Database Users

Something is sucking the life out of my battery while its idle!

I dont understand whats goin on. While im using the phone the battery seems fine and drops maybe 2-3% while listening to 30 mins of music. However as soon the screen switches off the battery plumets, overnight it droped by 30%. What could be draining the battery this much?
So far this is what ive tried.
3g is off 24/7
wifi is off most of the time
Using Helix launcher
Using battery defender
use media scape every now and then
Timescape never used.
Brightness is halfway
Any tips ??

check setting/about phone/battery use to see what app use up the battery

FireROR said:
check setting/about phone/battery use to see what app use up the battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it says:
40% cell standby
35% phone idle
11% android system
6% display
4%media server
2% dolphin browser
not sure what it means though

Your big one is the cell. Put the phone into airplane mode unless you need to be on standby for calls.
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App

instigator008 said:
Your big one is the cell. Put the phone into airplane mode unless you need to be on standby for calls.
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App
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Click to collapse
i thought 3g being off would help, but it hasnt lol.

2-3% in half hour is 4-6% per hour and say 30% overnight at an estimate of 8hrs is 3.75% per hour.
That seems a little on the high side but if you are getting a day or so of battery life with reasonable use then I'd say you are probably getting roughly around the same as everyone else (a few exceptions here and there claiming much higher figures but i have no idea about this).
I dont think you are going to be able to do much to improve it short of turning off your radio completely or disabling data for certain periods usin juice defender or similar. Can't see the point in doing this though - kinda defeats the object of having a smart phone

rocketpaul said:
I dont understand whats goin on. While im using the phone the battery seems fine and drops maybe 2-3% while listening to 30 mins of music. However as soon the screen switches off the battery plumets, overnight it droped by 30%. What could be draining the battery this much?
So far this is what ive tried.
3g is off 24/7
wifi is off most of the time
Using Helix launcher
Using battery defender
use media scape every now and then
Timescape never used.
Brightness is halfway
Any tips ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You must deactivate the internet connection, and then a soft reset

Go onto my thread of how to maintain battery life and memory, while your phone is idle it has background apps running like gmail or google talk, i dont use timescape because of all the fancy screen motion it consumes way too much battery juice.
Got any more questions then just PM me
Cheers Sean
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App

I actually have the TimeScape widget on my homescreen, BUT I have removed Facebook and Twitter and all the other internet-updated stuff, as I already have separate applications for them and hundreds of contacts I don't care so much about to see their statuses on my homescreen, and it doesn't suck my battery at all.
And it's nice to see the last missed call/message/picture taken at a glance!
Just go to Timescape, press Menu, Settings, and remove those from display settings for tiles and splines!

sean_seddon said:
Go onto my thread of how to maintain battery life and memory, while your phone is idle it has background apps running like gmail or google talk, i dont use timescape because of all the fancy screen motion it consumes way too much battery juice.
Got any more questions then just PM me
Cheers Sean
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What if i use gmail?
Disabling google talk only will help?

GPS is what did it for me. After trying everything else I decided to try turning off the GPS antenna and yesterday was the first day I made it through with power to spare. Now my usage was a little less than usual yesterday so I'm still gonna be testing with GPS off for a few more days but so far so good, I think that did it for me!

tuxStyle said:
What if i use gmail?
Disabling google talk only will help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you use google talk ? If you keep yourself logged in, this could be an issue.
Also, I do a restart after each recharge. I found this to help somehow..

The phone is alway trying to sync. So you should probably uncheck
setting -> mobile networks -> MMS & Data -> turn off
Turn sync app off
Also you mentioned you display brightness is at 50% turn it even lower you will notice a huge difference

ive tried most things people have mention with no real change, im goin to reduce the brightness this time.

If your indoors brightness @ 10-15% is more than enough..
Id suggest trying adw launcher and maybe cut out the animation effects in adw settings and also in phone settings under sound and display! Lookz more slicker than original and for me lasts more than a day.
If u use mediascape mainly for music id suggest tryin 'meridian'.. quicker to use, nice music control widget and drains less battery!
Hope it helpz!!
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App

This will probably be the craziest suggestion you will read. Remove the Timescape and Mediascape shortcuts from all three home screens.
I actually get just under two days of moderate use; where before I only got 9hours.
Just try it!

fm1776 said:
This will probably be the craziest suggestion you will read. Remove the Timescape and Mediascape shortcuts from all three home screens.
I actually get just under two days of moderate use; where before I only got 9hours.
Just try it!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
will try this
also...disable Gmail > Data Synchronization

