Database Users

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

Signal Strenth and Battery Life

I just got my droid x a few days ago and I'm having problems with battery life. I work 12 hour days at a state penitentiary which cell phones are not allowed to enter the building. My phone is rooted and I have about 8 bloatware apps removed like blockbuster, skype, ect in case that matters at all. My typical day is waking up at 4 AM unplugging my phone fully charged. I get to work at 5 AM and between 4-5AM I prolly send one text and sometimes visit one website. So at 5AM my phone is in standby mode until I take a lunch and come out to my car between 12-2. So the phone is on around 9 hours so far but not used much at all. Today I took my lunch at 1PM and when I pulled my phone out my battery was at 15%. The battery ussage is like 72% cell standby, 14% screen, and like 14% Phone idle. I checked my signal strength at work and it was like 99-102 dBm which I beleive sucks. Also today was very hot 100+F so that might also play a factor but I came from a iphone 4 last week that went through the same daily routine and never had battery problem (of course att may have had better reception at work which used less battery). So what do yall think? Is it because of the poor signal strength that runs the battery down within that time even though its in standby? Is there a problem with my phone?

I know this isn't really a fix per se, but any reason not to put it in airplane mode?

gefahr said:
I know this isn't really a fix per se, but any reason not to put it in airplane mode?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeh thats what Im going to try tomarrow. Just weird my wife has the same phone and in a full day of her using her phone it still has 70% battery life when Mine is in standby all day and it dies. But I do work at a prison out in the middle of nowhere and im sure the reception it very bad but i didnt think that would cause a phone in standby to go from 100% to almost dead without using it. Guess ill figure it out tomarrow when I try airplane mode.

Try juice defender
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

Try turning off GPS. That made my standby mode last 10x longer.

Just a thought are you using handcent? I was until 2 days ago after do some tracking it appears that it was not acting well with something and my battery died very quickly. Since my wife has it on her phone as well I am guessing it is with something else I have DLed but since my wife has not gotten many apps I have a hard time finding out what it might be. But changed to chomp yesterday and at the end of a 16 hour day while taking 130+ pics along with texting browsing ect was at 60%.

Are you using an exchange account to sync email? I found that when I leave the exchange email sync set to "push" or "as arrive" (or whatever that setting is) it totally drained my battery. However, when I set it to sync every 15 min my battery life improved probably 2x.
Sent from my DROIDX using XDA App

battery usage all depends how the user phone is setup, if you have email clients with push activate, that will drain battery, having gps location on will drain battery, screen brightness will drain battery, widget that update though internet(3g, edge) will drain battery and etc; take all that into account and try out the battery manager on the phone that turns off data connection after 30mins of inactivity.

[Q] Crazy high cell standby killing my battery life?

Help!
I'm running the 81xx firmware on a direct-from-dell unlocked Streak.
My battery life has so far been abysmal, and looking at the battery usage screen, my cell standby is usually over 60% while idle is less than 20%, everything else like 2%. This isn't from weak signal, though; I am in a well-covered 3g-only area and my phone has reported only being disconnected about 4% of the time.
Another strange thing is, my data indicator is constantly switching between the H symbol and the 3g symbol.
Anybody know what's going on?

It might be that while you are well covered for 3g, you are marginal for HSDPA and that constant switching back and forth is using your battery. I have not tried it but have a look and see if you can disable HSDPA in settings somewhere and see if that helps.

i'm usually around 40% cell standby.. do u have any task killer apps installed? although people think those are useful they usually do more harm then good.

I have the same problem, and I used another Android phone in the same location (hence same cell coverage) with no such problems. I just took my phone off the charger and had the display on since then non-stop. Cell standby used as much battery as the display!! There's no way that is appropriate.
I'm running build 8102, but it was the same with 6941 before. Can't tell about 1.6 as I bought my streak used with 6941 on it.
What Android version are you guys running? Maybe we can find common denominators.. :/
Edit: here's a screen shot of the battery usage after a while off the charger with the screen on constantly:
http://i.imgur.com/3OrqZ.png

You must be Australian W0nk0
Do you think your antenna might be loose or defective?

