Display power usage - G2 and Desire Z General

Hi,
I recently flashed my G2 to the leaked T-Mobile gingerbread release: so it's not rooted or anything like that. I'm not using it any differently to how I was before.
The upgrade went very smoothly. However, the battery seems to be draining a lot more quickly than prior to the upgrade, and Android's battery usage app points a very damning finger at the display: currently it's showing 67% usage, and pretty consistently shows a high usage most of the day.
Before, I could consistently run the phone for the whole day and charge overnight, but now I'm finding that I have to charge it a bit during the day too in order for it to make it to the night.
I'm pretty sure that I'm not using it any more than usual, and I pretty much always have brightness set to 20%.
So my question is, what could be causing this? Could something be using the screen when it's not supposed to be even though it's not showing anything? Could it be a battery calibration issue? Maybe the power usage app in gingerbread calculates what it attributes power consumption to differently to froyo (though that wouldn't explain the overall reduction in life). What, if anything, could I do to try and track this down further?
Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Some things I should add.
I really haven't changed my behaviour regarding how I use things like wifi, bluetooth and gps. In fact, so far I actually have one fewer gmail account set up on it that before the upgrade, so sync should be doing less work. The apps I'm using are all about the same.
When I said I could use it for the day, I mean it would often end the day with more than 50% battery left. On some days I'd get it down really low, but that would be due to obvious extra usage, which isn't the case here. Occasionally I'd let it die completely. I always charge it fully overnight.
Finally, here are the other top items in my power consumption list at the moment:
Display: 67%
Maps: 8%
Cell standby: 7%
Phone idle: 5%
I seem to remember that before the upgrade, Cell standby and Phone idle were usually the top users of power.

no problem
Sorry, but I don't see any problem. Maybe its just placebo. This is the same on every android based phone. I Had HD2 and had 2 NAND androids till now and the battery stats were showing also display use 60% and then after new NAND version - gingerbread they were up to 80%+ but the battery was better than ever before.
Let me explain it to you. The display should consume most of the battery if you have 3.7 inch display and more. Maybe some navigation and 3G is the biggest sucker like the display but with normal use the Display. And if your display consumes lets say 75% of battery over when you are at 1% battery then it means it sucked 3/4 of your battery and just 25% other things did like phone idle and cell.
If it was before and your display consumed like 40% or less that meant that the other things like cell standby, phone idle consumed more power so it wasnt battery efficient. So its more battery efficient. Maybe you just have much more awake time than you did before. The awake time - sucks the hell of your phone(some apps warn you taht your phone wont turn to the sleep, which means your processor is still working hard which means your battery will deplete completely in a short time)
I experienced this also that my phone lasted only 6 hours or so and before it could wen to all day . Then I deleted some apps which were causing it and my battery was perfect.
and last advice. try to charge your phone via USB, I dont really know why it is caused but it will last longer , but on the other hand you will have to charge it longer. But if you go somewhere where the extra juice is needed then its nice.
With these steps my HD2 with old battery (about 1000mah left on 100%) went through 2 days of medium USE and about 5 days of just receiving calls and messages) so I dont know anyone else who could say that !
ยจ
hope I helped you. GL a HF

If you can stand it, turn the brightness as low as you can handle . EDIT, you're already doing that....hmm
Not sure why gingerbread is giving you problems, personally I find it slightly better with battery than froyo.
Sent from my T-mobile G2

Hmmm... placebo. By that, I presume you mean that since Display is ranking higher in the list now, that's making me think more battery is being used before. I suppose it's possible, but really it's more to do with how often I've been reaching that "I should charge" point, which for me is a function of battery level and time. If I get to 50% before lunch time, I think "I should charge". But getting to 15% just before bed I don't. What I've noticed is that since the upgrade I've reached the "I should charge" point every day.
I'm just very surprised by how the proportions in the battery usage list have changed, while a the same time the phone's battery usage seems to have increased, despite the fact that Gingerbread's battery usage is supposed to be improved.
One other thing that came to mind: perhaps Gingerbread's battery usage is just more accurate than Froyo's? It always seemed to me that the battery level used to work a lot like a car's fuel gauge: it would stick at 100% for a long time and then would drain. It was as though "full" as a concept understood by Android was a range rather than a limit, and so as a result the phone appears to drain more quickly, but it's actually just showing a more accurate battery level over time. Just a theory.
So last night I allowed the phone to completely die. This morning I switched on and immediately checked battery usage: display showing 99%, which is exactly what I'd expect. So I'll see how it goes now that Gingerbread has experienced battery exhaustion.

