[Q] Nexus S CPU usage and battery life on 4.0.4 ICS - Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi all,
First time poster here, so hello! I've searched the forums and google but could not find an answer to this question.
Is anyone running a Nexus S on 4.0.4 ICS seeing lots of CPU usage at the 1000MHz frequency?
My phone is a Nexus S (i9020)
Operator: 02 UK
OS: Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.4
Not rooted.
My phone goes into a deep sleep fine and battery usage seems to be little in this state. However, the moment I turn on the screen and start 'using' the phone, I see a battery drop of at least 1% every 5 mins or so. I'm not doing anything taxing, either scrolling through the home screens, or opening browser to read a web page for a few mins.
Higest three battery users are reported as:
Screen 37%
Android System 15%
Browser 7%
CPU Spy reports the following:
1000 MHz - 25.11 (30%)
800 MHz - 7.35 (9%)
400 MHz -3.34 (4%)
200 MHz - 6.26 (7%)
100 MHz - 6.56 (8%)
Deep Sleep - 33.29 (40%)
Total time: 1h23m13s
From what I've read cpu usage shouldn't max out unless you're running something intensive i.e. it shouldn't be at the 1000MHz frequency, when just reading an already loaded page.
I'm able to go from 100% to 50% in about 2 hours, just using the browser (on wifi) to read webpages and nothing more.
When I first got the phone, a year ago, on Gingerbread, I'd be able to watch 1 hour of video, send calls and texts and make it from 8.30am to 5pm using around 40% battery. These days, I don't get close to that at all.
Noted to moderators: if this is posted in the wrong place or would be better suited in an existing thread, I'm sorry please let me know and I'll edit as required!
Thanks in advance for your time and assistance!

Screen drains most the battery. If there is drain while it's off there would be some kind of wake lock preventing sleep. You likely don't have this since it seems your phone sleeps nicely, assuming you had the screen on for moat the time in that screenshot.
The frequencies you show seem a little skewed to 1000mhz for web browsing. What cpu governor are you using, and what settings? I usually get around 40-40 between highest and lowest frequency with ondemand, 20% or less for the intermediate frequencies. This is while web browsing most of the time.

Harbb said:
Screen drains most the battery. If there is drain while it's off there would be some kind of wake lock preventing sleep. You likely don't have this since it seems your phone sleeps nicely, assuming you had the screen on for moat the time in that screenshot.
The frequencies you show seem a little skewed to 1000mhz for web browsing. What cpu governor are you using, and what settings? I usually get around 40-40 between highest and lowest frequency with ondemand, 20% or less for the intermediate frequencies. This is while web browsing most of the time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand the screen drains the most battery, but I feel there is an underlying issue since light usage (like reading) can drain 50% in 2 hours, whereas before I could watch 1 hour video and lose about 10%.
I'm not sure what you mean by CPU governor and settings. I'm running the stock ICS 4.0.4 (got the OTA only a few days ago). I agree it seems skewed. It seems to use the 1000MHz frequency pretty much all the time the screen is on.

chillerz said:
I understand the screen drains the most battery, but I feel there is an underlying issue since light usage (like reading) can drain 50% in 2 hours, whereas before I could watch 1 hour video and lose about 10%.
I'm not sure what you mean by CPU governor and settings. I'm running the stock ICS 4.0.4 (got the OTA only a few days ago). I agree it seems skewed. It seems to use the 1000MHz frequency pretty much all the time the screen is on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First off, welcome to XDA!
The fact that you're not rooted + stock could only mean that there is probably a background app running while your actively using your phone. Have you checked into Settings > Apps > Running and noticed anything peculiar? For a fact, based on everything I'm reading here there is no way your phone should be at 1000 MHz for 30% of the time. At most for my usage, my phone is in the 1000 MHz state < 10% of the time.
If all else fails, you could always try doing a factory reset and seeing if the problem persists. If not then you can install your important apps one by one to find a culprit.
You could also try out this nify tool: BetterBatteryStats to give you more statistics as to what is eating your battery.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

10 percent drain while watching a video is hard to believe.
That would equal 10hrs to drain the battery with screen on watching a video. Which is not happening.
Your battery drain now sounds normal. Maybe in the past it was not reporting it correctly or you're simply mistaken somehow.

The average battery should last along the lines of 4 - 5 hours worth of screen on time. Whether this is playing a game or browsing around hasn't made more than that much difference for me. 1% every 5 minutes would give you ~8 hours of screen on time, a feat very few (aLNG, looking at you) have been able to do without an extended battery. Anything more than this is not going to happen while maintaining a cell signal and watching videos. You may have been exaggerating the time on battery in the past.
Go to Settings --> Developer options --> Show CPU usage and tick it. Leave the phone sitting there with the screen on for a bit and let me know what the top CPU users are.

Which settings are the best for battery lfe? I have stock everything.

Harbb said:
The average battery should last along the lines of 4 - 5 hours worth of screen on time. Whether this is playing a game or browsing around hasn't made more than that much difference for me. 1% every 5 minutes would give you ~8 hours of screen on time, a feat very few (aLNG, looking at you) have been able to do without an extended battery. Anything more than this is not going to happen while maintaining a cell signal and watching videos. You may have been exaggerating the time on battery in the past.
Go to Settings --> Developer options --> Show CPU usage and tick it. Leave the phone sitting there with the screen on for a bit and let me know what the top CPU users are.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The list of things using the CPU changes quite often, here's the list of the ones that are at the top of the list for a while (I've also attached a screenshot):
system_server
com.android.systemui
surfaceflinger
com.jim2
kworker/u:1
kworker/0:0
dhd_dpc
wpa_supplicant
UPDATE:
7h 48m 34s on battery
Voice calls: 1h 39m (screen is off for most of the call duration)
Screen on: 1h 23m
Used browser and xda app for less than 5 mins each.
Haven't done much else with the phone and I'm on 44% battery (from full charge).
CPU Spy (measuring whilst phone was charging overnight, so deep sleep is high):
Total CPU time = 13h26m
1000 MHz = 40 mins (5%)
800 MHz = 17 mins (2%)
400 MHz = 12 mins (1%)
200 MHz = 26 mins (3%)
100 MHz = 56 mins (7%)
Deep Sleep = 10h52m (80%)

hi,
I can confirm chillerz's notice. My experience's similar. Last week I upgraded my (non routed) i9023 from GB via OTA (before the update I did a hardreset). My phone became a cityphone I always have to keep a charger in my pocket and looking for power connectors.. with GB I could use my phone at least 2 days but now I'm happy if I can survive my workday.. my best was 13h - in that case Android OS battery usage was 61%.. I still haven't try to use the music player.. but I don't see any sense to it.. I'm also interested in a thread which could help me out and I've found my self here.. what do you recommend? what to do? replacing my 7 months old phone?? I've jus loved my nexus and here I'm.. It won't be a good business strategy in long term..
I know about the issues of released ICS in December.. I was hopping the 4.0.4 will solve them.. now it's April.. I don't want to wait 4 more months again..
thanks in advanced for your helping!

I had horrible battery life after the 4.0.4 update, but it's been much improved after fully discharging the battery and then charging it to 100% with the phone powered off.

great news, I will try tonight and share the result!
thx

The latest usage results seem good and processes also seem standard. Phone calls tend to use a fair bit of battery, keeping and transmitting a constant signal, powering speakers, keeping the entire phone awake and so on. I wouldn't put it above the screen being on, so you should be able to squeeze another ~30 minutes before 44% in normal use but this depends on too many factors to list anyway and bad reception can make it all the more difficult to figure out.
Also, while making calls don't be surprised if the CPU does decide it needs to ramp up to a higher frequency (ondemand likes 1000mhz) but i havn't put this to the test. This could skew the results as in the OP.

hello futangclan,
since your solution the battery usage "normalized" 26h/17%. This workaround would be a great tip on a welcome srceen at the first boot of ICS
before the fully discharging battery I noticed the battery usage of Android OS decreased from 60 to 19%.. I'm thinking about whether the ICS does something "maintenance" in the background after the OTA upgrade the first days or not..

