Gets hot and uses battery while idle - Galaxy S I9000 General

Recently I have noticed on several occasions that my phone have gotten hot and started eating away the battery. One time I had around 30% battery and the phone was laying in my pocket. I felt the heat through the pockets and took it up to see what's up. It then had 0% battery and turned itself off.
When looking at battery use in settings, it's hard to pick out one specific application that might do this. If anything it would have to be "Android system", right now it's tied with the screen on 40%, but I charged the phone an hour ago and I haven't used the screen much.
Edit: I should add that the same thing just happened, from 99% to 89% then it stopped. That's why the information above about battery usage is relevant.
Do you think it might be hardware-related, like a partial short circuit or something, or is it most likely a software thing?

Bump. 10 signs.

Had mine for a few days, have not experienced anything like what you describe
I have though felt the screen get hot when turned on full brightness and reading a e-book on it (white - black text)

Well this is while it's laying in my pocket, with the screen off, so it's not the screen. (it's the battery that gets hot)

Take it back.
[Funny story that probably isn't relevant. I had a dodgy micro sd card that made my phone drain battery super fast and as a result my phone got incredibly hot. Took it out and it's back to normal.]

Sounds software related to me, your android system should definitely not be 40% of your battery. It sounds like some rogue app/process is utilizing your cpu and thus your battery very heavily. If you select the "Android system" in the battery usage list, does it not give you a further breakdown of what is included in that that is using your battery? Also, what does it say for the cpu time for the android system?

May be firmware bug
I've had this happen to me a few times when I was running the original firmware. In some early firmware there was a bug related to switching between wifi and 3G, which would get it stuck so that you couldn't toggle wifi on or off. The times this happened to me, it was also stuck in the wifi bug (although I had the wifi bug and it didn't drain the battery).
I now run the newer firmware (JG4) and both problems have stopped.

I've had this problem with my asian i9000 since the beginning. The app called Top showed me that it is ksoftirq/d that is running and System Panel showed me that the cpu was running at 100% at 1ghz.
At first the only solution seemed to be restarting the phone. However some information shared on this forum led me to try restarting wifi which also works. For that thread search for "ksoftirq/d."
David
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I have had the "stuck wifi" bug, but I'm not sure if it was happening the last time this happened. I'll check it out the next time.
There's no official firmware update on Kies for Norway yet, so I think I'll wait for one.

Had exactly the same problem and tracked the culprit - it was Fancy widget in my case. Removed it, installed Beautiful widget and all is well since
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

That might actually be it. If I'm not mistaken Fancy Widget had 30% battery consumption when I checked. I deleted it just to see if it would make a difference. So far so good.

Some details:
Fancy Widget will hit the 100% cpu on auto-refresh if there's no data connection available (either wifi or cellular). It seems there are 2 bugs with Fancy Widget; it ignores "auto-refresh off" option and it tries to connect to server even when offline.
A dirty work around would be to set refresh time to let's say 12 hours and make sure to manually refresh at least once every

That makes me even more convinced that Fancy Widget is the culprit. I usually have cellular network disabled (APNDroid On/Off Widget) to save battery and my wifi connection keeps loosing connection, probably due to some software bug in XXJF3 stock firmware.

Related

Overheating and battery life.

