Switching from iPhone - Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Questions and Answers

I got my new S7 Edge from TMobile last Friday and sent back my iPhone 6+. So far I find the battery life to be complete ****e. I did all the normal things I would with any phone like turning off notifications for everything, turning off auto brightness and setting it low, turned off background usage for everything, enabled no background data, turned off animations, installed nova launcher and a few other things.
For example; I unplugged my phone about 1:30 ago and only played music in my car for about 15 minutes.. my battery is at 80% now. If I actually use the phone I can watch the percentage trickle down by 1 about every 30 seconds. Thats just with browsing the web... If I'm in a game it drops 2% at a time extremely quickly. Maybe I dont understand how it works yet, but I closed all of the open programs and when I go into Application Manager i'm able to "force close" all this stuff. Shouldn't that option be greyed out if I closed all the open apps by pressing the left button? I also installed advanced task manager and used the widget to close open things. It tells me it closes a number of tasks, but they still are able to be "force closed".
This phone is unusable in it's current state. I talked to TMobile chat and after some basic troubleshooting I was told to call, which I will be doing later. So is anyone else having extreme drain like this with nothing open? Also am I not correctly understanding how apps run on Android? I've searched the internet and read a lot of articles on these things and I feel like I understand it somewhat. The features and screen of this phone are a million times better than my iPhone, so i really don't want to switch back. Thanks
TL;DR - Battery drains 20-30% an hour with minimal, sleep usage. Apps stay open after closing. SOS Plz halp

I read in a post that people are having big battery drain because of media scanner service scanning the SD card constantly. I have a 64gb SD card in so this could be it.

Hmm, I have the T-Mobile version as well, and have an SD card inserted. I'm not having any battery drain issues, knock on wood. Took my phone off the charger at 9:30 a.m., it's now 1:30 p.m. and I have 84% left. I've done some texting, some WhatsApp, some Trivia Crack, a couple of phone calls, answered an email or two, did a little browsing in Chrome, and some Snapchat. I also have always-on display turned on.
Not quite as stellar as the battery life on some of my Nokia Lumias, but pretty darn solid, and definitely bests any battery life I've witnessed on Android or iOS.
I don't know all the details of your usage, but it's not like it's complicated so I doubt you're doing anything crazy. I'd bet the issue is either a bad device, or something really simple we're not noticing. Either way, I'd definitely exchange the device while you're in the grace period.
If it's at all relevant, I have the gold variant. I have a co-worker with the black one (also T-Mobile) and seems quite happy with his as well.

That's a really abnormal drain. It sounds like you might have a lemon. I would recommend getting it replaced or backing it up with Smart Switch for PC and doing a hard reset. Sometimes the store reps are helpful with finding battery-draining apps. Sometimes.

I thought it might be bad also. I don't think i could have changed anything that would cause this. I also have Always On Device turned off, anything like that is off... even edge screen features and ones that do something when you move the phone. When I get home im gonna factory reset it and see if its any better. If not I will call TMobile and request a new one.

Yeah, you likely got one with a defective battery. I don't think I could get mine down to 80% from fully charged that fast if I tried.

Yeah you shouldn't be able to lol. Do you know what I was talking about with the apps staying active?

So I did a factory restore last night and left my phone off of the charger overnight. It only dropped by 2% over 8 hours. In the past 2 hours it has only gotten down to 90% even with me downloading all of my apps again. I think the issue is resolved. I'll keep messing with it and see if it's really fixed, but I'm also not getting the SD card notification constantly anymore.

