I open the thread in DEV because I haven't got convincing answer until now.
I found many junior ROM makers and users delete the system apps as many as possible to think it will bring a longer battery usage. I also listened someone got a faster battery drain after deleting some apps like DrmProvider.apk or others.
Could someone explain the real reason please?
Will the missed apps make the system try to read the 'file' again and again so the battery drain faster or some other reasons?
And as mentioned in the begining, deleting those apps that donot affect the system will really bring a batter battery performance?
Thanks!
defw said:
I open the thread in DEV because I haven't got convincing answer until now.
I found many junior ROM makers and users delete the system apps as many as possible to think it will bring a longer battery usage. I also listened someone got a faster battery drain after deleting some apps like DrmProvider.apk or others.
Could someone explain the real reason please?
Will the missed apps make the system try to read the 'file' again and again so the battery drain faster or some other reasons?
And as mentioned in the begining, deleting those apps that donot affect the system will really bring a batter battery performance?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm no dev myseld, but you might find interresting reading what I've recently posted here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=16662568&postcount=10102
Don't take my words for it, but you can always delete apks one by one and carefully watch the logcat verbose to see if the system posts any strange behavior after doing so.
*** I take no responsibilty for you doing so - and do it at your own risks! ***
For sure deleting an apk that is needed by the Android system could make the battery usage worst; DRMprovider is probably a good example of a mandatory app - unless someone never listens to any audio at all.. I don't know the specifics for every error and what kind of energy the system would put into solving a bug related to a missing app -is this really important anyway?
I've deleted 30 apks myself from the system/app directory from CM7 and I did not see any drawback in doing so. Most of them are apks installed by the gapps.zip so they are not part of my stock rom per say -hence: both the system and myself can live very well without them.
I don't care much about saving battery by deleting them as much as: 1- saving space; 2-preventing the system to ever have to read or generate thumbnail previews (or anyhing else really) for those apks and most importantly 3- seeing apks listed in my "running apks" that I've never wanted to start in the first place.
I'm sure that you've read the comment that states that task killers are not needed with Froyo because the system now manages the ram usage very well..but I still kill aps many times a day. Some might say they're just listed but not using resources; well fine! But how can they prove that? If an apk is loaded in memory, it might do an update (or what not) once an hour or once day; that takes battery - not much- but it does and if it is not needed then...
One other good example would be my xda apk: it is always listed under the running task even though I logged out and exited the program. Checking it out with an apk like Process Explorer clearly shows that it still constantly uses up to 3%of the cpu unless I kill it properly... So all this to say: removing apks might not save you so much battery but it might save you some task killing.
Bottom line is: if you're sure that the apk is not needed why have it on the phone?
Battery saving might very well be negligeable and no one can say it's the case for every specific apks. Again, I removed those apks because they're of no use to me and my system seems to live well without them. But it's your job to make sure that deleting stuff is not detrimental for the system and that is the dev part of it.
Personally I use a Startup Manager kill anything or most anything that's listed that starts by itself including my xda app. Never understood why on the Defy there's 15 to 25 apps up and running when they're not being used. And why they start themselves. I don't need my music apps starting by themselves.Or Documents to Go/Equalizer/GPS Tracker/Maps, etc., etc. I'll manage my own stuff, thank you. I would think all those apps running in the background would affect battery life. I have also deleted some of the crapware. Seems to me battery life has increased and when I run Advanced Task Manager I'm only killing 5-6 apps instead of 15-20.
btw wrong section to post...
MikeChannon
please move this thread.. in here..
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=853
INTRODUCTION
This is a guide made to with help from Xperia X10 users and developers for Xperia X10 users enjoyment but most of the tips contained here are suitable for any phone running Android. The tips contained here focus on WHAT to do to improve the performance of your phone and not HOW to do it, after all, once you know what must be done is to find simple tutorials on how to take these actions.
For some of the tips contained in this guide I assumed that you have just installed a new ROM or formatted / bought your phone recently and have root access but even without these prerequisites this guide can still be useful to most users.
