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I had seen one too many posts about people asking and complaining about battery drain issues on their G1 phones and it gets tiring to read it every 5-10 posts. So I decided to create this thinktank to pool in ideas from the community and create a set of best practices to maximize mileage of our phones. I'm currently using a HTC Dream with stock battery and my battery life is pretty good with light to medium usage. I would like to contribute to the community by creating this thinktank thread. I hope this can help as a guide for myself and for people who have been having numerous battery drain issues on 5.0.7-DS and variants of this distribution.
This is NOT the ultimate end-all solution for your battery problems. These are just steps to tackle the problem. If you want minimum to no battery drain keep it plugged to socket or plug it in a car battery.
If you would like to contribute your experience, or make any corrections please do not hesitate to post and I'll include them if they seem fit and attach your name as reference. I'll also do my best to give credit where credit is due. Please see the references at the bottom part of the post. Please do not clutter this thread by doing "I'll try this" or "It doesnt work" post. Its more important for all of us to know WHY it work/didnt work. Stick to topic, and be constructive. Be intelligent. Think first.
0. Update your Radio
Updating your G1's radio to the currently-latest version (2.22.23.02) should give you better battery life as well as signal reception (you can always switch back to 2.22.19.26I if it doesn't work out for you)
1. Recalibrate
Take note that BATTERY STATS ARE WIPED whenever you flash a new rom. (since full wipes are required whenever changing ROMS, and /data is where the battery info is.) This usually leads to inaccurate battery readings.
Here's how you recalibrate properly:
- Charge your phone till the GREEN LED shows up. Leave it for another hour.
- While plugged, go to recovery and wipe your battery stats.
- Right after the phone is booted up and settled, unplug and use as per normal till it shuts off. Then charge as per normal.
2. Disabling some basic phone hardware functionality
Turn off GPS, WIFI when not in use. And brightness set to manageable levels. Even loudspeaker. This is self-explanatory. Automation software like LOCALE can be useful, but usually all it takes for you to turn off your ringer, or turn on wifi when you're at a specific area is just a press on the Power control widget.
3. Overclocked kernels
Running on full overclock speed (by default is 528mhz or even higher on some kernels) will drain your battery faster and you'll notice significant heat increase when you're using your phone along with 3G.
Although im using pershoots 576mhz overclock kernel, I do not max it to 576 unless needed. The reason why I use his kernel is due to its UNDERVOLT capability. I have set up my phone using SetCPU
MAXFREQ: 480,
MINFREQ: 176
CPU Governor : ONDEMAND.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Usually I would set my phone to 384mhz if im going to stay on it longer (texting/long browsing etc). On the sleep mode I set it to 122mhz to 384mhz.
4. Tame your widgets, minimize using them.
Widgets that constantly connect to the internet, or constantly refreshing on the screen to update data being shown on the screen at extremely small intervals would also give you battery drain. Minimizing widgets can help minimize applications running in the background (free up memory) and avoiding your phone going on "partial sleep". Also tweak your widgets to update as less as manageably possible. If for some reason you can't see the next suggestion.
Aside from that you might want to disable Background syncing and do manual syncing. Aside from saving your data plan, it also saves battery life. You can disable it by doing the following:
Menu > Settings > Accounts & Sync > Background Data - OFF
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
manually update your facebook widget or contacts/gmail by
Menu > Accounts & Sync > Facebook (or GMail) > Sync.
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Click to collapse
5. 3G, 2G, switch off, or automate it.
You'll notice that inside the default settings for mobile networks. Setting to 2G will "save battery" which is actually true. The connection will definitely be slower, but if you like your phone to last longer throughout the day, either switch to 2G or turn it off altogether.
Also, similar to juice defender, I use 2g/3g toggle and toggle data as and when needed.
Another suggestion that I just found out recently is the use of Juice Defender app [d]. It automatically turns on or off your APN settings at intervals. You might want to try to look at that app if you cannot do #4
6. Disable live wallpapers. Auto Updating Sense
Remember that 2.1 isnt actually built for our old phones. and livewallpapers do require cpu/gpu processes. These are also running in the background and may run while your phone is asleep. So turning them off will benefit you.
7. Refrain from using Automated task killers and choose what you kill.
If you see that the app you had been trying to kill a few times keeps coming back. Stop killing it. Everytime you do, and whenever it respawns, CPU flies to 100%. Go back to #4.
8. Disable Market notifications.
- Open the Market application.
- Select the Menu key.
- Select Downloads.
- Select the Menu key again.
- Select Notifications.
- Select the Do not notify me radio button. press [Ok]
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Click to collapse
9. Make your phone sleep.
Open your spareparts application, Go to End button behavior. Select "Go to sleep"
10. Under the hood tweaks
10.1 Extending Wifi scan intervals
Edit the wifi scan interval in /system/build.sapphire.prop (or build.trout.prop if you have a G1)
# Time between scans in seconds. Keep it high to minimize battery drain.
# This only affects the case in which there are remembered access points,
# but none are in range.
wifi.supplicant_scan_interval = 45
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Click to collapse
Changing this number to just 90 second will half your wifi scans. Obviously larger numbers can mean less wifi scans which means more battery life, though it may take a little longer for your phone to pick up a remembered access point when in range. This is not just a CM/Eclair thing, it can also work for Donut phones.
This setting needs a reboot after editing the file. Edit it with Root Explorer, or nano as root if you have CM5, or pull the file with adb then edit it then push it back.