Related

[Q] Another battery thread but I am desperate

Hey guys and please dont crucify me. I know there's a ton of other battery issue threads on this forum and on many others but I cant find the right one. I have looked up each and every one of them, about mediaserver draining the battery about the android system and so on. I have done everything each thread said to, downloaded greenify and hibernated most active apps, disabled and froze certain bloatware with titanium backup pro and so many other things. And I think that the battery would be supposed to perform at its best right now. I am not a very heavy user, I just use my phone for music, calls, a little gaming and the occasional facebook/messenger/browser session with either 4G or WiFi. I have everything everyone ever said turned off. Things like auto backup of Google+ and all location services and auto sync. Screen is constantly at 65% brightness. To further prove my point, at this point in this post which took me like 3 minutes to write, my battery has lost 3 percent. I can leave the phone unplugged all night at 100% and when I wake up it will be at 95% but the moment I pick it up and start playing some music or some games the battery goes down really fast. I can even compare it to the battery of my old Xperia S after a year and a half use which was like 7 hours altogether. Battery stats say that mediaserver takes up 20ish% battery and Android system goes over 40%. I really don't know what to do. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance, George.
you should look at the time it depletes when screen on, if its below 5 hours from 100% downward then its not good. I have noticed the battery still charges past 100%. So leave it an hour after it reaches 100%. I would also recommend using the charger that came with phone. No usb charging for these tests. Dont use phone while charging either.
Also freezing\debloating can be adverse, at least thats my experience on battery life. So I recommend going back to stock full clean with factory resets.
No recovering of apps or app data for these tests. No contamination so to speak.
Also lg roms allow you to switch off services via taskmanager settings, in settings app you can disable what you dont want to use. No need for debloating\freezing etc.
Switch off location settings, gps and bluetooth for this test. Search for carrier iq on lg g2 forum and how to disable it via settings. Switch of cloud storage(dropbox/box etc) and lg backup stuff. Only google accounts, wifi and mobile networks.
Now for the screen on time test, just use browsing apps. No games or music\movies.
Your screen on time should be 6 hours approximately. From 100 to 0. It can be 5-6 hours. If its below 5 then its not good. this is with good network coverage btw.
thats what I would do
send from the jungle
Have you tried better battery stats, wake lock detector, or even gsam battery monitor. Maybe you have Google location services on?
Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk
comk4ver said:
Have you tried better battery stats, wake lock detector, or even gsam battery monitor. Maybe you have Google location services on?
Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I have tried all of the above. Only thing that sticks out is something called 1013 which keeps running and waking my phone but I think it's something about the sound. Next is Android System with many wakelocks and as I said with 30+ % battery consumption. Everything location-wise is off. Actually everything is off. Every setting. Things go to hell when I open 4G or WiFi. Also I have the international model so I don't think there's carrier IQ in my device, or maybe I didn't find it in an app suggested by someone here for that purpose. System Tweaks I think it was.
Could you post a screen shot?
Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk
I've had android 4x do this on multiple devices, multiple roms for no apparent reason. Wipe it and start over. Wipe everything. Especially directories with any form of music, sound files, videos... ( Use LG Flash Tool and go back to stock 4.2 for example will do just that )
So the OTA came over to my country and now it seems like BBS and WLD are broken. Can't really do anything to show you the more complex battery stats and can't really say that the battery has improved. Reducing the brightness did have some effect but I am not really fond of having it at such low values. Anything else I can do to minimize the Android System battery consumption? Its bigger than what the screen is using, even when it was at 70% brightness.
Sad to say my first LG G2 just got replaced today & am now running into this problem with the 2nd phone. Its literally night and day battery life performance between both phones.
First phone had 0 issues and by now I'd still have battery % in the 90s. New phone is sitting @ 63% after 3 hours of use (setting up phone, few reboots here there....just factory resetted for the 2nd time to try and clear this etc)
Culprits are:
Google Services
Android Core Apps
Media Server
System UI
Both phones are: 4.2.2
build: JDQ39B
Software: D80110c
brightness (which never was an issue)= 45%
O.P,
has your situation improved or worsened since you've encountered this problem? I'm thinking about sending my replacement back for another replacement
tiguy99 said:
Sad to say my first LG G2 just got replaced today & am now running into this problem with the 2nd phone. Its literally night and day battery life performance between both phones.
First phone had 0 issues and by now I'd still have battery % in the 90s. New phone is sitting @ 63% after 3 hours of use (setting up phone, few reboots here there....just factory resetted for the 2nd time to try and clear this etc)
Culprits are:
Google Services
Android Core Apps
Media Server
System UI
Both phones are: 4.2.2
build: JDQ39B
Software: D80110c
brightness (which never was an issue)= 45%
O.P,
has your situation improved or worsened since you've encountered this problem? I'm thinking about sending my replacement back for another replacement
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can now say that the battery life of my phone has improved. But sadlyf the problem was probably some corrupt mp3 files that I moved directly from my old device which forced the mediaserver service to run constantly and thus the android system. :/ I still can say that I think it drains a bit fast when I use it for browsing, Facebook, games and stuff but at least when I check the battery consumption, the only things stated there that make a difference are the screen at ~30-35% and the game which I was playing or for example Chrome. It finally feels like that whatever I use drains the battery and not something else in the background but I don't have that good of an impression for the 3000mAh "beast" battery of the G2. Awesome phone though.
giorgos123 said:
I can now say that the battery life of my phone has improved. But sadlyf the problem was probably some corrupt mp3 files that I moved directly from my old device which forced the mediaserver service to run constantly and thus the android system. :/ I still can say that I think it drains a bit fast when I use it for browsing, Facebook, games and stuff but at least when I check the battery consumption, the only things stated there that make a difference are the screen at ~30-35% and the game which I was playing or for example Chrome. It finally feels like that whatever I use drains the battery and not something else in the background but I don't have that good of an impression for the 3000mAh "beast" battery of the G2. Awesome phone though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I ended up returning my replacement phone and am back on my original G2 until I can get a proper replacement. I can tell you, the G2 does have an awesome battery life if you get a good phone out the box.
The differences between my first G2 and the 2nd one tmobile sent me are night and day. Get a replacement phone while you still have time.
Should have my new one next week. Just hope it's exactly like my first one.
Ex....been using it all day..I mean heavy usage...and in still @ 75%..and the phone is cool to the touch
The replacement g2 would [email protected] 36-37% by now and running hot
giorgos123 said:
Yes I have tried all of the above. Only thing that sticks out is something called 1013 which keeps running and waking my phone but I think it's something about the sound. Next is Android System with many wakelocks and as I said with 30+ % battery consumption. Everything location-wise is off. Actually everything is off. Every setting. Things go to hell when I open 4G or WiFi. Also I have the international model so I don't think there's carrier IQ in my device, or maybe I didn't find it in an app suggested by someone here for that purpose. System Tweaks I think it was.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're on 4.2.2, not 4.4.2 when you have the 1013, is that correct?
Try rebooting when the volume is on, rather than rebooting in quiet/vibrate mode.
Sfkn2 said:
You're on 4.2.2, not 4.4.2 when you have the 1013, is that correct?
Try rebooting when the volume is on, rather than rebooting in quiet/vibrate mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The OTA came to my country some days ago. Still the battery feels kind of small. Is it normal to lose 1% every ~1-2 minutes on 4G browsing? With nothing else on. No gps no G+ backup no anything.

