Database Users

Serious battery drain with minimum usage

Hi all,
The battery life of my 4month old SGS is becoming shorter every week! I can 'almost' last a work day (8 hours) with a fully charged battery and minimal use.
I had this problem also on the stock firmware, Darky's rom 8.x was a slight improvement (much faster tho!), Light-ning rom and Darky's rom 9.x.
Everyday I charge my battery untill it is full, when my alarm goes off it's already at 98% (it's still hooked up). When I'm in the train to school, my battery already dropped around 86% (being idle). I check some mobile websites, my e-mail and read some twitter messages.
Because I know services as Twitter (I'm using Tweetdeck) uses alot of resources and battery, so when I'm done looking I always shut down those programs. And I often do an 'end all' task in the 'System' app which I purchased from the market lately to monitor my battery.
During the day the only thing I do is check my mail and some websites, but not for long, mostly it would be around 5minutes or so. So WiFi is turned OFF, GPS is turned OFF, and only GMail synchronizes with default settings. So what's the deal? Is my battery slowly dieing because of oldness, or is there another problem?
Thanks in advance for helping me! You're doing a great job!
Sincerely yours,
S1GNZ

after flashing your custom roms of choice... did you ever do a battery calibration?
like let your phone drain till it dies on its own... turn it on againa nd let it die again to completely drain it to the point where u cant even turn it on.
Then plug your phone in to charge and let it charge to 100%. Keeping the phone plugged in turn on your phone into recovery. Then clear battery status.
Then reboot your phone into normal mode and let it continue charging till it says 100%. WHen you unplug your phone it SHOULD say 100% still.
This normally fix the problem but if you notice that your phone is dying quickly still then PM me.

One small advice,try logging out google talk,of-course if you are not on it much,it will give you at least 2-3 hrs more.
Also,there is already a thread active on this forum 'dont kill your phone
,give it a life' give that a read.
Mainly this battery drains are there because of apps doing sync. or polling.identify them and adjust settings.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

cripez said:
after flashing your custom roms of choice... did you ever do a battery calibration?
like let your phone drain till it dies on its own... turn it on againa nd let it die again to completely drain it to the point where u cant even turn it on.
Then plug your phone in to charge and let it charge to 100%. Keeping the phone plugged in turn on your phone into recovery. Then clear battery status.
Then reboot your phone into normal mode and let it continue charging till it says 100%. WHen you unplug your phone it SHOULD say 100% still.
This normally fix the problem but if you notice that your phone is dying quickly still then PM me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been browsing these forums lately, and I've also come across a thread which advice is just the opposite and that you should NOT do this, any advice if that's true? And is it also true that deleting the batterystats helps?
GreenSGS said:
One small advice,try logging out google talk,of-course if you are not on it much,it will give you at least 2-3 hrs more.
Also,there is already a thread active on this forum 'dont kill your phone
,give it a life' give that a read.
Mainly this battery drains are there because of apps doing sync. or polling.identify them and adjust settings.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Am I auto-logged in on Google talk? If so, how do I log myself out :$? So Google sync might drain it? (Mail, Agenda, Contacts?)
Thanks for the quick replies! I really appreciate it!
Sincerely yours,
S1GNZ

I am not 100% sure if you auto logged or not.I believe not but if not so , then open app,press menu/setting button on phone,select logout.also if you not intending to use data network,press power key till you see a menu turn off,data network,turn it on when you need it.These small things saves some power.
If you dont want to mess around with this little twiks then 'juice plotter' is the app for you.it will manage lots of things and defi. saves battery.
BTW based on your usage desc., I think I use it in similar way ...almost and yet phone makes ~2 days.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

