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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)---
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)---
*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 !!!!!
Related
I had seen one too many posts about people asking and complaining about battery drain issues on their G1 phones and it gets tiring to read it every 5-10 posts. So I decided to create this thinktank to pool in ideas from the community and create a set of best practices to maximize mileage of our phones. I'm currently using a HTC Dream with stock battery and my battery life is pretty good with light to medium usage. I would like to contribute to the community by creating this thinktank thread. I hope this can help as a guide for myself and for people who have been having numerous battery drain issues on 5.0.7-DS and variants of this distribution.
This is NOT the ultimate end-all solution for your battery problems. These are just steps to tackle the problem. If you want minimum to no battery drain keep it plugged to socket or plug it in a car battery.
If you would like to contribute your experience, or make any corrections please do not hesitate to post and I'll include them if they seem fit and attach your name as reference. I'll also do my best to give credit where credit is due. Please see the references at the bottom part of the post. Please do not clutter this thread by doing "I'll try this" or "It doesnt work" post. Its more important for all of us to know WHY it work/didnt work. Stick to topic, and be constructive. Be intelligent. Think first.
0. Update your Radio
Updating your G1's radio to the currently-latest version (2.22.23.02) should give you better battery life as well as signal reception (you can always switch back to 2.22.19.26I if it doesn't work out for you)
1. Recalibrate
Take note that BATTERY STATS ARE WIPED whenever you flash a new rom. (since full wipes are required whenever changing ROMS, and /data is where the battery info is.) This usually leads to inaccurate battery readings.
Here's how you recalibrate properly:
- Charge your phone till the GREEN LED shows up. Leave it for another hour.
- While plugged, go to recovery and wipe your battery stats.
- Right after the phone is booted up and settled, unplug and use as per normal till it shuts off. Then charge as per normal.
2. Disabling some basic phone hardware functionality
Turn off GPS, WIFI when not in use. And brightness set to manageable levels. Even loudspeaker. This is self-explanatory. Automation software like LOCALE can be useful, but usually all it takes for you to turn off your ringer, or turn on wifi when you're at a specific area is just a press on the Power control widget.
3. Overclocked kernels
Running on full overclock speed (by default is 528mhz or even higher on some kernels) will drain your battery faster and you'll notice significant heat increase when you're using your phone along with 3G.
Although im using pershoots 576mhz overclock kernel, I do not max it to 576 unless needed. The reason why I use his kernel is due to its UNDERVOLT capability. I have set up my phone using SetCPU
MAXFREQ: 480,
MINFREQ: 176
CPU Governor : ONDEMAND.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Usually I would set my phone to 384mhz if im going to stay on it longer (texting/long browsing etc). On the sleep mode I set it to 122mhz to 384mhz.
4. Tame your widgets, minimize using them.
Widgets that constantly connect to the internet, or constantly refreshing on the screen to update data being shown on the screen at extremely small intervals would also give you battery drain. Minimizing widgets can help minimize applications running in the background (free up memory) and avoiding your phone going on "partial sleep". Also tweak your widgets to update as less as manageably possible. If for some reason you can't see the next suggestion.
Aside from that you might want to disable Background syncing and do manual syncing. Aside from saving your data plan, it also saves battery life. You can disable it by doing the following:
Menu > Settings > Accounts & Sync > Background Data - OFF
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
manually update your facebook widget or contacts/gmail by
Menu > Accounts & Sync > Facebook (or GMail) > Sync.
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Click to collapse
5. 3G, 2G, switch off, or automate it.
You'll notice that inside the default settings for mobile networks. Setting to 2G will "save battery" which is actually true. The connection will definitely be slower, but if you like your phone to last longer throughout the day, either switch to 2G or turn it off altogether.
Also, similar to juice defender, I use 2g/3g toggle and toggle data as and when needed.
Another suggestion that I just found out recently is the use of Juice Defender app [d]. It automatically turns on or off your APN settings at intervals. You might want to try to look at that app if you cannot do #4
6. Disable live wallpapers. Auto Updating Sense
Remember that 2.1 isnt actually built for our old phones. and livewallpapers do require cpu/gpu processes. These are also running in the background and may run while your phone is asleep. So turning them off will benefit you.
7. Refrain from using Automated task killers and choose what you kill.
If you see that the app you had been trying to kill a few times keeps coming back. Stop killing it. Everytime you do, and whenever it respawns, CPU flies to 100%. Go back to #4.
8. Disable Market notifications.
- Open the Market application.
- Select the Menu key.
- Select Downloads.
- Select the Menu key again.
- Select Notifications.
- Select the Do not notify me radio button. press [Ok]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
9. Make your phone sleep.
Open your spareparts application, Go to End button behavior. Select "Go to sleep"
10. Under the hood tweaks
10.1 Extending Wifi scan intervals
Edit the wifi scan interval in /system/build.sapphire.prop (or build.trout.prop if you have a G1)
# Time between scans in seconds. Keep it high to minimize battery drain.
# This only affects the case in which there are remembered access points,
# but none are in range.
wifi.supplicant_scan_interval = 45
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Changing this number to just 90 second will half your wifi scans. Obviously larger numbers can mean less wifi scans which means more battery life, though it may take a little longer for your phone to pick up a remembered access point when in range. This is not just a CM/Eclair thing, it can also work for Donut phones.
This setting needs a reboot after editing the file. Edit it with Root Explorer, or nano as root if you have CM5, or pull the file with adb then edit it then push it back.
11. Remove your phone from your pocket whenever you can.
Body heat deteriorates battery life no kidding! there had been already studies to back it. I keep my phone either on my hand or outside of my pocket to keep it cool. Do whatever is manageable in your environment. If you're using your phone as a music player streaming using streamfurious and stuff. dont let your body heat add to the heat already been generated by your phone itself.
References / Updates :
[a] cyanogen recalibrating batteries : http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php/Troubleshooting#Battery_recalibration
thanks to mejorguille for correction on /data and wiping.
pershoot UV kernel: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=666850
[c] SetCPU main site : http://www.pokedev.com/setcpu/ - Thanks also to ShadowCH for tip.
[d] JuiceDefender : http://www.latedroid.com/2010/01/juicedefender.html -
- Thanks to shohid1234 for 3G-2G toggle
[e] Thanks to Jaymzz for tip on disabling market: http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?/topic/94-i-fixed-my-battery-drain/
[06/02] thanks to Arkain2k for tip #0
[06/04] Thanks to Foo_Blyat's tip for disabling background sync and manual updates for fb/gmail (item 4) http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6670907&postcount=36
[06/04] Thanks to Super Jamie for tip 10.1 extending wifi scans http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6684954&postcount=49
reserved in case something nice comes up
10. Remove your phone from your pocket whenever you can.
Body heat deteriorates battery life no kidding! there had been already studies to back it. I keep my phone either on my hand or outside of my pocket to keep it cool. Do whatever is manageable in your environment. If you're using your phone as a music player streaming using streamfurious and stuff. dont let your body heat add to the heat already been generated by your phone itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
really? isnt warmth charging batterys? in my old gameboy years i always put my batteries on the heater when the drained completely and after an hour i could play again with the old batteries.
1. Recalibrate [a]
Take note NOT TO WIPE BATTERY STATS whenever you flash a new rom and your battery is less than 90%. This usually leads to inaccurate battery readings. If you already wiped your battery during one of your flashes, here's how you recalibrate properly:
- Charge your phone till the GREEN LED shows up. Leave it for another hour.
- While plugged, go to recovery and wipe your battery stats.
- Right after the phone is booted up and settled, unplug and use as per normal till it shuts off. Then charge as per normal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true, but since battery stats are stored on the data partition, a data wipe also deletes the battery stats. A lot of rom's require a full wipe, meaning data and dalvik, so battery stats are deleted whether you select the option or not.
Since001 said:
really? isnt warmth charging batterys? in my old gameboy years i always put my batteries on the heater when the drained completely and after an hour i could play again with the old batteries.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi!
Yes Im very familiar with that practice because i do that too. The reason might be because of the composition of the battery (alkaline, non alkaline). Usually we put it under the sun so that the heat will help change the composition of the compound inside the battery in order for it to lower down its resistance. Leading to a "charge".
But now we are using Li-Ion batteries, and I do not suggest putting them under the sun because it will deteriorate your battery capacity holding charge and its lifecycle.
reference: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm see figure 1.
samaral said:
Hi!
Yes Im very familiar with that practice because i do that too. The reason might be because of the composition of the battery (alkaline, non alkaline). Usually we put it under the sun so that the heat will help change the composition of the compound inside the battery in order for it to lower down its resistance. Leading to a "charge".
But now we are using Li-Ion batteries, and I do not suggest putting them under the sun because it will deteriorate your battery capacity holding charge and its lifecycle.
reference: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm see figure 1.
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Click to collapse
Thanks, that makes sense.
Made me lol to see that there actually is a "battery university"
Thank you! this post is noted
mejorguille said:
This is true, but since battery stats are stored on the data partition, a data wipe also deletes the battery stats. A lot of rom's require a full wipe, meaning data and dalvik, so battery stats are deleted whether you select the option or not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Noted. I have edited the guide to reflect your insight.
