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I have a weird battery drain problem...(Bell I337M, latest firmware)
I realized mid-morning that I was dropping battery a LOT faster than I normally do. I don't use my phone much at work so after the course of a work day I'm usually left with around 85% battery remaining. Today, however, my battery dropped all the way down to just over 40%.
I checked the battery stats and saw that Android System was the next highest source of battery usage - with a "stay awake" time of over 12 hours so far. I installed BetterBatteryStats and it points to an Android System process called GCM_LIB holding the wakelock 100% of the time. My phone has not once dropped into deep sleep.
I think this may be the Google Cloud Messaging service, so I tried investigating every avenue I could. I've rebooted three times. I've removed every single account on my phone. I've stopped every push or polling application. GCM_LIB continues to hold the wakelock.
Any ideas? I really don't want to have to wipe the phone if I don't have to, I have everything configured just the way I want it to be.
got_milk said:
I have a weird battery drain problem...(Bell I337M, latest firmware)
I realized mid-morning that I was dropping battery a LOT faster than I normally do. I don't use my phone much at work so after the course of a work day I'm usually left with around 85% battery remaining. Today, however, my battery dropped all the way down to just over 40%.
I checked the battery stats and saw that Android System was the next highest source of battery usage - with a "stay awake" time of over 12 hours so far. I installed BetterBatteryStats and it points to an Android System process called GCM_LIB holding the wakelock 100% of the time. My phone has not once dropped into deep sleep.
I think this may be the Google Cloud Messaging service, so I tried investigating every avenue I could. I've rebooted three times. I've removed every single account on my phone. I've stopped every push or polling application. GCM_LIB continues to hold the wakelock.
Any ideas? I really don't want to have to wipe the phone if I don't have to, I have everything configured just the way I want it to be.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the android system drain when I used google edition roms but I fixed it by adding a few build.prop entries to make the phone sleep better. I didn't have this issue with stock touchwiz roms tho
Deeper Sleep / Better Battery Life
ro.ril.disable.power.collapse=1
pm.sleep_mode=1
Hi, some of our users said this.
As you can see from this screen: https://plus.google.com/communities/112636044705492129107 they have the same problem of you.
Have you found a solution?
GCM LIB is deprecated as per the GCM website, it has been superseded by GCM Server and GCM Client. Please use the GoogleCloudMessaging API instead of the GCM client helper library. The GCM server helper library is still valid.
There are a number of open bugs against GCM_LIB, including this one and I doubt they will be addressed.
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.
Nexus 6P, All Stock, Marshmallow w/ May security updates. [non-rooted]
A while back, I noticed Doze had stopped working. I always leave my phone unplugged overnight, and the battery graph used to be a mostly flat line overnight, with no wake activity. Recently, the graph is sloped, and there is a lot of activity overnight. I tried disabling WIFI and Google Now, but that didn't help.
I really do not want to do a factory reset. I don't think that will help. Also, I haven't installed any new apps - I'm not sure what it is. The phone displays a lot of wake locks throughout the day as well.
Has anyone run into this problem before and has a more specific solution or approach to troubleshoot? I wish Google hadn't dumbed down their battery info, you really can't get any meaningful information with 3rd party apps. Is there a way to identify what woke up the phone during those time it was dozing?
Looks pretty normal to me. I see just a handful of wakelocks for you. You could always try setting Location to battery-saving mode. Make sure bluetooth is off, see if that helps.
I have the same issue even when in battery saver mode overnight. Sometimes I'll lose 40% in just six or seven hours.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using XDA-Developers mobile app
So nobody have a solution to this problem? Sometimes it loses 1-2 percent per night, but sometimes about 15, obviously it processes something, I can't understand what, I don't install new applications in monthes.
Most battery stat apps need root after 4.4 but you could use adb if your keen...
