[HOWTO] Improving Battery Life for CM 5.0.7 and other 2.1 ROMS [upd 06/04] - G1 Android Development

I had seen one too many posts about people asking and complaining about battery drain issues on their G1 phones and it gets tiring to read it every 5-10 posts. So I decided to create this thinktank to pool in ideas from the community and create a set of best practices to maximize mileage of our phones. I'm currently using a HTC Dream with stock battery and my battery life is pretty good with light to medium usage. I would like to contribute to the community by creating this thinktank thread. I hope this can help as a guide for myself and for people who have been having numerous battery drain issues on 5.0.7-DS and variants of this distribution.
This is NOT the ultimate end-all solution for your battery problems. These are just steps to tackle the problem. If you want minimum to no battery drain keep it plugged to socket or plug it in a car battery.
If you would like to contribute your experience, or make any corrections please do not hesitate to post and I'll include them if they seem fit and attach your name as reference. I'll also do my best to give credit where credit is due. Please see the references at the bottom part of the post. Please do not clutter this thread by doing "I'll try this" or "It doesnt work" post. Its more important for all of us to know WHY it work/didnt work. Stick to topic, and be constructive. Be intelligent. Think first.
0. Update your Radio
Updating your G1's radio to the currently-latest version (2.22.23.02) should give you better battery life as well as signal reception (you can always switch back to 2.22.19.26I if it doesn't work out for you)
1. Recalibrate
Take note that BATTERY STATS ARE WIPED whenever you flash a new rom. (since full wipes are required whenever changing ROMS, and /data is where the battery info is.) This usually leads to inaccurate battery readings.
Here's how you recalibrate properly:
- Charge your phone till the GREEN LED shows up. Leave it for another hour.
- While plugged, go to recovery and wipe your battery stats.
- Right after the phone is booted up and settled, unplug and use as per normal till it shuts off. Then charge as per normal.
2. Disabling some basic phone hardware functionality
Turn off GPS, WIFI when not in use. And brightness set to manageable levels. Even loudspeaker. This is self-explanatory. Automation software like LOCALE can be useful, but usually all it takes for you to turn off your ringer, or turn on wifi when you're at a specific area is just a press on the Power control widget.
3. Overclocked kernels
Running on full overclock speed (by default is 528mhz or even higher on some kernels) will drain your battery faster and you'll notice significant heat increase when you're using your phone along with 3G.
Although im using pershoots 576mhz overclock kernel, I do not max it to 576 unless needed. The reason why I use his kernel is due to its UNDERVOLT capability. I have set up my phone using SetCPU
MAXFREQ: 480,
MINFREQ: 176
CPU Governor : ONDEMAND.
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Click to collapse
Usually I would set my phone to 384mhz if im going to stay on it longer (texting/long browsing etc). On the sleep mode I set it to 122mhz to 384mhz.
4. Tame your widgets, minimize using them.
Widgets that constantly connect to the internet, or constantly refreshing on the screen to update data being shown on the screen at extremely small intervals would also give you battery drain. Minimizing widgets can help minimize applications running in the background (free up memory) and avoiding your phone going on "partial sleep". Also tweak your widgets to update as less as manageably possible. If for some reason you can't see the next suggestion.
Aside from that you might want to disable Background syncing and do manual syncing. Aside from saving your data plan, it also saves battery life. You can disable it by doing the following:
Menu > Settings > Accounts & Sync > Background Data - OFF
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Click to collapse
manually update your facebook widget or contacts/gmail by
Menu > Accounts & Sync > Facebook (or GMail) > Sync.
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Click to collapse
5. 3G, 2G, switch off, or automate it.
You'll notice that inside the default settings for mobile networks. Setting to 2G will "save battery" which is actually true. The connection will definitely be slower, but if you like your phone to last longer throughout the day, either switch to 2G or turn it off altogether.
Also, similar to juice defender, I use 2g/3g toggle and toggle data as and when needed.
Another suggestion that I just found out recently is the use of Juice Defender app [d]. It automatically turns on or off your APN settings at intervals. You might want to try to look at that app if you cannot do #4
6. Disable live wallpapers. Auto Updating Sense
Remember that 2.1 isnt actually built for our old phones. and livewallpapers do require cpu/gpu processes. These are also running in the background and may run while your phone is asleep. So turning them off will benefit you.
7. Refrain from using Automated task killers and choose what you kill.
If you see that the app you had been trying to kill a few times keeps coming back. Stop killing it. Everytime you do, and whenever it respawns, CPU flies to 100%. Go back to #4.
8. Disable Market notifications.
- Open the Market application.
- Select the Menu key.
- Select Downloads.
- Select the Menu key again.
- Select Notifications.
- Select the Do not notify me radio button. press [Ok]
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Click to collapse
9. Make your phone sleep.
Open your spareparts application, Go to End button behavior. Select "Go to sleep"
10. Under the hood tweaks
10.1 Extending Wifi scan intervals
Edit the wifi scan interval in /system/build.sapphire.prop (or build.trout.prop if you have a G1)
# Time between scans in seconds. Keep it high to minimize battery drain.
# This only affects the case in which there are remembered access points,
# but none are in range.
wifi.supplicant_scan_interval = 45
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Click to collapse
Changing this number to just 90 second will half your wifi scans. Obviously larger numbers can mean less wifi scans which means more battery life, though it may take a little longer for your phone to pick up a remembered access point when in range. This is not just a CM/Eclair thing, it can also work for Donut phones.
This setting needs a reboot after editing the file. Edit it with Root Explorer, or nano as root if you have CM5, or pull the file with adb then edit it then push it back.
11. Remove your phone from your pocket whenever you can.
Body heat deteriorates battery life no kidding! there had been already studies to back it. I keep my phone either on my hand or outside of my pocket to keep it cool. Do whatever is manageable in your environment. If you're using your phone as a music player streaming using streamfurious and stuff. dont let your body heat add to the heat already been generated by your phone itself.
References / Updates :
[a] cyanogen recalibrating batteries : http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php/Troubleshooting#Battery_recalibration
thanks to mejorguille for correction on /data and wiping.
pershoot UV kernel: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=666850
[c] SetCPU main site : http://www.pokedev.com/setcpu/ - Thanks also to ShadowCH for tip.
[d] JuiceDefender : http://www.latedroid.com/2010/01/juicedefender.html -
- Thanks to shohid1234 for 3G-2G toggle
[e] Thanks to Jaymzz for tip on disabling market: http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?/topic/94-i-fixed-my-battery-drain/
[06/02] thanks to Arkain2k for tip #0
[06/04] Thanks to Foo_Blyat's tip for disabling background sync and manual updates for fb/gmail (item 4) http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6670907&postcount=36
[06/04] Thanks to Super Jamie for tip 10.1 extending wifi scans http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6684954&postcount=49

reserved in case something nice comes up

10. Remove your phone from your pocket whenever you can.
Body heat deteriorates battery life no kidding! there had been already studies to back it. I keep my phone either on my hand or outside of my pocket to keep it cool. Do whatever is manageable in your environment. If you're using your phone as a music player streaming using streamfurious and stuff. dont let your body heat add to the heat already been generated by your phone itself.
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Click to collapse
really? isnt warmth charging batterys? in my old gameboy years i always put my batteries on the heater when the drained completely and after an hour i could play again with the old batteries.

1. Recalibrate [a]
Take note NOT TO WIPE BATTERY STATS whenever you flash a new rom and your battery is less than 90%. This usually leads to inaccurate battery readings. If you already wiped your battery during one of your flashes, here's how you recalibrate properly:
- Charge your phone till the GREEN LED shows up. Leave it for another hour.
- While plugged, go to recovery and wipe your battery stats.
- Right after the phone is booted up and settled, unplug and use as per normal till it shuts off. Then charge as per normal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true, but since battery stats are stored on the data partition, a data wipe also deletes the battery stats. A lot of rom's require a full wipe, meaning data and dalvik, so battery stats are deleted whether you select the option or not.

Since001 said:
really? isnt warmth charging batterys? in my old gameboy years i always put my batteries on the heater when the drained completely and after an hour i could play again with the old batteries.
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Click to collapse
Hi!
Yes Im very familiar with that practice because i do that too. The reason might be because of the composition of the battery (alkaline, non alkaline). Usually we put it under the sun so that the heat will help change the composition of the compound inside the battery in order for it to lower down its resistance. Leading to a "charge".
But now we are using Li-Ion batteries, and I do not suggest putting them under the sun because it will deteriorate your battery capacity holding charge and its lifecycle.
reference: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm see figure 1.

samaral said:
Hi!
Yes Im very familiar with that practice because i do that too. The reason might be because of the composition of the battery (alkaline, non alkaline). Usually we put it under the sun so that the heat will help change the composition of the compound inside the battery in order for it to lower down its resistance. Leading to a "charge".
But now we are using Li-Ion batteries, and I do not suggest putting them under the sun because it will deteriorate your battery capacity holding charge and its lifecycle.
reference: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm see figure 1.
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Click to collapse
Thanks, that makes sense.
Made me lol to see that there actually is a "battery university"

Thank you! this post is noted
mejorguille said:
This is true, but since battery stats are stored on the data partition, a data wipe also deletes the battery stats. A lot of rom's require a full wipe, meaning data and dalvik, so battery stats are deleted whether you select the option or not.
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Noted. I have edited the guide to reflect your insight.
Thank you very much

how about going to setting - about phone - battery use?
there you can find out exactly whats killing your battery and take appropiate action.
Also, similar to juice defender, I use 2g/3g toggle and toggel data as and when needed. Using these two widgets i have no battery issues.

Post noted and added on top
shohid1234 said:
how about going to setting - about phone - battery use?
there you can find out exactly whats killing your battery and take appropiate action.
Also, similar to juice defender, I use 2g/3g toggle and toggel data as and when needed. Using these two widgets i have no battery issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Noted. Your suggestion is added on top.

change preferred network type helped for me increasing battery life
Hello all,
as describe in post
forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6432560&postcount=1
changing preferred network type worked for me.
default setting: WCDMA preferred drains my battery in a few hours, crazy
within CM 5.0.7-test7 I was able to change to: GSM/CDMA auto and it worked
But now in the final release 5.0.7-DS I can not select this setting. Perhaps it correlates to the this (PRL) info in brackets.
It seems that no "auto" setting want be working so I am trying WCDMA only right now and will see if I have a network in 2G networks too.
Bye morT

Hhmm let me think…
Running a prrocessor that's massively overclocked with software that was never meant to run on our g1's I have an idea.
****** off back to stock or get over it
I mean seriously people come on, we have set cpu for power profile management, basic battery usage which is dim screen, turn off wifi and 3g when not in use blah blah blah same **** written in every guide about battery life for ANY roms from cupcake to eclair.
As I said, get over it or go back to stock.
[highlight]Mod Edit: Please watch your language and don't flame others.[/highlight]

im sorry does turning on "display battery status" in spare parts still effect battery life? TIA

Ive noticed that bluetooth is killlllling battery life, but dont know if its normal. I charged to 100% and turned everything on, leaving screen on the whole time and what not.
While I was actively using the net over WiFi, I had nothing using the bluetooth, and both seem to eat up 20%..
This might be normal, might not be, but thought it was odd that it being on, but not in use, ate up just as much as functioning, in use, wifi.

whats funny to me is as soon as my phone dies i plug it up reboot it a few times and my battery is at 70%
.... i think its not reading correctly .. i mean fully charged play talk text browse till it shuts off .. plug it in turn it right back on then reboot ..
and my battery is back at 70% which is weird ... anyone else notice that???
also wifi, gps is on screen brightness is standard !!!

batteries really seem to be the least developed technology in our high tech phones. feels like a sportscar with a one gallon tank...the fun's over quickly...
turned off my 3G and got a lot of additional battery life. with bad 3G reception (like in the place I live in) the phone was sometimes sucked empty in just a few hours, now I get two days.
another thing that really helped me extend my battery life was turning on airplane mode when I went to bed.

how about dont use overclock or any other cpu speed up tool....maybe the speed they are factory set to is there for a reason...Hmmmmmmm

dcowboys2184 said:
whats funny to me is as soon as my phone dies i plug it up reboot it a few times and my battery is at 70%
.... i think its not reading correctly .. i mean fully charged play talk text browse till it shuts off .. plug it in turn it right back on then reboot ..
and my battery is back at 70% which is weird ... anyone else notice that???
also wifi, gps is on screen brightness is standard !!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should go through a battery recalibration - steps on the first page.