Thank you very much
how about going to setting - about phone - battery use?
there you can find out exactly whats killing your battery and take appropiate action.
Also, similar to juice defender, I use 2g/3g toggle and toggel data as and when needed. Using these two widgets i have no battery issues.
Post noted and added on top
shohid1234 said:
how about going to setting - about phone - battery use?
there you can find out exactly whats killing your battery and take appropiate action.
Also, similar to juice defender, I use 2g/3g toggle and toggel data as and when needed. Using these two widgets i have no battery issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Noted. Your suggestion is added on top.
change preferred network type helped for me increasing battery life
Hello all,
as describe in post
forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6432560&postcount=1
changing preferred network type worked for me.
default setting: WCDMA preferred drains my battery in a few hours, crazy
within CM 5.0.7-test7 I was able to change to: GSM/CDMA auto and it worked
But now in the final release 5.0.7-DS I can not select this setting. Perhaps it correlates to the this (PRL) info in brackets.
It seems that no "auto" setting want be working so I am trying WCDMA only right now and will see if I have a network in 2G networks too.
Bye morT
Hhmm let me think…
Running a prrocessor that's massively overclocked with software that was never meant to run on our g1's I have an idea.
****** off back to stock or get over it
I mean seriously people come on, we have set cpu for power profile management, basic battery usage which is dim screen, turn off wifi and 3g when not in use blah blah blah same **** written in every guide about battery life for ANY roms from cupcake to eclair.
As I said, get over it or go back to stock.
[highlight]Mod Edit: Please watch your language and don't flame others.[/highlight]
im sorry does turning on "display battery status" in spare parts still effect battery life? TIA
Ive noticed that bluetooth is killlllling battery life, but dont know if its normal. I charged to 100% and turned everything on, leaving screen on the whole time and what not.
While I was actively using the net over WiFi, I had nothing using the bluetooth, and both seem to eat up 20%..
This might be normal, might not be, but thought it was odd that it being on, but not in use, ate up just as much as functioning, in use, wifi.
whats funny to me is as soon as my phone dies i plug it up reboot it a few times and my battery is at 70%
.... i think its not reading correctly .. i mean fully charged play talk text browse till it shuts off .. plug it in turn it right back on then reboot ..
and my battery is back at 70% which is weird ... anyone else notice that???
also wifi, gps is on screen brightness is standard !!!
batteries really seem to be the least developed technology in our high tech phones. feels like a sportscar with a one gallon tank...the fun's over quickly...
turned off my 3G and got a lot of additional battery life. with bad 3G reception (like in the place I live in) the phone was sometimes sucked empty in just a few hours, now I get two days.
another thing that really helped me extend my battery life was turning on airplane mode when I went to bed.
how about dont use overclock or any other cpu speed up tool....maybe the speed they are factory set to is there for a reason...Hmmmmmmm
dcowboys2184 said:
whats funny to me is as soon as my phone dies i plug it up reboot it a few times and my battery is at 70%
.... i think its not reading correctly .. i mean fully charged play talk text browse till it shuts off .. plug it in turn it right back on then reboot ..
and my battery is back at 70% which is weird ... anyone else notice that???
also wifi, gps is on screen brightness is standard !!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should go through a battery recalibration - steps on the first page.
Best Practices for Improving Battery Life for CM 5.0.7 (and variant ROMS) is to use this ROM, Thanks.
Do whatever you like, show or hide battery status in the Spare parts, calibrate or not....the battery remains....for loOng....enough time....
hot/cold controversy
Since001 said:
really? isnt warmth charging batterys? in my old gameboy years i always put my batteries on the heater when the drained completely and after an hour i could play again with the old batteries.
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Click to collapse
Since I have a background in electrical theory and chemistry, let me end this debate once and for all: heat makes atoms (and therefore molecules) move faster. Lack of heat (cold) makes them move slower. In general, fast-moving atoms in batteries mean MORE power, not less. The reason your car doesn't want to start when temperatures are subzero is that the battery acid (electrolyte) molecules are moving too slowly to oxidize (give off e-, electrons) and turn back into positive ions. The same is true for the ol' Gameboy AAs -- put them on the heater, the dry cell warm up, and more electrons are transferred to the anode by anions, the positive ions (cations) are more able to travel to travel back to the cathode (in the case of dry/wet-cell rechargeable storage batteries). Heat acts as a catalyst to produce electricity. Some of you may have even taken your car battery indoors if the electrolyte froze in the winter. Some of your cars may have battery blankets or even battery heaters if you live really far up north. In addition, the process of charging a Li-Ion, Ni-mH, or even lead acid battery will produce heat, because chemical conversion is bi-directional, but anyway . . . you charge the G1, it gets hot. You use it heavily, it gets hot. You know you're spending electrons somewhere when it gets hot period. Keeping the phone cool will not increase battery life or make it charge fast. What lower battery temperatures will do is lengthen the battery's overall life. What happens if you leave meat out in 100F/30C temperatures? It goes bad quickly. Same principle in Li-ion. The rechargeable battery is ideally an efficient, closed system of ion exchange that should work for many (hundreds) of duty cycles, but eventually heat plays a role in deterioration of the electrolyte and chemical catalysts inside.
So put your extra charged batteries (but you don't want a Li-ion or Ni-mH battery to sit very long in an discharged state, so be careful here) in the refrigerator in an airtight bag (rotating on a daily basis) if you really want them to last a long time, but don't charge them frozen (ka-boom!) and remember cold batteries charge slowly. Car batteries in sub-tropical areas are replaced at a rate of about once every 24 months, but in Sweden? Maybe every five or six years. Cold temperatures slow down chemical deterioration just like cold keeps that steak from becoming maggot food.
Again, a hot G1 may weaken its own internal components and batteries over time, but putting it on ice won't give you an extra 6 hours to oogle Miley Cyrus' vBlog
Hope this helps.
For me, unless I'm expecting a text or a call always have my phone on airplane mode. I turn it off every hour or so to see if I got any unimportant texts, and then turn it back on
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
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, AudioOut_2: 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 keytone 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. I personally have to use UCLF5, as UCLF6 is a mess out where I live. 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.
A special note about this wakelock: You will get all kinds of crazy numbers out of this wakelock. You may see as high as 20m on a 1h30m stretch of battery. You will want to kill this wakelock, and kill it with fire. Don't, I say, don't do it! Look at your deep sleep time vs. time awake - screen on. Odds are, it's far less than the 20m that this wakelock is showing. You may have a time awake - screen on time of less than 3 minutes. What's the reason for the discrepancy? Well, it's well-known that there are wakelocks out there, PWLs especially, that will hold your device awake even if it's already been woken up: i.e., you'll have a PWL registering while the screen is on. Alarms are certainly among those that do so, as they are designed to wake your device up, so that's the first thing they'll try and do. I suspect the remainder of the discrepancy is caused by the way BBS reports. I suspect every alarm is tallied differently, so that if you have two alarms go off at the same time and last for 2 minutes each, BBS will register 4m of wakelock even though it was only held awake for 2m. Make sense? It doesn't for me either, but that's the best pair of explanations I've got, and the numbers seem to back it up.
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. A note about this wakelock: it's been shown to be an occasional, but serious, problem on Jellybean ROMs. We're still not entirely sure why, let alone how to solve it permanently. That said, haloeight has been able to beat it into submission on his phone.
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. If you've got a persistent wakelock here on a JB ROM, try haloeight's approach above.
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.
ActivityManager family: This is a harmless wakelock. The typical cause is not exiting out of apps fully before turning the screen off.
To fix: Don't sweat this one too much. If it's a big issue for you, make sure that you're exiting out of apps fully (i.e., either use the back button to exit the app or FC it in Task Manager) before turning the screen off. Credit to the XDA Wiki on this one, as this is one of the PWLs I wasn't able to figure out for myself simply because I hardly ever saw it. I use the back key to exit apps.
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. This wakelock also seems to be related to a poor wifi connection, so keep an eye on that as well. 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, check your wifi/data connection and make sure it's good. If it persists, 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?
NetworkLocationCallbackRunner: Thanks to clankfu and mw86 to pointing this one out, and a huge thanks to promiseofcake for finding the solution. This is the first wakelock published here that's specific to a phone other than the Skyrocket; it's an S3 issue. Hooray, we've gone global! NetworkLocationCallbackRunner is another wakelock caused by that most wonderful of apps, Google Maps. If you're still using it, seriously, why?
To fix: Upon turning on your phone, don't open Google Maps or anything else that utilizes Google location data. Or, you know, you could just uninstall Google Maps and use an alternative program...details below.
show keyguard: This is a new one for me. It had always been there, but since switching ROMs, it's really started to show up. Not in massive quantities, but enough to make me scratch my head. I've already established that setting your lockscreen to not show user info, weather or calendar data will significantly reduce this. I'll play around with adding those back in more, and having sliders on your default lockscreen won't do much damage either. Still, the more people who've goofed around with this one, the better, as it makes this entry all the more accurate.
