[Q] Does removing Cell Standby actually save battery life? - General Questions and Answers

I have a debate going on over at slatedroid and would love some of the hardware experts to weigh in. The other side who claims to be an android developer says that the phone apk's causing "cell standby" have absolutely no effect on battery life at all. From my experience with computers and from everything I've read I would have thought that because it's running constantly in the background it's preventing the CPU from throttling down and would therefore use up more power. But it's just a guess on my part. Is there anyone with concrete info on this?

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Related

Fuze Pathetic Battery Life

I know this has been covered in many other threads but they seem to be fragmented into some suggestions for specific problems. Researching, following and applying the information, tips and software some have suggested I am still getting nowhere. My battery dies in a very short period of time - something like 4-6 hours.
I have installated, executed / implemented many of the suggestions and procedures here and on fuze-mobility to extend battery life. These are representative. I think there have been probably more but I cannot remember them.
HTC Power Management
SD Card Battery Saver
Taskmgr - to kill / stop Activiesync (replog.exec) from continuously cycling
Advanced Configuration Tool to turn on and off 3G
Registry Edit modifications on both the Fuze and associated laptop related to Activesync Update cycles
Activesync - added new server, made timing manual, deleted server.
Charging processes - Letting battery run all the way down to below 10%
Lowering brightness on my screen
I have ordered and am waiting for an extended battery for the Fuze.
The only thing I see is when viewing what is executing via the Taskmgr CPU Usage panel, I see that most of the time the Idle process is executing. (75+%). Although I have read some threads where folks have said this is good because nothing else is draining your power, just because the process says "idle" does not seem to me to be doing nothing..it is still cranking through and using cycles to go through its designated activities.
Is there a way to indicate the interval when the idle process cycles?
Anyone have this same situation? Any suggestions?
That sounds very bad. Most complaints are about it being less than a day, noy 4-6 hours.
Have you contacted HTC/your supplier to get a replacement battery?
Also, idle is not a process, it's the absence of a process...
I'm not an expert on the ARM architecture, but idle processes are processes that use the CPU when all other processes are waiting for something or when there are no other processes running. They don't necessarily do anything constructive (they essentially just 'mind' the CPU until another process needs it), but they often feed the CPU with power-saving instructions. In conclusion, ignore it - it's not causing any problems and there's no point in fiddling with it.
That sort of a battery life is absolutely ridiculous, and you've clearly had a good go at increasing it, so I my best guess would be that it's defective.
Thanks for the quick responses.
I would still like to investigate the "idle" process angle. As long as something accesses the CPU, cycles are being executed and power is being used. Depending on what the "idle" process is doing with the 75+% "time" it has control of the CPU lots of power could be being used / drained.
Not sure how to go about this yet but I'm sure there is a way to find out what is going on during the "idle" process time holding the CPU.
If anyone know please share.....
Wow, it seems like the battey life on these things just keeps getting worse and worse. I remember going from the Hermes to the Kaiser and thinking how much worse the battery life was on the Kaiser.
The features keep increasing and batteries are having a hard time keeping up, I think.
there is alot to blame here. the good news there is a fix for almost every culprit.
1st....touch flow 3d. this thing demands alot of battery life. Not too mention its always running. Att has also seem to have added a few things to the touch flo interface that may have had an impact on this as well.
2nd....the applications these days seem to be getting bigger and bigger every few months. its not uncommon to see an app eating up 7 to 10 mb of ram. jivetalk...opera...the new aim??? the thing about this....the more ram an app takes up, the more batt power is consumes.
by the way...this is not a problem native to windows mobile...take a look at Google's g1....the batt life on that phone is even worse than your stock fuze...and after i've been digging through the phone....i found out all the apps are over 5 mb....madness! Also, the iphone has had this problem....and still does. but the iphone doesn't allow for background processing....so large programs running in the background aren't really that much of an issue.
3rd...att! in a noble attempt to cram the fuze with everything under the hood and give it the title it truly deserve (a phone capable of doing everything) they've weighed the os down with crap ware.