11. Remove your phone from your pocket whenever you can.
Body heat deteriorates battery life no kidding! there had been already studies to back it. I keep my phone either on my hand or outside of my pocket to keep it cool. Do whatever is manageable in your environment. If you're using your phone as a music player streaming using streamfurious and stuff. dont let your body heat add to the heat already been generated by your phone itself.
References / Updates :
[a] cyanogen recalibrating batteries : http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php/Troubleshooting#Battery_recalibration
thanks to mejorguille for correction on /data and wiping.
pershoot UV kernel: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=666850
[c] SetCPU main site : http://www.pokedev.com/setcpu/ - Thanks also to ShadowCH for tip.
[d] JuiceDefender : http://www.latedroid.com/2010/01/juicedefender.html -
- Thanks to shohid1234 for 3G-2G toggle
[e] Thanks to Jaymzz for tip on disabling market: http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?/topic/94-i-fixed-my-battery-drain/
[06/02] thanks to Arkain2k for tip #0
[06/04] Thanks to Foo_Blyat's tip for disabling background sync and manual updates for fb/gmail (item 4) http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6670907&postcount=36
[06/04] Thanks to Super Jamie for tip 10.1 extending wifi scans http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6684954&postcount=49
reserved in case something nice comes up
10. Remove your phone from your pocket whenever you can.
Body heat deteriorates battery life no kidding! there had been already studies to back it. I keep my phone either on my hand or outside of my pocket to keep it cool. Do whatever is manageable in your environment. If you're using your phone as a music player streaming using streamfurious and stuff. dont let your body heat add to the heat already been generated by your phone itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
really? isnt warmth charging batterys? in my old gameboy years i always put my batteries on the heater when the drained completely and after an hour i could play again with the old batteries.
1. Recalibrate [a]
Take note NOT TO WIPE BATTERY STATS whenever you flash a new rom and your battery is less than 90%. This usually leads to inaccurate battery readings. If you already wiped your battery during one of your flashes, here's how you recalibrate properly:
- Charge your phone till the GREEN LED shows up. Leave it for another hour.
- While plugged, go to recovery and wipe your battery stats.
- Right after the phone is booted up and settled, unplug and use as per normal till it shuts off. Then charge as per normal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true, but since battery stats are stored on the data partition, a data wipe also deletes the battery stats. A lot of rom's require a full wipe, meaning data and dalvik, so battery stats are deleted whether you select the option or not.
Since001 said:
really? isnt warmth charging batterys? in my old gameboy years i always put my batteries on the heater when the drained completely and after an hour i could play again with the old batteries.
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Click to collapse
Hi!
Yes Im very familiar with that practice because i do that too. The reason might be because of the composition of the battery (alkaline, non alkaline). Usually we put it under the sun so that the heat will help change the composition of the compound inside the battery in order for it to lower down its resistance. Leading to a "charge".
But now we are using Li-Ion batteries, and I do not suggest putting them under the sun because it will deteriorate your battery capacity holding charge and its lifecycle.
reference: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm see figure 1.
samaral said:
Hi!
Yes Im very familiar with that practice because i do that too. The reason might be because of the composition of the battery (alkaline, non alkaline). Usually we put it under the sun so that the heat will help change the composition of the compound inside the battery in order for it to lower down its resistance. Leading to a "charge".
But now we are using Li-Ion batteries, and I do not suggest putting them under the sun because it will deteriorate your battery capacity holding charge and its lifecycle.
reference: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm see figure 1.
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Click to collapse
Thanks, that makes sense.
Made me lol to see that there actually is a "battery university"
Thank you! this post is noted
mejorguille said:
This is true, but since battery stats are stored on the data partition, a data wipe also deletes the battery stats. A lot of rom's require a full wipe, meaning data and dalvik, so battery stats are deleted whether you select the option or not.
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Click to collapse
Noted. I have edited the guide to reflect your insight.
Thank you very much
how about going to setting - about phone - battery use?
there you can find out exactly whats killing your battery and take appropiate action.
Also, similar to juice defender, I use 2g/3g toggle and toggel data as and when needed. Using these two widgets i have no battery issues.
Post noted and added on top
shohid1234 said:
how about going to setting - about phone - battery use?
there you can find out exactly whats killing your battery and take appropiate action.
Also, similar to juice defender, I use 2g/3g toggle and toggel data as and when needed. Using these two widgets i have no battery issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Noted. Your suggestion is added on top.
change preferred network type helped for me increasing battery life
Hello all,
as describe in post
forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6432560&postcount=1
changing preferred network type worked for me.
default setting: WCDMA preferred drains my battery in a few hours, crazy
within CM 5.0.7-test7 I was able to change to: GSM/CDMA auto and it worked
But now in the final release 5.0.7-DS I can not select this setting. Perhaps it correlates to the this (PRL) info in brackets.
It seems that no "auto" setting want be working so I am trying WCDMA only right now and will see if I have a network in 2G networks too.
Bye morT
Hhmm let me think…
Running a prrocessor that's massively overclocked with software that was never meant to run on our g1's I have an idea.
****** off back to stock or get over it
I mean seriously people come on, we have set cpu for power profile management, basic battery usage which is dim screen, turn off wifi and 3g when not in use blah blah blah same **** written in every guide about battery life for ANY roms from cupcake to eclair.
As I said, get over it or go back to stock.