To fix: I'm testing several possibilities now, but the one that's worked best so far is turning calendar, weather and user info off. It seems that having those on causes the lockscreen to wake the phone to refresh itself, which creates the wakelock. Judging by my recent experience, this seems to be a pretty big leech.
Chekin Service: Thanks to epapsiou for finding this one and confirming my guess on it. Getting tough to test without my Skyrocket being used as a phone anymore. This wakelock, while a Google Services process, seems to be caused by Facebook. That kind of confirms my theory that Facebook "borrows" Google services.
To fix: Uninstall Facebook and use an alternative app, or just access Facebook through your mobile browser of choice.
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 and Fast are both great alternatives that let you set how often the app wakes up, but I've taken to just accessing m.facebook.com through the browser of my choice lately.
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. If you really love Google Maps, reinstalling it from the Play Store as a user app can reduce those wakelocks dramatically.
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.
World Weather Clock Widget: Do you have this on your phone? Get rid of it. I installed it as an alternative to SiMi Clock Widget, and while it certainly looks pretty, it ignored my "Update every 3 hours" and tried to update 275 times in that 3 hour window. This drove AlarmManager, GSYNC_ACONN, and NetworkStats off the deep end, and left me at 82% deep sleep with 6% of my battery gone in 3 hours. Kill it. Kill it with flaming nuclear waste.
Alternative Apps: I liked SiMi Clock and wanted to try something new, basically. I'm back to SiMi, but there are literally hundreds of clock widgets out there.
Google Search: If you use Google Now, forget trying to fix this one. GNow is a battery hog, and there's nothing you can do about it without crippling the feature. If you don't use GNow, you can use Greenify to hibernate Google Search and stop the persistent alarms and wakelocks it creates. Greenify is a method I hadn't used in the past, but I've grown to like it for hibernating rogue Google apps.
Alternative Apps: A quick look at the Play Store revealed Quick Search to be the second most-popular option after Google Search. I've run devices without Google Search in the past without issue, but it is usually a system app, so freezing instead of deleting would be a safer option.
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.
Also, be sure to check out Jrockttu's thread on fixing your battery, as there's tons of great information in there.
Additional in-thread references below. If any of these posts helped you out, please click the link down here and send them a thanks.
DoctorQMM covers com.google.android.apps.maps, an alternate fix for AudioOut_1 and using CPU Spy to help track down wakelocks.
kishke tracks down an alternative cause for the sdio family of wakelocks (including sdio_al) and details it for us here.
polarbearno shares their experience with the mmc_detect family of wakelocks.
haloeight gives us some great steps on how to get rid of the MediaScannerService wakelock on AOKP-based ROMs.
promiseofcake solves the S3-specific NetworkLocationCallbackRunner PWL.
Hi,
I am trying to use smartcharging feature on my crdroid ROM. During the charge, when I reach the preset charging value, it is working well as the phone stop charging. However, at this time, I can see with betterbatterystat that a Kernel Wakelock appears and prohibit the deep sleep mode to be enable. The name of this kernel is c440000.qcom,spmi:qcom,[email protected]:qcom,qpnp,smb5.
As a result, the deep sleep consume a lot of battery and the next morning, when I unplug my phone, I can see a huge battery drain around 2-4% per hours, which is not ideal for a smartcharging feature...
Do you know why this kernel wakelock appears? Is it possible to do something to avoid that?
Thanks
A Comprehensive (but not by any means definitive) Guide to Wakelocks
OP edit, January 12, 2016: To say that I'm proud of what this guide grew into would be an understatement, given that drawing it up was a weekend project for me using my old Galaxy S2 Skyrocket and either ICS or JB.
Take that last little bit into account here. It was done over three years ago on an S2-variant phone using Android 4.0 or 4.1. A lot of the specifics here are no longer going to be 100% correct, even if the principles remain true. If you're a rookie de-wakelocking your phone for the first time ever, please take what you see in the OPs with a grain of salt and ask questions in the thread before making any drastic system changes or mucking around in a terminal emulator.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you know a little bit more about your phone when you're done here than you did coming in!
-TJ
----
Wakelocks suck. 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. The goal of this guide is to list some of the more common wakelocks you'll encounter and how to wipe them off of your system. As you encounter ones not on this guide, let me know and I'll add them to the list. For some reference, I typically have light to moderate use of my phone. Before de-wakelocking, I was getting maybe 24 hours on one charge. After de-wakelocking, I was up to 36. Then I bought the Galaxy Nexus Extended battery, and on that battery's third cycle, I went two and a half days on a single charge. Impressive, right?
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. You'll see examples of that below.
PWLs are wakelocks caused by an app. The solution to these, more often than not, is to freeze (or, in the case of Google apps, uninstall) the offending app. Before you do so, and this is critical, go in via Settings -> Apps, force close the app, and wipe its cache and data. If you don't, you'll almost certainly cause yourself more headaches about 30 seconds after killing the app.
Second, you need to know the tools involved in wakelock hunting. The first is Better Battery Stats. Google "better battery stats XDA" and the dev's post will come up; they give this app away to XDA members. That said, if BBS helps you out, show the dev some love and buy the paid version. It's only $2.89, and the dev will have more than earned it from you by the time you've finished de-wakelocking yourself. The other tools you'll need are (hopefully) this guide, and, of course, the Internet search engine of your choice. I won't cover everything simply because I haven't seen it all.
Two final notes before the 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 dropdown 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?
Something to note with BBS: it seems to have a weird "counting" bug. While testing a ROM with BBS, I finally began to question why my PWL time would be considerably higher than my true wakelock time. "True wakelock time," simply put, is time awake - time awake with screen on. If your phone is awake for 45 minutes and the screen is on for 40, you have five minutes of true wakelock time.
So why does BBS say that you have 90 minutes of PWLs when you only have a true wakelock time of 45 minutes? Well, I have two theories to account for that. One, BBS counts wakelocks independently, even if they occur at the same time. For example, if AlarmManager wakes your phone up for two minutes and AudioOut_1 wakes your phone up for 30 seconds during that same time, BBS will register 2m30s of PWLs even though the device was only held awake for 2m total. Now throw 30s of wlan_rx_wake (KWL) in there, and BBS is registering 3 minutes of wakelocks when there were only two. Throw in the notion that you had the screen on for 30 seconds during that time frame, and suddenly you're showing 3m of wakelocks when really there was only 90 seconds of true wakelock time to begin with. BBS has effectively doubled the reported wakelock time, and thrown off your stats. Now, throw in several dozen mini-wakelocks happening at once with the screen on, and you can easily see, say, 6h of PWLs on a 24h run, even if your true wakelock time is only 45m. It seems that Android's battery screen in settings reports this the same way, so my advice to you is to use the true wakelock time when cleaning up and attack KWLs and rogue apps. Some PWLs (AlarmManager) will always be high.
The second theory is that alarms are given a minimum reporting duration; i.e., five seconds per alarm for the sake of demonstration. Now, let's say you have Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Gmail, Email, News & Weather and BBC News all set to sync every 30 minutes. They'll each set off an alarm at the same time, and suddenly your five seconds of alarm reporting time becomes 40 seconds every half hour. Now, let's say you have 35 alarms going off every half hour (not out of the realm of possibility with Google Services Framework). 35 x 5 = 175 seconds of time awake (in the five seconds per alarm scenario), which is now 350 seconds per hour of wakelocks reported, even if the true wakelock time was only ten seconds. Just something else to keep in mind when attacking PWLs.
One more note on BBS and how it handles KWLs: There is no such thing as a 0-KWL cycle, regardless of what the BBS reporting screen says. If BBS is showing 0 KWLs, tap the menu button, then "More", then "Raw Kernel Wakelocks" to see them. KWLs are required to boot the phone. In essence, the only phone that has 0 KWLs since it was last charged is a phone that hasn't been turned on since its last charge.
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.
Also, anytime new information about a certain wakelock or wakelock family comes to light elsewhere in the thread, I'll be sharing that information here. If it helps you out, please visit the post that gave us that information and thank the poster. I'll link to each post twice, once in the wakelock description and once at the bottom of the OP, so no excuses about not being able to find it!
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.
KWLs in post #2
PWLs in post #3
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. Mine was--between my wife and I, we have four computers, an iPad, three Androids, a Wii, a PS3 and a Wifi-enabled TV hooked into our home network. The "background noise" caused by all of that would wake my phone up constantly. The solution? I happened to have a spare Wifi router laying around, so I hooked it up, set it on a different channel from my main router, and we now use that network for two of our three smartphones. Period. It's not the easiest fix ever, but wlan_rx_wake is almost completely eliminated (I'm looking now and have 4m45s of it 12h27m into a charge).
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, sdio_dmux, etc.: 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. The easiest way to tell is to download Jrockttu's Skyrocket Charger Test App. 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 could be 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. Also, a huge thanks to kishke for discovering a third cause for the sdio family of wakelocks: data. It seems that the sdio family is also the wlan wakelock family equivalent for cell data, and can be caused by apps searching for a data connection.
