Database Users

Battery life suddenly very poor - how to identify cause?

For the first few weeks I had my HD the battery life was brilliant. With minor use it'd have high levels like 95+% when I go to bed at night, but the last week or two something has begun really guzzling power from it and I can't figure out what.
I don't think I installed anything new, so I want to find out if there is a way I can easily identify where the power is getting drained so badly. For instance, some days now it is down to about 55% by the middle of the day without even making a call or using any data services etc. I have bluetooth & wifi switched off all the time too!
Is there an app that can identify battery drain in a similar sort of way to cpu/memory use? Or does it normally follow that something using more memory/cpu will be the cause?
Thanks guys!

Cret said:
For the first few weeks I had my HD the battery life was brilliant. With minor use it'd have high levels like 95+% when I go to bed at night, but the last week or two something has begun really guzzling power from it and I can't figure out what.
I don't think I installed anything new, so I want to find out if there is a way I can easily identify where the power is getting drained so badly. For instance, some days now it is down to about 55% by the middle of the day without even making a call or using any data services etc. I have bluetooth & wifi switched off all the time too!
Is there an app that can identify battery drain in a similar sort of way to cpu/memory use? Or does it normally follow that something using more memory/cpu will be the cause?
Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try the following task manager and click on CPU Usage at the top. This should help isolate what programs are active

Thanks very much for the reply.
I did look in a task manager I already had and I found that Phonex seemed to be varying but generally using up to 10% cpu just sitting in the background so I have uninstalled it (shame - it's nice).
I'll add in the task manager you've given me and check that, and see how it behaves now PhonEx is gone.....

Thanks very much for the reply.
I did look in a task manager I already had and I found that Phonex seemed to be varying but generally using up to 10% cpu just sitting in the background so I have uninstalled it (shame - it's nice).
I'll add in the task manager you've given me and check that, and see how it behaves now PhonEx is gone.....

Here's an update - I couldn't find anything else that was really using any cpu, and the main culprits using memory seem to be important stuff (I think - shell32.exe & device.exe & cprog.exe) so I doubt I can do anything about them.
Anyway, it wasn't bad last night after removing PhonEx but this morning it had used 10% battery in half an hour without even being used at all!!!
Rebooted and it's stayed on the same battery level now for over an hour but I don't trust it - it seems very erratic and I'm really not sure the best way to find the cause still.
I'd do a hard reset but it'll be a right PITA to get everything back on it again afterwards.

Cret said:
Here's an update - I couldn't find anything else that was really using any cpu, and the main culprits using memory seem to be important stuff (I think - shell32.exe & device.exe & cprog.exe) so I doubt I can do anything about them.
Anyway, it wasn't bad last night after removing PhonEx but this morning it had used 10% battery in half an hour without even being used at all!!!
Rebooted and it's stayed on the same battery level now for over an hour but I don't trust it - it seems very erratic and I'm really not sure the best way to find the cause still.
I'd do a hard reset but it'll be a right PITA to get everything back on it again afterwards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would recommend reading this thread
A number of ideas have been given including using SQTools to identify what is using up the battery.
Good luck and keep me informed

Thanks for the reply again.
Are SKtools/SQtools two different things, or is that just a typo?
Have already got SKtools installed so I'll give it some scrutiny. It's obviously behaving at present though as it's an hour since my earlier post and still on the same battery % level.
Thanks for the link to the other thread anyway. I'll obviously be keeping a close eye on this so I'll advise any findings as they come up.

I've never known anything like it with this battery - no regular pattern sometimes brilliant sometimes awful. Very sensitive to chargers and type - one person reported here that if he charged through usb on computer his battery life went down really quickly afterwards. If he charged through mains battery life was much better. I also just found my charger on my motorbike has a small amount of rust/dirt in it and is causing the device to discharge.
I am not helping but just reaffirming your findings. I did find a programme called BattLog useful to see what programmes were causing high level battery usage. I don't have the link but you can find it here somewhere using search. Another tool for your collection.
Good luck!