Dumpsys System Diagnostics
Viewing Battery Use Data
Battery Historian Graph
Edit: Wakelock Detector has a pc version which could be easier if it works...
having the same issue!!! i also notice my wifi line to be constant even when wifi is switched off!!! which is absolutely strange!!!!
Happy news from me.
I successfully restored Doze Mode in my phone MiA1 Android One 8.1.0 Dec 2018.
Here is how. Go to Developer options, Background check.
Turn the Switches to Off for most Apps except the Critical ones. (Don't Rush, it's not easy to determine the Critical Apps. Choose in stages till the Doze mode kicks in).
Here's a list of System Apps which I have switched off
ANT HALL Service
Calendar
Chrome
FactoryKit Test
Gmail
Google
Google Play ... (all of them)
Maps
Settings
Spock
Translate
____________
You may have to do some experiments.
I could not pinpoint which System Apps were the rogue ones.
I eliminated the possibility of all apps that I installed as the cause.
The rogue apps which prevented my phone entering the doze mode were unknown components of Android OS and Android system (I am hundred percent sure).
My approach is a trial and error one and I expect some malfunction in the future.
BUT, I reconfirm that in my phone Doze Mode is now working.
Here is some inside info. My MiA1 Android One 8.1.0 (Dec 2018) Phone's Doze Node did work for some time after I did all that mentioned, but NOT GOOD enough; again it malfunctioned and continuous 3% per hour battery consumption by Android OS was noticed with totally idle phone.
(Then deleted cache data of all apps including system ones. DID NOT HELP. So my advice is don't waste your time doing this).
(Remote all syncing of all apps. DID NOT HELP).
LAST Attempt. Deleted App data and also cache data of Google Play services. It takes some time to initiate and it was OK. May have worked, not sure as Google/Android meanwhile updated its Google and other related apps in the Google Play Store.
Now the REAL Good News
It's now 3 days my phone's Doze Mode is ACTUALLY WORKING!!
Now the screen-off battery consumption is 0.7% per hour which includes non-doze mode. The doze mode works even when the phone is in the pocket and moving. You only need the screen to be switched off.
This has been my phone's normal behaviour for last 3 years (since September 2017)
I perhaps want to thank @google / @ANDROID for getting rid of the buggy update of August 19 on September 5.
No Bluetooth, No Location - Yes WiFi, LTE 100% signal coverage, no downtime, overall low brightness around 25-40% I can't seem to get past a day of regular use with 2 hours and half average screen time. Using latest OTA.
I've turned off the always-on screen, several bloatware that came preinstalled, including Facebook and Whatsapp.
The first on the battery usage is always Android System followed by Cell Standby then Android OS (again???) and then Screen. Also the voice call seems to use some great amount of battery. Naming might be different since my Android is in another language.
Have turned on energy saving for most apps that runs on background. Doesn't help much since I don't have many apps that runs on background. Imagine if I did! My day ends with about 20~27% battery left, I just turned off fast charging to see if it helps anything. My Xperia Z3 with Whatsapp and a great deal of apps installed would end the day with over 50~65% with Stamina Mode. I know the screen is smaller but so is the battery.
So I thought it would get better with time but it didn't, it's the S7 Edge Exynos Single SIM, unbranded with the official Samsung rom so I could get the latest updates or I would be stuck with no updates at all since Frebuary, since my carrier usually only releases major OTAs such Android N and skips all the minor updates.
Yes I did a factory reset already hoping for the better, maybe I got a defective Galaxy S7? I'd hate to have my phone fixed and the battery changed, it wont be the same again unless they give me a new one which is unlikely.
Why is Android System and Android OS draining so much battery? Are there any tools to debug this and trace which processes are using CPU time? Or could this be due a faulty battery?
Settings, Applications, Google. Disable all the services that will cause wakelocks such as all security options. This is something 99% of folks overlook or forget. Post a screenshot of your battery stats
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1827676
Only settings marked above are "Allow remote lock and erase"
Here is an average day with:
**Few moments connected to my laptop transferring pictures from yesterday - so incidentally it took some charge on the way.
