Database Users

Possible solution to the battery drain prob (WiFi only)

This is for the WiFi only A500.
Just noticed that if you install the power control widget (the free one) from the market, and configure one of the buttons as a 2G/3G switch, on pressing it you get to a menu that's not available through Settings (is missing from the WiFi and connections menu). There you have the option to unselect the Data enabled checkbox. I'm not sure yet, but I seem to be getting better battery life (although Cell standby will still show up in Battery use; still, that value is a percent of the total drainage, which seems to be smaller).
Please try it out and let the others know of your results.

Noted Before - Did Not Seem To Resolve Much
Actually many widgets have the property of opening up "hidden" settings, e.g.,
docfreed said:
Wow! I just went into my Beautiful Weather settings and under the "Advanced Panel" you can specify an action for clicking on the time (or weather). When this is done, it provides a large list of action - this list, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't show up anywhere.
Anyway, Mobile Data was checked (yes or on) so I cleared the list (resulting in mobile data being UNCHECKED) and rebooted. Mobile data remained unchecked so I'll watch for a while and report results later.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Could be placebo, I agree. Well, no harm done in any way

sure fire fix
Although it has been said that by renaming the phone.apk and telephony.apk you may risk bricking the device during a factory reset, I have renamed both and have seen an incredible increase in battery life.
Currently at six and a half hours of moderate use for music and web with some standby time and have 88% battery left. No cell standby being shown in battery stats either.
Reboots are fine, just don't factory reset without renaming the apk files back.

Installed Free Power Widget from the Market, says its installed but doesnt show in my widget list, strange.

Cell standby is simply terminology for when the tablet is asleep meaning screen off. So I wouldn't start changing it. In all likelihood you have an application that tries to access those two apps and when it doesn't find them it can't run its background process. I bet finding the culprit app would equally fix battery life.
cbotd said:
Although it has been said that by renaming the phone.apk and telephony.apk you may risk bricking the device during a factory reset, I have renamed both and have seen an incredible increase in battery life.
Currently at six and a half hours of moderate use for music and web with some standby time and have 88% battery left. No cell standby being shown in battery stats either.
Reboots are fine, just don't factory reset without renaming the apk files back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk

peejayw said:
Installed Free Power Widget from the Market, says its installed but doesnt show in my widget list, strange.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same, switch off and reboot made it appear in the list.
In much the same way photos I copied from a portable hdd onto the micro SD didn't show until I had powered off and on again.

Thanks, that did the trick.

@Canadoc: "Cell standby is simply terminology for when the tablet is asleep meaning screen off. So I wouldn't start changing it."
I do not believe this is correct. If this were true, removing Phone.apk and Telephony.apk would not affect battery usage, because the tablet would still use just as much power when the screen is off and it would still list "Cell standby" on the battery usage screen. In actuality, removing these two apps causes Cell Standby to disappear from the battery usage list and decreases actual battery usage. Plus, my "Cell Standby" % on the battery usage screen is highest when I have my tablet awake all day, and lowest on days when I let it go to sleep much of the time. So it must be doing something else in Cell Standby that uses power, probably trying to contact cell towers (in vain) even though it is a wi-fi only device.
A few minutes of Googling reveals that many Android wi-fi only models have the same problem (they try to access cell service even though they have no cell capability) and removing Phone.apk and TelephonyProvider.apk seems to fix the problem for everyone who's tried it. I have rooted my own A500 and removed them and it has given it an extra hour of battery time per full charge. YMMV, and it may someday brick when there's an update or something, but for now it works great. Cell standby was definitely doing something that it is now no longer doing.

I'm not 100% sure if android respects them(more experience on Linux than Android), but couldn't we just remove the exec flag off of the apk and not worry about bricking?
Or possibly set it's owner to system and deny rights to everyone but owner? Would that still allow updates?