Personally, if I was upgrading from Froyo to Gingerbread, I'd prefer to start from scratch rather than doing an "in-place upgrade". I'd worry that maybe there are some leftover settings or files from Froyo that could cause unintended consequences. Consider backing up as much data/apps as you can (it's more difficult if you don't have root), charging the battery up to 100%, doing a factory reset, and then restoring and reinstalling everything back. Doing this will also reset Android's battery stats file, so you may find your battery levels maybe inaccurate while it's relearning the right levels for a few days.
Alternatively, if you don't fancy a factory reset just yet, you could try monitoring your power use with a widget like CurrentWidget which looks that the current draw rather than percentages. Also consider installing Watchdog Lite which might be able to help you identify if there are any processes using excessive CPU cycles.
EDIT: Just realised that if you flashed a leaked version, the install would probably have wiped everything anyway, so you can probably disregard the first paragraph.

Like the others have said, I think the screen usage being higher in 2.3 has more to do with the reduced usage of other apps and not the screen using more battery than in 2.2.
Think about it, most of the high battery usage items (web browsing, etc) also keep the screen on at the same time.

Yes, that's probably mostly because other things are using less power. I also suspect that maybe Gingerbread's battery usage app is calculating display usage differently: I just checked it on someone else's G2 (still running Froyo) and Display was way down the list. It dominates mine, even though I haven't used it that much today.
Today's power consumption has been a lot better. It's down to 39% now after 12.5 hours on battery, with 59% of that being attributed to Display. So that's not bad at all really.
Thanks for the tips on the monitoring apps. I'm already using System Panel (which only seems to care about apps and not hardware so much), but it's always worth checking out alternatives.

Couldn't it be due to you being in areas with bad connection?
I noticed that my G2 is down tot 30% after a few hours at school in bad reception+bad wifi areas. When I'm home the whole day my G2 is still at 60% at 10pm.
I have 2 exchange mail accounts set up to push and one gmail account...
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

Related

Battery life sucks

I've had my battery replaced, I've wiped my phone from ROMs, and I've used aggressive SetCPU profiles...
What is annoying though is setCPU recently updated and I decided to see how my phone ran without it.. battery life is horrific with a simple UV kernel.. Why is this?
I mean I take my phone off the charger at 11am and by 10pm its less than 15% remaining. I now have a second battery from HTC after a warranty replacement but I saw very little change. I have a task manager that auto kills everything now which helps but it is annoying since I lost my car charger my phone is discharging all day.
Is this normal and I'm just freaking out or do I have a real problem?
Running Kang-o-rama ROM with ~20 apps
I know 3 things about the N1 battery:
1) it took a couple of weeks for my battery life to max. Lithium batteries need a break-in period. They have no memory, and the recommended approach of not using the phone until it's full charged is bunk. Just use it normally and it will work as it should.
2) Switching between 2G and 3G constantly murders the battery, 4 hours and you're dead. If you're going to be in an area like that for a while, force it to one or the other.
3) Watch your apps. If your phone is acting even slightly sluggish it's CPU is maxed which is killing your battery. Slowly swipe between homescreen pages, it should be silky smooth without any stutter. Try and track down which one it is and either install/reinstall (which fixed an issue with Better Keyboard for me) or completely uninstall if you can't fix it. Check for apps that ping the network too often, or ones that start up on their own.
I will add that the built-in 2.1 battery usage tracker is not 100% accurate. In my Better Keyboard example, Android said it was the screen using all the juice, not the app. Might have to do with video graphics drivers, I really don't know. Point is, after uninstall/reinstall my screen used 55% of my battery instead of 75%, so don't trust it.
XFreeRollerX said:
...I mean I take my phone off the charger at 11am and by 10pm its less than 15% remaining.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you kidding? You're running your N1 for nearly 12hours and you STILL have 15% juice left?!?
Search the forums, 12hrs and still having juice left would be considered excellent to many.
...Then again, you haven't mentioned what your usage is like. If we were talking about your phone being in sleep mode for most of those 12hrs with just an occasional call or 2 that only lasted very briefly...Then that's a different story.
Have a look at Juicedefender, it will limit your internet access to 1Min on every 15Mins when the phone is asleep/screen is off. Does wonders for battery life

Cyanogenmod 7 on Nexus One - super awesome battery life, stable wifi!!

