260-270mA drain while idle - Thunderbolt General

Been experiencing a high battery drain past few days on both VirusROM and BAMF 1.6.3. According to CurrentWidget it keeps at 260-270mA most of the time with screen off. On it jumps up to 400-500mA pretty much right away.
The strage thing is that I haven't really changed anything and have seen 40-60mA draw while idle before.
Partial wake usage mainly lists Android System, everything else has really short duration times.
Any idea how I could track down what's using so much power during idle? Have very few apps installed and all that are installed are pretty standard I think.
Here's a list of what I have:
Where's my droid
Appstore (amazon)
ShootMe
Solo Lite
Facebook
Fandango
Go Launcher EX (maybe this? was updated recently)
Calendar (widget for EX) as well as two themes for EX
Google Maps
Gmail
GO SMS Pro and a theme
Foursquare
Screen Off and Lock widget
ROM Manager
CurrentWidget
SoundHound
Ginger keyboard
Shush!
ColorNote
gTabSiMiClock
Ringer Volume
Retro Cam+
SMS Backup
As far as general settings, Wifi and GPS are always on as well as syncfor gmail and FB, but then again they were since day one and I've seen idle draw at 40-60mA always before.
Thanks for the help.

Have you changed your wallpaper recently?
Mine used to be orange with flames, and it used to do the same thing. Since then, I changed it to a space themed wallpaper that's mostly black and dark blue . My current power usage has gone down significantly to idling at 30 unless I use it!! Try that!!
You could also recalibrate your battery if you haven't done that since ROMing, I did that at the same time too, but I don't think that did it.

Darker wallpaper hmm. Well I changed it to something darker though it doesn't make sense that it would drain battery differently while screen is off, but I guess it doesn't have to make sense heh.
I did use all kinds of wallpapers before even live ones and never really seen such high idle use before. Will try to drain battery and recharge as I haven't done that in a while.

Going to try and wipe everything and just install bamf 1.6.3 along with currentWidget and see what happens I guess. And if issue is fixed will slowly add apps one at a time to try and find which one causes the problem. It also possible that TitaniumBackUp is causing the issue as lately I was using it to reinstall all apps instead of going to the market and doing it that way.

make sure you re calibrate your battery after ROMing, if you haven't done that already. That fixed all my idling power consumption (and charging) problems

Try applying airplane mode. That will help you see if your radios are eating battery.

Reinstalled the rom and while I didn't want to install any apps market restored everything I had, but I did not use TitaniumBackup this time and so far everything is fine. Idle is back down to 40s mA.
I guess was some glitch in the backups. Because everything else is the same.

Related

Is Widget Locker draining my battery?

