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Never rooted a phone before. First smartphone was the Mytouch 3G and never did anything with it, but I decided to try with this one. I primarily rooted it so I could uninstall alot of the preloaded junk, but I'm also starting this thread for any other advice I should follow.
Primarily, I use my phone for browsing at work and texting, in general. Though now, I grabbed a bunch of games and I'm running some emulators. I also listen to music on it. So I'm not sure how much more I can get out of my phone with what I use it for. I would like more battery life. Maybe it's just the browsing that does it, but the battery doesn't last long while I'm surfing at work. It's usually at around half, more or less around noon, I start using it at 9 or so. I recently got Ninja Fruit and have been playing that alot, quick battery drain too. If this is all normal, then disregard. If there are any other things I can do to keep the battery from draining so fast, I'd like to hear it. I saw a few things in a thread around here, installed Watchdog and Elixer, changed a few settings. WiFi is always off, I don't use Facebook or Twitter, so the phone's not searching for updates. Only thing always running is Weatherbug, email and 4G. I usually turn the phone off when I'm not using it to save battery.
As for uninstalling apps, I read around and it seems most, if not all of these are good to go.
AppPack
EA Games
Highlight
NFS Shift
Nova
T-Mobile Mall
T-Mobile TV
TegraZone Games
TeleNav GPS Navigator
Video Chat
Wi-Fi Calling
Zinio Reader
Considering getting rid of Car Home, though it might be useful one day. Not sure what Talk does really and I don't think I'll be using SmartShare either, are those good to get rid of too?
I suggest you read the thread on how to save battery... the apps suggested for installment have been very useful with saving battery with everyday tasks... I would start there
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA Premium App
I'll assume it's the Steps to 24 Hour Battery Life thread. Working on some of those now, going to do the battery calibration tonight. The only one I'm not clear on is this one:
Third -(Root Needed) Set CPU. Have had this on my G1 and N1 and it does nothing but save battery. I currently have it set on 216 - 1000 for when the screen is on and the only profile i have is for when the screen is off and it is at 216-216.
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I have no idea how to set CPU or where to set it as. I couldn't find anything specifically pertaining to the G2X, so I'd rather get some direct advice here from someone that knows than to try to fiddle with something I have no understanding for.
Also, found the Battery Drain Fix thread, did that last week as well.
Talk is Google Talk. You can reinstall that from the Market. All the ones you mentioned are good to go except Highlight, not sure what that is.
I kept WiFi Calling and Smartshare. WiFi Calling is actually pretty useful if you ever need it. Perhaps just move the WiFi calling and Smartshare to a backup folder just in case.
Also there is LMI stuff that can go (LogMeIn). Kinda scary that LogMeIn comes standard on our phones without an interface. Are they able to remote into our phones or something? I dunno but delete those too (there are 2).
Make sure you install Clockwork Recovery via the NVFlash method so it is accessible on bootup (PWR + VolDwn)... and make yourself a nice backup before you proceed.
Also, now you are rooted and have Clockwork, you might want to flash Paul's Patch from recovery.
I just froze Talk, SmartShare and WiFi calling, since I'm not worried about space. Highlight was a T-Mobile thing, I'm assuming it was an app for "Highlighting" apps they want you to check out or something.
Don't know what the LogMeIn stuff is, but I'll delete them as you suggested.
What's Clockwork Recovery for? Googling instructions on what do to, but I seem to be stuck after downloading nvflash_gtablet and nvflash_windows, since I don't know what exactly to do with them. Seems a bit daunting. And when you say make a backup, what of?
Also, what's Paul's Patch for as well and how do I go about flashing it from recovery?
Hi everyone I'm new to the forums and smartphones. But I got a razr hd from fido a few months ago. I've never compared the battery life and could get 3 hours of screen time on one charge. At first I thought it was great but then I used my friends razr (non maxx like mine). But I could watch 3 hours of YouTube videos with max sound and only used 50% of the battery. I got the warranty from future shop that will replace my battery, but since the battery isn't removable they will replace it with another phone of the same retail value. I turned off all apps, apex launcher, and avg, and used only what he had, JuiceDefender Ultimate and SwiftKey. My battery was about the same.