I can't post in the Development area yet, so I'm posting it here.
2nd day using CyanogenMod 7, and here's my feedback:
- Very stable
- It seems to have solved my Nexus One touchscreen issue. I've tried CM6 and Enomther before, and this was never resolved before.
- The Wifi is stable with no drop (is it because of the new radio in CM7 ??)
- Super duper battery life!! Even way better than Enomther. By noon, usually I'm at 81-85% with very light activities (browsing, reading emails, etc) and nothing running on the background except Corporate Email and a couple GMail accounts sync. Today it's still 89% and this is fabulous. Note that I've set the Wifi to "Never Sleep". The battery life is SIMPLY AMAZING!
- I can't notice speed differences with ENomther.
- I couldn't care less for the animation or eye candies, but the touchscreen keyboard fix, wifi stability, and long battery life are very important. FYI I wiped everything (data, Dalvik Cache, battery stats, rotation, etc)
THANK YOU, CYANOGEN!
you should judge your battery on a whole days worth of use. The ~5% difference in a couple hours could easily be made by one app or game being run. I'm getting ~36 hours out of my MIUI setup. Though I block and limit many background syncs.
No doubt CM7 is great, huge step from what many android phones are stuck with out there. ps, CM7 doesn't include a radio.
foreverwinter said:
I can't post in the Development area yet, so I'm posting it here.
2nd day using CyanogenMod 7, and here's my feedback:
- Very stable
- It seems to have solved my Nexus One touchscreen issue. I've tried CM6 and Enomther before, and this was never resolved before.
!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What touchscreen issue?
And it still has the mic-not-working in a call problem, so it's useless if I can't use my phone as a phone.
My N1 has a touchscreen issue since day 1 ... seems to have been fixed in this release.
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=nexus+one+touchscreen+problem
Mic is definitely working here. Talked on the phone twice yesterday.
Battery life is definitely awesomeeeeeeee. I have 4 accounts in my N1 (2 corporates, 2 GMail).
Kimd41 said:
What touchscreen issue?
And it still has the mic-not-working in a call problem, so it's useless if I can't use my phone as a phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My gps loses its signal right after it gets a lock. I'm using CoPilot. Anybody having gps issues?
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Yeah same experience here. What current draw are you seeubf during idle use? I'm seeing 4-5 mA which is great.
I don't think daily usage is a good way to determine battery life.
Best way is to see how much % drops overnight.
CM6 I was seeing 3-7% overnight, CM7RC4 I am seeing 7-20%.
Haven't had CM7 final long enought to check but first night I lost around 10%.
This is with all data off, 2G only and no services running apart from the basics.
behelit said:
This is with all data off, 2G only and no services running apart from the basics.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's totally the best way to determine usable battery life.
/sarcasm
LOL .. 2G and no services running?
I have GPS, Wifi, 3G all ON. 4 sync accounts (2 MS Exchange, 2 GMail). I have no Facebook sync, however. 3rd day ... still really amazed with the battery life. FWIW, I set the brightness to low (I don't need it that bright anyway) as usual. Same way I usually set it with my 2.2 Enomther ROM and CM6 and stock ROM. Battery life on CM7 is simply AMAAAAAAAAZZZZINGGG or maybe I'm just lucky
GPS locks in seconds, but I haven't done an extensive test with it yet. I'm going to use it (I have both CoPilot and Sygic Aura).
The only weird thing is that ADW Launcher closed and I had to reboot the phone once yesterday to bring it back on ???
Other than that, I'm super duper happy with CM7, especially the battery life
behelit said:
This is with all data off, 2G only and no services running apart from the basics.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kimd41 said:
And it still has the mic-not-working in a call problem, so it's useless if I can't use my phone as a phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Search for and install "dewonkificator." It has fixed all of my call related problems, along with several others.
I also think that Gingerbread should be given much of credit for the Wifi fixes.
Im finding my battery getting eaten up noticeably faster from CM6 but its worth it for all the fixes/features.
best battery life ever, I pick my phone up ... IT'S COLD!
I've been using Kang-o-Rama 1.1, which is based on CM 6. I tried several different kernels and settled on the wildmonk kernel (2.6.35.10 though I'm sure there are newer versions now), because it gave me a similar excellent battery life as others have described here. I had been using various ROMs before that (those that are close to stock, with a few nice features added) and always had pretty bad battery life.
CM 7 therefore isn't necessary if you want stability (e.g. a phone that always works as a phone, no random crashes etc.) and excellent battery life. I'm cautious about CM 7 (and the soon-to-be-released Kang-o-Rama based on CM7) until the "wonkiness" issue is fully addressed - I don't consider having to install the dewonkifier program fully addressing the issue!
I like to have the latest and greatest, but having a potentially unstable phone is really annoying! Just have to be patient. Regardless, Cyanogen and everyone working on custom ROMs must be applauded for their efforts, don't know what I'd do without them
I have to say I'm a bit miffed about not being able to post in the development forum, which is the main reason I read xda...
