[TIP] FM Radio users one setting could cause drastic battery usage. - Galaxy S II General

First the tip: Don't use the "Show Station ID" option, it causes a massive battery usage.
Here are some numbers, with it turned on 4 hours of uninterrupted radio listening drains 36% of my battery. With it turned off the same 4 hours only drains 20% of my battery.
This is caused because with it turned on the phone never goes to sleep when the screen is off. When it is off the phone actually goes into deep sleep will still playing music which causes the drastic difference.
My numbers are based on 40 hours a week listening for 5 months of Station ID being turned on without thinking about it and getting a consistent 36%/4hr daily
Then I did my only factory reset when going to a ICS rom a couple weeks ago and not thinking to set it I started only losing 20%/4hr and noticed I was spending time in deep sleep.
It's great leaving work after a 8 hour day with a extra ~30% battery then I have been used to.

Actually that's not an accurate comparison seeing that you've switched roms.
Try to compare it now on your new rom so that the comparison is done on same roms.
But thanks for the info anyway.

I think this may be due to the HUGE number of messages written to logs when RDS is enabled. I see this with my FM app using the RDS in my app's Samsung FM API mode, and there's not too much I can do about it in that mode.
====
BTW, I very much need people with S2's to help me get my app working on stock or stock derived ROMs on which the stock FM app works. It works fine on Galaxy S for a while and probably just needs a tweak or 2. See my post here and respond via PM or on my thread, since it's Off Topic to this thread.
Except that... perhaps my app can use less power when in background or screen offm since it can turn the RDS off then.

bpivk said:
Actually that's not an accurate comparison seeing that you've switched roms.
Try to compare it now on your new rom so that the comparison is done on same roms.
But thanks for the info anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did a quick 1 hour test with it on and the numbers still match up. My phone lost 9/hr which does equal 36/4hr.

shadowofdarkness said:
I did a quick 1 hour test with it on and the numbers still match up. My phone lost 9/hr which does equal 36/4hr.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll run a test on my Galaxy S and I'd bet the same thing happens. I think a dozen or more log messages every second can do the battery in faster.
For you or anyone else looking to test my app, there's not much to it:
Feb 26 release on the Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mikersmicros.fm
Possibly better Feb 28 release: http://www.mediafire.com/file/i5654nm9vzd9d9m/Spirit_FM_Radio_v120228.apk
Just ensure a wired headset is plugged in, install the app and run. If you are rooted you should deny SU when it starts. At the Intro screen, press "Disable".
Hopefully, it will "just work" at that point.
NOTE: I just realized now that if you give my app SU, it will not try the Samsung FM API, it will go straight to the low level mode which gives no audio on the GS2. So set Menu->Settings->Debug->FM API to "OEM Proprietary" to force use of the Samsung FM API. If this API fails, I think the app will fall back to the low level mode. That can be prevented by setting Debug->FM Chip to "TI" and if the OEM API fails, then power up will fail.
Working or not, please give SU to my app, restart the app and send me a debug log with Menu->Help->EM Logs. After a few seconds. enter "GS2" and/or any useful phone or ROM etc. information in the email text and press send.
Remember, this test request is for stock or stock derived ROMs that can run the stock FM app only.
My app has been running in a "low level device driver mode" for over 6 months now on rooted GS2s, but without audio, except I think on the MIUI ROM which supports the CyananogenMod audio method. I need no testing for this mode, unless you know how to enable the FM audio or want to try the different Audio Methods to see if any magically work.

Related

Possible cause and solution to X10 Battery? -"No Sleep Bug"