1 hour 29 minutes voice call, 3G/LTE signal is excelent, VoLTE not used, WiFi on occasionaly, Location off, Bluetooth off.
1 hour 12 minutes running Fallout Shelter with power saving on, 30 fps low resolution mode, that's the CPU time at least.
2hour 28 minutes screen time with very dim brightness​
Power saving ON all apps where available, I have absolutely nothing installed but a couple of games, Teamviewer and Microsoft Remote Desktop.
That left me with 49% battery. Not sure how great the results are considering the brightness was very low.
Since the image took the whole page, here are the links instead lol.
Screenshot1 | Screenshot2
Dont quote me on this but I believe the Android System drain issue is a byproduct of the latest Samsung firmware update...
Someone more in the know could correct me or elaborate more
null
There is a thread on battery life here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/s7-edge/how-to/post-battery-life-t3321547
you might find some help/answers in there
Regards
Sawdoctor
Just some heads up, in offline mode my phone went a full day with a 6% drop, half hour screen time and some minor gaming, when I turned the phone radio back on around 20:00 when it was 10:00AM it was down to 15% battery, solely on standby. No bluetooth No location - Yes Wireless Yes LTE
Hello!
I updated to 7.0 last Friday and the phone has been acting very well, overall.
But I am having some problems with the battery life. In actuality, it can last 3 days in standby, but I feel like the "Phone Idle" is eating WAY too much battery regardless.
The drain when in standby, for example, should be closer to 1% for 7-8 hours, but for me it is closer to 7-8%, almost 1 % drain per hour in a supposedly sleeping state.
Right now, my stats are as follows, after 1 day and 10 hours (with 1 day 3 hours left):
Screen 30% (2h 23m SoT, 677mAh)
Phone Idle 20% (1d 10h, 459mAh)
Google Play Services 11% (radio active 1h 24m, 246mAh)
Cell Standby 10% (radio active 4m 45s, 234 mAh)
Android OS 6%
Android System 5%
... the rest is some apps with negligible usage.
So, this tells me that something is very wrong with Phone idle. It has consumed almost as much as the screen.
I read a lot about this issue and a large number of reports claim that doing a factory reset does not fix the problem. I am scared to do a reset, since Debloater no longer works in Android 7, and I will not be able to deactivate crap like all facebook services and What's New. So, it's a bit of a no-exit situation... I don't think rooting and using custom roms is a good idea for me, as I would like to retain warranty of my device until it expires. I plan to root and modify it after that.
Still, are any of you experiencing this issue since the Nougat update? Any ideas on how to solve it?
So far, suggestions include:
- removing SD card
- turning adaptive brightness OFF
- turning location accuracy to battery-saving mode
- turning Wi-Fi awake ON (only when charging), or OFF
- going to App settings and selecting 'reset all app settings'
- wipe cache partition by holding power and volume up keys (while phone is on) until you feel 3 vibrations
I've already done these things today (except sd cards, no way I am giving that up) so it's early to say if they helped.
Feel free to use this thread even if you just want to share your problem-free battery experience on android 7 with your Sony Z5C. I am curious to see how does a "perfectly fine" z5c unit perform in terms of battery, on Android 7. What is the "real" expected real-life performance?
Thanks for reading.
The things you suggest are not gonna change too much.
* Resetting app settings or removing your SD card is not gonna do anything at all.
* The location accuracy can make a little difference (let's say 2% at the end of the day) but the problem with location settings isn't HOW it's gonna look for a location, but HOW MANY TIMES. If you want longer idle, location services should be off (in one or another way) when your phone is sleeping.
In my eyes, with the things you have been doing is not worth the hassle.
** With Nougat, you still have the opportunity to extend your battery life a lot with apps like
Doze Settings Editor
My Android Tools
And you'll have to debloat.