I had Lockbot Pro on my EVO until last night. Got frustrated with it, and when I tried to go and download theme's from the gallery, I kept getting errors and it wouldn't connect, even after rebooting the phone and trying again.
So I read through the comments in the market for Widget Locker and it had a lot of positivity and I decided to give it a go.
I noticed today that my battery is half drained where as at the equivilant time in the past, I would be about 3/4 full.
I am still new with Widget Locker and trying things out. I have the Widget Locker with 6 sliders on it as well as the clock and the Tiny Palmary Weather Widget.
Nothing else is installed recently besides Widget Locker, so this is my reasoning with my question targeted at Widget Locker as the suspect.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you,
Whiteice
WhiteiceDMSTech said:
I had Lockbot Pro on my EVO until last night. Got frustrated with it, and when I tried to go and download theme's from the gallery, I kept getting errors and it wouldn't connect, even after rebooting the phone and trying again.
So I read through the comments in the market for Widget Locker and it had a lot of positivity and I decided to give it a go.
I noticed today that my battery is half drained where as at the equivilant time in the past, I would be about 3/4 full.
I am still new with Widget Locker and trying things out. I have the Widget Locker with 6 sliders on it as well as the clock and the Tiny Palmary Weather Widget.
Nothing else is installed recently besides Widget Locker, so this is my reasoning with my question targeted at Widget Locker as the suspect.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you,
Whiteice
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it's not. Feel free to look at System Panel, Spare Parts, etc..
I was wondering something about this.
When I had Lockbot Pro, it had a still image for the background. When I entered my PIN to unlock the phone, then it takes me to my normal screens which run a live wallpaper.
With Widget Locker, my background is the Live background. Does this mean that even when the phone is in standby until I hit the button to bring up Widget Locker to get into my phone that the background is constantly running whether the phone is on and being used or in standby mode?
Thank you,
Whiteice
WidgetLocker definitely drains your battery. You can just do your own test to find out.
Before you go to bed, leave your phone off the charger and remember what % you left it off at. Then:
1. Observe how much battery is drained overnight without WidgetLocker.
- For me, my phone drains around 1-4%.
2. With all else equal from the night before, apply WidgetLocker and, again, observe how much battery is drained overnight.
- For me, once WidgetLocker was installed and applied, it drained at least 20% every night.
For safe measure, you could reboot your phone before doing these tests to make sure no other apps are running in the background.
This is the test I use for testing the impact on battery every time I install a new app. I'm more cautious of apps that change system settings more than just stand alone apps (such as games). WidgetLocker definitely falls under the former so I wasn't surprised to see that it does cause a fairly significant change in battery life. It's a shame though cause it's definitely a good app. It's just the trade off isn't worth it when the Captivate doesn't have the best battery life to begin with.
khaytsus said:
No, it's not. Feel free to look at System Panel, Spare Parts, etc..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only thing is that it wouldn't list "WidgetLocker" when you use those apps. For example, with Spare Parts, WidgetLocker's effects would cause other measures to increase. If I remember correctly, "Android System" under the Partial Wakelock category was a lot higher with WidgetLocker installed which means that it does prevent the phone from sleeping at times. Also, Running % was higher as well with WidgetLocker installed which means again that the phone ran for a longer time without sleeping. Anyways, my suggestion is to use my tests above if you want to find out how it really effects real world usage. Observational tests will give you the best results (if all else are equal).
Enhanced said:
It's just the trade off isn't worth it when the Captivate doesn't have the best battery life to begin with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if it's a Captivate issue or an Android issue, but one of the settings the Captivate has turned on by default triggers a bug which might be related to this thread.
Settings -> Wireless and Network -> Wi-Fi settings -> Menu key, Advanced -> Wi-Fi sleep policy.
The default sleep policy that the phone comes with is "When screen turns off". The problem is that when that one is selected, sometimes the phone doesn't sleep correctly, and battery drains quickly because the CPU is still running. (Set to "Never" and I've not had problems since) I've tested with Tasker as well, making it respond to the screen turning off - it also prevented the phone from sleeping, even though it should have done no such thing.
So Widget Locker, if it responds to the screen turning off, could easily triggering the same bug as those two. At least on the Captivate. Other lock-screen replacements would probably do the same thing. If that is the problem, responding to the screen turning on, instead, might fix it.
Thanks all for the info and advice.
For the time being, if not forever, I went and uninstalled and refunded my purchase since I was still able too.
After I posted this thread, I plugged in my phone and charged it. Once fully charged, after 45 minutes off the charger, I lost 1/4 already. This hasn't happened until I installed this program.
I also noticed that my phone is a bit "zipper" once I removed this program.
Thanks anyhow. It seemed like a good program but wasn't worth the battery drain and slight sluggishness I noticed with it installed.
Whiteice
I've measured zero difference between using Widget Locker and not using Widget Locker, but I also have my phone doing stuff, so perhaps it wakes it no more than it already would have been. With K9 email, updating weather, syncing a few accounts, Tasker running, misc stuff, my phone always has 2-4%/hr.