Best Practices for Improving Battery Life for CM 5.0.7 (and variant ROMS) is to use this ROM, Thanks.
Do whatever you like, show or hide battery status in the Spare parts, calibrate or not....the battery remains....for loOng....enough time....

hot/cold controversy
Since001 said:
really? isnt warmth charging batterys? in my old gameboy years i always put my batteries on the heater when the drained completely and after an hour i could play again with the old batteries.
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Click to collapse
Since I have a background in electrical theory and chemistry, let me end this debate once and for all: heat makes atoms (and therefore molecules) move faster. Lack of heat (cold) makes them move slower. In general, fast-moving atoms in batteries mean MORE power, not less. The reason your car doesn't want to start when temperatures are subzero is that the battery acid (electrolyte) molecules are moving too slowly to oxidize (give off e-, electrons) and turn back into positive ions. The same is true for the ol' Gameboy AAs -- put them on the heater, the dry cell warm up, and more electrons are transferred to the anode by anions, the positive ions (cations) are more able to travel to travel back to the cathode (in the case of dry/wet-cell rechargeable storage batteries). Heat acts as a catalyst to produce electricity. Some of you may have even taken your car battery indoors if the electrolyte froze in the winter. Some of your cars may have battery blankets or even battery heaters if you live really far up north. In addition, the process of charging a Li-Ion, Ni-mH, or even lead acid battery will produce heat, because chemical conversion is bi-directional, but anyway . . . you charge the G1, it gets hot. You use it heavily, it gets hot. You know you're spending electrons somewhere when it gets hot period. Keeping the phone cool will not increase battery life or make it charge fast. What lower battery temperatures will do is lengthen the battery's overall life. What happens if you leave meat out in 100F/30C temperatures? It goes bad quickly. Same principle in Li-ion. The rechargeable battery is ideally an efficient, closed system of ion exchange that should work for many (hundreds) of duty cycles, but eventually heat plays a role in deterioration of the electrolyte and chemical catalysts inside.
So put your extra charged batteries (but you don't want a Li-ion or Ni-mH battery to sit very long in an discharged state, so be careful here) in the refrigerator in an airtight bag (rotating on a daily basis) if you really want them to last a long time, but don't charge them frozen (ka-boom!) and remember cold batteries charge slowly. Car batteries in sub-tropical areas are replaced at a rate of about once every 24 months, but in Sweden? Maybe every five or six years. Cold temperatures slow down chemical deterioration just like cold keeps that steak from becoming maggot food.
Again, a hot G1 may weaken its own internal components and batteries over time, but putting it on ice won't give you an extra 6 hours to oogle Miley Cyrus' vBlog
Hope this helps.

For me, unless I'm expecting a text or a call always have my phone on airplane mode. I turn it off every hour or so to see if I got any unimportant texts, and then turn it back on

Related

[Q] How do you make the battery life better on this

I have to charge my phone 2 or 3 times a day any recommendations on how to make my battery life longer that are simple and easy
Jawdude said:
I have to charge my phone 2 or 3 times a day any recommendations on how to make my battery life longer that are simple and easy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm a truck driver and I'm a heavy user.
I did too before I made the changes below. These all work with the Stock Rom.
1. Installed No Lock (so that I don't have to swipe the screen to unlock, just push the power button)
2. Set screen to turn off in 30 seconds.
3. Installed Brightness Widget (allows changing the brightness from the home screen
4. Installed Screen Filter (lets me really darken my screen at night.
Try those and see how you do.
5. I then flashed the Infused Rom (I now get up to 10-14 hours)
Jawdude said:
I have to charge my phone 2 or 3 times a day any recommendations on how to make my battery life longer that are simple and easy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Custom kernal and rom
Running refused and infusion 1.8 rom and I get 14 hours with heavy data use
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA Premium App
Also, Turn off GPS and Wifi when you're not using them.
Battery
After much experimenting and monitoring of battery use I find that the biggest drain is the screen display, so go to settings-->display-->brightness and lower the screen brightness as low as you comfortably can. Also when you you are not using the phone make sure the screen is off, I have trained myself to automatically hit the power button every time I put down the phone. If you listen to music through your phone make sure the settings on your music players allow the phone to play when the screen is off and turn the screen off while it plays.
GPS also drains the battery, so I keep it turned off when I don't use the Nav. When I use the Nav I know the battery will drain at a rapid pace, nothing you can do there, even if I have the phone plugged in to car power while using Nav it still drains the battery! Drains slower than unplugged navigating but still drains.
If your watching videos then your S.O.L. there's really nothing you can do that will increase battery life enough to make a difference during video playback.
I get 10-12 hours with regular use and stock rom. Worst was 8 hours best was 24.
Thanks for all the advice this has really helped my battery
Truckerglenn said:
I'm a truck driver and I'm a heavy user.
3. Installed Brightness Widget (allows changing the brightness from the home screen
There was a recent post that showed a shortcut for changing the screen brightness from the homescreen without any additional software. First, turn off auto brightness. Second, tap and hold the menu bar at the top. Third, slide left to reduce the screen brightness and right to increase screen brightness.
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Click to collapse
menzoom said:
After much experimenting and monitoring of battery use I find that the biggest drain is the screen display, so go to settings-->display-->brightness and lower the screen brightness as low as you comfortably can. Also when you you are not using the phone make sure the screen is off, I have trained myself to automatically hit the power button every time I put down the phone. If you listen to music through your phone make sure the settings on your music players allow the phone to play when the screen is off and turn the screen off while it plays.
GPS also drains the battery, so I keep it turned off when I don't use the Nav. When I use the Nav I know the battery will drain at a rapid pace, nothing you can do there, even if I have the phone plugged in to car power while using Nav it still drains the battery! Drains slower than unplugged navigating but still drains.
If your watching videos then your S.O.L. there's really nothing you can do that will increase battery life enough to make a difference during video playback.
I get 10-12 hours with regular use and stock rom. Worst was 8 hours best was 24.
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Click to collapse
How does it drain your battery when its plugged into the car? I have never seen that on any cell phone. That my friend is messed up if true.
reissy said:
How does it drain your battery when its plugged into the car? I have never seen that on any cell phone. That my friend is messed up if true.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems that Samsung ****ed up and included phone CPU/screen/etc usage when measuring battery charge current.
This means that the 600 mA stock battery charge current limit isn't just going to the battery, it's split between battery/screen/CPU. If screen/CPU/etc go above 600 mA (Navigation at full brightness seems to be the most common way), battery starts draining.
It also means that unless there's something I'm missing (which I could be since the MAX8998 datasheet is super-ultra-secret), our phone isn't going to be able to do proper charge termination - if the screen is on/CPU is running, it will cause a falsely high battery charge current reading, which will cause charging to fail to terminate.
Juice defender
I found that juice defender helped my battery and i just use the free version it's a great app
I used Iphone 3g 3gs 4. None of them drain battery like this one. First time use Android phone and getting a bit disappointed of this phone. It's draining 2% every 5 mins and im using stock Rom.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App
Install a ROM. Infused v2 nearly doubled my screen-on battery life and tripled my screen-off battery life.
sweetboy02125 said:
I used Iphone 3g 3gs 4. None of them drain battery like this one. First time use Android phone and getting a bit disappointed of this phone. It's draining 2% every 5 mins and im using stock Rom.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's excessive... Rogue app maybe?
ptgptg said:
Truckerglenn said:
I'm a truck driver and I'm a heavy user.
3. Installed Brightness Widget (allows changing the brightness from the home screen
There was a recent post that showed a shortcut for changing the screen brightness from the homescreen without any additional software. First, turn off auto brightness. Second, tap and hold the menu bar at the top. Third, slide left to reduce the screen brightness and right to increase screen brightness.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks I never new that
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997R using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
look in about phone battery use to identify the biggest battery user, it should be the screen. anything else and there is a problem.
the cell standby may go high on froyo rom, turning on flight mode and turning it off will correct that, it's an android bug.
on gingerbread the android os or android system may hog battery occasionally. some think it is the wifi sleep policy but it pops up on me without setting the sleep policy. the fix for that is to pull the battery for a couple minutes and put it back in and restart the phone.
next manage the screen brightness
install a custom rom, there are issues with certain firmware keeping sensors active wen they shouldn't be.
turn off unneeded sync options (i find that auto fetching my email uses a lot especially with my gmail already set to sync),
use wifi when you use the internet if possible, turn it off when out and about.
monitor cpu useage of apps that are cached in the task manager
kill apps that use cpu
if needed turn the max cpu clock down to 800mhz
set "use wireless networks" for location when possible for general location (limited to city level at times)
Dani897 said:
look in about phone battery use to identify the biggest battery user, it should be the screen. anything else and there is a problem.
the cell standby may go high on froyo rom, turning on flight mode and turning it off will correct that, it's an android bug.
on gingerbread the android os or android system may hog battery occasionally. some think it is the wifi sleep policy but it pops up on me without setting the sleep policy. the fix for that is to pull the battery for a couple minutes and put it back in and restart the phone.
next manage the screen brightness
install a custom rom, there are issues with certain firmware keeping sensors active wen they shouldn't be.
turn off unneeded sync options (i find that auto fetching my email uses a lot especially with my gmail already set to sync),
use wifi when you use the internet if possible, turn it off when out and about.
monitor cpu useage of apps that are cached in the task manager
kill apps that use cpu
if needed turn the max cpu clock down to 800mhz
set "use wireless networks" for location when possible for general location (limited to city level at times)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, high cell standby is OK if the phone is screen-off often.
Cell standby is always my top user - but my phone is sitting on my desk with the screen off frequently, in a location with weak signal. Weak signal makes cell standby usage go WAY up.
Syncwifi application is awesome for extending sync settings to gain more battery
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA Premium App
Using titanium backup I froze drm content 2.2.1 and this significantly increased my battery life.
Sent from my Infuse. It is what it isn't.
JuiceDefender!!
I agree JuiceDefender works!! I had to charge in the middle of the day. Now with moderate use it will last all day Im on stock Rom.
I easily get 2 days out of my Infuse, no idea how some of you are managing to only get 8 hours. After rooting my phone and freezing the bloat i easily get twice the battery life of my prior iPhone 3GS.