I'm still testing these possibilities. But I just got on Nougat today, and with my initial settings, I broke some functionality I need. (Alarm Clock didn't work in deep sleep and I couldn't install WhatsApp). Maybe I get it working the way I want in the next few days or week, but I guess so.
** Having a kernel that allows you to change governors can also make a huge difference. Governors will give you the opportunity to buy (a lot of) battery life and to reduce heat, but you pay with performance.
** One more thing that can make a huge difference, is performing a clean install. So you need to install Nougat (or whatever ROM you use) on a clean system, and install your apps manually.
"I am curious to see how does a "perfectly fine" z5c unit perform in terms of battery, on Android 7. What is the "real" expected real-life performance?"
-->> With these things done and Doze/MyAndroidTools optimized, your phone shouldn't use more than 2-3% overnight. On an optimized MM (with XPosed/Greenify/Amplify) I had to recharge about 2 times a week. Maybe on Nougat it will be a little bit less because there's no XPosed/Amplify, but it should be possible that your battery life will be about three times as long as you have right now.
** If you want a better understanding about battery life, forget about these stats. You won't learn anything from the stats (like you gave us). Instead you can use an app like Better Battery Stats. Especially in (deep) sleep, knowing as much as possible about wakelocks is quite essential.
By the way, you can't call that a "real" expected thing. Battery life is always a compromise, and balanced with performance. Optimization (in the way I'm speaking about) is that much more than limiting performance/apps/widgets while you use your phone, and turning your phone in a dead object as soon as possible when the screen is off.
--jenana-- said:
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for this response, it's quite elaborate. But I am fully convinced that the Phone Idle issue is not due to ANY of my settings and should not plague a device, even if it is non-rooted. Most of the suggestions you added would require root, or operations that are beyond what I am willing to risk right now. Even the simple root would likely require me to downgrade to 6 and most likely brick my device due to unreliable nature of many of these guides.
I will definitely be trying out the BBS non-root edition as soon as I get home and manage to activate it properly.
But, overall, a stock non-rooted android 7 should not drain as much battery in idle mode. I know that via rooting you can get as close to 0.2% battery drain per hour. But what about no root?
Ultimately, I will root the device at some point when warranty has expired, or is close to, and I will get it to drain extremely slow with xposed and some tweaking. But we shouldn't be required to do this for normal battery life. It's becoming ridiculous at this point.
BTW. Is doing the "Repair" thing from Sony PC Companion equatable to doing a "clean install"? In other words, can I do this without having to actually re-install a rom completely and without rooting the device?
Bobzee said:
Thank you for this response, it's quite elaborate. But I am fully convinced that the Phone Idle issue is not due to ANY of my settings and should not plague a device, even if it is non-rooted. Most of the suggestions you added would require root, or operations that are beyond what I am willing to risk right now. Even the simple root would likely require me to downgrade to 6 and most likely brick my device due to unreliable nature of many of these guides.
I will definitely be trying out the BBS non-root edition as soon as I get home and manage to activate it properly.
But, overall, a stock non-rooted android 7 should not drain as much battery in idle mode. I know that via rooting you can get as close to 0.2% battery drain per hour. But what about no root?
Ultimately, I will root the device at some point when warranty has expired, or is close to, and I will get it to drain extremely slow with xposed and some tweaking. But we shouldn't be required to do this for normal battery life. It's becoming ridiculous at this point.
BTW. Is doing the "Repair" thing from Sony PC Companion equatable to doing a "clean install"? In other words, can I do this without having to actually re-install a rom completely and without rooting the device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haha, I'm bad in keeping my stories short.
If you're non-rooted, you won't ever get that experience. Not even close. It depends on the apps you're using, but a few messenger-apps (like facebook/fb messenger/whatsapp) + some google apps like maps/calendar/... or weather apps rely heavily on location settings, and they always want to sync or connect with their mothership. To illustrate my point, at a certain point last year I had done some dirty flashes, I had quite some apps and widgets like this installed, but in the end it drained 30% battery overnight. After clean install + debloater it went down to 10% overnight. After heavily tweaking with Amplify/MyAndroidTools/Greenify and so on, it went down to 1% overnight.