However, the author has said a few times it's doing nothing if it's not visible. Could depend on the widgets you have loaded of course too.
I have Beautiful Widgets time/weather (4x1), PowerAmp (4x1), Android Agenda Widget (4x2).
And do you think that lock bot could drains battery?
khaytsus said:
I've measured zero difference between using Widget Locker and not using Widget Locker, but I also have my phone doing stuff, so perhaps it wakes it no more than it already would have been. With K9 email, updating weather, syncing a few accounts, Tasker running, misc stuff, my phone always has 2-4%/hr.
However, the author has said a few times it's doing nothing if it's not visible. Could depend on the widgets you have loaded of course too.
I have Beautiful Widgets time/weather (4x1), PowerAmp (4x1), Android Agenda Widget (4x2).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What I had loaded on the Widget Locker lock screen was the default unlock and silent mode, camera and brightness sliders. I added a Dolphin HD and Pandora slider. I had the default clock and the tiny Palmary weather widget set to update every 1 1/2 hours. This update setting has been the one I've used on Palmary since Ive had it the last month.
And just FYI, I would have loved to have kept it, it seemed really awesome. But again, I did not have this battery draining issue until I installed this program. And it seems to have gone away once I removed it. All this within a 24 hour period from when I purchased Widget Locker.
Whiteice.
the phone will go into a sleep state using widget locker unless you attach a widget that prevents sleep.
I have typoclock and poweramp widget on mine along with a custom slider.
I dont get any difference in power consumption than normal
however im not using homehelper, i have a fully rooted device using the root method of the 5 second rool and turned off weather animations.
I would consider what widgets you attach to widget locker and what method you are using to avoid the 5 second rule. Home helper maybe a resource hog.
I notice no significant drain on my battery. I had my phone on for 3 hours today while in class, and my phone only dropped 6%.
I experience phone lag with it, really awesome app but it needs some more work, interference with stock lock screen too.
Had to remove it but would like to bring it back if those glitches are sorted out.
Had it on Desire ...
Widgetlocker definitely drains my battery. Pity because it's a great application. However with it on android system takes over 40% of my battery, Widgetlocker itself is shown to take another 17%
and OS monitor shows constantly at least 25% CPU load from Widgetlocker.
Don't know what is wrong but something is wrong. Will try to root my device and not to use home helper and check if there is any difference.
I will have to look at my settings because I am not having any serious battery drain at all. On my WL, I have Beautiful widget with clock and weather going (update every 3 hours) and quick dial/text to my wife.
I am getting normail battery life with or w/o WL. I will report back my settings so those that love WL can continue to use.
OK, I've got to admint, rooting the phone and bypassing homehelper definitely improved the situation. Although I still have to check if there is still some battery drain when using the program. I guess there is some but not that significant anymore. Now the program is usable.
Enhanced said:
WidgetLocker definitely drains your battery. You can just do your own test to find out.
Before you go to bed, leave your phone off the charger and remember what % you left it off at. Then:
1. Observe how much battery is drained overnight without WidgetLocker.
- For me, my phone drains around 1-4%.
2. With all else equal from the night before, apply WidgetLocker and, again, observe how much battery is drained overnight.
- For me, once WidgetLocker was installed and applied, it drained at least 20% every night.
For safe measure, you could reboot your phone before doing these tests to make sure no other apps are running in the background.
This is the test I use for testing the impact on battery every time I install a new app. I'm more cautious of apps that change system settings more than just stand alone apps (such as games). WidgetLocker definitely falls under the former so I wasn't surprised to see that it does cause a fairly significant change in battery life. It's a shame though cause it's definitely a good app. It's just the trade off isn't worth it when the Captivate doesn't have the best battery life to begin with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
same goes with me... widget locker does drain my battery.. my battery used to drain about 2-4% per night... but after installed the widget locker it drains like 12% to 18% per night..
XmUrF said:
OK, I've got to admint, rooting the phone and bypassing homehelper definitely improved the situation. Although I still have to check if there is still some battery drain when using the program. I guess there is some but not that significant anymore. Now the program is usable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i did the rooting too.. but still it drains the battery.. like 15% per night.. that is on standby no usage at all.. jus wonder how will it drain on normal usage.. lol
I wonder if the updated WidgetLocker has any battery life improvements? Anyone with any new experiences?
i installed widget locker last week, and I've noticed it does seem to drain my battery significantly. I also dumped a sh1t ton of widgets on it too.
i think its the price you have to pay for functional lockscreens like this. I had an iPhone 3GS with LockInfo on it and it drained the battery a bit too.
Seems like a dead thread, but I am also having battery issues with WidgetLocker. I am certain that it is the culprit because when I restarted my phone after installing, the battery indicator was yellow, and when WidgetLocker initiated, the battery instantly went to red. Any ideas on how to fix this? I love this app.
Yep - I agree with everybody above. WidgetLocker is a battery muncher.
It's one of my favorite programs, but I've had to part ways with it. With it running I was only getting about 7 hours out of my battery - without it, I go 12 hours easy.
Sucks. Back to default lock screen.