I can't imagine the antenna to be loose really - but who knows, I bought mine used. If so, I think there is a signal strength value in " about phone" somewhere, no?
What signal strength are others getting? I'll post mine later, I'm on airplane mode right now so that I get some battery life.. :/

For signal strength, I am getting -75 to -95, and 9 to 12 for the two values while riding the train (not subway).
It also appears my battery life is quite good when my phone is in standby and not doing anything... the problem seems to come from net browsing or anything else that uses an active connection... Just browsng XDA is taking about 2% a minute!
Oh and my android is the 81xx 2.1 version with the modaco tweaks
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

I had really high cell stand-by too. then i installed juicedefender, now my cell standby is down to about 29%.
I think the main thing is that it disables data connections while your screen is off and only turns it back on when the screen is on and unlocked. It also has a setting where it enables data connection periodically to allow background syncs and whatnot.
I'd recommend you guys give it a go, it had almost doubled my battery life!!

Mine shows,
cell stand by 50%
phone idle 44%
it seems quite common on the streak as I read in all the forums. I am on 2.1 stock rom? what's 1.6 like?

Ok I'm jealous

As I'm looking through the threads I'm seeing people getting terrific battery life. What can I do to get better battery life besides all the little tricks like cutting of gps, syncing, and back light etc? As I stated in another post I run the tunein app for 2hrs and my phone is at 20% HELP!!!

Stop using tunein/find alternative? I'm not exactly sure what the application does but I'm sure there has to be another application that offers similar functionality in the market, that might be easier on the battery.
powered by the tears of a million orphaned alpacas...

I've tried a alternative. I've tried the app for the actual radio station still get the same thing.

I use Tunein Radio since it's one of my favorites apps and have no issues whatsoever ... I mean it's normal the battery usage since it's streaming media.

Turning off the 4g made the biggest difference for me.
I'm usually near wifi, and with that on all day I SOMETIMES end up w/ <60% battery at the end of the day.

So just kick a man while he's down why don't ya!!!

Try this:
1. Do a full reset
2. Fully charge the phone. Once light is green, Let it stay unplugged for a couple of seconds, turn off the phone and plug in again. When light turns green again (may take up to an hour). Repeat until the green light appears almost instantly. This may take anywhere from 4-10 cycles.
3. Run the phone stock for one complete cycle. Don't add any apps.
4. If you have no problems, charge the phone then try adding one app then let the battery cycle again.
5. Keep adding an app after each cycle and monitor your battery consumption.
This way you can find out if the issue is your phone or the app. I know this isn't a quick fix, but it will help you dial in on the problem. I had similar problems as you before going through these steps. One of my cycles only got 2 hours of life before dying. I now get 15 hours of medium to heavy usage consistently! I am currently at 15 hours 5 minutes with 32%.

why dont you stop using apps to "fix" your battery and use the internal battery monitor program to narrow down exactly whats causing your battery drain?
settings>about phone>battery>battery usage
keeps a running tab on whats been using your battery since last unplugged.
if its cell standby, that usually means you are in a place that doesnt have service too long.
display is just screen being turned on.
android system is basically stuff installed in android. such as email, surfing the web, the market, etc etc.
see what that tells you. dont cover up the problem. get down to its roots. my phone completely stock got medium usage and lasted almost 9-10 hours.