Has anyone noticed a difference in battery performance between the first discharge and subsequent discharge cycles on the later cm7 builds? I've noticed that my phone will drains faster the over longer uptimes. The first discharge cycle after a boot discharges at an average rate of 3% to 5% per hour, averaged over a full day. Use over a full day for me is fairly light with some texting, one or two brief calls, and maybe some web and facebook. The battery is usually over 60% in after 8 or 10 hours on battery on that first discharge. After a full recharge, the drain rate on the next discharge seems higher. I've observed that similar use through a second discharge cycle is typically 5% per hour or more. I sometimes struggle to get more than 10 hours use out of the phone on that second charge.
I have noticed the Status Bar app seems to account for an abnormally large amount of battery use. Where's My Droid Power app reports the Status Bar consistently as the top power consumer on the device. Status Bar's power consumption in that first discharge cycle is usually reported around 10%, but jumps to 30% on subsequent discharge cycles. Other known power hogs consistently consume 5% to 6% according to the app. I don't know how the power monitoring app derives its data, but nothing shows up as strange in the Spare Parts battery history. I'm beginning to wonder whether the "where's my droid power" app's statistics gathering might be being baised somehow. It leads me to question my data.
So, does anyone have similar observations on frst discharge versus second discharge rates? Does anyone know what the Status Bar app actually does, and whether it might actually be contributing to higer battery drain? Finally, is there a better power monitoring app i should be looking at to track down rogue apps?
Solidgrue said:
Has anyone noticed a difference in battery performance between the first discharge and subsequent discharge cycles on the later cm7 builds? I've noticed that my phone will drains faster the over longer uptimes. The first discharge cycle after a boot discharges at an average rate of 3% to 5% per hour, averaged over a full day. Use over a full day for me is fairly light with some texting, one or two brief calls, and maybe some web and facebook. The battery is usually over 60% in after 8 or 10 hours on battery on that first discharge. After a full recharge, the drain rate on the next discharge seems higher. I've observed that similar use through a second discharge cycle is typically 5% per hour or more. I sometimes struggle to get more than 10 hours use out of the phone on that second charge.
I have noticed the Status Bar app seems to account for an abnormally large amount of battery use. Where's My Droid Power app reports the Status Bar consistently as the top power consumer on the device. Status Bar's power consumption in that first discharge cycle is usually reported around 10%, but jumps to 30% on subsequent discharge cycles. Other known power hogs consistently consume 5% to 6% according to the app. I don't know how the power monitoring app derives its data, but nothing shows up as strange in the Spare Parts battery history. I'm beginning to wonder whether the "where's my droid power" app's statistics gathering might be being baised somehow. It leads me to question my data.
So, does anyone have similar observations on frst discharge versus second discharge rates? Does anyone know what the Status Bar app actually does, and whether it might actually be contributing to higer battery drain? Finally, is there a better power monitoring app i should be looking at to track down rogue apps?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a bug in the status bar process. If you have battery percent enabled in the status bar, when you plug in the charger, the status bar process uses 10-30% CPU for the next hour during charging. If you disable batt percent and charge this does not happen.
I looked at the source code and was gonna try a fix soon.
On previous cyan 6, charging temp disabled the percent. Also this slows things down and home screen scrolling gets super choppy.
RogerPodacter said:
There is a bug in the status bar process. If you have battery percent enabled in the status bar, when you plug in the charger, the status bar process uses 10-30% CPU for the next hour during charging. If you disable batt percent and charge this does not happen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do have battery percentage enabled, so that could explain that. Thanks for the feedback! I could convince myself I tried disabling battery percentage before, but who pays attention to the little things when you're having so much fun?
Oh, and an update on the battery discharge thing. I left my Wifi on full time after my last full charge, and i'm about to roll over 2 days runtime with about 10% left. I haven't seen performance like that since i enabled a Corporate Email account.
Yeah I'm getting superb standby battery life on cyan #39 right now. Idle current draw overnight for 8 hours, with wifi on, is seeing 7 mA current drain steadily.
CyanogenMod 7 not working!
I just upgraded to the new CyanogenMod 7 on my Nexus 1 and unfortunately it is not loading. It gets to the CyanogenMod screen, with the Android guy on the stake board and the arrow going around him, but it just wont go passed that screen. It has never gone passed this screen.
What i have tried:
Taking out the battery and restarting it
letting it run for 30 minutes
If anyone one can help me I would greatly appreciate it
Regards,
What kernel are you guys using on CM7 for such awesome battery life? I've tried stock for one week, then redstar with minimal improvement.