I don't know what all your experiences are, but I noticed the past few days that my epic is getting hot on the back.
I also noticed that my battery is draining more so than usual. When I got the update last week my battery life sucked, but now since this overheat thing it's gotten worse. It drops a lot even when in standby.
I do not have gps, wifi, anything else on. I am not rooted. Didn't do any battery tweaks. This is completely stock di18.
This is normal use with 3g. It's getting annoying and I'm hoping someone has an answer. Thanks!
Do you have any email accounts configured in the mail application?
This happened once or twice - I rebooted the phone and all was peachy.
Sounds like you have a rogue process wearin it out.
Yeah my phone overheated yesterday while charging....this phone has a few more steps to go before it really beats my hero...
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I partly found out what the problem was, but it seems you guys are ahead of me. I had some process keeping my CPU running at 95-100% nonstop. I still haven't figured out what the process was, as now it is back to the normal 5-15%, but I'll have to keep an eye on it now.
the task manager widget turns red and it shows you what process was causing it...for me it was the xda app...a few times.
I think my problem was not backing out of WordFeud. I didn't notice anything on the task manager though. Hasn't happened since that one time.
this happens to me when i'm plugged in and using gmail. screen flickers and then shuts off. the screen-off battery indicator shows the batt. gauge and a little thermometer sign next to it indicating it's too hot.
wtf?!?! this has to be a defect. anyway, is there any official word on this? any pr from sammy/sprint?
i have read elsewhere about some epics resetting themselves a few times a day which could indicate an issue with heating (at least on a pc). so if you think it might be hardware its possible. otherwise keep doing what your doing, monitor your processes for anything thats eating it up, go to about phone > battery use > cell standby to see your time without signal. the higher this is the more battery use. also, might want to consider a startup manager to prevent the 2 DRM files (search forums) from running as this can affect batt life too
you can also use setcpu even (free on here, search it) to throttle your cpu down when it hits a certain temp.
This is very interesting... My wife and I both have this phone, she has had this happen several times after the last update (I though she was just crazy). Me on the other hand... No problem!
I need to look into this a little deeper.
The only time my epic's battery gets hot is during heavy use or gps. Gps/Nav makes it heat up like a mofo. But other than that... *knocks on wood* Its all good, no problems. As far at battery life, I am rooted and using SetCPU to turn down the processor while the screen is off, helps a ton. Not using anything other than that... was using juicedefender but then I started not getting calls or text...
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
One thing, I learned, that didn't help my battery was putting my phone in the locker at work. That thing must have killed my TWS and ate my battery alive.
i feel like this thread will start to die but i had a weird somewhat related issue last night. i too have had maybe 3-4 times where i woke up to my charging phone with the red LED and a screen that would not turn on, battery pull, worked fine.
however, THIS morning my phone would freeze like 30 seconds after boot EVERY time. tried a few things to no avail until I wiped, reinstalled my ROM (aosp 0.4.1) and the data from a previous backup (which was the way i got that ROM to first boot successfully according to tips in that thread).
so this worked, but i couldnt figure out why my other steps wouldnt. had to be something in the data partition of my system at the time, since changing that worked. the only thing i could think of is that app watchdog which someone mentioned to track processor usage by apps. anyone else ever experience this?
I have experienced this once when I was playing Robodefense while the phone was charging. My phone tends to get a little warm when it charges, and hot if I run something intensive while its charging. Wondering if this will be an issue when I use this phone for GPS nav while plugged into my car.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
"I'm having this problem too...I didn't get any warranty for this either. Any reasons onto why this is happening...I woke up this morning and picked up my burning phone lol the temp was at 50C so I took out the battery and let it sit for 15 mins...it went down to 30C, then after not touching it for another 15..it was at 17C...very odd...what should I do, this crap is going to die within the next hour I'm worried it will fry the hard drive or something. Need help! " - I wrote this on a diff. forum a couple days ago
I dont have anything on, no wifi, gps, or any 4g (lol only if I could find it)...I even got rid of my facebook/twitter/weather updater widgets. The only thing that updates is email, and that's only if I click on it. The battery has been dying a lot faster and I charge my phone next to the window now because its like 20 degrees outside here in Chicago, so that brings down my phones temp lol....and today, my phone's battery life went from 100 to 5 percent in about three hours of barely using it...wtf?!
Also, another problem...sometimes when I lock my phone and unlock it after taking it out my pocket or something, the screen doesn't seem to respond...I keep swiping my finger over it to put in my password and it wont do anything and it only works when I slide up my phone for the horizontal view. This happens like 4 out of every 10 times I open phone.
Very embarrassing especially if your trying to get someones number down, I stopped showing off the phone now ...lol

Really Bad Battery Problem. Help.