[highlight]Mod Edit: Please watch your language and don't flame others.[/highlight]
im sorry does turning on "display battery status" in spare parts still effect battery life? TIA
Ive noticed that bluetooth is killlllling battery life, but dont know if its normal. I charged to 100% and turned everything on, leaving screen on the whole time and what not.
While I was actively using the net over WiFi, I had nothing using the bluetooth, and both seem to eat up 20%..
This might be normal, might not be, but thought it was odd that it being on, but not in use, ate up just as much as functioning, in use, wifi.
whats funny to me is as soon as my phone dies i plug it up reboot it a few times and my battery is at 70%
.... i think its not reading correctly .. i mean fully charged play talk text browse till it shuts off .. plug it in turn it right back on then reboot ..
and my battery is back at 70% which is weird ... anyone else notice that???
also wifi, gps is on screen brightness is standard !!!
batteries really seem to be the least developed technology in our high tech phones. feels like a sportscar with a one gallon tank...the fun's over quickly...
turned off my 3G and got a lot of additional battery life. with bad 3G reception (like in the place I live in) the phone was sometimes sucked empty in just a few hours, now I get two days.
another thing that really helped me extend my battery life was turning on airplane mode when I went to bed.
how about dont use overclock or any other cpu speed up tool....maybe the speed they are factory set to is there for a reason...Hmmmmmmm
dcowboys2184 said:
whats funny to me is as soon as my phone dies i plug it up reboot it a few times and my battery is at 70%
.... i think its not reading correctly .. i mean fully charged play talk text browse till it shuts off .. plug it in turn it right back on then reboot ..
and my battery is back at 70% which is weird ... anyone else notice that???
also wifi, gps is on screen brightness is standard !!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should go through a battery recalibration - steps on the first page.
Best Practices for Improving Battery Life for CM 5.0.7 (and variant ROMS) is to use this ROM, Thanks.
Do whatever you like, show or hide battery status in the Spare parts, calibrate or not....the battery remains....for loOng....enough time....
hot/cold controversy
Since001 said:
really? isnt warmth charging batterys? in my old gameboy years i always put my batteries on the heater when the drained completely and after an hour i could play again with the old batteries.
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Click to collapse
Since I have a background in electrical theory and chemistry, let me end this debate once and for all: heat makes atoms (and therefore molecules) move faster. Lack of heat (cold) makes them move slower. In general, fast-moving atoms in batteries mean MORE power, not less. The reason your car doesn't want to start when temperatures are subzero is that the battery acid (electrolyte) molecules are moving too slowly to oxidize (give off e-, electrons) and turn back into positive ions. The same is true for the ol' Gameboy AAs -- put them on the heater, the dry cell warm up, and more electrons are transferred to the anode by anions, the positive ions (cations) are more able to travel to travel back to the cathode (in the case of dry/wet-cell rechargeable storage batteries). Heat acts as a catalyst to produce electricity. Some of you may have even taken your car battery indoors if the electrolyte froze in the winter. Some of your cars may have battery blankets or even battery heaters if you live really far up north. In addition, the process of charging a Li-Ion, Ni-mH, or even lead acid battery will produce heat, because chemical conversion is bi-directional, but anyway . . . you charge the G1, it gets hot. You use it heavily, it gets hot. You know you're spending electrons somewhere when it gets hot period. Keeping the phone cool will not increase battery life or make it charge fast. What lower battery temperatures will do is lengthen the battery's overall life. What happens if you leave meat out in 100F/30C temperatures? It goes bad quickly. Same principle in Li-ion. The rechargeable battery is ideally an efficient, closed system of ion exchange that should work for many (hundreds) of duty cycles, but eventually heat plays a role in deterioration of the electrolyte and chemical catalysts inside.
So put your extra charged batteries (but you don't want a Li-ion or Ni-mH battery to sit very long in an discharged state, so be careful here) in the refrigerator in an airtight bag (rotating on a daily basis) if you really want them to last a long time, but don't charge them frozen (ka-boom!) and remember cold batteries charge slowly. Car batteries in sub-tropical areas are replaced at a rate of about once every 24 months, but in Sweden? Maybe every five or six years. Cold temperatures slow down chemical deterioration just like cold keeps that steak from becoming maggot food.
Again, a hot G1 may weaken its own internal components and batteries over time, but putting it on ice won't give you an extra 6 hours to oogle Miley Cyrus' vBlog
Hope this helps.
For me, unless I'm expecting a text or a call always have my phone on airplane mode. I turn it off every hour or so to see if I got any unimportant texts, and then turn it back on
Hey guys,
So after many months with the XT720 and alot of flashing and trying to get the most out of my battery, i've come up with a few conclusions about battery life in general and how to extend it. I thought I'd share here. This is mostly aimed at people who are new to android and have not experimented like some of the more advanced users we have on this forum. Hope you find this helpful and please feel free to make additions.
General Battery Info
The XT720 was my first android phone, and I came from a long line of typical nokia phones whose batteries would last for ages. I had no idea the kind of power an android device would use. When I started out using it, i was surprised at how quickly the battery would die. You'd think with advancing software we'd have better batteries but sadly batteries are lagging behind in technology. Generally speaking you can expect the following battery life from your XT720.
Heavy use: 10-14 hours
Moderate use: 16-20 hours
Light use: 1 day - 1 day 12 hrs.
Note: New batteries improve with each charge cycle. It is recommended to go through a few complete charge cycles when you buy a new phone. After that, complete discharges are not recommended and its smart to start charging your phone when it hits the 20-25% mark.
