Database Users

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.
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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

Phone running extremely hot after EC05 update

Anyone else's phone running extremely hot since the update? When I have it charging and streaming pandora it just sucks my battery. Before this update, I was able to do this without taking a hit on the battery.
I went to the sprint store yesterday and they tested my batter and it was good. The radio in particular gets extremely hot, put it in airplane mode for a few minutes and the phone cools off. I'm wondering if I should load a different kernel. Could that potentially help? I noticed most of the kernels are overclocked, which I don't really care about. All I want is something stable that gets decent battery life (6-8 hours) of heavy use and the ability to have it on the charger without draining the battery to 50% after I unplug it.
Anyone else seeing any issues with heat and poor battery life?

blazinazn said:
Anyone else's phone running extremely hot since the update? When I have it charging and streaming pandora it just sucks my battery. Before this update, I was able to do this without taking a hit on the battery.
I went to the sprint store yesterday and they tested my batter and it was good. The radio in particular gets extremely hot, put it in airplane mode for a few minutes and the phone cools off. I'm wondering if I should load a different kernel. Could that potentially help? I noticed most of the kernels are overclocked, which I don't really care about. All I want is something stable that gets decent battery life (6-8 hours) of heavy use and the ability to have it on the charger without draining the battery to 50% after I unplug it.
Anyone else seeing any issues with heat and poor battery life?
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Download either Spare Parts or BatteryHistory from the market.
Open the battery stats and toggle the top drop down to sensor usage. See if any application has a high % of usage. If nothing with high usage, then toggle partial wake usage from the same top drop down and look for the same.
My OTA install is wonky with the Gallery. The moment I open it, it destroys the battery with sensor usage. Even if the app isn't open.

nikon120 said:
Download either Spare Parts or BatteryHistory from the market.
Open the battery stats and toggle the top drop down to sensor usage. See if any application has a high % of usage. If nothing with high usage, then toggle partial wake usage from the same top drop down and look for the same.
My OTA install is wonky with the Gallery. The moment I open it, it destroys the battery with sensor usage. Even if the app isn't open.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using spare parts right now. I don't see how you can find the percentage of usage. Android system is using about 30% (guessing) under sensor usage. Under partial wake usage, android system is about 10%.
Nothing that throws up a red flag.

Display power usage

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 !
¨
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

Help, my battery life is horrible.

Help, my battery life is horrible, even for an X10.
I lose ten percent in 3 hours, mostly on idle. And cell standby is always on top. Any idea why this is so.
Sent from my rooted, JITed, X10, using my fingers, my eyes, one of my brain's four cores (Take that tegra 2), and Oh, the XDA app.

dante2086 said:
Help, my battery life is horrible, even for an X10.
I lose ten percent in 3 hours, mostly on idle. And cell standby is always on top. Any idea why this is so.
Sent from my rooted, JITed, X10, using my fingers, my eyes, one of my brain's four cores (Take that tegra 2), and Oh, the XDA app.
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Click to collapse
Same here..............................first 10% dies quick, seems to settle sa little after thay

ddi you check any background app that could be running for updates (timescape, weather...etc), these apps tend to cosume battery for updates even phone is in idle
if you are not sure which one it is try turning off the traffic and see if the battery still drains crazy, if it behaves normal I would say one or more of your apps running in background is the cause

no even i got same problem since i installed wolf's 3.5 and later my battery drains very fast !!! was using the wolf;s v3 before battery was very gud ... even all apps which m running now used to run before !!

Try wipe battery stats then fully charged it and calibrate it.
Use battery calibration, you can get it from market.
Sent from my X10i using XDA App

Okay, I'll try these. And Yes, my battery lasts a lot longer when I disable data. But could it have something to do with the baseband.
Sent from my rooted, JITed, X10, using my fingers, my eyes, one of my brain's four cores (Take that tegra 2), and Oh, the XDA app.

Did all the above stuff before now battery is going more fast...like lost 51% in just less than three hours ...ya I jus sent 10 msges 1 hour online radio and display at 75% brightness ...
What next then ????
Sent from my X10i using XDA App

It could take a few days for your battery to settle down after you have done a callibration.
Can you get cpu spy from the market and see if you phone is going into deep sleep, there could be some app that is using up your battery

the first 10% of the battery dies very fast and it's some kind of "trickle charge" to top off the battery. it settles down to a steady depletion after 89%.
3G eats all your battery, also check if your CPU maintains high clock speed all or not.

Yeah. As other have stated, download CPU Spy and leave you phone in standby (and not charging) for a while. Then check CPU Spy and make sure the phone is going into "Deep Sleep", as well as running at lower than 998 MHz. You may have to refresh within CPU Spy (via the menu button).
Also, if you're not connected to a wifi network, turn off WiFi. Otherwise the phone will search for a network regularly, wasting battery power.

my personal suggestions was, try to put brightness below around 50 or 60 percents.. its good enough even under bright places.. or you can try to raise the refresh frequency for those application you using such as beautiful widget / facebook update interval.. and try turn off those gps/wifi or any data traffic that running if you are not using it.. lastly also put the brightness to 0, if you are idle from using the phone or just to listen on songs, use earphone if possible.. thats what i do, its probably messy but its work quite well

Okay, THANKS. I'll try all these and report back.
Once again, Thanks y'all.