I don't get even get three hours of screen out of mine with brightness at around 40% and I have the maxx. I game a lot on mine though and talk a lot on the phone. I think the battery figures were obliviously under the ideal circumstances, so in the real world that's pretty good what your getting.
Do a side by side with both devices and see what the difference is.
Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using xda app-developers app
Mines just a normal RAZR HD. I'm not in an LTE area like you so I stay on 3G and throttle up to H+ when its transferring data.
I don't game much; my heaviest game is Angry Birds Star Wars which I don't use much so usualy its just Words With Friends.
I don't use it often for phone calls but I do use it. I'm a guy so I'm not talking for hours and hours.
I always get a full day out of it, and by full day I mean 16 hours or therabouts, until I put it to recharge while I sleep.
I'm not using anything to save battery.
I run Apex Launcher opposed to stock.
I run Tasker and have it looking for cable plugged in, orientation, change in wifi connection (nothing major, just gets the SSID and MAC and stores them as variables), and have it looking for screen unlocked and Display off (for ADB toggle).
In the background I'm running NG call recorder, LMT, WhatsApp, Lookout, LocateMyDroid, Words With Friends, TEAM battery bar Pro, Go SMS
Pro, Calengoo, BetterBatteryStats, ModemFastdormancyMonitor, SmartCardService, Google Services, Google Play, and Notification Toggle.
I sync Gmail and Contacts.
I have frozen Acoustic Warning, Audio Effects, Calendar, Calendar Storage, Email, Facebook stays frozen but unfreezes and runs with GPS off when I run a script but I don't use it much and the same for Maps but GPS on obviously (Maps made a differance for me and needed to be refrozen on every boot as well as the ROM seems to unfreeze it at boot time), Google Caledar Sync, Google Play Books/Movies/Music, Google+, Homescreen (default launcer), Moto Chinese Input, Moto English... infact almost everything starting with "moto or Moto is frozen", Quickview, All of Smart Actions, Swype, and Telstra One (specific to my ROM). Of everything frozen, the only things that I think make a significant impact are the way I have Maps and Facebook handled, that they stay frozen and then are called by a script that unfreezes and runs them and refreezes them on exit.
The Motocare may make a differance however I think its something that's needed to see when you have updates.
This list is very specific to my ROM as I'm on Telstra Austrlia which is (so I've gathered) one of the most bloat free ROMs, and freezing is always going to be carrier specific from what I've read about the phone from other people's carriers.
In adition to the freezing, I've stopped heaps of stuff in Autostarts. I don't reccomend messing with this as its easy to get lost and forget your settings. There is no undo or restore to default, so if you get lost then you're only sure fire way is a factory reset. If you feel safe using it though, then its worth having a look through what's starting up (start with just the stuff after boot) and disabling things that aren't needed. There's heaps of apps that run that really don't need to; non system apps I mean. If you get comfortable with it then the next greatest place they like to start up is when new apps are installed or old ones updated but there needs to be some care taken here as some apps do need to know this while others are just spying and wasting resources while doing so. If in doubt, just don't mess with it at all as there's no "set back to default" option.
I don't use Juice Defender, that's something that stuck out at me, is that I don't know how its being used in one of the posts stated above, but in the case of my ROM, the power management seems to be as good as I'm going to get it on its own. Toggling wifi in particular is something that I tried out with Tasker and it was better to leave it alone. I did try an app... I can't find it now but apparently I didn't back it up before uninstall. Its the beta app made by the chip manufacturer that runs in our phones (or so I read anyway) and it spent time in the background collecting data then tried to optimise power management. I think it was okay but I didn't see anything significant. I was hoping it would end the wakelocks that turn the wifi on but it ended up just leaving my wifi on most of the time and then turning it off when I actually was at home, and I couldn't manually turn it on and get a connection. It may be quite helpful for others though... Its the same thing for Juice Defender; I reckon that the way I would use it would be less helpful because of the wifi handling. I've gathered that wifi doesn't so much turn off but just goes into a power friendly state, and that a full toggle on and off takes more power so I ended up leaving that alone entirely. For people with other power issues, for example I stated that I don't use LTE or 4g in my area, then perhaps it could be useful... I can't give advice on that.
...