Once upon a time, I too was one of the sullied - one those unfortunates souls, plagued with poor battery life on a Nexus S (stock FTW), brought on by an innocent (and joyful) upgrade to ICS 4.0.4 from 2.3.6.
When I first discovered the trouble, with great gusto, I ran to the interwebs and dutifully followed suggestions of restarting the phone or draining the battery, but alas - it was all to no avail. There is, however, a happy ending to this story. With effort and perseverance, I've since significantly improved performance. Here is my brief tale of success.
After the upgrade, Android (praise be its name!) decided to start, in the background, every single application on the phone. Verily Snake '97 was indeed running all the time. The horror!!! The game is entertaining certainly, but hardly worth keeping alive at the cost of other, more critical apps.
I was not deterred and took matters into my own hands. Using Manage Apps -> All (not Manage Apps -> Running, mind you), I went about Force Stopping each application (including some Android core apps). It was tedious and frightening. I was very careful and hesitant, as you should be if you are affected by a similar malady.
By the next day, I saw much improved battery life (hooray!), yet I wasn't free and clear. The hold of evil had not been loosened completely.
I found within, a strange and dangerous lock (wakelock - was that its name?) keeping the Gallery in the list of active applications, even when I had not used it for some time. It refused to move to the cached apps list. Puzzled, I scratched my empty head. The interwebs were of no use this time - I was on my own.
(cue ominous music)
Peering within, in the Sync section I found the system was trying to sync photos on an account where the checkbox for syncing was not selected.
A quick off-on-off stopped the syncing. The app slinked off the Running apps list. Soon, I was overjoyed, for I was experiencing improved battery life!
I've now returned to performance much closer to that from days of 2.3.6. My Nexus S' battery now reaches 40%-30% in ~16 hours, with always-on 3G, Wifi and GPS, oft use of phone, contacts, messaging, whatsapp, twitter, foursquare and browser, and infrequent use of music, market, maps, camera and rarer usage of games like Angry Birds (which consumes vast amounts of battery) and gallery.
All is well with the universe.
Certainly, this tale may or may not be a mirror to your own. Should you be experiencing similar problems, I hope my tale brings you solace, and provides a means to the end of your troubles.

demarcolister said:
Once upon a time, I too was one of the sullied - one those unfortunates souls, plagued with poor battery life on a Nexus S (stock FTW), brought on by an innocent (and joyful) upgrade to ICS 4.0.4 from 2.3.6.
When I first discovered the trouble, with great gusto, I ran to the interwebs and dutifully followed suggestions of restarting the phone or draining the battery, but alas - it was all to no avail. There is, however, a happy ending to this story. With effort and perseverance, I've since significantly improved performance. Here is my brief tale of success.
After the upgrade, Android (praise be its name!) decided to start, in the background, every single application on the phone. Verily Snake '97 was indeed running all the time. The horror!!! The game is entertaining certainly, but hardly worth keeping alive at the cost of other, more critical apps.
I was not deterred and took matters into my own hands. Using Manage Apps -> All (not Manage Apps -> Running, mind you), I went about Force Stopping each application (including some Android core apps). It was tedious and frightening. I was very careful and hesitant, as you should be if you are affected by a similar malady.
By the next day, I saw much improved battery life (hooray!), yet I wasn't free and clear. The hold of evil had not been loosened completely.
I found within, a strange and dangerous lock (wakelock - was that its name?) keeping the Gallery in the list of active applications, even when I had not used it for some time. It refused to move to the cached apps list. Puzzled, I scratched my empty head. The interwebs were of no use this time - I was on my own.
(cue ominous music)
Peering within, in the Sync section I found the system was trying to sync photos on an account where the checkbox for syncing was not selected.
A quick off-on-off stopped the syncing. The app slinked off the Running apps list. Soon, I was overjoyed, for I was experiencing improved battery life!
I've now returned to performance much closer to that from days of 2.3.6. My Nexus S' battery now reaches 40%-30% in ~16 hours, with always-on 3G, Wifi and GPS, oft use of phone, contacts, messaging, whatsapp, twitter, foursquare and browser, and infrequent use of music, market, maps, camera and rarer usage of games like Angry Birds (which consumes vast amounts of battery) and gallery.
All is well with the universe.
Certainly, this tale may or may not be a mirror to your own. Should you be experiencing similar problems, I hope my tale brings you solace, and provides a means to the end of your troubles.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You, my friend, deserve a cookie for such good writing.

@demarcolister Awesome first post here on XDA.
Great story too. Most will blame battery drain on the custom ROM/kernel they flash and fail to realize their battery drain is usually caused by a rogue app running in the background ...

I've never had good luck with the stock gallery app. I always freeze it via adb when I flash a new ROM. It seems much worse in ICS. It would always start back up.

Stock GB gallery was an absolute joke. Slow, missing thumbnails, weird background and hard to see what you're scrolling through. The stock ICS gallery i actually prefer over alternatives. Though i don't use picasa so that is disabled. Never an issue with it (besides always showing my damned album covers).

Harbb said:
You, my friend, deserve a cookie for such good writing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nom nom nom!!
AeroEchelon said:
@demarcolister Awesome first post here on XDA.
Great story too. Most will blame battery drain on the custom ROM/kernel they flash and fail to realize their battery drain is usually caused by a rogue app running in the background ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was quick to (negative) judgement too, but I figured that Google would not (certainly!) release an update that completely cripples a modern and high-selling device.
Harbb said:
Stock GB gallery was an absolute joke. Slow, missing thumbnails, weird background and hard to see what you're scrolling through. The stock ICS gallery i actually prefer over alternatives. Though i don't use picasa so that is disabled. Never an issue with it (besides always showing my damned album covers).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed! In fact, I'd accept, grudgingly, if album covers show up in the gallery (although, truly they should not), but I do not, under any circumstance, want to see the icons (tick for yes, cross for no, i for icons, etc.) used by an application in my Gallery. Idiocy!
What is the solution? I wish to remain Stock, so rooting and editing the equivalent of plist or config files is not an option. At least 'Camera' is the first option, always! That makes it usable, but as soon as I use picplz or camera360 or instagram their folders get shuffled in position. Is Google hinting at something!? *sigh*

