Battery drain while idle - "suspend" process - Galaxy S I9000 General

Hello,
When I got my SGS it only ate 2-3% of the battery during the night. Since then I've tried many different firmwares, currently on the latest JM6, and all of them have had a very annoying problem. It eats 8-10% of the battery during night. I haven't changed anything, wifi is "always on" to avoid it eating battery using 3G. Ofcourse I've tried turning it off, too. The funny thing is that using Spare Parts it seems like it's the "suspend" process using a lot of CPU, which I believe it definately shouldn't. Some times after flashing it seems okay and can sleep properly, but then it goes haywire again - without having installed anything since it worked. Anyone else having "suspend" process using a lot of CPU?
To test, install Spare Parts. Plug in the charger, and remove it again to reset stats (Spare Parts uses some system app to show the CPU usage, and its default view is "since last unplugged", very practical). Go to bed. Sleep. Wake up. Start Spare Parts. Select "Battery History". Click "Other usage", select "CPU usage". Wait for half a minute or so (it needs to load data, if you click anything now you won't get CPU time used). Find the "suspend" process. Check how much CPU it has used.
I might add, that this doesn't seem to have anything to do with wake locks, it's something strange in the system itself.

try next time with all unecessary items off
like WiFi, GPS, BT anything that you don't use when you go to sleep

AllGamer said:
try next time with all unecessary items off
like WiFi, GPS, BT anything that you don't use when you go to sleep
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, but I've noticed something strange - still checking, but it seems as if I haven't got my SD card inserted, it looks okay...

I use JM5, Wifi Always on, 3G Always on, Auto sync off when unnecessary.
I was working at the polling booths on Election day here in AU, that's from 7:30AM till 11:30PM, I didn't really need to use my phone for anything, but when I got out 16 hours later I noticed that I had only lost about 3-4% battery.
It's pretty good. D:
For the record:
Bluetooth - This only needs to be turned off if there are devices that auto-pair with the phone, such as a bluetooth headset, in which case you probably want it on anyway?
GPS - This does not need to be turned off as it only uses battery when a service is actively requesting a gps fix. For example if you have Maps open it will drain more battery, but it won't on standby unless you are using Location tracking software or otherwise location aware software.
WiFi - Truth to be told, WiFi when connected uses less power than a 3G connection on standby. WiFi does have the potential to use a lot more power than 3G because of the higher speed potential over a local wireless network. In most cases it's pretty safe to have WiFi always on, however it should be noted that when WiFi is NOT connected it will constantly scan for access points to connect to, this process uses power ON TOP of 3G, so it would be wasteful to leave this on unnecessarily unless you were using it for Google Location services via WiFi access points.
3G Data - The only reason this 'uses power' is because it's a always-on connection, you can partially remedy this by giving WiFi always-on priority saving both mobile data quota and some power. 2G uses a lot less power than 3G simply because it uses the GSM chip in the phone, not it's own higher power chip. So switch to 2G if u don't need high speed data, but want always on Push notifications and such. (EDGE is fairly fast, but I only get GPRS and 3G on my carrier. )
Brightness - This phone has a super bright screen, use something in the lower settings, auto brightness at day if you want.

sturmeh said:
I use JM5, Wifi Always on, 3G Always on, Auto sync off when unnecessary.
I was working at the polling booths on Election day here in AU, that's from 7:30AM till 11:30PM, I didn't really need to use my phone for anything, but when I got out 16 hours later I noticed that I had only lost about 3-4% battery.
It's pretty good. D:
For the record:
Bluetooth - This only needs to be turned off if there are devices that auto-pair with the phone, such as a bluetooth headset, in which case you probably want it on anyway?
GPS - This does not need to be turned off as it only uses battery when a service is actively requesting a gps fix. For example if you have Maps open it will drain more battery, but it won't on standby unless you are using Location tracking software or otherwise location aware software.
WiFi - Truth to be told, WiFi when connected uses less power than a 3G connection on standby. WiFi does have the potential to use a lot more power than 3G because of the higher speed potential over a local wireless network. In most cases it's pretty safe to have WiFi always on, however it should be noted that when WiFi is NOT connected it will constantly scan for access points to connect to, this process uses power ON TOP of 3G, so it would be wasteful to leave this on unnecessarily unless you were using it for Google Location services via WiFi access points.
3G Data - The only reason this 'uses power' is because it's a always-on connection, you can partially remedy this by giving WiFi always-on priority saving both mobile data quota and some power. 2G uses a lot less power than 3G simply because it uses the GSM chip in the phone, not it's own higher power chip. So switch to 2G if u don't need high speed data, but want always on Push notifications and such. (EDGE is fairly fast, but I only get GPRS and 3G on my carrier. )
Brightness - This phone has a super bright screen, use something in the lower settings, auto brightness at day if you want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've got bluetooth off all the time, it's currently running a very new install of JM6, and I haven't installed anything that runs when I don't want it to run. 3G isn't used, as wifi is always on (advanced wifi settings).
It's around 7 hours since I pulled the plug, after having restarted phone after removing SD card, and the suspend process isn't even on the list anymore... I find this quite interesting - it might just be a coincidence, but right now it looks like there is some kind of problem with suspend process when SD card is in... Do you have an "external" SD card in your phone?