[Q] Desire Z : Really Inconsistent Speeds + Battery Issues

Friend has a new Desire Z (bell, unlocked). Using it on AT&T network.
When at a house, and we use WiFI (30Mbps DL, 25Mbps UL), the speeds are VERY inconsistent. With my iPhone 4 using speedtest.net, it shows up as 20/15 each time. (WiFi is a little slower than the modem).
With the Desire Z, we get 15/10 (which is fine/acceptable). Then 3 minutes later we do it, we get 5/2. Without even moving the phone or touching the modem connection (not downloading anything on the computer), the connection just gets slower. Then it might be fast or slow, basically it's a toss-up.
The first time we noticed the issue is because when we are outside, we get HSPA speeds of 2.5/1.0, then randomly decreases to 0.1/0.05. HUGE difference. And VERY inconsistent. He is using a microSIM from iPhone 4, with an adapter, so we figured maybe the SIM card is getting loose at certain points? However, the WiFi is also inconsistent in addition to the HSPA, so it's probably not that.
What should I do? Is this the situation where I have to flash a new radio or something? (Please suggest others if I am wrong).
Thanks!
---
Also, his battery is kinda weak. The battery health is apparently clean/healthy. He came from an iPhone 4, where he would have 3G, WiFi, and GPS on at night but not actually using them. Wake up, and 3% battery loss, maybe 5. WITHOUT using them, just having them on.
Now, with the Desire Z, we have the WiFi + 3G on, but NOT the GPS. He is losing 20%-25% in 8 hours without even using the phone.
Information about battery shows a high Cell standby (25%) and Phone idle (25%) percentage. When going into Spare Parts > Partial Wake usage, we didn't find anything really fishy. BUT we had rebooted so perhaps some info may have been lossed. Should he just go to sleep tonight and report the Partial Wake Usage statistics again?
We have a feeling it may be some apps refreshing at night.. But he clears all the apps with Advanced Task Manager except for like Facebook (2 hour interval refresh), GMail, and Google Voice.
I highly doubt a 20% battery decrease overnight is normal.. My mom's Atrix only loses about 5% overnight, with the same parameters I gave before.
I thought it may be a bad battery, BUT the phone idle + cell standby are abnormally high.
Thanks!
Why is this in General as well as Q&A?
Put this in Q&A, didn't get any answers. Went to General, saw that more people posted there, even for Q&A's. Have an actual problem that research didn't help much with, so made a thread. If necessary, I would be glad to remove the thread on Q&A.
By the way, thanks for the answer .
Would you be able to post your software specs? Radio version, rom version, android version? My Bell DZ only loses about 3% per night if I don't plug it in to charge. I, like you, have wifi, gps and hspa enabled with no huge I'll effect.
The stock battery is usually alittle weak. Being a 1350mA, it doesn't have the capacity either, but that is why it is user replaceable. I picked up the mugen 1800mA battery that gives the phone the stamina to last a full day of full use or 2-3 days of light use. I forget how much I spent on it but it was definitely an upgrade.
As for the signal issues, we would need to know what you are running. The latest .30 radio is recommended for AT&T if I remember correctly. Also, the type of rom (stock or custom) might give us abit more insight.
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using XDA App
I lost about 10% overnight today I believe, possibly 15 (don't remember exactly what I left off at).
Not sure on all the stats because I don't know how to check them but
Android Version 2.3.4
Cyanogenmod 7.1.0-RC-Vision (seller did it for me)
What is the radio version? I think that is baseband not kernel? If so its 12.52.60.25U_26.08.04.30_M3
-------------------------------------------------------------------
If anyone knows about the sporadic data, that'd be helpful. It does seem that if I go into airplane mode a few times it fixes itself, but I doubt everyone does that to ensure fast HSPA speeds
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using XDA Premium App
I've never used CyanogenMod Custom ROM's before, so I can't speak from that experience. I can, however, tell you that while running RMK (and team's) Custom ROM's (Virtuous, G-Lite, Unity) and now MIUI, battery life has been excellent, even with the stock battery. The current build of MIUI lasted for about 15hrs on a day of full use, RMK's ROMs would last about 12-15hrs of moderate to full use on the stock battery. Alot of the custom roms have different power management settings and tweaks, if you're comfortable with flashing, I would recommend another ROM and see if that helps with either of your problems.
If you like the Vanilla/AOSP look of android, try RMK's G-Lite ROM. It is very lightweight, fast and stable. I remember having one issue with it, but it was a very small issue and didn't stop me from using it for a few months.
I am currently on MIUI English 1.7.1 and with moderate use I am sitting at 50% charge spent over 2 days. Moderate for me is about 300 texts with about 10 phone calls and a total of about 4hrs of web browsing.
I can link you to those roms if you need, but they're all located in the Dev section. Your radio seems like it's on the right version, so perhaps it's not the issue. Try running another rom for a week and see if that helps to any degree.