It’s important to say that although most of the tips some are quite basic, some require a little more work and deal with the more delicate parts of your phone, they should be made at your own risk. These more advanced tips often use very specific terminology which you can find more about on XDA Developers or even Google.
Finally I would like to remind that even machines that are made within a few standards can operate in different ways: some phones take better advantage of certain adjustments and settings and not others so it’s impossible to guarantee one hundred percent efficiency for all of you but still I that you make good use of this guide.
Sincerely,
Guilherme "XOT" Oliveira
- Install a good ROM and a good Kernel
Official ROMs are good but custom ROMs are usually faster and in many cases as stable as official ROMs. This is because ROMs are released and thereafter rarely change, custom ROMs are already made by developers who are constantly improving their job to get the most out of your phone. It's very important to research before installing a new ROM, searching always for the one that meets your expectations and relates well with your device since the same ROM can work very well on my x10 but not as well on x10 my brother’s for example.
The same goes for Kernels, but with Kernels take extra care to make sure that the Kernel is compatible with your desired ROM and your phone.
- Keep clean your caches
Caches are good to keep certain information and have access to these faster but with these files and information some "garbage" is stored .
The solutions to this can be pretty basic or advanced, the most basic way is to enter your Application Manager (Settings> Applications> Manage Applications) and clear the cache for each application. It is important to clear the cache only and not application data as these may be important such as the files that resemble your progress in a game. Already the most advanced solution is to clear the Dalvik Cache and Cache Partition through your recovery.
Both solutions don’t need to be made with daily frequency, for example I usually clean my caches every 45 days or when I feel that the phone is getting slow.
- Make a full, but clean, backup
Full backups (full system backup) like those made by recovery or nandroid are great to store complete setups but when they are done with “dirty” files in the the phone’s memory restoring these files may worsen rather than help the situation of your device .
Ideally, do a full backup after completely configure your phone (configure your account, set your homescreens, install the required applications, etc.) but before using it for real.
That way if your phone starts getting slow and nothing works to reverse the situation you can easily go back to your “original” settings without the hassle of customizing everything in its way again.
- Do not touch the CPU / GPU the first day
Like people, phones also take a while to adapt to a new environment, or in our case new ROMs, so during the first 24 hours of use is important to use the settings of CPU and GPU that came with the ROM, no overclock, undervolt and things like that.
Another important step in the process of adaptation to the new ROM is really using and exploring the device in this very first day so it "get used" to the change. Do not mind the battery consumption, that should stabilize after a few days.
It’s also iimportant to remember that some ROMs already comes with overclock, undervolt and improvements in battery usage. In this case there is no problem in using these settings from the first minute because if they are there since the installation of the ROM, it is because they are part of the default settings already programmed and develop on this particular ROM and it will work better this way.
- Use the maximum your battery
Batteries seem to last less and less as time goes on, in part this is because your battery is uncalibrated and there are ways to fix it.
I will not talk much on this subject because it is very easy to find guides that teach you how to calibrate your battery so I’ll just recommend that you take a look at them.
- Applications: less is more
Having millions of apps is the glory and the doom of smartphones, the glory because you can do everything on your device and doom because of the following reasons:
As a computer your phone also slows down the as it becomes full and in most cases you can blame it on the number of apps that you have installed on it. So try to leave installed only the applications you actually use and uninstall the ones that you no longer use so you can have more free memory and consequently a faster device.
Some applications can not be uninstalled because they are system applications; in order to remove those apps you are going to need uninstallers that have root access (ex: RootUninstaller) which are capable of removing these applications but before taking such a measure is necessary to look for a safelist (a list of applications that can be removed without causing system problems).
Keeping a low number of applications but doing so by installing and uninstalling new apps every day also usually let the machine slower so if you find an application for a specific function that fits your needs you should stay with it instead of testing another 10 before returning to it.
PS: A good way to avoid testing several applications before finding the right one is reading reviews and comments before making your choice.