I thought anything PRIOR to Honeycomb was made for phone ? ( froyo, gingerbread ...etc )
That info was actually made in press by Google !
So in essence, HC is for tablet ONLY ! why are we still seeing cell standby and phone apk ?
even if you argue because some tablets are 3G models ... 3G is about DATA ... not making a phone call !!! ( imagine bringing a 10" device up to the side of your ears )
there are some 7" tablets that are GSM capable... so, they CAN make GSM calls, and they DON'T use Honeycomb either.
anyone care to enlighten me why here we are with Honeycomb and still have the cellstandby and phone APK ??

UnicornKaz said:
anyone care to enlighten me why here we are with Honeycomb and still have the cellstandby and phone APK ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because Google are a bloody idiots?

Because hc was built on gingerbread. It wasn't built from nothing.
Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk

How to find out what keeps phone "awake"

I have enormous battery drain on my phone (Gingerbread) and it shows that phone is constantly "awake" and drained 25% of my battery in 2 hours. Majority is taken by "phone idle" and graph shows that it was almost 100% awake all that time even though I never used a phone.

Phone idle as a top consumer is normal. If you have the screen on a lot, it should be close to the Display consumption.
As far as a fix, I saw this on GB before upgrading the radio to .30P (I am on ATT).
Saw a dramatic improvement, which makes me conclude that the new radio is optimized to GB, whereas the .15P was only good enough for FroYo.

check for social network apps and widgets that update themselves constantly... i had the same issue and fixed it by freezing the social network stuff and setting my others not to check at OCD levels....

If you've got time on your hands and "System Panel" app from Market, this is going to be really worth it:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=8910035&postcount=24

System panel is by far the best tool for this. Paid version with monitoring tracks all apps hitting your cpu. Must have.

should i freeze stuff with titanium backup? or is there a beter/easier/safer/whatever way?

Smintz said:
should i freeze stuff with titanium backup? or is there a beter/easier/safer/whatever way?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First look in the settings for each app to see if you can disable or change the usage in any way.

feisty_noodle said:
Phone idle as a top consumer is normal. If you have the screen on a lot, it should be close to the Display consumption.
As far as a fix, I saw this on GB before upgrading the radio to .30P (I am on ATT).
Saw a dramatic improvement, which makes me conclude that the new radio is optimized to GB, whereas the .15P was only good enough for FroYo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can second that. My phone was draining battery like crazy after Gingerbread. I flashed the .30P radio last night, and now it looks like it is back to normal. I'm on AT&T as well.

Pat123 said:
If you've got time on your hands and "System Panel" app from Market, this is going to be really worth it:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=8910035&postcount=24
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a bunch, thats a really good find
Sent from my PocketDock

I'm trying the system panel solution. But it seems to be telling me nothing (I HAVE turned monitoring on) .
e.g. my top process after 3 hours is Beautiful live Weather at 1.8% then system at 0.4%? surely that's a bit low, if I add up everything in top processes I don't even get 10%.... also I'm sus as none of the blur stuff is showing up LOL, also I've been listening to music via BT for at least 1 hour and its not even showing 1%....
My drain is not crazy (~5% an hour if mostly idling, ~10% an hour with BT music) but I want to improve it

wintermute000 said:
I'm trying the system panel solution. But it seems to be telling me nothing (I HAVE turned monitoring on) .
e.g. my top process after 3 hours is Beautiful live Weather at 1.8% then system at 0.4%? surely that's a bit low, if I add up everything in top processes I don't even get 10%.... also I'm sus as none of the blur stuff is showing up LOL, also I've been listening to music via BT for at least 1 hour and its not even showing 1%....
My drain is not crazy (~5% an hour if mostly idling, ~10% an hour with BT music) but I want to improve it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do believe motoblur is included in "system"
About the percentages... is it the ammount of total battery used, percentage of processing capacity, or what? You have to look out for those details.

even if it is total amount of battery used, where is the drain caused by 1-2 hours of mp3 playback via bluetooth? surely thats on the list somewhere. I know for a fact that it doubles the rate of drain roughly.