Battery Problem [CM7]

Hi everybody!
So I am using CyanogenMod 7 Beta5.1 And I'm having huge battery problems...
It's draining abnormally fast (30% lost during night).
It started to happen when I got problems with my Defy and flashed 3.4.3-11
And now updated to 3.4.2-117.
Before these problems it usually drains only 3% during night!!
Also everytime I boot my phone, when it's completely booted I hear the camera sound (when you open camera app,it makes a physical sound).. It never happened before...
I overclocked my phone to 1100Mhz but I don't think it really affects the battery (when screen off it's set to 500Mhz)
Please help me!....
I was having that problem and I turned fast boot off and it solved the problem for me. The phone doesn't really shut down all the way if fast boot is on.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA Premium App
schultzy001 said:
I was having that problem and I turned fast boot off and it solved the problem for me. The phone doesn't really shut down all the way if fast boot is on.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
fast boot? The one from setvsel?
schultzy001 said:
I was having that problem and I turned fast boot off and it solved the problem for me. The phone doesn't really shut down all the way if fast boot is on.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how can u shutdown fastboot? wanna give this a try...
schultzy001 wrote
"Sent from my Desire HD"
um... a new thread? really?
by the way, i have this problem too since beta 1.. i don't know why..
but i still like it because CM7 is so fast without OC.
i try to compare froyo and CM7, with same apps and same apps settings,
CM7 lost the battery faster than froyo, even when in flight mode.
the strange one is, even the memory usage is so low on CM7 (no motoblur crap),
but why battery still drains so fast..
in battery usage statistics,
on CM7, it shows that "Display" is the one who responsible drinking so much juice (60% and the other is just 3-10%).
on froyo, is not the "Display" which responsible drinking most of the juice, it is "Cell Standby".
i thought gingerbread should have good battery management, and the battery should last much longer than froyo.
i'm sure it is a bug on CM7 for Defy.
but whatever, at least we have a Gingerbread on Defy from a great dev like Quarx.
while motorola working so slow on releasing froyo with its motoblur crap.
Hi guys,
I'm having this issue too, and i note since a few days ago. I don't know why, but my Defy is sucking his battery too fast. Could it be a bug ?
it's a little bit difficult to follow the bugs and the solutions in a huge thread like the other one. so i think that this that could be a mayor problem for all of us should be treated in a differente thread.
I use Motocharge since 1 day to follow how it discharge during the day.
I say it in the other thread, the phone loose a lot of battery when i don't touch it. sometimes it loose like 5% in 15mins and i don't touch it. maybe it doesnt sleep well, i don't know..
I hope that Quarx can solve this, because in the other betas of him i don't have the problem. only in the 5.1.
battery draining
I think It´s a bug, because I used before BETA 5.0 and without any battery life was almost 3 days in normal use, bur now with BETA 5.1 only two days or less.
By the way I´d proved with 3 or 4 diferent roms, but the same result.
But I´m sure Quarx will deleted this bug in the next version
same problem for me,but b3 and b4 is ok
Sent from my MB525
apart from low battery life.....i noticed substantial increase in battery temp..normally its 32-34 deg cel.....but wid CM7 it raises to 42-45 deg cel.....waiting for a solution so that i can come back to CM7...
I use Toggle 2G/3G to switch to 2G when phone goes to sleep. I set wifi to never sleep and use it as much as possible over 3G. I also set brightness levels long time on 16 so that in the shadow I always use just a little energy. This way I almost get double battery live.
+ it's better for battery to charge every night, empty or not, and let it go lower just occasionally.
Link to Toggle app:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=739530
yes, this issue is really annoying, 30% battery drain overnight.
something is definitely running unreasonably... hope find it.
I think it depends upon what "type" of defy u have. My battery that only used to last for 12-14 hours in eclair now went for 2 days last 2 charges.
Also depends upon how many widgets and apps u running... hard with mobile phones to judge battery as so many independent variables.
Sent from my MB525 using XDA App
OK Guys, this is an old thread, but I think it should be deleted or at least people should read this before registering this thread in their mind:
The battery drain 'issues' were almost always due to two things:
1- For the beta 6 version or older of CM7- there was a bug with the auto-brightness which was heavily stressing the cpu and making the system lag badly - hence: the battery drain. To fix this: you have to stay on auto-brigthness. So just make sure that the auto-brightness box is checked and ON. Additional info: some users also complained about the 4 action buttons (menu, home, back and search) not lighting up ---> fix: un-check auto-brightness and re-select it: done!
2- Users did not set their Network baseband properly. Fix: use the Defy Baseband Switcher application and select the newtwork that applies to you. If you don't do this, your phone might have signal reception (phone and sms) but it will use more power to communicate and get a proper lock to your phone service provider.
I don't know what is the exact build # that brought the Defy Baseband Switcher (as far as I can remember, CM7 beta 4.1 had it) but all the 'newest' CM7 will have it anyway.
And if you want to further decrease your battery consumption, you can still do it like this:
- use the bootloader cpu settings: OC'ing and governernor type to change the cpu speed. [From CM7 default 1000MHz to the Defy's stock 800MHz] and change the governor type from "interactice" default to "on demand" [OK: I'm not sure about governor change will improve or not but that is the Froyo's default I believe].
- install SetVsel to underclock --> by lowering cpu Vsel upon the 3 cpu frequencies. Do some reading; you might need to uncheck its "[email protected]" option AND also have Milestone Overclock installed for it to work properly.
- USE a recent nightly (post May 29th: there was a possible problem with custom recovery backup restoring prior to that) and you will be able to set your screen display brightness as low as you want [fix the bug described in point 1- above].
- use DroidWall and/or the CM7 built-in applications' permissions control to block some apps' access to internet and networks. BE WARNED though: changing permissions CAN make an application stop working or create problems - don't submit bug reports if you do that.
- Avoid high usage of apps that drain battery quickly (TuneIn radio is power-thirsty one that comes to my mind...) and apps that have to create catalogs and thumbnails (ex: Photoshop, Titanium Backup, Gallery, ...)
- If possible: use 2G network only, disable data synch, auto updates of apps and social networks.
- set your WiFi sleep policy to "Never" [while in Wi-Fi settings, press menu button/ Advanced] and avoid frequent Wi-Fi ON/OFF switching.
- Lower your display brightness and switch that screen off at any chance you got!
There are many other ways I'm sure, but those are the main ones anyway...
I've seen high temps yesterday on my Defy, but I later realized that I forgot to re-set my Baseband after a CM7 nightly install... It 'could' also happen when a (background) service goes "beserk" and overload the cpu: absolutely not necessarily related to CM7 --> faulty apps and bugs happen... Just stop and clear the cache of that app and/or reboot your phone and problem should be gone.
CM7 is now really stable; a VERY FEW little hickups remaining still (like with the camera, but negligeable), but the large amount of new user controls that it brings clearly overcomes the 1 or 2 minor bugs left --> IMO, just having control over each and every applications' permissions justifies forgetting about using Eclair and Froyo. Problems in CM7 are being actively sorted out and new user controls and other useful options are added in almost daily manner through the nightly builds.
I'm categoric: on CM7, I now have more control over where my battery juice goes that I've ever had on Froyo....
So please stop alarming people with high battery usage drainage on CM7 and give it a try by following the right proper steps; I'm sure that you won't regret it.
marhensa said:
um... a new thread? really?
by the way, i have this problem too since beta 1.. i don't know why..
but i still like it because CM7 is so fast without OC.
i try to compare froyo and CM7, with same apps and same apps settings,
CM7 lost the battery faster than froyo, even when in flight mode.
the strange one is, even the memory usage is so low on CM7 (no motoblur crap),
but why battery still drains so fast..
in battery usage statistics,
on CM7, it shows that "Display" is the one who responsible drinking so much juice (60% and the other is just 3-10%).
on froyo, is not the "Display" which responsible drinking most of the juice, it is "Cell Standby".
i thought gingerbread should have good battery management, and the battery should last much longer than froyo.
i'm sure it is a bug on CM7 for Defy.
but whatever, at least we have a Gingerbread on Defy from a great dev like Quarx.
while motorola working so slow on releasing froyo with its motoblur crap.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Display instead of cell standby showing up first in battery consumption means that Froyo (or CM7) uses less battery. The display just stayed the same of course, unless it's tuned brighter, the percentage increased because it's a relative measurement.