- Repair defective applications
Often the phone is working fine but a certain application or function is not, which can cause slowdowns and FCs (force close); depending on the situation there is not much to do but some of these solutions may take care of the problem:
The first thing to do is to uninstall and reinstall the apps via Play Store to make sure that the problem was not caused by a corrupted file when you downloaded the application, if the problem persists there are some more advanced alternatives: in the advanced settings of your recovery select fix permissions, this function should make sure that every application has the necessary permissions to work properly.
- Keep some free space
Full memory is often a problem on any device, especially in older phones like ours, after all the more files the longer it takes read all these files if it is necessary, so the tip is this: the more free space the better.
This step seems a little redundant since we already talked about having the smallest possible number of applications but this time we are also talking about other files. Anything occupying space on your phone is "bad"; too many photos, songs, text documents, etc.. can make the phone slower and lets be honest, you do not need to carry 150 photos of your last weekend with you all the time.
A solution to this problem is simple, try to keep the memory of your phone as free as possible by eliminating caches, unused files and moving applications to the SD card (Settings> Applications> Manage Applications> choose the application and select Move to SD card or use apps like Link2SD); your SD card should also be kept clean by eliminating unused files and traces left by already uninstalled applications, such traces are sometimes hard to find and applications like SD Maid can help you eliminate much of this "junk".
- Avoid keeping some applications running all the time
It’s very common to close an application and assume that it stopped running on the system but this is not always the case because it actually still cached in the memory of the device, Android makes it to be faster on reopening it later and often the system itself definitively closes the application automatically but that’s not always the case.
Firstly it is important to prevent certain applications from even opening and to do this we use apps known as Startup Managers, there are several options in the Play Store but I particularly like Autostarts. Once inside your Startup Manager you can choose which applications will be opened as the system is started or any action is taken (for example changing the state of your Wi-Fi); the ideal is to minimize the number of self-starting applications, leaving only the truly necessary ones without forgetting to be very careful to avoid stopping system applications because if they are unable to open themselves it can cause instability. Another way to prevent applications from opening or stay on cache all the time is to disable automatic updates of apps such as email clients and social networks but this is a more personal matter that varies from user to user, just remember that the more constant the updates are, the more time these applications will be running in the background and more power (CPU and battery) will be consumed.
Now that we’ve already took care of the self opening apps it’s time to find out when you really need an app to be closed for sure.
It's easy to know when to quit an application completely but it is necessary to first understand a basic concept about the system: applications and processes cached in memory are not always a bad thing, in fact as stated at the beginning of the topic they are a good thing because the application should open faster when launched again (hence the use of Task Killers usually worsens more than help if not done properly) but if you use an application to view the weather every morning and will only use it again the next morning this application can be closed without problems.
In our current official version of Android (2.3) already have a task manager that can be used to do this action (Settings> Applications> Running services > select the desired process and press Stop) but if you want a more advanced option there are several Task Managers that monitor processes and can be used to close them too.
PS: Again about the Task Killers: although its use is discouraged for the day-to-day because of the reasons already explained, if you plan on haevy gaming they can be the great saviors since these games need a lot of free memory to run without lags.
- SMS: clean your inbox
Message apps, both native and third-party tend to take quite some time to open if you have many messages on your mobile because everytime you run your message app it needs to load a large list of conversations, so cleaning your inbox periodically helps performance, the same goes for call log.
A tip for those who want to clear the messages inbox and call log without losing your information is backing up with applications like SMS BackUp + that emails you both your conversations and call logs, all within a specific marker so they won’t end up messing the inbox of your email or if your intention is to save only one or two most important message the native client and most ones available at Play Store have the option of forwarding SMS, simply by holding your finger over until the action menu opens up.
- Give your device a break
Like conventional systems for computers, Android also collects information in its memory and despite the “dumping information system” some of it is left in cache , which ends up requiring more processing on your device.