Battlog eh? Thanks for the suggestion - will look it up
*edit* here it is - I'll try this tonight, if only as it's quicker than going through the SKtools menus to get to the power usage:
http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/ppc-download-battlog.html
I just began uninstalling stuff to see if it helps (seems to currently run around 106-111mah drain - no idea what might be considered 'normal' and have seen other posts questioning this but no real answers - yet).
Uninstalled Memmaid, and the wedge 18 tab action screen, and also Singh's 15 tab thingy. Have also turned off Handy Switcher as I had that running from startup. It's still drawing 106mah after all that!
One side effect though after removing those, was the weather applet appeared on S2U2 when I unlocked it - first time it's worked! It did disappear again though so there's still a problem with that too.

I've seen many posts where people blame software they have installed and the developer denies it is the software etc.... I think in the end it comes down to the device/battery or manila/TF3D. I may be wrong of course and will be interested to see how you go with it all.

I think it must be software since I have a lot on there and it was fine for the first few weeks I owned it and then suddenly began losing LOADS of power.
For some reason my data connection is not working now either! Might be time for a hard reset I guess.

If you are getting ~150mah consumption when the unit is in use, then with a standard 1350mah battery the lifetime should be 9 hours per charge.
If your battery dies in 1 day, then the unit is consuming the same amount of power almost all the time, even when it's locked or sleeping and this is not normal, unless you want it this way.
Some software, in particular lock managers and button managers are believed to be causing battery drain as they prevent the device from entering deeper sleep states where power can be conserved.
There's software floating on this forum that enables wi-fi and wave audio drivers to remain active in unattended mode (when your backlight is off) too, battery is drained a lot faster when any of these are installed.

Good points
I doubt there's any way of monitoring what power is being used in standby mode is there?
For instance, would an app be possible so that when sync'd and usb charging turned off the app on your desktop could run the same power monitoring process that you find in the likes of SKtools? That would answer a lot of questions I think!

PowerGuard
I used PowerGuard, when I was troubleshooting my battery problems ... and you can run the monitor and put it in standby mode, backlight off etc. I used to consume ~180maH when on, no calls no bluetooth and ~96mAh when backlight off/standby.
For me the culprits were S2U2 and Enable HSDPA in the phone settings. I cant get 3G cause im in the US, but it was alwys searching for a signal... after disabling those two.. im at 115mAH when on and 33mAh when standby and back to an ~18 hour battery life.

Oh dear, I just made a new thread with the same question really Silly me.
What version of S2U2 are you using? Did you upgrade that recently? I moved up to 1.5 and I think that might be the culprit, but I've uninstalled it and still having poor battery problems.
**EDIT** Okay, so I have Battlog installed, the drain sometimes shows as -330ma, but how do I see what is causing that drain?

My battery was lasting 2 days on the standard rom, using S2U2 and with HSDPA enabled.
I then upgraded to the Davideuck V-1 HP, and changed the radio from 1.09 to 1.12. Again I did have SU2U installed.
The battery then lasted about 6 hours, and the unit shut down before the ending of my day at work. I can only assume that the pda was consuming too much power even when switched off.
After two frustrating days, I gave up last night, and installed Davideuck V6 and changed the radio to 1.10, and now the pda battery is lasting for ages. It's only dropped from 100% to 99% after 5 hours.
OK, I know I should have changed things one step at a time, but I must assume that either the 1.12 radio or the V-1 rom is causing the problem.
I don't think S2U2 is the culprit here. But I do suspect that it might be the V-1 rom, as I believe that some folk have a similar problem with the new Dutty rom too. However, other users of the V-1 rom assure me that they don't have such a problem, so I'm confused!

Hmm, Dutty's 2.0 is using radio 1.09. Maybe I should try 1.10? Where can I get it from?

AndyCr15 said:
Hmm, Dutty's 2.0 is using radio 1.09. Maybe I should try 1.10? Where can I get it from?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Follow link in my signature below. Has all Radios

AndyCr15 said:
**EDIT** Okay, so I have Battlog installed, the drain sometimes shows as -330ma, but how do I see what is causing that drain?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There should be for example "Active Application=ThumbcalStart" just above the temp/ma figures in the log file like in this screen shot post 17.
I am guessing 330ma does not sound too excessive for an open application as long as it is not running all the time.

