[Q] Battery health test: Do I need a new battery? - Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have had quite bad battery drain issues for a while, and searched BBS dump files and forums for an answer, but the logs appear normal with no unusual wakelocks. In short, the battery consumption profile is OK but it just goes too fast. So I concluded I needed a new battery and was too cheap to buy Samsung original battery and instead got a noname type (same capacity, 1500 mAh).
But it didn't help. Still 12-16 hr standby with low use (<1 hr screen time at lowest brightness).
So I tested the health of the two batteries by draining them as fast as possible. I used the app "Battery Drain" (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fuzzyoneapps.BatteryDrain) and drained using full screen brigtness, wifi, bluetooth, gps, CPU but NOT the vibrate function.
The results are attached to this post. As observed, there's no big difference between the two batteries. And I don't know what to expect.
So now I'd like someone else to do the same test so that we can compare the results
Basically, just 1) Run the app with all the settings turned on except vibrate, 2) make note of battery percentage, 3) leave it for exactly one hour, and 4) check percentage again. Is ~45% per hour normal for the nexus s?
Thanks in advance

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[Q] Disappointed with the battery life... :(

Hi folks - this is the first thread I have started, hence requesting the non-noobs to go easy on me... (this forum is a scary-kind-of-cool)
I mustered up the courage to install Infused 1.5.0 on my stock... the instructions were superb and everything went great... really enjoying the improved speed and looks. But my battery life has degraded. It has been more than a week since I flashed my phone - and it is only getting worse. Now I have read a lot about how Infused is getting great battery life for some folks... and i have gone through those threads, trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. This is my typical usage profile
1) I put the phone on charging before I go to sleep... when I wake up (around 7 AM) it is fully charged.
2) I quickly check overnight messages, finish the daily ablutions, and 30 min later when I check the phone it is already at 95%.
3) By 10 AM, I have made a few long phone calls (no bluetooth) (totalling 60-90 minutes) - and the battery is down to 75%
4) At work I use a bluetooth A2DP headset - maybe 30-40 min of calls and by 12 I am at 50%.
5) More calls in the afternoon, intermitted mail checking and sometimes 30-40 minutes of music streaming on my bluetooth headset - and by 6 PM my phone is down to critical level 12-15%.
This is in now way the same experience that others are having with the Infused ROM and with the Infuse phone in general.
Other points:
6) I run Juice Defender... (don't know if it helps)
7) My screen brightness is just a few notches over 0%
8) My data is always on - except when I am using Wifi of course
9) I turn bluetooth off when I am not using it
So that's the story guys... and I would eternally grateful if the awesome folks out here can help me figure out what I am doing wrong... or there is some logic behind the sad battery life of what is otherwise the best phone that I have ever owned.
It depends how long Infused has been running on your system. After about 3 days I noticed my phone was adjusting to the ROM and the battery life improved significantly. Aside from that, try this trick. Drain your battery next to nothing and then charge all the way. Do this a couple of times. Not quite sure about the logistics but it seems to work. Another thing that has improved my battery life is to make sure I don't have background apps running. You can check this by going into apps > manage apps > and then running. Sometimes Media Hub will begin a background process and that eats up a whopping 8 MBs alone. Force close these pointless background apps and you should see an improvement there as well.
have you conditioned the battery and reset battery stats?
popesmasseuse said:
It depends how long Infused has been running on your system. After about 3 days I noticed my phone was adjusting to the ROM and the battery life improved significantly. Aside from that, try this trick. Drain your battery next to nothing and then charge all the way. Do this a couple of times. Not quite sure about the logistics but it seems to work. Another thing that has improved my battery life is to make sure I don't have background apps running. You can check this by going into apps > manage apps > and then running. Sometimes Media Hub will begin a background process and that eats up a whopping 8 MBs alone. Force close these pointless background apps and you should see an improvement there as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks popesmasseuse (you really aren't are you?)... the ROM has been running now for a week... gets worse rather than better. I do typically wait for my battery to drain completely before I charge it... but when I do have to do it at 7 PM - then I can never charge it fully, before I have to start using it again. I wonder if the fact that my phone goes through "micro charges" is a reason for my declining battery life...
Will check the running apps... and see if closing them improves things... thanks!
Fact: Installing a ROM greatly improves battery life... Try it....
Turn of GPS and Bluetooth when not in use.
Same here I uninstalled media hub... period... just useless...