To end this there is a very simple solution: give a rest to the phone. Once a day or when you feel like the machine is running slow give it a reboot or shut down and leave it off for a minute or two before restarting, it should get rid of the cache and it can boost the speed of the phone, but attention: restart the machine and making it open up various apps on boot has no point so keep your boot clean (see related topic).
- About some specific applications:
Task killers (that goes for any app of this kind) are good for a heavy gaming experience (eg: GTA, Dead Space, Asphalt...) because those games need a lot of free RAM but for everyday use is preferable to don't use task killers and keep some of the apps in the cache so they open faster when they are requested again.
Deep sleep is an important part of the ROM performance when it comes to battery usage, applications like CPU Spy can check if this function is working correctly or No-frills CPU Control which in addition to monitoring provides the ability to adjust the frequencies and governors you want to use in your phone.
Chainfire3D is an useful app to change the way your GPU will work and customize it to gain performance or quality , notice that these values tend to be inversely proportional.
Try always to use the lightest possible applications, it helps in memory. I for one think the galleries and music players of almost all default ROMs are too heavy and prefer apps like QuikPic and UberMusic.
Finally I would like to thank: XDA Users: Oodie, x10forevers, Vasishta Reddy, DiKeJ, 9Lukas5, FeraVolt, alzbac, Websites: lifehacker.com, limitlessdroid.com , doctor-android.com, androidcentral.com for helping with the tips on this guide and say that if you have a tip that is not in this guide feel free to share with us!
PS: I'm sorry if I made some grammar mistakes, English is not my first language and this is a pretty big article.
thanks...nice one..
Dude I screwed my music thing on x10 . Please help . Tried flashing xperia s music player . Now music icon has dissapeared . N power button seem to reboot all the time . Will updating binary files of xrec n then flashing again help ?
Please tel . Desperately.
Rooted x10 2.3.3 stock Rom
Sent from my X10i using xda premium
theMoiz94 said:
Dude I screwed my music thing on x10 . Please help . Tried flashing xperia s music player . Now music icon has dissapeared . N power button seem to reboot all the time . Will updating binary files of xrec n then flashing again help ?
Please tel . Desperately.
Rooted x10 2.3.3 stock Rom
Sent from my X10i using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey dude, I don't really know how to help you because I haven't had any similar problems but I'm pretty sure that you should try the basics: clear caches (dalvik included) and fix permissions.
Since I'm not a developer I can't really help you with the binary files but try reaching your ROM's developer and he might help you
I hope you get your phone fixed
Dude u sure that I should clear off dalvik cache ? I tried fixing permission but still nothing . The power button rebooting the phone is more irritating than not having a default music PLAYER . Im asking in this forum but havent got the solution yet :'(
Sent from my X10i using xda premium
Excellent post Buddy . Hope you update the thread with other power users opinions & Tips .
Thanks.
Oodie.
theMoiz94 said:
Dude u sure that I should clear off dalvik cache ? I tried fixing permission but still nothing . The power button rebooting the phone is more irritating than not having a default music PLAYER . Im asking in this forum but havent got the solution yet :'(
Sent from my X10i using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that the only people that can help you are the ones on your device's specific forum man, try creating a topic there
Sorry but I really don't know what to do to fix your phone
Some of the tips are a complete waste of time and utter crap (mostly those related to keeping RAM usage low and task killers [EDIT: actually, you contradict yourself on these points], giving the device time to "adapt" to the environment -seriously?- and going for the lighter apps -this obviously applies if you have an outdated device, but it's not a rule).
EDIT: Forgot to say that the rest is good.
GermainZ said:
Some of the tips are a complete waste of time and utter crap (mostly those related to keeping RAM usage low and task killers [EDIT: actually, you contradict yourself on these points], giving the device time to "adapt" to the environment -seriously?- and going for the lighter apps -this obviously applies if you have an outdated device, but it's not a rule).
EDIT: Forgot to say that the rest is good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I said the guide was wrote based on Xperia X10 user experience so it is kind of an old device.