So, idle it's at around 90-100. When I turned it off and S2U2 didn't start, it dropped down to 33 fairly steady. When I locked S2U2 and then turned it off, it stayed around 80, dropped to 50 for a little while and then came back up to 99...

I hate Froyo!

Thought the title would get your attention.
After upgrading to Froyo, I have many issues, two of which I'll cover here in hope that someone can resolve them.
First issue is battery life. Absolutely horrible after upgrading. Thought it would be the opposite. Can someone please provide some resolution to this issue? I've disabled a number of things said to resolve this problem but none have worked.
The second issue is the accelerometer after upgrading. Most screens end up in landscape view and switching back to portrait is difficult. I have tried to calibrate it but that didn't work. Don't like the huge delay or failed attempt to switch between both on this version. Calibration does not work.
Any help is appreciated...

pookieguy said:
Thought the title would get your attention.
After upgrading to Froyo, I have many issues, two of which I'll cover here in hope that someone can resolve them.
First issue is battery life. Absolutely horrible after upgrading. Thought it would be the opposite. Can someone please provide some resolution to this issue? I've disabled a number of things said to resolve this problem but none have worked.
The second issue is the accelerometer after upgrading. Most screens end up in landscape view and switching back to portrait is difficult. I have tried to calibrate it but that didn't work. Don't like the huge delay or failed attempt to switch between both on this version. Calibration does not work.
Any help is appreciated...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
buy a new battery and a good charger
menu>settings> display> uncheck Auto-rotate screen

screen
Why would I want to uncheck that option? I want it to auto rotate but want it to happen quicker than it has after upgrading.

battery..
In addition, the battery is obviously not the problem here. This started after upgrading to Froyo.

Were you using a custom ROM with 2.1?
Are you using a custom ROM with 2.2?
As far as I know, the stock ROM with 2.1 didn't have great battery life either (thought I'm not sure, I rooted my phone the day I got it ). So if you're using a stock ROM with 2.2, you could have the same issue.
Also, if you are rooted, try using SetCPU. Even with the default kernel you can use it to underclock your phone when the screen's off and save a lot of battery.

pookieguy said:
Thought the title would get your attention.
After upgrading to Froyo, I have many issues, two of which I'll cover here in hope that someone can resolve them.
First issue is battery life. Absolutely horrible after upgrading. Thought it would be the opposite. Can someone please provide some resolution to this issue? I've disabled a number of things said to resolve this problem but none have worked.
The second issue is the accelerometer after upgrading. Most screens end up in landscape view and switching back to portrait is difficult. I have tried to calibrate it but that didn't work. Don't like the huge delay or failed attempt to switch between both on this version. Calibration does not work.
Any help is appreciated...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You hate Froyo then please return your EVO to sprint

are you running a task killer? try removing it. Have you tried any of the MANY battery life tricks? Try flashing the update.zip, could have been a messy install. you also could be suffering from useritis.

root
Thanks for the reply. No, phone has not been rooted. I simply waited for the 2.2 upgrade and can confirm both issues are a result of upgrading. You are right...the stock ROM did not have good battery life. However, after upgrading, it is much worse in comparison.
The g-sensor issue is also a huge problem. With that said, I'm looking for a fix to these two issues.
Thanks,

task killer..
tonyh703,
Yes, I'm running Advanced Task Killer which did not have a problem before. Is this an app that can cause this problem? I'll remove it if so...

You really need to do a little detective work to find out why your battery is not lasting. My battery is actually lasting noticeably longer on froyo. I was using Fresh 1.0.1 before with Netarchy's kernel and would just barely make it through the day of moderate use. Now that I have updated to Fresh 3.1.0.1, I am easily making it through the day with about the same use. Yesterday, I went 14 hours and still had 26% left when I plugged it in for the night. My usage was about 2 hours streaming last.fm, about a half hour of phone calls, about 1 1/2 hours of internet and twitter, about 45 minutes watching video's, and an hour and a half of reading with my kindle ap. To me that is pretty darn good. I have gps on, twitter syncing every half hour, and google sync on, most of my other stuff like email and such is set to manually sync. The only thing I did notice is that the first day after going to Froyo, my battery went down pretty quick, but after a day or two it settled down to the way it is now on it's own. Today I have had about the same use as yesterday so far, and have been off of the charger for 11 hours and have 76% remaining.
As to your other problem, can't say, mine is working fine.