...but to answer your question, that's how I use my phone and I get at least 6 hours screen time in a 16 hour day. In fact I always get that much (assuming its used that much) and usually more if I need it. I have battery left over but it does admitadly go down quickly after it reaches a point. I would be dissapointed if I got less. I came from the S2 with the Samsung extendable battery (just under %20 more juice than out of the box) and would get 4 or 5 hours on that before it was dead. I think that you have a genuine frustration on your hands, but that you should deal with it slowly and one step at a time, and that the first step is diagnosis and if it were me I would start by switching it to 3g/2g and seeing how that goes for a few days... let it settle in like that and see if it makes any differance after at least a few days later and a few charges of the battery.
By the way, Location services work fine with maps frozen. Another thing I neglected to mention is that I don't use Google Now. All of my apps that use fine or course location work fine (Google ones and third party) with Maps frozen.
Oh... One more edit; I also have DroidWall or some other equivalent firewall installed. I forget which one at the moment but if you use one, make sure it simply is a front end to iptables as there's almost zero resources used in this fashion. As I don't have 4G in my area, I don't know what is best suited for that. Mine is very simple and has a checkbox for wifi and for data, however it makes a lot of sense that a lot of these firewalls may not be updated to be detecting the interface that 4G is running on. This doesn't make a huge difference on my phone and I don't think I would notice any battery savings if I didn't have it but it may be of help if you were hell bent on using 4G, as its supposed to be power hungry, because you can prevent a lot of apps from making a connection to report the crap they discover (Contacts, numbers dialed, etc) and block ads in some games that don't otherwise need the internet to be played. At the same time, I'm honestly not sure if the results would be good or bad... for example if an app persistently tries to make a connection and isn't programmed to give up when the connection is timed out then that would be bad. I still thought I'd throw it in there. It would actually be one of the last additions I'd make to my phone after being finally satisfied with the power management. Its also something that you need to be aware of, for example if you can't play a game or use an app, it can cause you (me) to uninstall and reinstall only to find that I had firewalled it when it needed to have a connection. Some apps need to connect to check the validity of their licence as well and you just need to be aware and enable it when it shows up.
I try to tweak the phone to save as much battery as it can, but I still want to be able to use the Lost Phone functionality. What settings do you suggest?
For now I'm using these settings:
- Allow WIFI to sleep when in sleepmode
- Allow WIFI to scan even if WIFI is turned off
- No GPS
- Location is on battery save mode
- Don't allow mobile data connection when screen is of (using Llama)
Now im using the default Google find my phone website. For the theftie I installed Lockwatch (it will take a pic after a few tries of entering the wrong code). But you need a data connection / wifi for the app to sent the mail? So how to circumvent this if wifi and data is off after the phone goes to sleep??
I don't have Lockwatch. But it looks like a really nice simple app. From what I can read in the product description it implies that Lockwatch turns on the required features by itself GPS, WiFi, etc. Have you tried "stealing" your own phone with your power saving settings activated? The other thing not mentioned in the product description is does the app continue to send periodic emails to update the phones location after it has been stolen and is moving? Maybe you know? I am using Lookout which can be interrogated at any time to located the phone. But it is not a lightweight app, which makes Lockwatch all the more interesting. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I can't answer your question, but maybe someone else can, plus my question!
I monitored the battery life of my Moto G LTE for a while and I can say that in standby doesn't drain battery, even if gps and mobile networks are active (I tried using Runtastic while riding racing bike for about 15km: 1h of gps and mobile network consumed about 10-15%).
Remember that, even if you turn on location, doesn't mean that phone searches costantly gps signal, it searches for it only when apps request for it.
grahamgo said:
I don't have Lockwatch. But it looks like a really nice simple app. From what I can read in the product description it implies that Lockwatch turns on the required features by itself GPS, WiFi, etc. Have you tried "stealing" your own phone with your power saving settings activated? The other thing not mentioned in the product description is does the app continue to send periodic emails to update the phones location after it has been stolen and is moving? Maybe you know? I am using Lookout which can be interrogated at any time to located the phone. But it is not a lightweight app, which makes Lockwatch all the more interesting. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I can't answer your question, but maybe someone else can, plus my question!
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You're welcome. I try to test it a few times. I'm still not sure when the mailing and gps kicks in. I do receive a mail when fake stealing my phone So it works good from time to time.