About the RAM management you won't have any issues with a top device with a lot of free RAM but in our case (old device users) we have about 256mb or less RAM to work with so keeping it well managed is essential if you want your device to run smooth.
The adaptation thing seems like BS but it's not, because your device need to create/edit some files as its being used and that's what this part of the article really means. For example your battery writes a log about its own capacities (making a long story short by recalibrating your battery all you do basically is reset this log)
Thanks for the feedback, hope you found something usefull
GuilhermeXOT said:
As I said the guide was wrote based on Xperia X10 user experience so it is kind of an old device.
About the RAM management you won't have any issues with a top device with a lot of free RAM but in our case (old device users) we have about 256mb or less RAM to work with so keeping it well managed is essential if you want your device to run smooth.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it's not essential. It's actually bad.
The lifehacker website seems to be down, so I'm giving you a link to this article instead (the article itself links to three more detailed articles; one of them is the lifehacker article I wanted to link; do read them): http://androidandme.com/2011/11/app...lers-still-dont-give-you-better-battery-life/
EDIT: Regarding the battery, draining the battery (to 0% or close) is actually bad for lithium based batteries and should be avoided. A discharge to 15% is usually enough.
GermainZ said:
No, it's not essential. It's actually bad.
The lifehacker website seems to be down, so I'm giving you a link to this article instead (the article itself links to three more detailed articles; one of them is the lifehacker article I wanted to link; do read them): http://androidandme.com/2011/11/app...lers-still-dont-give-you-better-battery-life/
EDIT: Regarding the battery, draining the battery (to 0% or close) is actually bad for lithium based batteries and should be avoided. A discharge to 15% is usually enough.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get your point and I also talk about the same thing as the article in the guide: "the use of Task Killers usually worsens more than help if not done properly" , I just didn't elaborated on this very much.
Now, what I'm saying is that if you are a day-to-day user you don't need a task killer and it's recommended ONLY for a gaming experience, aka heavy games like GTA, Dead Space, etc...
"Task killers (that goes for any app of this kind) are good for a gaming experience but for everyday use is preferable to keep some of the apps in the cache so they open faster when they are requested again."
I'm not a task killer fan myself but if you check any gaming rom (DikeJ's for x10 is a good example) you can see that the developers try to maximize the free RAM because those heavy games use a lot of it.
So in order to avoid this kind of confusion I'll edit the article to solve this misunderstanding thx for the heads up
GuilhermeXOT said:
I get your point and I also talk about the same thing as the article in the guide: "the use of Task Killers usually worsens more than help if not done properly" , I just didn't elaborated on this very much.
Now, what I'm saying is that if you are a day-to-day user you don't need a task killer and it's recommended ONLY for a gaming experience, aka heavy games like GTA, Dead Space, etc...
"Task killers (that goes for any app of this kind) are good for a gaming experience but for everyday use is preferable to keep some of the apps in the cache so they open faster when they are requested again."
I'm not a task killer fan myself but if you check any gaming rom (DikeJ's for x10 is a good example) you can see that the developers try to maximize the free RAM because those heavy games use a lot of it.
So in order to avoid this kind of confusion I'll edit the article to solve this misunderstanding thx for the heads up
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool, thanks for that
Buddy, that guide is awesome written, excellent work. And big thanks for credits - I'm very proud that I could help in that "project" ^^. It's should hit XDA Blog . Cheers .
DiKeJ said:
Buddy, that guide is awesome written, excellent work. And big thanks for credits - I'm very proud that I could help in that "project" ^^. It's should hit XDA Blog . Cheers .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm the one who have to thank you
People please share your ideas so we can make this guide better!
Is it possible to create a user-facing setting to manually enter the actual capacity of the battery in use? Perhaps under either settings->battery or settings->performance->battery? I've read through this and I think I have a decent grasp of all the moving parts behind the graph the system prints in settings->battery.