Without root, the only thing major thing you can do is: clean install. Almost everything else (with a large enough impact on battery life) is beyond your control. Apparently the choice of developers is to implement smooth and always-up-to-date apps and widget, always ready to serve you the latest news/messages and so on. I agree with you that smartphones these days aren't lean at all. And there are no secret settings that will give you a much better battery life all of a sudden.
I've never used PC Companion. I've no idea what it does or how it works exactly. I don't think it's powerful enough to solve issues with wakelocks.
Literally:
* If you want control over Android, you need to root. Without root: no control whatsoever;
* Clean install = everything out, fresh start. You can't paint your wall without removing your paintings.
Thanks again for the great response. And PC Companion is Sony's default software that comes with their devices and is used to backup/reset/update, etc.
To clarify, I never expected any secret battery options that will solve all my problems. I was rather hoping that it's a well-known problem with a possible non-root solution.
As to rooting, yeah - I would love to do it, but I am afraid your guide won't work for 7.0, would it? I am already using 32.3.A.0.376-R2D. In any case, rooting so soon after buying it (a few months) is not something I am rushing to do.
Also, to add something else - my old Z1, when it was on KitKat 4.4, used to last me 5 days with low usage EASILY. The thing actually drained about 1% per night without having to root it, with the normal stock features and 3G network on all the time. Something just went wrong down the road for many manufacturers and their relationship with the android OS. The battery life became abysmal for me after android 5 and above it.
And then, at work, I have a Nexus 5x on my desk for testing, which lasts 6 days in standby with a battery which is not dramatically bigger, with no root. But it has no SIM card or 3g/4g on at all, only WiFi.
This brings me to believe that you are absolutely right about location services.
And a last question... if I am to root now, from FW 32.3.A.0.376-R2D, what would you say would be the most reliable method? I saw your guide and really liked it, but it seems to require MM to begin with. Seen many other guides, but in each guide there are responses about frozen/bricked devices, or issies with no working camera/finger scanner/etc... It's a bit worrying.
brokich said:
Thanks again for the great response. And PC Companion is Sony's default software that comes with their devices and is used to backup/reset/update, etc.
To clarify, I never expected any secret battery options that will solve all my problems. I was rather hoping that it's a well-known problem with a possible non-root solution.
As to rooting, yeah - I would love to do it, but I am afraid your guide won't work for 7.0, would it? I am already using 32.3.A.0.376-R2D. In any case, rooting so soon after buying it (a few months) is not something I am rushing to do.
Also, to add something else - my old Z1, when it was on KitKat 4.4, used to last me 5 days with low usage EASILY. The thing actually drained about 1% per night without having to root it, with the normal stock features and 3G network on all the time. Something just went wrong down the road for many manufacturers and their relationship with the android OS. The battery life became abysmal for me after android 5 and above it.
And then, at work, I have a Nexus 5x on my desk for testing, which lasts 6 days in standby with a battery which is not dramatically bigger, with no root. But it has no SIM card or 3g/4g on at all, only WiFi.
This brings me to believe that you are absolutely right about location services.
And a last question... if I am to root now, from FW 32.3.A.0.376-R2D, what would you say would be the most reliable method? I saw your guide and really liked it, but it seems to require MM to begin with. Seen many other guides, but in each guide there are responses about frozen/bricked devices, or issies with no working camera/finger scanner/etc... It's a bit worrying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The guide I wrote is actually outdated. I wrote it in the first weeks after MM was released.
IF you want to root, it's actually not that difficult.
