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Strange "Android System" CPU usage times battery usage

I've been noticing a weird shift in percentages of usage on my battery. Before a few days ago, display would take up a good 70+% of the battery. Now, I seem to be seeing a 40%-ish usage from Android System. My girlfriend and I have the same phone, we both unplugged at the same time and within 2 hours, hers only had about 4 minutes of CPU usage from Android System while mine had a whopping 1 hour.
I can't figure out what the problem is or what's causing this.. Anyone able to shed some light on this for me?

I noticed that Android System is using the second most battery after the display for me too. Hadn't noticed this at all until today. Are you rooted?
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mjforte said:
I noticed that Android System is using the second most battery after the display for me too. Hadn't noticed this at all until today. Are you rooted?
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I am not.
It just doesn't make any sense to me because my girlfriend and I were in the same spot for those two hours; nothing should have been different.

Yeah that is weird. Anyone else that can shed some light on this?
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Sounds like a rogue process. Reset and see what happens.

You may want to use an app like Quick System Info Pro (or something else, can anyone suggest one?) and capture logs of that process. That might shed some light on whats going on.
I had that problem, and then through elimination figured out that if I had a clockweather widget on the home screen, it caused some issues. I dunno why.

a number of things are always going to be using the battery. if the display isn't the biggest battery user and the android system is than it simply means that a number of background processes have been consuming your battery while your display has been off. how is or was your battery level compared to your girlfriend's phone? perhaps you have more things that are sync'ing in the background than your girlfriend. anyway, unless you're seeing an unusually high drain in your battery than I wouldn't worry about it.

Well, I powered off/on the phone and it doesn't seem to be doing it anymore. I would love to find an app that could help me pinpoint this next time so I don't have to power down my phone just to fix it. I have aLogcat installed but I can only see the past two minutes of logs because it goes by so fast.
shock2sys said:
a number of things are always going to be using the battery. if the display isn't the biggest battery user and the android system is than it simply means that a number of background processes have been consuming your battery while your display has been off. how is or was your battery level compared to your girlfriend's phone? perhaps you have more things that are sync'ing in the background than your girlfriend. anyway, unless you're seeing an unusually high drain in your battery than I wouldn't worry about it.
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Yeah, the problem is how much battery it was draining. Within the 2 hours it was unplugged, I lost 54%; she only lost 29%.

Ive had this same problem with Android System going crazy. I have no idea what causes it. A reboot fixes it, but it's pretty annoying.

Yup. I've seen this too.
I'm gonna guess you guys were on 4G? I've read this exact thing happening to a few people, and they've all been on 4G. It's happened to me three times -- all on 4G. I keep my phone on 3G at work because the signal is terrible and WiFi at home and haven't seen this issue in those circumstances. Some kind of 4G radio issue, most likely.
I read in another thread Verizon is aware of the problem (or so somebody was told on a support call about it), so hopefully it'll get fixed in an OTA update.

Battery prob is now worse!

I'm rooted first of all.
Well, wifi, all GPS, and bluetooth off.
my battery was okay, it lasted for a day mostly. and I think about 2 days ago, the battery suddenly getting worse. Everything remains same. I haven't changed any option, but the bettry is suddenly worse.
I don't use my phone that much. like I got a phone call yesterday and today? no texting, no internet, no app uses.
I charged my battery full(til 11am or til noon), then it dies before 5pm.
(Today I charged my phone til 9:40am, got only one single phone call lasted 1-2mins, and my battery is already 47%.)
It's just terrible! Anyone has same prob????
I'm in California BTW.

are you rooted?
what rom/kernel?

squeakyl said:
are you rooted?
what rom/kernel?
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I'm rooted and I think it's stock rom.
I just followed the manual perm root process.
It's weird because under same conditions, battery got totally worse than before. It lasted at least for a day, but now, it lasts only 4-5 hrs with same amount of usage under same conditions.

ever figure this out?

Just rooting will not change anything to your battery life. You need to install a rom or a different kernel in order for it to change anything.