Hey guys...
Sent from my Nexus S

Related

[GUIDE] Battery Management for noobs

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

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

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

[GUIDE] Basics For A Better Battery

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*If you find this Guide Thread helpful, feel free to hit the "thanks" button below!​
Getting a full day out of your battery isn't something that should be fantasized over, but rather is absolutely attainable with most phone configurations. With following this [GUIDE] you should have no trouble getting more from your Atrix 2's battery life. I will outline several "usual suspects" and "battery butchering bandits" that some may already know of, and some that you might not have ever considered. However, if you try all of these it, may ruin your Android experience because you’ll be constantly fussing with your battery; that's not what this is for. These are ALL the tips/tricks I know. Even I don’t use all of them. Using just a few of these (possibly even one or two) should be enough that you notice an increase in your battery life. So, n00bs and more knowledgeable users can both benefit from this, and for the more resident members here, we've all seen the threads like, “Please help with my battery issue”, “Does undervolting save you battery life” or “Getting horrible battery life”, so this should help give everyone some great ways to improve upon your battery's performance and lifespan between charges.
First off, let me start by telling you all to be realistic. What I mean by that is this: You Atrix 2 is meant to be used! Your Atrix 2 is more than just a phone, it is a pocket-sized computer, an arcade full of your most favorite games, it is meant to be talked on, played with, downloaded to, uploaded from, tweaked/modded/themed/rom'd and everything else that you may desire! So, again, after reading and implementing some of (or all, if you're neurotic) the things I'll outline, hopefully this will alleviate some of the questions you may have as to why your battery performance isn't everything you anticipated it to be. Though, if you think you will get days out of your battery's life by following these suggestions, you're either not using your phone for anything other than holding down a stack of papers, or you're just not being realistic. Will these suggestions help give you more from your battery? Absolutely. I know this is all (well, mostly) very elementary in effort, but overall this WILL HELP you.​
*"There are many things to consider when thinking of your battery's performance, such as: Animation Speed. Polling For Notifications. GPS, WiFi scans, Overclocking. CPU/Ram Usage, Proper Sleep, Widgets, Brightness, 2G/3G/4G Data Usage, Call Time, Text Volume, just to name a few ~THESE are the things that really affect your battery life. The bottom line is, if you truly want to save battery you are going to have to get your hands dirty... there simply isn't a "one-click" (or one-flash) solution."​
*STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I cannot be held responsible for any and all damage related to Hardware loss or Data or Software, which the user might cause while attempting these procedures. Additionally, I am taking the liberty to assume that anyone who attempts these procedures understands the potential risks involved. Though, there should be no such issues to arise from following this guide, I am still exempting myself from any liability.
---For All Users (Rooting Not Required)---
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1) Turn Off Your Radio(s) When Not Using Them:
Radios are what connect your phone to the rest of the world. You have your general mobile connection, WiFi, data/internet connection (3G), GPS, and/or 4G. Those are listed in order from least to greatest in battery consumption. If you’re not using the radio turn it off. If you know you won’t be online for a long time, why turn 3G data on? If you’re at home, use WiFi instead of 3G. If you’re not using Google Maps why is your GPS on? You’d be amazed at how much battery life you can save just by turning off the radios that you aren’t using.
2) Vibrate Uses More Battery:
Anytime your phone vibrates a lot of battery is used. This include haptic feedback. A lot of keyboards have the option to turn off haptic feedback and I would recommend it. If you’re a heavy texter you’ll notice very quickly how much longer your phone will last. Also, if you’re in a place where you can easily hear your phone why do you need to have vibrate enabled? If you know you’ll be able to hear your phone there’s no reason for it to be buzzing too.
3) Don’t Use Task Killers:
Crazy, right? Android has it’s own task killer that’s actually very good. If programs are using too much memory your Android OS will kill it. A common misconception is that apps run in the background forever; this is not true. If an app is using too much memory (which links to battery life) it’ll be killed by your phone. That’s why if you play a game, check a message, and come back the game is still running. It’s memory usage isn’t that high. However if you put your phone down, walk away for an hour, and the game is still trying to run in the background, there’s a good chance it will be closed before you come back. Separate task managers have to constantly be running in the background which can actually use more battery than it saves. Yes, task managers can use more battery than claim to save.
4. Power Cycling:
Not sure about the real effectiveness of this charging policy, but some users have tried it and have claimed to have had good results from it. So, to begin with the phone in the on position, fully charge the battery with the phone on. Once your Atrix 2 is fully charged, unplug the charger until the led goes off. After the led goes off, plug the charger back in. When the led turns green , power off the phone. Now, with the phone fully powered off, 1) Unplug the charger. 2) Wait until led goes off. 3) Plug charger back in until the led turns green. When it turns green, unplug the charger again and go to step 1). Repeat steps 1) and 3), 10 times. This may take anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes per cycle. Typically only about 1 minute though. It takes too much work for me, but I’ve done it once just to test it.
5) Don’t Use Live Wallpapers:
They look awesome, right? They also use a lot of battery (especially the more complex ones). We’ve all used live wallpapers to show off how cool our phones can be, but for daily use they can KILL your battery. Also, your animations will be a factor in diminished battery life expectancy. To adjust this, simply navigate to: Settings>Display>Animations>set to "Off or Medium". #1 when it comes to what is eating your battery, is your display. It always has been and always will be, so accept it and try to do something about it. If you don't believe me, go to your Settings>Battery> and see just how much percentages the screen takes up. But, you want to do something about this, right? This part is easy. Just lower the brightness. You can set it to a brightness that is low but you are still able to see well enough to function. Live Wallpapers fall into this category. They are cool to look at but static ones take up less RAM and also less display because they are not running all the time in the background. These screens are very bright at 100%, so tone it down.
6) Watch Your Applications:
You have to pay attention to your applications. I repeat. You have to pay attention to your apps! Especially if they run in the background. This can be anything from a harmless .99¢ game to a monster like a Live Wallpaper. The battery drain threat is twofold here because the application is running in the background but it could also be using its anonymous data collection abilities and sending that back to the Mother ship. Ever wonder why your signal bars in the status bar have arrows or other animations going back and forth when your phone is just sitting there? This is because some application is transmitting data, whether you are using it or not. There are apps in the market that monitor these situations like Watchdog Task Manager Lite or you can adjust app permissions like LBE Privacy Guard. Data transfer is #2 on the "What Kills My Battery" list.
7) Worthless Widgets:
They look cool. But widgets are nothing more than RAM and battery hungry monsters that you purposely put in your home screen. Think about it. What does a widget really do? All it really does is monitor an app that you have running. So not only is it running and taking up battery and RAM but the app that it is linked to is running in the background a la Facebook, Twitter, Google+, CNBC, MSNBC, BBC, …the list goes on and on because they want us to put THEM on our home page. What a great marketing campaign the widget is: "Hey, look at me new home screen!" "Cool. Hey what widget is that?" "Oh, it is (whatever widget)." "Nice, I’ll have to download that tonight when I get home." Right then and there, they have you and your battery. If you're serious about getting the very most out of your battery, get rid of the widgets. I know, they're hard to resist, but trust me, your Atrix 2 will be a better place if you want the most out of your battery.
8) Set Your Screen Timeout:
Some phones start with their screen timeout at 3 minutes or more. That’s completely unnecessary. While you don’t want it to be instant, you know your preferences. Set it to as low as you see fit. The sooner your screen goes off, the longer your battery life will last. I set my screen timeout to the lowest "never" -but, in doing so, every time I am done checking emails or sending a text, I kill the display with the power button to turn off the display. This takes some habitual conditioning, and if you're used to allowing your phone the responsibility of turning off the display for you, it might bode well for your battery capacity crusade to simply adjust this to the minimum. But, if if you're like me and like 'control' over your display, I recommend you still set the timeout to the lowest possible setting, in the event that you forget to manually shut the display off yourself. It's just good practice when going for battery life longevity.
9) The Charger, and What You Can Do Regarding it:
Using certain chargers causes a wakelock on your phone that prevents it from going into deep sleep. This can result in roughly 10% battery attrition, regardless of activity or screen on time. Before you try anything else, you should test each of your chargers and make sure they aren’t causing a wakelock. Though this shouldn't be of concern if you are using the stock wall charger that came when you purchased your Atrix 2, there are other aftermarket ones that you may not suspect as reasons to worry about charging your phone with. If you are not using the stock charger, and you suspect you may have a problem, or may be curious to find out: Install CPU Spy from the Play Store. Open the app to see how much time your phone spends in each CPU state. If Deep Sleep is a very small percentage, or Deep Sleep doesn’t even appear, you have a problem with your charger. Or, follow the method below to test each of your chargers:
Testing CPU Spy:
1) Plug your phone into the charger and turn the screen off. Leave it charging for about 30 seconds. (Don't do this with a fully charged phone, as I don't know how that affects the testing)
2) With the screen still off, unplug the phone from the charger.
3) Open CPU Spy, hit the menu button, and "Reset Timers". Turn the screen off.
4) Let the phone sit idle for a few minutes with the screen off.
5) Turn the phone back on and refresh the timers in CPU Spy (menu button again).
If Deep Sleep doesn’t appear in the list of CPU states, your phone is experiencing a wakelock brought on by the charger. It’s probably spent the majority of time at 192mhz or 384mhz. To further confirm this, leave your phone unplugged, restart it, leave the screen off for a few minutes, and then check CPU spy again. You should now see it going into Deep Sleep.​​
10) Your Camera Flash and Battery Don’t Get Along:
If you like using your camera LED for a flashlight realize that will absolutely MURDER your battery. In all seriousness, your flash uses battery more than any other process on your phone. Turn off the flash. Don't set it to "automatic", you should know when you will need it and when you will not. By setting it to "automatic" you're relying on the phone's light meter to determine if the flash is needed. Sometimes it is, and other times it isn't.
11) Low Cell Signal Hurts Battery
Your phone is always searching for a stronger signal…This process gets more hectic as the cell signal goes down. So if you’re at one bar your phone’s battery life will drop faster than if you’ve got full coverage. There’s not much you can do here, but if you’re in a place where your phone has little to no signal anyway, you probably won’t be making calls so you might want to just turn on airplane mode or your phone off. And with Airplane Mode, you can toggle the airplane mode on/off 3 times in a row, that will reduce your Cell Standby battery usage. It should only be necessary to do it once after flashing but if you think Cell Standby uses too much power at some stage, you could toggle again the airplane mode 3 times. This is a handy little trick, not well known, but should give you some relief with Cell Standby usage. I travel for my job, which means that at times, I do not get good reception, or bounce around between Edge/3G/4G, and each time that happens, your Atrix 2 is sucking more juice by trying to find a good signal. If you are not in a static network, meaning one that is either 3G/4G at any given time, without locating off-network tower connections, turn your radio off or switch to Airplane Mode.
12) Speaking Of Syncing…:
Check your settings to see what is syncing and when. You probably have things syncing you don’t even use (stocks, news, contacts, etc). You can turn those off and edit the other ones. I don’t need my contacts’ statuses every hour, so my facebook sync is scheduled for once a day rather than the old once an hour. Find out what you need and how often you want it, and turn the rest off. I know you are very important and you need to know what LeBron James is doing right now, or that you need to upload a picture of you and your girlfriend every time you two are at a party, drinking beer. That is fine and I applaud you for it, and will probably download the picture and Photoshop myself in your place. This is not the problem. Syncing your accounts is. That is what is causing battery drain. Do you really need to have your FB widget (see widgets section) streaming all day long? I doubt it. Kill it (not LeBron, but rather the auto-syncing). Every time you “friend” someone their numbers, contact info gets sync’d to your phone. Also, there are settings in Facebook, Twitter and Google+ that you can upload pictures instantly. Don’t do that. Once you do, it is out in the Ether-World and just swallowed a bunch of battery doing it too. Settings>Accounts and Sync>Auto-sync>uncheck it
13) Don’t Use GPS Unless You Have To:
Some apps give you the option to precisely determine your position using GPS, or make a general estimate (usually within 100 meters) based on WiFi or 3G data. While this isn’t always the best (like if you’re driving or getting navigated), try to use the 3G connection when it doesn’t really matter. The data radio uses far less battery than GPS.
14) We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat, erm... I Mean Battery:
If still not completely convinced that you have have stellar performance from your stock Atrix 2 battery, you can always check out the Atrix 2 Accessories threads for suggestions and/or discussions on extended capacity batteries. I've never used one myself, but don't see as to why this wouldn't certainly add to your life expectancy of your battery -assuming you're choosing foregoing the suggestions above, and simply insist on having your widgets and eating them to -or your battery, for that matter. Nonetheless, there are several manufacturers that supply an aftermarket extended capacity battery for the Atrix 2, just use your pal Google to help you find one.
​
---For All Users (*Rooting Required)---
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*FOR ROOT USERS: If you’ve rooted your phone you have a few more options. You don’t gain too many more options, but they are even more effective than the ones listed above.
Underclock Your Phone:
Just like SetCPU can overclock your phone, it can underclock it as well. Set it to underclock when the phone is sleeping or even lower the max clocking speed. This will give your CPU's scaling frequencies a lower "resting" point, and will not allow the load of the CPU to be any higher than the maximum setting you permit. I know everyone who likes to get their hands into the belly of their Atrix 2 and start tweaking it loves the idea of overclocking, but c'mon, you don't have to run your CPU at 1.3GHz all day, everyday. Scale that baby down when you don't require such a high CPU load, and trust me, your CPU and your battery will thank you. Also, along with underclocking your CPU, you can undervolt as well. This will allow (after some testing you'll need to do first to make sure you're not undervolted too low for stable CPU loads) for your Atrix 2 to run at a lower voltage consumption, and with these types of settings, you can allow your Atrix 2 to run at your desired CPU frequency scaling, but a slightly lower voltage rate. *Note: As aforementioned, some testing is required for this to be effective with both your CPU's table values, as well as how it may improve your battery's life. Also, please reference This Thread for the latest kernel/module overclocking and undervolting methods.
Wakelocks That Destroy Your Battery Life:
If you're not familiar with wakelocks, they're basically processes that run on your phone that prevent it from going into deep sleep. Deep sleep is the mode your phone should go into when you're not using it so that it can conserve battery. Some wakelocks are intentional, while others can be the result of rogue apps or system processes. If you're trying to maximize your battery life, you know this already. Some wakelocks are happy, friendly things, but many are silent leeches, sucking away your battery life while you remain blissfully unaware of what's happening. First off, you have to understand the difference between kernel wakelocks (KWL) and partial wakelocks (PWL). KWLs are wakelocks caused at the kernel or hardware level. Some of these are benign, and some of them are vampires. The only way to solve them is to change how your phone behaves. To effectively find your wakelocks, you'll need Better battery Stats It's free to us XDA users. You can get it IN THIS THREAD. More on wakelocks can be found in the post below.
Use SetCPU:
Create a special profile that forces the device to run at low clock speeds when the display is off.
Go to profiles
Check Enable
Press Add Profile
Set the following:
Condition: Screen Off
Max: 600MHz Max
Min: 300MHz Min
Governor: ondemand
Priority: 50
Press Save
On the Main tab make sure you have
Max: 1000MHz
Min: 300MHz
Governor: ondemand
Scheduler: deadline
Clean Out the Bloat:
Some of the bloatware and unnecessary applications on our Atrix 2's can drain battery. I really recommend you freeze the applications by using Root Freezer and run your Atrix 2 for a few days after you have frozen an unwanted application, and certainly before you decide to uninstall. This way you won’t accidentally uninstall something your phone needs to remain stable. Albeit, most of the custom roms that you will see here are already "de-bloated", if you're new to rooting and Android, and haven't quite decided that taking the next jump to flashing roms is for you, use Root Freezer to "freeze" applications that you suspect are bloat, until you decide to run a de-bloated ROM -and you will, eventually...
The Stock ROM Sucks:
If you’re still unrooted and on stock Gingerbread, I feel sorry for you. What the heck are you doing on this forum if you’re scared to flash a new ROM? This guide would be way too long if I tried to explain the battery improvements you might see by stepping up to the Stock ICS leak. You’ll probably see even more improvement if you flash one of the many custom ROMs in the Development section. If you’re dedicated to getting the most out of your phone, spend a weekend reading the ever-loving crap out of the stickies in the Development forum, and the [ROM] threads. Only after you have read those threads and feel like you have a good understanding, backup your phone and flash a new ROM on it. As long as you’ve backed up properly, you can flash between several ROMs and choose the one that works best for you. If you have any questions about the ROM you’re trying to flash, ask in that ROM's specific thread, don’t start out by creating a new thread in the General Section. You did do a search first, right?
Lost DIR Liability:
Let's say that you have your phone plugged into your PC and for some reason you, in a fit of rage, jerk the plug out without unmounting it first. This creates a file that is put into your LOST DIR folder on your SD card. Anytime you don't safely unmount the SD card, it will create a file in that folder. In the scheme of the SD card, it isn't too much, but I don't like having useless items free floating about. Clear them out using Root Explorer or a like Root File Explorer, and this will free up some (depending on how many times this has been done) valuable memory real estate.