[GUIDE] Battery Management for noobs

Hey guys,
So after many months with the XT720 and alot of flashing and trying to get the most out of my battery, i've come up with a few conclusions about battery life in general and how to extend it. I thought I'd share here. This is mostly aimed at people who are new to android and have not experimented like some of the more advanced users we have on this forum. Hope you find this helpful and please feel free to make additions.
General Battery Info
The XT720 was my first android phone, and I came from a long line of typical nokia phones whose batteries would last for ages. I had no idea the kind of power an android device would use. When I started out using it, i was surprised at how quickly the battery would die. You'd think with advancing software we'd have better batteries but sadly batteries are lagging behind in technology. Generally speaking you can expect the following battery life from your XT720.
Heavy use: 10-14 hours
Moderate use: 16-20 hours
Light use: 1 day - 1 day 12 hrs.
Note: New batteries improve with each charge cycle. It is recommended to go through a few complete charge cycles when you buy a new phone. After that, complete discharges are not recommended and its smart to start charging your phone when it hits the 20-25% mark.
How to improve battery life
1: Battery Calibration
If you've ever flashed a new ROM, you must have noticed a sharp decline in battery performance. This is partly due to old battery statistics left behind from your old ROM. Android is a smart OS and collects information over time. The more you use it, the more accurate it gets. In the same way it collects information from your battery usage and reports your battery percentages according to that. When you flash a new ROM, sometimes android thinks that your battery is 100% when its really lower than that and that causes relative reduced battery performance. To deal with that it is recommended that you use a nifty free app called Battery Calibration from the android market. What this does it removes the old battery stats and allows your new ROM to create its own battery stats. Charge your battery to full, use the battery calibration. Drain once till phone turns off by itself and charge to full again. You will notice a sharp increase in battery life.
2. Battery Managment
We all know that android has its own battery management built in but it usually doesnt give complete information about the phone. For that you need to dive deeper into the settings. Usually if you experience battery drain its because of a rogue app and believe it or not some common apps you wont think off drain unnecessary battery. To see your complete Battery Stats input this code into the dialer.
Code:
*#*#4636#*#*
This will take you to a bunch of options. What you're interested in is Battery History. When you tap that it will show you two drop down menu's.
1) Other Usage
2) Since last unplugged
Other usage shows you how long your phone has been running and how long it has been asleep. Also shows you how long your wifi has been on and running and how long your screen has been on. It is important to see how long your phone has been running. For example if your phone has an uptime of 20 hours and its been running 5 hours out of that. Your run time is 25%. Which is very good. Sometimes an app can run even when your phone screen is off. This will represent a longer run time even when you have your phone lying on a desk or something. See this setting and correlate with the amount you have used your phone. Does it seem normal? If no then use the first drop down menu and select
Partial Wake:
Partial wake is basically, any app which takes your phone out of sleep mode to use the CPU even when youre screen is off. These are apps which need to sync or use the phone resources. In this you will see a list of apps and how much they have caused a partial wake lock. See anything unsual? For me one app that caused unsual drainage was latitute. Yes, i had simply signed into it and i didnt know it was updating my location every 5 minutes. Extreme battery drain for me even when my phone was idle. See which app was draining your battery and either tweak the settings or remove altogether.
GPS, Sensors, CPU:
You can also see these in the first drop down menu. Certain apps like screeble use the sensors alot, and hence cause drain. Obviously games, camera, will stress the CPU. See if anything is causing drain in that and adjust accordingly.
Miscellaneous Information
After you have dealt with rogue apps that you don't use that drain youre battery your battery life will depend on how you use your phone. But hopefull these tips will help you with increasing your battery life. I do have some more information on different settings and supposed battery saving applications.
Autosync: When you enable auto sync, you allow google and other accounts to sync on a regular basis. This is important for people who need to use push email etc. It does not drain battery IF you tweak what you need synced. In google for example you can have your contacts, calendar, google+, google reader, gmail all to sync by default. If you just need email, please untick the rest. This will help you save battery life. Increase your update times for facebook and google+ if you dont recieve many updates all the time or turn them off altogether. If you have many services syncing at the same time you will get battery drain.
Wifi Sleep Policy: This is sort of a hidden menu. If you go into wireless & networks >> Wifi settings >> settings key >> advanced >> wifi sleep policy. This has three settings. Never close down wifi, never close when charging, or close with screen off. If you choose never your wifi will always be on, which will in turn crunch the **** out of your battery. If you use it off with screen off, remember it takes about 5 minutes to turn the wifi off. I personally use the never with plugged in. Its an intermediate. So when im plugged in wifi always stays on and when im not it follows the screen off protocol.
Wifi Vs Mobile Data: Having mobile data on all the time, does not drain battery. The only time the battery gets drained is when the data connection is active i.e you have many apps on autosync youll see your battery going down. If you arent doing anything and your phone is connected to Edge or 3G your battery will drain regularly. 2G networks drain less than 3G keep that in mind. If you are actively using your connection, wifi will take less battery because speeds are faster and you will be using it for a little time. Also your signal strength has alot of effect on battery. If you have crappy 3G signals your radio will actively be searching for a connection the same goes for wifi. That is important to keep in mind.
Control Background data: By selecting this option you can allow or disallow apps to connect to data without any permission. Some apps require this like the android market. If you uncheck this apps wont be able to sync automatically in the background.
Milestone Overclocking: This is fairly obvious. The higher you overclock with higher vsel the more battery drain you will have. Some use set cpu with profiles but I found that if i set the setcpu too low while idle It takes time for the cpu to charge up when i recieve a call or turn the screen on. Ringtones lag etc etc. I let android do my CPU management and its fine. and comfortable setting would be 850 MHZ, 56 vsel but you can change according to your phone usage.
Juice Defender/ Screebl / Task killers:
In my personal experience with juice defender ultimate I found that with the above precautions juice defender didnt make much of a difference and actually used more battery. First off theres an extra process going on in the back. Second activating and deactivating the connection everytime the screen goes off uses more juice because your radio has to search for the signal hundreds of times as compared to not having it in the first place. Screebl is good if you dont want your screen to annoyingly turn off while youre doing something but it surely doesnt save battery life. Task killers are a no no for android. They kill tasks which start up anyways, its better to use autokiller memory optimizer which tweaks androids internal memory settings and allows for more free ram without killing processes without reason.
System Apps:
Some system apps run uselessly in the background specially with stock ROM's this is called bloatware. Remove all unused system apps with titanium backup to stop them from running in the background for no reason at all.
A final word
Finally after all this tweaking, just use your phone as normal. Dont worry about the battery all the time checking how much its drained, itll mess your head up and make you enjoy your phone less. Battery temperature also changes battery life. Keep your phone out of the sun or in hot places.
Thanks, good article.
Very detailed and useful
Sent from my Milestone XT720 using XDA App
Thanks for this interessting article!
Could you make a list of the bloatware that can be safely removed?
I figured this would just list all the usual stuff I've heard. I'm glad to say I was wrong! A bunch of useful info here I now plan to put to use. Many thanks
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...
Thanks guys, glad you people found it useful.
syrenz said:
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes! Can't believe I missed that one out. In the start id use the lowest brightness setting, which would be fine indoors. But outside it was impossible to see the phone because of its insanely reflective glass. Since we have an ambient light sensor I use it on automatic and it does a good job. Full bright strains my eyes abit thats why I dont keep it on full bright So for people really wanting to save the juice you can keep your brightness on the lowest level. Also when you take the phone out of your pocket and use it, its better to put the phone to sleep with the power button than let it timeout by itself. Those 10-15 seconds for each time you use phone count towards many minutes of unused display time in the end and does make a difference.
This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...
androidlover123 said:
This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Using your phone while charging does not affect your battery life, and is neither good nor bad. It is perfectly normal to use your phone while charging and is sometimes recommended while doing battery intensive tasks for example navigating while driving, wifi tethering, playing memory intensive games and finally outputing video through HDMI.
2. Overcharging was a phenomenom is older lithium ion battery. New batteries have bypass circuits. So when your phone reaches complete charge, it does not charge any further. So you should not be worried about overcharging your XT720.
Hope this helps.
Excelent article and good quality info. Thanks and best regards!
awesome article! Great information. Thanks a lot for putting that together. I have already started using a few of the tips mentioned.
u da maaan dude, thanks for a very detailed and informative article

[Howto]Tips n tricks for better battery life

Since we have better battery life on Android r169 version thanks to our devs i'm going to post tips n tricks for a even better battery life
1. Use "GSM auto (PRL) to save more juice while still connecting through 3G
- in the phone setting>wireless and network>MobileNetwork>NetworkMode
we are only allow to choose GSM only/ WCDMA / Auto between two
- but if you use type "*#*#4636#*#*" to phone Information, you can choose more type of networkmode. It is claimed that choose "GSM auto (PRL)" allow you to save more battery (cell standby) while allow you to connect to 3G network.
-there is one more setting which you can change:click settings(windows logo)>select radio band and change it according to your needs
- Please provide feedback on this. Thanks
2. Use AutoKiller Memory Optimizer
- This tool is different from other app killer
- It fine tunes android systems inner memory manager to keep your device fast over time.
- As a side effect it also lowers battery consumption.
- At certain free memory level (e.g. 250mb), the android os will automatically close those apps not in use (according to original android os logic)
3.Use Autostart
- Instead of closing them, it would be better if we don't let the app start from the begining
- You can choose to disable those app that u feel unnessary, so that they will not run during your phone startup
4. Check your Battery Consumption
- Download "Current Widget" or "battery monitoring widget" from market
- these apps will monitor your battery usage and recoded in a log file
- This is the normal consumption rate (varied across ROM, kernel and CPUI frequency and other factors)
credits:XDA
to be continued....
Tips
General Lithium-Ion Battery (LIB) Usage:
• Discharging your LIB fully (or less than 2.4 Volt per cell) is bad for the battery. Every time you do that, it can be said that small part of your battery (some cells) dies (they forever lose their charge). Do not store your batteries depleted, there's a high chance they will die completely or will become very "weak".
• You cannot restore bad LIBs by overloading/heating/praying. You gotta go buy a new one. They DO degrade overtime, some cells naturally lose the ability to gain/give electricity.
• Although it is said that LIBs do not have memory, it's not entirely true. LIBs have gauges that monitor performance of cells, and if you do a lot of small charges, it won't let those gauges to monitor a full battery potential, causing an invalid indication of charge level. A complete charge/discharge should be made when battery capacity seems reduced, that will calibrate gauges and they will provide your phone with correct charge level status. A full charge/discharge cycle should be done every 30 (or so) partial charges.
• LIBs have a shelf-life. Do not buy them to store them. Use them early, use them often, they will die whether you use them or not. Do not buy LIBs to use them in 6 months/year/etc, buy them right before actually using them.
• LIBs have short lives (in comparison to NiCa batteries, etc). You should expect to buy a new battery in 2-3 years after being manufactured. It is caused by internal oxidation and there's nothing you can do to stop or prevent that.
• Worst LIB treatment is to keep it at 100% charge level at high temperature (think laptop/phone under direct sunlight, like car dashboard).
• Best LIB treatment, or LIBs "favorite" charge level - 40%. That's also the usual charge level you buy them with.
• LIBs don't like heat. For example, while always at 100%, typical LIB in a laptop, at temperatures of 25C (77F) will lose 20% (twenty percent!) of full capacity per year. That capacity loss is reduced to 6% (six percent) at 0C (32F), and increased to 35% loss at 40C (104F). So, keep them cool (LIBs like fridges), don't let your devices sit in the sun or overheat at charge. Also, keep in mind that while in use, battery will be significantly hotter than phone/outside environment.
• LIBs like frequent partial charges/discharges more than they like full charges/discharges.
General Android power usage advice from google:
• Although this part is somewhat controversial, they do recommend having a complete, full FIRST charge to be made. If time allows, a preferred time for the first charge is 12 hours. This may have more to do with the OS than the battery.
• Battery on a Android device, in average, will last about a full day with normal use (some videos, mail, calls). That's what you should kind-of expect.
• Speaking in averages, "idling" 3G/EDGE connection (when phone is sleeping and no data is transferred through 3G), drains almost no energy. Just a little more than having 3G/EDGE radio off completely. So when no apps are using 3G, you don't need to keep it off.
• Same goes to WiFi connection - although it's on, if there is no data flowing through it, it uses almost no energy.
• At full throughput (100% data flow), EDGE is using more energy than 3G. In average, 3G is more energy-efficient than EDGE.
• WiFi is using more energy than 3G (when both are at 100% use), but since it transfers files much faster and then goes to "sleep", it's actually recommended to use WiFi whenever possible. Since it'll "sleep" more often than 3G, overall it will use much less battery than using 3G.
• Some bad apps or widgets can use android's "WakeLock", keeping CPU at 100%, screen always-on, or both. I myself have encountered such widget (I won't mention the name, it's in the market) that used a WakeLock to keep CPU spun-up at 100% all the time. That makes a huge impact on battery life. My advice - use a CPU profiling app to monitor the CPU - make sure that CPU slows down by itself when it's not used. So, beware of such widgets/apps. To check for CPU cycles, many recommend OSMonitor (free from market, install it, go to options, sort by "Load" in descending order. It'll give you "busiest" processes at the top). At rest you should be getting about 10-20% for OSMonitor itself, and 1-10% Android System. At rest, everything else should be 0-1%.
• Android slows down CPU when not in use by itself, as a built-in feature. Apps that throttle/change CPU frequency, are not necessarily needed.
Sources:
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
BatteryUniversity - http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
Google IO Conference 2009 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUemfrKe65c
Electropaedia - http://www.mpoweruk.com/life.htm
this one too
this is very useful information, thx a lot!
Sorry Tzacapaca, but I do not understand where I have to type the code in order to have access to other network modes
Could you clarify?
THX
doublej4473 said:
Sorry Tzacapaca, but I do not understand where I have to type the code in order to have access to other network modes
Could you clarify?
THX
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Call this number with the phone dialer
Very good summary, thanks
I will definitely come back to read again and try in this way extend battery life.
Thnx, great tips to read !
Standard battery Capacity: 1200 mAh
HTC HD Mini have a standard battery Capacity: 1200 mAh.
When the battery loses capacity and you want to replace it, consider that there are batteries in the market for the HTC HD Mini with 1700 mAh Capacity, which would be logical to give a day or two extra pleasure
15MA1L said:
HTC HD Mini have a standard battery Capacity: 1200 mAh.
When the battery loses capacity and you want to replace it, consider that there are batteries in the market for the HTC HD Mini with 1700 mAh Capacity, which would be logical to give a day or two extra pleasure
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I still like and need my phone so I wouldn't trust those batteries
I would better get an emergency recharge which can charge my phone on the go
Edit: here is one http://www.phonesuit.com/primo-cube-battery-pack-for-android-phones/
hi how do i send a log to show my battery level? its draining way to fast,temperature is 38.8 is that normal?
with the battery moniter widget temperature is fluctuating from 35.5 to 38,stabilising to just over 35.0,also says 190mA in top left for battery indicater
BATFINK74 said:
hi how do i send a log to show my battery level? its draining way to fast,temperature is 38.8 is that normal?
with the battery moniter widget temperature is fluctuating from 35.5 to 38,stabilising to just over 35.0,also says 190mA in top left for battery indicater
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
download current widget and enable log file,right now i have 32.5 C on 100% battery level
tzacapaca said:
download current widget and enable log file,right now i have 32.5 C on 100% battery level
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks dude,can i post log file results here?
BATFINK74 said:
thanks dude,can i post log file results here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sure
...
battery history
hi heres my battery history,is there any clue in here as to why its draining so fast?
also upload current widget log
BATFINK74 said:
hi heres my battery history,is there any clue in here as to why its draining so fast?
also upload current widget log
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi,tell me around when phone was in standby so i can figure out
anyway so far it looks bad :O
also i have some Q's :
do you have set brightness on auto in Android or on WM?
is it a fresh install of Android?
did you install apps after that?if yes,which?
do you have GPS on on droid or on wm?
With "CurrentWidget" you can also log applications which are running on background. Then it should be easier to find out cause of battery drain. Also don't forget to write about your current settings ...
tzacapaca said:
hi,tell me around when phone was in standby so i can figure out
anyway so far it looks bad :O
also i have some Q's :
do you have set brightness on auto in Android or on WM?
is it a fresh install of Android?
did you install apps after that?if yes,which?
do you have GPS on on droid or on wm?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi thanks for replying
i have brightness turned down in android,havent touched in winmo
yes its a fresh install
iv installed angry birds rio,a 3d game,zedge,ebay and sky sports apps from market place
gprs is always on in both
my device is currently in sleep mode,will upload a fresh log to show results for sleep mode
For the nexus s 4G , just put brightness on low and turn of background data
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App