Mine too has gotten worse in the last week. I am not rooted. At this point my battery is draining roughly 25% per hour with little or no use. Spare parts shows the most usage on my phone is 0. I have tried getting rid of weather bug, Pandora and sirius. I tried looking for something to explain exactly why 0 takes up 10x more battery than Android system itself and I have came to the conclusion that I am lost. Any direction to the correct forum topic would be appreciated.
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jimsteam321 said:
Mine too has gotten worse in the last week. I am not rooted. At this point my battery is draining roughly 25% per hour with little or no use. Spare parts shows the most usage on my phone is 0. I have tried getting rid of weather bug, Pandora and sirius. I tried looking for something to explain exactly why 0 takes up 10x more battery than Android system itself and I have came to the conclusion that I am lost. Any direction to the correct forum topic would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried the "Blockbuster" mod?
1) open the Blockbuster Application, it should ask you to update.
2) once the update has finished open the application back up and
3) navigate to Menu>Settings> "Disable Movie Updates"
Users have reported better battery life.

Thanks for the reply. Yes I have updated and disabled the Blockbuster app. Better yet even I just rebooted my phone and it drained 12% on the battery. How is that possible. I am using my stock battery now and not the extended, so the % would be different with the stock compared to my extended but really I don't think it should use 12% on a reboot.
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Do you currently have 4g?
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Yes I do and I have been using LTE off/on for last 2 days .
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I also just logged of FB chat about 2 hours ago and Google talk. 2 hours later still at 52% maybe I am on to something.
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I guess you and I are on the same page! I charged mine til 9:40 am and went to work yesterday. I got only one phone call that lasted 1-2mins. The battery was already 52%. All GPS was off, bluetooth off, Wifi off, everything off except 4G. I sent a text and received a text, and the battery drained to 46%. After a few mins with no use of the phone, the battery warning sound played. So I had to charge my phone at that point. It is just totally weird. Under same condition and same usage of the phone, the battery lasted for a day at least. (4G was on at the point.) I don't know what cause this problem. Anyways, I just unrooted mine and got a software update via OTA. I don't know if this will fix the problem. Any luck to you yet?

I am going to charge tonight and try current settings tomorrow and see how long battery last. It is to the point if I have to turn all this stuff off, doesn't it defeat the purpose of having a smartphone?
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

Try ZD Box
Try ZD Box, and use its task killer to stop any programs your not using right then. Pandora is another app that loves to stay on and chew at your battery...

My phone just started doing this as well. I've been using the TBolt for a couple of weeks now.
Just yesterday my battery life took a serious nose dive. I've adjusted all the settings I can and the battery is dropping like a drunk girl's panties...
I'm having to charge it all the time now just to keep it from giving me the low battery warning.

Ok well here it goes . Off charger for 30 mins 7 text ,this post and a restart and down 10% already. Wtf
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jimsteam321 said:
Thanks for the reply. Yes I have updated and disabled the Blockbuster app. Better yet even I just rebooted my phone and it drained 12% on the battery. How is that possible. I am using my stock battery now and not the extended, so the % would be different with the stock compared to my extended but really I don't think it should use 12% on a reboot.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
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That's about what mine took on average to reboot. 10-12%.

I'm at 72% after 11 hours of idle usage and that's on the 2750mah extended battery. That would put me at 46% after 12 hours having not touched the phone once. I literally fell asleep as I took it off the charger...
Something is jacked up and I don't know what.
Rooted, Virus ROM B3, 1.8G kernel (forget which).

I've gone to Imoseyon's Sense lean kernel, special edition.
We'll see how that goes...?

Wanted to report back as I think the culprit may be the wireless tether app.
I turned GPS, WiFi and all my sync's back on and the phone is back to giving me decent battery life.
I did some changes with the tether app and I'll report back to see if my suspicions are correct.

[Q] Battery draining extremely fast. Any suggestions?

This rom used to be fine, now it is draining extrememly fast and I don't know why.
I am on Gingerbread KF2 and really haven't done anything else yet. I used to be able to make it through an average day of ~15 or so hours using the phone only for some messages, a call or two, and a few minutes of music. After this type of usage, the battery would be around 70-80% at the lowest usually. This is even with the screen at FULL brightness all day.
About a week ago, it started draining super fast. The same usage runs the phone down to about 20-30%, which is ridiculous. In battery stats, Android OS is always FAR above everything else with like 60%. A couple battery calibrations did nothing. I don't use task killers, but I do check my running apps. OS monitor didn't help me at all, and checking my currently running apps just showed mostly system apps that should not be draining hardly any battery at all.
Any suggestions? I think that about covers it all. This just has me stumped...

go through your apps and see how often they check for updates. there were a lot of updates recently and some settings may have changed. If nothing changed, can you do a quick scan with look out? Just to be safe. Also, try juice defender and set it to aggressive
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Lookout didn't pick up anything and I set JuiceDefender to aggressive. Will JuiceDefender warn me of an app using excessive battery?