past 2-4 days.... my nexus just dies suddenly with the battery drained. checking history with system panel shows that the cpu usage just suddenly shoots up to 100%! and i dont know what app is causing it.
just updated locale and extended controls + a lot of other apps. but my main main suspects are locale and extended controls (since EC posted that they are having problems with the update on the nexus)
any ideas? any other apps i could use to target and isolate the rogue app that drains my battery?
get a task manager and see ?
also, it may just be time for a new battery. ebay. $13 shipped, 2400 mah
antikryst said:
past 2-4 days.... my nexus just dies suddenly with the battery drained. checking history with system panel shows that the cpu usage just suddenly shoots up to 100%! and i dont know what app is causing it.
just updated locale and extended controls + a lot of other apps. but my main main suspects are locale and extended controls (since EC posted that they are having problems with the update on the nexus)
any ideas? any other apps i could use to target and isolate the rogue app that drains my battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
System Panel HAS a history, and you can see which apps are using CPU, so have you done that? Is the phone getting hot? It would if the CPU was running 100%. And even at that, it wouldn't immediately die, I've never exactly tried to see how long 100% cpu utilization takes to drain the battery but I'd have to guess it's at least 2-3 hours.
khaytsus said:
System Panel HAS a history, and you can see which apps are using CPU, so have you done that? Is the phone getting hot? It would if the CPU was running 100%. And even at that, it wouldn't immediately die, I've never exactly tried to see how long 100% cpu utilization takes to drain the battery but I'd have to guess it's at least 2-3 hours.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
seems fine at first then when i notice its hot... it is already about to restart. couldnt even get to check the app usage on system panel. after reboot... the app usage in system panel goes away. just checked now.. nothing is eating the battery up according to system panel.
guess the rogue app just turns on and eats up all the juice at some point in time. weird.
khaytsus said:
System Panel HAS a history, and you can see which apps are using CPU, so have you done that? Is the phone getting hot? It would if the CPU was running 100%. And even at that, it wouldn't immediately die, I've never exactly tried to see how long 100% cpu utilization takes to drain the battery but I'd have to guess it's at least 2-3 hours.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
seems fine at first then when i notice its hot... it is already about to restart. couldnt even get to check the app usage on system panel. after reboot... the app usage in system panel goes away. just checked now.. nothing is eating the battery up according to system panel.
guess the rogue app just turns on and eats up all the juice at some point in time. weird.
Do you have SetCPU or anything else enabled with a performance-oriented governor or similar? That would likely keep the CPU pegged at the max without really doing anything.
Try disabling as many applications as you can until you can pinpoint which one is misbehaving.
Same Problem Here
My phone is experiencing atrocious battery life, and so is a friend of mine's. We are both on FRG83D, and it seems to have been the trigger for the problem. He is on AT&T and I am on T-Mo. My wife also has an N1 on FRG83D on T-Mo, but her phone is not having the problem. Her phone is set up very Vanilla, my friend and I have more system altering stuff on ours but nothing too wild, and none of the phones have ever been rooted. The two problem phones both use Launcher Pro and Extended Controls, I am not sure what else we have in common in our apps. I installed System Panel today to try and figure out what is happening, but I still can't find an obvious culprit. While the phone is sitting on the dock charging the CPU seems to be idling under 10% and when I pock it up and look at System Panel you can watch the CPU spike to the upper ranges if you scroll the screen but otherwise it is idling under 10%. The display is always the highest on battery usage and the worst app shows as System Panel, but that is basically what I expect to see. I am ready to start removing apps to see if I can get it back to normal unless anyone has an idea of how to better diagnose the issue.
I had this issue a while ago. "system" was taking up all my CPU, and I couldn't find any details about what was really causing the problem. I couldn't remember how I finally found out about the problem (I think I spent a night reading the logcat to see what was wrong). I couldn't even use the phone, it became horribly sluggish, and battery went flat in mere hours. Turns out, I had a bad picture or two in my SD Card, and the media indexer went in a loop trying to interpret the files. For some weird reasons, the same files got Windows Explorer "confused" too.
Try to remove or format your SD card and see if it's doing the same. I know it's more of an anecdote than a real known issue, but it won't hurt trying
oh wow i was hoping someone was having the same problem... left it overnight unplugged so far so good. now im really beginning to think its extended controls. took out the widget and replaced it with the stock one for now.
IDLING at 10% CPU usage??? Mine idle at 0% if nothing is active. Average 3% over time.
You guys should watch and see what's using hte most CPU, SystemPanel can do it if you look at the history (free for a week or 10 days or something, or buy it to keep the function), but also look at Spare Parts, you can install it from the market. It gives you visibility to a few more Android settings/info menus which you can see which apps are keeping the system awake etc, it can help pinpoint what's going on.
Something very bad is happening. When you all figure it out, report back.
When I look at system panel the little CPU circle graph stays at 100% for the most part. I don't understand if its accurate.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Do you have the app 'Extended Control' installed? The last update is very buggy and is causing bad battery life and broke the camera app on the N1. Check comments on the market. They are working on a fix.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Looks like Extended Controls
I did some testing and Extended Controls does appear to be the culprit. Dev seems to be aware, hopefully they get it sorted.
Edit-Overnight and battery life is back to normal with Extended Controls uninstalled. I didn't suspect it at first because they had already released an update after FRG83D, but apparently it was broken worse than they knew. I hope they fix it soon, I like the app.
msavic6 said:
When I look at system panel the little CPU circle graph stays at 100% for the most part. I don't understand if its accurate.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It obviously should not sit at 100%, look and see what app is using CPU, it ain't rocket science.. Mine idles around 3% with my apps, mainly K9 and Tasker, weather etc..
Step 1: Call HTC's exclusive Nexus One Phone number
1-888-216-4736
Step 2: Tell the rep your battery isn't holding charge. (Possibly tell him your earphones blew as well, if you lost them like I did )
Step 3: Wait 3 days for the battery (and headphones?) to make it to your door.
You don't even have to ship your old battery back!
Step 4: ???
Step 5: PROFIT!