Ok it depends on alot of stuff
1.your baseband
2. Flash 2.1 wiped everything in xrecovery then flash any desired rom.
3.turn off backgroundd and auto sync
4.gps turn it off when not using it
5. Data turn it off also
6. Put brightness to 50%
Sent from my X10i using XDA Premium App

My cell standby is always high, usually around 30% of my battery use. I don't remember it being like that when I was running FreeX10 2.2 or even SE 2.1 for that matter.

acerulz said:
no even i got same problem since i installed wolf's 3.5 and later my battery drains very fast !!! was using the wolf;s v3 before battery was very gud ... even all apps which m running now used to run before !!
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Click to collapse
I actually had a dramatic improved battery life from v006 to V3.5. Then even longer battery life on V3.6. Before, my phone runs out of battery after one, two hours of gaming. Now I can play for four hours.
Eight hours of standby without wifi, data still took around eight percent. mine doesn't have the 400 hours sony claims to have either.
Sent from my X10i using XDA App

My battery life dropped after installing FPS UNCAP 54. Dramatically.
It's stock, rooted ROM.
It's counting downwards like a counter on a gas station!
From 100% to 1% in cca. 1 hour.

I find that GPS is the biggest drainer on battery so if you use that a lot that might be the problem. Also make it so your phone is only using 2G when you aren't actively using your phone (aka idling in your pocket) you might have slower synching but it isn't like you are using your phone during this time anyway.

dazbaz996 said:
It could take a few days for your battery to settle down after you have done a callibration.
Can you get cpu spy from the market and see if you phone is going into deep sleep, there could be some app that is using up your battery
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Click to collapse
if you are sure it is not rom related. get Green Power Free from the market. i suffered the same issue. now i can get up to 2 full days without charge...

rkonert said:
My cell standby is always high, usually around 30% of my battery use. I don't remember it being like that when I was running FreeX10 2.2 or even SE 2.1 for that matter.
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Actually, that's good, it'd mean there is no-brainer task eating your juice in the background
Mostly there're three main thing to check out, some of these were mentioned. If you read it and feel it's a little bit too hard, jump to the end.
(1) Deep Sleep, check it through CPU Spy or SetCPU, if the phone idle, it should go to deep sleep
(2) App usage, since 2.3 arrive, it's much harder to check. Try "SystemPanel (Lite)"
In most case, it'd be these 2.
(3) Another one is to check the memory usage vs. minfree, the most essential one is "AutoKiller Memory Optimizer".... probably your custom ROM might have optimized these value already. But sometime the problem is that your normal usage has overloaded the minfree level, (too much background app, too much widget, too much sync) which cause the OS to shutdown some task while it'd be re-opened a few second afterward, this cause a stupid battery drainer loop.
Use AutoKiller Memory Optimizer, it'll show u 6 slots with amount of free memory, the trick is the free memory shouldn't be close to the forth slot.
HOWEVER, if this sound too complicated for you, I suggest first try to remove the widget one-by-one, uninstall some background apps to see if it gets better.
You could blame ROM, but the problem is not the ROM itself, the devs just try to optimize their ROMs for most users, some essential ROMs provide stability without many tweaks, meaning that you could just put 20 widgets without much troubles. An optimized ROM is a trade-off between multi-task and performance. That's why it's not work on some people.

Maybe you have an app keeping your phone awake, hence x10's gb runs at 998 mhz all the time, that could drain the s**t out of your battery, download setcpu from market, i lose 1% every 1 or 2 hours, im on stock 2.3 pre rooted by doomlord
Sent from my x10a"i"(running 2.3.3 root)

Left my s5 on top of my frozen tv dinner for an hour, possible damage?

Long story short i was running late and my phone was on top of my tv dinner from the freezer in my lunch bag. It was on it for at least an hour, it wasn't too cold but the phone was a little cold like 3 to 4 times more thn normally. Do you think it has possible damage or am i being too worried?
What excuse can i say to exchange it? Is been having heat issues and some days the battery only last 7 hrs. I got it from radioshack

You have nothing to worry about.
Sent from Tapatalk

btort1 said:
What excuse can i say to exchange it? Is been having heat issues and some days the battery only last 7 hrs. I got it from radioshack
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If it's "having heat issues and some days the battery only last 7 hrs" then say it gets hot and the battery dies too fast... but I'd bet some app is running the cpu at max all the time. Ever looked at the battery usage in settings?
Maybe try a factory reset and don't install non-google apps to see if it clears up.

delawaredrew said:
If it's "having heat issues and some days the battery only last 7 hrs" then say it gets hot and the battery dies too fast... but I'd bet some app is running the cpu at max all the time. Ever looked at the battery usage in settings?
Maybe try a factory reset and don't install non-google apps to see if it clears up.
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Click to collapse
Alright I'll try that but I always make sure to close all my background apps, maybe 7 hrs is exaggerating but more like 9-12 hours

For comparison I've been seeing 50-65% battery left after 12 hrs off charger.
Even after 24 hrs off charger with average usage I had 30% this AM. It actually streamed Play Music all evening through bluetooth while I worked. I'd be upset if it needed charging after 12 hours.
I've turned off as many bloatware apps as I can in App Manager. I don't know really if that helps much with CPU load as I've always heard that Android handles memory and running services differently than Windows. It can certainly help with data usage, and by extension battery life if some AT&T or Samsung service is reaching out constantly.
I do not regularly kill any apps as some devs seem to think that killing apps has a worse effect than leaving them for the OS to manage since many apps restart anyway. I tend to think that the people who wrote the OS software probably know more about memory management than I do. That doesn't preclude a crappy 3rd party app from causing issues.
If after removing unnecessary apps and/or resetting you still have poor battery life and high temps you may indeed have a dud battery or device.
From my experience in repair, most returns/service for faulty brand new products are user problems; I see it every day. But there are occasional real problems.