4th...the att radio that ships with the phone....its horrid. you'd never belive how much better some of the other radios are vs. the shipped att radio. its almost ridiculous that att would ship the phone with such a poor radio.
5th....htc. The batt in the phone is no bigger than the one offered in the tilt. But lets keep in mind, the same size batt now has to power faster processor....more ram...and a brighter more high res screen. Why they didnt up the power of the batt? who the hell knows...i guess to keep the phone nice a small...but its def a trade off.
I want you to try a cooked rom....try romeos 1.4 or the new proven.....change your radio to the shipped orange....make sure you spl before doing both.
and post back. im sure you'll have a different experience.
wrjp said:
Thanks for the quick responses.
I would still like to investigate the "idle" process angle. As long as something accesses the CPU, cycles are being executed and power is being used. Depending on what the "idle" process is doing with the 75+% "time" it has control of the CPU lots of power could be being used / drained.
Not sure how to go about this yet but I'm sure there is a way to find out what is going on during the "idle" process time holding the CPU.
If anyone know please share.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to save you a ton of wasted hours in your life....or at least give you something else to waste those hours on. Stop the witch hunt on the "Idle" process. Open up the task manager on your desktop/laptop and look for the Idle process on there. If you pay attention (and do a little guessing), you'll see that the idle process consumes the remaining percentage of the CPU after the other applications have had their cut, however if you look at the total usage, you'll see that it doesn't include the Idle process.
There's a reason for this. It's lying to you....
There is no "Idle" process, it's just a way for the operating system to indicate how much processing power is not being used by applications. There's certainly something going on during those empty cycles, but it's operations that the core of the operating system is doing. Another poster mentioned that one of the things it's doing is sending power-saving instructions, which is basically true (but it's more in the form of telling the processor that there's nothing to do and letting it decide to save power).
The idle process cannot go away, and the closer you get it to 100% the better (relatively speaking, as it means you're doing nothing with the phone and removed any cool features it had). As long as the phone is on there's going to be at least a trickle of power going through the processor so the core of the operating system (i.e. Kernel) can perform it's necessary actions...just like the brain or heart does in your own body, even at rest they are still working a little bit.
Truthfully, I think you're barking up the wrong tree with your battery issues. I've got a Fuze also, and the ONLY time that I saw the battery die in 6 hours was when I was talking on it for about 3 1/2 or 4 hours in one afternoon. Otherwise, that thing, even on the stock rom, has given me nothing like the trouble your describing. I've flashed NATF's rom onto it (didn't like ROMeOS that much, just felt a little too laggy for me) and the new Austrailian radio .20M1 and the battery life seems even better. I don't think you're doing something wrong, I think you've got a lemon phone. Return it to the store complaining about the battery life on it not matching that of any of the other Fuze's you've seen anybody else using, then get a new one and try that out.
4-6 hours? Consider yourself lucky. I can get that if I don't touch the phone and no one calls. If I use the phone as a normal person might, I can get 2 hours. I don't even consider it a mobile phone. It's stays plugged into something all day.
momojopoe said:
4-6 hours? Consider yourself lucky. I can get that if I don't touch the phone and no one calls. If I use the phone as a normal person might, I can get 2 hours. I don't even consider it a mobile phone. It's stays plugged into something all day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have a faulty battery or you don't know how to set up the phone. I'm also using HTC Raphael, and battery lasts 1,5 days with lots of usage. I think that you should search xda for battery tips&tricks, like lowering backlight, turning off WIFI, BT and other. Also, there might be a problem with the ROM and Radio you're using.
The battery was exchanged...twice...the poor battery life was present with nothing but stock apps and all the tips and tricks you suggest were tried, and then some...the problem is endemic with the fuze...I figure as much as I paid I shouldn't have to jump through all the hoops with 3rd party new roms etc. just to get my phone to work like it should...the battery is piece of crap
Hmmm, in that case it could be faulty device - there are plenty of people on Raphael subforum that are using Fuze and battery lasts for most of them 1-2 days.
Whos got Extended battery on there Att Fuze ?
Is it worth the bulk
& which one to get ?
18,00 / 2,000 diff kinds i see
with diff company