Tombstones:
So you are downloading an update from the market and for some reason your phone freezes and the Force Close-Retry-Wait doesn't work out for you. You have to do a battery pull. Frustrating I know and the memory takes a hit too. Every time you have to do a battery pull because of a freeze up or something of the like, it creates a TOMBSTONE file in /data. These are useless and can be deleted. If you are flashing ROMs and are constantly having to do battery pulls b/c market crashes or an app freezes, then you are creating a Tombstone file. Here is where your file manager (with root) will help. Go into /data and scroll all the way to the bottom and open /tombstone. There should be some files in there and depending on how many there are, I could be a nice chunk of wasted memory. Just select all and delete. They are not needed. Your internal memory should go up by doing this.
Lost & Found:
Same scenario, but now go into /data/ cache or /cache and you'll see Dalvik Cache (don’t mess with this), Lost & Found and Recovery. If you tried to download an app and it got frozen for some reason and had to do a battery pull, the apk will be free floating in there, uninstalled (free floating radical). You can delete this. While it isn't in the Dalvik Cache folder, it is taking up space. Once you are able to download something completely and correctly from the market, it will populate into Dalvik Cache correctly and won't be a free radical, as I like to say.​
---For All Users (Miscellaneous)---​​​​​​
Some More Memory Clearing Tips:
Home Launcher:
If you have a 3rd party home launcher, see if it has the ability to long-press an icon to take you to its screen in the Manage Apps section. I use ADWex and if you long-press on say Market, it takes me to the same place as is I were to go to Settings>Applications>Manage Apps>Market. Instead of all that, just long-press on the icon and BAM! it takes you there. Here you can clear out your cache for the market or delete the data (if you need to do that). Or clear the cache of the XDA app because you looked at too many posts with pictures, etc.
Browsers:
These develop cache that takes up memory and space, especially the stock browser. If you use a 3rd party, you can get the settings to clear cache, cookies, passwords,…on exit. I use Dolphin, but I am pretty sure that most have something like this on them. (side note: most 3rd party browsers once exited will not run in the background unlike the stock one)
Media:
So you download a bunch of mp3's from the internet or you've clicked on some pix and saved them to your SD card. Or maybe you just felt like wiping your card and having a fresh start. Every time you reboot, you phone will scan media. No big deal, but the more you criss-cross things from PC to phone and back again, it can create a bunch of double files in your media cache on the phone. With the proper placement of .nomedia files (this prevents your media scanner from doing just that, scanning media- i.e. pix, jpegs,…Don’t place a .nomedia in your music, album art or DCIM files**bad). Every once in a while, I'll hit the Diskusage or go to Manage apps and clear the media cache. Then I got to my file manager and the DCIM->Thumbs and delete the thumbnails files (should be 2). Unmount the SD card and remount to start the media scan, pull up the Gallery and wait for the thumbs to come back (depending on how many you have, this could take awhile). By doing this you can get almost 5 mb back if you have a bunch of double scans in your media folder.​
Applications That Use Advertisements:
Try to avoid ad-supported applications, if you can. A research showed that in apps where there is adds, 70% of the power use comes from downloading and managing those adds to your screen. With just a 30 second use of an application that uses ads, it might drain your fully charged battery anywhere from 0.35% to 0.70%, which is enough to completely discharge the battery within a couple of hours if the process is repeated. This, according to a team of researchers, show that applications using advertisement support can take a high toll on your Android smartphone’s battery. The researchers analyzed how Android apps use the battery and concluded that the ad-serving processes that run in the background are responsible for heavy battery drainage. This may not seem like much, but so many applications that are free utilize advertisements and are blasted about the bottom or top of your application. I know I'll likely get ostracized for mentioning this, at least by some of the developers who rely on ad-support within their applications, but there is a way to eliminate these ads from showing themselves in your application(s). This is for BOTH rooted and un-rooted devices, as there are applications available from Google Play Store, such as AdFree Android (for ROOTED users only) or you can find one that will work on a non-rooted device. Or better yet, you could pony up the nominal dollar or two and show your own support for your favorite applications by buying the paid version, and thus eliminating the ads in that manner.​
*I will be updating this OP as I see necessary, and if anyone has useful tips that I may have missed or overlooked, please let me know. I'm aware that there are threads of this capacity floating about through XDA, but I have taken the liberty to create on specifically for our community.
Credits & Big Thanks To: Woodrube
Wakelocks Explained
Two final notes before I get started with the Wakelock Portion of this guide: Do not go wakelock hunting right after installing a new ROM or clean-wipe reinstalling your current one. New ROMs cause the phone to go nuts for a little while, as things decache and little behind-the-scenes tweaks are made. Wait one full battery cycle (100% to 0%, which you're probably doing to calibrate after a clean ROM install anyway) before trying this, or you'll drive yourself nuts. Also, remember that solving one wakelock will often create another, especially early in this process. That's normal and to be expected. God does not hate you, your ROM of choice is not crap, your phone is not glitched, and a clean install while your current ROM is still settling in will only make things worse.
So, how do you track these wakelocks down with BBS? This is a really complicated procedure, so make sure you're with me. First, open BBS. Then, see the drop down menu at the top that probably says "Other" right now? Tap it, and then you'll see "Kernel Wakelocks" and "Partial Wakelocks" below. That was obscenely difficult, right?
There are a couple of other features of BBS that we'll make extensive use of later, but there's one you need to know right now. Tap your phone's menu button to get the BBS menu up. Tap on "More". See the button that says "Set Custom Ref."? You'll need it--you'll need it a lot.
Last, but certainly not least: modifying your system in any way, including altering or deleting processes needed to resolve wakelocks, can have unpredictable results. Use caution and make backups of your apps and data, as well as nandroid backups, frequently while finding and eliminating wakelocks. Any modifications you make are done at your own risk, and I assume no responsibility for any damage you may do to your phone while cleaning out wakelocks.
With that said, we'll get started with the KWLs, as they're the trickiest to get rid of. Use the guide below to identify your wakelock, what is causing it, and how to get rid of it.
KERNEL WAKELOCKS
wlan_rx, wlan_rx_wake, wlan_wake: This is a wakelock caused by network traffic. The easy solution would be to just turn off Wifi, but be careful doing so! If an app goes to sync and it sees that Wifi is off, it will search for a mobile data connection (which causes the ConnectivityService wakelock). If it can't find a mobile data connection, it will wait and search again at its next sync interval and/or automatically sync when the phone wakes up. This wakelock can also, deceptively, be caused by the Wifi network itself as it refreshes connections or refreshes IPs.
To fix: This is a tricky little sucker to fix, as there are so many possible causes for it. Airplane mode is a safe bet--syncing apps seem to "respect" airplane mode, whereas if Wifi alone is turned off, they'll just try to find a way around. But then, of course, you lose your ability to talk on the phone. If you're particularly unlucky, your Wifi network itself will be the problem.
PowerManagerService: This is probably your #1 or #2 kernel wakelock, and you'd probably love to get rid of it at all costs, right? Hate to say it, but there's not much that can be done about this one. PowerManagerService is a KWL that serves as a "catch-all" for your PWLs. It's a placeholder, nothing more, nothing less. Don't spend much time worrying about it.
To fix: Reduce PWLs. See below.
deleted_wake_locks: Remember what I said above about force-stopping an app and deleting its cache and data before uninstalling it? This wakelock is why. It's the PowerManagerService for deleted apps. Once the app is gone, the wakelocks it caused suddenly become unknown to the system, so they get lumped in here. This number can also go up as the system "looks for" deleted apps and/or finds more wakelocks associated with them, but not dramatically.
To fix: Make sure to force close apps and wipe their cache and data before deleting. A reboot should eliminate the wakelock entirely. If it's still showing up, wipe phone cache and Dalvik.
sdio_al: This is an annoying wakelock, as there are two potential causes for it. One's easy, and one sucks. The easy one is that you've fallen victim to the charger wakelock. If your charger shows up as AC Regular Charge, there's your problem. If it's AC Fast Charge or USB Normal Charge, your wakelock is caused by your SD card. That can be an irritating fix, but the SD card version of this wakelock is typically small enough that it's not worth addressing.
To fix: Check your charger and adjust if needed. If it's the SD card, it's probably not a strong enough wakelock to be worth fixing, but if you want to fix it, you'll have to format your SD card. If formatting doesn't work, format it again, then wipe cache and Dalvik.
alarm_rtc: This is your phone's internal alarm scheduler, set to wake up your phone for sync, push, etc. Closely related to the AlarmManager PWL.
To fix: Check your apps and make sure they're only set to sync when you want them to, not for constant push or stupid-short intervals.
mmc0_detect, mmc1_detect, mmc2_detect: I'll be honest, I have no idea what causes these. Fortunately, they seem to be minimal, so I've never wasted much time worrying about them.
To fix: Good question!
vbus_present: This is a weird one. I never could quite figure out what causes it, but it seems like it's there as long as the phone's plugged it. Strange...