ive just flashed JM1 and hate how much power its using... no idea what the problem is, but ive just come off the official JM1 from Kies, and had a big problem so had to flash the first thing i could find. can this really be down to firmware?
i mean im really noticing a difference on standby, before id loose like 3-4% in a whole day of not using it, now it drops 10% in like a few hours...

sensi_ said:
ive just flashed JM1 and hate how much power its using... no idea what the problem is, but ive just come off the official JM1 from Kies, and had a big problem so had to flash the first thing i could find. can this really be down to firmware?
i mean im really noticing a difference on standby, before id loose like 3-4% in a whole day of not using it, now it drops 10% in like a few hours...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have "external" SD card?

i do use 16GB class 6 external SD from Transcent

MoWa22,
I had this happen to me last night and (am stock DXJG04) so very interesting. Trying to remember what my battery drain was last night but I think it was around 10-15% and previously I would get 1% if I turned everything off except being able to receive calls.
I always thought these issues were related to wake locks or that the phone just cannot sleep. Something to try is to reboot the phone and check the battery power before going to sleep and see the battery drain over the night. If minimal battery drain, then maybe it is a rogue app which you may have opened/used during the day. If same 8-10% drain, then am guessing some service or inbuilt process is causing issues.
Half the battle is trying to track the CPU hog or rogue app.

Dang. Lost almost 10% again tonight - but actually the "suspend" process almost didn't use any CPU, SD card still not in phone. Using the built-in battery usage thing, it has cell standby on top, phone idle right below. This is really starting to bother me...

Last night while I turned off APN, Wifi, GPS, etc, I left my phone on as 3G only. I've heard the switch between 3G to 2G causes extra battery drain so I had left the phone on as 3G only. I know 2G is lot less of a battery strain but wonder if it affects cell phone standby. Going to leave my phone on 2G tonight.

I have 3G and sync on. I have weather and feed widgets updated every hour. Plus some other widgets and Google Latitude which I know is using cpu time. My drain is about 1 to 1.2% drain per hour of standby. Firmware DJG4.
I think you dont need to bother too much if battery drains 1-2% per hour on standby (this gives you at least 2-4 days if you use the phone very little). Any more than this means you may have some rouge apps/widgets.
The more critical is the usage time (i.e. with screen on). This is usually like 15-20% drop per hour of use.

Been testing a bit again - this night I had a total of approx. 1% battery used in 9 hours. Still without SD card. I inserted the SD card one hour ago, and I've lost 5-6% already - and suspend process is on top of the list again... Definately something weird going on when SD card is inserted! Please, can anyone test with/without SD card and check for differences?

I spotted this thread and read with interest as last night I noticed my power dropped "unreasonably". I've not started any troubleshooting yet but I am curious about the SD card thing.
Have you tried having the SD card in, but unmounted? Does it still suck powere when unmounted?
Obviously unmounting it is a simpler and quicker process than removing the cover and then physically removing the card.
Mark.

Upgraded to the new Froyo today, seems to be without suspend problems even with SD card. Gotta check how much battery it'll eat during the night.

MoWa22 said:
Upgraded to the new Froyo today, seems to be without suspend problems even with SD card. Gotta check how much battery it'll eat during the night.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2% drain during the night. Uhm, I like this.

MoWa22 said:
2% drain during the night. Uhm, I like this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did you manage that? Everything off? auto-sync off? Wifi? 3g? 2g?

I'm on jm5 with Samset 1.9f and for all the time ive had this phone it has only used 2% battery overnight. Exceptional cases were when i used Fancy Widget, it ate up all my battery overnight leaving me with nothing for the next day. Have stopped using it ever since.
Nowadays, my battery drains heavily when screen is on(when im using the phone). Drains roughly about 1% for every 2 mins im using it, but standby time is still great at 2% overnight...

