Sudden Overnight Battery Drain - Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Has anyone else experienced any issues like this? Over the past week my Nexus 5 has been going through about 60% battery over night. In the past I would at most use 5-7%. I posted a couple pictures of my battery usage. I live in an area where my signal is always LTE and usually 1-3 bars. I do not have any new apps, location, gps and pretty much all google services SHOULD be off...

smakcruiser said:
Has anyone else experienced any issues like this? Over the past week my Nexus 5 has been going through about 60% battery over night. In the past I would at most use 5-7%. I posted a couple pictures of my battery usage. I live in an area where my signal is always LTE and usually 1-3 bars. I do not have any new apps, location, gps and pretty much all google services SHOULD be off...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you tap on the graph itself you'll be able to see if the phone was awake frequently or if it was losing signal, etc...
If you're seeing that the phone was awake often, try BetterBatteryStats to see what is keeping your phone awake.

Wakelock Detector is another app to try and pin down the problem.
Also, maybe try wifi overnight instead of LTE to see if that might be the issue.

its your signal quality killing your battery. you have phone idle and cell standby taking most your battery.

simms22 said:
its your signal quality killing your battery. you have phone idle and cell standby taking most your battery.
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Click to collapse
I guess, but I dont know why all of a sudden it is doing it. My cell signal has remained the same at home since I got the phone in January. Unless for whatever reason it is dropping out all night...

smakcruiser said:
I guess, but I dont know why all of a sudden it is doing it. My cell signal has remained the same at home since I got the phone in January. Unless for whatever reason it is dropping out all night...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is especially strange is it appears you're on WiFi, and yet both the voice and data connection seem to be causing the largest drain here.
Tap the graph so we can get an idea of what the awake times and signal strength was like.

I have a similar gripe and I pinned mine down to stupid photos uploading overnight via wifi and a bunch of other wifi related crap....pretty much network things causing battery drain. also the auto update's killing it for google play stuff.
I found that switching to dalvik and back to ART [which i was on] helped a bit though i supposed there's a process running somewhere in the background that's buggy...here's hoping 4.4.x fixes it

Switch to ART cleared it for me
smakcruiser said:
Has anyone else experienced any issues like this? Over the past week my Nexus 5 has been going through about 60% battery over night. In the past I would at most use 5-7%. I posted a couple pictures of my battery usage. I live in an area where my signal is always LTE and usually 1-3 bars. I do not have any new apps, location, gps and pretty much all google services SHOULD be off...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also saw the same. Turning off functions, etc. had no effect, but switching form Dalvik to ART did. I'm guessing that the change probably cleared something in the OS that was actually causing the problem. Note that the reported sources of battery usage are almost the same in both images, even though battery usage rate is vastly different.
I've attached two screen shots before and after the runtime switch. The red arrow on the before image is when I made the runtime change.

Mike585 said:
I also saw the same. Turning off functions, etc. had no effect, but switching form Dalvik to ART did. I'm guessing that the change probably cleared something in the OS that was actually causing the problem. Note that the reported sources of battery usage are almost the same in both images, even though battery usage rate is vastly different.
I've attached two screen shots before and after the runtime switch. The red arrow on the before image is when I made the runtime change.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a shot from last night. I went to bed with about 50% battery life and woke up with a dead phone. Looks like cell signal maybe...
I am already using ART, but maybe I should switch back to dalvik and back to art like someone suggested earlier.

I've noticed more battery drain as well as reduced cell signal. My phone is losing connection in areas where I'd previously have 1-2 bars. I was thinking T-Mobile was changing things on their towers, but I'm starting to see other Nexus 5 owners complaining about it as well. Did they update something in the background on our phones?

You REALLY need to get Gsam and take some screens from it after a night. The stock battery usage screen shots say very little of use.
Otherwise we're are all just guessing here.

smakcruiser said:
I am already using ART, but maybe I should switch back to dalvik and back to art like someone suggested earlier.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's worth a shot, and I, for one, am curious to see if it helps.
FWIW, I just noticed that my battery usage is increasing significantly again. So, I may try the same thing if it persists.
I'd say there is definitely a bug somewhere, possibly interacting with an app or a subset of apps. Are you using Tasker, by any chance?

kj2112 said:
You REALLY need to get Gsam and take some screens from it after a night. The stock battery usage screen shots say very little of use.Otherwise we're are all just guessing here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good point.
As I noted in my previous post, my phone started chewing battery again yesterday. No evident trigger, battery usage rate just went up abruptly. I recharged the phone and then left it asleep over night. Images below captured this morning.