Good points, newkidd. Finding the root cause is critical. However, I'd like to add that just because Display or Cell Standby is the top battery user at any given point in time is not necessarily a bad thing.
For example, if you were to unplug your phone in the morning but then forget it on the kitchen table when you leave the house for the day (No, I've never done that!), you'd see that Cell Standby was the top battery user for the day. But that's expected with a properly running phone that sat all day with 0 usage.
On the other hand, if you did nothing on your phone all day but turn it on every 5 minutes to check the time and then turned it back off, then Display would be the top battery user. Doesn't mean there's something wrong with the display or settings. At least not if your battery still lasts a full day. It just means the display was on a lot.
However, if your battery is down to 20% after only 2 hours, something is definitely wrong. Tunein is a streaming audio app, right? When you use it, are you in a good 3G (or 4G) coverage area? If the phone is having difficulty keeping a strong data signal then a streaming service could definitely eat up more battery than normal. How long does your battery last when you don't use Tunein? Or have you tried using it while connected via wifi instead of cellular data?

I'm starting to come to the conclusion I'm in a bad coverage area when at work. I left my at home today by accident and it was still almost full battery. I haven't tried using wi-fi.

Poor reception kills your battery QUICK. My house has horrible reception and for the week I was battling the cable company over our internet (no wifi) my phone would only last a few hours. Last weekend when I was home most of the day, so using maybe 85% wifi, my battery lasted the 18.5hrs until I went to bed. And I'm a heavy user. 3 gmail accounts synced, screen at near max brightness and lots of screen on and data use.
^ Shift Faced

my work
My work as well has horrible reception. We run a lot of electronics and are next to the airport, all bad for cell signals.
I try to stream music, but it is a crap shot depending on the day.
I have an audiobook that I listened to all day, with no significant additional drain. However streaming music gets me about three or four hours.

I work in the middle of Houston, TX, so I should be covered by excellent 3G and 4G signal. But at my desk in a corner office, windows on 2 sides of me, on the 6th floor of a 20 floor building, I get intermittent 3G and have never gotten a 4G connection.
Although that's better than when I was on the 20th floor for about a year. My desk was right against the windows but I couldn't even get a cell signal, much less 3G (no 4G at the time). I had to put my phone on airplane mode when I got to the office or the battery would die before lunch just from trying to get a cell signal. I could change the settings to force roaming only and calls/texts would work OK, but still drained the battery quickly.
Fortunately, we have wifi at the office so I connect to that every morning now and everything works fine. It's just annoying that I can't get 4G at all. Can't get it at home either (in a house, right by the window), even though the Sprint coverage map shows that I should. I can zoom in to my address and it's in the dark blue (best available) coverage area that should mean I can get a 4G signal inside buildings - "You will be able to use 4G data inside most buildings, in a car, and outside." Nope. Not unless I stand outside.
Back on topic, a poor signal will eat the battery for lunch...

no 4G at all here
I am annoyed that there is no 4G in Phoenix at all. 4th or 5th largest city in the country, (depending on the study), and we get snubbed.
Thanks a lot Sprint

Exactly! Where's our 4G in Phoenix. I remember reading about some test market thing with the valley, Clearwire and Sprint about running WiMax and nothing ever came of it. Oh well, guess we just have to be patient.
My battery life is great on my shift. Still stock, having issues getting root through my laptop, but I usually get a whole day out of my battery. For the first time I'm actually impressed with android battery life.
Sent from my Shift using Tapatalk

I'm trying out some things today for battery life, will post with results tomorrow

Problem is Android Market makes it way too easy to download a crap ton of of apps to the point that your phone slows to a crawl. We live in an always connected world, but this also means we need to be more aware of what and whom we interact with. Be careful out there kiddies.

Android OS - Keep Awake and Mobile Radio Active

Hi,
The Nexus 6P has been pretty good so far on battery. Nothing super insane, but enough to get me through a day.
Max I get is 3 hours SOT when I hit 0%...
Android OS is usually in the top 3, and in a 10 hour day, its getting 2 hours of Keep Awake time and about 30min Mobile Radio Active.
Google Play Services is also getting around 45min Mobile Radio Active as well.
Phone is bone stock, bootloader locked, unrooted. Running a handful of apps, even stopped using my Moto360 and disabled bluetooth when not in use to see if that was the culprit.
Any tips? (or apps that help me delve deeper into Android OS and why it keeps waking the thing up)

would also like to know about this, having very similar stats

Similar situation here - crazy battery drain and "Keep Awake" when I have a sim card in (TMo). 3 hours sitting on my desk - not using it - the phone gets warm/hot and Keep Awake shows 1H 16m under Android OS. When I put the same sim back into my Nexus 5 (using the adapter/converter) the N5 battery is perfectly fine.. normal.. no massive drain.
Any thoughts?