Phone calls are a pretty heavy battery drain. Sounds like you're in call for hours each day. Most people don't talk on the phone more than a few minutes a day. Poor signal will also significantly reduce your battery life... how many bars you usually have at work?
My battery life got better the longer I had the infused ROM. But personally I only talk on the phone maybe a total of an hour each day, but I am constantly using internet and youtube, and if I have spare time I'm using my Kindle app to read some books. I keep my GPS, sync, and wifi on all day long and my brightness all the way up (I just can't stand a dim screen lol) and by the time I got home today my battery was at 40%, which I am perfectly fine with.
gtg465x said:
Phone calls are a pretty heavy battery drain. Sounds like you're in call for hours each day. Most people don't talk on the phone more than a few minutes a day. Poor signal will also significantly reduce your battery life... how many bars you usually have at work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah...the man himself.
Yes I talk a lot on the phone - nature of the job. 3 hours minimum in a day. Signal at home is terrible - 15% strength... that could be the reason why the battery runs dry after the morning routine. Any way to offset that?
At work signal is great. But in office I also tend to use my desk phone more...
hydrogenman said:
have you conditioned the battery and reset battery stats?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Err... no... Noob alert!!!
How does one do that?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=14912331&postcount=7
Read this post in another battery thread I am doing this right now to see how it performs afterwards.
Read the thread in my sig.
Never use task killers.
For me, battery life on phones gets good after about 2 weeks or so.
With light to medium use I can easily go for 2+ days.
Consider not streaming music through Bluetooth. Also don't auto sync stuff every 15 mins. If you can use Gmail they use Push notification. I'm on my phone all day literally and I make it home with some battery left. BTW connect to a Wi-Fi when ever possible, 3g data streaming will kill your battery quick.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA Premium App
Blackberrynomore said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=14912331&postcount=7
Read this post in another battery thread I am doing this right now to see how it performs afterwards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
has anyone tried this method?
It's a Lithium-Ion battery which means it does NOT respond to "conditioning".
"Reconditioning a battery involves completely discharging the energy from a battery then recharging the
battery. Li-Ion batteries do not require reconditioning to maintain good battery performance since Li-Ion
does not have a memory effect. It is necessary to complete drain and then recharge a Li-Ion battery in
order to determine its current capacity level, but that is not the same thing as reconditioning the battery. Li-
Ion batteries do not have a condition that needs to be reconditioned." lxe.com
andrawer said:
It's a Lithium-Ion battery which means it does NOT respond to "conditioning".
"Reconditioning a battery involves completely discharging the energy from a battery then recharging the
battery. Li-Ion batteries do not require reconditioning to maintain good battery performance since Li-Ion
does not have a memory effect. It is necessary to complete drain and then recharge a Li-Ion battery in
order to determine its current capacity level, but that is not the same thing as reconditioning the battery. Li-
Ion batteries do not have a condition that needs to be reconditioned." lxe.com
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Keiht's tutorial is effectively a technique called "bump charging" for putting that last extra percent or two of charge into a battery. However - with Li-Ion batteries, charging like this will SEVERELY reduce their charge cycle lifetime.
The only thing that "calibration" should affect is how your device reports battery charge level, NOT actual power usage. You should get the same total battery life whether your device is "calibrated" or not, with the exception possibly of the device shutting off prematurely because it thinks the battery is lower than it really is.
Entropy512 said:
Keiht's tutorial is effectively a technique called "bump charging" for putting that last extra percent or two of charge into a battery. However - with Li-Ion batteries, charging like this will SEVERELY reduce their charge cycle lifetime.
The only thing that "calibration" should affect is how your device reports battery charge level, NOT actual power usage. You should get the same total battery life whether your device is "calibrated" or not, with the exception possibly of the device shutting off prematurely because it thinks the battery is lower than it really is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would have to agree with you. I followed his directions as i was having horrible battery issues after going to 1.5.0 and it seems to have helped the reporting as far as I can tell. I think the big problem and it is only a guess is how the phone is reporting the battery condition not actual battery left. In any event I am running JD and the longer I run with 1.5.0 the battery seems to be lasting a lot longer but I have ti disable most everything which hobbles the phones best features to get that battery life still searching for the perfect solution.