Nope, that battery is still dropping like crazy. (8% in half an hour from almost no use.)
Maybe I just need to reflash and start over fresh...

It will take a day out two to settle in. is your phone sleeping properly when the screen in off? Press the volume keys once it locks and if it makes the sound then it if still on.
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jager555 said:
It will take a day out two to settle in. is your phone sleeping properly when the screen in off? Press the volume keys once it locks and if it makes the sound then it if still on.
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Sleeping just fine.

Yea, I guess if you can't figure it out, you can reflash. That is a pain though. I would say to try out jd for a while longer and see if you get results. fb us usually the culprit for my battery drains, but if you checked all of your apps and changed them to manual, then there isn't much more you can do.try putting your screen to auto brightness
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So either juice defender is helping or ADW launcher was using excesive battery. It is working better today after I switched back to launcher pro, but still going down pretty fast.
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ADW doesn't really drain much battery for me. It actually uses less RAM compared to LauncherPro and Go Launcher (for me).
I think you should just try reflashing your ROM, maybe flashing the new GB ROMs too.
Also, are you sure you're doing the battery calibrations properly? That might also be an issue.

Maybe it's not your phone or ROM...
I've had several ROMs in the last few weeks and have noticed this behavior on many of them....after searching, I found this.
T-Mobile has apparently noticed some abnormal battery issues in areas with their "4G" HSPA+. They're asking people in their support forum for a bit of info to help them find the issue.
support[dot]t-mobile[dot]com /thread/3544
The problem was initially believed to be affecting the G2 only, but is now believed to be affecting all phones in their "4G" footprint that started when they updated their towers in late July. The update provides the government an emergency channel to use, but it appears that it may be causing network issues.

Thanks for bringing it up, this is affecting me too. i lose 20-40% battery PER HOUR of use on the phone at 25% screen brightness playing a card game online (no wifi, just on HSPA+). This is on a BRAND NEW flash of KH2 (GB 2.3.4).
The top half of the phone gets really hot and battery drains like crazy. ceasing data use cools it down and reverts to normal battery use.

[VERIZON] Absolutely Horrible Battery Life

My only concern when buying this phone was battery life compared to my Razr Maxx. I was expecting it to be shorter...... but not this much!
I have tried restarting and clearing cache+dalvik. It seems to keep happening.

Eesh that is definitely not normal. I have the Verizon GS3 and get far better battery life.
I would suggest a factory reset. That seems to work for some people. Otherwise I'd suggest getting a replacement.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

looks like something is waking up your phone like crazy when the screen is off...

I love these sort of posts. You obviously have a wake lock that is keeping your processor active when not in use. Download "BetterBatteryStats" from the market and check out your wake locks and partial wake locks. It will be petty obvious at that point. It's most likely a rouge app.
It isn't a systemic problem with the phone. I get around 20 hours with slightly more than moderate use.
Sent from my SGS3

Schaweet said:
I love these sort of posts. You obviously have a wake lock that is keeping your processor active when not in use. Download "BetterBatteryStats" from the market and check out your wake locks and partial wake locks. It will be petty obvious at that point. It's most likely a rouge app.
It isn't a systemic problem with the phone. I get around 20 hours with slightly more than moderate use.
Sent from my SGS3
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can you elaborate more on this? i downloaded the program and I dont see anything irregular at all. when i go to "partial wake locks" i see audioout only taking up 2.4% TOTAL TIM, 7M51S and the next one being dropboxcpuolywakelock
next one being backup, so on and so forth, none above 2%....
I am experiencing the exact same battery life drain as the op...except i have the tmobile version

airmcnair06 said:
can you elaborate more on this? i downloaded the program and I dont see anything irregular at all. when i go to "partial wake locks" i see audioout only taking up 2.4% TOTAL TIM, 7M51S and the next one being dropboxcpuolywakelock
next one being backup, so on and so forth, none above 2%....
I am experiencing the exact same battery life drain as the op...except i have the tmobile version
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I had the same issue the other night. Took it off the charger and fell asleep.... when I woke up over 1/4 of my battery was gone. Android System showed the same high percentage used. I went into apps, android system, force stopped it, rebooted.. Hasn't crept back up since.
From my understanding, under idle, android system should be in the 5-10% range.