[Tip] For saving battery on CM9 + other ICS roms

I wanted to share with the board a very simple (can't believe I didn't think of that) kind of way of finding out what is draining battery and disabling/uninstalling it.
My first 3 days with CM9 Alpha 3 where pretty ehhh with battery. I was draining a lil more than 10% an hour. Now I am probably 10% for 2+ hours.
Under Settings > Developer Options > Enable Show CPU Usage. Obviously I don't keep this on all day. I turned it on just to see what is in use when my phone is pretty much supposed to be idle/doing nothing. I was surprised to see how some apps where constantly popping up on the list. I spotted 2 weather apps I had constantly on this list and watchdog lite. I uninstalled them and started using Google news and weather for my weather needs and now when my phone is idle, 95% of the time its the basic system services that are running. All I did was uninstall 3 apps, which I barely used. It is crazy how big of a difference it made. Mind you I have Wifi and Bluetooth on all the time and my screen is set to Auto Brightness.
Just something I think everyone should be aware of and make use of when they have a battery problem.
P.S. I also have my governor set to conservative.

AOSP ROMs Battery drain (staying awake?)

Hello,
I've been flashing a bunch of AOSP roms and with all of them, i tend to get terrible battery life while idling. I've narrowed it down to my phone not sleeping while the screen is off. In the battery chart menu awake seems to be almost the same as the battery up time and the bar graph is almost a full solid blue. while i was searching i came across a post in cm forums blaming this on something to do with the gps and that disabling it and rebooting would fix it but this does not seem to work for me. Does anyone else have this and has anyone found a way to fix it?
I've also discovered a post whereby someone was running advanced task killer on an sgs2 to fix the same issue i'm having but i would rather not rely on a task killer if i don't need to. Any info, ideas, help, links etc are greatly appreciated!!
Your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman.
So, to narrow things down, I started off fresh
- Flashed stock 1.11 hboot from Telus RUU
- relocked then RUU
- unlocked, flashed TWRP 2.4.4
- Wiped SD, Cache, Dalvik, System, Factory Reset
- Flashed PA 2.54/Gapps (my fave ROM)
- Installed few apps. Friendcaster, Tunein Radio and Swiftkey
- Left it at 60% over night not charging
Low and behold, Awake time and screen on time were almost on par. However, I used it on the bus to listen to some tune in radio, browse the web etc and it seems as though one of the apps or maybe multiple are keeping the phone awake more than it has to be and it started draining again. not as bad as before, mind you. Most likely due to there being less apps. So at this point if I want to continue using AOSP ROMS it seems as though I will need to set up a task killer so nothing keeps my phone awake.
Tonight I will set it up and see what happens with my awake/screen on bars. I am fairly certain they will sync up afterwards. I tried to avoid a Task Killer but it seems as though I cannot! I will post my findings after for anyone else in this same boat though it seems very few are!
Get a program like better battery stats or Gsam battery monitor to tell you what your wake locks are
Sent from my VENOMized HoxL

[Q] Please Help ! Android System Battery Drain on Nexus 5 after KitKat 4.4.2 update