Mike585 said:
Good point.
As I noted in my previous post, my phone started chewing battery again yesterday. No evident trigger, battery usage rate just went up abruptly. I recharged the phone and then left it asleep over night. Images below captured this morning.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Obvious culprits are WiFi and radio. Check in gsam (might be too late if you charged) for kernel Wakelocks. Or try wakelock detector app.
You could have a WiFi issue caused by other devices on your network. Would have to search on that for causes and cures. I'm not sure. I only know its been an issue.
And you appear to have no radio signal at all. If you go in to radio screen from main gsam screen, it will tell you your time searching for signal. That can destroy battery life.
It doesn't seem to he an app. Or general held awake time...as you have hardly any.
Putting phone in airplane mode over night would prove its WiFi or radio.
---------- Post added at 09:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 AM ----------
If a night of airplane mode is no better, then its a rogue app. That you'd need to track down. Process of elimination style.
But its probably either WiFi or radio signal. I guess if you have location service on, it could be adding to the trouble.
Turning off WiFi would show if its WiFi....or radio. But with very poor radio signal....I know you're battery will take a beating anyway.

kj2112 said:
Obvious culprits are WiFi and radio. Putting phone in airplane mode over night would prove its WiFi or radio..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What's puzzling to me is that it was not an issue until a week ago, then converting to ART made it go away temporarily.
My radio signal is poor, but it's always that way at home. I definitely plan to see what airplane mode does. Will report results.
Thanks for your help.

Mike585 said:
What's puzzling to me is that it was not an issue until a week ago, then converting to ART made it go away temporarily.
My radio signal is poor, but it's always that way at home. I definitely plan to see what airplane mode does. Will report results.
Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
These images are from last night. I went to sleep with about 55 percent and woke up with 31%. The screenies are from betterbatterystats. Maybe you guys see something...

Definitely radio in my case
kj2112, you were right on. :good:
Running in airplane mode removes all serious battery drain on my Nexus 5. If I turn WIFI on, there is only minor battery usage. I've installed OpenSignal and will try monitoring radio reception vs. battery drain.
I'm still puzzled by the sudden onset (could be a problem with my nearest tower, I suppose), and the fact that switching from Dalvik to ART dramatically improved battery life for a few days. That's hard to link to the poor cell signal.
I'm still suspicious that there is a software component, that may or may not be interacting with my cell signal strength.

Follup up / more info
Based on posts on other forums, I tried excluding LTE from my preferred network types, and my battery usage improved dramatically. If I choose 3G, signal strength is 2-3 bars. 2G gives me 4-5 bars. With LTE I get 0-1 bars - mostly 0. On 2G my battery life is the best I've ever seen
My suspicion is that the sudden change I saw was caused by a change in the way the radio software selects network speed options. It appears that if the preferred network type selected is LTE, the phone now will expend maximum effort continually to connect to LTE, even if there is no useful signal available. Before the change, it's likely that a stronger LTE signal was required before the phone would attempt a connection.
I'm not sure if the OS determines where that set point is located or if it's something the carrier can control. If it's the carrier then maybe the Nexus 5 has a radio that isn't as efficient as other phones, and the current algorithm is pegged to the best case phone.
If anyone knows how to adjust the conditions for attempting to connect to LTE or has any ides about who does control it, I'd definitely like to know. For now, I set my phone to 2G or 3G when I'm in a poor LTE reception area (which with T-Mobile is most of the time). That actually works okay for me, but I doubt it's a solution for everyone.