To fix: Check your charger and adjust if needed. To test the cell data possibility, make note of the time on the sdio wakelock, then turn cell data and Wifi off and walk away for an hour. Check it upon your return, and if you have minimal to no sdio wakelock, that was it. Try out some different radios for a better connection, or leave cell data off and stick with Wifi only. 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. polarbearno, however, has had a great deal of experience with this wakelock, and traced the cause of excessive activity here to a faulty SD card.
To fix: Unmount your SD card and pull it, then reboot. Might want to clear cache and Dalvik for good measure. If your problem was caused by a faulty external SD, this should solve it. If your problem was not caused by a faulty external SD, we're back to the original solution of "good question".
vbus_present: This wakelock exists as long as the phone is plugged into a wall charger. This wakelock can also persist if you use an Apple-compatible charger, which registers as "slow USB" charging and will cause the wakelock to hold after you'e unplugged.
To fix: Check your phone. Is there a cord plugged into it? If so, does that cord lead to a source of power? If so, unplug your phone (after it's fully charged, of course). Is the wakelock still there? Plug your phone into an OEM charger for a few seconds, then unplug it to kill the wakelock, then consider ditching that piece of fruit you're charging with. I try to use OEM Samsung chargers as much as possible, as they're designed for the phone (and to not cause persistent wakelocks). Jrockttu has an awesome charger test app, linked to in the OP of his outstanding "fix your battery life" thread.
suspend_backoff: This is a difficult one to nail down. Very difficult. To make a very long story short, this wakelock is caused when your phone wants to sleep, but a running process blocks it from doing so. Typically, this is going to be Wifi. Make sure your Wifi is set to stay awake when the phone sleeps. Otherwise, you risk the Wifi going out of its way to keep the phone from sleeping. This can also, unfortunately, be caused by apps, making it hard to pin down.
To fix: Do the Wifi thing, then reboot into recovery and wipe your caches. If it persists after that, you have no choice but to look at a dmesg output to pin it down. Go into a terminal emulator app and type the following commands, one per line:
su
dmesg >/mnt/sdcard/dmesg.txt
Next, transfer the .txt file onto your computer and open in WordPad or a similar program that automatically cuts line (i.e., no Notepad). Search the document looking for the word "event". You should find a lot of strings that look like this:
eventX-XXXX
Where the X's are all numbers. See those last four numbers after the dash? You should see them repeated again and again. Write them down, then go back into your terminal emulator. They are your process ID (PID). Once there, type:
ps
This will show you all processes that have run since your last boot. If you look at the second column from the left hand side of the page, and you should see a sequence of four numbers. These are listed sequentially, lowest to highest, as you come down the page. Scroll around until you find the sequence of four numbers that matches the one you wrote down. The line below those four numbers is the name of the process causing the wakelock. If it's instantly recognizable as an app, delete the app and see what happens. If it's a hardware thing that can easily be fixed, like Wifi, change your settings to accommodate it. If it's com.android.process.acore, I smell a wipe in your future. If you don't know what the process is, don't go screwing with things to find out. You can brick your phone in terminal emulators. Instead, write it down and Google it. Someone has already written about what this process is and what it does. If it's something you can easily fix, go for it. If it's a deeply-embedded system process, I'd just do a full wipe and clean reinstall.
Remember, terminal emulators can brick your phone if you're not careful. If you use them and something bad happens, or if you wreck your phone trying to fix this or any other wakelock, it is your problem, not mine.
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.
PWLs in post #3
The phone doesn't sleep when its charging, some android thing, that specific wakelock is called vbus_present.
kishke said:
The phone doesn't sleep when its charging, some android thing, that specific wakelock is called vbus_present.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That one's in there. It's the last wakelock under KWL.
I know it's there but you wrote: "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."
So I just want to clarify it so you could give it a straight explanation. Also you have a small typo there it=in.
It's a great guide!
T.J. Bender: Good topic… good write-up. I can’t agree with you more regarding the frustration level chasing down “greased-pig” wakelocks! The key is to have the right tool-set for analysis. At a minimum, make sure you have CPU Spy, BBS, and a utility which will show you what processes and services are active. Here’s my approach to identify wakelock problems. Again using CPU Spy to check time in Deep Sleep.. and using BBS to check Count of Alarms as well as time (minutes/seconds) of wakelocks:
1) open BBS and set a “Custom Reference” point (basically, this will reset the clock)
2) open CPU Spy and “Reset Timers”
3) turn screen off and let it sit for your predetermined time (i.e., 15min, 30min, 60min, etc)
4) when you reach the first predetermined time checkpoint, turn screen on and first check CPU Spy. How much time did the phone NOT sleep?
5) open BBS and check “Partial Wakelocks” against “Custom Ref Point”. Also check “Alarms” against “Custom Ref Point”.
6) do this every predetermined time (i.e., 15/30/60 min).. and write down results
What I found was very interesting. First I found "com.google.android.apps.maps" Partial Wakelocks were running about 80 times an hour (and preventing Deep Sleep): SOLUTION (thanks Bruno2123), un-check "Google Location Service” in "Location Services" in system setup.
Second culprit: AudioOut_1 : I also had unchecked all the keytone and touch sound options in setup, however, I was still getting a boat-load of PWL for AudioOut_1. I tracked it down (trial-and-error) to PowerAmp. Even though PowerAmp was not actively running, I had checkmarks (in PowerAmp Settings… Headset) in “Pause on Headset Disconnect” and “Resume on Headset Connect”.. which were preventing Deep Sleep. By un-checking these, it stopped the PowerAmp AudioOut_1 PWLs… and allowed Deep Sleep.
Third: this was a surprising find. Started to continue to see excessive AudioOut_1 PWL times; however, fewer counts (number of occurrences). Turns out, every time I open PlayStore, AudioOut_1 PWLs incremented… every time I played certain games (even with sound turned OFF in the game’s settings), AudioOut_1 PWLs incremented. However, these did not interfere with Deep Sleep.. these PWLs incremented when screen was on anyway!
Anyway, hope others find this approach useful and hopefully will help you identify PWL/ Alarm problems and find solutions.
kishke said:
I know it's there but you wrote: "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."
So I just want to clarify it so you could give it a straight explanation. Also you have a small typo there it=in.
It's a great guide!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sarcasm is a fine art, mastered only by years of practice.
DoctorQMM said:
snip
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely forgot to mention CPU Spy! Honestly, I did almost all of my hunting using the BBS "Other" timers, which show the percentage of time in deep sleep, awake, screen on, PWL and KWL. That's not to say CPU Spy isn't a valuable tool, because it is, but I had plenty of luck with BBS alone.
I kind of hinted at the benefits of leaving all Location Services off unless you need them. That said, I'm going to link this post from the OP, because you've kind of underscored the need to do so here.
And yeah, again, good catch on wakelock times. I was thrown for a loop the first time I had 94% deep sleep and 9.8% PWL until I realized that a lot of those PWLs were coming from apps that were running only when the screen was on.
This is an informative post. Thanks op
Sent from my SGH-I727 using xda premium
Good stuff...
Too bad your findings point to Google in a lot of ways as far as battery drain... maps, gmail, etc...
I don't mind Maps that much. It has been pretty accurate from me. When I ran BBS last time, it showed no problems on my phone as far as wakelocks, etc... I had more problems with BBS than anything.. WEIRD....
Every time I unplug my phone, it will ask for root permissions about 5-6 times before I get to my home screen even.... I just don't have time to be hitting allow that many times... (yes, remember is checked...)
Thanks for the posting! I subscribed and will check back here often!
onealvideo said:
Too bad your findings point to Google in a lot of ways as far as battery drain... maps, gmail, etc...
I don't mind Maps that much. It has been pretty accurate from me. When I ran BBS last time, it showed no problems on my phone as far as wakelocks, etc... I had more problems with BBS than anything.. WEIRD....
Every time I unplug my phone, it will ask for root permissions about 5-6 times before I get to my home screen even.... I just don't have time to be hitting allow that many times... (yes, remember is checked...)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Almost sounds like you've got a ROM issue. I've also read that switching from Superuser to SuperSU can solve a root permissions "loop" like that.
Unfortunately, yeah, a lot of the PWL headaches I've come across can ultimately be traced back to a Google app. That said, I set out looking to make a battery last as long as possible. If you get to a point where you're happy with your battery life, I'd stop there regardless of what apps are still on the phone. The more you change, the more you can potentially screw up.
Can someone post the link to xda bettery stats, I search for it and find nothing.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app
specter07 said:
Can someone post the link to xda bettery stats, I search for it and find nothing.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately you don't know how to search my friend.
http://bit.ly/NuHF7q
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app
jyazzie110 said:
Unfortunately you don't know how to search my friend.
http://bit.ly/NuHF7q
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems you don't know how to google either. Where's the free better bettery stats for xda members? That just shows the link to the store for the paid one.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app
No at the bottom of the second post is dl link I just grabbed it
Sent from my SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
specter07 said:
Seems you don't know how to google either. Where's the free better bettery stats for xda members? That just shows the link to the store for the paid one.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know how to google....your the one who cant search or read! Haha
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app
jyazzie110 said:
I know how to google....your the one who cant search or read! Haha
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Be nice
Sent from my SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
Illnevertell said:
Be nice
Sent from my SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, when he says it... u have issues lmao
Illnevertell said:
No at the bottom of the second post is dl link I just grabbed it
Sent from my SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I kept scrolling pass it since on my phone you can hardly even see the attachment on the broswer.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app
Come on, guys, please keep this thread on topic.