How to improve battery life
1: Battery Calibration
If you've ever flashed a new ROM, you must have noticed a sharp decline in battery performance. This is partly due to old battery statistics left behind from your old ROM. Android is a smart OS and collects information over time. The more you use it, the more accurate it gets. In the same way it collects information from your battery usage and reports your battery percentages according to that. When you flash a new ROM, sometimes android thinks that your battery is 100% when its really lower than that and that causes relative reduced battery performance. To deal with that it is recommended that you use a nifty free app called Battery Calibration from the android market. What this does it removes the old battery stats and allows your new ROM to create its own battery stats. Charge your battery to full, use the battery calibration. Drain once till phone turns off by itself and charge to full again. You will notice a sharp increase in battery life.
2. Battery Managment
We all know that android has its own battery management built in but it usually doesnt give complete information about the phone. For that you need to dive deeper into the settings. Usually if you experience battery drain its because of a rogue app and believe it or not some common apps you wont think off drain unnecessary battery. To see your complete Battery Stats input this code into the dialer.
Code:
*#*#4636#*#*
This will take you to a bunch of options. What you're interested in is Battery History. When you tap that it will show you two drop down menu's.
1) Other Usage
2) Since last unplugged
Other usage shows you how long your phone has been running and how long it has been asleep. Also shows you how long your wifi has been on and running and how long your screen has been on. It is important to see how long your phone has been running. For example if your phone has an uptime of 20 hours and its been running 5 hours out of that. Your run time is 25%. Which is very good. Sometimes an app can run even when your phone screen is off. This will represent a longer run time even when you have your phone lying on a desk or something. See this setting and correlate with the amount you have used your phone. Does it seem normal? If no then use the first drop down menu and select
Partial Wake:
Partial wake is basically, any app which takes your phone out of sleep mode to use the CPU even when youre screen is off. These are apps which need to sync or use the phone resources. In this you will see a list of apps and how much they have caused a partial wake lock. See anything unsual? For me one app that caused unsual drainage was latitute. Yes, i had simply signed into it and i didnt know it was updating my location every 5 minutes. Extreme battery drain for me even when my phone was idle. See which app was draining your battery and either tweak the settings or remove altogether.
GPS, Sensors, CPU:
You can also see these in the first drop down menu. Certain apps like screeble use the sensors alot, and hence cause drain. Obviously games, camera, will stress the CPU. See if anything is causing drain in that and adjust accordingly.
Miscellaneous Information
After you have dealt with rogue apps that you don't use that drain youre battery your battery life will depend on how you use your phone. But hopefull these tips will help you with increasing your battery life. I do have some more information on different settings and supposed battery saving applications.
Autosync: When you enable auto sync, you allow google and other accounts to sync on a regular basis. This is important for people who need to use push email etc. It does not drain battery IF you tweak what you need synced. In google for example you can have your contacts, calendar, google+, google reader, gmail all to sync by default. If you just need email, please untick the rest. This will help you save battery life. Increase your update times for facebook and google+ if you dont recieve many updates all the time or turn them off altogether. If you have many services syncing at the same time you will get battery drain.
Wifi Sleep Policy: This is sort of a hidden menu. If you go into wireless & networks >> Wifi settings >> settings key >> advanced >> wifi sleep policy. This has three settings. Never close down wifi, never close when charging, or close with screen off. If you choose never your wifi will always be on, which will in turn crunch the **** out of your battery. If you use it off with screen off, remember it takes about 5 minutes to turn the wifi off. I personally use the never with plugged in. Its an intermediate. So when im plugged in wifi always stays on and when im not it follows the screen off protocol.
Wifi Vs Mobile Data: Having mobile data on all the time, does not drain battery. The only time the battery gets drained is when the data connection is active i.e you have many apps on autosync youll see your battery going down. If you arent doing anything and your phone is connected to Edge or 3G your battery will drain regularly. 2G networks drain less than 3G keep that in mind. If you are actively using your connection, wifi will take less battery because speeds are faster and you will be using it for a little time. Also your signal strength has alot of effect on battery. If you have crappy 3G signals your radio will actively be searching for a connection the same goes for wifi. That is important to keep in mind.
Control Background data: By selecting this option you can allow or disallow apps to connect to data without any permission. Some apps require this like the android market. If you uncheck this apps wont be able to sync automatically in the background.
Milestone Overclocking: This is fairly obvious. The higher you overclock with higher vsel the more battery drain you will have. Some use set cpu with profiles but I found that if i set the setcpu too low while idle It takes time for the cpu to charge up when i recieve a call or turn the screen on. Ringtones lag etc etc. I let android do my CPU management and its fine. and comfortable setting would be 850 MHZ, 56 vsel but you can change according to your phone usage.
Juice Defender/ Screebl / Task killers:
In my personal experience with juice defender ultimate I found that with the above precautions juice defender didnt make much of a difference and actually used more battery. First off theres an extra process going on in the back. Second activating and deactivating the connection everytime the screen goes off uses more juice because your radio has to search for the signal hundreds of times as compared to not having it in the first place. Screebl is good if you dont want your screen to annoyingly turn off while youre doing something but it surely doesnt save battery life. Task killers are a no no for android. They kill tasks which start up anyways, its better to use autokiller memory optimizer which tweaks androids internal memory settings and allows for more free ram without killing processes without reason.
System Apps:
Some system apps run uselessly in the background specially with stock ROM's this is called bloatware. Remove all unused system apps with titanium backup to stop them from running in the background for no reason at all.