[HOW-TO] Battery saving tips

As some of you have been complaining about your Infinity's poor battery life, I thought we should start a thread on getting more out of its battery. I invite you all to share your experiences, hopefully we could come to sth helpful together.
Perhaps when the development's carried on further by more XDA developers, we can split this to stock ROM and custom ROMs, as probably the latter will have more of these already included.
1. Arguably full charge and discharge does nothing good on modern Li-Ion batteries and it's rather advisable to keep it balanced - discharge a little, don't push it with charging all the time (however in case of the Infinity, as with many other devices, the charger will just stop consuming energy after [almost] fully charging your device). There is one reason for doing a few full discharges and charges however - so that the battery monitoring apps/widgets can learn more about your battery's life and power consumption.
2. Monitor your battery life and monitor it wisely (don't use power-consuming apps and widgets). I personally like Battery Monitor Widget, as it gives you mA and % / hour (either drain or charge), which is pretty cool, as you can see how much your usage exhausts your battery in real time. This way I've found out that switching the WiFi off while reading books actually gives me battery drain closer to 10%/h than 15%/h etc. You can see some other in this apps thread. Try different apps and see what fits you best. Don't rely on system battery usage stats, see what other apps show us and what apps and processes drain the most of your battery, show most wakelocks, etc.
3. Use as low power mode as you need (administered most easily through ASUS/Android notification bar on the bottom of your screen). There are three power modes:
power-saving (keeps your CPU at 1 GHz according to some apps, 500 MHz according to others) <- can give you up to 2 additional hours
balanced (keeps your CPU at 1,5 GHz)
normal / performance (keeps your CPU at the highest speed - in stock kernel 1,7 GHz for the 1st core and 1,6 for the others)
You have to try these for yourself. Most games run well on balanced, but may sometimes need the performance mode (keep in mind that overheating your CPU and GPU may cause the clocks to actually slow down). You may also find yourself happy with the power-saving mode, which really helps your battery to last longer, but I've noticed issues with some apps while running it (problems with pdf rendering, for example), as it probably changes more than just the CPU clock speed, but also the system behaviour. I hardly ever leave the balanced mode, mostly when curious about benchmark results
There are also different CPU governors in Android/Linux kernel, which you can change if you are rooted, but perhaps leaving the default "interactive" one on should serve you well (you can also try "conservative", but it has been argued it doesn't save your battery so well in the long run).
(if rooted) You can also use CPU management apps like SetCPU, create your custom profiles or use the default ones according to your needs (for example ).
4. In ASUS setttings switch on both power-saving options at the very bottom of the list (WiFi and dock deep sleep [the former is the same as choosing "never" in WiFi advanced settings]).
5. Keep the screen brightness as low, as you can. It's better to adjust it manually through the notifications bar or a widget than to switch auto-brightness on (some recommend LUX app, personally I had problems with it trying to outsmart me when I was doing some manual changes). I like to keep it around 30-40% indoors during the day and 0-10% at night.
6. Switch WiFi off when you don't need it, unless you need it on constantly.
For me, it sometimes also helps organise my work too, when I don't get constant notifications or when I'm not eager to browse the web all the time, when just reading something and taking notes.
7a) (if rooted) Make your device fall into really deep sleep...
Add these to your build.prop file (see the thread on tweaking):
ro.ril.disable.power.collapse=0
pm.sleep_mode=1
7b) ...and make it scan for available WiFi networks less often, for example every 180 seconds (same as above):
wifi.supplicant_scan_interval=180
8. (if rooted) Switch off all the apps you don't need that auto-start on boot with a program like System Tuner.
(f not rooted) Use auto-killer for the apps you don't need (if rooted you can do the above two together as well).
You can also deactivate unused apps (settings -> apps -> [select app] -> deactivate). Remove bloatware, too (see the first few posts).
9. Adjust your minfree values, so the low level system task killer will take care of the apps running in the background for you (see the thread on tweaking). You can try with different settings and see what's better for you. Some apps drain your battery life even when you don't use them, while others don't and it's better to leave them in the memory than run them all over again every time. Do some tests and see what's best for you, if you have time for it.
10. Switch auto-syncing apps to lower values when possible (sometimes PUSH is better, sometimes worse for your battery life).
11. Keep it simple. Too many funky animations, floating wallpapers, lots of nice widgets will make your battery drain really fast.
12. Try different custom launchers, you can set more UI behaviour rules in these (see this apps thread).
13. Use a dark wallpaper and dark themes / night reading modes (see why).
​
PS JuiceDefender reported to having disabled deep sleep, so stay away if possible.
Hotmail app has been said to trigger wakelocks, while overriding system wifi sleep when screen is off, so keep that in mind if you want better battery life over constant e-mail syncing.
Hit [THANKS] if it helps.
First of all, thanks to d14b0ll0s for yet another great write up. I am one of those concerned with the battery life of the Infinity. Though some review says it got up to 9-9.5 hours with BALANCED mode I believe is the mistake. By using Power save mode, I think we can potentially get to that level but still hard.
My system is NOT rooted, but I have noticed significant change in my battery life so far with following:
1. Balanced Mode to Power Save mode.
This gets me like extra 2 hours or so. WIthout this change, 5-6 hours for my usage and with this it goes up to 7-8 hours screen time.
2. Under Wi-Fi Setting change Use wifi during sleep mode (mine is in Japanese so exact wording may be different) to never. Default setting was always. Prior to this change, I lost quite bit overnight unplugged; however, after the change it loses negligible amount.
Now rather than these, I am trying to play around with Juice Defender, which was recommended by d14b0ll0s in best application list he created. I have initially downloaded Juice Defender Free edition, and noticed may be minimal gain over #1&#2 already instituted. But concept was great. So I ended up purchasing Ultimate edition, which allows us to control when to turn of WIFI per individual application based without Root i.e. while reading PDF I don't think I need WIFI connection.
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=juice+defender&c=apps.
I am still tweaking and playing with Juice Defender, but I am certain without change in #1,#2 (which are actually taken care by Juice Defender in its own way), I can gain same battery life and my hope/guess is I can get even more battery life.
So in conclusion, for those not rooted try Juice Defender (at least free version). I will let you all know how the ultimate version does in next couple days.
Thanks for this! ^^ Post 1 updated.
Have you noticed what power-saving mode changes apart from CPU (& GPU?) clock speed? Does it change auto-sync settings or unload some modules? I'm not using it, as it is too slow for me to render big pdfs consisting of scanned jpgs. But when I'm reading them with WiFi off on balanced, I normally get 9.9% drain per hour according to Battery Monitor Widget, which even with some other things that I do from time to time and some additional rendering when opening new files should give me about 9 hours on a single charge. Browsing over WiFi gives me about 7.
The Wi-Fi settings you mentioned are the same as WiFi power-saving settings on the bottom of ASUS setting list, but I've clarified that in post 1 now.
I'm happy JuiceDefender helped you, it's good to advertise it here. I'm adding the info about your post apart from the link to the list of apps.
Thanks
I would also add that it's good the deactivate unused apps/widgets (settings -> apps -> "select app" -> deactivate)
it's only possible for apps which cannot be uninstalled
Good point! ^ Added (-> p. 8).
Mine will be here this weekend.
Thanks d14b0ll0s
Look very useful! I'm about to try.
I think the standby time is awesome. Wifi off, power save mode enabled and left the tablet over night right after full charged battery w/o dock. After 10h still 100%.
Ali I Hagen said:
I think the standby time is awesome. Wifi off, power save mode enabled and left the tablet over night right after full charged battery w/o dock. After 10h still 100%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
#nice
The system measuring system isn't exact, and early on so are all the indicators, so don't rely on it too heavily. There may be a variance of 1-3% and a lot more in the usage indicators. Try different battery / apps widgets and compare the results.
Anyway, deep sleep is nice indeed. It normally drains about 0.2% (-0,5%) per hour, mine is now 98% after the night off the charger and responding to a few e-mails in bed
Thanks for the info, it's appreciated.
Antutu's Battery Saver worked great on my 101, I'm observing how it will regulate the power drain on my 700. Hopefully it will keep the back of the tab cool as well.
i think the problem is when you have wifi on!
Ali I Hagen said:
I think the standby time is awesome. Wifi off, power save mode enabled and left the tablet over night right after full charged battery w/o dock. After 10h still 100%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this is good when you have wifi off. however, when you have the wifi on, it shows 80% wifi and 20% screen consumed by battery. you can stop network access by disabling wifi from Asus customized settings and also in wifi setting, you can keep wifi on during sleep to NEVER. this helps a lot..
Stock battery (usage) stats are not relevant, use other battery apps or widgets for that.
I've heard good things about AnTuTu's bat.sav., but also that it doesn't let you have more insight into what it's actually doing, so JuiceDefender seems a better option in that matter.
d14b0ll0s:
Do you know the specific voltage setting / configurations coming out of the usb line?
Is it 16V and how does it distinguish between 16V and 5V on the single USB cable.
For example does the voltage cable go on different lines for 16V and 5V for the TF700?
Or is it 16/5V dual switchable on the same power cable?
I'm asking this is because there's interest to charge the tablet by using alternative methods such as mobile battery with 16V setting.
If so, then does a DC to USB cable be suffice for the job? Or is the cable wired differently as proprietary ASUS?
Thanks!
Sorry, I wouldn't know that. There some ppl here that are doing some testing with the batteries and hardware, perhaps the_kreature or MartyHulskemper could know something. You should post it as a thread in Q&A too.
Redefined301 said:
d14b0ll0s:
Do you know the specific voltage setting / configurations coming out of the usb line?
Is it 16V and how does it distinguish between 16V and 5V on the single USB cable.
For example does the voltage cable go on different lines for 16V and 5V for the TF700?
Or is it 16/5V dual switchable on the same power cable?
I'm asking this is because there's interest to charge the tablet by using alternative methods such as mobile battery with 16V setting.
If so, then does a DC to USB cable be suffice for the job? Or is the cable wired differently as proprietary ASUS?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, the charger gives 15V, not 16V. Avoid giving your tablet too much voltage as that can kill it...
Secondly, the included cable is a USB 3.0 cable and therefore has 5 extra pins (you can see them if you look straight into the USB plug). These extra pins are used to get 15V from the charger. I don't know exactly how that works, but I guess the tablet tells the charger it wants 15V over the power lines (same power lines as 5V) rather than the charger giving 15V over these extra pins (because that could be devastating to other USB 3.0 gadgets). This is why the tablet won't charge if you insert an old (USB 1.0 or 2.0) extension cable between the charger and the tablet.
Hey I'm running with wifi on during sleep and I seem to get great battery performance (2% loss over 11 hr standby). No build.pro tweaks so no deep asleep our anything like that. I'm wondering if anyone else has gotten similar performance?
I thought it was interesting because the results were the opposite on my tf300t, and my usage pattern hasn't changed much between the two devices.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T
watwat1234 said:
Hey I'm running with wifi on during sleep and I seem to get great battery performance (2% loss over 11 hr standby). No build.pro tweaks so no deep asleep our anything like that. I'm wondering if anyone else has gotten similar performance?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. Battery life on deep sleep with WLAN is great!
But I think the Infinity needs a lot of power while reading news, tapatalk, Reader HD..
Not more than 4 hours Screen On Time!
And that with balanced mode and 50% brightness.
Any problems with the fifth companion core?
PS: Is there an app which shows the activity of the different cores?
FAbi
Gesendet von meinem ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T mit Tapatalk 2
this is crazy, i got my tablet on monday, used it about 3-4 hours restoring all my apps and signing in to everything, and i havent used it much since but today, i'm still at 76%, havent plugged it in it or docked it. I also forgot to mention my dad played with it a bit also...prob about 1 hour