0. Prepare your computer, because you need the right drivers and some tools.
1. If it's the first time you unlock your bootloader, you might want to backup your TA-partition. I leave the details to other people, there are great guides about it in this subforum. As far as I know, to do this, you need to go back to marshmellow. I've never done this, because I unlocked my bootloader before there where any tools or any knowledge available about how to do this. So my original TA partition is gone forever (and I've never missed it).
2. Flash Nougat. This is really simple. You only have to download a (large) file, click a few buttons in flashtool, drink a coffee, and it's done.
3. Make a kernel with Rootkernel. It's basically like following a recipe, and in the end you have a file (the kernel) which you can install with the tools on your computer. In this step, you made root access and TWRP-recovery.
4. Reboot
Personally (and I know not everybody will agree), I wouldn't bother with backup of the TA partition. So *I* would just unlock the bootloader and move on. But your first step should be: make yourself familiar with basic adb commands and with how to make and restore a (full) backup. I really don't know why it causes so much problems for some people. It's true, sometimes you run into unexpected behavior. But then you have 2 options. Go back to last TWRP-backup or get your **** together and start from scratch.
By the way, if I was you (with your priorities), I wouldn't upgrade to Nougat. There are much more tools available to optimize marshmallow. Install some of them, get familiar with them, and in a few days you have a reliable and battery-friendly system.
Hm, these are some fair points.
Thanks for that little root guide - but why would you skip backing up the TA partition? Wouldn't that break some core functionalities? At least that's what I've read (cause I did go through most of the root guides for MM in this section).
I guess people have problems because the guides are sometimes incomplete, or people themselves are not following them properly. I would not expect myself to mess-up instructions, and whenever I have problems with guides, it's usually some kind of disparity between my side and their side. Or the guide is wrong, or something is missing. Many things can go wrong, yeah.
It's not that I am not willing to take risks, it's more that I might end up getting the overheat issue at some point - and at that point I would like to use my warranty. If I mess up anything, the warranty will be lost too soon.
Furthermore, I believe Nougat is far superior to MM, and I am willing to wait unofficial development to continue for at least another year. Perhaps in that time the z5c will have stopped receiving official updates, and we can all settle on some rooted, stable and working version of (probably) 7.1 or smth a bit after it, with working Xposed framework as well. At that point I would like to root and truly make the device shine in terms of battery life.
But for now, I'll have to limit myself with a factory reset at MOST.
I am doing an experiment now, after charging the phone completely. Turned location services off, and google services to "battery saving mode". I've turned wi-fi to off and am just going to be using a constant LTE connection. Auto sync is on.
I'd like to see how the phone handles this configuration without further intervention. So far, after 30 minutes post-charge, it's still sitting at 100%. But I'll have to check the overnight drain to verify any actual improvement. In any case, my 100% charged phone predicts 3 days of standby in the battery settings.
edit: looks good after 1 hour (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwg-0GLG0gP9Wmt1ekZCTFNnS3c)
brokich said:
Hm, these are some fair points.
Thanks for that little root guide - but why would you skip backing up the TA partition? Wouldn't that break some core functionalities? At least that's what I've read (cause I did go through most of the root guides for MM in this section).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mwa, yes and no.
Yes 1: By unlocking bootloader you break your TA partition and loose functionality.
Yes 2: If you ever want to go back to a phone which is unrooted and locked with all functionality, you need that backup.
No 1: There are DRM-fixes. Rootkernel (and the entire 2nd or 3rd step in my other comment) will fix DRM-keys too. And about every modified kernel you'll find over here has that DRM-fix + a few tweaks, so you don't have to worry, you won't miss anything.
I guess there are two kind of people. Some people say "You never know if you ever gonna need it, so you would be stupid not to back it up. After you click that button it will be gone. Forever." They are right. Some people say "Why bother, it's too much work, in the end you'll loose that backup, and actually you won't ever use it. And if it doesn't go smooth, it will give you unnecessary stress". They are right too. I'm in the second group. And I don't want to convince you that what I say is anything better than what others say, I'm just explaining my view...
