelocks.
One way to quarantine rogue apps is to use Greenify (XDA link). It'll basically put those apps in a hibernation mode, which prevents them from waking the phone. It may break some functionality of the rogue app which rely on waking up the phone, but when the app is actively running (i.e. open on the screen), greenify doesn't touch it.
Hopefully these suggestions will get you started on your way to great battery life. There's one more thing I'd like to address, and that is ROMs.
Custom ROMs
You didn't explicitly state that you wanted to try out custom ROMs to solve your issues, but I'd be remiss if I didn't address them. In case you don't know what a custom ROM is, it's basically just a custom version of the phone OS which has been developed.
There are many great developers out here that create custom ROMs. Some focus on creating custom themed ROMs with tons of additional features, other focus on ROMs that strip out all of the extra TouchWiz bloatware that Samsung (and Sprint) add onto the phone. Some developers focus on maximizing battery life, while others focus on making a "stock android" (AOSP) experience. Finding the right ROM for you
I'd recommend browsing through the various ROMs in the Development Section of the forum. If you read the posts, various users will give their battery life using that particular ROM (as it's important to most of us here).
In Closing
If you've read this far, congratulations! I can't believe you actually read the entirety of this giant post I made. Kudos!
Anyways, if you have any more questions, just reply to this post and I'll try to answer them as much as I can.
I hope this helps!
You are officially my new best friend!! I did read everything and I am truly grateful. to answer some questions about the e-mails I use, here are the following:
hotmail.com
aol.com
gmail
and exchange
now I managed to speed up the e-mails by simply removing them all and adding them back again. this process took along time as well as some battery life. you mentioned that you can get 15 - 18 hours of battery life without charging... That is awesome and I honestly can't get that with my iphone.. but I can get at least a full day while im at work which is 8 hours. I'll be happy that I can get a full days charge without having to worry about plugging in the phone. This is another reason why its hard for me to part with the iphone.. I've come to terms with my podcast and I already
At the time of this response.... My iPhone has been keep good charge at 83% since i left the house this more at 8:30 am. However, when I got into work, I decided to turn on the my note 3 and occasionally checked my emails at around 11 am. As of the response, my battery life has been at 65% and that's heavy use... so im suspecting that I have, what i like to describe as crap-ware running in the background. I feel that once I have my note running solid with the battery life lasting and I don't have to worry about it, I will switch with no hesitation.
The reason why im so particular, its because I use my phone for emails especially for work. So I have to be in constant contact. This reminds me of an old commercial that saw before with a guy showing his exotic sports car at a gas station, as he reved his up to show up, his gas tank would empty out... Thats how i feel about the note 3, I have fancy phone but im afraid to use because im afraid that I will use use up my battery before I even get home.
Yes, you are right, the iphone requires little to now tweaking.. which is my case but of course im restricted unless I jailbreak the phone..
You mentioned roms... Unfortunately, I am completely new to this and have no clue how it works except on emulators for games... So i need help on this... I have the basic understanding of rooting and I was able to do it on the note 3, so i can safely say, my phone is rooted.
I'm desperately looking to switch..... I just want to perform well and keep a good battery life.
My wife's s5... works excellent right out of the box.
Outstanding....
Outstanding input, @topherk. I think this is useful advice from which many could benefit.
Much appreciated.
rmontero01 said:
now I managed to speed up the e-mails by simply removing them all and adding them back again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm glad that re-adding the accounts worked. I hadn't even thought of that, and it seems to be a common solutions when issues arise within the default e-mail app. I wouldn't be able to tell you why that happens, though.
One thing that I forgot to mention that could affect battery life is the frequency of checking the accounts. In the Email App, under each Account's settings, you can adjust the frequency of the syncs. Unless I'm mistaken, I think that "push" notifications is the most economical in terms of battery life, but it might not be offered for each type of account (I tested it with my gmail and it was able to do the push notifications... I don't have a Yahoo, AOL, or hotmail account. Below is what mine shows.
rmontero01 said:
You mentioned roms... Unfortunately, I am completely new to this and have no clue how it works except on emulators for games... So i need help on this... I have the basic understanding of rooting and I was able to do it on the note 3, so i can safely say, my phone is rooted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my opinion, running a custom ROM is the best way to increase battery life. Most Devs on here use tweaks and mods in their ROMs that extend battery life substantially. I won't link you to a specific one, but if you choose to install one, I can definitely help with that.