Hey guys,
Just updated to the x10 after my samsung galaxy died on me, so far i am rather happy - except for the lack of root, but that will come.
I have noticed many complaints on the forum about battery life, and have experienced the same thing myself. From my experience, i think this looks like the same issue that was faced on a leak of 1.6 for the galaxy - it was referred to as the "No Sleep Bug".
TBH, the name says it all - for some reason, in many builds of android 1.6, phones were not sleeping correctly. There are many theories as to why, from cpu not being allowed to sleep, to permanent communication with google servers.
Despite all these different theories, one thing seemed to fix the problem - turning off all location services. Some people argue that a different carrier build, turning off just 'share with google' under location, turning off just AGPS etc. would fix it, but from my experience, the only real way to fix the issue was to turn off all GPS usage unless you need it. The once you have used it, reboot your phone.
This fix obviously sucks, and a new fix has recently been released by a veritable android-demigod around the Galaxy.
HERE IS A THREAD ABOUT NO SLEEP ON i7500 GALAXY;
(ok, some stupid rule says i can't post links - can a mod help me out?)
HERE IS THE FIX FOR THAT PARTICULAR BUG;
(ok, some stupid rule says i can't post links - can a mod help me out?)
LINKS ARE IN POST #5 - THANKS TO ONDOTEAM (would still be nice to get them in this original post though)
Now, from my experience, no sleep behave exactly the same way on the x10 as it does on the Galaxy;
1) I turn of all location services, and my battery life at least doubles.
2) After said turning off of services, 'spare parts' no longer says 100% running time under battery usage - in fact it can be as low as 10%.
These two factors are identical to my experience with Galaxy. SO; is there any way drakaz's fix can be applied to our X10's? It seems to me that the files he mods are standard Android system files, not sony/samsung specific.
Now i am no developer, so i dont know it this is possible - the first question that comes to mind for me is "do we need root access, or can this be done through developer tools using the android SDK?"
Can anyone help shed anymore light on this?
Seems to work for me. I disabled all location services. Spare Parts went down from 100% to 7.6%.
I'll just have to enable GPS when I need to use it..
Awesome! Glad to hear it has helped.
Let's keep testing this guys - if it does show up to be a big cause, then perhaps the devs around this place can help is figure out a patch for Drakas' mod to make it work with our x10's!
n3man said:
Awesome! Glad to hear it has helped.
Let's keep testing this guys - if it does show up to be a big cause, then perhaps the devs around this place can help is figure out a patch for Drakas' mod to make it work with our x10's!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello send me a PM with links, I will try to post it
http://androidforums.com/samsung-i7500/61168-no-sleep-has-nothing-do-anything.html
http://androidforums.com/samsung-i7500/78471-no-sleep-bug-fixed-drakaz.html
Links from n3man
No sleep is easy to fix, took me a while to figure it...
Turn your screen brightness from manual to auto, spare parts will now start showing proper running stats, no more 100% running.
The screen is a little dark in auto but it will cure the 100% running.
GPS and location services etc make no difference to my X10i, I am running the 1.6 version unbranded UK handset, the only thing to stop mine running 100% is to put the screen on Auto.
ronnyuk said:
No sleep is easy to fix, took me a while to figure it...
Turn your screen brightness from manual to auto, spare parts will now start showing proper running stats, no more 100% running.
The screen is a little dark in auto but it will cure the 100% running.
GPS and location services etc make no difference to my X10i, I am running the 1.6 version unbranded UK handset, the only thing to stop mine running 100% is to put the screen on Auto.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL... this is already going the way of the Galaxy thread!
My phone came out of the box with auto-brightness and i never changed that option, yet i still had no sleep.
Drakaz has done some fairly deep digging and is next to certain that it is an artefact of the geolocation bug discussed in the thread in which the problem was fixed.
I can't see "Spare Parts" in About Phone -> Battery Info
tuxStyle said:
I can't see "Spare Parts" in About Phone -> Battery Info
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me neither.. I was wondering about that myself!..
Although I'd half assumed that they were referring to the total "up-time" figure which you can see at the bottom of the "about phone"; "Status" screen.. But perhaps not.?
Spare Parts is a standalone Program ...
(i don't know for sure if it is in the market or downloadable as .apk from somewhere here in the forum ...)
Bax
im_iceman said:
Me neither.. I was wondering about that myself!..
Although I'd half assumed that they were referring to the total "up-time" figure which you can see at the bottom of the "about phone"; "Status" screen.. But perhaps not.?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can download it here
Spare parts is indeed available from the market - it is a much more powerful tool for indicating battery usage than the regular android methods. The galaxy stared on 1.5 which had NO indicator of battery usage statistics at all, so we all learned about spare parts very fast.
Perhaps that is why no x10 users have realised about the potential no sleep bug; because so far only the android usage indicators have been used?...
Anyway, hopefully this can help us all understand the way our phones are working better together
n3man said:
Spare parts is indeed available from the market - it is a much more powerful tool for indicating battery usage than the regular android methods. The galaxy stared on 1.5 which had NO indicator of battery usage statistics at all, so we all learned about spare parts very fast.
Perhaps that is why no x10 users have realised about the potential no sleep bug; because so far only the android usage indicators have been used?...
Anyway, hopefully this can help us all understand the way our phones are working better together
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
14% it's mine value for running time, not 100%. By the way thats 30 minutes of 210 in total :S
I'm also experiencing "No sleep bug" after i used GPS. I use Battery Graph to plot my power consumption and after I use GPS, I can clearly see that power consumption is high even if i turn the phone in plane mode.
In addition SE widget, used to turn on/off GPS, seems to not work very well for me. So, to fix the bug, i manually disable GPS in parameter menu and restart my phone. After that power consumption is hardly null (20% in 8h with MP3 on almost all the time).
mimok said:
I'm also experiencing "No sleep bug" after i used GPS. I use Battery Graph to plot my power consumption and after I use GPS, I can clearly see that power consumption is high even if i turn the phone in plane mode.
In addition SE widget, used to turn on/off GPS, seems to not work very well for me. So, to fix the bug, i manually disable GPS in parameter menu and restart my phone. After that power consumption is hardly null (20% in 8h with MP3 on almost all the time).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have 3G always on?
My phone has no trouble sleeping.
Gps hasn't really been an issue but I keep it off when not needed.
Here's my solid settings:
1) No auto sync
2) No moxier
3) Gps off
4) Restart after using wireless
As long as it's like this my phone lasts 2 days easily
ondoteam said:
Do you have 3G always on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, but I made a lot of test with and without 3G enabled and 3G seems not to be a problem for me. I think my problem comes from GPS.
ondoteam said:
Do you have 3G always on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
3G always on.
n3man said:
LOL... this is already going the way of the Galaxy thread!
My phone came out of the box with auto-brightness and i never changed that option, yet i still had no sleep.
Drakaz has done some fairly deep digging and is next to certain that it is an artefact of the geolocation bug discussed in the thread in which the problem was fixed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been playing with mine for a month to work out what caused mine to not go into sleep, I keep GPS wifi etc on 24/7 but in spare parts I was running 100%, after numerous reinstalls and removing everything i chanced on turning on auto screen brightness, now when i unplug my x10 the running sits at the correct level.
No Geolocation bug here
I have this problem with 100% on and off. Sometimes when I check its under control (~10%), other times its at 100%. I have GPS off, no WiFi, auto brightness... don't know why it sometimes just gets stuck at 100% :/