To fix: Check your phone. Is there a cord plugged into it? If so, does that cord lead to a source of power? Like, I don't know, an adapter plugged into a wall socket? That's your root cause. vbus_present is a completely harmless wakelock, which will appear for as long as your charger is plugged into your phone. Set a custom reference point in BBS when you unplug, and you'll note that it's magically disappeared.
There are a number of other, lesser KWLs that I'm not going to worry about here because you shouldn't worry about them either. You might occasionally see a battery cycle with very low (sub-1%) KWLs, but that's the exception and not at all the rule.
PARTIAL WAKELOCKS
PWLs are a different beast. These are almost all caused by an app (with a couple of notable exceptions). For that reason, I won't go in-depth on too many of them, as the solution is usually to delete the app causing them. There are a few notable ones, and a few apps that merit mention.
AudioOut_1: This is an evil leech of a wakelock that will drain you dry if given the chance. For being such a pain in the app, it's surprisingly easy to get rid of. This wakelock is created whenever the phone's speaker plays a sound. With 99% of sounds, it goes away almost instantly. With keypad sounds, however, it doesn't go away so quickly, and it will sit there draining your battery for as long as it goes unnoticed.
To fix: Open Settings, then select sound. Turn off key tone sounds, touch sounds, screen lock sounds and vibrate on screen tap. It'll take some getting used to, but the extra battery you'll coax out just by solving this ridiculously simple problem is more than worth it. See DoctorQMM's post (#5), linked at the end of this one, for info on additional causes of this wakelock and how to fix them.
ConnectivityService: This will appear whenever your phone is trying to connect to a mobile data network. Excessive wakelocking here suggests that your phone is having a hard time finding a network, and an even harder time staying on it.
To fix: Test out different radios and see if one's better in your area. If you're able to control your radio bands and you don't live in an LTE area, setting your phone to hunt for GSM/HSPA connections only can save you a little bit of juice here. Not much, but every drop counts, and if you're not using LTE anyway.
AlarmManager: This isn't a wakelock unto itself so much as it's a compilation of app alarms and the time they held the device awake for. Seeing the wakelock alone doesn't tell you much, but here's where one of those features of BBS that I said we'd be using comes in.
To fix: Open BBS. Tap the menu button, then "More", then "Raw Alarms". That will show you which apps are waking up your phone, and how often they're doing so. Google will have a ton of wake-ups, but they're mostly innocuous. We'll discuss some of Google's problem apps later. Email clients will also have a ton of alarms. If anything else looks out of whack, though, first check the app settings to see how often it's refreshing. If the app is set to refresh every hour but it's set off 400 alarms in the last 30 minutes, get rid of that sucker and email the dev. You can't eliminate this wakelock, and it's constantly my #1 PWL at this point, but you can minimize it.
MediaScannerService: This is a wakelock created by the system as it scans your device for music, movies, pictures, etc. Once in a while, it will randomly get hung up and hold the phone at 384 MHz for...well...until you notice and do something about it. Like AudioOut_1, this is a heavy-drain wakelock. Luckily, like AudioOut_1, it's almost always easy to fix.
To fix: Reboot. Ninety-nine times or so out of a hundred, this solves the problem. If the problem persists, go to Settings>Applications>Running then tap on "Show cached processes". Find the Media process and stop it manually to kill the wakelock. That's a short-term fix, though, as a persistent wakelock from this process most likely means you have a corrupt media file somewhere on your phone- and there are a lot of sounds, movies and images on your phone. This is one of the few wakelocks that, if it's a regular problem, justifies considering a full wipe and clean reinstall. That's not because it's doing any kind of damage to your phone, but more because sifting through every single media file on your phone to find the culprit isn't really a practical solution.
SyncLoopWakeLock: This is exactly what it sounds like; your phone is being held awake while apps sync. There are two possible causes for this: apps syncing (duh) and a bad data connection.
To fix: Open BBS. Tap the menu button, then "More", then "Raw Network Stats". This will show you which apps are using the most data, and help you narrow down possible culprits. Once you've done so, check those app settings and make sure they're not set to constantly push notifications, refresh every five minutes or anything dumb like that. If they're set correctly and still holding sync open that long, try downloading the Speed Test app off of the Play Store and test your phone's connection. If your connection is on the slow side, it's possible that the apps are struggling to sync because of your bad data connection. Try flashing different radios to see if that solves it. If the troublesome apps remain so after you've found a better radio, it's best to just delete or freeze them.
GTALK_ASYNC_CONN family: Despite its name, this wakelock doesn't seem to be directly related to Google Talk. How do I know? I haven't had Google Talk on this phone in over a month, but the wakelock still pops up from time to time. These wakelocks can be absolute destroyers of your battery if given the chance, and unfortunately, there's no known root cause for them, and no reliable way of eliminating them.
To fix: These wakelocks will often disappear within a minute or so of generating. If one becomes persistent, reboot into recovery and wipe cache and Dalvik ASAFP. That solves the problem temporarily, but it will reoccur. Thanks, Google.
NetworkLocationLocator: What a lovely name for such a lovely wakelock. It's a minor annoyance usually, nothing more. If this one is persistent, it's because you're in an area with crappy cell coverage and very few Google-mapped WiFi networks.
To fix: Why, exactly, are you leaving Network Location on all the time anyway?
SCREEN_FROZEN: Uh oh.
To fix: If this is high on your list, you've got bigger problems than a wakelock.
PWL OFFENDING APPS
We're almost done, I promise!
Down here, I'm going to list off for you apps that will cause you severe PWL migraines, and what to do about them.
A note when uninstalling Google built-ins: Google built-ins are often system packages, and deleting them can have unpredictable results. I highly recommend freezing them in Titanium Backup for several days to see how the phone runs before uninstalling them through there as well. Deleting system processes is inherently risky, and I assume no responsibility for your own decisions.
Facebook: Any social networking app will want to sync as often as it can, but you can overrule that by setting notification intervals. Thing is, Facebook doesn't respect those intervals, and wakes up the device for data exchanges pretty constantly (even though your news feed may only update every hour or so when you want it to). This app is no better than bloat, and should be treated as such when you clean house.
Alternative App: Friendcaster. It's as good a third-party Facebook client as you'll find on Android, and it only wakes up when you tell it to.
Gmail: A running theme here will be that if there's a non-Google equivalent to a Google app, you should probably kill the Google and download the alternative. Gmail is an alarm fiend, and one of the main offenders if you have an excessive SyncLoopWakeLock problem.
Alternative App: How many email clients are out there? I've had the best luck with the stock Email app, but K-9, Kaiten, MailDroid, even Enhanced Email and Touchdown for the power users are all great alternatives. Speaking of which...
Whatever email client you're using: Email clients will always be high up on the list of alarms, and that's by their nature. Keep an eye with raw network stats on how long they're connected for, and don't be afraid to experiment. I tried K-9, Kaiten and MailDroid before settling back on the stock Email app as the one that gave me the best balance of battery life and necessary features.
Alternative Apps: Download and try out different clients until you find the one that works for you. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
Google Latitude: Latitude is a tracking service. As such, it tracks you. Beyond the creepiness aspect of that, it holds your phone awake pretty often while doing so. Kill it. Kill it with fire.
Alternative App: Personally, I'm not into the whole stalking thing, but I've heard that Glympse works quite well.
Google Maps: Colossal waste of space and battery. You can do better. An important note on Google Maps: this app will still wake your device up even after being frozen in Titanium Backup. I don't know how it happens, but it does. To truly solve the alarms from Google Maps, you have no choice but to uninstall it. Do so at your own risk.
Alternative Apps: I'm a fan of Waze for navigation and MapQuest for a Google Maps-ish "browseable" interface. OSMAnd is also a great alternative, but it uses a ton of internal memory because of its offline nature.
Google Play Music & Movies: Updates itself constantly and wakelocks. Even if you freeze it, it still somehow manages to tell you that there's an update available. It's the Google zombie.
Alternative App: There are literally 100+ music and/or movie players out there. I'm sure you can find one that works for you. I'm a big fan of RocketPlayer for music, and I just use the stock video app more often than not.
JuiceDefender: What's that you say? JD sets off tons of alarms and holds the device awake for more time than I'd care to discuss, largely because of its data control settings. More harm than good, in my opinion.
Alternative Apps: JuiceDefender's main goal in life is to minimize the amount of time your device is held awake. Therefore, if you've just gone through all this to clear out wakelocks, do you really need another wakelock-prone app to do what you've already done?
Skype: Occasionally, after a call, Skype will wakelock. This is not designed to happen, and is more a glitch in the app than a forced sync. Force-stopping the app and clearing its cache have solved it for me on the rare occasion that I've seen the wakelock occur.
Alternative Apps: No idea. I don't personally consider this a "replace" situation.