Qazz~ said:
I'm on jm5 with Samset 1.9f and for all the time ive had this phone it has only used 2% battery overnight. Exceptional cases were when i used Fancy Widget, it ate up all my battery overnight leaving me with nothing for the next day. Have stopped using it ever since.
Nowadays, my battery drains heavily when screen is on(when im using the phone). Drains roughly about 1% for every 2 mins im using it, but standby time is still great at 2% overnight...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And do you by any chance run without "external" SD card?

Spybreak said:
How did you manage that? Everything off? auto-sync off? Wifi? 3g? 2g?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The new Froyo beta JPC. Same settings as always - WiFi always on (which by the way seems to be default setting on JPC). Everything else standard (it won't switch to 3G while using WiFi).

Related

Battery live

Hi
Yesterday arrived my dev phone 1 and I am very hapy with it bu battery level is at 20% at 18:00. Is this normal?. I dont want to switch the band to 2g. I keep gmail synched with direct push but google talk not. anyone with same prpoblem?
Thanks
yeah, the standard battery in the G1 is ****ing terrible
not a lot you can do except buying an extended battery (which is a very good idea! )
The only thing I have found to extend my battery Life has been discussed previously a few times on these boards...
1. Turn off Wifi, when not in use. (Toggle WiFi from the Market is Great)
2. Turn off GPS, when not in use. (Toggle GPS from the Market also great)
3. Turn down the screen brightness.
4. (not sure if this makes a big difference) But sometimes if I do not need my feeds or background running apps throughout the day I will restart my phone, or run through a few applications that are not pulling web cache. This way you dont have auto update feedreaders in the background running. It seems like it works for me, but that could very well be wishful thinking. Also turning of things like Twitroid update etc...
Hope that helps.
recasper said:
The only thing I have found to extend my battery Life has been discussed previously a few times on these boards...
1. Turn off Wifi, when not in use. (Toggle WiFi from the Market is Great)
2. Turn off GPS, when not in use. (Toggle GPS from the Market also great)
3. Turn down the screen brightness.
4. (not sure if this makes a big difference) But sometimes if I do not need my feeds or background running apps throughout the day I will restart my phone, or run through a few applications that are not pulling web cache. This way you dont have auto update feedreaders in the background running. It seems like it works for me, but that could very well be wishful thinking. Also turning of things like Twitroid update etc...
Hope that helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i do #4 as well, it seems to help, since i have root i just go into terminal and type su [enter] reboot [enter] and when it turns back on its usually doing bettery with the battery
as for opening programs, would advanced task manager serve the same purpose (closing apps that arnt needed and using memory, because if its using memory isnt it in some way using battery power?)
Thanks.
I am porting CommMgrPro to Android (Similar to Locale but much more powerfull). In this way I will switch to 2G, turn Wifi off, disable connections, etc, etc, etc automatically depending on my location/weekday/hour.
Greetings
Dani
Hi All
I have a brand new G1 and, like you, I was suprised by the short battery life.
I also thought about selling the phone but apart from that problem I like it very much.
I noticed that the permanent 3g wireless connection was the real draining battery application.
So the solution I found now is: to disable the permanent connection. I downloaded APNdroid application from the market and I use it everytime I need to toggle connection on and off.
I also tried to leave the WIFI on and i saw that it does not consume much battery.
I did not tried with the GPS.
I am using a good tool to toggle and to fine check the battery level: Useful switchers
I can now say I am pretty satisfied with the phone.
Greeting
Lollo
lollonet said:
Hi All
I have a brand new G1 and, like you, I was suprised by the short battery life.
I also thought about selling the phone but apart from that problem I like it very much.
I noticed that the permanent 3g wireless connection was the real draining battery application.
So the solution I found now is: to disable the permanent connection. I downloaded APNdroid application from the market and I use it everytime I need to toggle connection on and off.
I also tried to leave the WIFI on and i saw that it does not consume much battery.
I did not tried with the GPS.
I am using a good tool to toggle and to fine check the battery level: Useful switchers
I can now say I am pretty satisfied with the phone.
Greeting
Lollo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. It was the same problem there was in HTC Hermes/TyNT and TouchPro/Diamond. I created bandswitch in the past and will create two little toggles to switch 3g/2g with and without time limit....
Conditioning
Try Conditioning the Battery...
I have gps on, 2g, brightness at 50% and screen timeout at 30 secs, everything syncing and I get around 5 or 6 hours of use...just like the company says I should.
Run your battery completely dead...
Charge your phone for around 8-12 hours...
Repeat for about 6 days...
You should see improved battery life.
I have 3g, wifi, bluetooth, brightness at 50% and screen timeout at 30 secs, everything syncing with 1-2 hours of music/video with 30 SMS, about 20 mins of calls......I am now getting about 8hrs on the new ones from HTC (the 04).
Interesting Battery
Well now that I have had a week of use I have noticed that the (old) "02" batteries would last about 4-5hrs and go until 1% before turning off, with a slow count down. The (new) "04" batteries stay at a high number (about 6-7hrs) until they get to 15% and within a few mins turn-off....as I recall I saw postings of 'quick' count downs, so I wonder if you either get a slow drain down with about 4hrs of use OR about 6 hrs of use with the last 15% a very quick shutdown....I'll keep monitoring these new HTC batteries to see if it was just one of those "weekend" things or if this is the trade off...was caught off guard as I had been getting 30 mins or so when I had 15% left and the G1 would stay on until 1%..."teach an old dog new tricks".....