Answer to bad battery life: phone never enters sleep state

Hi,
i noticed months ago the following on my IDEOS X5 (german) concerning bad battery life. It could be the reason why there are so many different reports regarding bettery lifetime of the U8800.
First - why did I start to investigate: because the phone sucked about 5-10% per hour while not beeing used / lying on my desk, so after max 20 hours the battery was empty. But this did/does not always happen....
What I did: it took some time to get used to android (its my first droid) and learn how to troubleshoot. A month after I got this phone I learned that the GSM-code *#*#4636#*#* will show you very useful information concenring battery/phone usage. I started to play around with the phone (factory reset, install/remove apps, enable/disable different options like 2G/3G/WLAN etc...) always keeping an eye on the 4636-infos.
Result: When I use WLAN the phone simetimes enters an "state" when it never again enters "sleep state" and the battery gets sucked as stated above. I switched off WLAN for a week and this did not occur while standby time increased to 48 hours and 4636 stated an "phone awake" percentage of below 20% (normal usage). Once I reenabled WLAN again it took about an day of WLAN usage to reproduce the bug and "phone awake" time increased to 100% while standby time decreased to below 20 hours. ONLY rebooting the device recovers from this "state". I further noticed that this does not happen if just WLAN is available but no 2G/3G (phone had no SIM). My conclusion is, that the
"You May Be Charged"-Popup is the culprit. It does lock the phone to this "state" for some reason, mybe when the WLAN connection is dropped while the phone is not used (traveling). Can someone reproduce this on his phone (maybe not german)?
Resolution: IMHO none. I send the device twice to reseller for service. First time the complete mainboard was changed without success regarding the battery drain. Second time nothing was done - they just returned the device to me.
Thanks.
This is a known problem, that already has a thread...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1043760
This is affecting ALL Froyo Roms, if you want battery life, install Oxygen or CM7...which are based on Gingerbread.
There is no point in discussing this issue anymore, this is a very well known problem and Huawei doesn't care.
Sending the phone back to manufacturer won't help at all.
Thank you for the hint - it realy looks like the same issue. Knowing more about the nature of this issue could give people not willing to install custom roms a possible solution. Can someone move this thread over to that one?
katu2006 said:
This is a known problem, that already has a thread...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1043760
This is affecting ALL Froyo Roms, if you want battery life, install Oxygen or CM7...which are based on Gingerbread.
There is no point in discussing this issue anymore, this is a very well known problem and Huawei doesn't care.
Sending the phone back to manufacturer won't help at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But Huawei is about to release official 2.3 in Q3 atleast I hope...
andreasha said:
But Huawei is about to release official 2.3 in Q3 atleast I hope...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everyone is looking forward to official 2.3, but we'll have to wait and see if the "sleep" bug will be sorted.
katu2006 said:
Everyone is looking forward to official 2.3, but we'll have to wait and see if the "sleep" bug will be sorted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope some more bugs are straightened out like headphones and internal mic at the same time. Headset button to work. Battery time!
none of my android phones could use the phone's mic when headphones were plugged in
I saw a solution for the mic-with-headphones-problem a few days ago, either here or at modaco (do not know if it is confirmed working though).
fajabird, I know that you want this to work with the ROMs provided by Huawei. Huawei obviously does not care too much about providing the community with updates (they do not even have gingerbread-support by now). This is the downside of this low priced phone.
Let me just say this: It took me about one hour to understand the ultimate-guide at modaco. It took me another hour to decide which ROM I want to use. If anything goes wrong at the installation I can easily start over again. Now I have a fully working phone with Android 2.3.5 with a battery that lasts at least 2 days, sometimes 3(if I do not play any games within that time). Of course I understand that you are probably very pissed at Huawei for providing a ROM with a bug that serious.
if you find that fix again, let us know where to look
darkado said:
if you find that fix again, let us know where to look
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is to be found at the Android-development-section, right here. Note that you cannot use the mic of your headset after applying this
too bad, it would be awesome to be able to use both
XphX said:
I saw a solution for the mic-with-headphones-problem a few days ago, either here or at modaco (do not know if it is confirmed working though).
fajabird, I know that you want this to work with the ROMs provided by Huawei. Huawei obviously does not care too much about providing the community with updates (they do not even have gingerbread-support by now). This is the downside of this low priced phone.
