Related
I've been seeing a lot of posts on crap battery life around here, and I was chasing my tail about some of them as well, following a lot of misinformation even by senior members. I think I have a good handle on it now, and picked up most of these tips from these forums, so I'm not taking credit for these ideas, just collecting them in one place. Some of my suggestions assume you have root and Rom Manager (see the Tips and Tricks sticky thread on how to get them).
1. If your battery drains in less than a day on standby, you probably have a bad flash of the JI6 modem (either from the OTA update or from a ROM). Flash the JI2 modem from here "www dot teamwhiskey dot com/home/downloads". If the flash fixes it, you may try going back to JI6 if you want, and it may stay fixed. I went back to JI2 and didn't bother going back to JI6, but it has worked for others. With JI2 and 3G on I get just over 24 hours in normal usage.
2. The #2 battery drain on standby is 3G. I turned it off (Settings/Wireless/Mobile networks/Network mode/GSM only) and my phone lasted for 40 hours on Edge with light usage (few phone calls, messaging, quite a lot of web surfing, 2 hours of podcasts). Didn't even feel too slow (I get 140kbps on edge). Can anybody suggest a really good widget for turning 3G on/off? I use the 2G-3G OnOff widget by Curvefish. It's not one-click, it's just a shortcut to Mobile Network Settings, but it works. Note that sometimes it takes a while for the data connection to re-establish after you see the 3G or E icon.
2.5. WiFi always on is a huge battery saver! It keeps 3g off. I can easily get 3+ days with light usage on my home wifi. Settings/Wireless and Network/Wifi Settings/Menu/Advanced/Wifi Sleep Policy/Never.
3. Don't need a task killer. I wasted all my time killing tasks trying to chase down my crappy battery usage, but since I fixed my modem and turned off 3G I know that the 3-5% CPU usage at idle does not hurt my battery. Taskiller for me was actually hitting the CPU constantly, lightly but for no reason, so I got pissed and uninstalled it.
4. Install a CPU usage monitor like Usage Timelines. It sits in the notification bar, very easy on the battery, but tells you if you have a rogue app pegging your CPU and draining your battery. These are the only apps you should be worried about killing. Astro File Manager has a task manager that shows CPU usage for each app, so you can kill the rogue one. I shoot for about 5% cpu usage at idle (at 200mhz - at 100mhz it would be a bit higher).
5. The app Autostarts lets you disable any app from starting on boot or other events like connectivity changes. This is not strictly necessary unless you have a lot of crap apps installed on your phone and they like to start themselves and waste CPU time behind your back.
6. If your battery reads less than 100% as soon as you unplug it from the charger fully charged, or your battery meter sits at 100% for a long time after you unplug it, you can recalibrate your battery meter. To recalibrate: 1) charge your battery to full, 2) unplug, 3) reboot into Clockwork Recovery and 4) Wipe battery stats.
7. There is No Such Thing as "battery reconditioning" (for all intents and purposes). The above procedure only RECALIBRATES you battery METER to read on a more linear scale between full and empty. It DOES NOT make your battery last longer, period. Whoever tells you that is a moron. If your battery is dying in 6 hours, doing any amount of calibration will not make it last longer (I've tried).
8. I wouldn't be too worried about undervolting, overclocking, kernel tricks and superawesomefast ROMS. The CPU drain at idle is so minuscule (as long as you don't have rogue apps) that those things make precious little difference. Like I said, the biggest drain is 3G and other radios. Having said that, I run Bionix 1.9 with the JAC kernel. It drained my battery in half a day at idle until I flashed the JI2 modem. With JI2 it suddenly started lasting over 24 hours, and once I turned off 3G, over 40 hours. I like this ROM and see no need to switch, it's very smooth. But you should be able to get similar battery life on a stock Vibrant.
9. I have GPS on, WiFi never sleep, auto-brightness, and a few widgets on like Weather and friend updates. I have no fancy settings, literally just turning off 3G (or wifi on, which is the same) got me 2-3 days. So I wouldn't waste time fooling around with magic settings (other than wifi never sleep), battery saver apps, etc.
10. If your screen is on all the time and you're playing games nonstop, you're draining your battery quicker than any of the things I mentioned above, so you probably don't care. In that case an optimized ROM/kernel is probably your best bet, especially JIT in Froyo. You can probably save on screen brightness as well.
If you guys have any other tips I'd be glad to add them to the list, but I hope this gives you an understanding of where your battery life is going. Basically: bad modem, 3G, or rogue apps.
Also, I hope this will put an end to trolls calling people whiners for complaining about battery life and saying unproductive **** like "you're a whiner" or "the Galaxy S is just a battery hog, live with it". It's not, you don't have to live with it, nobody should have to, here are your solutions.
Good luck.
A few things I do to help with battery life is:
Disable Audible touch tones
Disable Audible selection
Disable Haptic feedback
Disable SD card notifications
Set animations to NO animations
Uninstall media hub if you dont use it
Disable auto brightness adjustment
Disable power saving mode
I disable the last 2 and just swipe the notification bar to adjust brightness. Granted these items really only work when using the phone but I can go about 2 days of normal use without a charge believe it or not.
yeah disabling 3g has always been the best option for people really, really concerned with battery life.
But it's kinda hard to tell people not to use 3g on their brand new 3g capable devices.
You may want to add how to test if you battery is bad. If you use you phone repeatedly while it its plugged in you risk overheating and damaging your battery. Signs that unitas is the case are very quick drain and long (7 hours) charge times. You can easily test and see if your battery its damaged. Remove it from your phone and place on flat surface (e.g. Counter top) try spinning the battery. If it rotates easily and quickly you battery is bulging, this is a sign of damage. Time for a new battery.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Answer to #2-
Use APNDroid. Comes with a widget.
Thanks to the OP and other contributors in this thread.
I flashed a ROM with the ji6 modem and battery life has been noticeably ****ty since. Example - this morning I unplugged my phone at 7:30 am. 100% charged. It's 10:21 am and my phone is at 75%
In the last 3 hours I browsed the web for 10 minutes while having my coffee and a smoke before heading out to work. Blue tooth was on for my drive, and I've sent 2 text messages. Aside from that my phone has been on stand-by since I unplugged it 3 hours ago.
I'm going to try to flash back to ji2 tonight as the battery usage was definitely better. Will also look into the 3G thing.
Thanks again.
You forgot to mention the two DRM and one downloader services that run resident on JI6.
These were the cause of my reduced battery life after I upgraded. Killing & removing these processes restored my battery life back to normal
blink55184 said:
Answer to #2-
Use APNDroid. Comes with a widget.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just tried this - switching 3G off works fine, but switching 3G back on didn't work for me. I had to re-boot to get 3G back so this is a no-go in my case.