WiFi or 3G, which eats more Power?

i use WiFi @ home and work, 3G everywhere else.
my battery was over 50% before bed, woke up with am with 5% left.....
so 45% of my battery life was eaten up in 8 hours with NO use?
any thoughts?
Wifi seems to be a real battery eater on this device (along with GPS). I leave it switched off unless I'm actively using it, and have no problems with battery life (it would last >24 hours if I let it.. I charge overnight though).
As there's no 3G switch on the widget I don't ever switch that off so haven't seen what improvement that would give. Cell Standby is still the largest user of battery, so maybe it would.
Set wifi to sleep when screen turns off.
There's an option for that? Not seen that one..
muncheese said:
Set wifi to sleep when screen turns off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't know you could do that, however, i already have that option selected....after i found it in the menu.
i guess i'll just have to experiment and see if 3G saves me power over the weekend.
Yeah I am pretty sure that option is the default. It still definitely drains more power with the WiFi enabled than without, sleeping or not. Not sure vs 3g, I disable or enable both as I need them.
I thought Wifi drains very little power ... with my phone on airplane mode and wifi only, the battery lasts over 30 hours with Meebo on, push e-mail on, and e-mail sync every 15 min.
Likewise, I have gps/wifi/2g/screen widgets on my main home page.
This doesn't exactly apply to the OP, but there's a nice app called "Y5 - Battery" in the market that switches off the WiFi radio in areas that you usually don't use WiFi.
Also, you can see what's draining your battery if you go to Settings > About Phone > Battery Use. There's some cool graphs showing where all your battery went since the last charge. Maybe you have a program that's running in the background that's sucking up all your battery.
I have had some battery drain issues since I received my N1 3 days ago. I found that Android 2.1 has a nice battery log (/d/battery_log) which updates every 50 - 55 seconds. In doing some tests to see what was killing my battery I can tell you that it isn't WiFi.
I would say that when in use, 3G draws a bit more than WiFi when actively used, but when WiFi is just idle it seems better than when 3G is connected and not in use.
In case anyone cares...I am still isolating all of the battery drain issues, but one of the biggest I have eliminated by uninstalling seems to be from BeautifulWidgets. I found it hard to believe, but my testing seems pretty clear. I also have a decent draw whenever I'm in the car with Bluetooth sync going. I would have had a hard time confirming this without this battery log file.
Wifi is extremely power efficient on this device.
I use the device on at&t edge and have the wifi turned on all day. the battery drain with pus email i about 4%/hour.
I think the combination of wifi PLUS being on an HSDPA network is killing your battery.
pus email? sounds gross
A quick calculation gives me 2.4% an hour, and that's with sync on, Wifi off, 3G on and using the phone a bit (not so much today). That's consistent with what I see normally - if you never actually used the phone you could push 3 days out of it.. but of course there wouldn't be much point in having it switched on then so it drops to about a day after a bit of driving w/bluetooth on, streaming music, etc.
Of course it's not really productive to look at battery life as 'how long can I make this last' (although knowing I can theoretically push it to 3 days plus is going to be useful on holiday). You work out your average day.. say up at 8am, turn in at midnight, so that's 16 hours actual time that it's needed (assuming you charge overnight like most do) - then fiddle with the settings based on your own use so you hit that comfortably. I'm probably being overconservative right now.. I'm finishing the day with nearly 50% battery left & need to ramp it up a bit Maybe a few more games of Frozen Bubble..
http://www.google.com/phone/static/en_US-nexusone_tech_specs.html
According to the Google spec sheet:
Power and battery
Removable 1400 mAH battery
Charges at 480mA from USB, at 980mA from supplied charger
Talk time Up to 10 hours on 2G
Up to 7 hours on 3G
Standby time Up to 290 hours on 2G
Up to 250 hours on 3G
Internet use Up to 5 hours on 3G
Up to 6.5 hours on Wi-Fi
Video playback Up to 7 hours
Audio playback Up to 20 hours
I'd love to see someone get 12 days of standby!
The specs for mobile phones are always a bit of a fiction.. maybe you could do that if you put it in airplane mode and if you never activated the display at all...
I had a Sony Erricson that claimed 800 hours (over a month!) of Standby. Never got it over 2 days..
Would be interesting to see if anyone has managed 10 hours or even 7 hours of talk time... personally I doubt it.
TonyHoyle said:
I'd love to see someone get 12 days of standby!
The specs for mobile phones are always a bit of a fiction.. maybe you could do that if you put it in airplane mode and if you never activated the display at all...
I had a Sony Erricson that claimed 800 hours (over a month!) of Standby. Never got it over 2 days..
Would be interesting to see if anyone has managed 10 hours or even 7 hours of talk time... personally I doubt it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some phones in Airplane Mode when not used can do those kind of numbers though. My K800 lasted about 2 weeks in standby when running like above. Though that just proves how pointless such numbers are.
So when using wifi, is 3g auto turned off?
galaxys said:
So when using wifi, is 3g auto turned off?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would assume the data aspect is, but the 3G voice is still active, even with WiFi on.