[Q] Sudden Battery Drain on stock phone

So as it says, I am having a sudden issue with my battery. For the first few weeks after I bought this phone, I was sitting at nearly 2 full days before charging again. The past few weeks.. it has been decreasing steadily. From 2 full days to having to charge my phone every 1.5 days.. and now down to 1 day. This morning I wake up and my battery is being ridiculous. This was an overnight charge. I had only touched my phone last night to text and that was all.
I do not have have my phone rooted, and I would love to be able to fix the issue without rooting if possible! I really dislike losing all my game progresses when having to flash or factory reset anything.
As you can see in the attachment below.. I HAD great battery life. I played games frequently throughout the day.. used the phone quite often to text, facebook, chat on hangouts and still had 2 full days before needing to charge again.
Yes I've disabled a LOT of bloatware. I keep my location and bluetooth off at all times. I turned the WIFI from "Always on" to "Only when charging".I keep my screen brightness turned down and set to automatic. I turned off Google Search. I DO have motion gestures turned on, ONLY for the palm swipe screen capture.
I tried searching the forums for the answer and could not find one that directly applies to my issue. Most of them were short battery lives out of the box or shortened with the update in April.
I would appreciate any suggestions that you may have!
I'm in the exact same boat. When I went to bed last night my phone was at 27% and my device was dead when I woke up this morning.
I'm debating doing a factory reset on my phone, but that's a last resort.
I've had weird battery issues like this. Like 90% battery when I go to bed then the phone's off (2%) when I wake up. I've switched off the wi-fi toggles that we all know about but I also deleted and disabled most Samsung apps (except SHealth) and deleted the Samsung app store. I also got rid of all apps that I rarely or never use. This got rid of my battery issues and now have excellent battery life.
Yeah.. I have completely gutted out all the useless apps to me. That included all of Samsung's Apps and all but one T-mobile app. I'm in your boat Undergrad, I really don't want to factory reset if I don't need to!
I went into my Google Play and changed the updating from always to let me decide and turned off Google Search.
My battery still isn't where it used to be but that helped a lot. I'm now at 1d 2hours at 26%. The screen and Android System are neck and neck on my usage right now..
I wonder what app(s) is/are doing this.. maybe a recent update to them is just chunking away at our batteries.
Thank guys for letting me know I'm not alone!

[Q] Unrooted Note 3 - Battery Drain, Most Tips didn't work.