I know how to kill the processes for the DRM and downloader but how do I remove them?
OP thank you for putting together the list. But I've never seen the point of doing all this. Its like getting a lamborghini and only driving 40mph because it you don't want to waste gas, whats the point? Either get a second wall charger to charge at work or a car charger. Heck even get a second battery if you are out for a long period of time.
speoples20 said:
Its like getting a lamborghini and only driving 40mph because it you don't want to waste gas, whats the point?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't need to disable 3g.
The point of my post is to avoid people wasting their time with tweaks that have little to no effect on battery life. I'm telling people that they're wasting time killing apps and optimizing cpu usage and twiddling their settings when the radio drains most of their battery on standby anyway.
Meaning no matter what changes you make, you can only hope to improve your battery life by a tiny amount, because any other effect is overshadowed by 3G.
Put another way, you will NEVER get battery life much longer than a day if you're on 3g, so you're wasting your energy trying all kinds of tricks.
blink55184 said:
Answer to #2-
Use APNDroid. Comes with a widget.
smutek said:
I just tried this - switching 3G off works fine, but switching 3G back on didn't work for me. I had to re-boot to get 3G back so this is a no-go in my case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me the widget did nothing. But it seems like it's not even supposed to turn the 3G radio off, but ALL APN network traffic. Did I miss something? It won't save battery power as long as the 3G radio is on.
I went back to the 2G-3G OnOff widget by Curvefish. It's not one-click, it's just a shortcut to Mobile Network Settings, but it works. Note that sometimes it takes a while for the data connection to re-establish after you see the 3G or E icon.
Back to my Moto Startac
While i understand the idea behind this thread, your conclusion is simple.
If you use the phone as a smartphone, it will eat up your battery no matter what.
I personally go through two batteries and some a day. (they cost about 12 bucks in ebay, and they work just fine)
The price for saving battery is not using the phone, and having a 400 bucks phone just for show off is just silly at least.
If you have a phone like this is to use it. At least you can change the battery not like some other devices......
I understand that task killer is useless, but do any of you use Autokiller (memory manager) ?
That's kind of a redundant question because even if you do not use the app, your phone is still performing the functions. The app just adjusts the settings. But to answer your question, using a memory optimization tool such as AutoKiller is 1000% more efficient than using a Task Killer. I don't think it effects battery much, but works wonders on performance.
There's no 3g-off widget because apparently in Android there's no way to do that through a direct command. I also use the Curvefish widget, and you are absolutely right about turning off 3g to save battery. I normally do so when I'm asleep or if I'm sitting at my desk next to a computer (why do I need fast data on my phone when I have my computer right here?).
The other thing I would recommend is AutoStarts. There are way too many apps that open themselves up at bizarre and inappropriate times. Autostarts is an easy and painless way to see which apps do this and keep them from opening.
gagb1967 said:
While i understand the idea behind this thread, your conclusion is simple.
If you use the phone as a smartphone, it will eat up your battery no matter what.
I personally go through two batteries and some a day. (they cost about 12 bucks in ebay, and they work just fine)
The price for saving battery is not using the phone, and having a 400 bucks phone just for show off is just silly at least.
If you have a phone like this is to use it. At least you can change the battery not like some other devices......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1000
Great battery life comes to people who hardly use their phones. Guess I need to get a netbook. Will prolly get a netbook or 3g laptop + skype and ETF my phone soon. These battery woes are show-stopping.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Losing 4% an hour on standby when you're not using the phone is unacceptable. Samsung screwed something up with the JI6 update. Most people think it's because of the stupid Media Hub. I think they are right.
People are not complaining about the poor battery life from using the phone. They are complaining about the slow battery drain even when they are not using it. ~4% an hour adds up fast. Vibrant is supposed to have 450 hour (18 days) stand-by time. That's what is rated. But people are getting 24 hour (1 day) stand-by time after JI6.
Yellow C6 said:
Losing 4% an hour on standby when you're not using the phone is unacceptable. Samsung screwed something up with the JI6 update. Most people think it's because of the stupid Media Hub. I think they are right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not ready to sign off on this idea. For me simply flashing JI2 over JI6 fixed it. For some people flashing JI6 back over still left the problem fixed. I still have those processes running on JI2 and my battery life is fine.
The other reason I'm not ready to recommend wiping out those DRM processes is that apparently it stops the bundled Avatar movie from playing, and might affect other things that users may get pissed about. I've read that killing the downloader process people are talking about kills the market. So I really wish those people advocating that solution would figure their **** out and provide exact steps for the fix (right now their posts are really vague like "kill the processes that are named something like this" and not well tested; in all my research I didn't find the exact name of the "downloader" process).
Is it possible to flash the ji2 modem without root? Wishful thinking, I suppose..
It has been almost a month since I've gotten the Galaxy S2.
I literally waited like a longing puppy for almost half a year to get this into my hands.
I have to admit, it is one of the most beautiful creations to ever grace our earth, but gosh, it has this one big, big flaw... (for me) battery life. Before you dismiss this as another battery life complaining thread, hear me out...
I have tried EVERYTHING.
Ever since 2.3.3, battery drain. Then 2.3.4 was announced... NO MORE BATTERY DRAIN. The news caused a burst of elation, but it was all too brief. Flashed to 2.3.4, same deal.
I've tried all the ROMs-- Litening, Villainrom, Cognition, Infusion (now defunct).
I've tried several kernels -- the standard CF kernel, neophyte's, mirage, etc.
I've calibrated my battery after each flash.
I've tried downclocking it with SetCPU.
I've frozen so much with TitaniumBackup.
Dormancy settings, system update settings, modem roms, I've tried them all.
I even purchased, in desperation, a third party battery which claimed to have 2000mAh capacity.
All to no avail. Nada, zilch, non. NOTHING has worked for me.
Last night for example, I had charged my phone to 100%. When I woke up 7 hours later, it had fallen to 63%.
Therefore can deduce that consumption is is about 5% per hour with screen OFF.
I have also made it a point to test a different ROM/kernel for at least 3 to 5 days before I make a change.
Now I really don't know where I'm going wrong, yeah I do have a few widgets and stuff, but what is a phone like this without widgets?
I am getting so sad over this issue. This phone is so perfect in every other way.
Why? Is it just me?
One no mention of actual battery life .
Two phones get fed up with multiple roms kernels etc rammed down their throat and dont work well .
jje
What exactly do you mean by 'battery drain' ?
Starting an new battery drain thread without even describing the type of battery drain is not a god start for this thread.
What is your idle drain? (% per hour when not using the phone).