[GUIDE] Basics For A Better Battery

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*If you find this Guide Thread helpful, feel free to hit the "thanks" button below!​
Getting a full day out of your battery isn't something that should be fantasized over, but rather is absolutely attainable with most phone configurations. With following this [GUIDE] you should have no trouble getting more from your Atrix 2's battery life. I will outline several "usual suspects" and "battery butchering bandits" that some may already know of, and some that you might not have ever considered. However, if you try all of these it, may ruin your Android experience because you’ll be constantly fussing with your battery; that's not what this is for. These are ALL the tips/tricks I know. Even I don’t use all of them. Using just a few of these (possibly even one or two) should be enough that you notice an increase in your battery life. So, n00bs and more knowledgeable users can both benefit from this, and for the more resident members here, we've all seen the threads like, “Please help with my battery issue”, “Does undervolting save you battery life” or “Getting horrible battery life”, so this should help give everyone some great ways to improve upon your battery's performance and lifespan between charges.
First off, let me start by telling you all to be realistic. What I mean by that is this: You Atrix 2 is meant to be used! Your Atrix 2 is more than just a phone, it is a pocket-sized computer, an arcade full of your most favorite games, it is meant to be talked on, played with, downloaded to, uploaded from, tweaked/modded/themed/rom'd and everything else that you may desire! So, again, after reading and implementing some of (or all, if you're neurotic) the things I'll outline, hopefully this will alleviate some of the questions you may have as to why your battery performance isn't everything you anticipated it to be. Though, if you think you will get days out of your battery's life by following these suggestions, you're either not using your phone for anything other than holding down a stack of papers, or you're just not being realistic. Will these suggestions help give you more from your battery? Absolutely. I know this is all (well, mostly) very elementary in effort, but overall this WILL HELP you.​
*"There are many things to consider when thinking of your battery's performance, such as: Animation Speed. Polling For Notifications. GPS, WiFi scans, Overclocking. CPU/Ram Usage, Proper Sleep, Widgets, Brightness, 2G/3G/4G Data Usage, Call Time, Text Volume, just to name a few ~THESE are the things that really affect your battery life. The bottom line is, if you truly want to save battery you are going to have to get your hands dirty... there simply isn't a "one-click" (or one-flash) solution."​
*STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I cannot be held responsible for any and all damage related to Hardware loss or Data or Software, which the user might cause while attempting these procedures. Additionally, I am taking the liberty to assume that anyone who attempts these procedures understands the potential risks involved. Though, there should be no such issues to arise from following this guide, I am still exempting myself from any liability.
---For All Users (Rooting Not Required)---
​
1) Turn Off Your Radio(s) When Not Using Them:
Radios are what connect your phone to the rest of the world. You have your general mobile connection, WiFi, data/internet connection (3G), GPS, and/or 4G. Those are listed in order from least to greatest in battery consumption. If you’re not using the radio turn it off. If you know you won’t be online for a long time, why turn 3G data on? If you’re at home, use WiFi instead of 3G. If you’re not using Google Maps why is your GPS on? You’d be amazed at how much battery life you can save just by turning off the radios that you aren’t using.
2) Vibrate Uses More Battery:
Anytime your phone vibrates a lot of battery is used. This include haptic feedback. A lot of keyboards have the option to turn off haptic feedback and I would recommend it. If you’re a heavy texter you’ll notice very quickly how much longer your phone will last. Also, if you’re in a place where you can easily hear your phone why do you need to have vibrate enabled? If you know you’ll be able to hear your phone there’s no reason for it to be buzzing too.
3) Don’t Use Task Killers:
Crazy, right? Android has it’s own task killer that’s actually very good. If programs are using too much memory your Android OS will kill it. A common misconception is that apps run in the background forever; this is not true. If an app is using too much memory (which links to battery life) it’ll be killed by your phone. That’s why if you play a game, check a message, and come back the game is still running. It’s memory usage isn’t that high. However if you put your phone down, walk away for an hour, and the game is still trying to run in the background, there’s a good chance it will be closed before you come back. Separate task managers have to constantly be running in the background which can actually use more battery than it saves. Yes, task managers can use more battery than claim to save.
4. Power Cycling:
Not sure about the real effectiveness of this charging policy, but some users have tried it and have claimed to have had good results from it. So, to begin with the phone in the on position, fully charge the battery with the phone on. Once your Atrix 2 is fully charged, unplug the charger until the led goes off. After the led goes off, plug the charger back in. When the led turns green , power off the phone. Now, with the phone fully powered off, 1) Unplug the charger. 2) Wait until led goes off. 3) Plug charger back in until the led turns green. When it turns green, unplug the charger again and go to step 1). Repeat steps 1) and 3), 10 times. This may take anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes per cycle. Typically only about 1 minute though. It takes too much work for me, but I’ve done it once just to test it.
5) Don’t Use Live Wallpapers:
They look awesome, right? They also use a lot of battery (especially the more complex ones). We’ve all used live wallpapers to show off how cool our phones can be, but for daily use they can KILL your battery. Also, your animations will be a factor in diminished battery life expectancy. To adjust this, simply navigate to: Settings>Display>Animations>set to "Off or Medium". #1 when it comes to what is eating your battery, is your display. It always has been and always will be, so accept it and try to do something about it. If you don't believe me, go to your Settings>Battery> and see just how much percentages the screen takes up. But, you want to do something about this, right? This part is easy. Just lower the brightness. You can set it to a brightness that is low but you are still able to see well enough to function. Live Wallpapers fall into this category. They are cool to look at but static ones take up less RAM and also less display because they are not running all the time in the background. These screens are very bright at 100%, so tone it down.
6) Watch Your Applications:
You have to pay attention to your applications. I repeat. You have to pay attention to your apps! Especially if they run in the background. This can be anything from a harmless .99¢ game to a monster like a Live Wallpaper. The battery drain threat is twofold here because the application is running in the background but it could also be using its anonymous data collection abilities and sending that back to the Mother ship. Ever wonder why your signal bars in the status bar have arrows or other animations going back and forth when your phone is just sitting there? This is because some application is transmitting data, whether you are using it or not. There are apps in the market that monitor these situations like Watchdog Task Manager Lite or you can adjust app permissions like LBE Privacy Guard. Data transfer is #2 on the "What Kills My Battery" list.
7) Worthless Widgets:
They look cool. But widgets are nothing more than RAM and battery hungry monsters that you purposely put in your home screen. Think about it. What does a widget really do? All it really does is monitor an app that you have running. So not only is it running and taking up battery and RAM but the app that it is linked to is running in the background a la Facebook, Twitter, Google+, CNBC, MSNBC, BBC, …the list goes on and on because they want us to put THEM on our home page. What a great marketing campaign the widget is: "Hey, look at me new home screen!" "Cool. Hey what widget is that?" "Oh, it is (whatever widget)." "Nice, I’ll have to download that tonight when I get home." Right then and there, they have you and your battery. If you're serious about getting the very most out of your battery, get rid of the widgets. I know, they're hard to resist, but trust me, your Atrix 2 will be a better place if you want the most out of your battery.
8) Set Your Screen Timeout:
Some phones start with their screen timeout at 3 minutes or more. That’s completely unnecessary. While you don’t want it to be instant, you know your preferences. Set it to as low as you see fit. The sooner your screen goes off, the longer your battery life will last. I set my screen timeout to the lowest "never" -but, in doing so, every time I am done checking emails or sending a text, I kill the display with the power button to turn off the display. This takes some habitual conditioning, and if you're used to allowing your phone the responsibility of turning off the display for you, it might bode well for your battery capacity crusade to simply adjust this to the minimum. But, if if you're like me and like 'control' over your display, I recommend you still set the timeout to the lowest possible setting, in the event that you forget to manually shut the display off yourself. It's just good practice when going for battery life longevity.
9) The Charger, and What You Can Do Regarding it:
Using certain chargers causes a wakelock on your phone that prevents it from going into deep sleep. This can result in roughly 10% battery attrition, regardless of activity or screen on time. Before you try anything else, you should test each of your chargers and make sure they aren’t causing a wakelock. Though this shouldn't be of concern if you are using the stock wall charger that came when you purchased your Atrix 2, there are other aftermarket ones that you may not suspect as reasons to worry about charging your phone with. If you are not using the stock charger, and you suspect you may have a problem, or may be curious to find out: Install CPU Spy from the Play Store. Open the app to see how much time your phone spends in each CPU state. If Deep Sleep is a very small percentage, or Deep Sleep doesn’t even appear, you have a problem with your charger. Or, follow the method below to test each of your chargers:
Testing CPU Spy:
1) Plug your phone into the charger and turn the screen off. Leave it charging for about 30 seconds. (Don't do this with a fully charged phone, as I don't know how that affects the testing)
2) With the screen still off, unplug the phone from the charger.
3) Open CPU Spy, hit the menu button, and "Reset Timers". Turn the screen off.
4) Let the phone sit idle for a few minutes with the screen off.
5) Turn the phone back on and refresh the timers in CPU Spy (menu button again).
If Deep Sleep doesn’t appear in the list of CPU states, your phone is experiencing a wakelock brought on by the charger. It’s probably spent the majority of time at 192mhz or 384mhz. To further confirm this, leave your phone unplugged, restart it, leave the screen off for a few minutes, and then check CPU spy again. You should now see it going into Deep Sleep.​​
10) Your Camera Flash and Battery Don’t Get Along:
If you like using your camera LED for a flashlight realize that will absolutely MURDER your battery. In all seriousness, your flash uses battery more than any other process on your phone. Turn off the flash. Don't set it to "automatic", you should know when you will need it and when you will not. By setting it to "automatic" you're relying on the phone's light meter to determine if the flash is needed. Sometimes it is, and other times it isn't.
11) Low Cell Signal Hurts Battery
Your phone is always searching for a stronger signal…This process gets more hectic as the cell signal goes down. So if you’re at one bar your phone’s battery life will drop faster than if you’ve got full coverage. There’s not much you can do here, but if you’re in a place where your phone has little to no signal anyway, you probably won’t be making calls so you might want to just turn on airplane mode or your phone off. And with Airplane Mode, you can toggle the airplane mode on/off 3 times in a row, that will reduce your Cell Standby battery usage. It should only be necessary to do it once after flashing but if you think Cell Standby uses too much power at some stage, you could toggle again the airplane mode 3 times. This is a handy little trick, not well known, but should give you some relief with Cell Standby usage. I travel for my job, which means that at times, I do not get good reception, or bounce around between Edge/3G/4G, and each time that happens, your Atrix 2 is sucking more juice by trying to find a good signal. If you are not in a static network, meaning one that is either 3G/4G at any given time, without locating off-network tower connections, turn your radio off or switch to Airplane Mode.