If youve got an led flashlight type of app installed uninstall it they conflict with the HTC LED flashlight. That seems to be the most common problem with people upgrading to Froyo.

Agree on your second point. I wish there was a way to at least lock the screen to an orientation when need. The delay though is ridiculous.
I have also noticed that the delay to type sometimes is severely long causing me to retype the words a second time before they appear in the screen.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

FWIW - I found a little trick on a forum somewhere that allegedly came from HTC techs...
It goes like this - first, charge your phone as normal (phone on, 8 hours)
Then, after 8 hours and the phone reporting fully charged status, take the phone off the charger for about 3 minutes (just enough to slightly discharge it) and then turn it off (power down) and put it back on the charger for an hour or so.
Then, take it off the charger and turn it back on.
That's it! It sounds a bit ridiculous, but I think the cited reason was that whenever you install a new ROM, the "system" needs to understand when the battery is truly full and this trick helps to recalibrate and ensure that it is.
I really don't have any way (nor the desire) to verify the science behind this, but I did it myself after the horrible battery life I got with FroYo.
About a week out now and my battery is behaving completely normally, and possibly better than with 2.1, though only marginally if that...
Give it a shot - if it works, there you go, if not... Well it's not like you've lost anything.
Good luck, though YMMV.
Sent from my EVO 4G (Froyo - Stock HTC Rom)

have any of yall had a long delay when putting in a name for the reciver in sms? I kid you not it takes almost 3 to 5 sec for it to pull up a name and phone number from my phone book.

Its sad that you need to do "tricks" to get decent battery life, because most people expect it out of the box. Yes you can apply a custom rom with a undervolted cpu, but that shouldnt be necessary. I personally love doing all that stuff, but the majority of people are completely ignorant to these methods and might return their phones because of battery life, but for you people on here...BAKEDSNACK 1.2.5 with the latest of his kernel..amazing battery life.

Get rid of that task killer!! Froyo does not need it... Not to mention none of the task killers support Froyo correctly. Uninstall it, try using Froyo without it.

I recommend getting rid of the task killer and go without system panel lite. It works with froyo without any problems. I also recommend letting your battery completely die out before charging it again.
My Evo worked without any issues after the update to froyo. Also, if you are a widget fanatic, I recommend limiting the amount yo u use . The reason being that everytime you unlock your phone and scroll from one page to through next, you are loading said widgets into memory which help to eating up the battery quicker.
Also if you have a lot of things updating in the background, that can kill your battery quicker. I'm always on my phone and get anywhere from ten to fourteen hours of use. I also use a cpu manager to extend the life of my battery when not in use.
Sent from my HTC Evo

DO NOT DEPLETE YOUR BATTERY COMPLETELY!! These are Li-ion batteries. Depleting the battery too much can damage the cells. Discharging the batteries 100% before charging to avoid memory effect is a phenomena unique to Ni-Cad batteries. If a Li-ion is discharged too severely, it causes an irreversible reaction inside the cell that prevents the battery from holding any charge at all. This common in laptop batteries.
To the OPs issue, do you have the latest Facebook update (1.3.1)? Version 1.3.0 had an issue that was keeping the phone awake eating up battery life.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

sombdy said:
DO NOT DEPLETE YOUR BATTERY COMPLETELY!! These are Li-ion batteries. Depleting the battery too much can damage the cells. Discharging the batteries 100% before charging to avoid memory effect is a phenomena unique to Ni-Cad batteries. If a Li-ion is discharged too severely, it causes an irreversible reaction inside the cell that prevents the battery from holding any charge at all. This common in laptop batteries.
To the OPs issue, do you have the latest Facebook update (1.3.1)? Version 1.3.0 had an issue that was keeping the phone awake eating up battery life.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I could see how this could be bad if you discharged it completely every single time, but every phone ive had including the iphone, it has been specificly stated many times to COMPLETELY DISCHARGE THE BATTERY ATLEAST ONCE A MONTH

Still no luck...
Guys,
I have removed the task killer and have removed the other LED Light utility. Still having battery issues. Any other suggestions please??
Also,
What about the accelerometer? Having many issues with it. First off, when a text msg comes in, it automatically shows in landscape. Phone switches to landscape fine but it is very difficult to switch back to portrait.
Any other help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,

Exhausted every effort trying to fix this problem.. ATRIX 4G: new battery time?