Well, this is a smartphone.
Disabling everything will transform it in a dumb phone

rocketpaul said:
ive tried most things people have mention with no real change, im goin to reduce the brightness this time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i got the same issue as you do. i tried everything mentioned on various bbs, but it just didnt help. it is funny that i set the phone for my wife and it works very well. now im going to reset my phone to factory mode. hope it will help. sigh…
sent from X10

piercewei said:
i got the same issue as you do. i tried everything mentioned on various bbs, but it just didnt help. it is funny that i set the phone for my wife and it works very well. now im going to reset my phone to factory mode. hope it will help. sigh…
sent from X10
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have fixed it I think. i had a look at my battery history in spare parts and found my phone spent 86% of its time running, 15 hours which means the phone never went to sleep. The only culprit I could think of was juice defender because it is on all the time. Now my battery went down only 3% over night.

Juice Defender paid version

How many have actually bought this? Is it a huge increase in battery life? My phones battery life is really poor and I am wondering if this purchase resolves that. I use wifi all the time, like its on 100% of the time I am at home and such, even when Im not using it

Mark271 said:
How many have actually bought this? Is it a huge increase in battery life? My phones battery life is really poor and I am wondering if this purchase resolves that. I use wifi all the time, like its on 100% of the time I am at home and such, even when Im not using it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Get Tasker instead. Same feature and much more

kolyan said:
Get Tasker instead. Same feature and much more
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I read that, is there anyway I can find out what to do with Tasker to save battery life?
Like, what are some awesome things with Tasker. I see people post but it is usually people really not know what to do and such.

Mark271 said:
I read that, is there anyway I can find out what to do with Tasker to save battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as battery goes, u can control brightness, wifi, gps, data, syncs, and bluetooth. I personally have custom time settings for brightness and screen timeouts, that's it.

kolyan said:
As far as battery goes, u can control brightness, wifi, gps, data, syncs, and bluetooth. I personally have custom time settings for brightness and screen timeouts, that's it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you say, turn wifi off after 2 minutes of screen time out, and turn on after 1 minute of screen on?

A lot of people are saying it uses more battery life, definitely not what I want.

Mark271 said:
Could you say, turn wifi off after 2 minutes of screen time out, and turn on after 1 minute of screen on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
U can tell Tasker to do anything u want. Both Tasker and Juice Defender can drain battery if u configure them wrong.

Mark271 said:
A lot of people are saying it uses more battery life, definitely not what I want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends on how you use it. If you have Tasker using your GPS every 2 minutes (the default) to detect your location then yes, it's going to suck power.
I have mine set up to use the Near WIFI option to detect when I'm at work or home, and like you I leave my WIFI on all the time. It uses very minimal power.
Leaving WIFI on isn't too big of a deal. It goes to sleep after 5 minutes of the phone being off, and it pings out every so often to see what networks are there, but the power draw is minimal.

Last weekend I tested out Juice Defender to see how long my battery could last. 1d8h53m (~33hours) later my phone hit 10%. I plan on testing again this weekend with Juice Defender disabled to see what kind of difference there is.

I have used Juice Defender for about a week now and while I have found substantial battery savings I have also noticed that on its default settings it also causes issues for me. The main way juice saves battery is by turning off data services for 14 min out of every 15 min when the screen is off.
The problem I run into with this is that if you use gtalk or any instant messenger it will disconnect and reconnect you from those services. I have missed messages due to this. It also seems to affect the status of your friends on gtalk. My friends would always show offline until i sent them a message to "wake up the service" then they would show accurately until the screen went off again.
Overall for me the tradeoffs were not worth it. Also I was never thrilled with the idea of having to wait up to 13 min to get an email, push email should be instant.
Just my 2 cents

U can save battery by configuring brightness. Ex. I have auto brightness from 8-7 and min setting other times.

12 hours and my phone was dead with MINIMAL use, then I started to use switchpro to disable my data when im not using it. usually have my brightness about halfway down, and now my battery lasts 20 hours easy with alot of texting, a few calls, and games. I need to try tasker but this way works pretty well... if you haven't tried it yet

Battery drain when powered off w/o dock

I've noticed that when I attempt to power on my Transformer a couple days after powering down that the battery is completely drained as if the device was never shut down. The only way to power on is by plugging in to an outlet. I was under the impression the battery would last longer than a few days when powered down.