I did a full system reboot, pulled battery and restarted - all better. Something was tripping my battery up as well. It's not the phone, somethings causing it.
Galaxy S3 - Locked...

Schaweet said:
I love these sort of posts. You obviously have a wake lock that is keeping your processor active when not in use. Download "BetterBatteryStats" from the market and check out your wake locks and partial wake locks. It will be petty obvious at that point. It's most likely a rouge app.
It isn't a systemic problem with the phone. I get around 20 hours with slightly more than moderate use.
Sent from my SGS3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not sure how thats possible at all.. I have the t999 gs3 and other verizon users confirmed very similar battery life..... these phones get around 2.5 hours screen on time.... soo to actually get 20 hours of use, MOST of that time has to be with the screen off.. i dont see how moderate usage would yield 20 hours.... ide LOVE to get 20 hoursss

Topher227 said:
My only concern when buying this phone was battery life compared to my Razr Maxx. I was expecting it to be shorter...... but not this much!
I have tried restarting and clearing cache+dalvik. It seems to keep happening.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your phone never sleeps. I would do a factory reset.

joemagistro said:
not sure how thats possible at all.. I have the t999 gs3 and other verizon users confirmed very similar battery life..... these phones get around 2.5 hours screen on time.... soo to actually get 20 hours of use, MOST of that time has to be with the screen off.. i dont see how moderate usage would yield 20 hours.... ide LOVE to get 20 hoursss
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that's what i get, with 2-2.5 hours of screen time. no lte for me though.

I have Verizon GS3 and battery life is great. I too had an issue with battery drainning fast on my GS3 but found out it was Enhanced Mail Apps that I was using that killed my Battery so I uninstalled it. After the uninstall, my battery life has been great. You really can't compare battery life between Mot Raze and GS3. GS3 is far superior.
There must be an apps that is draining your battery.
Here is my battery stats. This is with moderate use.
Sent From Galaxy S III (i535)
Using Xparent Blue Tapatalk

By the way, I was mostly on a LTE network except for maybe 30min.
Sent From Galaxy S III (i535)
Using Xparent Blue Tapatalk

That is far from normal.
100% LTE. Moderate with periods of heavy use. I would run a few cycles to see if your battery performance improves. Also, as other users have stated, keep running BetterBatteryStats for a few days and it will keep catching the wakelocks you're getting. If you still can't figure out the problem, I would seek a replacement battery from Verizon just to be sure.
Edit: Forgot to mention this before. If you haven't yet, plug your phone in and charge the battery to 100% with the phone powered down completely. Then let it run all the way down before charging it again. Doing this once effectively "trains" the battery to better read its full capacity and won't hurt the overall life of the battery. This is something that I find is often missed with new batteries, but I have had great results with.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

delete post

Thanks for the replies... i did a factory reset and did not use Titanium to restore the apps in case one of them was causing the drain.
I'm still getting random drains by "gsiff_daemon" (which i'm seeing others having issues with this too). Fortunately this drain is fixed by a simple reboot. Yesterday I was able to get just under 15 hours of what i'd call light'ish use (under an hour of cached Spotify, WiFi all day, 10 minutes of phone calls, 30 SMS) and was at about 5%. Keep in mind I had about an hour in there where good 'ol gsiff was suckin down the battery (It took about 20% in 45 minutes).
The final test for me is this weekend. If it can last a whole day with my moderate/heavy usage.... i'm keeping it. Otherwise, its back to the Maxx.