A final word
Finally after all this tweaking, just use your phone as normal. Dont worry about the battery all the time checking how much its drained, itll mess your head up and make you enjoy your phone less. Battery temperature also changes battery life. Keep your phone out of the sun or in hot places.
Thanks, good article.
Very detailed and useful
Sent from my Milestone XT720 using XDA App
Thanks for this interessting article!
Could you make a list of the bloatware that can be safely removed?
I figured this would just list all the usual stuff I've heard. I'm glad to say I was wrong! A bunch of useful info here I now plan to put to use. Many thanks
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...
Thanks guys, glad you people found it useful.
syrenz said:
Might want to mention the display being the biggest drain of battery on this phone. Setting it to automatic brightness or lower will increase battery life. I love the screen at full brightness so I don't really follow that, but for those looking to squeeze some extra time and don't mind less brightness...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes! Can't believe I missed that one out. In the start id use the lowest brightness setting, which would be fine indoors. But outside it was impossible to see the phone because of its insanely reflective glass. Since we have an ambient light sensor I use it on automatic and it does a good job. Full bright strains my eyes abit thats why I dont keep it on full bright So for people really wanting to save the juice you can keep your brightness on the lowest level. Also when you take the phone out of your pocket and use it, its better to put the phone to sleep with the power button than let it timeout by itself. Those 10-15 seconds for each time you use phone count towards many minutes of unused display time in the end and does make a difference.
This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...
androidlover123 said:
This is a very gd post with lots o useful info!! ok i have a qn, is using the phone a lot while the charging good for the battery? And if u let the battery charge even though its already 100 percent for an hour good? srry if it is noob qn...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Using your phone while charging does not affect your battery life, and is neither good nor bad. It is perfectly normal to use your phone while charging and is sometimes recommended while doing battery intensive tasks for example navigating while driving, wifi tethering, playing memory intensive games and finally outputing video through HDMI.
2. Overcharging was a phenomenom is older lithium ion battery. New batteries have bypass circuits. So when your phone reaches complete charge, it does not charge any further. So you should not be worried about overcharging your XT720.
Hope this helps.
Excelent article and good quality info. Thanks and best regards!
awesome article! Great information. Thanks a lot for putting that together. I have already started using a few of the tips mentioned.
u da maaan dude, thanks for a very detailed and informative article
Found this shared on the web while browsing around... From g+ of a google employee who works with android...
Her post
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105051985738280261832/posts/FV3LVtdVxPT
Here's the article for lazy people like me...
Today's myth debunking:
"The battery indicator in the status/notification bar is a reflection of the batterystats.bin file in the data/system/ directory."
No, it does not.
This file is used to maintain, across reboots, low-level data about the kinds of operations the device and your apps are doing between battery changes. That is, it is solely used to compute the blame for battery usage shown in the "Battery Use" UI in settings.
That is, it has deeply significant things like "app X held a wake lock for 2 minutes" and "the screen was on at 60% brightness for 10 minutes."
It has no impact on the current battery level shown to you.
It has no impact on your battery life.
Deleting it is not going to do anything to make your more device more fantastic and wonderful... well, unless you have some deep hatred for seeing anything shown in the battery usage UI. And anyway, it is reset every time you unplug from power with a relatively full charge (thus why the battery usage UI data resets at that point), so this would be a much easier way to make it go away.
neojith said:
Found this shared on the web while browsing around... From g+ of a google employee who works with android...
Her post
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105051985738280261832/posts/FV3LVtdVxPT
Here's the article for lazy people like me...
Today's myth debunking:
"The battery indicator in the status/notification bar is a reflection of the batterystats.bin file in the data/system/ directory."
No, it does not.
This file is used to maintain, across reboots, low-level data about the kinds of operations the device and your apps are doing between battery changes. That is, it is solely used to compute the blame for battery usage shown in the "Battery Use" UI in settings.
That is, it has deeply significant things like "app X held a wake lock for 2 minutes" and "the screen was on at 60% brightness for 10 minutes."
It has no impact on the current battery level shown to you.
It has no impact on your battery life.
Deleting it is not going to do anything to make your more device more fantastic and wonderful... well, unless you have some deep hatred for seeing anything shown in the battery usage UI. And anyway, it is reset every time you unplug from power with a relatively full charge (thus why the battery usage UI data resets at that point), so this would be a much easier way to make it go away.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did somebody try this?
To almost double the Battery Life you can do these steps exactly:
1) Turn your device ON and Charge the device for 8 hours or more
2) Unplug the device and Turn the phone OFF and charge for 1 hour
3) Unplug the device Turn ON wait 2 minutes and Turn OFF and charge for another hour
I heard it from the same forum.
While I've had many Android phones, this is the first phone that I decided to use a battery charging controller to regulate how my battery is charged. I just wanted to share my journey with others and encourage others to try this out if you are not already.
Although there are several different battery charging controllers out there (and more than one named "ACC" which makes it even more confusing) I decided to use the Advanced Charging Controller module developed by VR25. I choose this module because I felt it provided the most customization.
Step 1 - Installation
Installing the module is easy. It is listed in the Magisk repository. Simply browse the available modules and find the one titled, "Advanced Charging Controller (acc) created by VR25 @ XDA-developers". There are several ACC modules, so make sure you install the one by VR25 to follow this thread.
Magisk will flash the module and start it automatically. You don't even need to reboot, although it is the only way to clear the Magisk notification that the module will be started at the next reboot.