That's the bulk of what I've learned from clearing out wakelocks. Remember how, early on, I specified that the search engine of your choice was the third tool? Simple fact is, I haven't installed every app on the planet, so I haven't seen every PWL out there. Because of the way my phone's set up, there are KWLs that I've never seen and never will. If you've got a pesky wakelock that won't go away and it's causing noticeable battery drain, Google (or Bing, or Ask.com, or whatever) is your friend. Good luck, happy hunting, and enjoy the extra battery life you'll get just by spending a few hours over the course of a few days tracking down and killing those wakelocks.
Credits & Big Thanks To: T.J. Bender
A Little Charging Trick
If, after rooting or more likely that case after flashing a new ROM, you often have battery reporting errors, and re-calibrating the battery along with some steps I will outline for you below will ensure that your battery is getting a full charge, and the battery reporting accuracy is right on. I run my device's CPU governor in performance mode all the time, and with a CPU overclock of 1.25GHz and various tweaks, I have about a day and a half - to a day and a quarter of full run time from my battery. This is with moderate usage (calls, emailing, text, gaming, web browsing, etc.) so you should have no problems getting acceptable battery performance after following these steps, coupled with the ones I've given in the OP:
1. Take the case off your Atrix 2 (one of the latter steps involves taking the battery out from the phone while it's plugged in. Make sure your case won't stand in the way.)
2. Install Battery Calibration app from the market
3. Plug in your Atrix 2 to charge while it's on, wait till it gets to a 100%
4. When the charge is 100%, open the BatteryCalibration app and lookup what the charge is in MV while at 100%. Write it down.
My Atrix 2 was showing ~3400MV while at 100%, which is definitely not the maximum capacity.
5. Discharge your Atrix 2 completely until it shuts off.
A good way of doing this quickly is by turning on wifi, and a video player.
6. Without turning on the phone plug it into a wall charger and let it get to 100%
7. When it's at 100%, without unplugging it from the wall charger, take off the battery cover, and take the battery out.
Your phone will "reboot" and show a Missing Battery icon.
8. Without unplugging the phone from the wall charger or turning it on, put the battery back in and wait until the phone recognizes the battery.
9. Your battery should now be recognized by the phone, and showing a charge % significantly lower than 100%.
Mine showed only 5%.
10. Let it sit there charging for 2-3 hours (or more).
My phone wouldn't charge past 10%, but yours might. The numbers don't matter much as the phone is definitely getting additional charge that could have been lost while flashing ROMs, etc.
11. After 2-3 hours (or more), turn the phone on while holding the volume down button and get into CWM.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
12. Wipe battery stats in CWM, reboot.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
13. When the phone turns on, go into Battery Calibration app again and look up your MV numbers -if you were like me, they should be significantly higher than before. After this whole process I had 4351MV at 100%, comparing to 3400MV before calibration.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
14. Before going to sleep - Install Watchdog Task Manager Lite from the market. Go into it's preferences, set CPU threshhold to 20%, check "Include phone processes", check "Monitor phone processes", check "Display all phone processes", set system CPU threshhold to 20% as well.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
15. Make sure your wifi and data connections are off. Now finally unplug the phone from the charger.
Go to bed, let your phone sleep too.
16. Success! Next morning check where your battery % is at and if you followed the instructions correctly / got lucky like me, your battery life should be 90% or more.
I went to bed with 98% and woke up to 94%. So, I consider this mission a success.
NICE JOB!!!!
Sticky... I will ask...
Nice Guide just fixed minor things and my battery is already better!
Sent from my locked MB865 on Ice Cream Sandwich.
temperature
what causes battery temperature rising ? oc? data? games?
cause i've noticed that battery drops horribly on graph when temperature increases
shardul.phatak said:
what causes battery temperature rising ? oc? data? games?
cause i've noticed that battery drops horribly on graph when temperature increases
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Battery temperature is a direct result of device usage. If you go to sleep at night, and are NOT charging your phone overnight, in the morning when you wake up and roll over to check xda or Facebook or whatever, the phone isn't warm, right? During the day, if you're running a browser or streaming music or just have a lot of screen time on, your phone will get warmer and warmer. It's hard to say without seeing any test results from your phone as to what is causing higher temperatures, but it's safe to say that any or all of the things you listed could be a cause. Obviously, overclocking WILL cause your phone to run warmer. Your permitting a higher CPU load value at the maximum frequency scaling, and subsequently your phone's CPU is working harder. Try some (or most) of the suggestions in this thread and see if you notice a lower temperature and battery drop as a result of the changes...
Great guide mister strider!
Motorola lied and I'm still locked mb865
Nice! Thanks for putting this together, Apex... Keep on striding, man!
Apex_Strider,
Can you tell us the final result when you applied these trick on your phone ?
Mine was not used any above, and gave me ~24hrs with heavy use, wifi on 24/24, screen on 5h using wifi. Phone for 15 mins/day, sometime movies for 2hrs.
I charged it at 22:30 PM every night.
Awesome guide. I made my lady read it. She was constantly complaining about her new atrix2's battery life. She learned quit a bit. It was easier to take this way than coming from a frustrated loved one.
You should use your skills to write a guide about how to use the report button and what help or response should be given and how to give it by non op's or those not involved in a given project for all the sudo (ha!) forum cops. (See I can't do it. My sentences are too long.) The constant correcting of anyone by everyone is getting annoying.
Sent from my MB865 using Tapatalk 2
Nice guide Apex!! Keep up the excellent work!
Thanks guys, your appreciation of my time doing these is more appreciated than I can say. Writing has always been a passion of mine, and really the only thing I was good at in school/college- when I wasn't ingesting illicit substances by the truck load. I'm working another guide thread now, hopefully completing it by tonight or tomorrow sometime. Thinking, since I'm nowhere near "dev" status or knowledge, I might apply for Recognized Contributor. Not sure we have any here in this community, at least that's not as present here as I am. Not to slight anyone who might be one, just haven't seen any floating around in here...
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Apex_Strider said:
Thanks guys, your appreciation of my time doing these is more appreciated than I can say. Writing has always been a passion of mine, and really the only thing I was good at in school/college- when I wasn't ingesting illicit substances by the truck load. I'm working another guide thread now, hopefully completing it by tonight or tomorrow sometime. Thinking, since I'm nowhere near "dev" status or knowledge, I might apply for Recognized Contributor. Not sure we have any here in this community, at least that's not as present here as I am. Not to slight anyone who might be one, just haven't seen any floating around in here...
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wait isn't "ingesting illicit substances" part of the college curriculum? If it is not officially it should be, cause it does, ur, um, it did help... LOL.
vinamilk said:
Apex_Strider,
Can you tell us the final result when you applied these trick on your phone ?
Mine was not used any above, and gave me ~24hrs with heavy use, wifi on 24/24, screen on 5h using wifi. Phone for 15 mins/day, sometime movies for 2hrs.
I charged it at 22:30 PM every night.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you asking for my "results", meaning my battery usgae stats (i.e.: maximum duration of battery from full charge to full discharge, screen time, etc.)? If so, I'll have to do this again, as it's been a couple of months since I had. Keep in mind, that everyone's results will vary, as it depends on so many different variables.
Also, being on WiFi will demand less from your battery than relying solely on the network connection. So, if you're 'always' on WiFi, you will get more from your battery than not. On my Atrix 2, I can get a full day or more from one full charge. Now, this is from my usage, and like I mentioned -everyone's will vary. Generally speaking, in practical use Wi-Fi isn’t any more or less friendly on your battery than cellular is. Sure there are differences, but the biggest one of all is distance. Since you’re probably a good-deal closer to your Wi-Fi WAP than you are to your cellular tower, it’s likely that your battery life will be better if you’re using Wi-Fi rather than cellular data.
The charging trick I outlined in this thread is very useful for battery reporting errors after flashing a new rom, or just is one feels like their battery isn't getting the kind of "full" charge it should. It helped me out, as well as others...
I have an extended battery that I've run through several full drain/charge cycles over the past two weeks (when I got it). However, it still doesn't register the charge % properly - it will say 5% for over a day. I used the BatteryCalibration app to no avail.
Ideas?
Ajfink said:
I have an extended battery that I've run through several full drain/charge cycles over the past two weeks (when I got it). However, it still doesn't register the charge % properly - it will say 5% for over a day. I used the BatteryCalibration app to no avail.
Ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try the battery charge trick above, without the Watchdog part -sounds like a battery reporting error. Are you using 1% battery mods?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Apex_Strider said:
Try the battery charge trick above, without the Watchdog part -sounds like a battery reporting error. Are you using 1% battery mods?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I'm completely stock with root.
The Battery Calibration app DOES list the appropriate mV levels, though.
I'll give it a shot.
governors, i/o schedulers ?
may be this & this could help if u want to do sum experiment :silly:
+10 awesome job again !!!!!