wintermute000 said:
I'm trying the system panel solution. But it seems to be telling me nothing (I HAVE turned monitoring on) .
e.g. my top process after 3 hours is Beautiful live Weather at 1.8% then system at 0.4%? surely that's a bit low, if I add up everything in top processes I don't even get 10%.... also I'm sus as none of the blur stuff is showing up LOL, also I've been listening to music via BT for at least 1 hour and its not even showing 1%....
My drain is not crazy (~5% an hour if mostly idling, ~10% an hour with BT music) but I want to improve it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well dont worry, i too now have this awwake problem. last night 9 hours unplugged, all while i was sleeping so no phone usage by me, my phone was awake constantly, just a thousand little awake blips on the graph.
so i check system panel, and it all shows as normal. nothing high usage or out of the ordinary. so something else is going on here.
i'm a religious system panel user too. never had the awake problem on my nexus one.

Google Services/Google Play Service/Google Framework Services draining battery

Bear with me. If you are an expert on android maybe you can help me out here. First off, I have researched the crap out of this problem and still been unable to fix it, so YES, I did search before making this thread.
I am on a stock, rooted Verizon Galaxy S4. I have been watching my battery consumption carefully via the integrated battery settings menu, battery stats plus and wakelock detector apps. Mainly, there is a program or set of programs that typically is called "Google Services" that according to the integrated battery menu is consuming anywhere between 20-45% of my battery, sometimes more than the screen on time! My battery life is around 48hrs with 10hrs screen time but that is on the massive zerolemon 7500mah battery which I just bought, so I am not sure if that is above, below or just average (i.e. I have no real standard by which to judge).
Like I said I have read probably every thread about this problem with remedies such as; disable location, turn off google now, turn off google maps reporting, uninstall updates for google play/google play services/google framework settings, turn off google sync etc. I have tried them ALL, none seem to work. I have a feeling the issue is perhaps more in depth and above my head.
It gets more complicated. Although the stock android integrated battery menu reports it as using a massive amount of battery, the other two apps I mentioned above do not even report it, or at least not under a name that I regonize (perhaps that categorize it under a different process?). Under them screen time is by far the highest consumer.
So what to make of this? Is it a false report that the stock integrated android battery menu is reporting, and thus something to disregard? I doubt that because there are many other threads out there of people with the same problem and questions I have. But It's also not like my battery drains within hours. For instance, today I have been off the charge for 12.5hrs, with 3hrs and 40min of screen time and have 63% remaining on the 7500mah zerolemon extended battery.
If you can help, please do. If this is indeed a major drain I would really like to fix it.

Gulanowski said:
Bear with me. If you are an expert on android maybe you can help me out here. First off, I have researched the crap out of this problem and still been unable to fix it, so YES, I did search before making this thread.
I am on a stock, rooted Verizon Galaxy S4. I have been watching my battery consumption carefully via the integrated battery settings menu, battery stats plus and wakelock detector apps. Mainly, there is a program or set of programs that typically is called "Google Services" that according to the integrated battery menu is consuming anywhere between 20-45% of my battery, sometimes more than the screen on time! My battery life is around 48hrs with 10hrs screen time but that is on the massive zerolemon 7500mah battery which I just bought, so I am not sure if that is above, below or just average (i.e. I have no real standard by which to judge).
Like I said I have read probably every thread about this problem with remedies such as; disable location, turn off google now, turn off google maps reporting, uninstall updates for google play/google play services/google framework settings, turn off google sync etc. I have tried them ALL, none seem to work. I have a feeling the issue is perhaps more in depth and above my head.
It gets more complicated. Although the stock android integrated battery menu reports it as using a massive amount of battery, the other two apps I mentioned above do not even report it, or at least not under a name that I regonize (perhaps that categorize it under a different process?). Under them screen time is by far the highest consumer.
So what to make of this? Is it a false report that the stock integrated android battery menu is reporting, and thus something to disregard? I doubt that because there are many other threads out there of people with the same problem and questions I have. But It's also not like my battery drains within hours. For instance, today I have been off the charge for 12.5hrs, with 3hrs and 40min of screen time and have 63% remaining on the 7500mah zerolemon extended battery.
If you can help, please do. If this is indeed a major drain I would really like to fix it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you trie to disable the network location? It works for me.