Hi Guys,
Firstly, I know there are several threads with different tips and suggestions but most of them didn't work for me.
Recently (since more than a week) , I have noticed strange drain in battery and getting hot pretty quickly. It has kitkat and I didn't get time to use it properly in the beginning. After reading different threads and forums here's what I did:
- Let it drain completely, shut off, took out battery for a couple of hrs and then charged without switching on. x2
- Rebooted after charging
- Uninstalled some apps I thought might be problematic
- Factory Reset (such a pain!)
- When attached to Kies, it prompted for Firmware update N9005XXUENC2 followed by another factory reset and hard reset.
- Cleared cache by going into recovery mode.
- Rebooting after charging
But seems like none of it made much difference, my routine use
- couple of hours on wifi
- no heavy games, only temple run, subway surf etc.
- no streaming
- no lengthy calls, not a lot of messaging
- 1, 2 hrs of music
- Syncing off, gps off, blue tooth off, Wifi mostly off, power saving on, brightness on auto, no 3g/4g data, almost no photos and video capturing, sensors, motions off except smart stay
I don't want to root the phone because of my busy schedule, with some difficulty I was able install WLD on it which resets after Rebooting. Point is, I am not a heavy user and this being a "beast" isn't quite unleashing the beasty-battery-life. I do get more than a day but that is when it's in deep sleep for 20hrs or more. I took some screenshots after reseting, updating firmware. It's past 3 battery cycles now, I will attach the latest one's to not clutter it up. I like this phone, but this battery is just not good enough. So, please helpful answers that don't require rooting.
Thank you for reading and Good day!
Is the battery drain consistant or does it happen at certain times (at home, at work, etc.)? If you are in an area where the signal changes frequently that will drain the battery because the radio is using power to maintain a connection. With wifi scanning for google services even when turned off setting make sure it is off if you dont need it. How do you charge the phone? If possible always use the charger that came with the phone, charging from a usb port from a computer is not as strong and can affect the memory of the battery and do not wait till almost dead to charge. It works best to recharge when between 35% and 45%. Look at your background services and see if anything out of the ordinary is running. And it could be possible the battery is defective and you might want to have it tested. I use my Note3 lightly and get 24 to 25 hours over two to three days (turning off at bedtime). This may not help any but this is what I have learned from others with similar situations. Good luck!
MPDnnrd said:
Is the battery drain consistant or does it happen at certain times (at home, at work, etc.)? If you are in an area where the signal changes frequently that will drain the battery because the radio is using power to maintain a connection. With wifi scanning for google services even when turned off setting make sure it is off if you dont need it. How do you charge the phone? If possible always use the charger that came with the phone, charging from a usb port from a computer is not as strong and can affect the memory of the battery and do not wait till almost dead to charge. It works best to recharge when between 35% and 45%. Look at your background services and see if anything out of the ordinary is running. And it could be possible the battery is defective and you might want to have it tested. I use my Note3 lightly and get 24 to 25 hours over two to three days (turning off at bedtime). This may not help any but this is what I have learned from others with similar situations. Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey MPDnnrd,
Thank you for your response.
It is sort of consistent, did you see the screen is just at 18% and the Android system at 30%? I think this is where the core problem lies - just don't know what and how to fix it.
- Signal Strength: Pretty good, hasn't been a problem
- I normally keep the wifi-scanning off and Now I turned off the location services to see the impact but then I think what's the point of premium device if you have to switch off everything.
- I prefer to use the factory-charger over usb-charging and I read it on several threads to let it completely die and then recharge, guess that didn't help.
- Background services - I don't think so, I kill all the apps as soon as I stop using them, use Greenify to hibernate other, switched off all auto-updates and notifications. Even on Playstore, I switched off the auto-updates and notifications.
- Defective Battery: Now this one, I haven't tested yet not sure how to - the phone's just 2 months old so shouldn't it be good enough?
I know they are not very helpful, but still thank you very much. :good:
uqureshi said:
Hey MPDnnrd,
Thank you for your response.
It is sort of consistent, did you see the screen is just at 18% and the Android system at 30%? I think this is where the core problem lies - just don't know what and how to fix it.
- Signal Strength: Pretty good, hasn't been a problem