Let me just say this: It took me about one hour to understand the ultimate-guide at modaco. It took me another hour to decide which ROM I want to use. If anything goes wrong at the installation I can easily start over again. Now I have a fully working phone with Android 2.3.5 with a battery that lasts at least 2 days, sometimes 3(if I do not play any games within that time). Of course I understand that you are probably very pissed at Huawei for providing a ROM with a bug that serious.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, thank you for sharing your experience with me. I always wanted to update to some custom roms but the time I started investigating this issue there was no stable one out there. On the other hand I thought there might be a dev interessted in more details regarding this issue helping him to sort out this nasty bug for whatever reason.
Can someone tell me, if his U8800 also has the ambient light sensor but like mine does: it won't reduce the brightness, just increase works. Thanks.
fajabird said:
Hi, thank you for sharing your experience with me. I always wanted to update to some custom roms but the time I started investigating this issue there was no stable one out there. On the other hand I thought there might be a dev interessted in more details regarding this issue helping him to sort out this nasty bug for whatever reason.
Can someone tell me, if his U8800 also has the ambient light sensor but like mine does: it won't reduce the brightness, just increase works. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine reduces brightness but does it quite weird sometimes like adjusting several times without the light around me changing...
Mine always adjusts it way too low. If I am inside the brightness is always on minimum. I use the power-widget on the homescreen. I only change it at night, it is on max. for the whole day (the max. brightness is still kinda low, especially if it's sunny).
fajabird said:
Hi,
i noticed months ago the following on my IDEOS X5 (german) concerning bad battery life. It could be the reason why there are so many different reports regarding bettery lifetime of the U8800.
First - why did I start to investigate: because the phone sucked about 5-10% per hour while not beeing used / lying on my desk, so after max 20 hours the battery was empty. But this did/does not always happen....
What I did: it took some time to get used to android (its my first droid) and learn how to troubleshoot. A month after I got this phone I learned that the GSM-code *#*#4636#*#* will show you very useful information concenring battery/phone usage. I started to play around with the phone (factory reset, install/remove apps, enable/disable different options like 2G/3G/WLAN etc...) always keeping an eye on the 4636-infos.
Result: When I use WLAN the phone simetimes enters an "state" when it never again enters "sleep state" and the battery gets sucked as stated above. I switched off WLAN for a week and this did not occur while standby time increased to 48 hours and 4636 stated an "phone awake" percentage of below 20% (normal usage). Once I reenabled WLAN again it took about an day of WLAN usage to reproduce the bug and "phone awake" time increased to 100% while standby time decreased to below 20 hours. ONLY rebooting the device recovers from this "state". I further noticed that this does not happen if just WLAN is available but no 2G/3G (phone had no SIM). My conclusion is, that the
"You May Be Charged"-Popup is the culprit. It does lock the phone to this "state" for some reason, mybe when the WLAN connection is dropped while the phone is not used (traveling). Can someone reproduce this on his phone (maybe not german)?
Resolution: IMHO none. I send the device twice to reseller for service. First time the complete mainboard was changed without success regarding the battery drain. Second time nothing was done - they just returned the device to me.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey there friend, I've detailed much of this and been through a lot of troubleshooting. It did not appear to be the "You may be charged" popup as I disabled that whenever I changed ROMs. I never did get a solution for any of the Huawei ROMs, it just seemed like bad code as Dzo pointed out with the WiFi driver.
A very simple solution for me was installing one of the 2.3 ROMs, they are quite stable at the moment, especially Oxygen (although I use MIUI). You will find much better battery life with these.
Best of luck,
Ryan
My stock rom 2.2.1 Shows Android System 97% battery usage and battery drains 50% in 19minutes! With wi-fi, 3g, Bluetooth, everything is off and even i do not use it.
Flash latest official 2.2.2, wait for official 2.3, flash the custom 2.2.2 rom void or flash a custom 2.3 rom. I would recommend flashing the latest 138 or 162 to get the latest modem baseband or manually install the AMSS.bin.
Sent from my Ideos x5
andreasha said:
Flash latest official 2.2.2, wait for official 2.3, flash the custom 2.2.2 rom void or flash a custom 2.3 rom. I would recommend flashing the latest 138 or 162 to get the latest modem baseband or manually install the AMSS.bin.
Sent from my Ideos x5
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't because phone do not use my external SD card somehow. In android i see files but in recovery-it does not use external sd.. I ask in forum why-but nobody answers
Backup ur data on it and format it. If that doesnt work ill send you a guide how i fixed mine, its just a partition error.
Sent from my Ideos x5
andreasha said:
Backup ur data on it and format it. If that doesnt work ill send you a guide how i fixed mine, its just a partition error.
Sent from my Ideos x5
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I formated it via phone, then via PC - it works in powered on phone in android, but in recovery it doesn't it only sees sdcard as internal memory, if i try mount sd-ext shows error, can't mount.
Also i have problem if i use pc to copy some files to internal memory-phone switches storage mode OFF! and i can't copy files to internal 2GB memory..strange