Insane Battery Drain...Please help

This is my first android phone and I'm wondering if I am doing anything wrong. Yesterday I charged my phone and it was at 83%. I unplugged the phone and went to sleep, when I woke up this morning the battery was completely drained.
This happens a lot. Even if I am not doing anything it still drains like crazy. I just text, make some phone calls and it barely makes it through the day. I don't play any games, no gps, no Bluetooth or anything. With my plan, I don't have a data connection so I can't connect to 3g/4g so that shouldn't drain anything.
What could I be doing wrong? When I'm done using the phone I tap the power button on top, the screen goes black - to sleep I presume and I put it away. I had an iphone before this and I did exactly the same thing and the battery lasted for 3-4 days on one charge.
Whenever I see what's using up the battery, the display tops the list. The display is using up 75-80% of the battery. If the phone is asleep for most of the time why is the display using up that much battery? Am I not putting the phone to sleep correctly?
Faizt20 said:
This is my first android phone and I'm wondering if I am doing anything wrong. Yesterday I charged my phone and it was at 83%. I unplugged the phone and went to sleep, when I woke up this morning the battery was completely drained.
This happens a lot. Even if I am not doing anything it still drains like crazy. I just text, make some phone calls and it barely makes it through the day. I don't play any games, no gps, no Bluetooth or anything. With my plan, I don't have a data connection so I can't connect to 3g/4g so that shouldn't drain anything.
What could I be doing wrong? When I'm done using the phone I tap the power button on top, the screen goes black - to sleep I presume and I put it away. I had an iphone before this and I did exactly the same thing and the battery lasted for 3-4 days on one charge.
Whenever I see what's using up the battery, the display tops the list. The display is using up 75-80% of the battery. If the phone is asleep for most of the time why is the display using up that much battery? Am I not putting the phone to sleep correctly?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you cant connect to 3g/4g, you should turn it off in settings. Otherwise, Your phone will constantly look for a signal, draining your battery.
Battery life is all relative. Every single person will experience different battery life. The apps you have installed, the amount of time you spend on it and the time you spend on/in each app, distance from cell towers, distance from Wi-Fi sources, settings you have for every app and things like sync and what not.
The first thing to check is if your phone is being affected by the init or suspend bugs. The good news is the former has an easy fix, and the latter can be temporarily fixed by a reboot.
First, download & install Watchdog Lite from the market. Then open its preferences and check "include phone processes," "monitor phone processes," and "display all phone processes." Then just use your phone as normal. It may take a while before you get an alert from Watchdog (and maybe you never will and it ends up you have a different problem). But if you do, note the process that is the culprit.
If it is the init process, go to settings>applications>development> check "usb debugging."
If it is the suspend process, reboot the phone. It should keep it from happening again for a while.
I know the second answer isn't really an answer, but so far it's all we've got for that problem. There is more information on the 2 problems in these threads:
Init:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=839935
Suspend:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=872839
Good luck...I had both of the problems and my phone didn't last to dinner time. Now I get better battery life than the iphone 3GS I had before this...about a day and a half of moderate use.
EDIT: also you'll probably want to go to settings>wireless & networks>uncheck "mobile network" since you don't have a data plan. No reason to have that on since you don't have a data plan.
werk said:
First, download & install Watchdog Lite from the market. Then open its preferences and check "include phone processes," "monitor phone processes," and "display all phone processes." Then just use your phone as normal. It may take a while before you get an alert from Watchdog (and maybe you never will and it ends up you have a different problem). But if you do, note the process that is the culprit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I installed this using the Moderate setting, and then selected those options as recommended in preferences.
Does Watchdog use a lot of system resources when running in this manner? Will it cause the battery to drain noticeably faster?
netter123 said:
I installed this using the Moderate setting, and then selected those options as recommended in preferences.
Does Watchdog use a lot of system resources when running in this manner? Will it cause the battery to drain noticeably faster?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Completely unnoticeable, IMO.
I installed watchdog lite and I have had couple of alerts. I got suspended couple of times and I also got Android system once.
Android system - 50.1%
Foreground
Suspend - 54.4%
Linux Process
I turned off the data usage from the settings and it did help save battery. The display is not using so much battery life anymore. It went from using 70% to 35%.
Edit: Battsatt reported that the battery was at 93%. When I saw the two alerts above I rebooted the phone and Battsatt now starts reporting the phone is fully charged.
Make sure the GPS is turned Off, too...
All these answers and the easy ones were not mentioned..
Make sure you shut your AUTO SYNC off...
Make sure you lower your brightneess....
Make sure you turn off GPS(was stated above me)
Turn off your wifi if you are not using it.. make sure you are not transmitting your hot spot stuff...
Faizt20 said:
Suspend - 54.4%
Linux Process
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You just summed it up right there. You are experiencing the 'suspend' issue, period. There is no app you can install to fix it. There is no app you can uninstall to fix it. There is no setting you can adjust to fix it. There is no fix for the 'suspend' issue, literally.
I started the following thread in an attempt to consolidate posts and hopefully work toward flushing out what the real issue is...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=872839
This is a real, legitimate issue with Android 2.2.x Froyo. As I linked in my post, this is Issue # 11126 on Google Code...
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=11126
If there was an app or setting that fixed the 'suspend' issue, we wouldn't even be discussing this right now. There are fixes/workarounds for a lot of things, but right now, the 'suspend' process issue truly is a mystery. No one, not a single person has yet to post, "this is the cause of the issue," let alone a fix for it.
I wish you had a fix man, I really do. My fiancee experiences this and there's only one way she's found to sort of workaround it, sort of - she reboots her phone every morning. This seems to keep it at bay, at least more so than when she doesn't reboot each morning, once she takes it off the charger. She still gets it though and she's just used to looking for Watchdog and checking her processes now.
This thread could go on and on forever but it comes down to this:
- The MT4G does not have insane battery drain and will give you about 12 hours of life, under normal>medium usage. If your battery is draining insanely quickly AND if you're seeing the suspend process jacked up so high, then there.is.no.fix.yet.
There might be a ton of other replies after this about uninstall this, install that, change this, don't use widgets, use widgets, etc. Those attempts will be futile.