Hi,
The battery life of my Nexus 5 has taken a dramatic hit since the 4.4.2 update. I think the culprit is Android System but the GSAM battery graph seems to suggest that the culprit is Android OS kernel. My Nexus 5 is on 4.4.2, unrooted, stock ROM and the build no. is KOT49H.
In short, my phone does not seem to have a wakelock issue but I can't verify because 4.4 does not allow wakelock access without root. It sleeps fine at night and in daytime when it is not in use. I only lose around 5% or less overnight with 2x battery turning off the data connection and only turning on data connection once every night. The problem is the Android System which drains at least 17% (sometimes 25%) of battery everyday and routinely sits on top my of battery usage chart with or without me actually using the phone. My usage per charge is typically around 6-7 hours with around 1 hour 45 minutes screen on time. I had extraordinary battery life before the update to 4.4.2 (lasting more than 1 day with over 3 or 4 hours screen on time). Now my battery life is completely shot. The battery graphs attached already represent one of the better days. Some days the Android system will drain at 25% or more. You will note my phone relatively slept fine without draining at night in the first 7 or 8 hours and then the battery drain started to take a nose dive after I woke up. I feel that whenever I start using the phone (with the screen being turned on), the battery drain will occur. My observations are as follows:
1. I use LTE but the reception at my home and work for LTE is not good so the radio jumps between LTE and H+ from time to time however I do not think the radio jumping contributes that much to the drain. The drain stays the same even when I am at a place with good LTE reception. I use wifi at home but i cannot connect to wifi at work (which sadly is another issue). The wifi is always off unless i use it at home. I do NOT have wifi scanning in the settings. I have wifi battery optimization on. I never use bluetooth.
2. My google now is off. My location setting is completely off with no location reporting etc..
3. My Google + auto back up is off. I do not use Facebook, Facebook messenger, Instagram, snapchat etc. I mostly use Feedly, Whatsapp, Gmails and look at stock quotes every day. I seldom take pictures, videos or listen to music.
4. I only have one widget dashclock widget. I have removed feedly and stock quote widgets from the home screen but they don't seem to affect my battery usage that much.
5. I use Automateit but only have a few rules such as setting vibrate on weekdays etc.. I do not have any profiles which are related to GPS or location which i understand would drain battery. I also use Dynamic Notification, Light Flow, Lux, Nova Launcher, Notification Toggle and the memory in general is always below 65% in the background. I also use 2x battery to save battery which is set at switching off data after I turn off the screen and it will only turn data in the background every 10 minutes.
6. I have tried safe mode and 9 out of 10 times the Android system drain remains the same. The only way to lower the Android system drain (albeit temporary) is when I turn off the phone and plug it in for a charge, then turn it on when it is full and still plugged in. After I unplug it, the Android System drain will lower to say 7 or 8 % but it will slowly creep back up to 20% within an hour or so.
7. The CPU usage overlay routinely has 9 + readings on the top when the screen is turned on (but with no app running). I think it means very high CPU usage.
8. I do not think Feedly is causing any problems. I deleted the app and the drain remains. I also do not think GSAM is that useful as pointed out by another member here. It points to one app. You delete that app and then the drain remains it will point to something else.
9. I have been using Greenify (non-root) but it does not seem to help with my battery drain as the drain might be caused by system apps or processes within the OS.
I don't know what else to do and this problem has been troubling me for more than 1 month now. Please help !
Update on 24/2/2014:
I have given up and factory reset my phone. After I reset my phone, the apps were installed via Google Play automatically. I also switched to ART. It was fine initially for at least one day. The apps were there but I did not use or enable most of them as I wanted to transfer all my data and tweaked the settings in one goal. I mostly just used Feedly, Whatsapp and Maps for navigation. Even with Maps and high accuracy GPS on, the Android System would go below 10% even though it would temporarily increase to say above 20% during navigation. This morning, I thought the battery seemed ok so I enabled Lux, Dynamic Notifications, Lightflow, Automateit, Nova Launcher and restore the settings to most of the apps.
The Android System drain came back within 2 hours and hit 25% of the total battery drain. My phone's battery dropped from 100% to 40 % in less than 5 hours and the screen on time was only around 1 hour! I never did any battery intensive actions. The most was turning on the phone to check my battery and whatsapped less than 10 messages back and forth ! Since the drain re-appeared, I have turned off completely the location setting, Google Now, sync for Google Plus, auto-backup for Google Plus. I have removed all widgets and disabled Dynamic Notifications, Nova Launcher, Light Flow, Lux. The drain still remains the same at 23% or more.
This is driving me absolutely crazy and I am sick and tired of spending so much time and energy on sorting out the cause for drain (and to no avail!) I spent a lot more time on trying to fix the phone than really utilizing the phone for my benefit !! I just sent an email to the Google tech support and hope they will help instead of sending me generic self-help sheet. Thanks all for listening and trying to help. I am just really disappointed with Google this time.
Use bbs to get wakelock info.
Feedly has got to go too
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rootSU said:
Use bbs to get wakelock info.
Feedly has got to go too
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your reply. My N5 is not rooted so I do not have access to wakelock stats anymore.
I have removed Feedly but the android system drain persists.
Not a lot that can be done without knowing the cause. Consider factory reset?
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rootSU said:
Not a lot that can be done without knowing the cause. Consider factory reset?
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am hoping I don have to resort to factory reset and can wait for the 4.4.3 update but I guess my patience is running out.
Thanks for your help.
My missus' LG-P880 has exactly the same problem. Just started happening one day. It seems to be wakelock locator alarms according to bbs but there doesn't appear to be any reason for it. Its been driving me mad too. Luckily tho she's rooted so using app opps i disabled Google services location and it's kinda helped
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Did you try another kernel ? When I changed to franco kernel, my battery life is better.
having weak LTE signal kills the battery but it should not be this bad.