How much "display on time" do you have when the battery is starting to be empty (no guessing, hard number from the battery menu please). A lot of people underestimates how much active use they have with SGS2.
Please also add graph for battery statistics, both the first page and also for the battery graph (press the small graph on top).
Just trying different ROM's in order to solve a battery drain issue is a bad idea, it is much better to find the root cause of the battery drain and solve that specific issue.
I mean I leave it overnight, and it falls from 100% to 60%.
It has never lasted me beyond 9 hours with mid level usage.
tjtj4444 said:
Starting an new battery drain thread without even describing the type of battery drain is not a god start for this thread.
What is your idle drain? (% per hour when not using the phone).
How much "display on time" do you have when the battery is starting to be empty (no guessing, hard number from the battery menu please). A lot of people underestimates how much active use they have with SGS2.
Please also add graph for battery statistics, both the first page and also for the battery graph (press the small graph on top).
Just trying different ROM's in order to solve a battery drain issue is a bad idea, it is much better to find the root cause of the battery drain and solve that specific issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apologies, my post has been updated. I don't have a good graph with my now since I'm charging, but I will post one up tomorrow.
Do widgets really make a big difference? Because that's the only thing that I have not really tested.
Could very well be a misbehaving app or widget. My phone in idle uses 0.5%-1% an hour with wifi on. Without wifi it goes slightly faster strange enough. I have some widgets that update every hour, gmail push, whatsapp and Samsung account sync.
Test without syncing and widgets and then re-enable things one by one to find the problem.
Another battery thread. That really IS depressing.
i just got my phone few days ago, battery life isn't great so far but it isn't as bad as your case.
I would recommend you do proper tests after starting fresh. flash a stale official rom, keep the phone barebones, dont install apps etc.. then test bat life with phone call usage.
Then slowly start adding and enabling things like gps, auto sync, background data and so on, till you find the cause. I think the battery life thing in the settings can help too.
Jeremy said:
I mean I leave it overnight, and it falls from 100% to 60%.
It has never lasted me beyond 9 hours with mid level usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
40% overnight is huge, I get approx 5% in 7-8 hours.
With 5% drain per hour with no usage, haven't you tested to turn off things until the drain stops? I would start with wifi, SGS2 doesn't work well with some routers. Then just continue with the usual suspects: widgets that connects to internet etc, email sync, facebook etc. (freeze with Titanium)
Do this systematically, you could turn off several things at once, but not too many, try to find the real cause.
There is of course a possibility that your phone is broken, but that isn't my first guess.
Why does no one try Juice defender???
tjtj4444 said:
40% overnight is huge, I get approx 5% in 7-8 hours.
With 5% drain per hour with no usage, haven't you tested to turn off things until the drain stops? I would start with wifi, SGS2 doesn't work well with some routers. Then just continue with the usual suspects: widgets that connects to internet etc, email sync, facebook etc. (freeze with Titanium)
Do this systematically, you could turn off several things at once, but not too many, try to find the real cause.
There is of course a possibility that your phone is broken, but that isn't my first guess.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh yes, that night the 40% drain was with Wifi on, and I heard that there have been issues with the DIR-655, which I am using.
Anyway, even with wifi off, my battery life fell from 100% to 83% with a very slimmed down ROM, everything that could be frozen, frozen.
Polluxus said:
Could very well be a misbehaving app or widget. My phone in idle uses 0.5%-1% an hour with wifi on. Without wifi it goes slightly faster strange enough. I have some widgets that update every hour, gmail push, whatsapp and Samsung account sync.
Test without syncing and widgets and then re-enable things one by one to find the problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah. That's a good idea, thanks.
Will try that over the weekend
TheSobadef said:
Why does no one try Juice defender???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would, but the thing is, the battery life should not even be that bad in the first place.
Sounds to me like you have a rogue app. I get 12,14 hours of heavy usage with brightness set to roughly 75%.
Don't flame him. He has tried alot things prior to posting. This is the place to post. Try the criskelo rom. It is a great rom with great battery life. Freeze wifi sharing. Delete apps at the beginning that you don't use all the time then add extra apps one by one and see what impacts the battery level the most. Check update schedules for things like news widgets and beautiful weather-I have mine set to six hours or so. There is absolutely no reason why you can't last a full day with 30-40% left.
Well, first of all, it's just a phone, although an expensive one, so no need to be stressed.
Secondly, it sounds very much like you have a faulty battery or device. Maybe you should have replaced it as soon as you noticed the problem. There's definitely something wrong there if it goes from 100% down to 60% overnight (assuming it's not heavily used during that time).
You already tried most of the things that I would do to tackle the issue. Try swapping batteries for a few days with somebody with the same handset, and see what happens.
Good luck!
For giggles, why don't you hard reset your phone? Then, instead of loading tons of apps of questionable quality, task killers, memory managers, and battery monitors, just load the stuff you need everyday. Things like e-mail and social stuff. People that haven't tortured their phones with excessive crap seem to get better battery life without even trying. With over a hundred apps, all the syncs syncing, heavy Wi-Fi use, and Exchange push I'm now up to 14-18 hours with moderate to heavy use. If the experiment works, start loading the rest of your stuff on your phone to see what the impact is.
Another thing to consider is your network connectivity. Your carriers signal strength and infrastructure could be part of the problem. Certain carriers and locations seem to contribute a lot to batter drain. Also, the SGS2 is very router sensitive. It likes Netgear, D-Link not so much.
Good luck.
This is with a screen on time of 2:14 too, and overclocking to 1.52gHz
There is no battery issue, this phone has twice the battery life of the desire hd and thats a fact, i have not changed fast dormancy or anything, this phone is king for battery life.
Played games and browsed internet, i would say medium heavy usage
Using 2.3.3 KF3
Also if you had a laptop that lasted 10 hours with 63 remaining wouldnt you think that was good? This phone is the absolute top dog, i would even say its better than IP4 for battery now
Also used cardiotrainer to track my run this morning using GPS, ran for 30 mins and lost around 6 percent... Amazing!
TheSobadef said:
Why does no one try Juice defender???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A lot do but informed opinion is that it drains battery .
jje
JJEgan said:
A lot do but informed opinion is that it drains battery .
jje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep Juice defender sucks, and is not needed really...
You either have a rouge app sucking the life out of your phone,
Your syncing at too short periods (mine is set to 1 hour)
Your phone signal is weak so your phone is using more battery drawing 3g from your service provider
Hello all,
Trying to find some info about some behaviour my Iconia has.
I love my device. Way more capable than my wife's Ipad and all that. There's only one thing that irks me: battery drain while the device is idle.