Now I'll explain how to install a custom ROM and some common things to think about/check prior to installing anything:
Installing a Custom ROM
Step 1 - Gather Information
First off, you need to know what version of Android your phone currently is running. This is easily done by looking in the Settings Menu -> General -> About Device.
The Main things we are looking at on this screen are Software Version, Model Number, Android Version, and Baseband Version. I'll explain these (to the best of my knowledge) below:
Software Version:
This is the "type" of Android that you're running. Rather than quoting the entire name, we typically only refer to the last 3 characters (MJ4, NAB, NC5, etc.). Stock Note 3 devices will (most-likely) be running one of 3 different versions of TouchWiz (TW):
MJ4 - This is the last Jellybean version of TW for the Sprint Note 3NAB - This is the first KitKat TW version for the Sprint Note 3NC5 - This is the latest KitKat TW version for the Sprint Note 3
The reason that we are concerned with the Software Version is that between the MJ4 and NAB versions, there were major changes. So if you're running MJ4, you will have to do additional steps before flashing a custom ROM based on a newer version. And if you're on NAB or NC5, you will not be able to go back to MJ4, so beware what you're flashing.
For the most part, if you're on NC5, you can flash either a NAB or NC5 custom ROM, but just read the ROM's FAQ to see if there are any issues with doing so.
Model Number:
Most people don't worry about this, but I always do when looking at a new ROM. The Sprint Note 3 is different from the Verizon Note 3, which is also different from the International Note 3. It's always best to double-check that the ROM you're trying to install is truly meant for your device. This simple check will prevent a LOT of potential issues you'll get when installing a ROM.
Android Version:
This is just an additional check to the Software Version. Always best to know.
Baseband Version:
The Baseband is, unless I'm mistaken, the "kernal" for the phone's cellular and 4G radios. Sometimes upgrading (or downgrading) the Baseband can help with signal strength and reception.Some users have noted that they got better reception on older Baseband versions. I haven't personally looked into it and the reports from other users seem somewhat anecdotal, but it's good to know which Baseband you're on.
The Baseband is independent from the ROM version, so you can run an older Baseband (MJ4 or NAB) on a newer ROM (NC5), and vice-versa.
The last bit of information you need to know is the Bootloader Version. The way to find this information is to reboot your device. When you see the text on the screen, you should look for the Bootloader Version. It'll be a long string of characters, but you're only looking for the last 3 (MJ4, NAB, or NC5).
Once you have all the above information, you should be ready to start the fun process of preparing your phone to flash your first ROM.
Step 2 - Backup your Media
First thing: Backup all of your media to your computer. If there's pictures/music/videos/recordings you don't want to lose, back them up. It's just good practice. Don't lose all your cat pictures because you flashed something and it somehow erased your internal storage. I tend to keep everything of importance on the External Storage, but there are times where even external storage can be wiped, so it's best to back up everything to a PC.
Step 3 - Upgrade your Phone to the latest Stock ROM (NC5)
This only is a MUST applies if you're running MJ4 and want to install a NAB or NC5 ROM. Most continually-developed ROMs are either NAB or NC5 now, so the first things first: Update your phone to NC5.
Go over to RWilco's thread and download the One-Click File. It will remove Root, but don't worry, because when you install a new ROM, it will automatically include root access.
Follow the instructions in his thread and your phone will now be fully upgraded.
At this point, your "About Device" should show the following:
Software Version: N900PVPUCNC5
Android Version: 4.4.2
Baseband Version: N900PVPUCNC5
Reboot your phone and let it sit for a minute so it can get it's bearings.
Step 4 - Install the Engineering Bootloader
I recommend installing the Engineering Bootloader. The major reason to install the engineering bootloader is that it allows you to flash different BaseBands (modems). And you never know when you might need to do that.
Just go to the linked thread above and flash it in ODIN. It should go in the "Bootloader" slot in ODIN, not the PDA slot.
Step 5 - Install a Custom Recovery
So far, we've been flashing everything in ODIN. Now, we're going to use ODIN one last time to flash a custom recovery, so that you can flash custom ROMs without the need of a computer.