There is an premium feature that will try to sent again when there is data connection again.
If you want even more lightweight, im now using Avira with Lockwatch. If you like your phone to take pics for app locking, you can try Smart App Lock. And if you dislike Chrome, use CM Browser
justanicename said:
You're welcome. I try to test it a few times. I'm still not sure when the mailing and gps kicks in. I do receive a mail when fake stealing my phone So it works good from time to time.
There is an premium feature that will try to sent again when there is data connection again.
If you want even more lightweight, im now using Avira with Lockwatch. If you like your phone to take pics for app locking, you can try Smart App Lock. And if you dislike Chrome, use CM Browser
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The "time to time" bit sounds worrisome! I'm on this group because I gave my wife a Moto G. She just wants a working phone, so now that it's pretty much setup right and she can "drive" it proficiently I tend not to mess with it (read - I am not allowed!) . We live in Peru 6 months a year and we both like the fact that I can ping her phone using Lookout if necessary to see that's she's safe. However, they removed the photo taking feature from the free version, and the paid version is now about $30 p/a. Quite reasonable, but this has prompted me to see what else is out there before giving them my money. I have read good things about Avira ($10 for Pro version), so your recommendation might be perfect. I have also just looked at avast! Anti-Theft (pro version $15 p/a), this also seems very comprehensive, I am not too worried about antivirus protection as she only uses the basic's. Anyway I'm still looking around to look at all possible options. Thanks!
Oh, and sorry I don't mean to pull your thread off track. But you do want a location app that overrides your battery saving setup when needed. So the more possible options open to you the better right? On our Moto G, the WiFi/3g data is always on. We get a 2 to 3 day typical battery life.
grahamgo said:
The "time to time" bit sounds worrisome! I'm on this group because I gave my wife a Moto G. She just wants a working phone, so now that it's pretty much setup right and she can "drive" it proficiently I tend not to mess with it (read - I am not allowed!) . We live in Peru 6 months a year and we both like the fact that I can ping her phone using Lookout if necessary to see that's she's safe. However, they removed the photo taking feature from the free version, and the paid version is now about $30 p/a. Quite reasonable, but this has prompted me to see what else is out there before giving them my money. I have read good things about Avira ($10 for Pro version), so your recommendation might be perfect. I have also just looked at avast! Anti-Theft (pro version $15 p/a), this also seems very comprehensive, I am not too worried about antivirus protection as she only uses the basic's. Anyway I'm still looking around to look at all possible options. Thanks!
Oh, and sorry I don't mean to pull your thread off track. But you do want a location app that overrides your battery saving setup when needed. So the more possible options open to you the better right? On our Moto G, the WiFi/3g data is always on. We get a 2 to 3 day typical battery life.
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It's ok, maybe some good anti-theft app can do this overriding the battery saving setup thingy. Im now trying "Android Lost", "AntiTheft & Find My Phone" and "Theftie" (all free of course) . Since we are just both users, maybe we can help each other here on XDA.
Sure, I for one would like to know which app you consider to be the best. Also the reasoning behind the decision.
I hope that you you find one that can override your power saving settings. I would hope that they all can...
grahamgo said:
Sure, I for one would like to know which app you consider to be the best. Also the reasoning behind the decision.
I hope that you you find one that can override your power saving settings. I would hope that they all can...
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After a few tests, i think Theftie and Lockwatch are the best. But I still need wifi or a data connection. And as a backup i keep Android Lost. So in the end i cannot save battery if i want to use the anti-theft functionalities.
Let me know if you what you decided.
justanicename said:
After a few tests, i think Theftie and Lockwatch are the best. But I still need wifi or a data connection. And as a backup i keep Android Lost. So in the end i cannot save battery if i want to use the anti-theft functionalities.
Let me know if you what you decided.
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Have you tried cerberus? It's one of the most complete out there at a reasonable price
I have to say Cerberus is very complete, I think this is the first app I have seen that specifies in its description that GPS is turned on even if its turned off. Edit:- not quite, only on systems earlier than 2.3.3 on later version you have to jump through hoops and convert Cerebus to a system app. Then In the case @justanicename the phone still needs to get access to a WiFi of GSM internet connection. I presume the only chance is that if the phone is stolen the thief will try to use the phone and the GSM data connection will become active when the screen comes on?