I also have a B&N Nook 1st gen (for books) and an EVO 4G. I leave and use the Iconia mostly at home, close to the WiFi. I'll take it out for long trips and such, but it stays close. I have it set up so that the WiFi antenna turns off when the screen does. Low brightness on the screen, will only charge the battery when it's low enough to charge, etc. It stills drains close to 6-8% if I leave it alone a couple of hours.
Earlier today I rooted the device and use Bloatware Freeze to freeze some stuff. Eventually I'll get rid of some of the gunk the tablet has installed. I want to figure out how to shorten that gap. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that the tablet left alone consumes 8% of battery charge! I mean, if nothing can be done then so be it, I'll learn to live with it.
For my money I would bet that there is something hidden in the Iconia's OS build that thinks it is a 3G/4G device. Now, I'm wondering what would happen if I were to take the next (logical) step and put another ROM in it. Would this make a difference? If I can make the battery drain stop at 5% or less, that would make this perfect.
Thx!
citizenklaw said:
Hello all,
Trying to find some info about some behaviour my Iconia has.
I love my device. Way more capable than my wife's Ipad and all that. There's only one thing that irks me: battery drain while the device is idle.
I also have a B&N Nook 1st gen (for books) and an EVO 4G. I leave and use the Iconia mostly at home, close to the WiFi. I'll take it out for long trips and such, but it stays close. I have it set up so that the WiFi antenna turns off when the screen does. Low brightness on the screen, will only charge the battery when it's low enough to charge, etc. It stills drains close to 6-8% if I leave it alone a couple of hours.
Earlier today I rooted the device and use Bloatware Freeze to freeze some stuff. Eventually I'll get rid of some of the gunk the tablet has installed. I want to figure out how to shorten that gap. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that the tablet left alone consumes 8% of battery charge! I mean, if nothing can be done then so be it, I'll learn to live with it.
For my money I would bet that there is something hidden in the Iconia's OS build that thinks it is a 3G/4G device. Now, I'm wondering what would happen if I were to take the next (logical) step and put another ROM in it. Would this make a difference? If I can make the battery drain stop at 5% or less, that would make this perfect.
Thx!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I leave my device with airplane mode checked, and then re-check wifi (as airplane mode will initially turn off your wifi). I get no strange programs showing up in battery usage now.
Will certainly try...
I'll try this next time I head out. Will leave her in Airplane Mode and will check the battery level when I come back.
I did disable the GPS and all location settings. I do not need it to know where I am, since I have the EVO for that.
citizenklaw said:
I'll try this next time I head out. Will leave her in Airplane Mode and will check the battery level when I come back.
I did disable the GPS and all location settings. I do not need it to know where I am, since I have the EVO for that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right on, let us know if that helps ya out
Well I'm glad I came across this. I didn't even think about leaving the GPS on and consuming battery. Also, where did you adjust for your wifi to turn off when the screen goes off?
EDIT: Nevermind, I found it.
I am developing an app that uses bluetooth and I noticed that if I leave bt on my tab will go dead in 2 days, if I turn it off it can stay idle for several days before needing a charge. I leave the wifi on all the time.
citizenklaw said:
Hello all,
Trying to find some info about some behaviour my Iconia has.
I love my device. Way more capable than my wife's Ipad and all that. There's only one thing that irks me: battery drain while the device is idle.
I also have a B&N Nook 1st gen (for books) and an EVO 4G. I leave and use the Iconia mostly at home, close to the WiFi. I'll take it out for long trips and such, but it stays close. I have it set up so that the WiFi antenna turns off when the screen does. Low brightness on the screen, will only charge the battery when it's low enough to charge, etc. It stills drains close to 6-8% if I leave it alone a couple of hours.
Earlier today I rooted the device and use Bloatware Freeze to freeze some stuff. Eventually I'll get rid of some of the gunk the tablet has installed. I want to figure out how to shorten that gap. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that the tablet left alone consumes 8% of battery charge! I mean, if nothing can be done then so be it, I'll learn to live with it.
For my money I would bet that there is something hidden in the Iconia's OS build that thinks it is a 3G/4G device. Now, I'm wondering what would happen if I were to take the next (logical) step and put another ROM in it. Would this make a difference? If I can make the battery drain stop at 5% or less, that would make this perfect.
Thx!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow I don't even have 8% drain with Wifi on all the time. There maybe something else in the mix. Most of my drain is the screen as I set it to auto and in my home it ramps up brightness most of the time. Is it possible you have a rogue app? Have you tested the tablet 'fresh', ie: after a factory reset with 1 google profile set up?
Neoprimal said:
Wow I don't even have 8% drain with Wifi on all the time. There maybe something else in the mix. Most of my drain is the screen as I set it to auto and in my home it ramps up brightness most of the time. Is it possible you have a rogue app? Have you tested the tablet 'fresh', ie: after a factory reset with 1 google profile set up?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is interesting, on 3.01 & 3.1 I've had zero drain with screen off w/up to 16 hrs. Settings : Wi-Fi disconnect policy never when plugged in, location & security use wireless networks on & gps on. Airplane mode , always off. I can't understand why you folks are having these problems. Hope we find out. Oh & by the way that's not charging.
Forgot to mention I use Juice Defender.
Update
Well, after much tweaking I think I'm somewhere where I feel comfortable. As a disclaimer I don't take the Iconia with me on my daily commute. Again I take my EVO and my Nook with me. The tablet spends the entire time I'm out in the office at home, unused.
I disabled all screen animations and I'm using the tablet on the lowest brightness setting.
I disabled the GPS and all location-related settings.
I rooted the tablet and am using Bloat Freeze to freeze/disable some of the Acer 'junk'.
I put the table in Airplane mode before heading out.
Last night when I went to bed I didn't use it (I was reading a very good book and I did not use the tablet to watch any of my shows). So I put it in airplane mode after I played with the new Google Music app (Impressive!). I went to bed around 11:00 and woke up at 5:00. In this span of time, battery went down by 1%.
Used it this morning to tweet, check a couple of websites, email. Was @ 71% at 7:00AM. Came back close to 7:00PM. Battery was at 67%. Right now (8:50 EDT) it's at 1d 19h 55m on battery @ 59% charge. Heavy usage of TweetCaster, TuneIn Radio, Browser, Market, &c.
Mind you, it was not used for close to 8-9 hours or more. If I were to take it with me the consumption would be more, but then I would probably use Airplane mode when it was not in use. Besides, I can't use it at work b/c the wireless is not compatible.
I'll keep doing some research, but I'm comfortable. I accept the fact that it will drain regardless, since the OS is up. The previous consumption was too much, and I think I can live within the 2% - 4% consumption rate. If it can go down to 1%, though, that would be even better.