Unexplainable battery drain

For a month or more I'm facing totally unexplainable battery drain.
As seen on the screens below, the phone is awake, but it is not detected anywhere - not by android nor by GSam. In any case the battery draws faster.
I have one observation tho - this happens after I make phone calls. Not every time, but once per 2,3 days.
Any ideas?
Spo0f said:
For a month or more I'm facing totally unexplainable battery drain.
As seen on the screens below, the phone is awake, but it is not detected anywhere - not by android nor by GSam. In any case the battery draws faster.
I have one observation tho - this happens after I make phone calls. Not every time, but once per 2,3 days.
Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have this problem
http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4/general/explanation-horrible-note-4-battery-t3004274
I'm pretty sure that I don't have this issue. Yes, the percentage in GSam maybe high, but I don't believe this reflects what is happening.
First of all - I don't have bad battery life. Usually my over night drain is less than 1%/1h.
Second - the issue appears sporadically.
Third - in the provided thread I don't see the issue appearing in stock battery monitor, while mine appear.
At last - my battery drains faster only while the issue is present and before I restart. After that it is back to normal ...
@Spo0f
Just some suggestions maybe you're using 3g I always have that turned off and switch it on when I use it my guess is that some apps are causing your drain after a call maybe like you said if you're not fimiliar with greenify I suggest you use it to stop all those apps and system apps also uninstall all those bloatware you don't need or at least freeze them if you don't mind lower the resolution to 1080p with nomone app use power save or disable dvfs and use an app to lower and raise the CPU to save juice when not needed....
Thanks for the suggestions, but as I said - this problem appear sporadically - home when using WiFi as well as outside when using 3G.
All of the rest is done - I'm no newby
Spo0f said:
Thanks for the suggestions, but as I said - this problem appear sporadically - home when using WiFi as well as outside when using 3G.
All of the rest is done - I'm no newby
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh sorry mate well I don't use much 3g so I can't help you there but if you're having drainage when you're using WiFi in general then maybe you should reconsider investigating the post above with the link I don't have so much drainage on connectivity with 3g or WiFi....viewing the pics you uploaded it seems suspicious.... Maybe an app? I don't know...
Use wakelock detector
Spo0f said:
I'm pretty sure that I don't have this issue. Yes, the percentage in GSam maybe high, but I don't believe this reflects what is happening.
First of all - I don't have bad battery life. Usually my over night drain is less than 1%/1h.
Second - the issue appears sporadically.
Third - in the provided thread I don't see the issue appearing in stock battery monitor, while mine appear.
At last - my battery drains faster only while the issue is present and before I restart. After that it is back to normal ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My overnight drain was also very low, but that was because the faulty device on the network was asleep at night too (my desktop).
If you're not rooted, use the PC version of Wakelock Detector at the end of your day and post screenshots of your highest drainers for the various categories. In my case, the device was being woken up by something on the network and it showed.
Bear in mind that actively downloading something in the time period will also raise wifi power used but more stats will help.
The fact that you're still experiencing a lot of drain even when outside suggests it might be a rogue app
One phone call today and after it the phone stayed awake.
Because I had issue with the PC WLD the screen shots are from 11 minutes after one of the disconnects. The device was awake all of them.
Spo0f said:
One phone call today and after it the phone stayed awake.
Because I had issue with the PC WLD the screen shots are from 11 minutes after one of the disconnects. The device was awake all of them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also checked out my battery behaviour this night and was very disappointed. Although my phone was in flight mode and every peripherals and services shut down, today morning my phone was crying for energy. So I made a quick investigation in my power diagram and found out, that "Android OS" requested a wakelock during the whole power-on time. So I installed "CPU Spy" to check in which states the phone was really over the whole charging period. I couldn't believe my eyes. Although the kernel should do it's job good, cause most of the CPU times are in lower freqeuncy states, the deep sleep mode was never activated.
Therefore I installed an app called "Wakelock Detector" to check out which apps could cause that. I found out, that S Health had a big amount of wakelocks and also active-time, so the first thing was to disable S Health. After some minutes I checked back, but nevertheless still no deep sleep time in "CPU Spy".
So I searched around and found another one arguing about the wakelocks and that they could be the products of some programming issues concerning WiFi. The should be gone, after turning off WiFi and rebooting yout phone. And it seems that he was right. I waited some time and hooray, "CPU Spy" listed the phone state "Deep Sleep" the first time as an active state and also with the major active-time. So at least that was some step ahead. (I have to remark, that S Health was already unfrozen at this time, so S Health should not be responsible in any way.)
The next step was to reactivate WiFi, leave it on and set the phone on standby. After some time I checked back again the phone showed even more deep sleep time. So that was an improvement. I reactivated everything and waited some time... Deep Sleep all over the time. Can't figure out for now, if it was S Health, WiFi, or anything else that caused the wakelock for sure. At least the reboot helped. I'll check that out on a long-term test, maybe I get some further conclusions.

[Q}Lollipop Yotaphone 2 battery life - any fixes?