I did some further research on the battery saving settings and found a discussion sayin that actually turning on/of the wifi/dataconnection/gps is draining the battery more. So I will try this for a while. Cerberus looks really nice, it seems that Theftie does a lot of what cerberus does too.
Hi, I tried Cerberus yesterday. It does everything as advertised. The memory footprint is 4.4mb, compared with Lookout's 19mb, though Lookout does provide antivirus protection. I started to try Theftie today, but was putoff by the requirement to sign in using Google+ a service that I don't like and don't use. So I removed Theftie. I will go with Cerberus costing the one time 3 Euro. Thanks @agusaon for the pointer.
grahamgo said:
Hi, I tried Cerberus yesterday. It does everything as advertised. The memory footprint is 4.4mb, compared with Lookout's 19mb, though Lookout does provide antivirus protection. I started to try Theftie today, but was putoff by the requirement to sign in using Google+ a service that I don't like and don't use. So I removed Theftie. I will go with Cerberus costing the one time 3 Euro. Thanks @agusaon for the pointer.
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Great app! I hope you enjoy it and never have to use it
Hi
Just curious if battery saving apps are worth it or is it better to manually turn mobile data, wifi, etc off? Cause those apps of course run a lot in the backgrounding checking if they can improve anything, so curious if it better to manually do those things sometimes?
Cause right now I have DU battery saver, but I don't see it doing a lot that I couldn't do myself.
So short, are those apps worth it or do they use more battery than they save?
Thanks in advance
I've tried a few but in the end I felt manually managing it was best for me. I anyway find myself making sure the automated tasks work, so if I'm putting in that effort I might as well just only do it manually.
I think setting automatic rules always has some problem or the other. For example, timed settings do not work for me because my daily timings are not the same everyday. Location based wifi is good to set, but doesn't always work. Data off when the screen is off also doesn't make sense for me because then messages or emails wont come or come at certain intervals instead of real-time.
One very useful thing I found though, was to use one of the many available apps to automatically switch my phone to 2G whenever its connected to my home or office wifi. That saves tremendous amounts of battery and hassle!
This is my opinion though, others probably have had different experiences...
OK, so I know M7 isn't the latest CM build, but it's the latest one without issues with GPS, so that's what I'm on since I use GPS a lot.
So last week I replaced my home router. This of course means reconfiguring all the wifi devices around the house, including my wifi thermostat. The unique thing about the thermostat is that to configure it, you connect a laptop/phone/tablet to the thermostat's ad-hoc wifi network, tell it which infrastructure ssid to connect to, verify a pin from the thermostat's screen (so nobody can hijack your t-stat from outside the house), and that's it.
thing is, when you use Cyanogenmod (at least on the relay) to connect to an adhoc network, it breaks wifi. what happens is you can't connect to any other wifi networks, and can't even scan to see available networks till you reboot. sometimes it doesn't work even after a reboot. strangely, the tethering/hotspot still works fine. you just can't connect the phone to a hotspot whether it's at home or work or anywhere.
i'd been having other issues and general slowness with the phone, so i decided to backup a few apps with TiBu and do a factory reset. that worked... till i tried connecting to the thermostat again, and it broke wifi completely this time.
solution? go to /data/misc/wifi/ and rename wpa_supplicant.conf to wpa_supplicant.conf.old (or whatever, as long as it's a different name) and reboot. the system will automatically create a new conf file. boom - wifi fixed.
obviously this requires root, but that's not an issue in CM. I doubt it matters, but i used ES file explorer since it's got a good root filesystem browser and mounting / or system as RW is a simple matter of a checkbox in the settings.
when i compared the newly created wpa_supplicant.conf with the one i'd renamed (.old) the only real difference i could see was the saved networks at the bottom. so you might be able to get away with simply deleting the offending network={ blah blah } section instead of completely renaming the conf file. the advantage here would be if you have a bunch of saved networks that you don't want to get rid of, it will keep those saved networks. the conf file is a plaintext file so it's easy enough to understand what you're looking at, and modify appropriately.
MODS: I apologize if this is in the wrong forum. I figured since it probably only applies to CM, I should post it in the dev forum rather than the general one. If it needs to be moved, I don't be offended.