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

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

Getting reasonable battery life

Hey guys, just wanted to throw out what I have found re: reasonable battery life.
As most of you know, you can tell when the phone is not getting what I consider reasonable battery life.
Here are the things that I found worth doing:
1: Greenify apps if you can. Unfortunately, Facebook is one of the worst violators of battery and if you greenify it, you will go a long way towards having decent battery life. Of course, then you don't get your Facebook notifications, but for me, this is a plus.
2: Battery Doctor. You can set it to kill apps when the screen is off. There is a whitelist as well so you can keep certain apps running instead being killed.
3: Adjust the auto brightness curve. This seems to work well. Keep the screen reasonably bright but no more than necessary. I think this might work better than just a fixed brightness level because if the area gets really bright, at least the screen will react and become brighter so you can still see the screen. To me, the screen is a battery killer.
4: If you have a super AMOLED display supposedly you can black out the screen with a dark UI. Not sure how much this helps.
5: Custom Kernel. I have only tried IceCode and insanity. Both were giving reasonable battery life. I tried the lower voltage tables in IceCode but didn't notice much difference.
For me, even though I tried several different ROMs, if I did the above, I got reasonable standby/sleep times. It was usually 1 to 1.5 percent per hour in sleep. When the screen was on, battery life was totally dependent on screen brightness. For me, reasonable is with decent use - check/reply to mail a few times an hour, browse web, text, talk abut an hour a day, etc... from 7a-3p and still have around 70% left. For me, the phone still needs charging every day though. Any other tips???
For Facebook, I use the Tinfoil For Facebook app, which is pretty much just a wrapper of the mobile browser version. Beside the battery drain the official app causes, the privacy concerns with the addition of them listening in on your mic makes this worth it.
Hi all. Can anyone please suggest which Rom & kernel combination gives best battery life for Ville c2 . Main use is web browsing on mobile data & some casual gaming.
I recently got this device and am new to this (c2) forum.
Sent from my HTC One S using xda premium
I use the "Snapdragon BatteryGuru" application.
A feature I love is that I can set what apps have to be updated ever, when I use them or basing on my use. For example I installed Facebook, Twitter, a mail client and Skype on my phone. I can choose that the mail client has to be updated ever, Facebook and Twitter basing on my use, and Skype when I use it.
BatteryGuru can enable some features like the Wi-Fi or the Mobile data basing on my use. For example, I surf the internet between 8:00 AM and 3:00 PM. The Snapdragon's application registers this activity and it will automatically enable internet connection between 8:00 AM and 3:00 PM.
Another feature I like is that I can enable a low power mode when the battery reaches a choosen level and disable, for example, the mobile data, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, apps update, etc.
Awesome app!
I saw that app. Will need to check it out. Sounds like useful features.
Thanks! I'll try Greenify with Facebook.
I'm quite satisfied with the AOSPA 4+ ROM (stock kernel). I unplug the phone at 9am and around 10pm - 56% battery remaining (with Greenify + Auto brightness + Dark UI theme) with normal usage like browsing/checking emails/phone calls every now and then.

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