Related

Battery life tweak

I was lurking over at the sprint hero board and came across an interesting thread. People are noticing an increase in battery life when the set the wifi settings for sleep to Never.
Seems like what is happening, as soon as the phone blanks out, WIFI is turned of and the phone is switched to EVDO mode. which drains battery. If your in a bad coverage area your battery drains even faster.
Some people are talking about a performance increase as well, but I think what they are seeing is the phone not having to cycle back to wifi everytime they touch the phone.
Treefallingquietly said:
I was lurking over at the sprint hero board and came across an interesting thread. People are noticing an increase in battery life when the set the wifi settings for sleep to Never.
Seems like what is happening, as soon as the phone blanks out, WIFI is turned of and the phone is switched to EVDO mode. which drains battery. If your in a bad coverage area your battery drains even faster.
Some people are talking about a performance increase as well, but I think what they are seeing is the phone not having to cycle back to wifi everytime they touch the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting, but is this for those who always have wifi enabled (I never use it)? I'll try anything to get more from my battery since I can barely squeeze out about a day (18 hours) from my phone even with the sms workaround implemented.
I'm looking in the wifi settings and don't see any options for "wifi sleep".
katmandu421 said:
Interesting, but is this for those who always have wifi enabled (I never use it)? I'll try anything to get more from my battery since I can barely squeeze out about a day (18 hours) from my phone even with the sms workaround implemented.
I'm looking in the wifi settings and don't see any options for "wifi sleep".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is the link: http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/24324?tstart=0
Basically, when you are in an area that has spotty coverage, your battery will drain quicker because its always roaming and trying for service. I get this in the Texas Hill country. So if you have wifi and are in a bad location, whenever your wifi sleeps, it goes back to EV. I think just the nature of this connection is hard on the battery. hence using Wifi as much as possible.
Another option is to use APNdroid or something like it to disable the EVDO when you're not using it. Push notifications don't always come through that way or can be slow coming, but if you know your phone is just going to sit there you can conserve a lot of power this way. Turning off GPS, WiFi and EVDO I was able to squeeze out almost 3 days of usage when I was using the phone sparingly. If you're enabling those connections only when you need them, making it through the day should be no problem if you're not constantly using the device.