Androids energy efficiency?

Uhh, I cannot post this in development as I am still a newby :-(
However:
Hello,
I came from Symbian (Nokia C7-00) and liked the phone very much. Everything worked the way it should. (I was especially interested in office functionality.)
Now I bought a Galaxy Note and I really love the hardware.
But I discovered that it uses much energy and it doesn't like to sleep as often as it could. (I already returned to Android GB, which gives a better experience, but there still is room for improvement.)
1. Sometimes even though the phone simply lies around and does nothing, the last app that I forgot to close is hindering the CPU from sleeping. Why? The is no need.
2. At night I am used to turn the phone into flight mode. However I found out that this isn't the best thing for Android. In the morning, when the email app goes to push phase, the phone leaves sleep mode and seems to excitedly wait for the flight mode to get switched off. This uses *quite* a bit of battery!
These things seem strange to me. My impression is that Android is not really optimised for cell phones. If the screen is off, there is no need for CPU time, doesn't it? There is nothing urgent to do; everything could be done slowly; no hurry.
I guess the battery could last *much* longer if this would be improved.
Greetings,
corcov
corcovo said:
Uhh, I cannot post this in development as I am still a newby :-(
However:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which is handy, because this thread has nothing to do with development and thus saved you from some abuse!
Regards,
Dave
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2
But I already know how to click the "thanks" button
corcovo said:
But I already know how to click the "thanks" button
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesn't matter.
Development, if you did not create IT, then it does not belong in development. Remember that. Otherwise you will get flamed.
Android is a mobile OS, so of course it is optimised for smart phones - not ordinary cell phones. Android acts like a computer and, if you keep a computer running Crysis 2 for example, it would burn more power than a computer just playing some music off of iTunes.
In terms of improving your battery, check your brightness. You can download widgets to adjust the brightness right from the home screens. I use these to set my brightness to its lowest whilst at home (perfectly adequate for night and indoor use away from sunlight) and turn it onto automatic when I go outside. This has saved my a bunch of battery.
If you are running a stock Samsung ROM, turn on power saving mode. I always leave it on and, frankly, I have no idea as to what it actually does. I haven't noticed a performance drop in the slightest, but if it saves a bit of battery it is worth it. Also, you could try Juice Defender or some other battery saving apps which work for some people - others not.
Finally, ensure you haven't left GPS, Bluetooth or WiFi on when not needed. Try downloading CPU Spy to check your phone deep sleeps, yet mine even without it ever deep sleeping gets around 16 hours of battery life which is still the best I have ever gotten on a smart phone. Bettery Battery Stats can show you wake-locks (apps that are keeping your phone active) also.
Brad387 said:
Android is a mobile OS, so of course it is optimised for smart phones - not ordinary cell phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see. Well it might be a nice feature if one could add an "now be a cell phone"-option for energy enhancement, which means: if screen if off, sleep.
c.
corcovo said:
1. Sometimes even though the phone simply lies around and does nothing, the last app that I forgot to close is hindering the CPU from sleeping. Why? The is no need.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are some legitimate needs for keeping the CPU from sleeping for a short period of time - such as finishing a sync operation (otherwise, the radio power spent beginning the sync is wasted). Unfortunately, some poorly written applications (Facebook for example) abuse the wakelock mechanisms and hold wakelocks when it is not justified.
2. At night I am used to turn the phone into flight mode. However I found out that this isn't the best thing for Android. In the morning, when the email app goes to push phase, the phone leaves sleep mode and seems to excitedly wait for the flight mode to get switched off. This uses *quite* a bit of battery!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not something I have ever encountered myself. "push" relies on the server to trigger something - in airplane mode, this trigger can't happen.
These things seem strange to me. My impression is that Android is not really optimised for cell phones. If the screen is off, there is no need for CPU time, doesn't it? There is nothing urgent to do; everything could be done slowly; no hurry.
I guess the battery could last *much* longer if this would be improved.
Greetings,
corcov
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android is well optimized for cell phones - However, it assumes that third-party applications follow Google's recommendations for power management. Unfortunately, many of them do not. The number of IM applications which choose to use their own proprietary and poorly optimized network protocols (such as Skype, it's atrocious) as opposed to Google C2DM (optimized and efficient) is astonishing.
An interesting note was that I believe much of the focus at Google I/O was on reminding app developers that they need to play nice with the system and other apps.
There are some cases where there are device-specific nonoptimalities. Compared to most Nexus devices, Exynos devices have an absurdly long time to resume from wake (1000 milliseconds), and during that resume cycle CPU frequency is locked to 800 MHz and cpuidle is disabled. This is one of the #1 causes of power drain on our device. This is also exclusively a Samsung kernel/hardware architecture problem that does not affect the Nexus S (similar CPU, but completely different modem interface) or the Galaxy Nexus (different CPU/modem interface).
In the case of our device, the modem is hung off of the CPU on a USB bus - this makes for very long resume times.
Here are obvious reasons the CPU should occasionally turn on when the screen is off:
1) MP3 playback in the background
2) Handling of background syncs - e.g. when an email or Google Talk IM comes in, wake the CPU, handle it, and pop a notification sound, then go back to sleep. Normally, this means the CPU sleeps while waiting for an interrupt from the WLAN chipset or the cellular radio. Unfortunately, some apps drive incoming data to the device far too frequently. (See my above rant about Skype's network protocols being crap compared to Google's C2DM protocol.)
3) Handling of scheduled wakeups (alarms, calendar events, etc) - these are rare and almost never consume power
Most power drain is from item 2, with third-party apps frequently behaving extremely poorly compared to Google's own application suite and sync protocols.
Now this an extensive answer which is very informative and helpful for me since insights are always soothing. Love it. Thanks!
not much to add after Entropy, but if you feel the need to get some control over battery usage you could try betterbatterystats app (and the thread) to identify battery eaters, besides that, there are few apps to check what is going on with your system when it sleeps:
- CPU Spy to show cpu states time
- Autorun Manager or Autostarts to disable triggers causing apps like FB to run without reason (those which you will find with betterbatterystats)
- Battery Monitor Widget, to check battery current consumption (mA) - this app is generally not recommended, because Note's hardware does not report the actual current, so the readings are highly estimated and because when poorly configured it can drain your battery faster, BUT otoh with refresh rate set at 5 minutes or more, it can give you some approximate orientation on how much battery you lose (better than counting %/hour by yourself) at negligible battery usage
- also, if you feel the need to disable net and sync during night, you could automate it using "lama", which is free, and in my experience does not eat much battery by itself
- and last but not least, avoid taskillers, those apps may have adverse effect, i.e. self restarting apps (by the triggers mentioned above), will get killed then restarted and so on and so on, leading to much higher battery drain

[HOW-TO][NEWBIE GUIDE] Optimize & proper set up your Galaxy S6 Edge (stock firmware)