It definitley should, if I just put my tablet in sleep and leave it all day, it loses about 1% per day, so turned off I'd expect the same or better.

darkonex said:
It definitley should, if I just put my tablet in sleep and leave it all day, it loses about 1% per day, so turned off I'd expect the same or better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, mine loses about 10-15% overnight. The same as the op... The batch number is B50*****

Mine too drains battery when in sleep mode. Also B5 build...hope an OTA update will fix it soon and that it is not a hardware problem.

Same here and I'm stock w/out root...
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

Mine was in standby with airplane mode on (wifi off) - B3OK
100% battery was down to 64% by the morning. In 10 hours lost 36% battery
With all the talk about keyboard dock drain - I think this is more a important issue.

I have a B50 tablet, and mine only looses 1-2% per day if left in standby. This is in Airplane mode. Dunno what you guys are doing to loose half your charge over 24 hours.

Probably background apps. Some apps force load themselves (Like Thumbs keyboard and TapaTalk which wants to prevent standby on installation according to someone else on this forum).

I am also experiencing this issue. When I put the tablet on standby the battery continues to drain. When I when to sleep last night the battery was at 30%. When I turned it on this morning, it showed 4%!
This is unacceptable. The battery saving option is turned on. Is ASUS aware of this issue?

if you look at the battery info chart, does it show it becoming awake shortly after using it and staying awake for quite some time with the screen off?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App

B50 here. 0% battery drain. woke up and used it to check XDA for a little bit and went down to 98% but that's to be expected since most tablet/phones don't like to stay at 100% battery level to preserve it longer.
airplane mode while sleeping.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p163/gbd270/P20110723082933.png
it would also be helpful for you guys to say what ROM / kernel you're using.. and if you're stock, say stock. hence why people on XDA have this stuff on their signatures

I am on stock. Could it be because I have some apps running that are causing this battery drain? Or is it the microSD card?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App

sazfar13 said:
I am on stock. Could it be because I have some apps running that are causing this battery drain? Or is it the microSD card?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
microSD wouldn't drain your battery. I would say check your battery usage but that's disabled on stock.
- Check your Google Accounts in Accounts & Sync. Is Picasa Web Gallery checked for syncing? I heard there was a bug about that and it consistently drained the battery even when you're not on Wi Fi.
- Any syncing apps, make the interval longer or make it a manual refresh if it's not important.
- There is a bug where the tablet may be trying to interact with Mobile Data. I'm not sure why but people on other Honeycomb tablets have reported the same thing. You can bypass this by activating Airplane mode. You can still use WiFi when it's in Airplane mode.
- I personally don't use any SetCPU profiles. They tend to do more harm than good. Just my opinion, it's up to you but if something's going wrong with your battery. Try disabling them and see if you notice a difference or not.
- My WiFi sleep policy is set to "when screen turns off." Even though I select this, my tablet still gives my notifications on emails and stuff. Seems to be working well for me.
- Don't use any task killers.
- If you use a kernel that supports undervolting. Play with the settings and undervolt. My kernel that I use doesn't support it but I still get good amounts of battery life.
- I don't overclock. This could drain your battery as well (unsure, but it probably does to a certain extent). At 1.0GHz my Transformer is fast and responsive so I don't OC anyway. I only OC for benchmarking for fun.
Many people have said to disable GPS. But in fact, GPS is on demand! Even though when it's enabled, GPS is only used when a app or the browser requests your location from GPS. I personally have it on, but it's up to you really.
There. I just compiled some battery tips. Hope they help.
A true way to find out if something is severely wrong is to put your tablet into Airplane mode while sleeping. When you wake up, check how much % you lost. If it's over 5-7%, I'd probably say something is wrong with your setup.

^OK thanks . I will give it a try when it is fully charged.

sazfar13 said:
^OK thanks . I will give it a try when it is fully charged.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
At least check if Picasa was syncing. If it was then that could of been the source of it. Let me know?

zephiK said:
At least check if Picasa was syncing. If it was then that could of been the source of it. Let me know?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK I have unchecked the following syncs:
- picasa
- calendar
- Skpe sync
I have also turned on airplane mode. Lets see what happens.

So how do you tell ???
How can you tell which model ( B30, B40, B50, B60 ) you have ????

marcelol said:
How can you tell which model ( B30, B40, B50, B60 ) you have ????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's the serial number. Check the sticker on the dock for S/N or on the box that it came in.