Gibson99 said:
OK, so I know M7 isn't the latest CM build, but it's the latest one without issues with GPS, so that's what I'm on since I use GPS a lot.
So last week I replaced my home router. This of course means reconfiguring all the wifi devices around the house, including my wifi thermostat. The unique thing about the thermostat is that to configure it, you connect a laptop/phone/tablet to the thermostat's ad-hoc wifi network, tell it which infrastructure ssid to connect to, verify a pin from the thermostat's screen (so nobody can hijack your t-stat from outside the house), and that's it.
thing is, when you use Cyanogenmod (at least on the relay) to connect to an adhoc network, it breaks wifi. what happens is you can't connect to any other wifi networks, and can't even scan to see available networks till you reboot. sometimes it doesn't work even after a reboot. strangely, the tethering/hotspot still works fine. you just can't connect the phone to a hotspot whether it's at home or work or anywhere.
i'd been having other issues and general slowness with the phone, so i decided to backup a few apps with TiBu and do a factory reset. that worked... till i tried connecting to the thermostat again, and it broke wifi completely this time.
solution? go to /data/misc/wifi/ and rename wpa_supplicant.conf to wpa_supplicant.conf.old (or whatever, as long as it's a different name) and reboot. the system will automatically create a new conf file. boom - wifi fixed.
obviously this requires root, but that's not an issue in CM. I doubt it matters, but i used ES file explorer since it's got a good root filesystem browser and mounting / or system as RW is a simple matter of a checkbox in the settings.
when i compared the newly created wpa_supplicant.conf with the one i'd renamed (.old) the only real difference i could see was the saved networks at the bottom. so you might be able to get away with simply deleting the offending network={ blah blah } section instead of completely renaming the conf file. the advantage here would be if you have a bunch of saved networks that you don't want to get rid of, it will keep those saved networks. the conf file is a plaintext file so it's easy enough to understand what you're looking at, and modify appropriately.
MODS: I apologize if this is in the wrong forum. I figured since it probably only applies to CM, I should post it in the dev forum rather than the general one. If it needs to be moved, I don't be offended.
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It does belong in q&a...but my lollipop validus has working gps
REV3NT3CH said:
It does belong in q&a...but my lollipop validus has working gps
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As does FatToad. However, I do know that the privacy bit in the GPS can be flipped with the drivers we're using in FT. There's an old thread with a post from nard about how to fix that.
Magamo said:
As does FatToad. However, I do know that the privacy bit in the GPS can be flipped with the drivers we're using in FT. There's an old thread with a post from nard about how to fix that.
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Do you understand more about this "privacy bit", what call in the API flips it, or can give me any other pointers about it? The poster previous to you indicates that GPS works with M7. I thought I had it working with M8, but can't really guarantee that, any more. The post from nard was quite an onerous process, including what looked like reflashing the baseband.
It seems to me that if we really understood this problem, the fix would be quite simple, and could be done by a root-access app. I've done more digging, and see that it seems to be common to many models of Samsung Galaxy phones, and some of the fixes involve doing potentially horrible things to the NVRAM. (like clearing it completely - what could possibly go wrong?)
It seems that the GPS is done in the baseband processor, along with the other radio stuff, but so far I haven't been able to find it. The transceiver chip is just a transceiver, no baseband processor. It looks like the baseband processor might be on the Snapdragon main processor chip, though they don't enumerate it well. In addition they mention a "gpsOne engine" without describing exactly what it is.
I'm still relatively ignorant about Android, a year after getting one. (not enough time) I'm better versed on hardware, but this problem seems to be in the cracks between.
Come to think of it, a simple question... Is there documentation on the communications between Android and the baseband processor?
Gibson99 said:
OK, so I know M7 isn't the latest CM build, but it's the latest one without issues with GPS, so that's what I'm on since I use GPS a lot.
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I just took my wife's phone outside and tested it. GPS works on M8 from last summer, as does wifi. AFAIK the only thing that doesn't work on M8 is the video camera. (Stills on the camera work.)
