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.
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.
Hey guys,
So after many months with the XT720 and alot of flashing and trying to get the most out of my battery, i've come up with a few conclusions about battery life in general and how to extend it. I thought I'd share here. This is mostly aimed at people who are new to android and have not experimented like some of the more advanced users we have on this forum. Hope you find this helpful and please feel free to make additions.
General Battery Info
The XT720 was my first android phone, and I came from a long line of typical nokia phones whose batteries would last for ages. I had no idea the kind of power an android device would use. When I started out using it, i was surprised at how quickly the battery would die. You'd think with advancing software we'd have better batteries but sadly batteries are lagging behind in technology. Generally speaking you can expect the following battery life from your XT720.
Heavy use: 10-14 hours
Moderate use: 16-20 hours
Light use: 1 day - 1 day 12 hrs.
Note: New batteries improve with each charge cycle. It is recommended to go through a few complete charge cycles when you buy a new phone. After that, complete discharges are not recommended and its smart to start charging your phone when it hits the 20-25% mark.
How to improve battery life
1: Battery Calibration
If you've ever flashed a new ROM, you must have noticed a sharp decline in battery performance. This is partly due to old battery statistics left behind from your old ROM. Android is a smart OS and collects information over time. The more you use it, the more accurate it gets. In the same way it collects information from your battery usage and reports your battery percentages according to that. When you flash a new ROM, sometimes android thinks that your battery is 100% when its really lower than that and that causes relative reduced battery performance. To deal with that it is recommended that you use a nifty free app called Battery Calibration from the android market. What this does it removes the old battery stats and allows your new ROM to create its own battery stats. Charge your battery to full, use the battery calibration. Drain once till phone turns off by itself and charge to full again. You will notice a sharp increase in battery life.
2. Battery Managment
We all know that android has its own battery management built in but it usually doesnt give complete information about the phone. For that you need to dive deeper into the settings. Usually if you experience battery drain its because of a rogue app and believe it or not some common apps you wont think off drain unnecessary battery. To see your complete Battery Stats input this code into the dialer.
Code:
*#*#4636#*#*
This will take you to a bunch of options. What you're interested in is Battery History. When you tap that it will show you two drop down menu's.
1) Other Usage
2) Since last unplugged
Other usage shows you how long your phone has been running and how long it has been asleep. Also shows you how long your wifi has been on and running and how long your screen has been on. It is important to see how long your phone has been running. For example if your phone has an uptime of 20 hours and its been running 5 hours out of that. Your run time is 25%. Which is very good. Sometimes an app can run even when your phone screen is off. This will represent a longer run time even when you have your phone lying on a desk or something. See this setting and correlate with the amount you have used your phone. Does it seem normal? If no then use the first drop down menu and select
Partial Wake:
Partial wake is basically, any app which takes your phone out of sleep mode to use the CPU even when youre screen is off. These are apps which need to sync or use the phone resources. In this you will see a list of apps and how much they have caused a partial wake lock. See anything unsual? For me one app that caused unsual drainage was latitute. Yes, i had simply signed into it and i didnt know it was updating my location every 5 minutes. Extreme battery drain for me even when my phone was idle. See which app was draining your battery and either tweak the settings or remove altogether.
GPS, Sensors, CPU:
You can also see these in the first drop down menu. Certain apps like screeble use the sensors alot, and hence cause drain. Obviously games, camera, will stress the CPU. See if anything is causing drain in that and adjust accordingly.
Miscellaneous Information
After you have dealt with rogue apps that you don't use that drain youre battery your battery life will depend on how you use your phone. But hopefull these tips will help you with increasing your battery life. I do have some more information on different settings and supposed battery saving applications.
Autosync: When you enable auto sync, you allow google and other accounts to sync on a regular basis. This is important for people who need to use push email etc. It does not drain battery IF you tweak what you need synced. In google for example you can have your contacts, calendar, google+, google reader, gmail all to sync by default. If you just need email, please untick the rest. This will help you save battery life. Increase your update times for facebook and google+ if you dont recieve many updates all the time or turn them off altogether. If you have many services syncing at the same time you will get battery drain.
Wifi Sleep Policy: This is sort of a hidden menu. If you go into wireless & networks >> Wifi settings >> settings key >> advanced >> wifi sleep policy. This has three settings. Never close down wifi, never close when charging, or close with screen off. If you choose never your wifi will always be on, which will in turn crunch the **** out of your battery. If you use it off with screen off, remember it takes about 5 minutes to turn the wifi off. I personally use the never with plugged in. Its an intermediate. So when im plugged in wifi always stays on and when im not it follows the screen off protocol.