12) Speaking Of Syncing…:
Check your settings to see what is syncing and when. You probably have things syncing you don’t even use (stocks, news, contacts, etc). You can turn those off and edit the other ones. I don’t need my contacts’ statuses every hour, so my facebook sync is scheduled for once a day rather than the old once an hour. Find out what you need and how often you want it, and turn the rest off. I know you are very important and you need to know what LeBron James is doing right now, or that you need to upload a picture of you and your girlfriend every time you two are at a party, drinking beer. That is fine and I applaud you for it, and will probably download the picture and Photoshop myself in your place. This is not the problem. Syncing your accounts is. That is what is causing battery drain. Do you really need to have your FB widget (see widgets section) streaming all day long? I doubt it. Kill it (not LeBron, but rather the auto-syncing). Every time you “friend” someone their numbers, contact info gets sync’d to your phone. Also, there are settings in Facebook, Twitter and Google+ that you can upload pictures instantly. Don’t do that. Once you do, it is out in the Ether-World and just swallowed a bunch of battery doing it too. Settings>Accounts and Sync>Auto-sync>uncheck it
13) Don’t Use GPS Unless You Have To:
Some apps give you the option to precisely determine your position using GPS, or make a general estimate (usually within 100 meters) based on WiFi or 3G data. While this isn’t always the best (like if you’re driving or getting navigated), try to use the 3G connection when it doesn’t really matter. The data radio uses far less battery than GPS.
14) We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat, erm... I Mean Battery:
If still not completely convinced that you have have stellar performance from your stock Atrix 2 battery, you can always check out the Atrix 2 Accessories threads for suggestions and/or discussions on extended capacity batteries. I've never used one myself, but don't see as to why this wouldn't certainly add to your life expectancy of your battery -assuming you're choosing foregoing the suggestions above, and simply insist on having your widgets and eating them to -or your battery, for that matter. Nonetheless, there are several manufacturers that supply an aftermarket extended capacity battery for the Atrix 2, just use your pal Google to help you find one.
​
---For All Users (*Rooting Required)---
​
*FOR ROOT USERS: If you’ve rooted your phone you have a few more options. You don’t gain too many more options, but they are even more effective than the ones listed above.
Underclock Your Phone:
Just like SetCPU can overclock your phone, it can underclock it as well. Set it to underclock when the phone is sleeping or even lower the max clocking speed. This will give your CPU's scaling frequencies a lower "resting" point, and will not allow the load of the CPU to be any higher than the maximum setting you permit. I know everyone who likes to get their hands into the belly of their Atrix 2 and start tweaking it loves the idea of overclocking, but c'mon, you don't have to run your CPU at 1.3GHz all day, everyday. Scale that baby down when you don't require such a high CPU load, and trust me, your CPU and your battery will thank you. Also, along with underclocking your CPU, you can undervolt as well. This will allow (after some testing you'll need to do first to make sure you're not undervolted too low for stable CPU loads) for your Atrix 2 to run at a lower voltage consumption, and with these types of settings, you can allow your Atrix 2 to run at your desired CPU frequency scaling, but a slightly lower voltage rate. *Note: As aforementioned, some testing is required for this to be effective with both your CPU's table values, as well as how it may improve your battery's life. Also, please reference This Thread for the latest kernel/module overclocking and undervolting methods.
Wakelocks That Destroy Your Battery Life:
If you're not familiar with wakelocks, they're basically processes that run on your phone that prevent it from going into deep sleep. Deep sleep is the mode your phone should go into when you're not using it so that it can conserve battery. Some wakelocks are intentional, while others can be the result of rogue apps or system processes. If you're trying to maximize your battery life, you know this already. Some wakelocks are happy, friendly things, but many are silent leeches, sucking away your battery life while you remain blissfully unaware of what's happening. First off, you have to understand the difference between kernel wakelocks (KWL) and partial wakelocks (PWL). KWLs are wakelocks caused at the kernel or hardware level. Some of these are benign, and some of them are vampires. The only way to solve them is to change how your phone behaves. To effectively find your wakelocks, you'll need Better battery Stats It's free to us XDA users. You can get it IN THIS THREAD. More on wakelocks can be found in the post below.
Use SetCPU:
Create a special profile that forces the device to run at low clock speeds when the display is off.
Go to profiles
Check Enable
Press Add Profile
Set the following:
Condition: Screen Off
Max: 600MHz Max
Min: 300MHz Min
Governor: ondemand
Priority: 50
Press Save
On the Main tab make sure you have
Max: 1000MHz
Min: 300MHz
Governor: ondemand
Scheduler: deadline
Clean Out the Bloat:
Some of the bloatware and unnecessary applications on our Atrix 2's can drain battery. I really recommend you freeze the applications by using Root Freezer and run your Atrix 2 for a few days after you have frozen an unwanted application, and certainly before you decide to uninstall. This way you won’t accidentally uninstall something your phone needs to remain stable. Albeit, most of the custom roms that you will see here are already "de-bloated", if you're new to rooting and Android, and haven't quite decided that taking the next jump to flashing roms is for you, use Root Freezer to "freeze" applications that you suspect are bloat, until you decide to run a de-bloated ROM -and you will, eventually...
The Stock ROM Sucks:
If you’re still unrooted and on stock Gingerbread, I feel sorry for you. What the heck are you doing on this forum if you’re scared to flash a new ROM? This guide would be way too long if I tried to explain the battery improvements you might see by stepping up to the Stock ICS leak. You’ll probably see even more improvement if you flash one of the many custom ROMs in the Development section. If you’re dedicated to getting the most out of your phone, spend a weekend reading the ever-loving crap out of the stickies in the Development forum, and the [ROM] threads. Only after you have read those threads and feel like you have a good understanding, backup your phone and flash a new ROM on it. As long as you’ve backed up properly, you can flash between several ROMs and choose the one that works best for you. If you have any questions about the ROM you’re trying to flash, ask in that ROM's specific thread, don’t start out by creating a new thread in the General Section. You did do a search first, right?
Lost DIR Liability:
Let's say that you have your phone plugged into your PC and for some reason you, in a fit of rage, jerk the plug out without unmounting it first. This creates a file that is put into your LOST DIR folder on your SD card. Anytime you don't safely unmount the SD card, it will create a file in that folder. In the scheme of the SD card, it isn't too much, but I don't like having useless items free floating about. Clear them out using Root Explorer or a like Root File Explorer, and this will free up some (depending on how many times this has been done) valuable memory real estate.
Tombstones:
So you are downloading an update from the market and for some reason your phone freezes and the Force Close-Retry-Wait doesn't work out for you. You have to do a battery pull. Frustrating I know and the memory takes a hit too. Every time you have to do a battery pull because of a freeze up or something of the like, it creates a TOMBSTONE file in /data. These are useless and can be deleted. If you are flashing ROMs and are constantly having to do battery pulls b/c market crashes or an app freezes, then you are creating a Tombstone file. Here is where your file manager (with root) will help. Go into /data and scroll all the way to the bottom and open /tombstone. There should be some files in there and depending on how many there are, I could be a nice chunk of wasted memory. Just select all and delete. They are not needed. Your internal memory should go up by doing this.
Lost & Found:
Same scenario, but now go into /data/ cache or /cache and you'll see Dalvik Cache (don’t mess with this), Lost & Found and Recovery. If you tried to download an app and it got frozen for some reason and had to do a battery pull, the apk will be free floating in there, uninstalled (free floating radical). You can delete this. While it isn't in the Dalvik Cache folder, it is taking up space. Once you are able to download something completely and correctly from the market, it will populate into Dalvik Cache correctly and won't be a free radical, as I like to say.​
---For All Users (Miscellaneous)---​​​​​​
Some More Memory Clearing Tips:
Home Launcher:
If you have a 3rd party home launcher, see if it has the ability to long-press an icon to take you to its screen in the Manage Apps section. I use ADWex and if you long-press on say Market, it takes me to the same place as is I were to go to Settings>Applications>Manage Apps>Market. Instead of all that, just long-press on the icon and BAM! it takes you there. Here you can clear out your cache for the market or delete the data (if you need to do that). Or clear the cache of the XDA app because you looked at too many posts with pictures, etc.
Browsers:
These develop cache that takes up memory and space, especially the stock browser. If you use a 3rd party, you can get the settings to clear cache, cookies, passwords,…on exit. I use Dolphin, but I am pretty sure that most have something like this on them. (side note: most 3rd party browsers once exited will not run in the background unlike the stock one)
Media:
So you download a bunch of mp3's from the internet or you've clicked on some pix and saved them to your SD card. Or maybe you just felt like wiping your card and having a fresh start. Every time you reboot, you phone will scan media. No big deal, but the more you criss-cross things from PC to phone and back again, it can create a bunch of double files in your media cache on the phone. With the proper placement of .nomedia files (this prevents your media scanner from doing just that, scanning media- i.e. pix, jpegs,…Don’t place a .nomedia in your music, album art or DCIM files**bad). Every once in a while, I'll hit the Diskusage or go to Manage apps and clear the media cache. Then I got to my file manager and the DCIM->Thumbs and delete the thumbnails files (should be 2). Unmount the SD card and remount to start the media scan, pull up the Gallery and wait for the thumbs to come back (depending on how many you have, this could take awhile). By doing this you can get almost 5 mb back if you have a bunch of double scans in your media folder.​
Applications That Use Advertisements:
Try to avoid ad-supported applications, if you can. A research showed that in apps where there is adds, 70% of the power use comes from downloading and managing those adds to your screen. With just a 30 second use of an application that uses ads, it might drain your fully charged battery anywhere from 0.35% to 0.70%, which is enough to completely discharge the battery within a couple of hours if the process is repeated. This, according to a team of researchers, show that applications using advertisement support can take a high toll on your Android smartphone’s battery. The researchers analyzed how Android apps use the battery and concluded that the ad-serving processes that run in the background are responsible for heavy battery drainage. This may not seem like much, but so many applications that are free utilize advertisements and are blasted about the bottom or top of your application. I know I'll likely get ostracized for mentioning this, at least by some of the developers who rely on ad-support within their applications, but there is a way to eliminate these ads from showing themselves in your application(s). This is for BOTH rooted and un-rooted devices, as there are applications available from Google Play Store, such as AdFree Android (for ROOTED users only) or you can find one that will work on a non-rooted device. Or better yet, you could pony up the nominal dollar or two and show your own support for your favorite applications by buying the paid version, and thus eliminating the ads in that manner.​
*I will be updating this OP as I see necessary, and if anyone has useful tips that I may have missed or overlooked, please let me know. I'm aware that there are threads of this capacity floating about through XDA, but I have taken the liberty to create on specifically for our community.
Credits & Big Thanks To: Woodrube
Wakelocks Explained