I re-calibrated the battery, let it die, charged it up, let it die, charged it up. I followed the instructions to the letter and all that.
It was at 100% when I went to sleep. Woke up 8 hours later, 74%.
Settings > Battery shows nothing high 40% for cell standby and phone idle. Everything else (Facebook, etc.) REALLY low.
Then I went to Spare Parts > Battery Usage, Partial wake usage, everything incredibly low as well..
I will try Watchdog, but could it just be a bad battery? Or maybe should I try a different ROM?
Thanks!
JayXL14 said:
I re-calibrated the battery, let it die, charged it up, let it die, charged it up. I followed the instructions to the letter and all that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NO! This is poor recommendation, and people need to stop perpetuating it. People keep recommending this, but its NOT a good idea to let the battery drain until it dies, just to calibrate the battery meter. While the protection circuit on the battery will USUALLY prevent over discharge, it is not 100% failsafe. There is a slight possibility that over-discharge of the battery will happen, and then the battery is no good, and will need to be replaced. Unless you have a special battery meter with a "boost" function (which most people do not have access to). See the following table on Battery University, where it says for Li ion batteries: Discharge: Prevent full cycles
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/do_and_dont_battery_table
Best practice is to charge to 100%, drain to about 20%, repeat a couple times. No need to go below 20%. The battery meter is not very accurate to begin with, so there is no value added going to 0% versus 20%, but you risk killing the battery.
Plus people keep abusing the terminology. You are just calibrating the battery meter, not "calibrating the battery". When people say this, I think its just a holdover from the old days of NiCad batteries, where you had to condition/discharge the batteries periodically to prevent memory effects (Li ion batteries do not suffer from memory effects, and require no period cycling).
Can't really speak to the Atrix or the iPhone. But the battery drain on the DZ described by the OP is right in line with what I've seen. I also have an unlocked Bell DZ on AT&T, and battery drain of 2-4% (on various ROMs and couple different radios) when the phone is completely idle, screen off is totally normal. Best I've seen on my DZ is with the Virtuous Unity ROM and the .30 Gingerbread radio, where I've seen somewhere around 1-2% drain per hour when idle.
One possibility, is that the different phones are not reporting % battery the same way. As I've mentioned above, the battery voltage meters on phones is not very accurate, maybe in the range of 5-10% accuracy (although, even with this, the drain on the DZ versus the ATrix and iPhone still sounds inconsistent). But what is more important is how many hours of usage you get before needing to charge.
Thanks for the info.. Ill try charging that way.
And I honestly think the battery is just reading it wrong. It honestly feels like it dies faster idle than not, go figure. Yesterday, at like 10% battery, I wanted to kill it off, and played a game for like 10 minutes straight, still 10...
Then I tried leaving the flashlight on for 10 minutes on and it maybe lost 1
How is that battery I recommended from dealextreme though?
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using XDA Premium App
It's interesting to see all the troubles that people are getting on the DZ...
I've had my DZ for about 6months and never seen any of the reported problems.
My 1350mha will last me on a frequent usage near 24hrs and if I'm using it lightly like when i'm busy at work... almost 2days worth.
Mind you I'm running Cyanogen MOD7. No GPS. Wifi is on and I use JuiceDefender.
Cheers mates.
Last night, I charged my phone to a complete charge before going to bed to see what kind of drain I would see overnight. After 9.5 hours, my battery had only lost 2% sitting idle. That is with 3G on, but no Wifi or Bluetooth enabled.
The phone idle accounted for 47%, cell standby 48% and Android system 4%
While it seems remarkable, I'm still not convinced that its not my phone incorrectly reporting the battery level. On a typical day when I pull my phone off the charger, the first 10% is very slow to drain. Today, I have sent a few text messages and played maybe 3 minutes of word feud. That has drained 6% of my battery.
We will see where I'm at later in the day. I suspect that the actual level is lower than the 94% it is reporting. Typically, I get between 12-16 hours of usage, depending on how much I play with my phone.
Well I am at nearly 23 hours on this charge. Have used the phone rather lightly during the day. It sat idle for about 9 of those hours while I slept last night.
Conclusion: Idle drain is very minimal on my device and looks as though the percentage was being reported rather accurately. I'd say if you're having a lot of drain while sitting idle, do some digging and find what it is.
More info:
Facebook: update 1 hour
Gmail Sync: 1 hour
Fancy Widget update: 1 hour
Brilliant Quotes widget: update 1 hour
Light Bluetooth usage (about 15 minutes)
Wifi on all day (not overnight so about 14 hours total)
Screen brightness set at about 50%
Average signal strength: -100dbm

Battery life been sucking...