Any other ideas welcome.
beautiful Widgets comes with a widget to disable/enable wifi like we're all used to on our phones.
I loaded prime 9.3 today because I wanted to try a 3.2 rom (for GPS and sd-card reasons). On that rom I noticed the 3g settings were visible until I added the line "ro.carrier=wifi-only" to build prop. I was able to see cell standby show up in batt usage.
Not sure if you guys knew it or not but under battery usage you can click on the graph to see a graphical depiction of what hardware used the battery when. If GPS was active when it shouldn't have been you'll see it there.
Interesting...
Are you suggesting that the 3g apk is active on the 3.1 image? I posted this question to a developer in Market that has an app that kills this on the Iconia. Maybe that's the other 2% - 4% I can kill.
Prime is a 3.2 rom. You could try adding that line and rebooting though.
To the stock 3.1 image? Interesting. Any instructions?
You'll need an app like root explorer that will let you mount the /system partition as read/writeable. In the /system directory there will be a build.prop file that you can open with a text editor (root explorer has this feature built in). You'll see many "ro.xxx" lines. At the end of the first group you'll just need to add the line "ro.carrier=wifi-only" without the quotes. Save and exit the file. Reboot tablet. On reboot, it will read the values in build.prop.
On the prime 3.2 rom, the settings for mobile networks are visible without that line added to build prop. I was actually seeing cell standby in the battery usage list. I never saw that on the stock rom. I use a toggle button for the wifi to quickly turn it on/off from the home screen and that keeps wifi from using any battery while sleeping..
I really doubt that GPS is the culprit in your case. Did you click on the battery usage graph to see what hardware was using the battery during the period of sleep?
Also remember
The % charge that the system reports is not always a very accurate indication of how much charge your system actually has - what matters is up time and how long you can go between charges.
Airplane mode is your friend - no real need to disable animation (has nothing to do with idle charge) - the only thing I do is enable airplane mode when away from charger and not using my tab - some of the drain you are reporting could be due to your system scanning for open hotspots.
Also remember all it takes is one poorly coded app to totally screw your battery over - as you are rooted, quite easy to check for apps that relaunch themselves even after closed, apps that want to phone home every 60 seconds - etc.
Would highly recommend you take a close look at any non-stock apps that you have installed.
Hi Guys,
Firstly, I know there are several threads with different tips and suggestions but most of them didn't work for me.
Recently (since more than a week) , I have noticed strange drain in battery and getting hot pretty quickly. It has kitkat and I didn't get time to use it properly in the beginning. After reading different threads and forums here's what I did:
- Let it drain completely, shut off, took out battery for a couple of hrs and then charged without switching on. x2
- Rebooted after charging
- Uninstalled some apps I thought might be problematic
- Factory Reset (such a pain!)
- When attached to Kies, it prompted for Firmware update N9005XXUENC2 followed by another factory reset and hard reset.
- Cleared cache by going into recovery mode.
- Rebooting after charging
But seems like none of it made much difference, my routine use
- couple of hours on wifi
- no heavy games, only temple run, subway surf etc.
- no streaming
- no lengthy calls, not a lot of messaging
- 1, 2 hrs of music
- Syncing off, gps off, blue tooth off, Wifi mostly off, power saving on, brightness on auto, no 3g/4g data, almost no photos and video capturing, sensors, motions off except smart stay
I don't want to root the phone because of my busy schedule, with some difficulty I was able install WLD on it which resets after Rebooting. Point is, I am not a heavy user and this being a "beast" isn't quite unleashing the beasty-battery-life. I do get more than a day but that is when it's in deep sleep for 20hrs or more. I took some screenshots after reseting, updating firmware. It's past 3 battery cycles now, I will attach the latest one's to not clutter it up. I like this phone, but this battery is just not good enough. So, please helpful answers that don't require rooting.
Thank you for reading and Good day!
Is the battery drain consistant or does it happen at certain times (at home, at work, etc.)? If you are in an area where the signal changes frequently that will drain the battery because the radio is using power to maintain a connection. With wifi scanning for google services even when turned off setting make sure it is off if you dont need it. How do you charge the phone? If possible always use the charger that came with the phone, charging from a usb port from a computer is not as strong and can affect the memory of the battery and do not wait till almost dead to charge. It works best to recharge when between 35% and 45%. Look at your background services and see if anything out of the ordinary is running. And it could be possible the battery is defective and you might want to have it tested. I use my Note3 lightly and get 24 to 25 hours over two to three days (turning off at bedtime). This may not help any but this is what I have learned from others with similar situations. Good luck!
MPDnnrd said:
Is the battery drain consistant or does it happen at certain times (at home, at work, etc.)? If you are in an area where the signal changes frequently that will drain the battery because the radio is using power to maintain a connection. With wifi scanning for google services even when turned off setting make sure it is off if you dont need it. How do you charge the phone? If possible always use the charger that came with the phone, charging from a usb port from a computer is not as strong and can affect the memory of the battery and do not wait till almost dead to charge. It works best to recharge when between 35% and 45%. Look at your background services and see if anything out of the ordinary is running. And it could be possible the battery is defective and you might want to have it tested. I use my Note3 lightly and get 24 to 25 hours over two to three days (turning off at bedtime). This may not help any but this is what I have learned from others with similar situations. Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey MPDnnrd,
Thank you for your response.
It is sort of consistent, did you see the screen is just at 18% and the Android system at 30%? I think this is where the core problem lies - just don't know what and how to fix it.
- Signal Strength: Pretty good, hasn't been a problem
- I normally keep the wifi-scanning off and Now I turned off the location services to see the impact but then I think what's the point of premium device if you have to switch off everything.
- I prefer to use the factory-charger over usb-charging and I read it on several threads to let it completely die and then recharge, guess that didn't help.
- Background services - I don't think so, I kill all the apps as soon as I stop using them, use Greenify to hibernate other, switched off all auto-updates and notifications. Even on Playstore, I switched off the auto-updates and notifications.
- Defective Battery: Now this one, I haven't tested yet not sure how to - the phone's just 2 months old so shouldn't it be good enough?
I know they are not very helpful, but still thank you very much. :good:
uqureshi said:
Hey MPDnnrd,
Thank you for your response.
It is sort of consistent, did you see the screen is just at 18% and the Android system at 30%? I think this is where the core problem lies - just don't know what and how to fix it.
- Signal Strength: Pretty good, hasn't been a problem
- I normally keep the wifi-scanning off and Now I turned off the location services to see the impact but then I think what's the point of premium device if you have to switch off everything.