I'll post everything I've tried and everything that's gone wrong here.
So initially I purchased this phone off of a friend nearly brand new, the screen had broken and had been replaced. Otherwise the phone is in perfect factory condition.
I unlocked the phone, and am using it on Rogers. APN settings working perfectly.
I installed GOLauncherEX on the phone as Motoblur wasn't doing it for me.
Battery life was crap (lasting hardly 3 hours and dying while I sleep). I found that Motoblur HOME had been running alongside GOLauncherEX. At first I simply uninstalled the third-party launcher, but then opted to grab LauncherPro+ and HomeSwitcher. This dramatically improved battery life.
Lately, I've been having issues once in awhile again. Mostly if I leave the phone unplugged while I'm sleeping (fully charged when unplugged) and we'll use the timeline 3am - 11am. It would either die completely or drop to around 15%.
As long as I could have enough charge to last me through work, I was fine with this as it was way better than what had been happening before.
This morning something extreme and unexplainable happened.. and it's the first time I took a look at the battery usage meter to see what had happened. Picture is below.
If someone could offer some tips or help that would benefit me even the slightest, it would be very much appreciated.
My bad for sneaking a link in, but it was the only way to show the issue.
a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/390662_10150380313609839_506884838_8126371_1297964124_n.jpg
(Remove the space between 1297964 and 124 at the end)

Oh and also, phone is rooted, bloatware is frozen via Titanium Backup Pro.

Have you recalibrated?

WiredPirate said:
Have you recalibrated?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have any suggestions as to what to use to calibrate?
I'm not keen on flashing any new roms if that makes a difference.

SL1VR said:
Do you have any suggestions as to what to use to calibrate?
I'm not keen on flashing any new roms if that makes a difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Calibrating is something you may need to do after flashing a ROM, you can search and find a guide or you can use this app.

I have not flashed any new roms and I don't intend on doing so, but I'll check out the app you posted.
Thanks for your help,
any new ideas are still welcome.

The benefits of battery calibration are not limited to only if you flash a new ROM. Battery calibration should be the first thing you try if you are experiencing battery troubles imo, and there is allot more in depth information in the guides you could search for.
There is one more thing I can think of you can try, download Watchdog and see if there are any malicious or poorly written apps burning up your cpu/battery.

WiredPirate said:
The benefits of battery calibration are not limited to only if you flash a new ROM. Battery calibration should be the first thing you try if you are experiencing battery troubles imo, and there is allot more in depth information in the guides you could search for.
There is one more thing I can think of you can try, download Watchdog and see if there are any malicious or poorly written apps burning up your cpu/battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your help, grabbing Watchdog now.

Maybe unlock the bootloader and flash a custom rom?

Go into account and sync and shut off background data. I was getting. 10-12 hours battery life and now over 30 by just doing that. Worked for a buddy at work too.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App

Radio is key. After I flashed radio 1.77.30p, my phone can easily using 3 days without freeze anything.

Do not use 1.97 radio and don't use task killers. 2.3.4 gingerbread does a much better job of killing tasks than Froyo did and it's unnecessary. Also, turning off background data is not necessary.

Phalanx7621 said:
Do not use 1.97 radio and don't use task killers. 2.3.4 gingerbread does a much better job of killing tasks than Froyo did and it's unnecessary. Also, turning off background data is not necessary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would say it is. Apps including google will try and update and locate your phone via 3g and gps when its sitting there idle. Its not necessary if you only install apps that dont use background data, or disable them individually but some dont allow it.
I still was able to get 15 hours with data enabled and over 30 with it disabled. There is a huge difference there. I just have to open my yahoo now to update it which I dont mind.

While I appreciate everyone's replies and help, has anyone actually looked at the picture I posted?
As much as I am most definitely interested in prolonging my battery life, that picture is showing a sudden drop from 70% to completely dead, idling, screen off, while I'm asleep.