Battery life went from poor to awesome to even worse?

Bought my Xperia just over a month ago, and installed juicedefender and juiceplotter to help manage my power use.
At first, I did the whole charging cycle thing, and managed to get battery life up to nearly 20 hours after a week! In the past few weeks however, my phone barely lasts 10 hours now...the battery dies before I can get a chance to recharge. I am a heavy user, but that doesn't seem to explain the sudden drop in battery capacity.
Because of the drop in power over the last few weeks, I have set EVERYTHING to not update, and google sync has been set to sync every other day.
Will my battery just continue to get worse? or do I have a faulty battery?
don't get me wrong, I love my new phone...I just need to know if this is a typical problem, or if I need to get a new battery.
Thanks!
Hi - I'm getting about 40 hours out of mine.. I tend to switch mobile data off when I'm at home as I use wifi.. the problem seems mainly to lie with 3G.. so when I'm out and about I switch wifi off and mobile data on.. but I tend to keep to 2G (GSM) for background syncing etc.. and switch 3G(GSM/WCDMA preferred) on when I want to do any active stuff.. like internet browsing of using the XDA app... I also have my Wifi sleep policy set to "sleep when screen is off"..
What do you use your phone for? if you can tell me a bit about how your using your handset I might be able to give you some more specific advice.
Thanks for the fast reply!
I use juice defender to switch off 3G when the screen is off. It connects every 15 minutes, could that be the issue?
I've looked for a way to switch to GSM, but I can't seem to do it with my carrier(don't have the option in my settings).
I use a lot of data, up to 3 gigs per month 3G only(on average). 4 or 5 calls a day, and probably 100 texts per day. I keep my screen at around 25% brightness.
If you can't switch to GSM then maybe try switching mobile data off all together when you're not using it..(when travelling etc)... (far from ideal I know!).. but it might help.. I think that the 3G radio isn't sleeping properly.. the new software update which is due out anytime now MIGHT solve it.. but only if you're either on an unbranded handset (sound like you're not) or your carrier pushes the update through to you...
The other things you can try is to switch off "Search for updates automatically" in the phone settings... and switch of determine location by wireless networks (in the location settings menu)..
There was a thread about auto brightness causing constant cpu drain, leaving it autobrightness is thought to be battery kind`er.
Ive stopped using task managers and just use default android control and its good for my battery. I check the ram availability occasionaly and though it gets down to around 30 or 40 or meg it shows no slowdowns or hangups but I do reboot after charging every other night.
I'm experiencing similar behavior: poor, then good, then poor, then good again, of course with similar usage. I don't use any task killer and have 3G always on. I have tried 3 different batteries: the stock one, the one from my X1, and the 1800 mAh from Mugen: same pattern with every battery.
I definitely think that there's something bad in the design of the power circuitry and/or in the kernel.