Getting frustrated with unreliable battery life

Ok. Android phones are not blackberries, and I'm well aware of that. This Thunderbolt is not my first android device, so I am very familiar with setting it up and using it in such a way to make the battery last.
I'm not posting this to complain of the battery life sucking. I'm complaining that the battery is fine one day, and horrible the next.
So here's what happens. Yesterday, i unplugged my phone at 730am like i do every day. By 3pm with light usage, i was down to 40% or so. Charged it up before I left work, no big deal, lasted the rest of the night.
Today, unplug the phone at 730am, phone is completely dead, as in, won't even boot by 11am. Same apps, same usage, same location, same strong 4G signal, same everything. It has happened multiple times on consecutive days when i was rooted on the stock rom, and still on VirusRom. I just dont get why this happens. I am doing nothing different and my phone either lasts all day, or a few hours. It's getting to the point where I am finding it very hard to rely on this phone when i'm out and about. It makes no sense. Especially if i'm not really using my phone, just checking for texts once in a while, there is no reason why it should die. What if i need it? I couldn't even call or text my gf tonight while I was working because my phone battery was ZERO only a few hours after leaving the house with a 100% charge.
Is anyone else experiencing this?
yesterday I had abnormal drain on my battery. I get 18 - 24 hours on a charge normally, but yesterday I went from 100% to dead in 5 hours. Called VZW and they said it was a documented problem and they were working on it.
IDK, they are pretty good about pushing updates. Also, yesterday I kept dropping out of data. bizzare....
I burned through the extended battery in 9 hours yesterday, really hope they figure out some better power management soon,
Switch it to 3G cdma rev.a and see if that helps. The 4G radio is always being searched for. I love the tb so I can deal with no 4G til they get the bugs out.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
You have to use current widget and see how much power draw your phone is pulling. Then use system panel monitoring to track apps using the highest CPU.
Definitely an issue and I'm glad that Verizon is aware of it. I've had this unusual drain happen four times now, all on 4G. Last time I noticed it (seeing the battery percentage drop like 2% every five minutes or so), went to the Market and snagged System Panel.
The offending process is "system." Had my CPU spiked at 100% for over an hour before I rebooted, which does fix it, at the cost of another 10% of your battery, of course.
Hope they get this ironed out soon. Love my Thunderbolt, but this is a major issue and seems to be happening to a lot of people.
The best thing to do is dial *#*#4636#*#* and turn the radio to CDMA auto (PRL) mode.
I am already seeing much better battery life, as I am in a non 4g area.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to give that a try. I got into the radio settings, and after flashing VirusRom, my phone defaulted to LTE mode only. I put it to cdma/lte auto, to see if that helps. If not, i'll just disable LTE unless i really need it.
No need to dial all of that crap. TeamAndIRC has a toggle app called "LTE OnOFF TeamAndIRC" that allows you to toggle between CDMA and CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto.
I found out two things dealing with my massive nighttime battery drain. One, wifi doesn't seem to work correctly. I've never had the problem before but for some reason it doesn't sleep correctly. What I've done is changed the sleep policy to "15 minutes" which allows it to switch back to 3G fifteen minutes after I turn off the screen. That allows me to have wifi while I'm using it but 3G while it's idle. This has seemed to fix my problem along with... Second, I am on the fringe of 4G/3G here on the outskirts of Cincinnati. At work I am solid 4G but at home it can't make up it's mind. Well, that has certainly played into the battery issue as it is constantly searching. So, what I do is as I walk in the door from work I use the app listed above to switch to "CDMA auto (PRL)" and it sticks to 3G. When I get to work I switch to "CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto".
So, to summarize:
I have eliminated my nightime drain by doing two things:
1) I use the Y5 app to automatically start wifi as I walk in the door but have changed the sleep policy to "after 15 minutes".
2) I use the app above to switch from 4G/3G auto to 3G only.
ridobe said:
No need to dial all of that crap. TeamAndIRC has a toggle app called "LTE OnOFF TeamAndIRC" that allows you to toggle between CDMA and CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto.
I found out two things dealing with my massive nighttime battery drain. One, wifi doesn't seem to work correctly. I've never had the problem before but for some reason it doesn't sleep correctly. What I've done is changed the sleep policy to "15 minutes" which allows it to switch back to 3G fifteen minutes after I turn off the screen. That allows me to have wifi while I'm using it but 3G while it's idle. This has seemed to fix my problem along with... Second, I am on the fringe of 4G/3G here on the outskirts of Cincinnati. At work I am solid 4G but at home it can't make up it's mind. Well, that has certainly played into the battery issue as it is constantly searching. So, what I do is as I walk in the door from work I use the app listed above to switch to "CDMA auto (PRL)" and it sticks to 3G. When I get to work I switch to "CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto".
So, to summarize:
I have eliminated my nightime drain by doing two things:
1) I use the Y5 app to automatically start wifi as I walk in the door but have changed the sleep policy to "after 15 minutes".
2) I use the app above to switch from 4G/3G auto to 3G only.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LTEonoff is just a shortcut to the menu. In essence, it saves no time because you have to download it. If you're flipping it on and off all the time, then yeah, it might behoove you to just dl the app. But, as a one time thing, it's unnecessary.
^You are correct. I switch daily but I didn't see earlier that you were not in a 4G area.
I would highly suggest this to anyone who sees their data connection switch back and forth as I was in my house.
Battery life has been strong the past couple days now. I haven't had any unusual drains since i switched from LTE only mode to EVDO/LTE auto mode. I dont know if this was for sure the issue, but it seems to have made a huge difference. I haven't been plugged in for 2 hours and i still have 92% battery left.
Here's my interpretation of the issue:
There seems to be some kind of problem or bug with the radio which makes it drain an enormous amount of power from some towers (700mA+ is shown on current widget). Even with good signal, I'll repeatably drain a lot of power in certain areas. The "fix" is to disable mobile data or switch to wifi. This lowers the power usage back down to (slightly lower than) normal levels.
For some reason, the radio will not admit to drawing practically 90% of your battery in the battery use menu (nothing does, in fact ... it just looks like normal battery use).
I'm glad to hear that they are aware of an issue that maybe causing this.
I can't stand the battery life either other than that I love the phone
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
Yeah i'm still at 83% battery after being unplugged for 4 hours, light usage.
Another thing i noticed is that when my battery was draining stupid fast, the phone would be warm to the touch even when it was just sitting on my belt clip. All seems well for now.
Mine is good
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
My battery life has recently become terribly inconsistent. Last week I was actually getting through a 16 hour day with light usage, but this weekened I must have installed something because now the phone is lasting 3-4 hours with hardly any usage at all.
The battery information is pretty worthless because it's not showing anything except display using the battery and the display has only been on maybe 8 minutes.
Checked the partial wake info and nothing seems to be running in the background. The battery is just discharging like crazy all of a sudden. Guess Ill start uninstalling stuff to see what might be causing it
I am also having a weird battery experience today. I am rooted running Adrynalyne 1.9. Last few days I was doing great, moderate usage and was staying charged for 16-18 hrs. Today my phone has died twice during my 8hr shift at work. I KNOW something is wrong there. Hopefully a fix is found soon.
On all my Androids (4 of them currently in daily use), I've found that Words With Friends is often a HUGE battery killer...and I don't mean because you play it a lot, I mean leave it running and put your phone down, walk away a while, come back to the phone and it is HOT to the touch! Obviously killing the battery. Something to look at for sure.
I've got the extended battery and just went over 48 hours, with moderate to heavy use by my standards on a single charge. Pretty amazing and I guess I'm not in a bad radio area.
hammer4203 said:
Switch it to 3G cdma rev.a and see if that helps. The 4G radio is always being searched for. I love the tb so I can deal with no 4G til they get the bugs out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only thing I love about the TB is the 4G...everything else on it, been there, done that. I wouldn't keep the TB if 4G had to be turned off to make it usable in terms of battery life. Hopefully it will be fixed quickly!
Zshazz said:
Here's my interpretation of the issue:
There seems to be some kind of problem or bug with the radio which makes it drain an enormous amount of power from some towers (700mA+ is shown on current widget). Even with good signal, I'll repeatably drain a lot of power in certain areas. The "fix" is to disable mobile data or switch to wifi. This lowers the power usage back down to (slightly lower than) normal levels.
For some reason, the radio will not admit to drawing practically 90% of your battery in the battery use menu (nothing does, in fact ... it just looks like normal battery use).
I'm glad to hear that they are aware of an issue that maybe causing this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that analysis. With that in mind, if it's accurate, could a Tasker app profile be set up that does your fix if the drain works that high? Would be a nice safety feature for those who aren't willing to have to look at their phone frequently to check battery life.
You have to use the current widget to record your idle power readings, its the only way to know what's going on. Then use system panel monitoring to see which app CPU is highest.