SL1VR said:
While I appreciate everyone's replies and help, has anyone actually looked at the picture I posted?
As much as I am most definitely interested in prolonging my battery life, that picture is showing a sudden drop from 70% to completely dead, idling, screen off, while I'm asleep.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would purchase a new battery from Motorola, It looks like your battery has one or more bad cells in it. Only thing that really explains it. Even with everything turned ON as far as data - the battery should not drop that far that fast.

i'm not entirely sure whats going on with the charge level dropping so sharply. Either something is draining your battery big time or the readout when it says 100% is incorrect.
I had issues with the battery up time as well. In my case, the battery wouldnt last more than 8-9 hours. I had to charge it two times a day. Once overnight so its 100% when i go to work and again as soon as i get home. If i charged to 100%, unplugged and went to bed, it would be at 15-20% when i woke up.
The last time i went abroad, i left the radio turned off completely. I noticed that the battery held its charge for about a day and a half.
Now i did root, unlock the BL and install CM7 on my phone. It seemed better but not that much. After i setup the phone to NOT use my 3G data connection while my wifi was on, i noticed that i was getting great battery life when i was at home but still rubbish at work.
I'm doing a test right now to see if this makes a difference or not. I have turned off data on my phone all together this morning. I charged it to 100%. Normally after 6 hours at work, my phone is at about 30-35%
Right now its sitting at 75%
the 3g is whats killing the battery, on my phone anyway. I will see how long the battery lasts without turning on my data at all. Then i will compare that with how its like with background data turned off.
I would suggest you try re-calibrating your phone's battery, i use battery calibration from the market. Then either turn data off altogether like i have or just turn background data off as the others have suggested and see what kind of a difference it makes.
While i realize you dont want to, it may help further to have a ROM like CM7 installed as it wont have all the bloatware that can further reduce the performance of your phone. You should definitely give turning the data off a go to see its the culprit before you go spend money on a new battery which may or may not fix the problem.
Best to isolate the root cause before you spend money on fixing it. If turning off the data doesnt do it, then you very well may have a battery problem.

Routaran said:
i'm not entirely sure whats going on with the charge level dropping so sharply. Either something is draining your battery big time or the readout when it says 100% is incorrect.
I had issues with the battery up time as well. In my case, the battery wouldnt last more than 8-9 hours. I had to charge it two times a day. Once overnight so its 100% when i go to work and again as soon as i get home. If i charged to 100%, unplugged and went to bed, it would be at 15-20% when i woke up.
The last time i went abroad, i left the radio turned off completely. I noticed that the battery held its charge for about a day and a half.
Now i did root, unlock the BL and install CM7 on my phone. It seemed better but not that much. After i setup the phone to NOT use my 3G data connection while my wifi was on, i noticed that i was getting great battery life when i was at home but still rubbish at work.
I'm doing a test right now to see if this makes a difference or not. I have turned off data on my phone all together this morning. I charged it to 100%. Normally after 6 hours at work, my phone is at about 30-35%
Right now its sitting at 75%
the 3g is whats killing the battery, on my phone anyway. I will see how long the battery lasts without turning on my data at all. Then i will compare that with how its like with background data turned off.
I would suggest you try re-calibrating your phone's battery, i use battery calibration from the market. Then either turn data off altogether like i have or just turn background data off as the others have suggested and see what kind of a difference it makes.
While i realize you dont want to, it may help further to have a ROM like CM7 installed as it wont have all the bloatware that can further reduce the performance of your phone. You should definitely give turning the data off a go to see its the culprit before you go spend money on a new battery which may or may not fix the problem.
Best to isolate the root cause before you spend money on fixing it. If turning off the data doesnt do it, then you very well may have a battery problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll definitely try everything you've mentioned, I did calibrate my battery since I first started this topic. I'm not sure if there's a difference, if there is, it isn't noticeable. My phone died last night, and I charged it overnight again so I haven't had a chance to see if what happened the other night will happen again. Soon enough, I'll post details if I notice anything peculiar.