Help? A few uncommon problems

Ok so I received my Vibrant on Monday and so far I am in love with it. Their are three things that bug me, however.
1. Battery Life is TERRIBLE. I know, I know-This has been discussed before but I did everything the other threads said and still no difference. On my phone, I will leave it on standby and it will drop 8 percent in like an hour and a half. Somethings wrong. Also, If I play the Sims for two hours (like I did today) my battery goes from 98% down to 45%. Is this normal?
Just to point out what I have going on with my phone:
- Brightness is turned down COMPLETELY. Automatic brightness is turned OFF.
- 3G is always on. Could this be the culprit?
- I have a completely black background.
- Last I checked, it said my display was taking up 60-70% of my battery usage.
- As stated above, Sims DRAINS my battery. Either somethings up with my phone or Samsung should have made sure the Sims doesnt kill the device.
2. The second I take my phone off the charger, the battery goes from 100% to 98%. Can I fix this? Its kind of annoying...
3. Problem with the Sims. Im not sure if any of you have this issue, but whenever I tell my Sim to watch TV, the app shuts down and takes me back to my home screen. Any idea why its happening?
alecjake said:
Ok so I received my Vibrant on Monday and so far I am in love with it. Their are three things that bug me, however.
1. Battery Life is TERRIBLE. I know, I know-This has been discussed before but I did everything the other threads said and still no difference. On my phone, I will leave it on standby and it will drop 8 percent in like an hour and a half. Somethings wrong. Also, If I play the Sims for two hours (like I did today) my battery goes from 98% down to 45%. Is this normal?
Just to point out what I have going on with my phone:
- Brightness is turned down COMPLETELY. Automatic brightness is turned OFF.
- 3G is always on. Could this be the culprit?
- I have a completely black background.
- Last I checked, it said my display was taking up 60-70% of my battery usage.
- As stated above, Sims DRAINS my battery. Either somethings up with my phone or Samsung should have made sure the Sims doesnt kill the device.
2. The second I take my phone off the charger, the battery goes from 100% to 98%. Can I fix this? Its kind of annoying...
3. Problem with the Sims. Im not sure if any of you have this issue, but whenever I tell my Sim to watch TV, the app shuts down and takes me back to my home screen. Any idea why its happening?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Leaving a phone in 3G all the time is not a good idea, if you have WiFi near you you can connect to I'd use WiFi instead, it has less battery drain then the antenna that is constantly searching for 3G signal - unless you are in the area with bulletproof 3G coverage of course.
2. It seems like this bug is common 100% jumps to 98% once you unplug the charger, are there really any accurate battery meters on the market?
3. Can't help you there, not playing the game on my phone.
HTH
lqaddict said:
1. Leaving a phone in 3G all the time is not a good idea, if you have WiFi near you you can connect to I'd use WiFi instead, it has less battery drain then the antenna that is constantly searching for 3G signal - unless you are in the area with bulletproof 3G coverage of course.
2. It seems like this bug is common 100% jumps to 98% once you unplug the charger, are there really any accurate battery meters on the market?
3. Can't help you there, not playing the game on my phone.
HTH
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
alright thanks. im in phoenix here so i am almost always in a 3G area. I guess i'll leave it on since i rarely dont have 3G
I also read on multiple forums including HoFo that 3G generally consumes more energy then WiFi.
sims 3 fix
so my girlfriend was complaining about sims crashing when she watched tv or relaxed on the couch. i fixed this by moving both the sims launcher app and the sims game app to data/app.
I normally use Edge simply because I don't need Wifi or 3G on unless I'm doing some heavy data transferring.
Currently I'm at 61% battery, which means my phone has been off the charger for 16hours. Its not a fluke either because its just normal use for me. I normally take my phone off the charger at 6am and I plug it back in around 11pm.
Prolonged GPS, Wifi and 3G will eat your battery. I'm not saying don't use the services, but you give up one for the other. I personally like to have awesome battery usage until I'm out and about and really need to use my phone.
I'd recommend you call T-Mobile customer service and have them diagnose the problems you are having and issue a replacement if necessary.
Based on my experience, battery life is excellent, probably the best I've seen in any smartphone in this category. Battery usually last easily through the day with heavy use, including:
- having 3G on all the time (and frequently switching to edge and back)
- 2 email accounts using push (gmail and exchange)
- gps on all the time
- google latitude running all the time
- facebook and twitter sync'ing every hour
- fancy widget sync'ing every two hours
- Newsroom harvesting 12 news sites in the background
- occasional picture (3 or 4) a day
- web browsing and searching
- xda app for reading and replying to this forum.
- bluetooth is always on
- wifi is on from 8 pm on.
I charge the phone through the night, unplug it at 8 am, return home at 8 pm and put it to charge around 11 pm, with still 50%. Brightness is set to auto. Phone is not rooted or modified in any way.
You bought a high end phone that should perform as such. You are supposed to get the most out of your phone, not turn off its features. I wouldn't listen to those who claim you should turn off everything and dim the screen. What's next, not using the phone to preserve batteries?
That's just my two cents.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