After making the changes I described in my last post, I am now losing about 2% every 4 hrs. That is 0.5% every hour on standby. Much better than before but I believe others here have a much lower battery discharge rate.
I will continue to monitor the battery discharge rate under different scenarios.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App

Same problem, if left overnight looses around 30-40% of charge and looses 3-4% as soon as I disconnect charger. All sync is of, email check is manual. Juice defender is installed and on. So I have checked its logs and it says that almost every 10 minutes tablet uses WiFi connection. Went to Settings of WiFi connection and unchecked Notice about open Wifi spots and checked Always on when cgarger plugged in instead of "Always on". Will see how it works now.

ICS SOD with Green Power

Just want to confirm a hunch that power savers (like green power) trying to control wifi may be one of the causes of screen of death (SOD).

SODs are caused by incorrect Kernel/Modem combinations.
I finally got rid of all my SOD problems when I found a modem that works good!
Really

tamarian said:
Just want to confirm a hunch that power savers (like green power) trying to control wifi may be one of the causes of screen of death (SOD).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any juice saver would be absolutely the last thing I'd want on my phone. That's treating cancer with carcinoma.

chasmodo said:
Any juice saver would be absolutely the last thing I'd want on my phone. That's treating cancer with carcinoma.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly! Same apply to task killers...

chasmodo said:
Any juice saver would be absolutely the last thing I'd want on my phone. That's treating cancer with carcinoma.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why is that? Green Power works great here on Stunner's 1.4.19. Turns off wifi and data a minute after screen is off and there's no significant data usage and turns it on every half hour to sync with all my push accounts. When I turn the phone on all data connections are restored and ready to use when I've unlocked it.
Does it work? Hell yeah! I only lose 3% max each night as opposed to 8% to 12% without Green Power. I still get my Whatsapp/Gmail/Wordfeud/etc. messages when it's turned off, albeit sometimes a little late which in my case doesn't matter at all. If it's important, either call or send an SMS text message, you can't expect someone to always be in an internet covered area.
Now task killers is another story. Android has a great memory management and most killers will eventually cause more pain than neccessairy.

Anything that attempts to underclock has a high risk of crashing Samsung ICS kernels that haven't had source fixes applied.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

Entropy512 said:
Anything that attempts to underclock has a high risk of crashing Samsung ICS kernels that haven't had source fixes applied.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great to hear from the SOD hunter!
GreenPower doesn't underclock like JuiceDefender. However, after lots of SOD's I noticed in the battery chart from settings that prior to SOD, WIFI was stuck ON when device was not awake, when GreenPower should turn it off whenever screen is off. I tested with uninstalling it and tried an alternative (Battery Defender) and no SOD's for 3 days. I had them a couple of times a day since LP1.

Battery Drain, almost solved. Need help from Dev.

Hello Everyone.
There is a battery drain issue in in cell standby and I think I just solved the issue. Let me go back to when I last experienced such an issue. It was when I flashed a ROM for my SGS1 Captivate called Cognition. There was a bug that left wifi not only on but it was active during sleep mode.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=12294219
It was later solved by the Dev and the draining went away.
What is different here is that the SGS3 only has this bug when wifi is on. Look at my battery charts when I have wifi on and wifi off. The red area shows the slope with wifi and the blue area shows it without wifi. This is during standby times.
So is this due to the wifi dual banding just taking up more battery? Or is the phone not properly tuning the wifi down in standby? Solving this issue is out of my hands now and I will have to hand this over to someone else.
For now, change your wi-fi sleep policy to shut off when in sleep mode.
EDIT:
So I think i figured out why the wakelocks are happening. Other people have the problem with dynamic IP addresses.
http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s3/563008-battery-saving-tip-really-works.html

I don't know why these other fanboy war threads are bumping and so popular but a serious problem doesn't even get a response or a second look. Does anyone else have any comments on how we can get this fix? We need Samsung to fix this problem too.

I will make this post for two reasons;
To bump the topic
To say that i would also like this "bug" to be solved

SlimJ87D said:
I don't know why these other fanboy war threads are bumping and so popular but a serious problem doesn't even get a response or a second look. Does anyone else have any comments on how we can get this fix? We need Samsung to fix this problem too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi slim,
I agree with you here as well. However I've not noticed any battery drain. I've got about 35% left after good full day of use.
Sent from Rooted debloated stock Galaxy S3 OG I9300