- I normally keep the wifi-scanning off and Now I turned off the location services to see the impact but then I think what's the point of premium device if you have to switch off everything.
- I prefer to use the factory-charger over usb-charging and I read it on several threads to let it completely die and then recharge, guess that didn't help.
- Background services - I don't think so, I kill all the apps as soon as I stop using them, use Greenify to hibernate other, switched off all auto-updates and notifications. Even on Playstore, I switched off the auto-updates and notifications.
- Defective Battery: Now this one, I haven't tested yet not sure how to - the phone's just 2 months old so shouldn't it be good enough?
I know they are not very helpful, but still thank you very much. :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sorry to have to say this but I think you got a pretty normal battery drain by looking on your screens. You played almost one hour subway surf(which drains the battery pretty quick) and I guess the other hours where internet (also known to drain battery) or calls/messages. On a not rooted device with stock kernel that seems like normal battery usage to me!!!
However if you like to check these maybe u get a couple of percentages(not that much though I guess):
-Power saving mode in notification drawer makes your cpu clock go down (not sure u got it on not rooted device sry)
-check turn of pen detection in s pen settings
-put the brightness on auto or put it down manually
-if you can change the theme color in apps do so(make it black)
-check the svoice settings so it doesn't listen to your voice
-if you don't care how your phone looks buy a zerolemon battery(I think it makes your phone too big but that's preference)
-don't use a bright background keep it dark colors and no live wallpaper as well
Maybe that helps a little.
I don't see any drain either. Almost 6 hours screen on during 24 hours is excellent, additional 1.5 hour awake time for other services. Excellent battery life.
Settings - General - Applications - disable unnecessary apps
In Google Settings, opt-out interest-based ads and disable location access.
Thank you for your reponses guys - thing is it actually had much better battery life. What I don't understand is the fact that Screen % used to be on top and android os and system was below it but now it has been on top.
I have tweaked quite a few things already that 4aces suggested and the S-voice thing seems new, I'll look at it. Today it didn't even last a full day whereas I know people who even after heavy usage get easily more than a day - mine one, I don't use it this much. The Zerolemon thing is beast but then the phone is a freakin block lol so heavy and big, good travel etc. where you can't charge your phone and has a rugged case.
But there's a change that I saw today, Android System is now below the screen so I am not sure what made it do that but may the next time I charge it gets better and so on. I'll keep you guys posted after charging it today, I'll monitor what I do.
Blondasisko - I wouldn't really call it excellent, but it's sort of getting better than it was in the first 2 cycles. But how do I reduce additional awake time for other services? Moreover, you might've noticed I got till 1% to get this much time like really stretched it to get there.
Someguyfromhell - Already done, locations were off starting today.
Can anyone else comment on their daily routine of usage and the battery drainage ratio?
If I get 12 hours and 4hrs screen time I'm happy. I don't even play any games. Have a lot of accounts syncing lot of Internet and a bit on the calls, gps. I get on average 14 -16 hours
I have brightness on high. If you put it on auto it makes a big difference.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
alom5 said:
If I get 12 hours and 4hrs screen time I'm happy. I don't even play any games. Have a lot of accounts syncing lot of Internet and a bit on the calls, gps. I get on average 14 -16 hours
I have brightness on high. If you put it on auto it makes a big difference.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess I should feel lucky, I have ZERO syncing, auto brightness, no live wallpapers or gimmicky stuff on, no gps, hardly 10mins or so on phone calls and prolly 30-60mins on messaging a day.
@all others - and the Android System is back on top - what could be the possible reasons for it?
I think its because of such minimal use that the system goes on top. The system still had to operate so when you have hardly used the phone then the system will go on top. Though with that usage you've stated you should get nearer 2 days really
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
alom5 said:
I think its because of such minimal use that the system goes on top. The system still had to operate so when you have hardly used the phone then the system will go on top. Though with that usage you've stated you should get nearer 2 days really
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're right probably, this is what I'd like to know as to what is running in the background that drains more battery? Exactly, at-least 1.5 days is what I should get with this usage. May be I should buy a new battery and see how it works.