Current widget (and yes, I searched first)

Does anyone know what's up with Current Widget? It's constantly reporting very high idle-draw values that I KNOW aren't correct. It's always reporting draws of anywhere from 70-400mah. If those numbers were accurate, my phone would be dead within hours but I'm getting very good battery life so they can't be right.
Every idle drain app I've tried does this, on every rom I've tried. I've read posts where people say they're getting 2-4mah drain, so is it just MY phone that's funky or is there some other way to measure idle drain?
kabuk1 said:
Does anyone know what's up with Current Widget? It's constantly reporting very high idle-draw values that I KNOW aren't correct. It's always reporting draws of anywhere from 70-400mah. If those numbers were accurate, my phone would be dead within hours but I'm getting very good battery life so they can't be right.
Every idle drain app I've tried does this, on every rom I've tried. I've read posts where people say they're getting 2-4mah drain, so is it just MY phone that's funky or is there some other way to measure idle drain?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
maybe you could try " battery calibration " from market and calibrate your battery... might do the trick..
and it's impossible to get 2 or 4 mah even in sleep mode on the sensation...
i use battery monitor widget and info are correct , on temperature and on Mah.. around 200 - 215 mah in standby mod..
It seems all the current draw apps are not working correctly on the Sensation at the moment.
You could estimate the idle current by noting your current battery capacity, putting the phone into sleep (screen off), and then leaving it that way (nothing waking it) for some amount of time. Then, after you have noted the time in sleep, check to see what the new capacity of the battery is.
Example:
Starting battery capacity: 1900mA/Hr
Sleep time: 1Hr
New battery capacity: 1850mA/Hr
Difference in capacity is 50mA, time is 1 Hr, so you used 50mA/Hr while in sleep. This will work out better for longer sleep times. It cant be 100% accurate since the reported capacity may not be 100% correct at any given time. (The monitor updates every minute or so)
This will, however, let you know whether or not you are seeing a reasonable current draw in sleep. It just wont be useful for knowing the EXACT value. At least you will know whether or not you are seeing low current draw or high.
Matt
I think it's got something to do with dual core. It was designed for single core.