I don't know if it's my imagination, but since the 2.4.6 update, my battery life has dropped a bit. By the time I get into my office from my morning commute, I'm anywhere in the 65-70% battery life after unplugging from a full charge. I haven't done anything new. I always unplug around 8:30 am when I head out, I do some light chatting with gf, browse some sites, check facebook (usually very briefly), and maybe sometimes do a little reading on my device. By the time I get into the office around 9:30 or 10 AM, I'm usually around the 80-85% area with battery.
Lately, doing the same thing, I'm seeing the aforementioned 65-70%.
Is anyone else experiencing decreased battery life since 2.3.6?
I'm on a Tmobile Nexus S, running stock 2.3.6 (no custom ROMs).
2.4.6 ? .... maybe 2.3.6 ... and yes, I also noticed a slight increase in power consuption after the upgrade. The stand-by is still great .. about 0.8 - 1% per hour.
Sorry, yes I meant 2.3.6.
Thanks for replying Ro_explorer. Is your increased power consumption significant? Seeing 65-70% when I'm used to seeing 80-85% as I get into my office, I find, is a large change. To be frank, the battery life of the Nexus S in general isn't so fantastic to begin with... this hit makes it worse.
Anyone else?
I used to get home with about 40-50% after a whole "normal day" (unplugged at 8AM, and getting back home at ~8PM) .. now (with the same average usage) I'm getting home with ~30-40% ... that why I said "slight increase" ...
Not your imagination, I too have noticed this. I hope the next update, will fix this - as I used to get pretty good battery life (even with over 250 apps).
When I recently updated to the 2.3.6, it caused a bug of continuous reboot (every 1-3 minutes), so I had to do a hard reset - now it works fine, but I only have added back about 15 apps - and the battery life sux!
Downgrade OS' it will be ok.
This is so weird. Why is the battery life worse?
onthecouchagain said:
Sorry, yes I meant 2.3.6.
Thanks for replying Ro_explorer. Is your increased power consumption significant? Seeing 65-70% when I'm used to seeing 80-85% as I get into my office, I find, is a large change. To be frank, the battery life of the Nexus S in general isn't so fantastic to begin with... this hit makes it worse.
Anyone else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You want bad battery life? Try an Evo 4g with a Sense rom. I averaged about 6hrs using a 1500mAh battery, in stock form.
The nexus is pretty light on power consumption, if you ask me. I average 15hrs on the stock 2.3.7 rom/kernel combo, with stock battery.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App
I'm on 2.3.6 and need to charge every two days. I text a lot and do light gaming. I'm typing this from my phone. Maybe you could drain the battery and wipe battery stats? I'm not even at 50% yet and I charged yesterday.
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk
I also noticed that the battery last less time
I've been waiting to see if anybody else reporting this issue
i noticed a decent increase in battery life going to 2.3.7 and thought that previously the battery life had been fairly poor :\
I am non rooted, and get around 20 hrs on light to moderate use. Again. Stock, non rooted.
How do I recalibrate my battery? I wonder if it could be that...
There are many was to recalibrate. Some involve wiping batt stats, some plugging and unplugging phone several times after charge.
I have always found that using the battery almost all the way down, but not past 5%, and then full recharge conditions it very well.
Oh I've been here to solve the problem
"Why last 2 weeks my Nexus s drain battery so fast ? or I have to calibrate it"
Thank for your notice about update OS to 2.3.6.
I think that's a root cause for me too.
1. Could I rollback to 2.3.4 ,how?
2. Does battery calibration is useful for this case , how?( someone suggest to calibrate when flashing new rom )
Thank you very much..
i want to know who have some methods to do with this stuff
borrowedchief said:
There are many was to recalibrate. Some involve wiping batt stats, some plugging and unplugging phone several times after charge.
I have always found that using the battery almost all the way down, but not past 5%, and then full recharge conditions it very well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whenever switching roms, kernels, or batteries, i always perform the following :
1. Charge to a true 100% (Battery Monitor Widget will register +0 to +2 mA)
2. Wipe battery stats using recovery (Amon RA has this option for the Evo, not sure about cwm), Battery Monitor Widget, or a dedicated app.
3. Discharge battery to 0% with normal usage. When the phone shuts down, I pull and re-install the battery and power back up (it will shutdown again very quickly).
4. Recharge battery and be on my merry way.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App
I found one workaround solution for this issue on
ww.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=1684c50cea15282a&hl=en&fid=1684c50cea15282a0004af022e5ed212
Sproogle77 's solution
Problem solved. Using the OS Monitor app, I found that the main culprit was Google Services - the Contacts sync specifically. Even though I had this disabled (only Gmail was being allowed to sync) it was constantly working, apparently trying to fix a location. The message log showed that it was generating continuous debug messages, all about locations - around 10 of these every second.
I have solved the problem by disabling 'Use wireless networks' under the Locations & Security settings.'Use GPS satellites' is still running. This immediately dropped my CPU usage - which had been running around 30 to 40% even when otherwise idle, to around 10%. Google contacts sync is now using 0% of the CPU. The difference in battery life was pretty much immediate and is now back to what it was before - the change in the slope on the battery usage graph is remarkable!
This doesn't really seem like a solution to me, and I don't know whether other aspects of my functionality are being affected, but at least my phone is properly useable again.
I'm testing for 1 day and I think that's working for me.
onthecouchagain said:
This is so weird. Why is the battery life worse?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One reason is that the new version of the stock kernel removed a speed stepping, so it'll power to higher levels faster, thus using more battery.
rentaric said:
One reason is that the new version of the stock kernel removed a speed stepping, so it'll power to higher levels faster, thus using more battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That actually isn't the problem. I'm using netarchy's kernel and still get this problem.
My battery life dropped from 16 hours --> 6 hours. the slope on my battery usage life is horrible the system is also awake almost constantly even when I'm not touching it / getting no messages.
I will try the fix suggested on the google support forum and see if that does the trick. sloppy update.