Two final notes before I get started with the Wakelock Portion of this guide: Do not go wakelock hunting right after installing a new ROM or clean-wipe reinstalling your current one. New ROMs cause the phone to go nuts for a little while, as things decache and little behind-the-scenes tweaks are made. Wait one full battery cycle (100% to 0%, which you're probably doing to calibrate after a clean ROM install anyway) before trying this, or you'll drive yourself nuts. Also, remember that solving one wakelock will often create another, especially early in this process. That's normal and to be expected. God does not hate you, your ROM of choice is not crap, your phone is not glitched, and a clean install while your current ROM is still settling in will only make things worse.
So, how do you track these wakelocks down with BBS? This is a really complicated procedure, so make sure you're with me. First, open BBS. Then, see the drop down menu at the top that probably says "Other" right now? Tap it, and then you'll see "Kernel Wakelocks" and "Partial Wakelocks" below. That was obscenely difficult, right?
There are a couple of other features of BBS that we'll make extensive use of later, but there's one you need to know right now. Tap your phone's menu button to get the BBS menu up. Tap on "More". See the button that says "Set Custom Ref."? You'll need it--you'll need it a lot.
Last, but certainly not least: modifying your system in any way, including altering or deleting processes needed to resolve wakelocks, can have unpredictable results. Use caution and make backups of your apps and data, as well as nandroid backups, frequently while finding and eliminating wakelocks. Any modifications you make are done at your own risk, and I assume no responsibility for any damage you may do to your phone while cleaning out wakelocks.
With that said, we'll get started with the KWLs, as they're the trickiest to get rid of. Use the guide below to identify your wakelock, what is causing it, and how to get rid of it.
KERNEL WAKELOCKS
wlan_rx, wlan_rx_wake, wlan_wake: This is a wakelock caused by network traffic. The easy solution would be to just turn off Wifi, but be careful doing so! If an app goes to sync and it sees that Wifi is off, it will search for a mobile data connection (which causes the ConnectivityService wakelock). If it can't find a mobile data connection, it will wait and search again at its next sync interval and/or automatically sync when the phone wakes up. This wakelock can also, deceptively, be caused by the Wifi network itself as it refreshes connections or refreshes IPs.
To fix: This is a tricky little sucker to fix, as there are so many possible causes for it. Airplane mode is a safe bet--syncing apps seem to "respect" airplane mode, whereas if Wifi alone is turned off, they'll just try to find a way around. But then, of course, you lose your ability to talk on the phone. If you're particularly unlucky, your Wifi network itself will be the problem.
PowerManagerService: This is probably your #1 or #2 kernel wakelock, and you'd probably love to get rid of it at all costs, right? Hate to say it, but there's not much that can be done about this one. PowerManagerService is a KWL that serves as a "catch-all" for your PWLs. It's a placeholder, nothing more, nothing less. Don't spend much time worrying about it.
To fix: Reduce PWLs. See below.
deleted_wake_locks: Remember what I said above about force-stopping an app and deleting its cache and data before uninstalling it? This wakelock is why. It's the PowerManagerService for deleted apps. Once the app is gone, the wakelocks it caused suddenly become unknown to the system, so they get lumped in here. This number can also go up as the system "looks for" deleted apps and/or finds more wakelocks associated with them, but not dramatically.
To fix: Make sure to force close apps and wipe their cache and data before deleting. A reboot should eliminate the wakelock entirely. If it's still showing up, wipe phone cache and Dalvik.
sdio_al: This is an annoying wakelock, as there are two potential causes for it. One's easy, and one sucks. The easy one is that you've fallen victim to the charger wakelock. If your charger shows up as AC Regular Charge, there's your problem. If it's AC Fast Charge or USB Normal Charge, your wakelock is caused by your SD card. That can be an irritating fix, but the SD card version of this wakelock is typically small enough that it's not worth addressing.
To fix: Check your charger and adjust if needed. If it's the SD card, it's probably not a strong enough wakelock to be worth fixing, but if you want to fix it, you'll have to format your SD card. If formatting doesn't work, format it again, then wipe cache and Dalvik.
alarm_rtc: This is your phone's internal alarm scheduler, set to wake up your phone for sync, push, etc. Closely related to the AlarmManager PWL.
To fix: Check your apps and make sure they're only set to sync when you want them to, not for constant push or stupid-short intervals.
mmc0_detect, mmc1_detect, mmc2_detect: I'll be honest, I have no idea what causes these. Fortunately, they seem to be minimal, so I've never wasted much time worrying about them.
To fix: Good question!
vbus_present: This is a weird one. I never could quite figure out what causes it, but it seems like it's there as long as the phone's plugged it. Strange...
To fix: Check your phone. Is there a cord plugged into it? If so, does that cord lead to a source of power? Like, I don't know, an adapter plugged into a wall socket? That's your root cause. vbus_present is a completely harmless wakelock, which will appear for as long as your charger is plugged into your phone. Set a custom reference point in BBS when you unplug, and you'll note that it's magically disappeared.
There are a number of other, lesser KWLs that I'm not going to worry about here because you shouldn't worry about them either. You might occasionally see a battery cycle with very low (sub-1%) KWLs, but that's the exception and not at all the rule.
PARTIAL WAKELOCKS
PWLs are a different beast. These are almost all caused by an app (with a couple of notable exceptions). For that reason, I won't go in-depth on too many of them, as the solution is usually to delete the app causing them. There are a few notable ones, and a few apps that merit mention.
AudioOut_1: This is an evil leech of a wakelock that will drain you dry if given the chance. For being such a pain in the app, it's surprisingly easy to get rid of. This wakelock is created whenever the phone's speaker plays a sound. With 99% of sounds, it goes away almost instantly. With keypad sounds, however, it doesn't go away so quickly, and it will sit there draining your battery for as long as it goes unnoticed.
To fix: Open Settings, then select sound. Turn off key tone sounds, touch sounds, screen lock sounds and vibrate on screen tap. It'll take some getting used to, but the extra battery you'll coax out just by solving this ridiculously simple problem is more than worth it. See DoctorQMM's post (#5), linked at the end of this one, for info on additional causes of this wakelock and how to fix them.
ConnectivityService: This will appear whenever your phone is trying to connect to a mobile data network. Excessive wakelocking here suggests that your phone is having a hard time finding a network, and an even harder time staying on it.
To fix: Test out different radios and see if one's better in your area. If you're able to control your radio bands and you don't live in an LTE area, setting your phone to hunt for GSM/HSPA connections only can save you a little bit of juice here. Not much, but every drop counts, and if you're not using LTE anyway.
AlarmManager: This isn't a wakelock unto itself so much as it's a compilation of app alarms and the time they held the device awake for. Seeing the wakelock alone doesn't tell you much, but here's where one of those features of BBS that I said we'd be using comes in.
To fix: Open BBS. Tap the menu button, then "More", then "Raw Alarms". That will show you which apps are waking up your phone, and how often they're doing so. Google will have a ton of wake-ups, but they're mostly innocuous. We'll discuss some of Google's problem apps later. Email clients will also have a ton of alarms. If anything else looks out of whack, though, first check the app settings to see how often it's refreshing. If the app is set to refresh every hour but it's set off 400 alarms in the last 30 minutes, get rid of that sucker and email the dev. You can't eliminate this wakelock, and it's constantly my #1 PWL at this point, but you can minimize it.
MediaScannerService: This is a wakelock created by the system as it scans your device for music, movies, pictures, etc. Once in a while, it will randomly get hung up and hold the phone at 384 MHz for...well...until you notice and do something about it. Like AudioOut_1, this is a heavy-drain wakelock. Luckily, like AudioOut_1, it's almost always easy to fix.
To fix: Reboot. Ninety-nine times or so out of a hundred, this solves the problem. If the problem persists, go to Settings>Applications>Running then tap on "Show cached processes". Find the Media process and stop it manually to kill the wakelock. That's a short-term fix, though, as a persistent wakelock from this process most likely means you have a corrupt media file somewhere on your phone- and there are a lot of sounds, movies and images on your phone. This is one of the few wakelocks that, if it's a regular problem, justifies considering a full wipe and clean reinstall. That's not because it's doing any kind of damage to your phone, but more because sifting through every single media file on your phone to find the culprit isn't really a practical solution.
SyncLoopWakeLock: This is exactly what it sounds like; your phone is being held awake while apps sync. There are two possible causes for this: apps syncing (duh) and a bad data connection.
To fix: Open BBS. Tap the menu button, then "More", then "Raw Network Stats". This will show you which apps are using the most data, and help you narrow down possible culprits. Once you've done so, check those app settings and make sure they're not set to constantly push notifications, refresh every five minutes or anything dumb like that. If they're set correctly and still holding sync open that long, try downloading the Speed Test app off of the Play Store and test your phone's connection. If your connection is on the slow side, it's possible that the apps are struggling to sync because of your bad data connection. Try flashing different radios to see if that solves it. If the troublesome apps remain so after you've found a better radio, it's best to just delete or freeze them.
GTALK_ASYNC_CONN family: Despite its name, this wakelock doesn't seem to be directly related to Google Talk. How do I know? I haven't had Google Talk on this phone in over a month, but the wakelock still pops up from time to time. These wakelocks can be absolute destroyers of your battery if given the chance, and unfortunately, there's no known root cause for them, and no reliable way of eliminating them.
To fix: These wakelocks will often disappear within a minute or so of generating. If one becomes persistent, reboot into recovery and wipe cache and Dalvik ASAFP. That solves the problem temporarily, but it will reoccur. Thanks, Google.
NetworkLocationLocator: What a lovely name for such a lovely wakelock. It's a minor annoyance usually, nothing more. If this one is persistent, it's because you're in an area with crappy cell coverage and very few Google-mapped WiFi networks.
To fix: Why, exactly, are you leaving Network Location on all the time anyway?
SCREEN_FROZEN: Uh oh.
To fix: If this is high on your list, you've got bigger problems than a wakelock.
PWL OFFENDING APPS
We're almost done, I promise!
Down here, I'm going to list off for you apps that will cause you severe PWL migraines, and what to do about them.
A note when uninstalling Google built-ins: Google built-ins are often system packages, and deleting them can have unpredictable results. I highly recommend freezing them in Titanium Backup for several days to see how the phone runs before uninstalling them through there as well. Deleting system processes is inherently risky, and I assume no responsibility for your own decisions.
Facebook: Any social networking app will want to sync as often as it can, but you can overrule that by setting notification intervals. Thing is, Facebook doesn't respect those intervals, and wakes up the device for data exchanges pretty constantly (even though your news feed may only update every hour or so when you want it to). This app is no better than bloat, and should be treated as such when you clean house.
Alternative App: Friendcaster. It's as good a third-party Facebook client as you'll find on Android, and it only wakes up when you tell it to.
Gmail: A running theme here will be that if there's a non-Google equivalent to a Google app, you should probably kill the Google and download the alternative. Gmail is an alarm fiend, and one of the main offenders if you have an excessive SyncLoopWakeLock problem.
Alternative App: How many email clients are out there? I've had the best luck with the stock Email app, but K-9, Kaiten, MailDroid, even Enhanced Email and Touchdown for the power users are all great alternatives. Speaking of which...