[HOW-TO][NEWBIE GUIDE] Optimize & proper set up your Galaxy S6 Edge (stock firmware)
As I've read across this forum and on several specific threads related to usage, battery life and so on, as well as discussing with some of my friends having a S6 or S6 Edge, I realized that most of the people don't really know how to properly set up their phones or how to use them efficiently.
OK, I get it, this is a fancy phone, not every owner is a developer or tech guy so it might be that many choose it based on the looks and don't really know how to optimize it...then they start complaining about different things like lag or battery drain not knowing that most of the problems are caused by miss-usage or improper setup. Of course there are bugs too, nothing is perfect. Of course there are many firmwares available and some are market or carrier dependent so some features or settings might be missing from some of them or even work differently.
What I will try here is to provide some guidelines and tips for setting up various things on the phone in order to maximize it's battery life and for a better usage. I will also make some recommendations based on my experience, tests and usage that might not apply to everyone. Use common sense and logic to apply similar settings in your particular case. Don't come screaming that you made that or that and now something is not working.
And YES, I know there are similar guides like this posted over the Internet and I'll probably make similar recommendations here too but I couldn't find such a guide here on XDA that is particular to this phone (if there is a better one than you might as well ignore mine).
All these things I'll describe below are applicable to any STOCK, NON-ROOTED 5.1.1 firmware and won't break warranty or your phone.
Now that was a long (and maybe unneeded introduction) but I thought to write this for everyone...let's start.
Model No.: SM-G925F
Android: 5.1.1 r2 (LMY47X)
Baseband: G925FXXU2QOI7
Kernel: 3.10.61-5672012
Build date: Fri Sept 4 2015
Carrier: Orange RO
DISPLAY
First I would like to say some words about the display. We have a great display, high resolution and it is most likely the biggest battery drain factor. There are two major things about it that you should keep in mind and will help you to get a better battery:
1. It's AMOLED...that means that the black pixels on it will consume no power because are not lit. Studies showed that even if not completely black, AMOLED displays use less energy if the displayed picture is darker compared to a lighter one.
2. The brightness level. Most people use it on "auto" or high level settings and this will be a major drain factor.
You can drastically lower the battery drain caused by your screen by selecting as much as possible dark (black) backgrounds and/or themes. There are some nice ones available in the Theme Store (my favorite is the Dalkomm Coffee Theme), that make most screens and menus dark/black. Also choosing a dark wallpaper for lockscreen/homescreens will help.
Don't use screen brightness at maximum...never. You don't need that in 99% of the cases. Also you won't probably need the automatic setting either since most of the people are spending most of the time indoors (either at work or home). A low manual setting will be fine most of the time, I have it set up at about 20% and only need a brighter one when going out. At that time I just tap on "auto" and it'll increase based on ambient light level. So you don't even need to tweak it alot every time. Find a low manual setting that's fine for your eyes and just tap on "auto" when you go out in sunlight.
CONNECTIVITY
Another battery drain factor is your multiple connection/radios features. In most cases you use just several: Mobile Data, WiFi, GPS/location and BT (when applicable). That means you should turn off all the others you don't use...NFC or BT (when not connected to a headset or car-kit or not listening to music). I don't listen to music and don't have a BT headset so I mostly not using BT (just when I'm in my car) and almost never use NFC so I have both disabled and I enable them only when needed via the Quick Settings.
WiFi
WiFi should also be properly setup otherwise it'll have impact on battery. It was incorrectly assumed or considered that keeping WiFi on all the time will drain battery faster. That was proven in different tests that's not true and in fact keeping WiFi on all the time won't make a big difference and in some cases was even better than to turn it off/on. I think is something similar with the car engines that suck more fuel when started that when running at idle. The major power drain is not when WiFi is running while is not connected to any network, but when the WiFi radio is powered up. When is on and not connected, it's going into a lower power state so the battery consumption is negligible.
I had a case with one of my friends that had WiFi setup to turn off when display was off...wrong choice, he got about 30% battery drain overnight because instead of having it connected to his home WiFi, the phone was using his 4G/LTE connection to make all the background sync/updates. That was eating his battery and also his data plan. After setting WiFi to "always" his overnight drain lowered to as little as 2-3%.
In some regions/carriers there are 2 other settings that were proven to help battery life: WiFi calling and VoLTE. I don't have either of them but based on different articles and what people say, they surely help with that so don't forget to turn them off if you don't use these features.
You might also want to try turning off "Always allows scanning" and "Smart network switch". I have the second turned off but I keep on the first one. Basically the first option tell the Location service to use WiFi for locating the device even if WiFi is switched off (by the on/off switch) so that means the radio is active. Second option should make you switch faster from WiFi to mobile data in case the WiFi signal is not strong enough or fluctuating. In my country there are plenty of WiFi hot-spots and they have mostly good connections so I don't use this feature.
GPS
Well here the opinions are split but I am currently having it ON all the time and Location Service is set to "high accuracy". I personally haven't noticed such a major difference with or without it so I preferred to let it on as it is used by many apps or services. You can try to set Location to "wifi and cell only" but don't think that will bring you a major benefit.
RUNNING APPS/PROCESSES
Well this is an important one. I've initially started to turn off/disable/uninstall everything I don't need or use. This can be done mostly from the Settings - Applications - Application Manager or if you want to go further, you can install Package Disabler Pro from PlayStore, about which I'll detail later.