Battery Drain from WiFi

I'm sure there are others who have experienced this problem. Even though I show no wake locks my phone drains at an unacceptable rate while on my Wifi at home. My phone can have a 60% battery when I go to bed, and be almost dead by the time I get up. The only clue that shows up in Android System Info or Spare Parts is network usage by '0' which is something with root access.
This is happening regardless of Rom. I've tried stock, Syndicate Frozen, Urban Fury, Bonsai, Stock Plus, and maybe another I'm forgetting. They all drain the crap out of my battery with wifi on at home so obviously this isn't a rom issue.
This leaves me to believe that either something on my network is forcing data to my phone keeping it from deep sleep, or the router itself is the cause. Turning on my phone to 3G, my battery life is spectacular overnight. It deep sleeps like it's had a case of beer with a bottle of nyquil as a chaser before bed. 1% an hour.
So, I've ordered a different router to see if that's the issue. I've googled my current router which is a D-Link DIR-655 and seems like others have had similar battery drains using that router but no one can emphatically say it for sure is the router. Guess we'll see when the new router arrives if it is indeed the DIR-655. Otherwise the next step is disconnecting everything else that is connected to my network (3 computers, 2 printers, XBox, Wii and a Blu-Ray player. I just wanted to point out to anyone else having issues with wifi and weird battery drain, that it may not be the phone that is the problem.
I too have massive battery drain when using Wifi. It doesn't matter what Wifi network I'm attached to (work/home/friends/etc), I burn about 10% + per hour on idle; whereas on 3G is burning only ~2%/hour on idle. On stock, Wifi was my battery saving grace.
I've just given up on using Wifi for daily use. I use 3G for everything now.
I hope the newest version of SFR (whatever the new one will be called) will remedy this problem I have. I haven't posted about it in the rom thread since I had a feeling it was just my phone or another bad flash in CWM.
I've been using that OS Monitor app to try and find the problem. On 3G all the network interfaces have static receive and send amounts as long as I'm not doing anything that requires data. Connected to my home wifi, there is a constant trickle of data.
When I let the phone sit overnight, there was over 4mb of data received, even if I turn off any kind of auto syncs on the phone.
wifi settings
Don't know if this will work for you but you can try. In the wifi settings click the menu button and select advanced then set the wifi to never sleep. I know it's counter intuitive but I went to sleep last night at 61% and woke to 57%. Wifi has been fine for me since changing that policy in the wifi advanced settings.
android_mp99 said:
Don't know if this will work for you but you can try. In the wifi settings click the menu button and select advanced then set the wifi to never sleep. I know it's counter intuitive but I went to sleep last night at 61% and woke to 57%. Wifi has been fine for me since changing that policy in the wifi advanced settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine has been set at never sleep since I got the Epic in September, and I double-check after each custom rom flash. Good looking out though.
nikon120 said:
Mine has been set at never sleep since I got the Epic in September, and I double-check after each custom rom flash. Good looking out though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. Mines always been set to never sleep.
Edit: I just tested my phone on my work's wifi network. CPU Spy says it's going into deep sleep just fine. OS monitor shows a static data received/sent number once I was connected. Obviously something about my home network is the problem.
android_mp99 said:
Don't know if this will work for you but you can try. In the wifi settings click the menu button and select advanced then set the wifi to never sleep. I know it's counter intuitive but I went to sleep last night at 61% and woke to 57%. Wifi has been fine for me since changing that policy in the wifi advanced settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is my general experience, too. These settings usually keep my WiFi usage low overnight.
But some nights, inexeplicably, I will wake up to find a large battery hit from WiFi. I don't think it is my WiFi router's problem, unless there is some outage duirng the night I am unaware of. Come to think of it, I had that problem last night but did not investigate early this morning before I left. When I get home, I will check with my laptop to make sure my router is running.
I have noticed this too and in particular over the past few days. I'm on the latest bonsai build which does have amazing battery life on 3G but now wifi does draithe battery much more than 3G. This never happened before. I have had my wifi set to never sleep. Any other suggestions?
Obviously haven't tested it overnight yet, but I shut down my one laptop and the constant data trickle immediately stopped. Right now it's looking like something my computer is running might be the culprit. Going to leave it sit overnight to see how it goes.