SlimJ87D said:
Hello Everyone.
There is a battery drain issue in in cell standby and I think I just solved the issue. Let me go back to when I last experienced such an issue. It was when I flashed a ROM for my SGS1 Captivate called Cognition. There was a bug that left wifi not only on but it was active during sleep mode.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=12294219
It was later solved by the Dev and the draining went away.
What is different here is that the SGS3 only has this bug when wifi is on. Look at my battery charts when I have wifi on and wifi off. The red area shows the slope with wifi and the blue area shows it without wifi. This is during standby times.
So is this due to the wifi dual banding just taking up more battery? Or is the phone not properly tuning the wifi down in standby? Solving this issue is out of my hands now and I will have to hand this over to someone else.
For now, change your wi-fi sleep policy to shut off when in sleep mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm experiencing some kind of battery drain too with sgs3, but mine it's not wifi related. I have as first voice in battery stats page Cellular Standby. I mean, it's almost impossible it drains more then the screen!
Anyway, giving a look at your screenshot, I can clearly see some areas you didn't red boxed when wifi was on, screen was off but battery drain was not terrible at all.
How do you explain them?!
Looking at your screenshot

ceo.mtcl said:
hi slim,
I agree with you here as well. However I've not noticed any battery drain. I've got about 35% left after good full day of use.
Sent from Rooted debloated stock Galaxy S3 OG I9300
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I mean my battery life is still good, but I know it can be better. Now that I made it turn wifi off when it's asleep the battery life, the slope you can see there in blue, is a lot better. It's not so slanted and draining as quickly.
A lot of other people that complained about bad battery life I noticed the same trend, it's their wi-fi also. If you notice the long blue line on the bottom, that's when wi-fi is active and those extreme slopes have to be caused by wifi. Cell standby shouldn't be draining the battery more than the screen I don't think.
It's either wi-fi, the radio or both.

Aratheba said:
I'm experiencing some kind of battery drain too with sgs3, but mine it's not wifi related. I have as first voice in battery stats page Cellular Standby. I mean, it's almost impossible it drains more then the screen!
Anyway, giving a look at your screenshot, I can clearly see some areas you didn't red boxed when wifi was on, screen was off but battery drain was not terrible at all.
How do you explain them?!
Looking at your screenshot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know, I guess that is when the wifi properly shuts itself off.
When I look at my screen while I'm not doing anything at all I can see the orange arrow on the wifi on, and it stays on even though I'm not using the internet or anything. What can that mean? Is the orange arrow "uploading" or "downloading?"
EDIT: It's downloading. And I set the wifi to shut off if the screen shuts off. The Wifi sometimes shuts off. But right now it refuses to turn off even in sleep! And the orange arrow is lit up!

How do you get the wifi to shut off when the screen shuts off?
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA

uf21 said:
How do you get the wifi to shut off when the screen shuts off?
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's there in advanced wifi settings.
Did any of you people tried flashing different modems to resolve this?
《tapatalked from galaxy s3》

If you turn off the wifi then wont it just use the normal data connection and so use more battery? I was led to believe that using wifi was less demanding than say 3g.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

hpsauce37 said:
If you turn off the wifi then wont it just use the normal data connection and so use more battery? I was led to believe that using wifi was less demanding than say 3g.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes that is correct, but read my OP and the thread I posted. A wifi bug is the wifi not powering down in sleep mode. It stays on at full power during sleep and drains your phone.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA

Just a thought. Dont all phones stay conne ted wifi while the screen is locked?

uf21 said:
Just a thought. Dont all phones stay conne ted wifi while the screen is locked?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, some turn off the wifi radio if the phone goes to sleep
Sent from my GT-I9300

I tried a couple of modems, but in vain. Cell Standby is always much too high. Wifi is beyond good and evil.
I would by now also lean towards a bug. Unfortunately I'm not a Android dev. My knowledge ends at developing apps.

I am satisfied with mine

ive noticed smth:
with Droidwall blocking everything -> still wlan sends smth & causes traffic
hows that possible? u guys can experience the same?
under 3g/edge and droidwall everything blocked: no traffic anymore -> everything is ok!

Have any of you guys tried easy battery saver? One of the features is to disable radios when screen is off. I wonder if it is more successful in doing this than the built in setting.

I got the same cell standby problem so I went ahead and flashed Omega ROM, yesterday was my first day full with that ROM and the result was quite good. I ended up with about 45% battery after about 15-16 hours. Well I'm on wifi for like 3-4 hours though.

Drain caused by exchange sync process. Kill this process and see how battery life will change. Sorry for my english.

Curious, which F/W are you on? I was getting oddball WIFI battery drain using an older LE9 insecure kernel to root at first (WIFI would actually shut off and come back on after coming out of idle... even though I had it set to "always on.")
Completely went away after I flashed back the stock LEF kernel that my phone shipped with.
For reference below, no drain issues during idle with WIFI left "always on."