Step 2 - Changing the Charging Switch Setting
I found that the default charging switch setting (auto) does not work reliably with our phones. Therefore I would suggest changing it using the commands below. Personally I have choose option 2 (battery/charge_disable 0 1) but I listed all the options with the quirks that I have found with each one.
Step 2.1 - open your preferred command line app - I use Terminal Emulator.
Step 2.2 - type "su" and hit enter to gain root
Step 2.3 - type "acc -s s" and hit enter - this is the command that allows us to select another charging switch
Step 2.4 - type what number of the charging switch you want to use.
Here are the available charging switches and the issues I have found with them:
1) Automatic - this switch tries to cycle through the available switches until if find one that "works".
- Passes the ACC switch test (type "acc -t"): Yes
- Charges and discharges according to the cooldownratio: No - I found that the phone would charge anytime it was plugged in and below the Pause threshold. It did not seem to wait until the battery level was below the Resume threshold.
- Works with battery idle mode (the phone will pull power from the AC power and not the battery when the battery reaches the Pause threshold): Yes
- Begins charging when phone reaches Resume threshold: Yes
- Charging "chime" and battery icons correctly reflect if the phone is charging or discharging: ???
- Suffers from wakelock issues when phone is plugged in but not charging: It does have a "overheat_mitigation" wakelock when on the battery idle mode, but because the phone is not using the battery power, it doesn't effect battery life and therefore I don't concern myself with this issue.
- Other issues:
2) battery/charge_disable 0 1 :
- Passes the ACC switch test (type "acc -t"): Yes
- Charges and discharges according to the cooldownratio: Yes
- Works with battery idle mode (the phone will pull power from the AC power and not the battery when the battery reaches the Pause threshold): Yes
- Begins charging when phone reaches Resume threshold: Yes
- Charging "chime" and battery icons correctly reflect if the phone is charging or discharging: ???
- Suffers from wakelock issues when phone is plugged in but not charging: It does have a "overheat_mitigation" wakelock when on the battery idle mode, but because the phone is not using the battery power, it doesn't effect battery life and therefore I don't concern myself with this issue.
- Other issues:3) battery/input_suspend 0 1:
- Passes the ACC switch test (type "acc -t"): Yes
- Charges and discharges according to the cooldownratio: Yes
- Works with battery idle mode (the phone will pull power from the AC power and not the battery when the battery reaches the Pause threshold): No - phone begins discharging from battery when Pause threshold is reached but the phone is still plugged in
- Begins charging when phone reaches Resume threshold: Yes
- Charging "chime" and battery icons correctly reflect if the phone is charging or discharging: No - may show charging icon when phone is really discharging, especially during cooldownratio times and the chime doesn't always ring when charging resumes.
- Suffers from wakelock issues when phone is plugged in but not charging: No
- Other issues: The phone seems to follow the cooldown charge/discharge times even before reaching the cooldown threshold. I find the phone pausing for 10 seconds (my cool down ratio) when the batter level might be a 50% - long before the 60% cooldown threshold I have set in the config file.4) dc/input_suspend 0 1:
- Passes the ACC switch test (type "acc -t"): NO, so this switch doesn't work with ACC
- Charges and discharges according to the cooldownratio:
- Starts discharging when the phone reaches the Pause threshold:
- Begins charging when phone reaches Resume threshold:
- Charging "chime" and battery icons correctly reflect if the phone is charging or discharging:
- Suffers from wakelock issues when phone is plugged in but not charging:
- Other issues:5) battery/charge_control_limit 0 1:
- Passes the ACC switch test (type "acc -t"): NO, so this switch doesn't work with ACC
- Charges and discharges according to the cooldownratio:
- Starts discharging when the phone reaches the Pause threshold:
- Begins charging when phone reaches Resume threshold:
- Charging "chime" and battery icons correctly reflect if the phone is charging or discharging:
- Suffers from wakelock issues when phone is plugged in but not charging:
- Other issues:
Step 3 - Configuration
You can configure the ACC controller using a couple of different methods. You can do everything using command lines, you can use the beta ACC app (see note below), or you can edit a config file that ACC creates when it is installed. Personally I found that editing the config file was the quickest and easiest method to make general changes.
The ACC config file is found at /storage/emulated/0/acc The file is named "config.txt" You can open the file with a text editor. I personally use the app Root Explorer. I long click on the file name, and then press the three dot button in the upper right hand corner. Choose "Open in Text Editor" and the config file will open and allow changes to be made. Saving the file will automatically push the changes to ACC, you do not need to reboot or restart the ACC daemon for changes to take effect.
I won't go into a lot of detail about all of the different configuration options here as the developer's xda thread is the best place to get that type of information. But I will talk about the most basic setting - the "capacity" setting. It is the second setting listed in the config file and it should look something like "capacity=0, 60, 70-80". Here is a break down of what those numbers mean:
- The First Number (0): is battery level were the phone will shut off. The default setting of 0 means the phone will turn off when the battery level hits 0. Personally I don't want my battery completely draining, so I have it set at 5.
- The Second Number (60): is the battery level where the module starts it's "cool down" functionality. Cool down (listed as coolDownRatio in the config file) is where the phone will stop charging briefly and then restart charging. The default "cool down" setting is coolDownRatio=50/10 which means the phone will charge for 50 seconds, and then stop charging for 10 seconds before charging again for 50 seconds, etc, etc, etc. This is designed to keep the battery temps low. A battery with a charge level less than this number (60 in this example) will charge without pausing, but when the battery level gets to this number or above, the phone will charge and pause based on the coolDownRatio.