Maybe you should try a factory reset and see if the problem still persist, if not then you have an rogue app somewhere.
You can use the process of elimination.
Start with disabling Dynamic notifications and Light flow as those have high potential for battery drain.
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Elias_grodin said:
I am hoping I don have to resort to factory reset and can wait for the 4.4.3 update but I guess my patience is running out.
Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Restart your phone in safe mode, and see the battery drainage...maybe it can help you.
It seems good for me
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I had this same problem the other night. Get app ops starter from the play store. In there turn location off in Google play services and android system. Note, this may impact other apps. I don't use any that I need location for so it works for me.
Sent from my Nexus 5
I had a similar issue as well. For me I turned off a couple things and it really helped:
1. Turned off Cerberus, I believe checking location too often or incorrectly or something.
2. Turned off Account sync for Play Newstand. Noticed when a sync would occur, it would hang on Newstand for much too long which I think was waking device and keeping device awake during it's long syncs. Everything else would only take a min or two total.
3. Set G+ photo sync to only sync when on wifi and charging.
4. Removed Yahoo Weather app. Noticed yahoo weather app staying alive a lot too.
5. Removed Whatsapp. Probably unnecessary really, but any of those messaging/weather/location apps that I don't use often (if ever) I removed to make sure they weren't checking location in the background.
So far, I'm at 78% battery today when I would have been at around 30-40% usually, so that combo has made a huge difference.
It's going to be different for everyone I think, but basically just make sure you don't have any excess apps checking location in the background. And at least for me there seems to be something wrong with Play Newsstand sync hanging for long periods of time.
Yea... Even i had the same issues... Latest version killes ma deep sleep mode nd also some of a rules disappeared....
I was having similar issues and was able to narrow it down to syncing Google Services...
I found that often times Google Drive would get hung up when syncing in the background and chew up my battery.
What Google Services do you have set to auto-sync? I would narrow it down to the ones you only really need to have synced in the background and have the others sync up for you when you open them.
Also, in regards to your LTE/H+ signal, have you tried to flash another radio to see if there is any improvement? A poor signal can have a pretty significant impact on battery life as well.
Lastly, as mentioned by another user, Better Battery Stats, though requiring root, will make it a lot easier to track down the culprit of the issue if it indeed a rogue app somewhere.
Try different keyboard. I've a suspicion that latest Google Keyboard is the culprit.
I was having some unexplainable with BBS (no locks, etc.) battery drain. Which can only be resolved (though temporarily) with reboot.
So, I installed alternative keyboard (Swype in my case) and using it. So far, second day I don't have battery drain.
Update
Please refer to the OP for update. Thanks all.
battery after reset
After a second factory reset, I did not install a lot of the apps which I suspect have something to do with my drain - including Swype, Dynamic Notifications, Nova Launcher, LightFlow, Task Manager, 2x battery, Lux, Notification Toggle, Dash Clock, Automateit. I have also set my location to device only with no location history and history. I have also disabled Google Now. I have not restored my photos, music and videos to the phone yet. I have disabled sync for Google Plus, Google Drive etc.. I have also disabled auto back up for Google Plus. I am on ART.
The battery life (with around 25 % left) was around 6 hours 30 minutes or a bit more but with close to 2 hours 40 minutes screen on time. The screen was the biggest draw. Android system comes in second with around 13%. This is obviously better than before where I managed to squeeze maybe a hour or 30 minutes more but with 2x battery turned on in the background. I mostly used the phone for battery checking, whatsapp, Feedly, web surfing. I played games for around 20 minutes. I was not on wifi most of the time. Is this battery performance normal?
Thanks in advance.
Replacement offer by Google
Elias_grodin said:
After a second factory reset, I did not install a lot of the apps which I suspect have something to do with my drain - including Swype, Dynamic Notifications, Nova Launcher, LightFlow, Task Manager, 2x battery, Lux, Notification Toggle, Dash Clock, Automateit. I have also set my location to device only with no location history and history. I have also disabled Google Now. I have not restored my photos, music and videos to the phone yet. I have disabled sync for Google Plus, Google Drive etc.. I have also disabled auto back up for Google Plus. I am on ART.
The battery life (with around 25 % left) was around 6 hours 30 minutes or a bit more but with close to 2 hours 40 minutes screen on time. The screen was the biggest draw. Android system comes in second with around 13%. This is obviously better than before where I managed to squeeze maybe a hour or 30 minutes more but with 2x battery turned on in the background. I mostly used the phone for battery checking, whatsapp, Feedly, web surfing. I played games for around 20 minutes. I was not on wifi most of the time. Is this battery performance normal?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have reset the phone three times. After the third attempt, the battery drain for Android System would go back up to 20% plus. By the test of elimination, I thought I narrowed down the possible culprit to Light Flow and Dynamic Notifications. I uninstalled both of them but the battery drain remained 20% plus.
Google was willing to replace my device. I asked them whether the battery drain is likely a hardware or a software issue or a combination of both. They said (to my surprise) it is hardware issue. It seems they have come across quite a number of similar cases. I always thought it was a bug within 4.4.2 or in the google apps such as Google Play Services etc. and could be fixed by a patch or something. The phone also means a lot to me as it was a gift from my gf. I just don't want to go through the hassle of replacing the device if it is a software problem but I guess I am running out of choices unless I decide to wait for the update. What do you guys think?
It's definitely not a hardware issue. If you Google it there's threads all over the place with all different makes and models of phones having the same problem and no one can figure out why, apart from it definitely seems something to do with Google services (GmsCore.apk)
Your best option is to root your phone and use app ops and turn location access off for every app that doesn't need it. (pretty much everything apart from maps and weather apps)
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