S1GNZ said:
I've been browsing these forums lately, and I've also come across a thread which advice is just the opposite and that you should NOT do this, any advice if that's true? And is it also true that deleting the batterystats helps?
S1GNZ
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You of course wouldn't be doing this alot nor should you NEED to do this often. It's only something you do when you're experiencing what you currently are.
Personally I have no idea why anyone say u "Should NOT" do this.. it's not like you're altering anything hardware wise. It's mainly software and power usage aspects.
Like I said to each their own. Some people say custom roms are a "No-No" cuz it messes with the phone in more bads than good and some says stock roms are for noobs. You dont HAVE to try what I said, it's merely a suggestion of fix or methods that seems to solve the problems others have encountered.
Clearing the battery status pretty much resets it's counter to 100% and from there it will "calculate" the life of the battery from full to empty. It's a calibration thing.
Now on regards to usage, keep your data plan off and auto-sync off when you're not using it. Leave your wifi off and gps off as well.. pretty much keep anything you dont need off until you need it. Some samsung apps does a background run thing where it'll auto turn on and auto run in the background which drains ur battery quite badly. If you don't use goggle talk or samsung chat apps, there are many ways to remove them completely so it won't mess with your battery life

Simple you installed a rom with multiple posts on battery drain problem .
A rom that also tells you about battery drain problems /fix on its front page .
jje

GreenSGS said:
I am not 100% sure if you auto logged or not.I believe not but if not so , then open app,press menu/setting button on phone,select logout.also if you not intending to use data network,press power key till you see a menu turn off,data network,turn it on when you need it.These small things saves some power.
If you dont want to mess around with this little twiks then 'juice plotter' is the app for you.it will manage lots of things and defi. saves battery.
BTW based on your usage desc., I think I use it in similar way ...almost and yet phone makes ~2 days.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay! And you're right, it logs me on when I start the app. But I logged me out, just to be sure. I know about turning of the mobile data traffic, I'll see how much it saves. I think I came across juice plotter, but I'll look into it. Thanks!
cripez said:
You of course wouldn't be doing this alot nor should you NEED to do this often. It's only something you do when you're experiencing what you currently are.
Personally I have no idea why anyone say u "Should NOT" do this.. it's not like you're altering anything hardware wise. It's mainly software and power usage aspects.
Like I said to each their own. Some people say custom roms are a "No-No" cuz it messes with the phone in more bads than good and some says stock roms are for noobs. You dont HAVE to try what I said, it's merely a suggestion of fix or methods that seems to solve the problems others have encountered.
Clearing the battery status pretty much resets it's counter to 100% and from there it will "calculate" the life of the battery from full to empty. It's a calibration thing.
Now on regards to usage, keep your data plan off and auto-sync off when you're not using it. Leave your wifi off and gps off as well.. pretty much keep anything you dont need off until you need it. Some samsung apps does a background run thing where it'll auto turn on and auto run in the background which drains ur battery quite badly. If you don't use goggle talk or samsung chat apps, there are many ways to remove them completely so it won't mess with your battery life
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't be offended by what I said! . I only wanted to make sure I'm doing the right thing, I appreciate your criticism though. I did what you said and fully drained my battery yesterday, kept it charging overnight, cleared the batterystats through recovery mode and at the moment it's charging till 100%. I will see if it helps!
And according to my usage, I have Wifi and GPS turned of as default. And because I reinstalled a new ROM inclusive data wipe I don't have much chat apps installed, maybe there are some default apps that don't show up in the 'System panel' app though?
JJEgan said:
Simple you installed a rom with multiple posts on battery drain problem .
A rom that also tells you about battery drain problems /fix on its front page .
jje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Care to explain a bit further?
FYI, I installed these ROMS:
past: Stock firmware 2.2.1
past: Darky's ROM v8.0 Gingerbread edition
past: Light-ning ROM 2.2 (if I'm correct, it's probably the latest)
current: Darky's ROM v9.2 Extreme edition (9.2 should've fixed the battery drain, am I right?)
Can't thank you enough for the replies!
Sincerely yours,
S1GNZ

im having similar problems too. calibrating doesnt really make a difference.
i installed an app called task identifier which is brilliant it tell me whats happening when the phone is asleep. the only trouble is i dont understand what these processes are so i cant disable them.... is there any sort of app out there that completely logs / signs you out of every app ??
i have 108 apps (not including system apps) and its hard trying to eliminate the battery drainers