[Q] Battery Applications/Monitors

Hi,
I was just wondering if there's a general consensus on whether having a Battery Meter/Saver really does much to save battery life or if it actually depletes a phone's battery more than anything else because it's always running in the background?
I'm not talking about something that just tells you how much power you have left. I' more referring to things like a Juice Defender or similar products.
What do you all think? I think most things that can save your battery are easily monitored on your own (like auto-updates, screen brightness, etc).

battery drain fix - alternate method!

This is a sister-thread to "Battery Drain Fix" for the g2x that lists a factory reset as a possible fix to battery drain issues.
First, let me say that even if you do not currently have battery drain issues with your G2X, that doesn't mean that you're immune. My battery has been phenomenal at times, abysmal at others. I've done the factory reset and that DID help for awhile, but battery problems arose again.
I believe the problem that plagued my phone was the dreaded 50% cell standby problem. If you're unaware of this problem, essentially the issue is that "cell standby" (found under settings --> about phone --> battery use) is at or around 50% always -- in other words, it doesn't matter that the phone has fine reception, is or is not being used, or even has the signal active (that's right, the problem persists even with airplane mode activated).
While I do recommend the factory reset method (assuming that you haven't had your phone too long, as it can be a real pain to reconfigure everything if you've set it up how you like it over many weeks...), I think this alternate method is something we should all do as well. In brief, you'll want to do the following:
-open dial pad and dial *#*#4636#*#* (If Testing menu doesn't come up than click "Call" and it will come up)
-Go to Phone information
-Scroll down and you'll see preferred network type
-click it and switch it to GSM/WCDMA auto
-click back button
After taking these steps, you should see an immediate improvement to your battery drain problems, as well as much faster battery charge times. Additionally, your cell standby % should decrease dramatically.
Isn't the same effect achievable from the Network Settings? No need to go to the secret menu. Unless I'm missing something.
electric33l said:
Isn't the same effect achievable from the Network Settings? No need to go to the secret menu. Unless I'm missing something.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought the samw but in the hidden menu it is set to wcdma preferred
switched will report tomorrow
thanx for this. hope it works
sent from my G2X with no regrets
I just changed it, hopefully it works. If it does work, thanks in advance
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk
Interesting. I've had mine set to 2G networks only, so I hadn't noticed. I'll switch it over as well, and see what happens. I've been getting great battery life though, so this is purely an exercise in curiosity. Regardless, the root cause of this problem has already been determined- the drivers are ****ty. CyanogenMod is liable to fix this up immensely.
I changed mine too and I will report back if I notice any improvements
Sent from my T-Mobile G2x using XDA App
The battery reporting is terrible so cell standby could be nothing really.
I believe doing this also fixes the GsmTracker poll failure in one of the threads. At least mine is no longer red but green (in the logs)
I can personally attest to the fact that this does absolutely nothing different. I have had my phone switched between WCDMA, GSM and WCDMA/GSM auto just to see if there was any difference for the past few days. My device has battery life worse than the HTC Thunderbolt that I returned, and being only 7 days in I'm thinking about doing the same to this device. I'm definitely experiencing buyers remorse.
@TheMightiest -- did you do a factory reset first and then try this method?
Erislover said:
@TheMightiest -- did you do a factory reset first and then try this method?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've factory reset my device 5 times, just drained it, for the 5th time and recharging it as we speak. I still lose between 15-30% per hour if data is enabled...just like the HTC Thunderbolt. At least I got 19mb download with the Thunderbolt, I'm getting an average of 6mb with the G2x, which ain't bad, i'm just saying.
Mine was set on gsm only. I've just made the switch so i'll report back if there is a difference or not.
I've read a lot on the whole philosophy of "drain completely and recharge fully to maximize battery life," and from the looks of it, that method doesn't do anything for Lithium-Ion batteries, which have no memory effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery - not that wikipedia is the ultimate authority on things, but hey, it's a link at least).