Hi all,
Having just bought a Yotaphone 2, latest model 801 processor and with Lollipop installed, I was impressed with it... lovely screen, sharp response, great display on the back ....until I realised that battery life on the EPD or indeed doing nothing was (and is) terrible.
This somewhat negates the point of having the EPD. Because whether you use the EPD or not, as others have found, the processor seems to be spending 100% of the time doing something like trying to connect to Google headquarters to report my unethical swearwords as I look at the battery level heading south.
To try and make sure the phone was using the least power, I went through all the running apps and services and terminated as many as I could, turned off things like Yotafit tracking, turned off the service that sends all your contact details to the Kremlin, and so on... then, I turned on the Yotaenergy mode and despite that, we are at less than 24 hours with virtually no phone usage at all. Fully 50% of all the energy according to the battery stats is being used by Android System and Android OS processes when the system is in standby. And the historic battery screenshot shows that the processor is active 100% of the time., even though the phone has not been touched. (sorry, not attached, I'll post at some point, but its not very interesting)
So, does anyone have any clues about how this can be fixed? I have seen screenshots where people have shown that their processors are not active the whole time, and I imagine they have Lollipop? I have heard Lollipop has got some kind of bug which means that data connections are live the whole time, not sure if this is related.
(This might explain the sudden appearance of half price devices on eBay around six months after launch in the UK.)
Many thanks in advance!
YotaDevices has acknowledged the problems on Lollipop battery life, which is the reason they won't be shipping devices coming to USA preinstalled with Lollipop, but with KitKat. Now that I've played around with the EPD and created some widgets/applications for it, I can spot many places where things can go wrong in maintaining battery life and still keep things working.
Personally I've been lucky with the battery life on all versions of Android. When I updated to the last version of Lollipop (firmware 1.44), the phone did show poor battery life for hours after the installation was finished, before calming down to the promised 5 days stand by. Are you on the very last firmware? (Settings - about phone - build number)
As a last resort if your device won't settle down, I guess you could roll back to Kitkat, which had a very good battery life for pretty much everyone. You can install it with Yota's flasher tool: ftp://fw.ydevices.com/YotaPhone2/YotaPhoneFlasher/yotaphone2_flasher.exe
Just carefully select your own region and then the last version of KitKat (4.4.3) they offer. As you are rolling back from one major version to another, I would suggest flashing pretty much everything. You will lose your data.
Yota has said that they are working on bringing Lollipop 5.1 or 5.2 to Yotaphone 2. Let's hope that that works better.
Thanks that was very useful. The question is, will Yota do another build ... or build another device? I'm hoping the Y2 has a bit of life left in it yet and they do launch in the US - it can only help the development community!
I reset back to factory/Lollipop last night as it was eating battery so fast I could not believe it, and I am on the latest build 1.44EU (and was before). Since then.. it doesn't seem to be misbehaving so much, but it does seem to insist that the WIFI is on (when it is switched 'off' in the settings) by 'on' I mean the battery usage recorder... I wil take your advice and 'take it slow' for now, but may flash back to Kitkat if necessary. It is a bit tedious having to reinstall all your apps by hand but this seems to be the only way to ensure it is relatively clean.
The screengrabs below show the phone doing nothing at all in Yotaenergy mode - per first post.
ridgemagnet said:
Thanks that was very useful. The question is, will Yota do another build ... or build another device? I'm hoping the Y2 has a bit of life left in it yet and they do launch in the US - it can only help the development community!
I reset back to factory/Lollipop last night as it was eating battery so fast I could not believe it, and I am on the latest build 1.44EU (and was before). Since then.. it doesn't seem to be misbehaving so much, but it does seem to insist that the WIFI is on (when it is switched 'off' in the settings) by 'on' I mean the battery usage recorder... I wil take your advice and 'take it slow' for now, but may flash back to Kitkat if necessary. It is a bit tedious having to reinstall all your apps by hand but this seems to be the only way to ensure it is relatively clean.
The screengrabs below show the phone doing nothing at all in Yotaenergy mode - per first post.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am quite confident that they will release updated Lollipop sooner or later. They don't have the resources to piss off all their customers just yet.
Your Wifi still does some scans on its own for Google's location service, even if it's not enabled. You can disable this feature in the advanced wifi settings. But that is not the cause of your battery problem. Basically your device is awake all the time, meaning something is holding a wake lock. And by something I mean one of Yota's EPD compoments, which are counted as part of "Android OS" and "Android System" - your biggest battery hogs. It could be one of the EPD widgets that is misbehaving, or it could be some specific combination of them, or just something out of your control.
You could try removing ALL the widgets from the rear screen from Yotahub, then restart the device, and then let it run for an hour with the screen off. Then check the detailed battery log if the device went to sleep or if it was awake. If it went to sleep, you can try adding widgets back one at a time, and then check again if the device sleeps. Basically all the widgets which update periodically hold a wake lock momentarily (time, battery, calendar, weather etc). Of course if the problem lies on Yota's EPD framework, then this wont help at all.
Jeopardy said:
I am quite confident that they will release updated Lollipop sooner or later. They don't have the resources to piss off all their customers just yet.