Now why we should do that? There are lots of apps, processes and background services running on our devices that take care about all the things we do on the device. The problem is that ALL are using resources: processor time, memory, space and so on. In the end these are translated for a user in LAG or battery drain. Of course we cannot kill everything and I learned long time ago that installing Task or memory managers on Android it's the worst thing you can do. Android it's smart enough to take care better about it's resources and processes (at least to a certain point) and keep killing a certain process won't give you more battery life but will eat more of it in the end,
What I wanted to say is you shouldn't start disabling, killing or blocking everything cause you might end up with an unstable or not properly working phone (case in which only a factory reset might help). First of all look at the ALL tab in Application Manager and try to identify what you don't need or use. For example I'm certainly not using some things like: music, books, news feeds, Samsung's keyboard (I use SwiftKey), the TouchWiz launcher (I use Nova), health services or whatever, S-Voice, S-Health, S-Finder, I don't have any smartwatches so I don't use any Gear processes, fancy device wake-up functions (like wave gestures) or animated wallpapers either.
So after all considerations above, you decided that you can safely disable some apps/processes. All good but you'll quickly learn that some of them cannot be disabled via Application Manager (the "disable" button is grayed out). Now what? Well here comes handy that Package Disabler Pro that I've told you about in the beginning. That app is able to disable ANY apps/processes on your phone, including those that are protected and cannot be disabled via the normal way (and yes it can do that without being rooted). The downside of it is that you must be careful what you choose to disable not to have something that is needed for the normal functionality or the apps you're currently using. The app has also a backup/restore function (via an xml file) for saving the list with apps you have disabled and easily import them back after a factory reset for ex. I've added to this thread my list of disabled apps as it is exported by the application (just unzip and copy the file on the root of your internal memory and it can then be imported in the Package Disabler app)
Another important thing is WHAT apps you're using. I know that socializing and social networking are some of today's most trendy things but keep in mind that some of the apps used for that are not so well made. An example could be the Facebook app/messenger which are reported to drain alot of battery. RSS feeds, news feeds, multiple weather apps or widgets, all contribute to battery drain and lag. Don't install several apps/widgets for the same purpose (like several calendar apps or weather apps). Each will take resources and won't have an added value. Want to use another weather app/widget than the one coming with the phone? Fine, install it...but don't forget to uninstall/disable the built in one or others that do the same thing. Same goes for keyboard for ex; I use SwiftKey for years and got used with it. For me it's better than any keyboard that Samsung might put on the device, therefore I've disabled the standard Samsung keyboard. I also don't like TouchWiz launcher and use Nova that offers me much more flexibility so...I've disabled both the "easy" and "regular" TouchWiz launchers. I went to the point that I've even disabled the different embedded font types, you have 5 of them and I doubt someone uses more than one at a time.
So as you all can see it's not only a matter of setup but also a matter of usage. When you have a device you have to use it properly otherwise it'll not perform as you expect. Imagine a car that has a manufacturer fuel consumption value of 5.5 liters/100 Km....that's under certain conditions not on ANY type of driving. Fly with 200+ km/hr on a highway and I'll guarantee you won't have 5.5 liters/100 km consumption. That doesn't mean the manufacturer has lied or mislead you. Same goes with a phone, if you don't know how to use it and optimize it, you'll have a bad experience.
I work in the IT industry for years and I mostly laugh when I hear someone advising somebody to reinstall the operating system to solve a problem. Same goes for "factory reset" for a phone. Yes, this method works some times but that won't solve the root cause of an issues if you're using it the same way. After several days it'll perform as bad as before and you'll just say that "factory reset" did nothing. Of course it didn't...YOU have to do something different, not the phone.
Now I apologize for the long post and I do hope that at least some will learn to better manage their devices and to understand what they're doing not just running certain commands or procedures blind. Both S6 and S6e are great devices but we should learn how to properly use them in order to benefit the most from them...otherwise we just come here asking for help or mumbling about what crap devices they are.
Thank you, I will check to see if I get an improvement on the standby battery drain.
Your part about not setting the screen to Auto is flawed. You mention that we are mostly indoors, and you don't need a brighter screen for that. Auto mode also knows that and sets the brightness lower. It already does automatically what you do manually.
Tnx. And yes....keeping screen at 20% brightness and just switching to auto when in outdoors works great for the battery life.
ArmedandDangerous said:
Your part about not setting the screen to Auto is flawed. You mention that we are mostly indoors, and you don't need a brighter screen for that. Auto mode also knows that and sets the brightness lower. It already does automatically what you do manually.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not quite, I've tested it. If you're on "auto" and use a lower setting on the slidebar, in a dark room the screen is too dark, you'll have to turn off "auto" and the manual brighteness set on the same level will be much higher than on auto.
Now if you have such good eyes and you're able to use "auto" in all cases with the slider at 20% that's good for you...unfortunately I am not so that's why I use it as I've described. The point is that "auto" mode consumes MORE battery regardless of how it's set, than a lower 'manual' mode. So I preffer to have it like this than to use auto all the time.
Thanks for the awesome guide. I'll start disabling some useless processes and see how my battery life is working. Anyway without much editing the battery of S6Edge is pretty good. I can use it a whole day and still 19% remaining. As a comparison I wasn't able to do it with my S3 having to recharge it 2 or even 3 times at day.
Again, thanks for the guide!
Enviado desde mi SGS6e mediante Tapatalk