Your battery sounds WAY worse than others' batteries...you should seriously consider returning it and getting a new one.
Well, my cell standby percentage has not gone down at all, but still my battery consumption is much improved.
As was stated in this thread, the battery readings may be very off the mark from actual battery life, however, that fact doesn't help explain why some of us only were getting 5-6 hours of battery life with moderate (and sometimes no) use. There obviously is a problem, and CM7 may well fix it, but the method in this thread has definitely helped my phone stay on longer...irrespective of battery readings.
Erislover said:
I've read a lot on the whole philosophy of "drain completely and recharge fully to maximize battery life," and from the looks of it, that method doesn't do anything for Lithium-Ion batteries, which have no memory effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery - not that wikipedia is the ultimate authority on things, but hey, it's a link at least).
Your battery sounds WAY worse than others' batteries...you should seriously consider returning it and getting a new one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not the reason people on these forums recommend draining completely and charging fully. The reason is that in order for your phone to get a semi-accurate idea of what percentage the remaining battery life is at. With this particular phone, however this is probably still a lost cause as the driver will never give an accurate approximation of remaining life.
At any rate, the full drain, full charge is a one time thing. This will also in no way extend battery life (but I haven't seen anyone on the forums claim this either). You can, however, extend battery life by keeping the charge at ~80% and keeping it as cool as possible.
On a side note, great to see yet ANOTHER battery thread
MWBehr said:
This is not the reason people on these forums recommend draining completely and charging fully. The reason is that in order for your phone to get a semi-accurate idea of what percentage the remaining battery life is at. With this particular phone, however this is probably still a lost cause as the driver will never give an accurate approximation of remaining life.
At any rate, the full drain, full charge is a one time thing. This will also in no way extend battery life (but I haven't seen anyone on the forums claim this either). You can, however, extend battery life by keeping the charge at ~80% and keeping it as cool as possible.
On a side note, great to see yet ANOTHER battery thread
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's amazing right - we have dual core 1Ghz processors in our smartphones with 1GB of RAM and high res screens, 4G data, etc. etc. yet battery technology hasn't advanced in years. Whoever improves battery tech is going to be the richest person in the world. Think about it.
Edit: Btw, mine was set to WCDMA preferred although in Network Settings it was on Auto so I changed it to Auto.
mobilehavoc said:
It's amazing right - we have dual core 1Ghz processors in our smartphones with 1GB of RAM and high res screens, 4G data, etc. etc. yet battery technology hasn't advanced in years. Whoever improves battery tech is going to be the richest person in the world. Think about it.
Edit: Btw, mine was set to WCDMA preferred although in Network Settings it was on Auto so I changed it to Auto.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought 512MB of RAM?
Can someone explain to me what WCDMA is? I am in a 2G only area. Should I select GSM only?
Erislover said:
I believe the problem that plagued my phone was the dreaded 50% cell standby problem. If you're unaware of this problem, essentially the issue is that "cell standby" (found under settings --> about phone --> battery use) is at or around 50% always -- in other words, it doesn't matter that the phone has fine reception, is or is not being used, or even has the signal active (that's right, the problem persists even with airplane mode activated).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay. I read the original thread and it sounds like the 50% is refering to the "Time Without Signal" value when you actually click on Cell Standby. Not the value of Cell Standby itself.
My G1 running FroYo last month had at least 50% Cell Standby with only ~1% Time Without Signal and the battery lasted about 2.5 days with moderate use.
I'm not an EE so obviously, I could be wrong about this.
You sir have just received a thanks, because this could also be the cause of some of our data issues and how the phone picks up on 3G vs 4G signal. Im doing some testing regarding APN and now with this hidden menu. Have noticed my speeds are a little bit better then they were. Battery drain was not a problem for me before.
Thank you! i did this to mine and my husbands g2x's last night. seems to have fixed the switching issue