Care to explain a bit further?
As it says post lots of with battery problems big big percentage running Darky rom .
current: Darky's ROM v9.2 Extreme edition (9.2 should've fixed the battery drain, am I right?) You would have to ask on dARKY Post .
Look at Battery drain thread LAST POST OR SO MAY BE OF INTEREST .
I am of the opinion that if a rom breaks something then installing more roms will often not fix the problem . I prefer a blank completely wiped phone in such cases with no trace of any rom left on it .
jje

@azzledazzle 108 apps? really ????
I don't have that much on my PC!
I think we should start narrowing down which apps drain most juice. I've been using Advanced Task Killer just to narrow down a couple.
example:
Sound Hound - starts on its own
Facebook had an issue with notifications push, when disabled, it still sent notifications to my phone. But I think they fixed it in the latest version.
We could start adding versions to know which app is a 'juice drainer'

How I got my Battery Life Back!!

Through this forum and others, I was able to restore my battery life on the epic back to the 20 odd hours. I thought of writing my process here for the benefit of those who might be struggling with similar issues:
ROM: Clean GB
Tools: Better Battery Stats and Battery usage graph (BetterBatteryStats from the market. I think there is another one that is free. I will try and find it. However, the graph referred to is the one that is built it. When you see battery usage, click on the the top part and it shows the graph of battery drain. )
Observation: There is unusual usage of phone when the screen is off. The phone wakes up roughly once every 2-3 minutes even when the screen is off. Battery life between 3 and 5 hours. Emails do not sync or slow to sync.
1. Removing DRM files: The three said files were frozen using Titanium Backup. However, when I looked under battery usage/Android, I would still see DRM listed. So in the end, I UNINSTALLED all three files and the DRM was no longer listed. Not sure how much of a culprit it is but worth mentioning if you are freezing the files assuming they are not coming up. Check under Battery:
2. Calendar: This was the main culprit: Calendar storage was damaged on the phone and so, the phone was constantly polling to sync my calendar, in turn, running the battery down and making the phone slow. Cleared Calendar Storage using Titanium and that fixed the problem of syncing.
Emails:
1. Hotmail : Activesync (now on 1 hour polling)
2. Corporate: IMAP (1 hour)
(Above two running on Enhanced Email client). Not sure if standart client will also work, will test that and post later)
3. Gmail: using gmail app
Worth mentioning, that I used Enhanced Email and turned on logging to really see what was going on, hence coming to the issue of Calendar taking forever to sync.
3. SNS: The symptom was that SNS would be constanting restarting when seen under Applications/ Running services. Freezing the 2 sns files took care of that. Lost facebook status messages etc for contacts but made the phone faster.
4. KERNEL and CWM : Initially, although the phone was rooted, CWM was somehow, not FULLY installed. And for some reason, the phone would go to Sprint Recovery Menu. Also, worth mentioning, kernel usage was high. Installed the Clean_kernel and the latest CWM till I was satisfied the install was good and clean. A good way to test is to watch kernel usage on better battery stats and CWM behaviour when you go to Recovery.
5. Moved all content of SD card to PC and reformatted it. However, my SD card was fine, so did not see a change in performance, however, others might benefit, especially if you have movie files that the system is having a problem parsing.
I will add more if I think I missed something but doing the above took my phone from a paltry 3 hours on standby to more than 20 hours with usage. Totally acceptable and happy.
Hope this helps others.

Thanks, there's some interesting information in your post!

I cannot find either of those battery tools on the market... I also run clean GB...