This doesn't address the root cause of something preventing the phone from sleeping, but I thought I would mention an app that helps extend battery life. Personally I get great battery life regardless of any "saver" apps, and have never gotten less than 12 hours on a full charge, and that was very heavy use. I probably average closer to 20 on moderate-heavy use.
Anyway, as some know there are apps that will automatically turn off your data connection while the screen is off. Most turn the connection on for 1 minute, every 15 minutes while the screen is off so that you still receive email, ect... This does not affect phone calls and text messages, as they do not use apn and would be received immediately. These products can significantly extend battery life with little complication, particularly if you stay connected to LTE all the time. As an example, overnight I might lose about 20% of my battery or more while sleeping. With one of these apps I lose only about 4-6%.
I personally like the BatteryDefender app, very simple to use, and very reliable.

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Coming from the HTC Thunderbolt, the Sammy GS3 is a nice change as far as battery life!

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ajd88 said:
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Did you have your phone on Airplane Mode or something for half the day?

[Q] Lightflow app Battery Drain

Anyone experiencing excessive battery drain for the paid version of Lightflow? I love this app, but after checking betterbatterystats, i realize that it forces my device to be awake all the time thus drains the battery faster.
I am using the Canadian Rogers RAZR HD rooted but on stock OS.

Now that you mention it, I too wonder if light flow is responsible for excessive battery drain on my RAZR Maxx HD. Before I installed it I was getting over 36 whores of use. Now I am only getting about 14. It isn't accounted for in battery stats so I am going to uninstall top see if it lakes a difference.
Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using xda app-developers app

mapleleafz06 said:
Anyone experiencing excessive battery drain for the paid version of Lightflow? I love this app, but after checking betterbatterystats, i realize that it forces my device to be awake all the time thus drains the battery faster.
I am using the Canadian Rogers RAZR HD rooted but on stock OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What sort of drain are you looking at? The app will cause a lot of wake locks that'll show in better battery status, but it's fairly normal for the app. The reason for this, is that every time the notification changes color, some code has to run to change it. To run in the phone needs to be in a partial wake state. If you find the phone showing as awake in the standard android battery graph then something doesn't sound right. Let me know and I'll try identify any issues or suggest changes in settings.

Seems OK to me, most of my wake locks are just exchange or stock ROM stuff.
Sent from my cm_tenderloin using Tapatalk 2

No problem at all for me with light flow.
Any news about LED while screen is on?

yeah it does drain excessive battery
i do confirm that since i installed light flow the phone just drains the battery , i got 9 hours of normal use instead of 20+ of average use .
good thing that you brought this up and confirmed my theory . i have RAZR MAXX HD ad proud of it

andrewpmoore said:
What sort of drain are you looking at? The app will cause a lot of wake locks that'll show in better battery status, but it's fairly normal for the app. The reason for this, is that every time the notification changes color, some code has to run to change it. To run in the phone needs to be in a partial wake state. If you find the phone showing as awake in the standard android battery graph then something doesn't sound right. Let me know and I'll try identify any issues or suggest changes in settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the standard battery graph, it does show lightflow as being awake for almost the entire time the phone is on (even during screen off). My device almost never sleeps. I can grab screenshots of any screens you request if this helps.
This is why I love the app, the developer cares enough to try and make a difference. I am definitely hoping I can fix this because the functionality of this app is fantastic!

mapleleafz06 said:
In the standard battery graph, it does show lightflow as being awake for almost the entire time the phone is on (even during screen off). My device almost never sleeps. I can grab screenshots of any screens you request if this helps.
This is why I love the app, the developer cares enough to try and make a difference. I am definitely hoping I can fix this because the functionality of this app is fantastic!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's always an odd one to try and track down, but there are a few things to try.
If at all possible is it possible to see if there's a particular notification type that it starts happening after (ie get a notification, view/clear it and see when it's not sleeping). It may happen for all notifications or it may just be a particular type - any info on this is certainly useful.
Then when you have no outstanding notifications and are getting the phone to be awake all the time go into lightflow->tools->logging and select "file logging". Then press your phones "home" key.
Leave your phone idle with the screen off to approx 10 minutes. Confirm that the phone stayed in an awake state. If it did then go into lightflow->tools->logging and select "no logging". Then go into the contact us section and e-mail me. The log will automatically get attached.
Info such as custom roms, non stock apps (such a handcent) that you've used can also be useful, so drop a note in the e-mail about the tests you've done. Hopefully there's something I can then track down.