- I prefer to use the factory-charger over usb-charging and I read it on several threads to let it completely die and then recharge, guess that didn't help.
- Background services - I don't think so, I kill all the apps as soon as I stop using them, use Greenify to hibernate other, switched off all auto-updates and notifications. Even on Playstore, I switched off the auto-updates and notifications.
- Defective Battery: Now this one, I haven't tested yet not sure how to - the phone's just 2 months old so shouldn't it be good enough?
I know they are not very helpful, but still thank you very much. :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sorry to have to say this but I think you got a pretty normal battery drain by looking on your screens. You played almost one hour subway surf(which drains the battery pretty quick) and I guess the other hours where internet (also known to drain battery) or calls/messages. On a not rooted device with stock kernel that seems like normal battery usage to me!!!
However if you like to check these maybe u get a couple of percentages(not that much though I guess):
-Power saving mode in notification drawer makes your cpu clock go down (not sure u got it on not rooted device sry)
-check turn of pen detection in s pen settings
-put the brightness on auto or put it down manually
-if you can change the theme color in apps do so(make it black)
-check the svoice settings so it doesn't listen to your voice
-if you don't care how your phone looks buy a zerolemon battery(I think it makes your phone too big but that's preference)
-don't use a bright background keep it dark colors and no live wallpaper as well
Maybe that helps a little.
I don't see any drain either. Almost 6 hours screen on during 24 hours is excellent, additional 1.5 hour awake time for other services. Excellent battery life.
Settings - General - Applications - disable unnecessary apps
In Google Settings, opt-out interest-based ads and disable location access.
Thank you for your reponses guys - thing is it actually had much better battery life. What I don't understand is the fact that Screen % used to be on top and android os and system was below it but now it has been on top.
I have tweaked quite a few things already that 4aces suggested and the S-voice thing seems new, I'll look at it. Today it didn't even last a full day whereas I know people who even after heavy usage get easily more than a day - mine one, I don't use it this much. The Zerolemon thing is beast but then the phone is a freakin block lol so heavy and big, good travel etc. where you can't charge your phone and has a rugged case.
But there's a change that I saw today, Android System is now below the screen so I am not sure what made it do that but may the next time I charge it gets better and so on. I'll keep you guys posted after charging it today, I'll monitor what I do.
Blondasisko - I wouldn't really call it excellent, but it's sort of getting better than it was in the first 2 cycles. But how do I reduce additional awake time for other services? Moreover, you might've noticed I got till 1% to get this much time like really stretched it to get there.
Someguyfromhell - Already done, locations were off starting today.
Can anyone else comment on their daily routine of usage and the battery drainage ratio?
If I get 12 hours and 4hrs screen time I'm happy. I don't even play any games. Have a lot of accounts syncing lot of Internet and a bit on the calls, gps. I get on average 14 -16 hours
I have brightness on high. If you put it on auto it makes a big difference.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
alom5 said:
If I get 12 hours and 4hrs screen time I'm happy. I don't even play any games. Have a lot of accounts syncing lot of Internet and a bit on the calls, gps. I get on average 14 -16 hours
I have brightness on high. If you put it on auto it makes a big difference.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess I should feel lucky, I have ZERO syncing, auto brightness, no live wallpapers or gimmicky stuff on, no gps, hardly 10mins or so on phone calls and prolly 30-60mins on messaging a day.
@all others - and the Android System is back on top - what could be the possible reasons for it?
I think its because of such minimal use that the system goes on top. The system still had to operate so when you have hardly used the phone then the system will go on top. Though with that usage you've stated you should get nearer 2 days really
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
alom5 said:
I think its because of such minimal use that the system goes on top. The system still had to operate so when you have hardly used the phone then the system will go on top. Though with that usage you've stated you should get nearer 2 days really
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're right probably, this is what I'd like to know as to what is running in the background that drains more battery? Exactly, at-least 1.5 days is what I should get with this usage. May be I should buy a new battery and see how it works.
Hi all,
Having just bought a Yotaphone 2, latest model 801 processor and with Lollipop installed, I was impressed with it... lovely screen, sharp response, great display on the back ....until I realised that battery life on the EPD or indeed doing nothing was (and is) terrible.
This somewhat negates the point of having the EPD. Because whether you use the EPD or not, as others have found, the processor seems to be spending 100% of the time doing something like trying to connect to Google headquarters to report my unethical swearwords as I look at the battery level heading south.
To try and make sure the phone was using the least power, I went through all the running apps and services and terminated as many as I could, turned off things like Yotafit tracking, turned off the service that sends all your contact details to the Kremlin, and so on... then, I turned on the Yotaenergy mode and despite that, we are at less than 24 hours with virtually no phone usage at all. Fully 50% of all the energy according to the battery stats is being used by Android System and Android OS processes when the system is in standby. And the historic battery screenshot shows that the processor is active 100% of the time., even though the phone has not been touched. (sorry, not attached, I'll post at some point, but its not very interesting)
So, does anyone have any clues about how this can be fixed? I have seen screenshots where people have shown that their processors are not active the whole time, and I imagine they have Lollipop? I have heard Lollipop has got some kind of bug which means that data connections are live the whole time, not sure if this is related.
(This might explain the sudden appearance of half price devices on eBay around six months after launch in the UK.)
Many thanks in advance!
YotaDevices has acknowledged the problems on Lollipop battery life, which is the reason they won't be shipping devices coming to USA preinstalled with Lollipop, but with KitKat. Now that I've played around with the EPD and created some widgets/applications for it, I can spot many places where things can go wrong in maintaining battery life and still keep things working.
Personally I've been lucky with the battery life on all versions of Android. When I updated to the last version of Lollipop (firmware 1.44), the phone did show poor battery life for hours after the installation was finished, before calming down to the promised 5 days stand by. Are you on the very last firmware? (Settings - about phone - build number)
As a last resort if your device won't settle down, I guess you could roll back to Kitkat, which had a very good battery life for pretty much everyone. You can install it with Yota's flasher tool: ftp://fw.ydevices.com/YotaPhone2/YotaPhoneFlasher/yotaphone2_flasher.exe
Just carefully select your own region and then the last version of KitKat (4.4.3) they offer. As you are rolling back from one major version to another, I would suggest flashing pretty much everything. You will lose your data.
Yota has said that they are working on bringing Lollipop 5.1 or 5.2 to Yotaphone 2. Let's hope that that works better.
Thanks that was very useful. The question is, will Yota do another build ... or build another device? I'm hoping the Y2 has a bit of life left in it yet and they do launch in the US - it can only help the development community!