This was an older phone than mine, purchased after mine. With mine I didn't need the radio or bootloader updates, my wife's did. I bought the phone for her, used it briefly with my PureTalkUSA SIM card to make sure it was really unlocked. Then I put CM11 on it.
phred14 said:
I just took my wife's phone outside and tested it. GPS works on M8 from last summer, as does wifi. AFAIK the only thing that doesn't work on M8 is the video camera. (Stills on the camera work.)
This was an older phone than mine, purchased after mine. With mine I didn't need the radio or bootloader updates, my wife's did. I bought the phone for her, used it briefly with my PureTalkUSA SIM card to make sure it was really unlocked. Then I put CM11 on it.
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no idea how old mine actually is; i bought it "like new" from a tmobile reseller here in town and i actually use tmobile for service.
right now i'm on fattoad and once i stepped down my paranoia (i turned on privacy guard for everything including all system apps. hint: don't do that ) it seems good so far. nova launcher has an issue with flickering or disappearing icons, and everything is huge (i need to adjust the dpi) but so far no issues with gps or wifi (though i havent needed to connect to an adhoc network yet).
Do be careful with Privacy Guard. I didn't mention, but although Privacy Guard out of the box tends to make it so that most system apps are unable to be tuned, TeamApexQ likes the option of being able to tune everything in that regard, so we removed the safeguard. (For example, when PG was first ported to CM12, you could tune the settings of the 'Settings' app. Then at our next internal testing build, it was suddenly coming up empty, because CM made a change to exclude tuning for it. We restored full capability because we liked it. But that does mean you can more easily 'shoot yourself in the foot'.
Magamo said:
Do be careful with Privacy Guard. I didn't mention, but although Privacy Guard out of the box tends to make it so that most system apps are unable to be tuned, TeamApexQ likes the option of being able to tune everything in that regard, so we removed the safeguard. (For example, when PG was first ported to CM12, you could tune the settings of the 'Settings' app. Then at our next internal testing build, it was suddenly coming up empty, because CM made a change to exclude tuning for it. We restored full capability because we liked it. But that does mean you can more easily 'shoot yourself in the foot'.
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I've recently begun to wonder if Privacy Guard might be partially responsible for reduced battery life. I'm under the impression that it lies to apps, providing false information when they have insufficient authority for the real information. Some of those permissions in Privacy Guard are to turn radios on and off. If an app thinks it's turned a radio on, and is trying to communicate based on faked (Really, it's going to look like a failure, at this point.) returns, it may spend more time continuing to try instead of just staying asleep. My battery life comes an goes, but I've noticed that on a "bad day" there are quite a few wakeups in the middle of nowhen, when the phone was sitting there in airplane mode with all radios off.
Of course I may be all wet on this - radio control may be one area where it can say, "You're in Airplane Mode, no program can turn the radio on."
good theory, and like you said, it depends on the app and how pg implements each block.
personally i'm having great battery life in L. i have a 5000mah battery, but usually by this point in the day i'm at about 60%. right now i'm still at 83%. i like how it projects your estimated remaining battery time. first time i looked at the battery chart, i lol'd - it was projecting 4.5 days before it died. i can probably get 2 no sweat even with regular usage, but i'd have to turn off sync and really cut back to make it 4 days.
I've had very good results with some simple rules with Privacy Guard. Generally the only thing I've turned off is the ability for Google Play Services and the Google App (Google Now) to wake up my device and to keep it awake. With those turned off, my battery life has gotten to be pretty damned nice... Though it makes Google Play Services FC once maybe every 24 hours. It restarts just fine, no harm no foul.
My battery life seems to be "bimodal". It either barely makes it 24 hours - basically needs recharging every night, or it lasts on the order of three or four days on a charge.
It seems to be somehow wifi-related, if I were guessing, and in an odd way. If wifi is largely off, but occasionally on, the battery life seems shorter. After wifi has been left off for "a while" (quantity not yet determined) it seems to go into long-battery-life mode. If I keep wifi largely on, and occasionally off (basically between known/trusted wifi places) the battery life comes out somewhere in between, consistent with wifi itself taking some power.
It's been really tough to detect any sort of pattern, but this is the best I've been able to come up with so far. I haven't done rigorous testing, or at least attempts at rigor so far have yielded inconsistent results. I've looked at what the Settings->Battery has available for power diagnostics, and one thing I noted was a lot of spurious wakeups when all radios were turned off. That's what led me to tentatively finger Privacy Guard.