[Q] For those who get 24+ hrs of battery usage

Battery drainage has been a major frustration for me with my phone. The frustration stems from the many variables associated with battery drainage. For the most part the terrible battery drainage started after flashing the modified ROMs. I believe the stock ROM was respectable when it came to battery drainage.
I am not ignorant to flashing ROMs. I have tried everything to figure out this battery problem; everything to keeping stock kernals, to battery calibration (delete battery stats), to battery bump charging, to matching radio files with RILs, to limiting data syncing, charge cycles etc.
But I am noticing that some of you are able to get good battery usage from a single charge with these modified ROMs. With that said, I want to cut the variables down and see what those folks who are getting over a day's worth of battery usage from a single charge are doing. The best indicator for battery usage to limit variables would be the battery usage standby rate with data network on.
I am not getting any better than 8%/hour on standby for any of these ROMs. That is crap. I wake up in the morning after 8 hours and there is only ~35% battery left. Unacceptable. I figure no more than 10% should be lost in 8 hours of standby.
So for those who have good battery usage, please answer the following questions so that we can eliminate all the variables.
1. What is your standby battery drainage rate?
2. What version phone do you have (TMoUS or EUR)?
3. Clockwork Recovery version?
4. What ROM are you using?
4. What Radio and RILs are you using?
5. How many charge cycles are you doing after the battery calibration and before you are getting the good standby rate?
6. Are you using any battery saving applications?
Please help if you can. Everyone seems to emphasize speed and performance but battery life is number one priority for any phone in my opinion.
Thanks
I'm currently running the P3D Neon ROM. I was having the same issues you are having due to flashing a new ROM jsut about every day. The big thing I noticed is that the longer I stayed with the one ROM the better my battery was. But as I'm sure you already know that no matter what a smartphone is a battery hog anyway.
By the way have you tried this, I am using it and love it !
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1128568
Tmobile model sensation
Latest radio with .56
Latest LeeDroid
Anker battery
Latest cwm
Do a charge cycle every time my battery dies
I use battery calibration app from market
No battery saving apps
Standby I have no clue lol it sometimes doesn't budge but sometimes I get 1% every hour and 1/2
Light use I get 26+ hours.
Medium I get 16+
Heavy I get 9+
Hope that helps.
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA Premium App
I've had my phone a week and am using stock Rom. I've S-Off, Root and install backup. Overnite, the battery only goes down 5%
If I were u, I'd get Android Assistant from the Market and check that all apps are closed. Check ur start-up apps and clear ur cache before u shut down ur phone.
Sent from my HTC Sensation
More than likely, there are apps that are not allowing the phone to sleep when the screen is off. CPUstats will show you how long your phone has been in deep sleep, as well as your CPU clock speed.
Here is what I would try out:
1-Get CPUstats.
2-Turn off the screen for the night
3-Check to see how long the phone was in deep sleep mode. It should have been for awhile if not, you have a rogue app that is bothering your phone while it sleeps.
To check your standby current:
So far, we cannot accurately see what it is. I dont know of any app that can for our phones. I do know that the values I see cannot be correct, otherwise my phone wouldnt be lasting long.
1-Write down your current battery capacity in mA/Hrs.
2-Write down the time that you put your phone into sleep.
3-Leave it off for an hour.
4-Wake it up and check the new battery capacity.
An Example:
I started with 1900mA/Hr.
I let it sleep for 1 hour.
I found that after an hour, I was down to 1850mA/Hr. That is 50mA gone, over 1 hour time. So my standby current was 50mA/Hrs.
Now this is only a crude way of judging whether or not your phone is behaving. Since the battery apps update capacity every 5 mins or so, you may not be right on the money, but you WILL know if something is BAD. Calculating 50mA +/- 20mA means the phone is likely sleeping as it should. Calculating 300mA+/- 20mA means something is USING your phone without your permission.
Youll need to find out if some apps are syncing (or trying to sync) while it sleeps. Or, your phone may be trying to improve your signal strength.
Matt
The anker battery will help but it is not solving the problem. We need to be getting around 1-2%/hour standby drain like some of you guys are getting.
mrg02d said:
More than likely, there are apps that are not allowing the phone to sleep when the screen is off. CPUstats will show you how long your phone has been in deep sleep, as well as your CPU clock speed.
Here is what I would try out:
1-Get CPUstats.
2-Turn off the screen for the night
3-Check to see how long the phone was in deep sleep mode. It should have been for awhile if not, you have a rogue app that is bothering your phone while it sleeps.
To check your standby current:
So far, we cannot accurately see what it is. I dont know of any app that can for our phones. I do know that the values I see cannot be correct, otherwise my phone wouldnt be lasting long.
1-Write down your current battery capacity in mA/Hrs.
2-Write down the time that you put your phone into sleep.
3-Leave it off for an hour.
4-Wake it up and check the new battery capacity.
An Example:
I started with 1900mA/Hr.
I let it sleep for 1 hour.
I found that after an hour, I was down to 1850mA/Hr. That is 50mA gone, over 1 hour time. So my standby current was 50mA/Hrs.
Now this is only a crude way of judging whether or not your phone is behaving. Since the battery apps update capacity every 5 mins or so, you may not be right on the money, but you WILL know if something is BAD. Calculating 50mA +/- 20mA means the phone is likely sleeping as it should. Calculating 300mA+/- 20mA means something is USING your phone without your permission.
Youll need to find out if some apps are syncing (or trying to sync) while it sleeps. Or, your phone may be trying to improve your signal strength.
Matt
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like this test, I will check it out.