Your Wifi still does some scans on its own for Google's location service, even if it's not enabled. You can disable this feature in the advanced wifi settings. But that is not the cause of your battery problem. Basically your device is awake all the time, meaning something is holding a wake lock. And by something I mean one of Yota's EPD compoments, which are counted as part of "Android OS" and "Android System" - your biggest battery hogs. It could be one of the EPD widgets that is misbehaving, or it could be some specific combination of them, or just something out of your control.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, I suspect the YotaFit app going bonkers despite my efforts to kill it.... or the Yotagram service, the thing is, looking at the Yota specific apps, you don't really need them, as you can flip the screen with the Yotamirror, and then use any Android app. Sure it would be nice to have notifications on the EPD, but my main focus for this phone is use in bright daylight, and long battery life, not to actually look at the thing 24x7 so I can respond to emails every 30 seconds.
At this point though I'm just trying to determine how bad the underlying hardware is. The GPS on this phone seems to a bit flaky, as does the basic reception of mobile signal. (And I'm not using a metal bumper.) So, I'm happy to flash back to KitKat 4.4.3 to try and give it the best chance..
So, any clues/links about the Yota flash tool? I've put the phone into USB debug mode, installed the flash tool on my windows 7 desktop, and installed ADB/Fastboot as well, but at this point I'm having a bit of an android driver problem, and ADB can't see the phone so that probably explains why the Flashtool says 'waiting for device' when I fire it up. I will go digging to fix that, but I assume that the Flashtool will do all the stuff like putting the phone into bootloader mode, unlock etc...
ridgemagnet said:
Agreed, I suspect the YotaFit app going bonkers despite my efforts to kill it.... or the Yotagram service, the thing is, looking at the Yota specific apps, you don't really need them, as you can flip the screen with the Yotamirror, and then use any Android app. Sure it would be nice to have notifications on the EPD, but my main focus for this phone is use in bright daylight, and long battery life, not to actually look at the thing 24x7 so I can respond to emails every 30 seconds.
At this point though I'm just trying to determine how bad the underlying hardware is. The GPS on this phone seems to a bit flaky, as does the basic reception of mobile signal. (And I'm not using a metal bumper.) So, I'm happy to flash back to KitKat 4.4.3 to try and give it the best chance..
So, any clues/links about the Yota flash tool? I've put the phone into USB debug mode, installed the flash tool on my windows 7 desktop, and installed ADB/Fastboot as well, but at this point I'm having a bit of an android driver problem, and ADB can't see the phone so that probably explains why the Flashtool says 'waiting for device' when I fire it up. I will go digging to fix that, but I assume that the Flashtool will do all the stuff like putting the phone into bootloader mode, unlock etc...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The widgets I'm running at the moment without any problems are Time, Mini Calendar, weather, battery, and communications (the small widget which shows phone calls, notifications and sms). And of course my own widget.
The best way to make sure there are no useless services running is to root the device and uninstall them completely, but that's another story.
For the flashtool to detect the device, you need to boot it into download mode manually. The easiest way is to turn off your device and plug the usb in while holding volume down -button. The screen will show "download" or something in very small white text. After that the flashtool should find the device. You probably don't have to flash the user partition (it asks for it separately), i.e. the simulated sdcard section which holds all your photos, documents and music.
Edit. And when you have kitkat installed, the first thing you might want to do is to disable automatic system updates. Otherwise it will nag you about the Lollipop update all the time.
I've been facing similar issues and am considering a downgrade when I have the time. I'm really disappointed in yota and won't be buying their next device.
I have found this thread useful, you may too.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/general/guide-extreme-battery-life-t3095884
thanks gents, oddly, the advice to let the phone 'calm down' seems to be working. I decided not to revert to KitKat (yet), as every day I use the phone the battery life seems to improve. Yesterday it was down to 40%, today 60% after about a days use. I'm thinking a week of running in will give it time to stabilize. I would love to root the phone but I want to use the Good app, and that doesn't run on rooted phones... (shame but I guess that's the flipside of working for a big corporate for you!)
ridgemagnet said:
thanks gents, oddly, the advice to let the phone 'calm down' seems to be working. I decided not to revert to KitKat (yet), as every day I use the phone the battery life seems to improve. Yesterday it was down to 40%, today 60% after about a days use. I'm thinking a week of running in will give it time to stabilize. I would love to root the phone but I want to use the Good app, and that doesn't run on rooted phones... (shame but I guess that's the flipside of working for a big corporate for you!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try putting the battery widget on your epd. If it shows 5 days remaining when you are above 85% and you don't use the phone, then the device works as advertised.
That Good app sounds like a real killjoy. There seems to exist some Xposed modules to disable the root check, but they seemed to be rather finicky to setup and very easy to mess up.
I was suffering from terrible battery life after the lollipop upgrade and the EPD battery widget was never showing much above 1d anymore. After much research and tinkering, it has now improved and I am seeing greater than 3d again. I think the culprits were maybe google fit tracking which I have now turned off and I also de-installed and re-installed the google play services updates which is a tip I saw in an android forum. I also over the last two days have received several yota widget updates which may have also helped. At least for now I am seeing a comfortable day's use again!
I experienced poor battery life out of blue again. I went through all the settings, cleared dalvik-cache and cache partition, tried disabling everything, but nothing helped. It only showed <1 day battery life at 100%.
But then I went to mess around in the developer settings, and when I set the animation scales from 1x to 0.25x and enabled "Force GPU rendering", the battery life returned instantly to 5 days.
Just thought I'd add this to the list of things to test out if someone's experiencing poor battery life. The forced GPU rendering might have some unexpected effects on some software rendering based games.