Battery drain fixed

Well I'm not sure what to make of this but here goes.
My wife and myself have both got n4 mine is black hers is white both sim free UK phones.
I've been checking every time I get home from work what her sot is and what percentage battery she has left against mine and she always wins.
Example my phone would have say 50% battery and 2.5 hours sot and my wife would have say 70% with 2.5 hours sot.
So I thought maybe it's because she's at home with good 3g radio and I'm in a medium 4G area at work?
I've been through every setting on both the phones to see if one had something turned on that the other didn't but no and in some cases she had more things on that me ie haptic feedback was on and mine was off on everything calls text messages everything.
I planned on swapping batteries to see if that was to fault.
But I decided to do a factory reset as the only hassle I would have would be to re enter my WiFi password and all my apps would download automatically which isn't a big deal.
And now as we speak or as I type I have 71% battery with 2hrs sot unplugged since 7.30am it's now 15.50.
So what has caused my battery to be so bad?
I've been through all my apps and there is nothing abnormal and my wife even had stupid ones like candy crush and talking Tom that she has to feed and take out for a pee!
Anyone else noticed that there battery has got worse ?
i had issues with lock ups and poor battery because of google services (google now in particular). i ended up removing all the services - uninstalling the updates (play, gmail, music etc) and then re applying them.
That was a week ago and since then the phone has been smooth and rapid without the silly lock outs.
ALSO, when booting i have to goto the multitask screen and end all otherwise i cannot get wifi and the phone runs like a dog for a while.
I hoping that these are fixed with the next firmware that im still waiting for in the uk

[Q}Lollipop Yotaphone 2 battery life - any fixes?

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.
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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.
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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...
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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.

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