Moz007 said:
Did you trie to disable the network location? It works for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes that seems to work, but it's not really a "fix" as now I cannot use the location feature of many of my apps. Basically traded one problem for another, albeit lesser one.

I'm still trying to figure it out as since last update (MEA firmware) , my phone is heating a lot.
I had this problem with data connection on, I had this problem in airplane mode, but not strangely with having connection to wifi.
I also observed that google services and android system is consuming most of the battery. earlier when I used to get 8-10% consumption in full use in an hour, now, 8-10 % is consumed within 30 mins.
No tweaks are working. Frozen a bunch of apps but the problem is still there.
Just now I've uninstalled fileexpert HD , as "greenify" told me that since last 20 minutes my phone is on, it has taken 250+ wake locks.
I'm charging my battery to full to check if that solves my problem.
will try to disable location services and report back on the results.

Bump

Have the exact same problem, before the latest firmware my phone had awesome battery life, and now the battery goes from 40% to zero in just a few hours without any app running when I'm sleeping... it's horrible. Same problem with my wife's S4 since the latest update... It absolutely sucks.

Battery Drain | Idle

My Essential PH 1 is draining a lot.
Phone idle is taking most power with approximately 17%. Screenshots attached.
Can you please advise if this is normal and ways to minimize battery drain ?

manuvarghese said:
My Essential PH 1 is draining a lot.
Phone idle is taking most power with approximately 17%. Screenshots attached.
Can you please advise if this is normal and ways to minimize battery drain ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you showing off? because those are amazing numbers. You're on track for 35 hours! I get around 26. Your bigger killer is What's App, but that's expected for a Facebook app. 17% for idle means your phone is on and doing nothing 17% of the time.
Sent from my PH-1 using Tapatalk

reverenddak said:
Are you showing off? because those are amazing numbers. You're on track for 35 hours! I get around 26. Your bigger killer is What's App, but that's expected for a Facebook app. 17% for idle means your phone is on and doing nothing 17% of the time.
Sent from my PH-1 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope I am not showing off, I think i am having huge drains when I am asleep. Most of the time in that graph is idle time so i am thinking it should be better ?
Again I moved recently to droid from iOS so i am unsure of the droid power management baselines.

manuvarghese said:
Nope I am not showing off, I think i am having huge drains when I am asleep. Most of the time in that graph is idle time so i am thinking it should be better ?
Again I moved recently to droid from iOS so i am unsure of the droid power management baselines.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool. I didn't mean to seem mean, but those are good numbers. If your phone is on, and you have push notifications (pretty much every social media app, phone, sms, etc.) you're going to have drain. Even if the phone was off, the battery would drain somewhat. But you have What's App and other chat apps, so that'll use battery, even if your asleep, the phone isn't. It's the only way you would be able to receive calls, text, updates, etc.
That 17% looks steep, but it's all relative to a small screen. over the span of 20 hours and you still have almost 50% battery, especially with "free" apps that are basically advertising engines pushing ads at your every minute. Having Phone Idle at the top is not a bad thing, it just means you don't use your phone as much as you use What's App.

1% per hour is good, better than our S8 even

I had enabled "Cellular data always active" and it chewed through my battery life. I turned it off and can now last 1.5 days on a charge.

My phone is draining 12% overnight. And phone idle is top of the list. What does this phone idle do? There was a random night where the phone only dropped 1%. But most nights, it's draining around 10% with phone idle at the top.
Update: setting wifi to not stay on while phone is sleeping seems to fix the drain issue.

boidsonly said:
I had enabled "Cellular data always active" and it chewed through my battery life. I turned it off and can now last 1.5 days on a charge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does disabling it affect receiving messages that rely on mobile data such as WhatsApp?