Radio lockup causing rapid battery drain

Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
same problems here
Scrappy1 said:
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem. Have went through many sim cards and factory resets. After 5 phone I finally have one that holds the signal a little better and does not go into this "funky mode". With the previous 4 (white 32gig) verizon phone I would burn through a battery in 6 hours at work. It would start with a drop in signal strengh at around -93 or so. Nothing would fix it. I finally got a blue 32gig and it seems to hold the signal to around -99. I don't know if I got a better batch of phones. But it seems to help me get through a day at work.
Scrappy1 said:
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not normal. Where I work I get 3g primarily but also 4g in the front of the building.....in the far back I get 1x. I have had my phone totally drop data for a while (like the radio sleeps or something) but never had the radio stick between 4g and 3g. I also live right on the edge of a 4g/3g line and my dbm right now is 111 on 4g LTE......If this was normal I would have had the situation your having since my signal is basically identical to yours. I would return it or at the very least contact Samsung. I'm sure Samsung will tell you to send it in for repair.
I have very weak signal at my house also. S3 switches from LTE to 3G and 1X and sometimes loosing signal completely downstairs but upstairs usually I get solid LTE with around -99dBm and ~10Mbps transfers. During this network jumping my battery drains very fast also but I never had my radio constantly locked at one frequency or signal strength. And I can directly compare signal reception to my wife's Fascinate and S3 loses this competition badly. Fascinate never completely lost signal at our house and it rarely jumps to 1X.
I did a factory reset yesterday and so far so good... I''ll update as time goes on.
As far as signal strength goes in general,my wife's Droid Charge always pulls in a few more LTE dBm's than my GS3. Based on general public feedback, GS3 is below average on signal and radio issues. It's too bad because the rest of the phone is above average.
It's been 2 days after the factory reset and no problems with battery drain or radio lock up.
The only app that I could maybe try and blame is Elixir 2's create widget feature for signal strength. This always returned bogus values and may have embedded itself at an unholy level. Simply uninstalling elixir 2 didn't fix it.
If anyone still cares... I found my radio lockup and battery drain issues returned only after I reinstalled Better Battery Stats. I again removed it and will see if I stay good.

Cell Standby, huge Battery Drain?