Since you said you bought the phone off a friend I would like to make sure you have the right battery.
The battery "must" be of the following to show the right charge level, otherwise it might appear the battery discharging very quickly.
The part/model no.: SNN5893A
Manufacturing Date: ??/April/2011 or onwards

In regards to the poster above who mentioned shutting off background data, my phone lasts 17-19 hours running CM7 with nothing frozen, background data on, and I record quite a bit of video + pictures every day. I don't use task killers either. So I'm thinking that maybe the background data thing is either actually covering up a radio problem, a carrier issue, previous ROM information leaking through, or a faulty battery as stated above that could possibly need replaced.

[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.

Trying to track down cause of recent battery drain issue.

Hello all,
So I know there's various discussions all over the web about the Galaxy s10 and battery issues on both Snapdragon and Exynos variants. It seems people are experiencing a wide margin of difference in avg battery life..
So here's my situation. My wife and I both have S10+'s through AT&T. We got them the first week they came out. I looked though the forums and performed several battery optimization tweaks on both phones and since then the battery life has been really impressive... No complaints really. Until this last week.
We both recieved the March security patch and fingerprint scanner fix about a week ago. My wife's phone seems unchanged by this. Everything working as expected. My phone however has been draining battery MUCH faster both in SOT and standby time. I'm losing 2-3x more battery % overnight. In the last 20 mins of just reading through threads on the XDA forum app, I've lost about 10% battery. I'm sitting in the dark with my screen brightness very low too. (down another 5% since I started typing this!)
My wife and I have very similar phone habits. Since both our phones are optimized identically, and we used most of the same apps a play the same games, I started looking through everything different I've done in my phone since this problem started. I installed Adhell3, which seems to be setup properly and working. Mike B. from Adhell's Discord assured me that Adhell shouldn't be draining my battery. I'm mostly using it just to remove a bunch of basic bloatware and block some ads.
The update seems to have worked fine otherwise. My FP scanner is much better now, but something is definitely wrong. I've tried wiping the partition cache afterwards. I've tracked down others experiencing issues after this particular update, but cant seem to find a way to fix this problem yet. I saw something about Deep Sleep problems after the update when someone uses a VOIP service like Skype or WhatsApp, but I dont use anything like that. I can't even find a good tool to use to see more information about my battery usage, as the built-in battery monitor lacks a good deal of information. CPUspy doesn't work on my version.
If anyone has any ideas of what could be the culprit, what else I could try, or what tools I could use to try and track down what exactly is causing this sudden increase in drain, I'd really appreciate it.

Which update do you have ASBA or ASCA? This is rather weird, Battery drain can also come from restoring from backups. I lose 2% every night and my phone is on airplane mode, not connected to anything except location. I do not have adhell, and last time I tested before the fingerprint update I had 10h SoT on wifi purely. When I got the new fingerprint update I checked if the phone went to deep sleep and it does, so I really do not know what might be your issue. I have an exynos variant btw. Also I charge my phone constantly from 80 I let it drop to 40 and charge it back, I do not use fast charging options. Since unplugging my phone now on LTE fully I have lost 1% in 30 min, I have my fitbit always connected, location on, max resolution, I have a semi black wallpaper and brightness around 40-50%.
I will see today how much SoT I can get from 80% part wifi, part LTE, I will update.

clear cache helped a lot of people

Update 1

Reset all phone settings to factory. Don't do full factory reset, just all the settings, fixed my post update battery drain issues
Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

Update 2

Hrrm. It seems I don't have ASBA or ASCA, I have ASD3. The March update.

I'm really hoping I don't end up having to factory reset and manually install everything... Because I did do a restore from backup with AT&T Transfer, because it seemed really convenient and time saving. I had no idea that so many people have had issues with restoring from various back up services (AT&T, Samsung, Google etc.)
I did the same restore from backup on my wife's S10+ too and she's had no problems. Her battery life is phenomenal. My battery issues only started after this last update.