Where is the "cellular data always active" setting? I don't see it. Have not updated to run Oreo.
My battery was dropping from 95% to 5% overnight. Did a factory reset which helped, but I'm still losing 17-20% overnight. Seems odd to me on a brand new phone, but I have never owned an Android before. I have blocked notifications and location services from nearly all of my apps. Any advice other than what has already been posted?

If your losing that much overnight it's probably a bad app.
I don't use it, but have read that the Facebook messenger is good for that. As in eating up a battery overnight.

spounce said:
Where is the "cellular data always active" setting? I don't see it. Have not updated to run Oreo.
My battery was dropping from 95% to 5% overnight. Did a factory reset which helped, but I'm still losing 17-20% overnight. Seems odd to me on a brand new phone, but I have never owned an Android before. I have blocked notifications and location services from nearly all of my apps. Any advice other than what has already been posted?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can promise you that that's not normal, especially for this phone. Overnight battery loss is minimal, 15 hours of idle with a 10% drain is what I'm getting. That's pretty amazing. I'd check your apps and ask the general android forums for advice. I also bet there is a rogue app draining you juice. chat and social media apps with all their pushed content and friend updates are huge battery killers.

Install accu battery ,charger to full last thing at night ,don't touch through night ,then see what's draining battery ,mine drains by about 2/3% through 8/9 hrs at night
Sent from my PH-1 using XDA Labs

spounce said:
Where is the "cellular data always active" setting? I don't see it. Have not updated to run Oreo.
My battery was dropping from 95% to 5% overnight. Did a factory reset which helped, but I'm still losing 17-20% overnight. Seems odd to me on a brand new phone, but I have never owned an Android before. I have blocked notifications and location services from nearly all of my apps. Any advice other than what has already been posted?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's under developer options settings. I have mine always active without draining my battery noticeable.
The social media apps such as snapchat, facebook, twitter, etc... are the ones draining your battery while your phone is idle so you need to disable their background data running.

spounce said:
Where is the "cellular data always active" setting? I don't see it. Have not updated to run Oreo.
My battery was dropping from 95% to 5% overnight. Did a factory reset which helped, but I'm still losing 17-20% overnight. Seems odd to me on a brand new phone, but I have never owned an Android before. I have blocked notifications and location services from nearly all of my apps. Any advice other than what has already been posted?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The option to Cellular Data Always Active is on the Developer Hidden Menu. If you have it enabled you should be able to turn it off.

Thanks to all for the replies. I thought that restoring factory settings had helped somewhat, but it turns out not to have. Battery has just depleted from 100% to 67% in 3 hours while the phone has sat idle.
The only social media apps I have installed are FB and Whatapp. Notifications for both are turned off. Location services for all apps are also off. The only apps I have installed have been download from the Play Store and have run on my previous phones without causing any trouble. Those who replied all suspect a bad app, so I have installed ACCU Battery as suggested to see if I can nail it down.
Thanks again for the responses.

Try this for one night. Right before bed....
1. Turn OFF WiFi
2. Reboot phone
3. Leave WiFi off after reboot
There is a bug in Google Play Services that affects many people on many different phone types since the November updates.
When on wifi, in certain circumstances (many theories on what the actually trigger is) it will cause Google Play Services to run non stop on certain WiFi networks causing huge battery drain.
In this particular scenario, turning off Wifi does not stop the battery drain. The phone has to be reboot.
I don't know if that is what you are experiencing, as you didn't say if it was an app or system taking so much battery, but I thought I would mention it in case it helps.
Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

Why don't you look in settings/battery and see what is using the highest percentage of the battery?