Whatever email client you're using: Email clients will always be high up on the list of alarms, and that's by their nature. Keep an eye with raw network stats on how long they're connected for, and don't be afraid to experiment. I tried K-9, Kaiten and MailDroid before settling back on the stock Email app as the one that gave me the best balance of battery life and necessary features.
Alternative Apps: Download and try out different clients until you find the one that works for you. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
Google Latitude: Latitude is a tracking service. As such, it tracks you. Beyond the creepiness aspect of that, it holds your phone awake pretty often while doing so. Kill it. Kill it with fire.
Alternative App: Personally, I'm not into the whole stalking thing, but I've heard that Glympse works quite well.
Google Maps: Colossal waste of space and battery. You can do better. An important note on Google Maps: this app will still wake your device up even after being frozen in Titanium Backup. I don't know how it happens, but it does. To truly solve the alarms from Google Maps, you have no choice but to uninstall it. Do so at your own risk.
Alternative Apps: I'm a fan of Waze for navigation and MapQuest for a Google Maps-ish "browseable" interface. OSMAnd is also a great alternative, but it uses a ton of internal memory because of its offline nature.
Google Play Music & Movies: Updates itself constantly and wakelocks. Even if you freeze it, it still somehow manages to tell you that there's an update available. It's the Google zombie.
Alternative App: There are literally 100+ music and/or movie players out there. I'm sure you can find one that works for you. I'm a big fan of RocketPlayer for music, and I just use the stock video app more often than not.
JuiceDefender: What's that you say? JD sets off tons of alarms and holds the device awake for more time than I'd care to discuss, largely because of its data control settings. More harm than good, in my opinion.
Alternative Apps: JuiceDefender's main goal in life is to minimize the amount of time your device is held awake. Therefore, if you've just gone through all this to clear out wakelocks, do you really need another wakelock-prone app to do what you've already done?
Skype: Occasionally, after a call, Skype will wakelock. This is not designed to happen, and is more a glitch in the app than a forced sync. Force-stopping the app and clearing its cache have solved it for me on the rare occasion that I've seen the wakelock occur.
Alternative Apps: No idea. I don't personally consider this a "replace" situation.
That's the bulk of what I've learned from clearing out wakelocks. Remember how, early on, I specified that the search engine of your choice was the third tool? Simple fact is, I haven't installed every app on the planet, so I haven't seen every PWL out there. Because of the way my phone's set up, there are KWLs that I've never seen and never will. If you've got a pesky wakelock that won't go away and it's causing noticeable battery drain, Google (or Bing, or Ask.com, or whatever) is your friend. Good luck, happy hunting, and enjoy the extra battery life you'll get just by spending a few hours over the course of a few days tracking down and killing those wakelocks.
Credits & Big Thanks To: T.J. Bender
A Little Charging Trick
If, after rooting or more likely that case after flashing a new ROM, you often have battery reporting errors, and re-calibrating the battery along with some steps I will outline for you below will ensure that your battery is getting a full charge, and the battery reporting accuracy is right on. I run my device's CPU governor in performance mode all the time, and with a CPU overclock of 1.25GHz and various tweaks, I have about a day and a half - to a day and a quarter of full run time from my battery. This is with moderate usage (calls, emailing, text, gaming, web browsing, etc.) so you should have no problems getting acceptable battery performance after following these steps, coupled with the ones I've given in the OP:
1. Take the case off your Atrix 2 (one of the latter steps involves taking the battery out from the phone while it's plugged in. Make sure your case won't stand in the way.)
2. Install Battery Calibration app from the market
3. Plug in your Atrix 2 to charge while it's on, wait till it gets to a 100%
4. When the charge is 100%, open the BatteryCalibration app and lookup what the charge is in MV while at 100%. Write it down.
My Atrix 2 was showing ~3400MV while at 100%, which is definitely not the maximum capacity.
5. Discharge your Atrix 2 completely until it shuts off.
A good way of doing this quickly is by turning on wifi, and a video player.
6. Without turning on the phone plug it into a wall charger and let it get to 100%
7. When it's at 100%, without unplugging it from the wall charger, take off the battery cover, and take the battery out.
Your phone will "reboot" and show a Missing Battery icon.
8. Without unplugging the phone from the wall charger or turning it on, put the battery back in and wait until the phone recognizes the battery.
9. Your battery should now be recognized by the phone, and showing a charge % significantly lower than 100%.
Mine showed only 5%.
10. Let it sit there charging for 2-3 hours (or more).
My phone wouldn't charge past 10%, but yours might. The numbers don't matter much as the phone is definitely getting additional charge that could have been lost while flashing ROMs, etc.
11. After 2-3 hours (or more), turn the phone on while holding the volume down button and get into CWM.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
12. Wipe battery stats in CWM, reboot.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
13. When the phone turns on, go into Battery Calibration app again and look up your MV numbers -if you were like me, they should be significantly higher than before. After this whole process I had 4351MV at 100%, comparing to 3400MV before calibration.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
14. Before going to sleep - Install Watchdog Task Manager Lite from the market. Go into it's preferences, set CPU threshhold to 20%, check "Include phone processes", check "Monitor phone processes", check "Display all phone processes", set system CPU threshhold to 20% as well.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
15. Make sure your wifi and data connections are off. Now finally unplug the phone from the charger.
Go to bed, let your phone sleep too.
16. Success! Next morning check where your battery % is at and if you followed the instructions correctly / got lucky like me, your battery life should be 90% or more.
I went to bed with 98% and woke up to 94%. So, I consider this mission a success.
NICE JOB!!!!
Sticky... I will ask...
Nice Guide just fixed minor things and my battery is already better!
Sent from my locked MB865 on Ice Cream Sandwich.
temperature
what causes battery temperature rising ? oc? data? games?
cause i've noticed that battery drops horribly on graph when temperature increases
shardul.phatak said:
what causes battery temperature rising ? oc? data? games?
cause i've noticed that battery drops horribly on graph when temperature increases
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Battery temperature is a direct result of device usage. If you go to sleep at night, and are NOT charging your phone overnight, in the morning when you wake up and roll over to check xda or Facebook or whatever, the phone isn't warm, right? During the day, if you're running a browser or streaming music or just have a lot of screen time on, your phone will get warmer and warmer. It's hard to say without seeing any test results from your phone as to what is causing higher temperatures, but it's safe to say that any or all of the things you listed could be a cause. Obviously, overclocking WILL cause your phone to run warmer. Your permitting a higher CPU load value at the maximum frequency scaling, and subsequently your phone's CPU is working harder. Try some (or most) of the suggestions in this thread and see if you notice a lower temperature and battery drop as a result of the changes...
Great guide mister strider!
Motorola lied and I'm still locked mb865
Nice! Thanks for putting this together, Apex... Keep on striding, man!
Apex_Strider,
Can you tell us the final result when you applied these trick on your phone ?
Mine was not used any above, and gave me ~24hrs with heavy use, wifi on 24/24, screen on 5h using wifi. Phone for 15 mins/day, sometime movies for 2hrs.
I charged it at 22:30 PM every night.
Awesome guide. I made my lady read it. She was constantly complaining about her new atrix2's battery life. She learned quit a bit. It was easier to take this way than coming from a frustrated loved one.
You should use your skills to write a guide about how to use the report button and what help or response should be given and how to give it by non op's or those not involved in a given project for all the sudo (ha!) forum cops. (See I can't do it. My sentences are too long.) The constant correcting of anyone by everyone is getting annoying.
Sent from my MB865 using Tapatalk 2
Nice guide Apex!! Keep up the excellent work!
Thanks guys, your appreciation of my time doing these is more appreciated than I can say. Writing has always been a passion of mine, and really the only thing I was good at in school/college- when I wasn't ingesting illicit substances by the truck load. I'm working another guide thread now, hopefully completing it by tonight or tomorrow sometime. Thinking, since I'm nowhere near "dev" status or knowledge, I might apply for Recognized Contributor. Not sure we have any here in this community, at least that's not as present here as I am. Not to slight anyone who might be one, just haven't seen any floating around in here...
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Apex_Strider said:
Thanks guys, your appreciation of my time doing these is more appreciated than I can say. Writing has always been a passion of mine, and really the only thing I was good at in school/college- when I wasn't ingesting illicit substances by the truck load. I'm working another guide thread now, hopefully completing it by tonight or tomorrow sometime. Thinking, since I'm nowhere near "dev" status or knowledge, I might apply for Recognized Contributor. Not sure we have any here in this community, at least that's not as present here as I am. Not to slight anyone who might be one, just haven't seen any floating around in here...
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wait isn't "ingesting illicit substances" part of the college curriculum? If it is not officially it should be, cause it does, ur, um, it did help... LOL.
vinamilk said:
Apex_Strider,
Can you tell us the final result when you applied these trick on your phone ?
Mine was not used any above, and gave me ~24hrs with heavy use, wifi on 24/24, screen on 5h using wifi. Phone for 15 mins/day, sometime movies for 2hrs.
I charged it at 22:30 PM every night.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you asking for my "results", meaning my battery usgae stats (i.e.: maximum duration of battery from full charge to full discharge, screen time, etc.)? If so, I'll have to do this again, as it's been a couple of months since I had. Keep in mind, that everyone's results will vary, as it depends on so many different variables.
Also, being on WiFi will demand less from your battery than relying solely on the network connection. So, if you're 'always' on WiFi, you will get more from your battery than not. On my Atrix 2, I can get a full day or more from one full charge. Now, this is from my usage, and like I mentioned -everyone's will vary. Generally speaking, in practical use Wi-Fi isn’t any more or less friendly on your battery than cellular is. Sure there are differences, but the biggest one of all is distance. Since you’re probably a good-deal closer to your Wi-Fi WAP than you are to your cellular tower, it’s likely that your battery life will be better if you’re using Wi-Fi rather than cellular data.
The charging trick I outlined in this thread is very useful for battery reporting errors after flashing a new rom, or just is one feels like their battery isn't getting the kind of "full" charge it should. It helped me out, as well as others...
I have an extended battery that I've run through several full drain/charge cycles over the past two weeks (when I got it). However, it still doesn't register the charge % properly - it will say 5% for over a day. I used the BatteryCalibration app to no avail.
Ideas?
Ajfink said:
I have an extended battery that I've run through several full drain/charge cycles over the past two weeks (when I got it). However, it still doesn't register the charge % properly - it will say 5% for over a day. I used the BatteryCalibration app to no avail.
Ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try the battery charge trick above, without the Watchdog part -sounds like a battery reporting error. Are you using 1% battery mods?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Apex_Strider said:
Try the battery charge trick above, without the Watchdog part -sounds like a battery reporting error. Are you using 1% battery mods?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I'm completely stock with root.
The Battery Calibration app DOES list the appropriate mV levels, though.
I'll give it a shot.
governors, i/o schedulers ?
may be this & this could help if u want to do sum experiment :silly:
+10 awesome job again !!!!!

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