Turn off Wifi and give it a try. See if you still have the same battery drain.

pogul said:
Similar situation here - crazy battery drain and "Keep Awake" when I have a sim card in (TMo). 3 hours sitting on my desk - not using it - the phone gets warm/hot and Keep Awake shows 1H 16m under Android OS. When I put the same sim back into my Nexus 5 (using the adapter/converter) the N5 battery is perfectly fine.. normal.. no massive drain.
Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go into location & uncheck all scanning functions

Thanks. I should have mentioned that I already had wifi and bt turned off, and had turned off scanning for both under Locations. I was trying to isolate this to cell signal as best I could by disabling wifi and bt things. I also tried turning off "Enhanced LTE" - and now I'm trying it with wifi calling on (again just to narrow down different possibilities).
I think a factory reset is in my near future - may as well start from completely scratch and see if I still get the same horrible battery drain.

Just reporting back. I did a factory reset - and INITIALLY I thought I was on to something. Battery life seemed better at first, but then I soon began dropping cell signal - which apparently sends the phone off searching for signal chewing up battery.
In my case it's never ending cycle - get signal, drop, search, get signal, drop search.
Yes, I'm in a fairly weak TMo LTE service area, but my Nexus 5 and my wife's Nexus 4 have never had these sort of massive drain issues.
Also, I was in a major metro area on Sat night and the signal kept dropping as well. I couldn't toggle it back on via airplane mode or the mobile data switch. I finally had to reboot to bring it back - and then it proceeded to drop again. Meanwhile, my wife's N4 had no issues.
I went to TMo on Sunday and swapped out the sim - no change. 6P went from fully charged to completely dead overnight (roughly 1AM to 9AM).
So, at this point I'm wondering if I just have a faulty 6P. I'll be calling Google today to see about an RMA exchange :/

pogul said:
Just reporting back. I did a factory reset - and INITIALLY I thought I was on to something. Battery life seemed better at first, but then I soon began dropping cell signal - which apparently sends the phone off searching for signal chewing up battery.
In my case it's never ending cycle - get signal, drop, search, get signal, drop search.
Yes, I'm in a fairly weak TMo LTE service area, but my Nexus 5 and my wife's Nexus 4 have never had these sort of massive drain issues.
Also, I was in a major metro area on Sat night and the signal kept dropping as well. I couldn't toggle it back on via airplane mode or the mobile data switch. I finally had to reboot to bring it back - and then it proceeded to drop again. Meanwhile, my wife's N4 had no issues.
I went to TMo on Sunday and swapped out the sim - no change. 6P went from fully charged to completely dead overnight (roughly 1AM to 9AM).
So, at this point I'm wondering if I just have a faulty 6P. I'll be calling Google today to see about an RMA exchange :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe try activating band 12?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-6p/general/fastboot-activate-band-12-volte-t3239652

I found that my wifi network was causing doze to not work as good. I turned off wifi at night last night and got better results with just data.
My radio is accounting for 88% percent of my phones battery drain. I was down to 60 percent with about an hour of SoT. Not sure what's going on with my device either. I was about to factory reset but don't want to.
Bums me out when I see people getting 4+ hours. I want that action.

I had the mobile active bug also, very close to getting an iPhone.

I saw in another thread that apps like GasBuddy has been causing wake locks like you describe. The issue may be app related. Rooting and installing a battery monitor app should give you more insight as well as wiping and loading just your basic apps to find the culprit because something is definitely wrong.
I get 6 hr SOT without doing anything special and at night I lose 1%, sometimes none if I only sleep for 5hrs and that's with wifi on.
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