BUGS & BATTERY USAGE on JULY official rom

hi MI A1 owners.
for those brave enough to use the latest vanilla, official OTA rom, what change did you notice?
does the battery still suffer huge drain that appeared in 2018 roms?
it's a big "NOPE" for me to update, i'm still on official DEC rom because of this drain issue.
Battery life is good on 8.1 no issue for me getting 5-6 hours SOT on gaming.
Never had battery drain problems. Only "issue" is notification led not blinking.
Just noticed that led light is no longer blinking when notifications arrive. Light stays on only when screen is off. Also Bluetooth is constantly disconnecting.
Ambient display isn't working for me.
Led notifier is also not blinking anymore!
Led not blinking, proximity sensor doesn't work properly all the time, some scrolling lag. That's what I've got so far
dudes thanks for your answers.
i'm just more convinced to not doing the update.
maybe the drain i had was magisk-related. (?)
Nothing for me, even got ten hours of screen after some cycles. Led doesn't bother me and it's the only thing i noticed.
Yes, the LED is always on, which is annoying, but the bigger issue is there is no change in the battery drain. I charged to 100%, set the phone down and did not move it or use it overnight. 8 hours later almost 14% of battery was drained. I have tried everything I can think of to try, including turning off high accuracy location, not allowing any location things like safe area, etc. and still I get this drain even when the phone is not in use. Android kernel and system consumed 85% of that usage, and System UI, Play Store and Phone Services accounted for 7%! SO basically, basic Android paired with the A1 hardware seems to be the issue and I don't know that there is any fix for that.
At one point, I thought an upgrade to the A2 was going to be a no brainer, but with the issues with updates being broken and this battery drain issue that nobody seems to be able to pinpoint and resolve, I am thinking I may not buy ANY other Xiaomi. It may be time to try something else because the only way I can get two days of battery is to turn on airplane mode when the phone is not in use!
KB_Thailand said:
8 hours later almost 14% of battery was drained.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dunno what to say man. Mine is below.
2-3% at most over night.
And now it would appear that there is an issue with airplane mode.
I put the phone into Airplane mode at 2300 last night with 90% battery and did not pay attention to it. This morning I turned to phone on to find there was only 69% battery left, and WiFi was working. (see screen shot) WTF???? I have started using airplane mode to keep the battery drain to a minimum when the phone is not in use, and now it would appear that this doesn't work either.
I am REALLY getting frustrated with Android and Xiaomi as it seems that every time they do an update, something else goes bump! I have gone from totally happy with the AI when I first got it to being ready to write off Xiaomi as a company I would consider for purchase.
IjazCI said:
Is your WiFi scanning is on. ( Under location / scanning)
Play services also cause these type of sudden battery losses.
Try downloading latest play services apk from apkmirror . Latest one is
"com.google.android.gms_12.8.74_(090408-204998136)-12874034_minAPI26(arm64-v8a,armeabi-v7a)(480dpi)_apkmirror.com.apk"
Uninstall your current one. Install this .
Power off your phone for a few seconds and reboot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the thoughts, but unless I totally misunderstand what airplane mode is, WiFi should not be active when airplane mode is invoked. You can see by the screen cap that airplane mode is on AND WiFi is active. This seems to be a one off as it has not happened again for the last two days. I turn airplane mode on to stop the overnight battery drain while the phone is doing nothing. I have location set to GPS Only. IIRC play services was just updated 3 days or so ago, so it should have the latest version. I will check it and see though. Again, thanks for the thoughts.
KB_Thailand said:
At one point, I thought an upgrade to the A2 was going to be a no brainer, but with the issues with updates being broken and this battery drain issue that nobody seems to be able to pinpoint and resolve, I am thinking I may not buy ANY other Xiaomi. It may be time to try something else because the only way I can get two days of battery is to turn on airplane mode when the phone is not in use!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't logically understand why you would think it is the hardware causing the issue. If it was hardware, what you are seeing would be happening to every owner of the phone and clearly that is not happening. By saying it is the hardware when you have other software loaded is akin to saying your car's air conditioning doesn't work properly when you have all the windows wound down.
There is something loaded on your phone that is causing the systemUI to be working when you think nothing should be happening. The first thing I see on the screenshot on your phone is that in the top left of the screen you have two non standard icons. That tells me that you have a skin or non standard software constantly running.
The way to solve any issue like this is to go back to basics. I would get the fresh rom and do a Miflash whilst keeping your data. Make sure you do a backup first.
If that does not work, back up your data and do a clean install and check the phone's battery life. Do not load any non google software / app at this stage.
Then each day add one app and test for 24 hours. You will find this issue and the offending app or apps and I would be willing to bet you a few Singhas it will be an app you downloaded not the hardware causing this.
ludditefornow said:
I can't logically understand why you would think it is the hardware causing the issue. If it was hardware, what you are seeing would be happening to every owner of the phone and clearly that is not happening. By saying it is the hardware when you have other software loaded is akin to saying your car's air conditioning doesn't work properly when you have all the windows wound down.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, I think it is a combination of hardware/software, but that is just a WAG. Others have noted the exact same issue without running the same software. My bet would be on the RCS services stuff.
There is something loaded on your phone that is causing the systemUI to be working when you think nothing should be happening. The first thing I see on the screenshot on your phone is that in the top left of the screen you have two non standard icons. That tells me that you have a skin or non standard software constantly running.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those icons are my Email client and GSAM Battery Monitor (presently 0.1% and 0.8%) and are the only two constantly running programs other than the stock apps and Sophos (0.3%). Neither use much battery compared to the Android stuff. Presently Kernel is 41.6%, RCS/Phone is 30.3%. SystemUI is 3.3%, Play Services is 2.0% and Phone Services is 1.8%
The way to solve any issue like this is to go back to basics. I would get the fresh rom and do a Miflash whilst keeping your data. Make sure you do a backup first.
If that does not work, back up your data and do a clean install and check the phone's battery life. Do not load any non google software / app at this stage.
Then each day add one app and test for 24 hours. You will find this issue and the offending app or apps and I would be willing to bet you a few Singhas it will be an app you downloaded not the hardware causing this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good advice. I will do this when I have a few days to play with it. In the interim, it's airplane mode every night. Thanks for the reply. If it turns out to be one of these apps, let me know where to send the Singhas.
Good luck with it. I hope you find the solution. It can be frustrating, but getting to the bottom of it will be worthwhile. I haven't used Sophos for a long time and even then it was for PC. I am not up with how Sophos AV is integrating into Android but that would be my first guess.
I have only had one issue with this phone after updating and it was that the OS was constantly asking for a password on unlock after using fingerprint not just on startup. A clean install solved it and I have been trouble free since with every update. With over 50 PCs in my office, I could only wish that I had so few issues with Windows updates as I do with Android.
For me, night light auto schedule not working properly.
I can't tether via wifi/bluetoth/usb
Made another post with the problem.
ludditefornow said:
Good luck with it. I hope you find the solution. It can be frustrating, but getting to the bottom of it will be worthwhile. I haven't used Sophos for a long time and even then it was for PC. I am not up with how Sophos AV is integrating into Android but that would be my first guess.
I have only had one issue with this phone after updating and it was that the OS was constantly asking for a password on unlock after using fingerprint not just on startup. A clean install solved it and I have been trouble free since with every update. With over 50 PCs in my office, I could only wish that I had so few issues with Windows updates as I do with Android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just for grins and giggles, I uninstalled my email client, GSAM, and Sophos, the only programs that run constantly other than system and Line. I then turned my phone off and back on, forced stopped Line, charged it to 100% and set it down with the screen off. It did not move of get used for 8 hours, yet it still used 12% of the battery. (see screenshots) This is better than the 20% with those apps installed, but still not close to what I would consider normal. When I first got the phone, it easily lasted 2-3 days between charges, with 6-7 hours SoT. Overnight would use MAYBE 2% of the battery. Now if I want it to last 2 days I need to turn on airplane mode overnight and then I can make it through a day.
So I guess the next step is to do as you recommended and load up the fresh rom when I have time to mess with it. At least I am now pretty sure that those apps aren't the culprits causing the biggest part of the battery drain. I hate to do it, but I am seriously thinking of a factory reset and seeing if that clears the issue. Would that put me back to Nougat?
IjazCI said:
I always disable carrier services apk. As rcs is not here in India.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you disable this apk? I seriously think this is the major culprit in the battery drain.
KB_Thailand said:
charged it to 100% and set it down with the screen off. It did not move of get used for 8 hours, yet it still used 12% of the battery. (see screenshots) This is better than the 20% with those apps installed,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So those apps were causing 40% of of the 20% of the battery drain. That is a good start. I am confident there are software issues with your phone. I see you have some GPS app on your home screen, if that was running askew, it might be constantly pinging. That is just a guess.
In things like this, work methodically through it. But of cause a hard reset would be the best way to go. I see no reason why you wouldn't stay on your current version after a hard reset.
If you want to go make to version 7 you would need to use the MiFlash program and a downloaded standard fastboot rom. You may need to do something else to the phone to go back to 7, but I would not think so.

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