[Q] Verizon SIII battery drain on standby, help identifying root cause

Hello,
I'm a first time poster looking for a little help. I've had my Verizon SIII for about a week now and almost everything about the phone I have loved with the exception of the battery life. Given the 2100mah battery I was expecting much more. I tend to be a fairly light user throughout the day at work, I have the screen brightness turned down, all data is off, and I really only am using it for texting, maybe a little bit of gaming. I have found that if I unplug at about 8am by about 6 or 7pm the battery will be nearly completely drained.
Noticing that this seemed to be a fairly common problem I started doing some research to determine the source of this. First, by looking at the battery stats I observed the same problem that many others observe, a heavy drain in standby mode.
ttp://i.imgur.com/2drJy.png (since I'm a first time poster I can't add external links, please just add an H to the beginning of the url)
So going off of this I started trying to determine the cause of this drain in standby mode. I should also mention that at times the phone does seem to get warm in the bottom left region of the back of the phone. I had read one tutorial explaining about wakelocks so I decided to check that out. I downloaded GSam Battery and CPU Spy to see if something was preventing my phone from entering standby mode properly. However my phone was entering deep sleep as shown below, so this confused me a bit. But clearly there is some issue visible in the standby mode of my phone, sometimes the battery will drain ridiculously fast (as high as 1% every 5 - 10 minutes). And keep in mind that this is while virtually everything, data included, is disabled. So that eliminates the possibility of it simply having to search for a signal in a weak area.
ttp://i.imgur.com/pekXb.png
ttp://i.imgur.com/xauHF.png
ttp://i.imgur.com/2drJy.png
Basically I'm having a tough time getting to the root cause of this problem. I feel like there's some little software issue in there that is draining it. But I've been pretty smart about the apps that I've downloaded, I've stuck with only very common and popular ones. So would anybody have any clue to how I could identify and address the source of my battery drain?
Thanks
mmisley3 said:
Hello,
I'm a first time poster looking for a little help. I've had my Verizon SIII for about a week now and almost everything about the phone I have loved with the exception of the battery life. Given the 2100mah battery I was expecting much more. I tend to be a fairly light user throughout the day at work, I have the screen brightness turned down, all data is off, and I really only am using it for texting, maybe a little bit of gaming. I have found that if I unplug at about 8am by about 6 or 7pm the battery will be nearly completely drained.
Noticing that this seemed to be a fairly common problem I started doing some research to determine the source of this. First, by looking at the battery stats I observed the same problem that many others observe, a heavy drain in standby mode.
ttp://i.imgur.com/2drJy.png (since I'm a first time poster I can't add external links, please just add an H to the beginning of the url)
So going off of this I started trying to determine the cause of this drain in standby mode. I should also mention that at times the phone does seem to get warm in the bottom left region of the back of the phone. I had read one tutorial explaining about wakelocks so I decided to check that out. I downloaded GSam Battery and CPU Spy to see if something was preventing my phone from entering standby mode properly. However my phone was entering deep sleep as shown below, so this confused me a bit. But clearly there is some issue visible in the standby mode of my phone, sometimes the battery will drain ridiculously fast (as high as 1% every 5 - 10 minutes). And keep in mind that this is while virtually everything, data included, is disabled. So that eliminates the possibility of it simply having to search for a signal in a weak area.
ttp://i.imgur.com/pekXb.png
ttp://i.imgur.com/xauHF.png
ttp://i.imgur.com/2drJy.png
Basically I'm having a tough time getting to the root cause of this problem. I feel like there's some little software issue in there that is draining it. But I've been pretty smart about the apps that I've downloaded, I've stuck with only very common and popular ones. So would anybody have any clue to how I could identify and address the source of my battery drain?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This may be worth a try http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1732722
or this http://androidapplikation.info/2012/07/cpu-sleeper-2-4-apk-for-android-free-download/
Hope it helps
You don't have to thank me there is a button for that
Download and try Watchdog Lite. It's a really good monitor for finding out which apps are acting up.
This doesn't exactly answer your question, but can help with your problem. There are programs that can help to drastically improve battery life by turning off data (3g\4g) while the screen is off. This can double your battery life or more, especially for lite/moderate users. Most of these programs work by turning on the data 1 minute out of every 15 the screen is off. That way you still get email, and notifications. You still get txt and phone real time, as they do not rely on data. When you turn the screen on data is turned on, when you actually would want to use it. Especially in 4g areas this really saves battery, as 4g is a battery hog.
Battery Defender is my favorite. I feel like I should be paid for this advertisement...
Do you have BATTERY SAVER option ENABLED in settings? That makes a huge difference for me.
It sounds like you are still stock, but I used the Root66 image and after that started having huge battery drain. I did a factory reset to no avail, so then moved to Synergy Rom. Since then, I've had outstanding battery life! not sure if you were thinking about going this route, but it has worked for me. Synergy is debloated so I assumed Verizon crap to be the culprit.
The images I saw were all at 100% battery. Those are not very helpful. A shot of your battery stats at the end of the day would be a lot more useful.
Please note that Cell Standby reports incorrectly at the moment on the S3. Unless you do the fix linked above, it will nearly always be at the top, but it does not actually drain that much battery, it is simply a reporting issue.

Battery Life Expectations

I know battery life has been discussed extensively here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2758709&page=71. But I'm just wondering if I have unrealistic expectations for the battery. I've noticed it drains very slowly when the screen is off, but once the screen is on it falls quickly. I always leave wifi on, connected to wifi for most of the day, I have gmail syncing on, screen brightness baseline is set at 50%, mobile data disabled all day, connection was to lte all day. I attached all my screenshots with some of the apps that are running, seems like ram usage is high but I'm not sure if it is normal. I know more of the running apps should be disabled because they probably aren't necessary. But I'm wondering if there are any suggestions to increase battery life? I was hoping for around 3:30-4 hours of screen on time.
You might want to get rid of the carrier IQ processes. This invasive crapware was eating 25% of my battery. Once I followed the steps in the General forum my drain is as I expect it to be. Only been two days since I deleted CIQ and looking much better now.:good:

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