SinisterDev said:
I'm really hoping I don't end up having to factory reset and manually install everything... Because I did do a restore from backup with AT&T Transfer, because it seemed really convenient and time saving. I had no idea that so many people have had issues with restoring from various back up services (AT&T, Samsung, Google etc.)
I did the same restore from backup on my wife's S10+ too and she's had no problems. Her battery life is phenomenal. My battery issues only started after this last update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well that seems rather strange to be honest, you can eliminate possibilities by just testing and see what works. Last possibility can be that factory resetting and installing all new, but then again, it could be that it solves your issues or not. You should be having rather horizontal lines to prove your phone is truly going into deep sleep in my opinion, but also you can check with CPU Spy

Sorry it will be this pic

Try to log too safe mode and check the battery drain
If stopped then it was from an application that have a problem
If not I think it might be a system app or something

So. I'm starting to think that some of my problem has to do with wakelocks. Unfortunately I have limited access to wakelocks statistics since my phone is unrooted. However. Last night I fully charged my phone right before bed and then took it off the charger to see how much it would lose overnight. It dropped a whopping 10% vs the 1-2% it used to.
I looked through some of the battery info and noticed several apps running in the background for very long periods of time since last night. Chrome(2hrs) , Discord(2hrs), Google Play Services(a whopping 13hrs 30mins running in background) and Google Play store (5hrs)
Somehow Discord was responsible for draining 7.6% battery in that time!
So, could this be a wakelock issue causing my phone to lose so much battery overnight? I know that's only half the problem, because I'm also experiencing higher drain than usual while using certain apps too. But I'm trying to figure out one thing at time.

SinisterDev said:
So. I'm starting to think that some of my problem has to do with wakelocks. Unfortunately I have limited access to wakelocks statistics since my phone is unrooted. However. Last night I fully charged my phone right before bed and then took it off the charger to see how much it would lose overnight. It dropped a whopping 10% vs the 1-2% it used to.
I looked through some of the battery info and noticed several apps running in the background for very long periods of time since last night. Chrome(2hrs) , Discord(2hrs), Google Play Services(a whopping 13hrs 30mins running in background) and Google Play store (5hrs)
Somehow Discord was responsible for draining 7.6% battery in that time!
So, could this be a wakelock issue causing my phone to lose so much battery overnight? I know that's only half the problem, because I'm also experiencing higher drain than usual while using certain apps too. But I'm trying to figure out one thing at time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can look at this thread and see if you can install the app without being root or not
https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

aromerodaniel said:
Which update do you have ASBA or ASCA? This is rather weird, Battery drain can also come from restoring from backups. I lose 2% every night and my phone is on airplane mode, not connected to anything except location. I do not have adhell, and last time I tested before the fingerprint update I had 10h SoT on wifi purely. When I got the new fingerprint update I checked if the phone went to deep sleep and it does, so I really do not know what might be your issue. I have an exynos variant btw. Also I charge my phone constantly from 80 I let it drop to 40 and charge it back, I do not use fast charging options. Since unplugging my phone now on LTE fully I have lost 1% in 30 min, I have my fitbit always connected, location on, max resolution, I have a semi black wallpaper and brightness around 40-50%.
I will see today how much SoT I can get from 80% part wifi, part LTE, I will update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
10 sot？！？！？you sure about it?!?whatever I try I always only have 7 something sot,how can you make it 10?!?

paullu said:
10 sot？！？！？you sure about it?!?whatever I try I always only have 7 something sot,how can you make it 10?!?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have done it before, I can look for the image, if you would like. That was a full day of wifi actually.

paullu said:
10 sot？！？！？you sure about it?!?whatever I try I always only have 7 something sot,how can you make it 10?!?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is the pic
Also you can look at this thread
https://forum.xda-developers.com/s10-plus/how-to/official-exynos-battery-life-thread-t3917814/page7

You have it good compared with me I get background drain on all apps and I have all apps set not to run in the background

da1e8 said:
You have it good compared with me I get background drain on all apps and I have all apps set not to run in the background
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You just need to tweak your settings more, put which apps do not run on the background or go to sleep, how many days you need to wait to put unused apps to sleep. Is all tweaking the settings.

aromerodaniel said:
You just need to tweak your settings more, put which apps do not run on the background or go to sleep, how many days you need to wait to put unused apps to sleep. Is all tweaking the settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've put all apps to sleep and they still register as been used

da1e8 said:
I've put all apps to sleep and they still register as been used
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then I don't what you can do, either do a factory reset and so not restore anything from backups and see if that works. I usually set my phone that way, clean no restoration from any backup all apps are installed manually, and I do not even use adhell to disable most of Samsung crap apps and services.