The most-commonly used Custom Recovery is TWRP (XDA Link). You'll want to use the latest version, 2.7.0.1.
Flash this in ODIN. I believe you use the "PDA" Slot.
Reboot your phone to make sure it works correctly.
Step 6 - Make a Nandroid Backup of your device
If you don't know what a Nandroid backup is, don't worry. It's basically just taking your phone as is and making a backup of it. In case you make a mistake or flash a bad download of a ROM, this allows you to restore your system. I always keep my backups on the External Storage (microSD Card), so in case I have to wipe my internal storage, it's not a big deal. You can also copy the files over to your PC, just to be more paranoind about your nandroid backups (rhyming is fun!).
You do this by restarting into Recovery (power down device, hold down home button and volume up while powering on phone).
Once in TWRP, go to "backup." Make sure the storage selected is "external storage." This screen will have various options of what to backup. I typically choose everything except external storage. Typically, backups range from 1-2 Gigs.
For me, backups typically take 5-10 minutes to do. In my opinion, this is totally worth it, since I can always restore a backup with no issues.
Step 7 - Install a Custom ROM
Once you choose your custom ROM from the Development Section, follow the instructions on the original post to install it. I'll give a general outline of what I do whenever installing a new ROM, but sometimes a custom ROM will have specific instructions, so you want to make sure to read the posts carefully.
Generic Instructions for Installing a ROM:
Download ROM and check the md5
Internet being spotty in my area, I always check the md5 to make sure that the file downloaded correctly. You can check the md5 using this windows program or using a file explorer on your phone like ES File Explorer. I always copy the ROM zip file to my external SDcard.
Reboot to Recovery
Wipe Data, System, Cache, and Dalvik Cache
This is called a "Clean Wipe," meaning it will wipe out your installed Apps and the data associated with them. Some people will claim that "Dirty Flashing" (i.e. not wiping the above) is OK, but I've seen too many apps Force Closing (FC-ing) when dirty flashing. Also, if you dirty-flash and encounter an issue with a ROM, the first piece of advice is to do a clean install. Might as well do that initially and hopefully not run into any issues.
Install the Custom ROM
Pretty straight-forward on how to do this... just click "Install" and then browse to the place your copied the ROM zip file.
Reboot your phone and run through the typical initial start-up information (google account, etc).
Once you get your phone set up the way you like (apps, accounts, wifi passwords, etc), I'd make another Nandroid backup, just so you have one where it's setup with everything you need. This will make any issues less painful, since you'd restore a backup that's already setup.
Step 8 - Further Considerations
If you ever want to try a new ROM, all you have to do is repeat step 7. Beware, though, people easily become flashaholics when they first figure this stuff out.
If you were paying attention to my "Generic Instructions" when installing a ROM, you'd notice that every time you do a Clean Install of a ROM, you lose all your apps... All of your Angry Birds 3-Star levels are gone!
Well, there are ways to get prevent losing that data... One is by "Dirty Flashing" (Not wiping the "system" or "data" partitions before flashing a ROM in TWRP). This is common practice among users here on XDA, but is typically frowned upon by ROM devs. I've noticed that a good number of issues on ROM threads stem from people Dirty Flashing. It typically causes more problems than it solves.
The other way of backup up and restoring app data (prior to wiping) is by using Titanium Backup. I could write up a long post on how to use Titanium Backup (TiBu), but the main things to remember are the following:
White line items are fine to be restored (both Data and Apps).
Restoring Yellow line items is typically OK (Data only).
Restoring system apps or data (red line items in TiBu) is typically a bad idea.
I've been using TiBu for the past 2-3 years and it's typically worked like a charm. Sometimes, when there's a major Android Update (like from JellyBean to KitKat), it can become broken, but the Developer is really responsive and gets it to work within a few weeks. If you upgrade to PRO, you can schedule automatic app backups (I backup all my user apps every night at 3am). You can also restore apps/data from Nandroid Backups (which is great if you do a Nandroid backup but had forgotten to update your TiBu backups).
In Summary
Whew, that was a lot to write... I'm a Structural Engineer, not a Software Engineer, so I don't know the technical side of things like bootloaders or basebands, but hopefully none of the information I provided was false.
Anyways, let me know if you have any problems with the install. I appreciate any feedback!