Wanted to share some results with you. Screenshots below. No KWLs in 24 hours since being unplugged...not half bad. PWLs are within reason, especially considering that Alarm Manager is one of those PWLs that will hold even if your screen is on. The only thing that strikes me is Twitter alarming my phone 6 times, when it's set to never auto-refresh. Not a huge deal, but worth investigating.
70% battery 24 hours into a charge, screen-on time of 31m. Granted, I have barely used my phone today outside of sending a few texts, checking into XDA once and playing a few quick hands of Blackjack, but I'm still pretty stoked with this run.
**EDIT: Good thing I checked! Twitter had automatically updated earlier in the day, and when it did, it reset itself to sync every hour. Switched it back to never sync, and that should solve it.
I know I've made a few posts about this in the past, but now I've learned a few things since then.
I know the battery isn't the greatest on the infuse (no rom that I'm using atm..) but would like to get the most juice out of my device that I can. I have root access and currently use the apps "battery calibration" and "no-frills CPU control" which I set my cpu at a relatively low frequency to help keep juice.
My phone is drained throughout my day, even without use. I believe it primarily happens because my data (mobile network) consumes it. I know apps such as "juice defender" are great at reducing idle drainage because it shuts off your network connection while in idle to save battery. However, I have used this application in the past and after a few days of use, it shuts off my mobile connection altogether.
My question is, if I were to use this application again and my mobile network were to malfunction, would I be able to change my apn to regain my network connection? In the past I had to reset my phone to regain connection, which isn't really worth using if that's the only solution.
Or are there any other battery saver apps worth using??
Thanks
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using xda app-developers app
Dr_Nacho said:
I know I've made a few posts about this in the past, but now I've learned a few things since then.
I know the battery isn't the greatest on the infuse (no rom that I'm using atm..) but would like to get the most juice out of my device that I can. I have root access and currently use the apps "battery calibration" and "no-frills CPU control" which I set my cpu at a relatively low frequency to help keep juice.
My phone is drained throughout my day, even without use. I believe it primarily happens because my data (mobile network) consumes it. I know apps such as "juice defender" are great at reducing idle drainage because it shuts off your network connection while in idle to save battery. However, I have used this application in the past and after a few days of use, it shuts off my mobile connection altogether.
My question is, if I were to use this application again and my mobile network were to malfunction, would I be able to change my apn to regain my network connection? In the past I had to reset my phone to regain connection, which isn't really worth using if that's the only solution.
Or are there any other battery saver apps worth using??
Thanks
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using xda app-developers app
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Click to collapse
A bit more information is needed before a specific course of action can be recommended. How much battery life are you using in an average 24 hour period? Also, what version of Juice Defender(beta, free, plus, ultimate) are you using, and what specific settings are you utilizing. It is a very customizable program after all. You might look into Battery Indicator Pro, which estimates your total remaining battery life based on your level of usage. I would also recommend CPU spy, which, if your device is rooted, will show the percentages that your device is running at various CPU levels.
If you turn off all the locational stuff, turn off 'update my current location' in Navigator, and set your CPU gov to conservative, you might get better battery life. I've not had any lasting luck with any of the battery saving apps. In the end, I decided to buy a couple of Anker batteries from Amazon just in case I have a bad battery day... Also some of the battery saving mods work, but I'm not sure about applying them to ICS and JB ROMS. I haven't tried!
Battery life is what you make of it..
Anything running in the background will drain the battery.. email constantly checking for new messages, twitter, Facebook, GPS, WiFi if no connection is found, etc..
Anything that makes the phone process even while the screen is off is going to kill a battery..
What ROM are you using? Some ROMs have better life than others..
How much are you actually using the phone?
What's the brightness set at?
Have you tried changing the processor and slowed it down?
Lots of information that is missing is helpful..
Its powered by Jellybeaned AOKP!
I know apps such as "juice defender" are great at reducing idle drainage because it shuts off your network connection while in idle to save battery
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Click to collapse
Some have good luck with these, others don’t. I prefer to try to adjust settings myself.
I believe it primarily happens because my data (mobile network) consumes it.
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How about putting a widget on your homescreen to toggle data on/off. Keep it on only when you need it. I go a step further, I use Tasker to automatically turn my data off every time my screen times out (because that means I’m not using it... I can restart my data later with my widget when I need it). Maybe that’s extreme, but I’m not just watching my battery.. I’m managing my limited data plan.
My phone is drained throughout my day, even without use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It may be that you have wakelocks keeping your phone awake when it’s supposed to sleep. One way to see this is (in GB or above) Settings / About-Phone / Battery Use...then click on the small graph at the top... should expand it to a large graph with traces along the bottom including Awake and Screen On. If you have long periods of time where phone is awake while screen is off, that’s a wakelock problem. A good program to troubleshoot that is Better Battery Stats. If nothing else, follow the instructions in the first post in the BBS thread linked below, and then post a dump to the end of that BBS thread (the developer and a lot of other knowledgeable people follow that thread and will help you interpret results):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809
Thru use of BBS, I found that Google Maps is one that was keeping mine awake and I think someone else on the forum reported the same. If that program (Maps) is causing problems, you can disable it from auto-starting on boot using Gemini Manager. It will still be available when you need it, just take a few seconds longer to load the first time after boot. Then need to reboot to stop it from causing wakelocks after use (there may be other easier ways, but this works for me).
Another program (Power Tutor) was helpful to me to see programs that were consuming unusual amount of battery although not necessarily thru wakelocks. In my case Dolphin Browser HD was occasionally drawing very high power even when that program was not actively in use.
electricpete1 said:
I found that Google Maps is one that was keeping mine awake and I think someone else on the forum reported the same. If that program (Maps) is causing problems, you can disable it from auto-starting on boot using Gemini Manager. It will still be available when you need it, just take a few seconds longer to load the first time after boot. Then need to reboot to stop it from causing wakelocks after use (there may be other easier ways, but this works for me).
Another program (Power Tutor) was helpful to me to see programs that were consuming unusual amount of battery although not necessarily thru wakelocks. In my case Dolphin Browser HD was occasionally drawing very high power even when that program was not actively in use.
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So how can I stop maps to running in background? only rebooting the device is the only option?or is there any other option?
TIA
atrix4nag said:
So how can I stop maps to running in background? only rebooting the device is the only option?or is there any other option?
TIA
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Just to provide more details on my previous post (not sure if it's answering your question):
I followed instructions here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=29420959&postcount=7059
In particular, I installed the free program "Gemini Apps Manager". That allows you to stop programs from auto-loading at boot.
So I used the program to stopp Google Maps from auto-loading at boot.
That stopped a large chunk of my wakelocks, as long as I don't manually launch Google Maps.
If I do manually Google Maps, then those wakelocks come back, and to get rid of them I have to reboot.
I don't use Maps that often (only when I go on trips), so it's not a big problem for me to reboot when I'm finished with my trip to help keep my battery use low.
It may also be possible to kill it from the list of applications at Settings/Applications/ManageApplications and killing botht the application and the process...but I'm not sure if it will stay killed that way... haven't tried. I know some applications have hooks that make it hard to get rid of them once they're launched.
But (if you haven't already), I think it's a good idea to use BBS to find out what programs are causing problems on your phone. You may have other apps causing lot bigger problems than Maps. And it certainly may be the case that a program that acts up on one phone can be fine on another phone due to differences in the way the user configures the application settings and the phone settings (along with other possible differences in application version, ROM used, etc etc).
electricpete1 said:
Just to provide more details on my previous post (not sure if it's answering your question):
I followed instructions here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=29420959&postcount=7059
In particular, I installed the free program "Gemini Apps Manager". That allows you to stop programs from auto-loading at boot.
So I used the program to stopp Google Maps from auto-loading at boot.
That stopped a large chunk of my wakelocks, as long as I don't manually launch Google Maps.
If I do manually Google Maps, then those wakelocks come back, and to get rid of them I have to reboot.
I don't use Maps that often (only when I go on trips), so it's not a big problem for me to reboot when I'm finished with my trip to help keep my battery use low.
It may also be possible to kill it from the list of applications at Settings/Applications/ManageApplications and killing botht the application and the process...but I'm not sure if it will stay killed that way... haven't tried. I know some applications have hooks that make it hard to get rid of them once they're launched.
But (if you haven't already), I think it's a good idea to use BBS to find out what programs are causing problems on your phone. You may have other apps causing lot bigger problems than Maps. And it certainly may be the case that a program that acts up on one phone can be fine on another phone due to differences in the way the user configures the application settings and the phone settings (along with other possible differences in application version, ROM used, etc etc).