Have looked in Settings/Battery, but am not seeing anything there that diagnoses the problem to my understanding. Highest use shown is Chrome (4%), then Screen (4%) then Google Play services (3%). ACCU Battery app shows the same. Battery is still losing 10-12% of its charge per hour while the phone is idle.
Have sent a message to Essential support to ask if they know anything about a bug in Google Play services causing battery drain. They have so far only suggested rebooting to safe mode and doing the reset to factory settings. Hasn't helped.
Will try shutting wifi off, rebooting and leaving wifi off tonight as suggested. Not really sure where to go from there even if that does save the battery, as a phone that has its battery drained just by being on wifi is useless to me.

If turning off WiFi and rebooting helps reduce system cpu usage, it is a bug in the software and not the phone. I can reproduce that specific issue on my pixel 2 and Samsung Galaxy s8, too....
If the CPU usage isn't from system, though, or turning WiFi off and rebooting doesn't help then you obviously have a completely different issue and need to troubleshoot further.
Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

Update:. Nothing Essential support has suggested has helped. Battery is draining to zero overnight while phone is idle both when connected to wifi and when not.
Upon learning that I had purchased the phone at a Telus store in Canada, Essential have said that they can't help me further and have referred me to the store for assistance. I'm disappointed in the lack of support from Essential.

LG V20 Battery drains on "Phone Idle" and Wifi is always on.

Hi guys,
Hope you all doing great.
Guys i have LG V20 n using from last year. It was working great without any issue. Battery timing was awesome. Giving me 5:30 to 6 hours screen on time. Almost day and Half on normal use. 2 days back something happened no idea what. Now phone idle using more then screen on time and wifi is always on even its off. I tired to uninstall app, then factory reset but still same.... No luck.... Any solution ??

Go to your location setting use the tab in upper right, click setting and turn wifi scanning off.

I tried this but no luck
As i mentioned i tried everything thing, like location off, wifi and Bluetooth scanning off, play services off, Almost everything is off, but still same. No luck...

shazzi said:
As i mentioned i tried everything thing, like location off, wifi and Bluetooth scanning off, play services off, Almost everything is off, but still same. No luck...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to install battery monitor application (I use betterbatterystats) to find out what is causing your idle drain. But to be honest, I've never got 5-6 SOT. My idle drain is about 0,7% per hour with greenify, managed Google play services wakeup, custom kernel, kernel adiutor and about 80 apps on board.

I'll try and help the best I can..
Within the last year or so..I have been reading about this issue quite often. That is, people posting about "Phone Idle" having high percentage in battery stats. And then they are off to hunt down the culprit. The truth is, "Phone Idle" is NOT eating up your battery. Phone Idle is just that.... Time the phone has spent being idle (being still, or CPU/Battery not being used). Or in this case, percentage of total battery "usage" that belongs to "Phone Idle". In actuality, phone idle isn't "using" anything. The "usage" for phone idle is really time NOT used. A higher percentage is better. If your phone sat for 2 days straight without being used...the phone idle % will be real high. Also, you can't "Greenify" phone idle. You only greenify phone idle when you greenify other apps.....think about it.
And as for Wifi. The Wifi radio on this phone is a bit more power hungry. It doesn't even include any power saving options that some phones, like my Samsung S4 has. My S4 used on average from 2% - 6% depending on signal strength. The V20 can use from 7% - 11% ..again depending on signal strength. If you leave Wifi on overnight and it's in bad proximity to the router..10-11% is normal.
What is your average signal strength for your 4G and cellular (calls)? CDMA has 1X, I'm not sure what GSM uses. If it's in the high 90's and higher, that right there could be chewing up your battery. Phone radio often doesn't even show on the usage list.
How often do you need to charge? Also how much time between a charge and what is your usual screen on time now..after you wrote this post? Phone idle is only at the top because the "idle" time now exceeds the amount of time you have your screen on. ......don't take this the wrong way but some people think the phone idle is actually something that's draining the battery. It's not..it's just placed within the list. Ignore the Mah it shows for it. That just assumes it's some app and it tries to convert everything into mah..and I really don't know how accurate that is. But it obviously doesn't apply to Phone Idle. Speaking of...what is the amount of phone idle time?