- The Third Number (70): is the "resume" value. If the phone's battery level is below this resume value, the phone will charge. If the battery level is at or above this resume value, the phone will not charge even while plugged in.
- The Fourth Number (80): is the "pause" value. This is the battery level where the phone will stop charging and should not charge above this value.
The default settings are set this way because research has shown that a phone's battery will last the longest with the least amount of battery capacity loss if it is charged to a max of 80% of the battery's capacity, and allowed to discharge just a small amount (10%) before being charged again. I realize this goes against the old "wives tale" that our phone's batteries have a very limited number of charges and it is best to limit the number of charges by only charging the phone when it gets to a low level. This is not true in actual battery performance however and if you charge like this, you are actually decreasing your battery's life expectancy and performance.
Obviously the default settings may not be the best setting for you. The default settings are probably only practical for a device that is plugged in 100% of the time. Personally I have changed my capacity setting to capacity=5, 60, 70-90. This means my phone will turn off when the battery level reaches 5% (something it has never dropped to yet), it is charged to a max of 90% and will discharge to 70% before charging again, and the cooldown charging cycling starts when the battery is 60% or higher. Obviously I'm not on my charger all the time, so it is very common for my battery to drop below 70%. However, if the battery is below 70% and I have a charger at my disposal, I am going to charge the phone back to 90% rather than let it the battery levels continue to fall.
Final Notes and Misc Thoughts
There are lots of other options and commands you can use in ACC. Feel free to share any changes you like to make, or post if you are having problems getting the module to work as expected on the 3a. I hope this helps some people feel give the module a try.
There is an ACC app that is available now that allows you to control some of the settings from a nice GUI. I personally did not like using it as I found it would overwrite settings in the config file that I was not intending to be changed.
There is an ACC telegram group if you want to join and have direct communication with the developer and others.
Thanks to @jellopuddingstick for educating me on what the battery idle mode does and why it is beneficial to have it working!
sic0048 said:
I just wanted to share my journey with others and encourage others to try this out if you are not already.
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Click to collapse
Was doing the same research when this popped up -- great job!
Can you discuss more on what unintended settings were overwritten by the app....
Also, thoughts have seem to have standardized now to lop off 40% of usuable capacity by having the battery charge btw 20-80% to extend life, such as... "capacity=20, 60, 70-80".
How were the defaults for ACC set and why have you chosen otherwise?
duh1 said:
Was doing the same research when this popped up -- great job!
Can you discuss more on what unintended settings were overwritten by the app....
Also, thoughts have seem to have standardized now to lop off 40% of usuable capacity by having the battery charge btw 20-80% to extend life, such as... "capacity=20, 60, 70-80".
How were the defaults for ACC set and why have you chosen otherwise?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The app works by writing to the normal config file. But it also has three profiles loaded into memory automatically when you install it. This makes it very easy to press on one of the other profiles by accident and totally change your settings. I eventually deleted all the "extra" profiles, but the charging switch isn't changeable via the app either (it seems like it defaults to auto) so the app will overwrite that setting back to auto if you aren't paying attention.
In the long run I found that using the config file was extremely easy and I found myself having the check the config file anytime I used the app to make sure it wasn't changing unintended settings, so I decided to remove the app and just use the config file.
As far as capacity, I decided to run 5, 60, 70-90. I think it is a good compromise between having a decent amount of capacity available and also not charging the phone to 100% all the time. I could probably get away with a limit of 80 or 85, but ultimately decided on 90. I do try to charge my phone when it hits 70 or below if I have a charger available vs waiting to do a larger/longer single charge.
sic0048 said:
I do try to charge my phone when it hits 70 or below if I have a charger available vs waiting to do a larger/longer single charge.
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Click to collapse
Don't you think 70 is too high to begin charging just to bring it back to 90. Doesn't number of charge cycles kill battery life as much as heat and fast rate charging?
Any good apps you like that intuitively monitor battery health, besides just stats and charts, that does it like apple, as a percent of remaining chargeable capacity?
Btw OT question, looking to move over my wifi connections from the previous phone and can't find the wpa_supplicant.conf file in /data/misc/wifi in the 3a. No reference online mentions that it's been moved. Any idea where they're hiding it now? Thx...
duh1 said:
Don't you think 70 is too high to begin charging just to bring it back to 90. Doesn't number of charge cycles kill battery life as much as heat and fast rate charging?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
According to this research (https://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries/), the more your battery discharges, the fewer discharge cycles it will survive before really negatively effecting battery performance. So discharging your phone just 10% might give you 6000 discharge cycles, while discharging your phone 60% might reduce these discharge cycles by 90%.
Obviously I have to rely on other people's research as there is no way I can adequately test this myself. But I do trust this research as accurate. I know with other phones I've had where I did not try to control the charging system I have had to replace the batteries with pretty regular occurrence. But I would leave the phone on the charger overnight (not a good thing for battery life) and try to discharge the battery a lot before charging it back again (also not a good thing for battery life). That's why I decided to finally look into using a charging controller like ACC with this new phone.
duh1 said:
Any good apps you like that intuitively monitor battery health, besides just stats and charts, that does it like apple, as a percent of remaining chargeable capacity?