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Thanks for your detail explanation. My main question was how can close the app without restarting? i feel my major battery drain is from dolphin browser, befor dolphin i used opera, even that has the same problem. Most of the time, if I dont open dolphin, my phone battery is good, but once I open it, it drains battery. So i am looking for soemthing simple which does, without rebooting the device.
Any way thanks for your help.
Welcome to the new Battery Life Help thread.
Please post the recommended screen shots from post 4 when posting here.... Or you will only get guesses as replies... If you get any.
Read the first 4 posts here before posting. You may not even need to post after you have!
If you are on a device other than a Nexus 5, that's fine, but please state that up front.... Or things may get confusing for all of us. ?
I'm not the "technician" of this thread, as there are many knowledgeable members on battery life savings and troubleshooting. Sometimes opinions vary... And that's always how things are...especially on the interwebz. Usually that's a good thing.
All are encouraged to participate!!!!
Most battery issues are non device specific.... Most. And troubleshooting is almost universal. Occasionally there's device specific issues and bugs, but mostly its about basic setup and usage patterns. No matter the device.
So, some guidelines to make finding issues efficient. (A lot of this won't be possible if you are not rooted....so do your best)
1. Please please please.....use Gsam (my favorite) or Better Battery Stats (BBS) or Wakelock Detector when posting screenshots. No one can stop you from posting shots from the stock battery usage screens in settings....but 9 times out of 10 you'll be asked to use one of the above apps....cause the stock screens say to little to be useful finding an issue. Just install one of the apps. Use it until your issue is solved...then get rid of it if you wish. Tho really, they are great tools to have, and NO, they don't consume heavy amounts of battery life. At all.
2. No screenshots will probably get you no useful help. As any attempt to assist you would just be guesses and generic tips.
3. As of Kit Kat, you either need an xposed module found Here or if you use Gsam, also install Gsam Root Companion. Both found on Play Store. Without any of those, you can't see wakelocks in Kit Kat.
4. Here are the standard screenshots that will get you the quickest help. In Gsam anyway....or the equivalent screens in the other apps.
For Gsam, you should post....
- The main screen.
- App sucker screen.
(In app sucker, click the drop down for the rest...)
- Times waking device.
- Time held Awake.
- Kernel wakelocks.
Yes, that is 5 screenshots. A lot I know. But together those will give almost all the info needed to help you. Usually.
5. Obviously, above your screenshots, post your issue in as much detail as possible. Like your setup (location on or off... Gnow on or off...screen settings...signal strength on Data especially... And anything else you feel may matter) and your usage. Gaming? Navigation? Etc.
All of the above will lead to much quicker help, without the need for people trying to help having to ask you a bunch of questions.
Be patient!! Some battery issues are very hard to lock down.....but 95.6 percent of them can eventually be solved. And remember....usage plays a big part! You may be stuck with 3 hours screen on time because of your usage. Sorry. Games for example. And a really poor signal strength while on data is a battery death march.
Tips for better Battery Life
These tips are going to be a collection of all I know, as well as contributions from you guys over time...that I will add in. Unless of course I completely disagree. Lol. (I.E. Task killers, Juice Defender type apps....etc)
First thing is first, since it seems to cause the most problems......and so many can't live without it. Lol. Location Services.
Location Services
Location Services is so very poorly implemented in Android, its almost absurd. The service itself isn't so much to blame for battery issues, but its weakness to getting exploited by other apps. Social apps being the worst offenders. Its also very hard to pin down the offending apps. Yes, many have no issue with location services. They're the lucky ones. Sooooo many do lose a tonne of battery life to it tho, usually by excessive wakes caused by apps accessing it.
So, my first piece of advice. TURN IT OFF! Use your toggles. On when needed, off when done. It doesn't take long, its a couple clicks. Guaranteed you see FAR greater battery life because of it.
If you must use it....just must.....know that Batter Saver is NOT the most battery friendly setting. Device only is. (GPS only). Don't know why, talk to Google for an explanation. Signal strength for data I bet. And of course, high accuracy will drop your battery the quickest.
Location history reporting. Battery killer.
Android Device Manager. Found in Google settings app. "Remotely locate this device", battery killer. Neat feature....but will cost you battery time. And the other option, "remote lock and erase"....surely takes its share of the battery pie also.
So, device only is your best bet, but not so great indoors. Probably won't find the satellites. But it will be far better on your Juice. One way to use location on and help stop apps from abusing it, is Grrenifying the apps that use it, or using app ops or its equivalent to change app permissions and disallow them location permission.
K, I bashed on location enough. But it is the number one item in most issues I see.
Signal Strength
A weak signal is about the quickest drain a phone can have. If your signal is very weak and spending time out of service and scanning for a signal.....your battery can literally drop like a rock. The worst part, Gsam and similar apps don't really indicate the signal, radio or anything else is draining your battery. I'm not sure why these apps can't report the loss from signal, but I guess its just not possible.
Very hard to "fix" this issue.
- Your first option, get on WiFi. Its not really the text and phone part of the radio draining you, its data. If your signal is poor or non existent and apps are trying to sync over data.....the phone is working overtime trying to transfer the data. Getting on WiFi will fix this. Even with poor signal strength on the radio.
- Next option, toggle off data in poor coverage. No, your social apps and what not won't work. But you'll still get texts and calls. When you have a signal. This will dramatically slow the battery drain.
- Last option. Airplane mode. Yes, you will be completely cut off from the world. But your battery will barely drop.....assuming you have no issues and your standby drain is good.
Of course, combine poor signal with location services on high accuracy or battery savings....with data on....and you will be charging by lunch time or have a dead phone.
Roms and Kernels
I won't say much about this. There's those who will agree with me and those that always ask "what's the best ROM/kernel for battery life?". MOST experienced users will agree....ROM/kernel combos will make minor differences occasionally. Its all about setup and usage.....and signal strength.
I always say.....I could run any ROM or kernel (and I almost have) and will still get 24 hours plus with 6 hours SoT consistently, with my lean setup and low CPU demand usage. Guaranteed. Now, if you want me to prove it.....I wanna be paid for my time. And I'm not cheap.
Kernel tweaking, such as under volting/clocking, may gain you small battery life returns at best. And also possible lag and instability. Lots will disagree with me here. But thoroughly test it out yourself and see. ��
But to each their own I always say. Personally, I can't remember the last time I changed any kernel settings from whatever one I'm running. I just don't see the point. Fun and experimentation perhaps.....but big battery savings.....not gonna happen.
Last kernel thing......double tap to wake, even with the timeouts it has now.....lots of battery drain.
Greenify
I use it. Some don't. I use it on anything I know is going to run when it feels like and possibly steal my battery juice or cause any issues. One app I've always greenified is Maps. If it comes with the ROM, I convert it to a user app with titanium backup and then Greenify it. Games, any I ever have, greenified. I don't need or want to know my farm is ready to harvest. Lol. I'll find out when I open the game.
Use at your discretion. I wouldn't Greenify anything I use often, like dolphin or Tapatalk.....it'll just use more juice constantly loading them into memory. Social also won't sync if greenified. And be very careful greenifying system apps. That can cause you issues for sure.
Greenify tip from @Lethargy:
The paid version of Greenify let's you choose an option for Greenified apps called GSM push, when used with Xposed and the Greenify module activated. It allows you to still receive push notifications from hibernated apps. So you can Greenify those social apps that like to spam location services and burn data when your not even using them....and they will be awoken when you get a push notification. Will help with the drain from these apps better than doing nothing with them for sure! . A happy middle between always running and totally hibernated.
Screen Brightness
I think we all know a bright screen will cost you lots of juice. Out in the sun, there's not much we can do about it. I go back and forth sometimes. If I'm outside all day, I just usually put on auto brightness. But, nothing will help you save juice more than setting it manually. Someone not long ago mentioned an app called "Display Brightness ". Its free, and puts a very customizable slider anywhere around the edge of your screen that you want it. It gives you a quick access slider on your screen and its always there no matter what app you're in. You can change its size, location, color, transparency... Etc. Great little app.
Anyway.....if you keep the screen as dim as is comfortable for you, you'll get big gains in battery time.
I'm not convinced about LUX and its equivalents.... But many swear by them. Definitely something to look at too.
Tasker
I know little of tasker, I've never really got into it much. I did pay for it....and can't say when I last used it. Lol
You can do amazing things with it....to automate much of the things I've mentioned. A great tool for sure!!!
I've just never minded using toggles myself.
A few Quick Ones
- The more vibrating your phone does, the more juice it will drink.
- Games. We all know they kill the battery fast. Nuff said. . (Keep the screen dim)
- Social apps and other things that sync....the more you have, the more your battery time decreases. Especially picture heavy ones, like Facebook. It takes data transfer and CPU time to load all those images. Also, some wake your device a crazy amount of times to keep you up to date with your friends. (See Post Number 3 for help on controlling these and much more!!!!)
- Task killers. Guaranteed they waste more battery than they claim they'll save. Opening apps over and over is far worse on the battery than them sitting in memory idle. (In most cases. Greenify the exceptions). Android RAM is meant to be used. Too much free RAM is not helping, its wasted RAM.