Hi Guys
I'm currently on Stock Android w/ Franco Kernel, Rooted and as I was watching my battery level closer after the first few cycles, I noticed that Cell Standby was making up a huge amount of my battery consumption.
In BBS I personally don't see anything reflecting that, but as you see in the attached screenshots Cell Standby consumption is huge. I've never experienced something like that with my former phones. Could the reason be, that I have bad reception over the day?
Any sugestions what I could try to fix that?
DerItaliener said:
Hi Guys
I'm currently on Stock Android w/ Franco Kernel, Rooted and as I was watching my battery level closer after the first few cycles, I noticed that Cell Standby was making up a huge amount of my battery consumption.
In BBS I personally don't see anything reflecting that, but as you see in the attached screenshots Cell Standby consumption is huge. I've never experienced something like that with my former phones. Could the reason be, that I have bad reception over the day?
Any sugestions what I could try to fix that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm having the exact same issue. My cell standby is at 49%. I can't even go a full work day without charging it (something I didn't have to do with my nexus 4).
I've turned mobile data off for now to see what's going on. I have friends with Nexus 5s and they're getting pretty good battery life. I might even erase my phone and start over again to see what's going on.
That's weird. Have you tried reflashing the kernel? Not sure if that'll really matter or not, but it would be worth a shot.
What is your Phone Idle time showing in comparison to your screen on time and standby time? I'm just really surprised your WLAN is showing as off. I take it that's a fix related to the kernel too? Mine is always on no matter what I do (I'm running stock though).
uodii said:
That's weird. Have you tried reflashing the kernel? Not sure if that'll really matter or not, but it would be worth a shot.
What is your Phone Idle time showing in comparison to your screen on time and standby time? I'm just really surprised your WLAN is showing as off. I take it that's a fix related to the kernel too? Mine is always on no matter what I do (I'm running stock though).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I tried reflashing the Kernel, but I guess it's not kernel related. Tonight I fully charged it and took it off the charger, and left it there for four hours. (Screenshots attached) I have Mobile Data always on, and WLAN (as I've currently no WLAN router here) as well as Location Services always off.
Everything seems about right, just the Email-sync is a little bit off the charts in terms of wakelocks. The next things I'm going to try are disabling email sync, then switching radio, and if nothing helps, a complete restart from scratch with a Factory image.
I understand that when there is poor signal the cell standby is going to drain but this seems to be a bug. Once I return to good signal the cell standby shouldn't continue consuming battery. If I forget to put my phone into airplane mode before I go into the hospital the bug will drain it no matter if I get back into good signal area shortly after. If I get into airplane mode before the bad area and turn it the radio back on after leaving the area, my battery lasts fine the rest of the day.
Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk

Unsolve battery drain

Hi everyone,
I need some advice from the community. I've had my XT925 for almost 2 years now, and in the last 6-8 moths I've been having weird battery drain that I couldn't solve. It started back on JB a while ago, and I thought "oh hell, KK is around the corner, it'll go away when I wipe everything". I was mistaken: I first tried the soak test leaked KK, and had the same erratic behaviour. And when the final release became available, I reflashed a full stock JB then flashed the zip OTA posted in general. I'm now on 4.4.2 stock moto kitkat.
I hardly last a full day, without a heavy usage. Many SMS (10-50), maybe 1-2 MMS, wifi ON most of the time at work, phone forced to 3G (4G cover is sporadic and when I turn it on I have a lot of 3g/4g switches). In the last week, I've frozen nearly every app I had with TB, to (hopefully) isolate the ones that drain too much battery. No luck so far.
Today I've decided to take a series of screenshot so maybe someone can help me troubleshoot what's wrong. They are attached to this post. I don't see anything out of the ordinary, but I'm no expert, so maybe someone can elighten me on any abnormality. I had roughly 40 min of vocal call today, which is a lot compared to my usual usage (average, maybe 3-5 min a day of voice call). This may have contributed to drain slightly more today, but there is not so much difference at the end of the day.
Basically, I recall lasting easily 1..5 days with the phone stock out of the box. Now, it's hard to reach >12h. I thought maybe the battery was dying (although *#*#4636#*#* said it was in good shape) so i replaced the battery by a brand new Moto one last week. There was absolutely no change at all.
So... here you go: any idea on what could be causing the drain ? Obviously I've cleared cache and wiped data many times already, and I'd like to avoid doing it again and again and again. Note that on the screenshot, there is many apparent time with bad signal. I have no idea why it shows like this since I'm always 3-4 bars at work. This is weird, and came with KK (JB sowed green signal at the same place).
Thanks for your help!
edit: just swa my thread title is missing a "d"... but cannot edit.
CoinCoin88 said:
Hi everyone,
I need some advice from the community. I've had my XT925 for almost 2 years now, and in the last 6-8 moths I've been having weird battery drain that I couldn't solve. It started back on JB a while ago, and I thought "oh hell, KK is around the corner, it'll go away when I wipe everything". I was mistaken: I first tried the soak test leaked KK, and had the same erratic behaviour. And when the final release became available, I reflashed a full stock JB then flashed the zip OTA posted in general. I'm now on 4.4.2 stock moto kitkat.
I hardly last a full day, without a heavy usage. Many SMS (10-50), maybe 1-2 MMS, wifi ON most of the time at work, phone forced to 3G (4G cover is sporadic and when I turn it on I have a lot of 3g/4g switches). In the last week, I've frozen nearly every app I had with TB, to (hopefully) isolate the ones that drain too much battery. No luck so far.
Today I've decided to take a series of screenshot so maybe someone can help me troubleshoot what's wrong. They are attached to this post. I don't see anything out of the ordinary, but I'm no expert, so maybe someone can elighten me on any abnormality. I had roughly 40 min of vocal call today, which is a lot compared to my usual usage (average, maybe 3-5 min a day of voice call). This may have contributed to drain slightly more today, but there is not so much difference at the end of the day.
Basically, I recall lasting easily 1..5 days with the phone stock out of the box. Now, it's hard to reach >12h. I thought maybe the battery was dying (although *#*#4636#*#* said it was in good shape) so i replaced the battery by a brand new Moto one last week. There was absolutely no change at all.
So... here you go: any idea on what could be causing the drain ? Obviously I've cleared cache and wiped data many times already, and I'd like to avoid doing it again and again and again. Note that on the screenshot, there is many apparent time with bad signal. I have no idea why it shows like this since I'm always 3-4 bars at work. This is weird, and came with KK (JB sowed green signal at the same place).
Thanks for your help!
edit: just swa my thread title is missing a "d"... but cannot edit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i would get gsam battery monitor with the root companion (second app) so you can get a better idea of whats going on. some shots of the app view screen, then change the view to view time held awake, then a couple shots of the details on the highest ones.
you can then get an app called unbounce that can limit the wakelocks, but it requires some reading so you dont break anything.
if you could take shots in English that would be great, otherwise i wont be able to help much with the diagnosis.
I was trying not to rely on wakelock limiting apps, as there's no reason for the drop from 1.5 (2) days to 12 h, with all custom apps frozen. I didn't know unbounce but the same goes for Greenify. I'll try the widget you mentioned and report back.
edit: yup i'll switch to english for the shots next time.
Oh and I forgot to mention this: from time to time, the drain won't be so apparent (e.g. 40% remaining after 12-15 h) and in a matter of minutes, the phone will drop to 10-12%. However it hasn't happened sicne I last turned off 4G, so maybe it was due to constant 3g/4g switches.
CoinCoin88 said:
Oh and I forgot to mention this: from time to time, the drain won't be so apparent (e.g. 40% remaining after 12-15 h) and in a matter of minutes, the phone will drop to 10-12%. However it hasn't happened sicne I last turned off 4G, so maybe it was due to constant 3g/4g switches.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no doubt, in weak and especially no signal areas, it will burn through battery like crazy.
Here it as, after a nearly complete discharge. Phone unplugged around 10am, 12h15 later I'm at 10% remaining, with not so much usage. Screenshots are attached. What's weird is that in the last 1h30 the phone has been off wifi (slider "Wi-Fi" is off in settings) but battery status still shows a connected wifi. However you can clearly see a huge drain due to wifi being off and 3g being on (it's the only part of the day it's been using cellular data: I was at the restaurant therefore no wifi). Possibly locatin services using the wifi even though it was disabled ? Anyway I'm not sure this could cause such a quick drain...
edit: as far as the signal bar color in battery status, I've found that grey-yellow stands for "signal 3/4", so it's rather good (solid green is signal 4/4). So it's probbaly not that either...
Ooops forgot the "time held awake" shots. It's definitely Google services messing around, but what... (details of Google services in previous post)
CoinCoin88 said:
Ooops forgot the "time held awake" shots. It's definitely Google services messing around, but what... (details of Google services in previous post)
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Click to collapse
some of those push the limits of what i would like to see personally, but none appear out of control to me.
im really not sure how you would go about taming some of that down though, without using a couple apps you dont want to use.
imo, you would need to control some of the wakelocks, and/or disable some of the receivers you done use.
the couple "nlp" wakelocks from google are going to account for a good bit of its waking. nlp is nothing more than google using your location information to build a database from it.
here is whats known about some of the more common offenders, and the testing results from limiting them.
That's what I feared... I'm usually not that bad with messing with the phone, and couldn't see anything obvious either. I've disabled "using wifi to locate" in wifi settings, I'll see how this drops the nlp wakelocks, for starters.
If anyone has a better idea, please don't hesitate
Sent from my RAZR HD using XDA Free mobile app
CoinCoin88 said:
That's what I feared... I'm usually not that bad with messing with the phone, and couldn't see anything obvious either. I've disabled "using wifi to locate" in wifi settings, I'll see how this drops the nlp wakelocks, for starters.
If anyone has a better idea, please don't hesitate
Sent from my RAZR HD using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have use quite a few of the more popular battery saving apps over the years. i just came across this one yesterday. its shaping up to be the best i have used to date. i wasnt using my phone except for a few minutes this morning, and it went 5 1/2 hours and was still @ 100%.
i also use greenify with root + exposed.
did you disable FAST DORMANCY? I have done it while on JB ? IT did not cause any prob.
Haven't disabled it, mostly because I've never been able to determine if it was being used by carriers in France or not. I've read somewhere that it wasn't, but the source was hardly documented. I've tried to disable it in JB however, and did not see any improvement.
Right now I've disabled Google Now and location history things. I'm trying to reduce the wakelocks as much as I can using settings available from stock rom (and understand at the same time what was causing them). Battery drain is still high, but I'm testing things every 10 min or so, so it's not really representative. I'll update here when I have a better idea of what's going on.
Another thing of interest is xposed with new module called Unbounce. There is a thread for it. All about minimizing wake locks
A few thoughts so far. I haven't tried Greenify or Unbounce yet, this will be the "final stage". For now I'm trying to minimize wakelocks as much as possible without installing third-party apps.
Here are a quick review of what I've found (NB: in the following I translated the menu names myself from french to english and didn't check their actual name... but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out which ones I'm referring to if the name is not exactly right):
1) Disabled Google Now and all "Google Location settings" (i.e. "Update location" and "Location history", found within "Google settings" in the drawer).
2) Set location settings to "minimize battery", that is with network and wi-fi.
3) In wi-fi advanced settings, disabled "search always available"
4) Locked the phone to 2G/3G only, because 4G coverage from my carrier (Free Mobile for the frenchies here ) is erratic at best, and caused many 3G/4G switches
5) Some "light" de-bloat (froze all Google apps I'm not using). At first I froze all my apps to mimick a fresh stock system, but there were really not that much difference.
Note that all the tests were ran (mostly) in the same location, on different days, so signal quality should be rather constant (and good) and therefore is not acting as a confounding factor in my tests.
Whats happening when 3G and Wi-Fi are both off ?
Obviously, disabling 3G and wifi gives a very good battery life. I'm talking about something like 2h screen-on and probably 30-40% after a full day (9am to midnight, roughly). I'll double check the exact values for this and update this post with a screenshot asap (= in the upcoming days). With this setting, wakelocks actually correspond to screen-on time. So it's probably the best one can achieve.
edit: 1h of voice communication, 1h15 of screen-on time, 10-15 sms, 1 received MMS (had to enable 3G a few seconds for that of course) => see Screenshot_2014-10-27-23-22-14.png
The decrease at the end corresponds to wifi+3G when I got back home and started using the phone "heavily". Roughly, 40% decrease in 12h. That is what I call a good battery life. Notice how the wakelocks closely match the screen on periods.
Whats happening when 3G is ON and Wi-Fi is OFF
We've discussed a bit the "fastdormancy" thing earlier here. Spending a whole day on 3G made the "modem fastdormancy" process drain a high share of battery (10-20% ? Can't remember exactly, but it was in the top-5 list of draining apps, and had a big wakelock time). Further proof that my carrier doesn't support it. I've therefore edited my build.prop to set
ro.mot.ds.fastdormancy.disable=true
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After that, the process was not found anymore in high-draining apps, and battery life was a little better (again, no values here, I'll update in a few days after I run the tests again and double-check everything).
Can't say much about Google location, but I'd say most requests were not executed.
Whats happening when 3G is OFF and Wi-Fi is ON
Wi-Fi at work did not cause any interesting drain. The phone sat there and was connected all day-long. There were probably a few Google requests to determine its location, with some nlpwakelock, but not really interesting.
What was really interesting was the behaviour outside my workplce (e.g. on the street). I have in my "known networks" some wi-fi hotspots (FreeWifi) that are enabled with my DSL provider: they provide me with codes from my contract that I can use in the street if any other of their customer has a wi-fi enabled on their modem (their is a dedicated SSID broadcasted from their modem). The phone connected automatically whenever it detected this SSID (which was... really often), but the captive portal (to enter credentials) was not filled, because the phone was in my pocket. This caused HUGE wakelocks and drained the battery incredibly fast. I'm talking about draining 50% in an hour or so. I could even feel the phone warming up in my pocket.
So, conclusion here: I think Wi-Fi could be a major cause of battery drain if you have some fav SSID that require credentials through a captive portal.
I'll update in a few days if I find anything else, and to add values to what i've stated here.
Hope that helps!

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