I reset back to factory/Lollipop last night as it was eating battery so fast I could not believe it, and I am on the latest build 1.44EU (and was before). Since then.. it doesn't seem to be misbehaving so much, but it does seem to insist that the WIFI is on (when it is switched 'off' in the settings) by 'on' I mean the battery usage recorder... I wil take your advice and 'take it slow' for now, but may flash back to Kitkat if necessary. It is a bit tedious having to reinstall all your apps by hand but this seems to be the only way to ensure it is relatively clean.
The screengrabs below show the phone doing nothing at all in Yotaenergy mode - per first post.
ridgemagnet said:
Thanks that was very useful. The question is, will Yota do another build ... or build another device? I'm hoping the Y2 has a bit of life left in it yet and they do launch in the US - it can only help the development community!
I reset back to factory/Lollipop last night as it was eating battery so fast I could not believe it, and I am on the latest build 1.44EU (and was before). Since then.. it doesn't seem to be misbehaving so much, but it does seem to insist that the WIFI is on (when it is switched 'off' in the settings) by 'on' I mean the battery usage recorder... I wil take your advice and 'take it slow' for now, but may flash back to Kitkat if necessary. It is a bit tedious having to reinstall all your apps by hand but this seems to be the only way to ensure it is relatively clean.
The screengrabs below show the phone doing nothing at all in Yotaenergy mode - per first post.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am quite confident that they will release updated Lollipop sooner or later. They don't have the resources to piss off all their customers just yet.
Your Wifi still does some scans on its own for Google's location service, even if it's not enabled. You can disable this feature in the advanced wifi settings. But that is not the cause of your battery problem. Basically your device is awake all the time, meaning something is holding a wake lock. And by something I mean one of Yota's EPD compoments, which are counted as part of "Android OS" and "Android System" - your biggest battery hogs. It could be one of the EPD widgets that is misbehaving, or it could be some specific combination of them, or just something out of your control.
You could try removing ALL the widgets from the rear screen from Yotahub, then restart the device, and then let it run for an hour with the screen off. Then check the detailed battery log if the device went to sleep or if it was awake. If it went to sleep, you can try adding widgets back one at a time, and then check again if the device sleeps. Basically all the widgets which update periodically hold a wake lock momentarily (time, battery, calendar, weather etc). Of course if the problem lies on Yota's EPD framework, then this wont help at all.
Jeopardy said:
I am quite confident that they will release updated Lollipop sooner or later. They don't have the resources to piss off all their customers just yet.
Your Wifi still does some scans on its own for Google's location service, even if it's not enabled. You can disable this feature in the advanced wifi settings. But that is not the cause of your battery problem. Basically your device is awake all the time, meaning something is holding a wake lock. And by something I mean one of Yota's EPD compoments, which are counted as part of "Android OS" and "Android System" - your biggest battery hogs. It could be one of the EPD widgets that is misbehaving, or it could be some specific combination of them, or just something out of your control.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, I suspect the YotaFit app going bonkers despite my efforts to kill it.... or the Yotagram service, the thing is, looking at the Yota specific apps, you don't really need them, as you can flip the screen with the Yotamirror, and then use any Android app. Sure it would be nice to have notifications on the EPD, but my main focus for this phone is use in bright daylight, and long battery life, not to actually look at the thing 24x7 so I can respond to emails every 30 seconds.
At this point though I'm just trying to determine how bad the underlying hardware is. The GPS on this phone seems to a bit flaky, as does the basic reception of mobile signal. (And I'm not using a metal bumper.) So, I'm happy to flash back to KitKat 4.4.3 to try and give it the best chance..
So, any clues/links about the Yota flash tool? I've put the phone into USB debug mode, installed the flash tool on my windows 7 desktop, and installed ADB/Fastboot as well, but at this point I'm having a bit of an android driver problem, and ADB can't see the phone so that probably explains why the Flashtool says 'waiting for device' when I fire it up. I will go digging to fix that, but I assume that the Flashtool will do all the stuff like putting the phone into bootloader mode, unlock etc...
ridgemagnet said:
Agreed, I suspect the YotaFit app going bonkers despite my efforts to kill it.... or the Yotagram service, the thing is, looking at the Yota specific apps, you don't really need them, as you can flip the screen with the Yotamirror, and then use any Android app. Sure it would be nice to have notifications on the EPD, but my main focus for this phone is use in bright daylight, and long battery life, not to actually look at the thing 24x7 so I can respond to emails every 30 seconds.
At this point though I'm just trying to determine how bad the underlying hardware is. The GPS on this phone seems to a bit flaky, as does the basic reception of mobile signal. (And I'm not using a metal bumper.) So, I'm happy to flash back to KitKat 4.4.3 to try and give it the best chance..
So, any clues/links about the Yota flash tool? I've put the phone into USB debug mode, installed the flash tool on my windows 7 desktop, and installed ADB/Fastboot as well, but at this point I'm having a bit of an android driver problem, and ADB can't see the phone so that probably explains why the Flashtool says 'waiting for device' when I fire it up. I will go digging to fix that, but I assume that the Flashtool will do all the stuff like putting the phone into bootloader mode, unlock etc...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The widgets I'm running at the moment without any problems are Time, Mini Calendar, weather, battery, and communications (the small widget which shows phone calls, notifications and sms). And of course my own widget.
The best way to make sure there are no useless services running is to root the device and uninstall them completely, but that's another story.
For the flashtool to detect the device, you need to boot it into download mode manually. The easiest way is to turn off your device and plug the usb in while holding volume down -button. The screen will show "download" or something in very small white text. After that the flashtool should find the device. You probably don't have to flash the user partition (it asks for it separately), i.e. the simulated sdcard section which holds all your photos, documents and music.
Edit. And when you have kitkat installed, the first thing you might want to do is to disable automatic system updates. Otherwise it will nag you about the Lollipop update all the time.
I've been facing similar issues and am considering a downgrade when I have the time. I'm really disappointed in yota and won't be buying their next device.
I have found this thread useful, you may too.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/general/guide-extreme-battery-life-t3095884
thanks gents, oddly, the advice to let the phone 'calm down' seems to be working. I decided not to revert to KitKat (yet), as every day I use the phone the battery life seems to improve. Yesterday it was down to 40%, today 60% after about a days use. I'm thinking a week of running in will give it time to stabilize. I would love to root the phone but I want to use the Good app, and that doesn't run on rooted phones... (shame but I guess that's the flipside of working for a big corporate for you!)
ridgemagnet said:
thanks gents, oddly, the advice to let the phone 'calm down' seems to be working. I decided not to revert to KitKat (yet), as every day I use the phone the battery life seems to improve. Yesterday it was down to 40%, today 60% after about a days use. I'm thinking a week of running in will give it time to stabilize. I would love to root the phone but I want to use the Good app, and that doesn't run on rooted phones... (shame but I guess that's the flipside of working for a big corporate for you!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try putting the battery widget on your epd. If it shows 5 days remaining when you are above 85% and you don't use the phone, then the device works as advertised.
