🪫 Battery life: how to troubleshoot?

[urszula]

@kirkmahoneyphd

Unfortunately, the Music app today makes the spoken-word podcasts sound like chipmunks or squirrels at anything above x1 speed (unlike dedicated podcast players) – not to mention the fact that the Music app has no skip-back button or skip-forward button, which are both standard on podcast players.

I just tried this & I get what you mean. The Audible app does not do this, so I understand the frustration. I’m passing this on.

[kirkmahoneyphd]

@urszula

The Audible app does not do this

…nor does any decent podcast player

[The]

I’m very impressed seeing as hotspots are INTENSE battery drains and two hours is a long time

[anon7028788]

Will battery last longer if we did charge the phone every day? Like I barely use my phone so rather than using it for 6 days and then charging it would the battery health long term be better if I just fully charged the phone every day even in short spurts during the day, making sure when I go to bed its at or near 100?

[rowancne]

Typical rule is the best thing for battery health is to keep it between 20 and 80%

[brendxn]

This ^, plus try to keep the battery from getting hot (intense use, direct sun, rapid charging) - and that’s about the best you can do.

[urszula]

@kirkmahoneyphd Someone on this forum suggested Simple AudioBookPlayer- (Simple ADB Free ) It’s actually B&W in its original form, so on E Ink it actually looks really good (I didn’t like the way AUDIBLE looked).

[kirkmahoneyphd]

@urszula

Simple AudioBookPlayer

Thank you for the recommendation, @urszula! I now am back to using my SIM-less deGoogled Pixel 6 for listening to podcasts (AntennaPod) and audiobooks (Audible). I already was using the Pixel in this way as a supplement to my Orchid – a minimalist cellphone. I realized that I can do the same for my Kompakt – another minimalist cellphone. The Pixel’s speaker does a good job with playing podcasts and audiobooks. And, I realize that I was trying to cram too much – for me, anyway – into the Kompakt. Thanks again!

[reed-OKC]

No real experience here, but this might be helpful

I’m considering which messenger apps, if any, I’ll sideload when my MK is with me. It seems whatsapp is just a bigger drain than most, by default. I also looked into Beeper’s battery drain (because boy, wouldn’t that be convenient if it was battery efficient and all messages could be consolidated) but it seems Beeper may be worse than whatsapp, since it syncs all messages and bridges to other services via their servers. It requires a persistent internet connection apparently (this is all from chatgpt).

Whatsapp / Signal / Telegram info below

Also, apparently Facebook Messenger is a big drain

[oceanos]

Curious if my battery life seems reasonable to those who’ve been using their Kompakts for a while now. Charged to 100% Saturday 8:30, down to 8% Tuesday 19:30.
So, Approximately 3 and a half days of battery life, and ideally charging every 3 days so I don’t kill the battery’s lifespan.

• Signal Strength: Most of the time -100-108 and 36-38 asu
• No Hotspot usage, turned off wifi and bluetooth half the time
• Turned off backlight almost exclusively
• Sideloaded Quik, Gramophone, and Smart Audiobook Player
• 3-5 SMS a day on average
• 2 calls - About an hour total time.
• 1-2 Hours using Gramophone
• 4-5 hours using Chess App
• 14-15 Hours using Smart Audiobook Player (My most used app)
• 5 Pictures Taken on stock Camera App

I feel like 3 and a half days is pretty good, especially considering my old phone generally didn’t last much more than a day. But at the same time, I have yet to use any hotspot, tethering, or Whatsapp type apps.

I would hope using it as a MP3/MP4 player wouldn’t kill the battery, so I was oddly relieved when it might just be a signal issue sapping the battery.

Any idea if I’m just overthinking it? I do tend to do that.

[buiosu]

I hope there’s a way to get 5 days of battery life with such use.

Regarding signal strength, I was roaming around the city and looking at the asu (that’s dBm RSS + 140 to make it a positive number) on the road and in my town and very close to the BTS it could be around 60-70, but anywhere else it was closer to 30-40.
Right now, in a building at the edge of the city, I have 30 asu. Checked the smartphone now, it’s the same (sometimes 1-2 dBm off but that’s natural for EMF). I think in some places they deploy mobile network stations sparsely for cost savings or with lower power than the standard intends.

For the sideloaded apps, I know some of them are heavy in the background. You can try killing them after use, which is cumbersome. What I can’t test right now, you could try to disable the SIM card data and use only home Wi-Fi (or laptop turned into a hotspot?), then combine that with packet capture/Wireshark to see how much volume of the traffic those apps can generate. This way you could at least identify what can potentially drain your battery.

I thought Wi-Fi grabs more energy than LTE but in theory it’s the opposite. In practice, the lower the signal to noise ratio is for either, the worse the transmission, takes more time to transmit data at low data rates and it could be heavier on the battery. I’m not gonna tell you that in your case Wi-Fi will be better, but if you’re at home or in an office with well designed WLAN, there’s quite a chance that you will be better off keeping Wi-Fi turned on. In my case, I’m mostly outside of any Wi-Fi access and I don’t have anything sideloaded so I thought it’s worthless to keep the WLAN module running. I also don’t use bluetooth (yet, I wish to pair the phone with my car audio), I prefer loudspeaker and wired earphones.

[The]

I noticed people are turning off WiFi in an attempt to save battery and I just want to say that a strong WiFi signal will actually drain LESS battery than cellular.

On another note, I charged to 100% around 8PM Monday night. I am currently at 62% on Wednesday at 4:30PM.

Installed: Signal and OLauncher
Also: Offline+ mode when I sleep

That puts me at around four days total of projected battery life. Anyone getting similar results?

[justdanwithaplan]

I noticed that the people that have the biggest problem with battery life have FUTO Keyboard installed? I installed FUTO Keyboard last night and noticed a significant drain in battery today.

I’m working on seeing if I can download a battery optimizer to track battery usage and confirm, but just thought I’d throw that out there.

[elbastino]

@oceanos

Turned off backlight almost exclusively

Where can I set this?

[astratev]

I haven’t side loaded anything on the phone and plan to use it with the stock settings.
With Wi-Fi on and the phone sitting idle for the majority of time it depletes an average of 1% battery per 1 hour.
I would have to use it a bit more to see if this is correct, but my rough estimate is that it will give me around 4 days of usage, maybe less…

[brendxn]

@elbastino

Where can I set this?

Click the physical button to open control panel, and there is a slider there.

[The]

Just reporting back to say with Signal and OLauncher installed, and using Offline+ at night, my battery lasted from Monday evening to noon Friday.

I started recharging at 14%, but estimate ~4.5 days from 100% to 0%

[buiosu]

I wonder if Session would work differently, it has some different message syncing mechanism than Signal. On the other hand it’s even less known among my peers.

[htoke]

Did you ever test this? I am also experiencing battery drain and use FUTO, but I also sideloaded a bunch of other apps so idk if it is FUTO

[justdanwithaplan]

I did, yes. Battery Usage apps were useless, but I factory reset my device and slowly added each sideloaded app back on. Didn’t experience any noticeable battery drain for anything but FUTO keyboard and Kreate (a music streamer).

(Other apps sideloaded: Amex, Auto Bluetooth Connect, Claude, Diarium, Files by Google, Gospel Library, MACU, Member Tools, Subtotal, Supra eKey, TAB Mobile, Ultimate Guitar Tabs, Telegram X, TickTick, Venmo).

I also might have experienced a little more battery usage after installing TickTick, but not sure.