- Juice Defender and other battery saver apps. Most will agree, some may not....but again, waste more juice than they save. For a moderate to heavy user, setup juice defender and look at your times held awake later. It can easily get over 2000 wakes per day.
Now...for a very light user.....very light....like you barely touch your phone all day....then Juice Defender may actually help you. But only the very light user.
Summary
Not all of these things are for everyone....but with each piece of advice you take, you'll save a little more juice.
Is my phone no longer a smartphone? Many have said that. Lol. Well guess what....in a few clicks, my phones intelligence can skyrocket. I just don't need things running 24/7 when I don't need them....or never use them.
So, here is a quick checklist of what I personally do after I install any ROM. And again, my battery life is as good as most I've seen. I'm just sharing this, not suggesting everyone do it. And also, all of our needs, usage and apps we use vary.....so there's no way to all have the exact same setup. Or the same battery times!!
After every install:
- I go into accounts/Google. Unchecked the things I don't want to sync. Usually I only have gmail, calendar and contacts checked.
- I turn location to device only, location history reporting is usually off for me by default, so I don't need to remember when I actually use it, then I turn it off completely.
- I go into Google settings app. In android device manager, they are both unchecked. Google Now is off. In ads, I check opt out of customizable ads. Location is already off.
- Sound settings. I uncheck all the options at bottom. No click sound, no vibrate on touch...etc. ( my keyboard makes no sound or vibration either). My phone only vibrates if I set it to vibrate. Otherwise it never vibrates on calls or notifications.
- I change a few cosmetics. (No battery impact here)
- I download titanium backup and restore my apps. Only user apps, and only data on the ones I don't want to setup again.
- change my wallpaper black. Not sure on an N5 if it helps battery life whatsoever.....its just my visual preference.
- Go into titanium backup and freeze, NOT uninstall...everything I never use.
- reboot.
- I Greenify all the apps I usually Greenify.
- Nova gets data restored, so not much to usually setup there. Its just how I had it.
- Restore the only widget I use. An agenda widget.
- Start LMT, Gsam, Display Brightness app and light flow...on some ROMs. The ones that have customizable notification LEDs by default, i don't use light flow. All of these get restored with data, so no setting up preferences required. Kii keyboard as well. And I disable the Nav keys.
Well, that's my setup routine. Again, to each their own. Just sharing my way. ��
That's all I have for now. Formatting (and spell and grammer check) will be tweaked to be easier to read in days to come. So no need to comment on my many mistakes. Lol. Plus additions I think are helpful from the community will be added. Along with credit, unless you don't want it.
Just whipped this up quick to help those that want it. I'll make it prettier soon. Promise!!
Good luck! ��
Managing syncs and services with "Disable Service"
Google Services drain? Syncs magically re-enabling themselves? Useless social app syncs?
Google apps and various social media apps use syncs. They'll put themselves under the "Accounts" section in Settings if they have any. At first the concept sounds fine, but the thing is, most of them are useless, abusively used and just waste your battery. Sync services cause wakelocks as they can't run while in deep sleep. Multiple syncs active causes dispersed wakeups, draining even more battery. Syncs also (for some unknown reason) sometimes re-enable themselves when you've unchecked them previously! Greenifying Google Play Services isn't a good idea since it'll constantly kill and automatically restart the services, which probably does more harm than good. It can also cause issues and break things, so what can you do about it?
There is a solution, use the app "Disable Service", found here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.wq.disableservice
True to it's name, it allows you to selectively disable services for apps, completely preventing them from being used, as if they didn't exist:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
As you can see above, I only have a Sync for Gmail, it's the only one I have a use for and the others are completely disabled, not just unticked (they sometimes re-tick themselves..).
[Note: "* Google Play Services" is a hidden sync that's for Google Account settings, I can see it because I'm using the Greenify Donation Package along with Xposed, the feature called "Reveal Hidden Sync". Its integrated into the core of Google Play Services so you can't disable it completely without causing issues (unticking is fine). It doesn't cause any wakes anyways since it's only active for a moment when you manually change account settings in Google Settings (i.e. device is awake anyways and it's not like you're always changing the settings).]
Now Google Play Services, various Google apps and social media apps have a lot of services. How do we tell which ones to disable?
They have "Sync" in the name and begin with what they're syncing.
For example:
Under Google Play Services, PeopleSyncService is the sync for "People" under your Google account.
Under Google+, AutoBackupSyncService is the Auto Backup sync for Photos.
Simply uncheck the boxes to disable a service:
If you're unsure which sync is which, the best way to tell is going to the sync page (In Settings > Account, see the first screenshot of this post), then opening Disable Service, disable a service and see which sync disappears. Re-enable it if it turns out to be a sync you rely on. If you're not 100% sure what a service is for, feel free to mention me in this thread, I'll provide an answer if I know what is is.
Social media apps also use syncs for purposes such as "find your friends", "contacts sync" and "photo album sync". Useful for some, but not everyone. They also use syncs to "refresh" automatically while you're not looking at them. There isn't really any need for that.. I mean, it'll refresh posts when you open up the app again and your notifications are pushed to your device anyways, right?
Waste of battery. You can disable all these too with no issues. Extremely helpful if you have a bunch of social media apps which nag you for syncs.
Also keep in mind that Google apps put all their syncs under the Google account and you'll have to go their respective apps to disable them (usually with "Adapter" in its name, but not always). For example, the Google+ and Google Chrome syncs get merged under your Google account.
If you also have the Greenify Donation Package and Xposed Framework, you can enable "Wakeup Timer Coalescing". This feature causes your syncs to all sync at the same time, rather than leaving them to sync whenever they want. It'll save a bit of battery because it'll only need to wake once rather than multiple times. Useful if you still rely on a few actually useful syncs such as Gmail.
The Disable Service app is also useful for disabling useless services which other apps tend to activate even if they're not being used. One example is YouTube. It wakes up screen cast services even if they're not being used, which subsequently wakes up Google Play Services. If you never use screen casting, you can disable it so it won't wake Play Services pointlessly whenever you open YouTube. Examples of some other services you can disable if you don't use them are Wearable Services, Play Games, Analytics. Don't disable any services with "Gcm", "gtalk" or "push" in them or you risk missing notifications from apps which use GCM cloud to push notifications to your device.
If you never use location you can also disable everything with "geo" or "location" in it, so it'll be completely disabled. No more location wakelocks. Ever.
Do keep in mind that disabling some could render an app useless if it legitimately needs to use it.
Titanium Backup won't work on Disable Service as it doesn't actually store any data itself and disables it in the system ("pm disable"). The "cut off wakeup path" feature of Greenify Donation Package + Xposed does the same thing, but (as far as I know) temporarily as it stores it in Greenify's data, and you can only disable them once they come up, not selectively.
Luckily, Disable Service has a hidden backup/restore function which you'll probably miss. Its in Overflow Menu > About. Helpful when flashing new ROMs/clean flashing. Puts DS_backup.txt on your Internal Storage.
For a general idea of what most of us have disabled without issues, I've dumped screenshots of what I personally have disabled. Please note that not everyone's would be the same, and some people may still need specific services to be enabled. Here: http://imgur.com/a/YyPtT
Blocking the wakelock permission on Play Services isn't a bad idea either, see my post here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=54516634&postcount=332
If you're a user of location but you don't want the services to always be active when you don't need them (e.g. you only need them for driving/maps), you can use Tasker to enable and disable them. Create a new task, add action: Script > Run Shell. The command is "pm disable package.name/package.name.service".
e.g. for disabling AnalyticsService:
Code:
pm disable com.google.android.gms/com.google.android.gms.analytics.service.AnalyticsService
Make sure to check "Use Root". To enable a service you use pm enable instead of pm disable, of course. Try not to toggle them too much (e.g. enable/disable if Google Maps is open or not), as it'll probably cause a lot of lag. Manual toggles are probably best.
Enjoy your device without the annoyance of Play Services wakelocks/syncs:
(13% left, might've made it to 2 days with 7 hours SOT but I was tired so put it on the charger)
For those who want to disable OTA services (and it's possible wakelocks) PROPERLY:
Elluel said:
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.SystemUpdateService
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.SystemUpdateService$ActiveReceiver
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.SystemUpdateService$Receiver
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gms/.update.SystemUpdateService$SecretCodeReceiver
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gsf/.update.SystemUpdateActivity
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gsf/.update.SystemUpdatePanoActivity
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gsf/.update.SystemUpdateService
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gsf/.update.SystemUpdateService$Receiver
adb shell su -c pm disable com.google.android.gsf/.update.SystemUpdateService$SecretCodeReceiver
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
(you can also just "su" then "pm disable com.whatever" via a Terminal app)
How to analyze and improve your idle battery drain
If you need help to analyze your battery life, please use BetterBatteryStats to report logs.