I just saw the setting to show "built-in" apps on PG. I see two different entries for google.services and google.services.framework. The former has scads of wakeups - thanks for the tip. The latter has many, but a much smaller number. Did you block wakeups for both? I presume "built-in" are also "system" that others have said shouldn't be bulk-denied in PG. Are there guidelines anywhere about which are OK, which are useful, etc? (Like this case, and perhaps battery life.)
phred14 said:
My battery life seems to be "bimodal". It either barely makes it 24 hours - basically needs recharging every night, or it lasts on the order of three or four days on a charge.
It seems to be somehow wifi-related, if I were guessing, and in an odd way. If wifi is largely off, but occasionally on, the battery life seems shorter. After wifi has been left off for "a while" (quantity not yet determined) it seems to go into long-battery-life mode. If I keep wifi largely on, and occasionally off (basically between known/trusted wifi places) the battery life comes out somewhere in between, consistent with wifi itself taking some power.
It's been really tough to detect any sort of pattern, but this is the best I've been able to come up with so far. I haven't done rigorous testing, or at least attempts at rigor so far have yielded inconsistent results. I've looked at what the Settings->Battery has available for power diagnostics, and one thing I noted was a lot of spurious wakeups when all radios were turned off. That's what led me to tentatively finger Privacy Guard.
I just saw the setting to show "built-in" apps on PG. I see two different entries for google.services and google.services.framework. The former has scads of wakeups - thanks for the tip. The latter has many, but a much smaller number. Did you block wakeups for both? I presume "built-in" are also "system" that others have said shouldn't be bulk-denied in PG. Are there guidelines anywhere about which are OK, which are useful, etc? (Like this case, and perhaps battery life.)
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It's difficult to give tips for this, because everyones' usage is different. Get 'WakeLock Detector' and keep an eye on that when your power drain seems more intense. Disable things that make sense to disable based on that.
I know this isn't really the topic, but just because you get a new router doesn't mean you have to reconfigure everything. Why couldn't you just configure the new router with the SSID and password from the old one?
slartibartfast42 said:
I know this isn't really the topic, but just because you get a new router doesn't mean you have to reconfigure everything. Why couldn't you just configure the new router with the SSID and password from the old one?
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believe me, i tried that. it's stupidly tedious to enter a long keyphrase via the remote control on our tivos and only slightly less tedious on the roku (its remote is much more responsive). laptops and phones aren't as bad since they have keyboards. apparently the devices are smart enough to notice a different MAC behind the BSSID. which if you think about it, is actually a GOOD thing in terms of security, since it makes spoofing a little more difficult. granted, you'd also have to know the wpa key to successfully spoof, but it's a simple check to implement for security's sake, and i'm glad they did.
by the way, do you like fjords?
Magamo said:
It's difficult to give tips for this, because everyones' usage is different. Get 'WakeLock Detector' and keep an eye on that when your power drain seems more intense. Disable things that make sense to disable based on that.
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"Wakelock Detector" has certainly been enlightening. "Google Fit", which makes sense, once you think about it. But the other aspect that was even more important, I just happened to see when one of the other forums popped up on some sort of search result or other.
You have to boot your Android device on battery. If the kernel starts up on charger, it never gets into the deepest power-saving states. When I first started using Wakelock Detector, my phone showed up as being awake something like 97% of the time. Google Fit was the biggest user, but not that big. After seeing that advice I've been careful to boot on battery, and now most of the time is spent asleep. Google Fit still uses wakes as much, but when it's not, the phone is really sleeping. My normal battery life has moved out to two or three days, sometimes into a fourth. As long as I consider Google Fit worth having around, this battery life is good enough for me - there is always a decent window to recharge.
phred14 said:
You have to boot your Android device on battery. If the kernel starts up on charger, it never gets into the deepest power-saving states.
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So much for that theory. A day or two back, after good battery life since this post, I noticed it draining faster. Today I looked, and sure enough, it's not going into deep sleep. I tried rebooting with all four states of wifi and cell service, and nothing has gotten deep sleep back. I think I'm going to try charging tonight, booting while charging, then rebooting after disconnecting. It would be good to have an exact and repeatable set of circumstances that cause both good and bad battery life.