dont know if this will help but just seen some of the new features of android m "marshmallow" one of which is doze and there is a separate app available on play store for this. i have installed and it has helped battery life !!!
I was going through terrible battery life after Lollipop as well. Suffered, tinkered, tried various things. Eventually I just said screw it, backed everything up and factory reset it from recovery. Since then it seems like it's almost back to it's old self. Obviously having root and using some kernel control apps, greenify and some other things helps it but It will happily do at least a couple of days with little-normal usage. Still don't think it's as good as KitKat but it's not too far off. The EPD really does help spread battery out too.
I did the same thing but a 3 weeks on, the battery is as shocking as ever.
Today, on battery since 0730, now @ 1115 51% and 3hrs left!??
No obvious apps causing battery drain, just google services!
Rarelyamson said:
I did the same thing but a 3 weeks on, the battery is as shocking as ever.
Today, on battery since 0730, now @ 1115 51% and 3hrs left!??
No obvious apps causing battery drain, just google services!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had the phone nearly a week, and these are similar figures I experience. What's the point of the epd if my battery dies by lunch!
Sent from my YD201 using Tapatalk
I think it is something with Android 5.0 that is causing the drain issues. I can go anywhere from half a day to a week with good batteyr life and then it will randomly start draining again. Some background activity seems to hold a permanent wakelock and will not let go of it. I am unable to pinpoint what app is creating the wakelock with better battery stats or wakelock detector since there isn't access to kernel wakelocks in either of the apps for our phone. A restart always fixes things though, so I have a tasker script now that lets me know when idle battery drain exceeds a threshold for too long so I know to do a restart, it's not elegant, but my battery life is exponentially better and gives me enough battery life to make it through the day without a recharge and leave the eink screen on all night as a tv remote.
I got a new phone
sportsfan986 said:
I think it is something with Android 5.0 that is causing the drain issues. I can go anywhere from half a day to a week with good batteyr life and then it will randomly start draining again. Some background activity seems to hold a permanent wakelock and will not let go of it. I am unable to pinpoint what app is creating the wakelock with better battery stats or wakelock detector since there isn't access to kernel wakelocks in either of the apps for our phone. A restart always fixes things though, so I have a tasker script now that lets me know when idle battery drain exceeds a threshold for too long so I know to do a restart, it's not elegant, but my battery life is exponentially better and gives me enough battery life to make it through the day without a recharge and leave the eink screen on all night as a tv remote.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the end, I got a new phone after my Yotaphone decided to brick itself. Its a Zopo Speed 7, Octacore, dual SIM, nice screen, and does 4G very well in my part of the world. It is also around $200 at time of writing. Its a Chinese phone typical of the genre, Zopo seem to be moderately responsive to bugs compared with Yota... This Zopa phone is running 5.1 Android and I can tell you that Lollipop is not the problem...
That's after charging the phone and leaving it overnight, with the battery saver mode on... not too shabby. Of course it won't actually last 28 days, but this phone is nothing special and it is capable of running without all those services running that the Yota has.
The Yota spent its entire time when I had it trying to contact Moscow with that dodgy 'dictionary app'. What (honestly) is the point of the e-ink display if it doesn't save power...
If you are experiencing "always awake" and wifi always on despite your settings saying otherwise it may be worth going into your advanced wifi settings and changing "wifi frequency band" from "auto" to "2.4 GHz only. I remember reading this tip somewhere else for an Android 5.0 phone that was having battery issues similar to this. I made this change about 24 hours ago and have noticed a dramatic difference in battery drain when the screen is off. When I look at my battery stats I am no longer seeing a solid bar for both wifi and awake. Worth trying.
For what it's worth, I have had fairly light use today, some checking of emails and facebook, 40 mins or so of music via bluetooth (with screen off). Total screen on time of 35 mins. The phone has been off charge since 06:30 this morning. It is now 17:00 and is showing battery of 71% with an estimated 2d and 8h left. Better battery stats show deep sleep of 71% whereas previously it had shown awake at 100%. Far better than I had before.
stapo101 said:
If you are experiencing "always awake" and wifi always on despite your settings saying otherwise it may be worth going into your advanced wifi settings and changing "wifi frequency band" from "auto" to "2.4 GHz only. I remember reading this tip somewhere else for an Android 5.0 phone that was having battery issues similar to this. I made this change about 24 hours ago and have noticed a dramatic difference in battery drain when the screen is off. When I look at my battery stats I am no longer seeing a solid bar for both wifi and awake. Worth trying.
For what it's worth, I have had fairly light use today, some checking of emails and facebook, 40 mins or so of music via bluetooth (with screen off). Total screen on time of 35 mins. The phone has been off charge since 06:30 this morning. It is now 17:00 and is showing battery of 71% with an estimated 2d and 8h left. Better battery stats show deep sleep of 71% whereas previously it had shown awake at 100%. Far better than I had before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried using the setting so Wifi is only on while screen is on? (Unless on charge...)
I think I found the issue, at least with my phone.
I was syncing with exchange, and there is a nasty bug with android 5.0 and exchange sync. The sync is taking forever and doesn´t sync everything. Calendar and contacts missing.
Then I removed the ActiveSync connection on my phone and set up the app Nine to sync instead.
After that I got much better battery. This may help for others as well. The phone is just hammering the exchange server all the time and this takes up a lot of power.

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