I took into account what you mentioned, and removed SNS completely, hell I went a step further and just uninstalled the FB app. I will use the mobile site, and that is fine and dandy for me, I don't really need or want the constant notifications anyways.
I recommend the app Juice Defender, get the ultimate version, either pirate or paid, it is well worth it. Manages your 3g and wifi better, turns them off when the aren't needed, turns them on when they are. Really handy, has at least doubled my standby time.
I also recommend getting CPU Master, and having both it and voltage control on boot. CPU master lets you have profiles based on events, like the screen being off, or the battery getting to hot, again setup properly this also has done a number on my standby time.
Since I just flashed this kernel I haven't run a battery test yet, I am using Legendary 2.1 and IAP 2.0.6. Will run a test tonight to see how long the battery lasts for standby, hopefully it will turn on in the morning, it hasn't in the past very often.
---------- Post added at 07:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:26 AM ----------
Milkman00 said:
I cannot find either of those battery tools on the market... I also run clean GB...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't used the graph, in order to find Betterbatterystats it has to be spelled just like that

Yes, BetterBatteryStats from the market. I think there is another one that is free. I will try and find it. However, the graph referred to is the one that is built it. When you see battery usage, click on the the top part and it shows the graph of battery drain.
The important part that I wanted to see was when the screen is off, is there any activity, meaning the phone is not truely speaking. At when the phone was at its worse, there was a activity roughly every 2 minutes. That was the main cause of the battery drain.

saramon said:
I took into account what you mentioned, and removed SNS completely, hell I went a step further and just uninstalled the FB app. I will use the mobile site, and that is fine and dandy for me, I don't really need or want the constant notifications anyways.
I recommend the app Juice Defender, get the ultimate version, either pirate or paid, it is well worth it. Manages your 3g and wifi better, turns them off when the aren't needed, turns them on when they are. Really handy, has at least doubled my standby time.
---------- Post added at 07:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:26 AM ----------
[/COLOR]
I haven't used the graph, in order to find Betterbatterystats it has to be spelled just like that
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I cant say much about those tools cause I havent really used them. However, in my case, the problem was a bad calendar sync and SNS, I can see Juicedefender would maybe improve the battery life as it wont let the phone connect, but wont necessarily correct the issue at hand. Just my two cents.

saramon said:
I took into account what you mentioned, and removed SNS completely, hell I went a step further and just uninstalled the FB app. I will use the mobile site, and that is fine and dandy for me, I don't really need or want the constant notifications anyways.
I haven't used the graph, in order to find Betterbatterystats it has to be spelled just like that
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
FYI: I have the facebook app installed and it works fine. The problem is in the SNS when you put in your facebook info and it lets you sync fb events etc.
Also, by removing, I am hoping you mean you froze or deleted those two SNS files. Just watch Applications/Running to see if you see SNS there. If not, you are golden.

4hours of battery =) blazerRom is the best out right now. Thought it usually would be at 2% with 3g on and not wifi allday
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

My phone stays "awake" constantly. How can I figure out why it is staying awake??? I think that is a big part of my battery problems.

Milkman00 said:
My phone stays "awake" constantly. How can I figure out why it is staying awake??? I think that is a big part of my battery problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Betterbatterystats has a listing of programs under partial wake lock. See which is using up the most time.

hindibuff said:
Worth mentioning, that I used Enhanced Email and turned on logging to really see what was going on, hence coming to the issue of Calendar taking forever to sync.
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you turn on logging in enhanced email?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using xda premium

sethlo said:
How do you turn on logging in enhanced email?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This might help:
http://enhancedemail.net/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=4&sid=25404e9a1c5b7b2471d2e184a1fbb6e2

saramon said:
I recommend the app Juice Defender, get the ultimate version, either pirate or paid, it is well worth it. Manages your 3g and wifi better, turns them off when the aren't needed, turns them on when they are. Really handy, has at least doubled my standby time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also highly recommend this app, and have realized enormous power savings from it. My phone takes microscopic sips of electrons when in standby with JD.
However, I most emphatically DO NOT recommend that anyone be a thieving, pond-scum, crook with the ethics of a crack whore and obtain a pirated copy of this app, as saramon has recommended above. The author if this app has spent a lot of their time developing it, and should be compensated fairly. It is one of the best supported, most often update apps around. For the value it provides, there really isn't any legitimate argument justifying stealing it to avoid a few bucks.
Shame, saramon, shame.