That Good app sounds like a real killjoy. There seems to exist some Xposed modules to disable the root check, but they seemed to be rather finicky to setup and very easy to mess up.
I was suffering from terrible battery life after the lollipop upgrade and the EPD battery widget was never showing much above 1d anymore. After much research and tinkering, it has now improved and I am seeing greater than 3d again. I think the culprits were maybe google fit tracking which I have now turned off and I also de-installed and re-installed the google play services updates which is a tip I saw in an android forum. I also over the last two days have received several yota widget updates which may have also helped. At least for now I am seeing a comfortable day's use again!
I experienced poor battery life out of blue again. I went through all the settings, cleared dalvik-cache and cache partition, tried disabling everything, but nothing helped. It only showed <1 day battery life at 100%.
But then I went to mess around in the developer settings, and when I set the animation scales from 1x to 0.25x and enabled "Force GPU rendering", the battery life returned instantly to 5 days.
Just thought I'd add this to the list of things to test out if someone's experiencing poor battery life. The forced GPU rendering might have some unexpected effects on some software rendering based games.
dont know if this will help but just seen some of the new features of android m "marshmallow" one of which is doze and there is a separate app available on play store for this. i have installed and it has helped battery life !!!
I was going through terrible battery life after Lollipop as well. Suffered, tinkered, tried various things. Eventually I just said screw it, backed everything up and factory reset it from recovery. Since then it seems like it's almost back to it's old self. Obviously having root and using some kernel control apps, greenify and some other things helps it but It will happily do at least a couple of days with little-normal usage. Still don't think it's as good as KitKat but it's not too far off. The EPD really does help spread battery out too.
I did the same thing but a 3 weeks on, the battery is as shocking as ever.
Today, on battery since 0730, now @ 1115 51% and 3hrs left!??
No obvious apps causing battery drain, just google services!
Rarelyamson said:
I did the same thing but a 3 weeks on, the battery is as shocking as ever.
Today, on battery since 0730, now @ 1115 51% and 3hrs left!??
No obvious apps causing battery drain, just google services!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had the phone nearly a week, and these are similar figures I experience. What's the point of the epd if my battery dies by lunch!
Sent from my YD201 using Tapatalk
I think it is something with Android 5.0 that is causing the drain issues. I can go anywhere from half a day to a week with good batteyr life and then it will randomly start draining again. Some background activity seems to hold a permanent wakelock and will not let go of it. I am unable to pinpoint what app is creating the wakelock with better battery stats or wakelock detector since there isn't access to kernel wakelocks in either of the apps for our phone. A restart always fixes things though, so I have a tasker script now that lets me know when idle battery drain exceeds a threshold for too long so I know to do a restart, it's not elegant, but my battery life is exponentially better and gives me enough battery life to make it through the day without a recharge and leave the eink screen on all night as a tv remote.
I got a new phone
sportsfan986 said:
I think it is something with Android 5.0 that is causing the drain issues. I can go anywhere from half a day to a week with good batteyr life and then it will randomly start draining again. Some background activity seems to hold a permanent wakelock and will not let go of it. I am unable to pinpoint what app is creating the wakelock with better battery stats or wakelock detector since there isn't access to kernel wakelocks in either of the apps for our phone. A restart always fixes things though, so I have a tasker script now that lets me know when idle battery drain exceeds a threshold for too long so I know to do a restart, it's not elegant, but my battery life is exponentially better and gives me enough battery life to make it through the day without a recharge and leave the eink screen on all night as a tv remote.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the end, I got a new phone after my Yotaphone decided to brick itself. Its a Zopo Speed 7, Octacore, dual SIM, nice screen, and does 4G very well in my part of the world. It is also around $200 at time of writing. Its a Chinese phone typical of the genre, Zopo seem to be moderately responsive to bugs compared with Yota... This Zopa phone is running 5.1 Android and I can tell you that Lollipop is not the problem...
That's after charging the phone and leaving it overnight, with the battery saver mode on... not too shabby. Of course it won't actually last 28 days, but this phone is nothing special and it is capable of running without all those services running that the Yota has.
The Yota spent its entire time when I had it trying to contact Moscow with that dodgy 'dictionary app'. What (honestly) is the point of the e-ink display if it doesn't save power...
If you are experiencing "always awake" and wifi always on despite your settings saying otherwise it may be worth going into your advanced wifi settings and changing "wifi frequency band" from "auto" to "2.4 GHz only. I remember reading this tip somewhere else for an Android 5.0 phone that was having battery issues similar to this. I made this change about 24 hours ago and have noticed a dramatic difference in battery drain when the screen is off. When I look at my battery stats I am no longer seeing a solid bar for both wifi and awake. Worth trying.
For what it's worth, I have had fairly light use today, some checking of emails and facebook, 40 mins or so of music via bluetooth (with screen off). Total screen on time of 35 mins. The phone has been off charge since 06:30 this morning. It is now 17:00 and is showing battery of 71% with an estimated 2d and 8h left. Better battery stats show deep sleep of 71% whereas previously it had shown awake at 100%. Far better than I had before.
stapo101 said:
If you are experiencing "always awake" and wifi always on despite your settings saying otherwise it may be worth going into your advanced wifi settings and changing "wifi frequency band" from "auto" to "2.4 GHz only. I remember reading this tip somewhere else for an Android 5.0 phone that was having battery issues similar to this. I made this change about 24 hours ago and have noticed a dramatic difference in battery drain when the screen is off. When I look at my battery stats I am no longer seeing a solid bar for both wifi and awake. Worth trying.
For what it's worth, I have had fairly light use today, some checking of emails and facebook, 40 mins or so of music via bluetooth (with screen off). Total screen on time of 35 mins. The phone has been off charge since 06:30 this morning. It is now 17:00 and is showing battery of 71% with an estimated 2d and 8h left. Better battery stats show deep sleep of 71% whereas previously it had shown awake at 100%. Far better than I had before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried using the setting so Wifi is only on while screen is on? (Unless on charge...)
I think I found the issue, at least with my phone.
I was syncing with exchange, and there is a nasty bug with android 5.0 and exchange sync. The sync is taking forever and doesn´t sync everything. Calendar and contacts missing.
Then I removed the ActiveSync connection on my phone and set up the app Nine to sync instead.
After that I got much better battery. This may help for others as well. The phone is just hammering the exchange server all the time and this takes up a lot of power.