Also, a lot of tools we use to experiment and tweak the sh#t out of our Z5C are highly experimental and not debugged. I don't care because partially it's a fun way to play around with it and I don't rely on my phone. If it doesn't work tonight, I'll find a way to make it work tomorrow. Again, that's my view...
By the way, I had to send my phone back to sony with a problem (unrelated hardware issue), and my warranty wasn't void.
Ha, that's very interesting. Perhaps they didn't bother to check for root at all, or they did and did not care. Maybe it's really hit and miss...
Overall, I am not extremely worried about it, as the device has actually been acting good so far, with no sign of hardware problems.
Also, I am not really going to gain that much by rooting Android 7, and I have no desire to have to stay on 6. When Xposed is well-developed and reliable on nougat, I'll probably go through the most promising method I can find and do the modifications that are required.
And yeah, I get your point about having fun, and I agree completely. But this device is important to me and I can't really risk it at the moment.
Anyways, the device is at 98% after 3 hours + of idle, which doesn't look too bad. I think perhaps adding the Greenify app might improve it a bit more, making it quite strong as a result, without the need of any root.
On more thing. Actually battery life on Nougat seems to excellent.
I did 4 things (not much work):
1) Edit doze settings more aggressively Doze Settings Editor, with the built-in "GeraldRudi"-preset. It should work on non-root too, but with slightly less aggressive settings.
2) Greenify, of course without the XPosed settings, and without aggressive doze. I think this didn't have any impact on battery performance/deep sleep, because Doze Settings was much more aggressive.
3) Tasker-module to put auto-sync off at night.
4) Kernel Adiutor to set governor to interactive. Obviously at night there was about no load on the CPU at all, but I did it to reduce heat.
All the rest is pretty standard. A lot of Google Apps are installed, messengers (FB messenger, WhatsApp) and social media, I even have a weather widget installed; all working normally.
Overnight it didn't use any power: 0,0% drain per hour; 0% over a 10h period of time. -->> battery stats
That's insane!!!! Big ups
I will absolutely try the Doze editor.
Sadly, no tasker with no root, but I might as well turn off auto-sync manually at night.
The kernel editor, I'm guessing, is also off-limits for me with no root.
What I did was to just turn off location and use greenify. My current idle draw is 0.66%.
But your is perfect. That's exactly what I want to achieve. Close to 0% draw when idle. That's how it should be.
Do you think it will be possible to achieve similar results with just the doze settings from step 1? (+turning auto sync off at night)
Bobzee said:
That's insane!!!! Big ups
I will absolutely try the Doze editor.
Sadly, no tasker with no root, but I might as well turn off auto-sync manually at night.
The kernel editor, I'm guessing, is also off-limits for me with no root.
What I did was to just turn off location and use greenify. My current idle draw is 0.66%.
But your is perfect. That's exactly what I want to achieve. Close to 0% draw when idle. That's how it should be.
Do you think it will be possible to achieve similar results with just the doze settings from step 1? (+turning auto sync off at night)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your idle time doesn't look bad at all. Without something like that Better Battery Stats it's hard to guess if some apps use CPU/power/... or cause unnecessary wakelocks, but if you use 6-7% over 10h idle time, it's not that bad.
As far as I know, changing governor without root is a no-go. Not possible, only the system has the right permissions. By the way, this should affect idle time that much, it mostly affects your phone while you use it.
Doze Editor should make a difference, because it speeds up the time after you turn off your device to put it in deep sleep. Out-of-the-box, that takes a long time (I don't know how long, but it's suggested to be about 30 minutes). Standard settings in Doze Editor, which you can use with adb and without root, bring that back to 3 minutes. It's fully explained in that Doze Settings-thread.
Thanks for the info
I tried Greenify since last night and it seemed to actually slow my device down. I could literally sense lag in the OS and nothing else could explain it. There was also a delay with every hit of the power button before the screen comes on. This, to me, was more bad than good, so I uninstalled this app. Perhaps it truly is a bit useless, or even detrimental to performance without root.