I purchased JuiceDefender but ended up uninstalling it. Much easier just to toggle wifi and sync on-off manually, rather than tweaking it constantly. I found that the app causes more connection hassles and permission annoyances which offset any battery saving benefits it offers, and is yet another ram-draining backround process that slows my phone.

Never said that I did, but not everyone can afford it, just sayin'

hindibuff said:
3. SNS: The symptom was that SNS would be constanting restarting when seen under Applications/ Running services. Freezing the 2 sns files took care of that. Lost facebook status messages etc for contacts but made the phone faster.
4. KERNEL and CWM : Initially, although the phone was rooted, CWM was somehow, not FULLY installed. And for some reason, the phone would go to Sprint Recovery Menu. Also, worth mentioning, kernel usage was high. Installed the Clean_kernel and the latest CWM till I was satisfied the install was good and clean. A good way to test is to watch kernel usage on better battery stats and CWM behaviour when you go to Recovery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had 2 questions. First, what exactly is SNS? I see it restarting a lot as well, but I've been afraid it was something important so I've always left it alone.
And how would ClockworkMod affect battery life? Doesn't that only come into play when going into recovery mode?
Thanks

TheSkipperCDB said:
I had 2 questions. First, what exactly is SNS? I see it restarting a lot as well, but I've been afraid it was something important so I've always left it alone.
And how would ClockworkMod affect battery life? Doesn't that only come into play when going into recovery mode?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have SNS restarting it's probably because you removed the stock "Feeds & Updates" widget that came with your phone. Either freeze SNS in Titanium Backup (rooted), put the F&U widget back on one of your screens (unrooted) or kill it after every reboot (unrooted and no F&U widget).

saramon said:
Never said that I did, but not everyone can afford it, just sayin'
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He's not suggesting that you did. He is just saying that you shouldn't suggest it to others.
Piracy is for children that want to feel savvy because they know how to steal Photoshop. Thepiratebay.org, kat.ph, isohunt, and the various novas aren't original or cool, everyone knows about them. The difference is that some people have grown up and understand that people that do work deserve to be paid for it.
Besides it is what? $2-3? Anyone with the intention to buy a product could afford that.
I bought After Effects, Sony Vegas, and Photoshop Elements. Elements I got on sale for $50. The others were a couple versions old and I got them for $300 and $150 respectively. I am a poor college kid. However, I know I can get a part time job and pay for the things I need and that's what I did. I only needed to work for about a month to buy all my software and now I have a legal license to use it. So Sony and Adobe won't try to steal the rights to everything I make >.>
In short, stuff only seems expensive if you have no intentions of paying for it in the first place. My family lives well below the poverty line and I still can afford a pretty decent production set up. I'm sure anyone could conjure up $2. It's less than a round trip bus ride.
I know this was long enough, but I figure I should mention this isn't an attack on you or anyone else. I feel very strongly about the subject and I would say this regardless of who brings the subject up. I have a lot of friends that disagree with me and I have pirated software in the past, I just think that people deserve the money they worked for. Perhaps prices could even go down if everyone actually paid for their software.