For my part, I've always used a larger-than-stock battery, and furthermore I use my batteries long enough that they start to show a noticeable dip in effective capacity. I'm assuming that if I could set the value manually (in the later case, I'm aware that there are apps that will try to calculate the effective capacity of an aged battery), my battery statistics would be a bit more accurate, especially the feature in lollipop that attempts to estimate remaining battery life. I'm aware that I could accomplish this be decompiling the framework and modifying the value in power_profile.xml, but that seems tedious to do if I'm flashing nightlies somewhat regularly.
JoeSyr said:
Is it possible to create a user-facing setting to manually enter the actual capacity of the battery in use? Perhaps under either settings->battery or settings->performance->battery? I've read through this and I think I have a decent grasp of all the moving parts behind the graph the system prints in settings->battery.
For my part, I've always used a larger-than-stock battery, and furthermore I use my batteries long enough that they start to show a noticeable dip in effective capacity. I'm assuming that if I could set the value manually (in the later case, I'm aware that there are apps that will try to calculate the effective capacity of an aged battery), my battery statistics would be a bit more accurate, especially the feature in lollipop that attempts to estimate remaining battery life. I'm aware that I could accomplish this be decompiling the framework and modifying the value in power_profile.xml, but that seems tedious to do if I'm flashing nightlies somewhat regularly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Last time I checked, the power_profile number was not actually USED anywhere by anything. (This might have changed with Lollipop though, I need to check that... It could be, or it may be simply based on how fast the SoC percentage changes.)
All of the statistics are measured based on:
1) State of Charge percentages, which are always handled by the fuel gauge chipset itself. If these are inaccurate, something is wrong with your device's kernel or hardware.
2) Estimation of what certain components within the system consume when they're in a given state. e.g. the various components OTHER than total capacity in power_profile.xml
Thanks for the insight. I also just picked through a few battery tester apps to try to gauge where my batteries are at, and one of them asked me if I wanted to use the system value (I'm assuming it read this from power_profile.xml, it was the incorrect stock value), or the actual value as reported by the battery(which was accurate).
So I guess the information is there all the same if anything wants to use it (assuming that the author knew what to use).
JoeSyr said:
Thanks for the insight. I also just picked through a few battery tester apps to try to gauge where my batteries are at, and one of them asked me if I wanted to use the system value (I'm assuming it read this from power_profile.xml, it was the incorrect stock value), or the actual value as reported by the battery(which was accurate).
So I guess the information is there all the same if anything wants to use it (assuming that the author knew what to use).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, so maybe the capacity in power_profile is used by some apps but not anything in the system itself...
Entropy512 said:
Hmm, so maybe the capacity in power_profile is used by some apps but not anything in the system itself...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Err, actually I 'dun goofed when I was tinkering around with that app. For the record, it's Battery Widget Monitor and it only seems to present those options during the first-run wizard(after that you can set it manually in a different dialogue). I started thinking I had a 2100 mAh battery in the phone (which was true), but when I saw those options I assumed that one of them was correct, so I basically convinced myself that I had my 1850 in (I peaked but the label faces inward, and I have two batteries that are the same color...ugh).
Long story short, what the app actually offers is "from battery files" and "from battery profile". I think the latter is being read from battery_profile.xml, because I decompiled my framework-res.apk and it matches (and the value is correct for stock toro battery, 1850). I think the first option must be that app's own database, because it's using the maguro value of 1750, and it seems most likely that the app just can't differentiate any finer than "Galaxy Nexus".
So I guess that's actually sort of back to square one; the app does rely on what's in power_profile.xml (or manual input), but that doesn't really say anything about what the system does or doesn't use it for.
Hi,
i'm looking for a fast way to analyse the apps installed on some phones in my company. I need to get an overview of all apps and some properties. I would like to list the permissions, check if they are allowed to run on mobile data and/or Wifi, the space the app is consuming, maybe battery usage... We don't have any mobile management.
I need all this for analysis, so preferably in a Csv export, or something similar. To avoid to bother the owner too much, i want to reduce the time I need the phone to do the job.
My only idea until now is to take screenshots of all needed settings. That's of course not very comfortable.
Any ideas?
Thanks