These Doze settings is what I will be trying out tonight, but I fear it might be a similar story to Greenify and not help me much without having root, or even potentially slow the device down?
Furthermore, I uninstalled all Google Play services updates and re-installed it. It used to take ~450mb of space, now it's back to ~150mb.
Hopefully, this will improve the Google services battery drain, because right now it is on the top of the list:
79% battery left, 2d 16h remaining:
25% google play services
15% phone idle
15% screen
12% cell standby
So, play services is still hogging too much battery, even with location off.
I re-installed it, so I have yet to see if this has any positive effect.
Z4 tablet problem too
I'm getting high battery drain on idle on my Z4 tablet, haven't attempted any fix yet.
My experience is a very big battery drain even if a clean install. I used MyAndroidTools to stop all unnecessary Google Play Services , with Kernel Audiutor I selected interactive governor CPU, with Doze I used GeraldRudi presetting. Switching off LTE, wifi, bluetooth and data , in less than 3 hours I loose 30% of battery, can not arrive to evening with a charge. I am back on 6.0.1 and I am able to recharge my Z5C every two days !
alpadolmeri said:
My experience is a very big battery drain even if a clean install. I used MyAndroidTools to stop all unnecessary Google Play Services , with Kernel Audiutor I selected interactive governor CPU, with Doze I used GeraldRudi presetting. Switching off LTE, wifi, bluetooth and data , in less than 3 hours I loose 30% of battery, can not arrive to evening with a charge. I am back on 6.0.1 and I am able to recharge my Z5C every two days !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That definitely sounds like you have one of those problematic units, with overheating and extreme battery drain, or perhaps it was due to a bug in the 7.0 ROM you used.
I am still able to get 2 days of my phone with 7.0 and no root, but that to me seems very unsatisfactory. Such a battery should easily last you a week with a single charge with LTE on, if you keep it idle most of the time. In my case, that's up to 3 days. If you see jenana's battery stats, it is possible to achieve almost 0.0% drain per hour at the cost of some performance. In those conditions, with ULTRA stamina on, your phone should last about a full month in idle mode with active network signal reception during that full period of time (but not LTE and other extras).
6.0.1 should be even better due to the Xposed framework, but I don't think that more than a month is a realistic with any OS and the current batteries.
Surely, 2 days is ridiculous. I don't use my phone much some days and the drain seems to be flat. It should be ALMOST 0% per hour. I assure you, even auto-syncing should be fully usable at all times without any kind of insane battery drain.
roycol said:
I'm getting high battery drain on idle on my Z4 tablet, haven't attempted any fix yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems I am in the same boat as you I really was enjoying Nougat, but I cannot live with half a day of charge. Last thing to try unrooted nougat and phh's superuser. Maybe this can resolve the massive drain. It is sad, really. I will report back with my findings...
I would appreciate any hint on to overcome this issue.
Cheers everyone!
Poor for me. I can get a day's worth out with about 3 to 4 hrs SOT but usually now my battery is less than 10% when I put it on charge. Marshmallow I was easily getting 4hrs SOT and down around 20 to 30% battery left. I love nougat but battery life is really poor. I have a mate who had x compact and 2 hrs SOT only uses about 25% battery. I just don't get it, so must be Sony with a poor ROM and not tested correctly or nougat not designed for this phone.
Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk
Hey, I can not understand it when people say the battery runs better than never before. I updated to 32.3.A.0.378, Sony has put the CPU on the best performance "performance". So with me runs the Z5C on the settings max. 10 hours. In the plaintext, I need root to convert this as it did at Marshmallow "interactive".
For everybody that experiences battery drain and heat problems: try rooting the phone with phh superuser instead of superSu. I couldn't get through a single day with superSu. Now, the phone is cool and endurance of battery is back to normal.
Sent from my E5823 using XDA Free mobile app