I got some life back out of my battery with CM7. Then went back to ERA legendary. I did all the following:
Wiped / reformatted the sd card, odined and repartitioned, odined ec05, odined CWM5, flashed ei22, flashed the rom, then kernel I wanted to try, multiple setups.... no avail. (Monitoring every combo with battery status)
What I have done now is repackaged the rom, removed the "stock" launcher (swapped for zeam) and a couple apks I though were pointless to me, and replaced the kernel so there is all only one flash. I am really starting to think mix_n_match flashing was causing an issue for me. Also, CWM 5 odined and not using the app is not giving me all the aformentioned issues or running as a background process...
So far my battery life is much better with one flash, but one thing I notice in all cases is after a reboot, better battery stats shows "system" under process tab, always highest on the list. Once charged it goes away until a phone call, reboot, and even after forced sync.

SNYPE2K9 said:
He's not suggesting that you did. He is just saying that you shouldn't suggest it to others.
Piracy is for children that want to feel savvy because they know how to steal Photoshop. Thepiratebay.org, kat.ph, isohunt, and the various novas aren't original or cool, everyone knows about them. The difference is that some people have grown up and understand that people that do work deserve to be paid for it.
Besides it is what? $2-3? Anyone with the intention to buy a product could afford that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my troll post for the day.

[Q] Android system drain after factory reset.

I'm starting to think the goodness of the Note 3 battery is becoming a joke. What I did was clear my cache partition and did a factory reset after from the recovery menu. I have not installed any other apps yet. I just set up dropbox, play books, email, etc. Normal things for normal use.
I did a reset because my battery was draining before and I thought a reset could resolve it. I need to ask for solutions as this is really giving me a headache.
Don't ask if I have turned off this or that, most probably I did as I read from multiple threads. Those threads are only guessing or otherwise throwing the OP in a loop for the search of answers.
Xda, I need your help to figure out how to SOLVE this stupid drain.
Note on the screenshot: I took that screen after 30 mins after plugging it out. It drained 2% while I was doing absolutely nothing but stare at the Android System bar graph go higher. Its like a plague for the damn phone.
---
Edit:
I installed BBS and here are screenshots of the partial and kernel wakelock. Is this normal though? This happened while I was sleeping overnight and I have not installed any apps other than BBS. This is how my stats were before and my battery is draining fast especially when I'm using my phone.
Thing is, I have set all measures possible to extend battery life non rooted and it goes down by the minute of light use.

Pokkle said:
I'm starting to think the goodness of the Note 3 battery is becoming a joke. What I did was clear my cache partition and did a factory reset after from the recovery menu. I have not installed any other apps yet. I just set up dropbox, play books, email, etc. Normal things for normal use.
I did a reset because my battery was draining before and I thought a reset could resolve it. I need to ask for solutions as this is really giving me a headache.
Don't ask if I have turned off this or that, most probably I did as I read from multiple threads. Those threads are only guessing or otherwise throwing the OP in a loop for the search of answers.
Xda, I need your help to figure out how to SOLVE this stupid drain.
Note on the screenshot: I took that screen after 30 mins after plugging it out. It drained 2% while I was doing absolutely nothing but stare at the Android System bar graph go higher. Its like a plague for the damn phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
at least should mentioned ur model n900 or n9005!?
anyway i did this for my N900 after i got battery draining once and it solve problem;
when it discharge to ~15% turn it off and connect it to charger and let it charging 100%
it can help battery to charge without using it at same time
i mentioned it before several times (in another threads) it s like re-gauging battery.
another thing u can do is flashing another stock firmware
but search for the more stable firmware.
:good:

Sorry! I have the SM-N9005. Bought from the Philippines (Smart carrier)