I found the cause of my drain! Narrowed it down to something from my laptop as when I shut my computer down at night, the drain would go away. The culprit was the HP Printer software for my wireless printer. Once I uninstalled it, the drain went away. Noticed in resource monitor that HPZinw12 was sending a constant stream of data from my computer. Why in the hell it would be also sending to my phone keeping it from sleeping seems pretty odd, but I recommend if anyone else who is having battery problems over wifi and happen to also have an HP printer, you might want to look into this as well.
I'd also add that my solution to getting rid of the problem and still being able to use my printer was just to uninstall the crappy HP software that came with the printer and add the printer through the control panel and let windows 7 install it. It doesn't throw on that HPZinw12 file that apparently polls the entire network constantly.
CapsLockKey said:
I found the cause of my drain! Narrowed it down to something from my laptop as when I shut my computer down at night, the drain would go away. The culprit was the HP Printer software for my wireless printer. Once I uninstalled it, the drain went away. Noticed in resource monitor that HPZinw12 was sending a constant stream of data from my computer. Why in the hell it would be also sending to my phone keeping it from sleeping seems pretty odd, but I recommend if anyone else who is having battery problems over wifi and happen to also have an HP printer, you might want to look into this as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since I have been experiencing similar symptoms intermittently and I also have a WiFi printer, I have tried to eliminate this as a potential cause. (I don't run an HP control app on my laptop, but already map the printer directly in Windows 7 like you suggest.)
In my case, I still get the excessive WiFi battery drain, and low battery level upon waking, sometimes overnight. But other nights the problem does not occur. So lately I have made sure that my laptop and printer are powered down before bedtime. And like you, a always have my WiFi sleep policy set to "never" and have a strong WiFi signal. But last night I still had the problem, and awoke to find the battery drained to 45 percent instad of its typical 90 percent.
Interestingly, I noticed not only high WiFi battery usage but also high "Cell standby" usage attributable to the well-known Time Without Signal problem -- and this despite my habitual use of the Airplane toggle workaround, which usually works.
Somehow, something caused both WiFi and cell radios to go crazy overnight.
BTW, I run a stock, unrooted Epic.
So far with SRF v1.1.1, my Wifi is back to normal.
On my work network, I've dropped 4% in 3.5hours with my work email syncing every 15mins. So that's pretty good usage given that sync interval.
I also do not have a printer at home, so the printer bit wouldn't have been a cause for me.
While the printer thing took care of the biggest problem for me, I still don't get as good of battery life overnight leaving my phone on WiFi rather than 3G. There is still something my computer is doing that wakes my phone up occasionally, but at least I'm not going to bed with a 70% battery then waking up to a dead phone. At least I have it narrowed down to one computer (total of 3 on my network), as when I shut that particular one down battery life for my phone is back to 1% an hour while sleeping. If I had to take a guess at this point, might be something with media sharing as I use that one as my primary location for music/videos to stream via Windows Media Center.
CapsLockKey said:
While the printer thing took care of the biggest problem for me, I still don't get as good of battery life overnight leaving my phone on WiFi rather than 3G. There is still something my computer is doing that wakes my phone up occasionally, but at least I'm not going to bed with a 70% battery then waking up to a dead phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you know it is your computer? Have you tried just turning it all the way off?
Do you watch the services running on your phone? I routinely stop the DRM service, for example.
Except for the mysterious episodes when I experience this intermittent problem, my overnight battery usage is typically about 1 percent per hour.
boomerbubba said:
How do you know it is your computer? Have you tried just turning it all the way off?
Do you watch the services running on your phone? I routinely stop the DRM service, for example.
Except for the mysterious episodes when I experience this intermittent problem, my overnight battery usage is typically about 1 percent per hour.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tested over a few nights with a mostly full battery off the charger and reset the timer on CPU Spy. The nights I shut that computer completely off, I get very little battery drain and the phone is mostly in deep sleep according to CPU spy. When it's on, the phone shows a good chunk of CPU at 800mhz and more battery drain.

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