Wifi Vs Mobile Data: Having mobile data on all the time, does not drain battery. The only time the battery gets drained is when the data connection is active i.e you have many apps on autosync youll see your battery going down. If you arent doing anything and your phone is connected to Edge or 3G your battery will drain regularly. 2G networks drain less than 3G keep that in mind. If you are actively using your connection, wifi will take less battery because speeds are faster and you will be using it for a little time. Also your signal strength has alot of effect on battery. If you have crappy 3G signals your radio will actively be searching for a connection the same goes for wifi. That is important to keep in mind.
Control Background data: By selecting this option you can allow or disallow apps to connect to data without any permission. Some apps require this like the android market. If you uncheck this apps wont be able to sync automatically in the background.
Milestone Overclocking: This is fairly obvious. The higher you overclock with higher vsel the more battery drain you will have. Some use set cpu with profiles but I found that if i set the setcpu too low while idle It takes time for the cpu to charge up when i recieve a call or turn the screen on. Ringtones lag etc etc. I let android do my CPU management and its fine. and comfortable setting would be 850 MHZ, 56 vsel but you can change according to your phone usage.
Juice Defender/ Screebl / Task killers:
In my personal experience with juice defender ultimate I found that with the above precautions juice defender didnt make much of a difference and actually used more battery. First off theres an extra process going on in the back. Second activating and deactivating the connection everytime the screen goes off uses more juice because your radio has to search for the signal hundreds of times as compared to not having it in the first place. Screebl is good if you dont want your screen to annoyingly turn off while youre doing something but it surely doesnt save battery life. Task killers are a no no for android. They kill tasks which start up anyways, its better to use autokiller memory optimizer which tweaks androids internal memory settings and allows for more free ram without killing processes without reason.
System Apps:
Some system apps run uselessly in the background specially with stock ROM's this is called bloatware. Remove all unused system apps with titanium backup to stop them from running in the background for no reason at all.
A final word
Finally after all this tweaking, just use your phone as normal. Dont worry about the battery all the time checking how much its drained, itll mess your head up and make you enjoy your phone less. Battery temperature also changes battery life. Keep your phone out of the sun or in hot places.
Thanks, good article.
Very detailed and useful
Sent from my Milestone XT720 using XDA App
Thanks for this interessting article!
Could you make a list of the bloatware that can be safely removed?
I figured this would just list all the usual stuff I've heard. I'm glad to say I was wrong! A bunch of useful info here I now plan to put to use. Many thanks
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...
Thanks guys, glad you people found it useful.
syrenz said:
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes! Can't believe I missed that one out. In the start id use the lowest brightness setting, which would be fine indoors. But outside it was impossible to see the phone because of its insanely reflective glass. Since we have an ambient light sensor I use it on automatic and it does a good job. Full bright strains my eyes abit thats why I dont keep it on full bright So for people really wanting to save the juice you can keep your brightness on the lowest level. Also when you take the phone out of your pocket and use it, its better to put the phone to sleep with the power button than let it timeout by itself. Those 10-15 seconds for each time you use phone count towards many minutes of unused display time in the end and does make a difference.
This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...
androidlover123 said:
This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Using your phone while charging does not affect your battery life, and is neither good nor bad. It is perfectly normal to use your phone while charging and is sometimes recommended while doing battery intensive tasks for example navigating while driving, wifi tethering, playing memory intensive games and finally outputing video through HDMI.
2. Overcharging was a phenomenom is older lithium ion battery. New batteries have bypass circuits. So when your phone reaches complete charge, it does not charge any further. So you should not be worried about overcharging your XT720.
Hope this helps.
Excelent article and good quality info. Thanks and best regards!
awesome article! Great information. Thanks a lot for putting that together. I have already started using a few of the tips mentioned.
u da maaan dude, thanks for a very detailed and informative article
Hi guys,
I have a vodafone 858 (android 2.2) phone. Its battery usage screen isn't giving proper information of power consumption. It shows only these items all the time, like this >
android system 96%
cell standby 4%
phone idle 2%
It has never shown the power consumption of other things. such as display, camera etc.
How can I solve this ?
its normal.It shows you what has been using the battery more and not what is draining it.If you want rhe camera and other stuff to show up just use them and you gonna see that they will appear
@ [email protected] no dude, Its not showing when I used camera. other thing is the display, that is one of the most battery drain things of a phone, but I have never seen battery usage of the screen in battery usage screen.
Also I'm using twitter, facebook and browser all the time, but the damn battery usage screen has never shown them.
damn it..Maybe the usage indicator is non-functional.Try downloading spare parts or betterbatterystats.If you wanna reduce the screen battery drain turn off animations,the screen sensor,haptic feedback and lower brightness