Pokkle said:
I'm starting to think the goodness of the Note 3 battery is becoming a joke. What I did was clear my cache partition and did a factory reset after from the recovery menu. I have not installed any other apps yet. I just set up dropbox, play books, email, etc. Normal things for normal use.
I did a reset because my battery was draining before and I thought a reset could resolve it. I need to ask for solutions as this is really giving me a headache.
Don't ask if I have turned off this or that, most probably I did as I read from multiple threads. Those threads are only guessing or otherwise throwing the OP in a loop for the search of answers.
Xda, I need your help to figure out how to SOLVE this stupid drain.
Note on the screenshot: I took that screen after 30 mins after plugging it out. It drained 2% while I was doing absolutely nothing but stare at the Android System bar graph go higher. Its like a plague for the damn phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The joys of Android!
Wakelock detector and BetterBatteryStats are your best friend in regards to stuff like that. - Usually it's Alarmmanager or something similar that causes it. What generally fixed it for me was switching ROMS

radicalisto said:
The joys of Android!
Wakelock detector and BetterBatteryStats are your best friend in regards to stuff like that. - Usually it's Alarmmanager or something similar that causes it. What generally fixed it for me was switching ROMS
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The joys Android bring me alright...
I downloaded bbs and will check after I wake up!
*rooting, switching roms and other watchamacallit are out of my comfort zone atm. I am trying to read about them alright but idk, I just don't get it lol. The Note 3 is my first Android/smartphone coming from the olden mobile phone days.

Pokkle said:
Sorry! I have the SM-N9005. Bought from the Philippines (Smart carrier)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you also have a microSD or a large amount of custom files in your (internal or external) memory? Since when you do factory-reset you also clear all the preliminary indexes and caches that the system created, and it will work pretty hard to re-index all that after first reboot!

Ahh wise not messing if out of your comfort zone then, sensible guy.
However, have a good read around, you'll find after some heavy duty reading you'll probably feel alright in maybe trying rooting and debloating some apps etc. But then again, you might not. That is one of the best things about Android, you can play around to suit your needs whether novice or pro.
Also, if you do fancy rooting and need help you can post here, or you can just shoot me a PM I'll help you over the first hurdle at least if you want :good:

xclub_101 said:
Do you also have a microSD or a large amount of custom files in your (internal or external) memory? Since when you do factory-reset you also clear all the preliminary indexes and caches that the system created, and it will work pretty hard to re-index all that after first reboot!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I don't have an SD card inserted. This is my second reboot since trying to solve the problem.

Battery Life Tips and Tricks Thread

I've noticed this phone has hit or miss battery life depending on what you have installed, greenified and frozen. I thought it would be a good idea to create a thread where everyone could share their battery life tips and tricks on this phone.
Below I posted what I have done to maximize battery life. I have not rooted my phone yet, so none of the below tips require root.
I disabled all bloatware apps that came with the phone. I did not disable any of the Asus applications.
I utilize the Asus autostart manger and denied auto start to all my applications except music applications, messenger applications, and google photo sync.

battery sucks. drain to much.

Just use until you have 5% free battery, this should make at least your day
With Android OS taking so much thanks to lollipop, there is not a lot to hope.

We wont see a good battery improvement until we get 5.1
Luckily, that is in the future for this device acc. to Asus.

Since the issue seems to primarily be Android os draining the battery I don't think most battery saving measures will make a difference. We will just have to wait for an update

When I was looking at the phone reviews people were claiming 8 hours screen on time, I can barely get 2 hours screen on time.
The problem I'm having is that the phone never goes to sleep and is constantly awake. Has anyone else seen this issue?

facelessloser said:
When I was looking at the phone reviews people were claiming 8 hours screen on time, I can barely get 2 hours screen on time.
The problem I'm having is that the phone never goes to sleep and is constantly awake. Has anyone else seen this issue?
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Click to collapse
I had the same problem after the latest update, no deepsleep in BetterBatteryStats (I'm rooted), I wiped everything and now it goes to deepsleep.

marcof93 said:
I had the same problem after the latest update, no deepsleep in BetterBatteryStats (I'm rooted), I wiped everything and now it goes to deepsleep.
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Click to collapse
Which firmware version are you on. I've wiped the phone once already, did you clear any caches? It's driving me mad

facelessloser said:
Which firmware version are you on. I've wiped the phone once already, did you clear any caches? It's driving me mad
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Click to collapse
I'm on 2.18.40.12 (ZE551ML of course), I restored the phone from backup & restore in settings (It may take 30 minutes or more). Before restoring I had 45+% of Android OS during the night, now 20% more or less, but, as said, also in BBS I can see deepsleep in frequencies.