Battery after 2.5 years of usage

So this phone has had a really good battery for me throughout its lifetime. I've even tried to maintain it between 20 and 80% charge most of the time. So I believe I've treated it quite well.
I'm using AccuBattery to track the behaviour of the battery. to notify me of the charge level when I should unplug it (I can automate this in my smart home). A good discharge rate for when the screen is off used to be around 0.5%/hour, but recently the phone has been wasting 1-2%/hour consistenly when not in use.
I've noticed no unusual wakelocks, no apps drawing an unusual amount of energy, I've tried restarting the phone of course, and I can't seem to find a software cause to it.
AccuBattery reports my current battery health at 84%. My conclusion so far is that the battery has aged a little and can no longer sustain its capacity as well as it used to when the screen is off. Also, the discharge rate with the screen on used to be around 10% an hour, and now it's closer to 15%.
Any thoughts and suggestions?
Replace it before it fails.
When a Li falls below 80% of its original capacity it has reached the end of its service life.
A degraded Li is more likely to fail which can seriously damage the phone.
Thank you for the answer, but I believe that's a bit drastic.
The battery has barely started to noticeably age. There are phones around me 3-4 years old where no one would think to replace the battery yet, since the behaviour is not erratic or the capacity hasn't gone considerably, or to an extent that decreases the phone's usability.
Another piece of data that I forgot to mention: AccuBattery shows "deep sleep" time as around 60% of time when the screen is off, while that used to be 80-90%. I think this behaviour started with MIUI 12 on this phone.
Still trying to figure this out. I suppose the higher battery consumption per hour when not in use is directly caused by the lower deep sleep time.
Quaresma_7 said:
Still trying to figure this out. I suppose the higher battery consumption per hour when not in use is directly caused by the lower deep sleep time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cloud apps doing backup are prime offenders.
Trashware like FB, WhatsApp etc.
Try in safe mode overnight to narrow it down.
I've just deleted/disabled Lite Messenger and FB Services, I only need FB Lite. Set battery optimization for a few more suspicious apps to not allow them to run in background.
Whatsapp is a useful app for me, and it does its local backup every night at exactly 2 am. I'm fine with that.
But I've got that low deep sleep time both during the day and night.
Next thing I'll try safe mode. But will it allow me to run AccuBattery in order to track the battery draw? Or I'll have to keep track myself of the percentage before going to sleep and then in the morning.
Lol, Accubattery is a 3rd party app...

Categories

Resources