1. Charge your phone to 100% then unplug it.
2. Leave your phone idle for at least 7 hours (do not touch the screen)
3. Open BBS and make sure that the start reference is "Unplugged" and the stop reference is "Current" or "Screen on"
4. Hit the Share button, select "Text Dumpfile" and save. The file is stored in the root of your sdcard.
5. Attach it in this thread
Note: Make sure that "Enable while charging" is NOT checked in BBS > Settings > Advanced
Any other information and screenshots about your usage pattern might help.
Here are a few screenshots from last night
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Gsam has a lot of easy to follow info available, if you have root companion as well, and know where to look. Many battery issues will show their faces in these screens somewhere. Many, not all.
Please go from 100% to 10 or 15 percent battery left before taking screen shots.....for an accurate idea what's going on.
Here are samples of the important Screenshots from Gsam. Include these in your post and other members will quickly get an idea of what's happening. Hopefully. (not all issues are easy to find)
These are from Gsam with Gsam Root Companion also installed. Without Root Companion, or if you are not rooted....you won't have all these available. So do what you can.
Main Screen
App Sucker Screen
Number of Times Waking Device (in App Sucker drop down)
Time Held Awake (in App Sucker drop down)
Kernel Wakelocks (in App Sucker drop down)
Also, if you have a weak signal a lot...maybe include Phone Radio screen
If your using Auto Brightness especially, the Screen screen can say a lot
And from the systems settings menu, under battery. Click on the graph for a more detailed graph....(tho really not necessary if you posted the first 5 above....and Radio screen if you think your signal is weak)
That's about it, from Gsam anyway.
I know we have a battery thread with 3000 posts....but its cluttered now, as all threads get eventually. Its in General, not Q&A, where troubleshooting is usually found. And its title is Nexus 5 battery results....designed to share times, more so than fix issues. It just became the go to issue place.
Time for a more new member friendly thread that stands out.
Reserved. For moi'
Good idea for the thread. It might also be helpful if you detailed your usage. Of course, people's usage should be what works for them and even if someone emulated your usage they will most likely get slightly different results. However, having said that I think a lot of people will ask for it anyway. I am curious myself as well of course =]
PsychDrummer said:
Good idea for the thread. It might also be helpful if you detailed your usage. Of course, people's usage should be what works for them and even if someone emulated your usage they will most likely get slightly different results. However, having said that I think a lot of people will ask for it anyway. I am curious myself as well of course =]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll be putting my setup, and general tips in post 2 when I get some time.
My setup is simple really, turn all the frills off. Toggle them when needed. Screen dimmer, and manually adjusted. Greenify anything that can hurt battery life. I don't usually game... I have an N7 for that. I mostly use the browser, Tapatalk...and text. Yes, boring, I know. Lol
And try not to be running data in poor signal coverage areas. That's number one! Use WiFi, or turn off data and use it only when needed. Texts and calls still work with data off.
My setup definitely isn't for everyone....but decent battery life should still be obtainable with a more robust setup. Its all priority. Give up some things, gain more time. Keep some things, lose some time. And definitely squash any abnormal issues. I've ran just about every ROM out there, and always got similar battery life...setup the same on all of them of course.
And I hope others will see what I put and add to it anything I missed.
As I said, this isn't MY thread to oversee.....its just hopefully going to be a more efficient place for help. Assuming the appropriate screenshots accompany the posts. ?
It will be simplistic, nothing fancy. I'm not much into kernel tweaks and what not, not for the small amount of battery life they can add.
The purpose of the thread is for people to post issues, and for people to help solve them.
My tips won't be new to most, just gathered in an easy to find location....especially to help newer folks.
Oh....and the answer to the majority of battery issues......Location Services. Lol
Not location services alone perhaps....but it and the apps using it combined.
Thank Google. They just can't seem to get location services right.
Want significantly better better battery life immediately? Turn it off. Yes, off. Toggle it when needed (2 screen touches usually....a swipe and a click). And toggle it off when done.
Best tip there is. Yes, a sacrifice to some....but usually, great results.
KJ said:
Oh....and the answer to the majority of battery issues......Location Services. Lol
Not location services alone perhaps....but it and the apps using it combined.
Thank Google. They just can't seem to get location services right.
Want significantly better better battery life immediately? Turn it off. Yes, off. Toggle it when needed (2 screen touches usually....a swipe and a click). And toggle it off when done.
Best tip there is. Yes, a sacrifice to some....but usually, great results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So freaking true. I've set up my rom's tile to toggle between High Accuracy and Off. When I need maps or location, I hit the toggle and once I'm done, hit it again :cyclops:
Looking good
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Just going to put this out there - if you put your brightness on the lowest settings and your device isn't awake too much while the screen is off (i.e. wake locks managed, Greenify/ROM's wake lock blocker), average screen on time should be 4-6 hours EASILY. Everything else is has minimal impact (apart from listening to music with the screen off, which would be keeping your device awake, nothing you can do about that.).
There is NO magic setup that will give you phenomenal battery life - short of a battery case but that doesn't count.
This is 4 and a half hours of continuous use, almost always SoT (4 hours 15 mins SoT). Just browsing forums on Tapatalk while listening to music. Still have a quarter left of my battery:
Sent from my Nexus 5
Lethargy said:
Just going to put this out there - if you put your brightness on the lowest settings and your device isn't awake too much while the screen is off (i.e. wake locks managed, Greenify/ROM's wake lock blocker), average screen on time should be 4-6 hours EASILY. Everything else is has minimal impact (apart from listening to music with the screen off, which would be keeping your device awake, nothing you can do about that.).
There is NO magic setup that will give you phenomenal battery life - short of a battery case but that doesn't count.
This is 4 and a half hours of continuous use, almost always SoT (4 hours 15 mins SoT). Just browsing forums on Tapatalk while listening to music. Still have a quarter left of my battery:
Sent from my Nexus 5
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. ?
No, there's no "magic" setup, but 3 hours average to 6 hours average screen time is a huge difference. And setup, usage and signal strength all play a role. The more features off....the longer you'll go. Yes, screen is huge....but things like location services (along with a bunch of social apps) gnow, android device manager...and certain apps can also make a huge difference.
KJ said:
Agreed. ?
No, there's no "magic" setup, but 3 hours average to 6 hours average screen time is a huge difference. And setup, usage and signal strength all play a role. The more features off....the longer you'll go. Yes, screen is huge....but things like location services (along with a bunch of social apps) gnow, android device manager...and certain apps can also make a huge difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agree 100%, but by "setup" I meant ROM, kernel, etc. I hate it when people claim that a certain kernel or ROM would give you better battery life - we know otherwise. To some extent maybe, but its only a minor impact compared to other factors that may influence your battery life.
But yes, setup in the form of apps and whatnot could impact battery life but really that's just down to your own usage and management. I have a bunch of social apps on my device but I have them managed properly with Greenify and whatnot. My battery life is fine.
In the end the only real excuse is signal strength. But I guess that's what this thread is for - to help people with the other factors.
And yeah, always nuke location. Its useless and just wants your battery.
Sent from my Nexus 5
The guys saying "my battery sucks", yet have every single feature on, auto brightness, 6 different social apps...etc...etc....are the ones who don't know these things. And they have 3 hours SoT. Well....that's about right. Lol.
So hopefully with tips on what to cut out....they can pick and choose what the can live without. And times will increase with each cut or change.
KJ said:
The guys saying "my battery sucks", yet have every single feature on, auto brightness, 6 different social apps...etc...etc....are the ones who don't know these things. And they have 3 hours SoT. Well....that's about right. Lol.
So hopefully with tips on what to cut out....they can pick and choose what the can live without. And times will increase with each cut or change.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should add it to the OP along with mentioning that a ROM or kernel will hardly make your battery life any better.
And I just hit 5 hours SoT with 15% battery left. I'm doing this just to see how much SoT I would get since I don't drain my battery down very often - and my device is asleep 99.99% of the time the screen is off (with the exception of music lol) - its just good management.
Also, I do have autobrightness enabled - but since I'm on a custom ROM I've changed the brightness levels really, really low, stock values are horrible i.e. battery drainer.
Sent from my Nexus 5
Lethargy said:
You should add it to the OP along with mentioning that a ROM or kernel will hardly make your battery life any better.
And I just hit 5 hours SoT with 15% battery left. I'm doing this just to see how much SoT I would get since I don't drain my battery down very often - and my device is asleep 99.99% of the time the screen is off (with the exception of music lol) - its just good management.
Also, I do have autobrightness enabled - but since I'm on a custom ROM I've changed the brightness levels really, really low, stock values are horrible i.e. battery drainer.
Sent from my Nexus 5
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome!!
Post 2 will have all the tips I can think of, no matter how harsh...Lol. As well as tips others contribute. Like yours!
Probably won't get to it til the weekend.
This is not a good battery cycle.
unsivil_audio said:
This is not a good battery cycle.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems pretty good to me??
Its on the borderline of acceptable to me. Location set to device, no GN. I can't tell if FB is a killer or not. I mean my wakelocks are under control (40 mins of that is listening to music). My battery life really seems to vary by the day with virtually no setup changes. I'm going back to location off today. We'll see if it helps.
v----This on the other hand was awesome...