Someone posted on Zentalk to turn off remote lock and scan for security threats in google settings. Not sure if it helps or not.

marcof93 said:
I'm on 2.18.40.12 (ZE551ML of course), I restored the phone from backup & restore in settings (It may take 30 minutes or more). Before restoring I had 45+% of Android OS during the night, now 20% more or less, but, as said, also in BBS I can see deepsleep in frequencies.
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Click to collapse
I wiped my phone yesterday and restored back up like you suggested and it seams to have sorted out my wake lock issue. I wonder why that is?

facelessloser said:
I wiped my phone yesterday and restored back up like you suggested and it seams to have sorted out my wake lock issue. I wonder why that is?
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Click to collapse
Glad you solved, but don't know why, maybe they are working hard on the firmware and there are lot of changes that can cause problem, maybe we have to wipe after every update, Intel processor and Lollipop are so unstable right now!

toebus said:
Someone posted on Zentalk to turn off remote lock and scan for security threats in google settings. Not sure if it helps or not.
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Click to collapse
It helps..i turned andriod device manager too

Ok so this is my battery with a normal day of use... Tomorrow ill show the results with your sugestions. My normal days have gsm calls(normal phone calls) whasapp (chat) youtube, twich, game like plant vs zombies 2, look at gmail, surfing internet, taking pics like 25 today.
I notice that battery drains a lot more while photo app open.
I use doble sim as you can see

If you want to test app battery drain, try GSAM Battery Monitor, or for some extra functionality the Pro version. Also very useful to determine what is causing wakelocks when you run into them.

Sammaul said:
If you want to test app battery drain, try GSAM Battery Monitor, or for some extra functionality the Pro version. Also very useful to determine what is causing wakelocks when you run into them.
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Click to collapse
Really interesting app ill download tomorrow im tring to lock some functionalities from google like sending data for app security and after that will download this and tell you what i got
Thank u sir thats a good one

Everyone is always wondering about Android using the most battery. Without doing some in depth debugging and tracing I would guess Houdini falls under Android. Because the ZenFone 2 uses the Intel processor a binary conversion for ARM instructions takes place with Houdini. More than likely you have a lot of apps native for ARM.

Force closing asus support app and zenui services app from apps setting gives me good amount of battery boost. Apart I have also disabled google books, movies, plus etc. I don't know if its placebo effect but someone can try and confirm. These app tend to restart at times so if you feel the battery decreasing at high rates again, make sure you force close them again.
Roughly speaking, I tend to get 3-5 min per percentage of screen on time with this which totals to 5 to 6 hrs on SOT on continous usage. Without the apps being force closed, I barely get 2min/%. The usage scenarios are normal web browsing, chats etc. This is using mobile data. It gets even better with wifi.
Try and let me know if this helps.

Maybe I don't use my phone as much as other people. I posted this last night on another forum. My phone was unplugged at 07:00, It's now 21:00. I have 80% battery left and the battery monitor shows 3 days left
I have received email, 3 phone calls and text messages. I checked Twitter a couple of times with the browser. I have read Google News a couple of times and played GSN Casino for about 20 minutes.
In Auto Start Manager I turned off Docs, Sheets, Skype, Slides, Translate, Amazon Kindle, Data Transfer and Web Storage. Everything else is Allow, but I have no social networking applications installed.

Its looks like battery life is a right mixed bag. At the start of the week I was suffering wake lock issue, my phone wouldn't go into deep sleep and was constantly awake. I wiped and restored from backup which seams to fix the issue.
Got up this morning and it looks like the wake lock issue is back. I don't know what to do to fix it.
Feel like giving up on the phone and sending it back if I can

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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.