How can you get a long life Cell Phone Battery

Durability of a cell phone battery can easily be understood by just check a parameter........ mAh. You will find it on the battery level- such as 1000 mAh, 1200 mAh, 1500 mAh, 2100 mAh. The larger the rating, the longer is the battery life. Just check it on your cell phone battery.
Note- While buying a new battery for your old cell phone then you must check this unit to have long lasting/durable service.
If you have 2G, no Wifi, low brightness could also make your battery life last longer ^^
Calibrating the battery after flashing new roms will typically increase the battery life if you are experiencing issues. It simply removes the old battery stats to make the stats pertinent to your given rom.
Sent from my MB860 using xda app-developers app
Buy an old nokia that is hard like a brick
no gadgets and stuff
the battarey can hold for the whole week maybe more!
Battery drain..
stavgayer said:
Buy an old nokia that is hard like a brick
no gadgets and stuff
the battarey can hold for the whole week maybe more!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to don"t use your phone:silly:....or use juice defender....it works fine for me..
Irronically I have noticed certain battery aid apps actually killing my battery more, but simply avoid auto brightness and adjust it accordingly when inside or out, turn off wifi, bluetooth, and maybe some of your sync options, depending on your type of screen avoid using backgrounds with certain colors... ex Amoled's emeny is white as is most screens, if possible change the backgrounds in certain used apps to black such as messaging.
yes proper callibration is basic step/
Then use 2g network if 3g use is not much.....but if you have to do it as 3g, not as auto...coz it chews up more battery
Then diable wifi and bluetooth when not in use
avoid live wallpapers
You can use the slick power saving feature option by enabling it......
Decrease the brighness of screen as much as possible
screen lockout time to minimum pratical
stavgayer said:
Buy an old nokia that is hard like a brick
no gadgets and stuff
the battarey can hold for the whole week maybe more!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im selling my nokia 1616 :silly:
annyprinces said:
Durability of a cell phone battery can easily be understood by just check a parameter........ mAh. You will find it on the battery level- such as 1000 mAh, 1200 mAh, 1500 mAh, 2100 mAh. The larger the rating, the longer is the battery life. Just check it on your cell phone battery.
Note- While buying a new battery for your old cell phone then you must check this unit to have long lasting/durable service.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The mAh value isn't anywhere near as important as the way you use your phone. Theoretically my HD2 with a 1230 mAh battery could last a good week and a bit in airplane mode with no usage whatsoever, but that's a completely unrealistic scenario. I can always get a full day of usage out of it, and really I've never needed more. All I do to limit battery drain is use a custom ROM, JuiceDefender and SetCPU, and I get a 5mA drain on standby with WiFi on. To put that in perspective, my Mum's Desire S on a stock ROM gets 26mA drain in Airplane mode. Despite having a 1600 mAh battery (I think) the battery doesn't last much longer than mine, and even then it's only because she never uses her phone.
Slade Wilson said:
If you have 2G, no Wifi, low brightness could also make your battery life last longer ^^
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
stavgayer said:
Buy an old nokia that is hard like a brick
no gadgets and stuff
the battarey can hold for the whole week maybe more!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah
Yes, use only 2g, low brightness, no animations, and most important, calibrating.
but with a good rom, what isnt the stock, u can use a batterysaver kernel governor, like savagedzen
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. As far as power cycling, I don't know that it does much good. I run my device in performance mode all the time, and with a CPU overclock of 1.25GHz and various tweaks, I have about a day an a half to a day and a quarter of full runtime from my battery. This is with moderate to heavy usage (calls, emailing, text, gaming, web browsing, etc.) so you should have no problems getting acceptable battery performance after following these steps:
1. Take the case off your device (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 device 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 device 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.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
That seems like way too much work for me lol.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda app-developers app

[Q] The battery drain is more fast when travel around

Hello,
I test the battery drain with these two scenarios:
1. When I charged the battery to 100% , then place it in my room for overnight, and I found the average usage of the battery is 2/% per hour.
2. When I charged the battery to 100% , then take it to my office, I traveld and use whatsapp for a while, then I found the average usage is 4.2% (Sometimes, I think it is also 4.2 % even I don't used whatsapp)
3. I think when the my phone galaxy N7000 with 4.1.2 Jellybean is traveled, the battery will drain more fast, I found the wakelock time of multipdp and secril_fd-interface is almost doubled for Battery Better Stats when I
Traveled the phone.
Question:
1. Is my guessing correct?
2. If it is, how can I reduce the wakelock time if I traveled the phone?
Thanks.
I've always found this to be the case on Android phones - haven't figured out why.

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