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Click to collapse
I've been using the ExperimentalX helper app to track battery usage. (You don't need to use their kernel to use the helper app). I like it because it breaks the battery usage stats into two parts: when the screen is on, and when the screen is off, but it doesn't attempt to give a percent of remaining chargeable capacity. I'm not aware of an app that does that (although I too would be interested to know if such and app exists).
duh1 said:
Btw OT question, looking to move over my wifi connections from the previous phone and can't find the wpa_supplicant.conf file in /data/misc/wifi in the 3a. No reference online mentions that it's been moved. Any idea where they're hiding it now? Thx...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the info you are looking for is now stored at /data/misc/wifi/WifiConfigStore.xml.
As I use my phone more, I realize that none of the charging switches seem to work 100% of the time as expected. I'll continue to do trial and error tests, but please share if you find a switch that works consistently.
I've continued to edit my original post to provide as much information about the different charging switches and the issues I see with each one. Hopefully it is easy to understand.
I still find myself defaulting to the 3rd charging switch option and while it can act a little erratic sometimes, it does work normally most of the time.
Is it possible to disable/bypass the cool down period?
creeve4 said:
Is it possible to disable/bypass the cool down period?
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Click to collapse
The default setting is for it to be turned off I believe. Look in the config file for "coolDownRatio=" and see if it is blank. If it is not, you can remove everything after the equal sign.
Another way to do it is set the cooldown threshold number to be equal or higher than your "pause" threshold. So you might set this as "capacity=5, 100, 70-90". The 100 represents the value at which the cooldown process would start, which is higher than the pause threshold (at 90 in this example) and therefore would never kick in.
All this being said, I find that the #3 switch option seems to allow the cooldown pause/charge process to start below the set cooldown threshold. I have my cooldown threshold set at 60, yet find the phone pausing and charging at battery levels below this threshold. This should not be happening, but is something I can live with, so I haven't bothered to follow up with it.
After several more weeks of use, I've updated the initial post again. I found some quirks with the "automatic" charging switch, so I have gone back to selecting charging switch option 2 (battery/charge_disable 0 1).
Great job!
May I ask you whick kernel you are using for "battery idle mode" support? It should not be supported on stock kernel.
Thanks
Hi, haven't had a Pixel for a long time (last one was a 4 XL) so pardon my Aly question
Brand new Pixel 7 Pro, charged at 100% and went to bed with AOD on, woke up after 7h with 92% battery: is this normal?
PS: I'm used to Xiaomi 13 Pro with AOD off using almost 0% overnight.
Thx
I'd be very surprised if a phone really consumed 0% over 7 hours, WITH AOD on. Infinite battery life?
That said, sounds about normal, especially until the system sets.
I believe Xiaomi is sort of cheating with batt %, since in the morning stays at 100% even after 15 mins of usage
By the way, I disabled AOD and will test tonight.
Happy to be back to a Pixel though
Also note that if you put it face down on a flat surface it will activate DND, and do try the bedtime mode since it reduces battery consumption.
How do you enable bedtime mode?
Look in settings, it's under Digital Wellbeing
Thx
Battery will adjust with use, it consumes quite a bit more than normal the first few days.
Once it adjusted, for me it went down to 0.6-0.7%/hr. That was before I started installing apps though!
What about charging speed?
Is there a switch to turn on/off adaptive charging to have quicker charging during the day?
Nope, you have to settle for it. For me, it's fast enough to be honest...
The Xioami.waa charging at 120W 0 to 100 in 20 mins
thegios said:
The Xioami.waa charging at 120W 0 to 100 in 20 mins
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Great for long term battery life.
Xiaomi gives me a new phone for free every quarter, who cares
thegios said:
I believe Xiaomi is sort of cheating with batt %, since in the morning stays at 100% even after 15 mins of usage
By the way, I disabled AOD and will test tonight.
Happy to be back to a Pixel though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not cheating really. Just their charging "design". If you keep a Xiaomi phone on a charger even after it charges 100%, it actually charges a bit more than 100% you just can't see it. So, from 100% to 99% is like not actually 1% of battery capacity but like 3-4-5%.
krakout said:
Also note that if you put it face down on a flat surface it will activate DND, and do try the bedtime mode since it reduces battery consumption.
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Click to collapse
I noticed that, when on charge, if I simply turn on Do Not Disturb, the adaptive charging notification appears, but if I turn on bedtime mode, the adaptive charging notification disappears.
thegios said:
I noticed that, when on charge, if I simply turn on Do Not Disturb, the adaptive charging notification appears, but if I turn on bedtime mode, the adaptive charging notification disappears.
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Disable global power management; it never did work right. Find the power hogs and deal with each on a case by case basis.
If you find the source(s) of the excessive drain and correct them, the excess battery usage disappears immediately. Close apps before you put the device in sleep mode.
Developer options > standby apps, if all buckets show as active global power management is disable. If various bucket states exist and/or those states can be altered, it is active. It can't be disable here; power management settings. Altering background battery usage in the individual app settings doesn't invoke global power management...
blackhawk said:
Disable global power management; it never did work right. Find the power hogs and deal with each on a case by case basis.
If you find the source(s) of the excessive drain and correct them, the excess battery usage disappears immediately. Close apps before you put the device in sleep mode.
Developer options > standby apps, if all buckets show as active global power management is disable. If various bucket states exist and/or those states can be altered, it is active. It can't be disable here; power management settings. Altering background battery usage in the individual app settings doesn't invoke global power management...
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Click to collapse
I have not understood a word of your reasoning... Apologies...