Related
I am trying to compile a large list of tips and tricks that we users can use to extend the life of our small batteries.
List is here:
http://android-simplicity.blogspot.com/2009/08/bag-of-tricks-1-increase-battery-life.html
On-Going Power saving List
1. Under-clock your cpu(for root users only). Download->over clocking widget->set cpu speed to lowest value
2. Turn off GPS
3. Reduce the number of start up apps
4. Restart phone
5. Lower screen brightness
6. Turn off Wi-fi when you are not around any wifi networks
7. Turn off 3G Mobile Data Network - Settings--->Wireless Controls--->Mobile Networks and check the box that says "Use Only 2G Networks.
8. Disable auto Data Sync
9. Download and install "Power Manager"
10. Disable back ground apps - [~JDBDogg]
11. Turn off keyboard backlight (for Dream/G1 only for obvious reasons) with Backlight Off app. Only works on rooted phones. [~Chahk]
12. Turn off any unnecessary noises or vibrations, such as for on-screen keyboard and games. [~AdamPI]
13. Make sure your firmware and apps are up to date, efficiency may be improved. [~AdamPI]
14. Use headphones. [~AdamPI]
15. Turn off Bluetooth. [~AdamPI]
16. [~Yours goes here]
If you have any tricks that you use to get the most time juice out of your phone, please share them to the rest of us. Thanks.
Disable background apps
Turn off keyboard backlight (for Dream/G1 only for obvious reasons) with Backlight Off app. Only works on rooted phones.
Chahk said:
Turn off keyboard backlight (for Dream/G1 only for obvious reasons) with Backlight Off app. Only works on rooted phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nice, one ! didnt think of that~
Lower the time it takes for the screen to time out.
Id also say take off any widgets you may have but i guess that falls underneath the "disable background apps" category
Bluetooth isn't mentioned.
Turn off any unnecessary noises or vibrations, such as for on-screen keyboard and games.
Make sure your firmware and apps are up to date, efficiency may be improved.
I'd guess using headphones is better than the speaker, plus no-one on the bus wants to hear your "music".
Has anyone tested decoding efficiency of video and audio codecs? AAC saves space, but does it use more battery than mp3?
up to 15
AdamPI said:
Bluetooth isn't mentioned.
Turn off any unnecessary noises or vibrations, such as for on-screen keyboard and games.
Make sure your firmware and apps are up to date, efficiency may be improved.
I'd guess using headphones is better than the speaker, plus no-one on the bus wants to hear your "music".
Has anyone tested decoding efficiency of video and audio codecs? AAC saves space, but does it use more battery than mp3?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now thats thinking out of the box. Thanks AdamPI
We have now 15 on the list. Lets see how long this can go~
Someone should do a test using all of these tricks and do a comparison, although it will be a very boring phone at this point with everything off.
Don't use a ROM that requires a linux-swap Partition
This causes the phone to die faster because the sd card is constantly being acessed
jf4888 said:
Don't use a ROM that requires a linux-swap Partition
This causes the phone to die faster because the sd card is constantly being acessed
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SD Cards are so cheap these days that you shoudn't worry about damaging them. In a weird way though, this advice does make sense. Swap = more apps are being kept in memory, thus more work being performed by the phone, which translates to higher power consumption.
But then again, following this logic a similar advice would be to not run any apps at all. Or better yet, just shut your phone off! Maybe then it will last a full day on a single charge
Seriously though, if you're worried about damaging your phone, read up on Lithium-Ion/Polymer batteries and how to prolong their lifespan. The main points are:
Don't let them get too hot. Heat damages battery cells and cause them to lose their capacity.
Deep discharge cycles (letting the battery drain before fully charging them) kill these batteries fast. LiIon/LiPolymer batteries like to be "topped off" once the level gets to 60-70% mark.
Discharge cycles can improve state-of-charge estimation, so only perform those when the battery meter goes out of whack and doesn't tell the charge level properly. This doesn't happen often.
They don't suffer from the "memory" and overcharge issues that used to plague batteries using older technologies (NiCad/NiMH), so it's safe to keep the phone plugged in whenever you can.
The "first-time cycle" is a myth left over from Nickel-based batteries. This means you don't need to charge the batter for 8 hours the first time you use it.
Do not use "fast chargers" since their usage can decrease the lifespan of the battery.
Get an app that turns off your data network completely (like WiSyncPlus). Not just "use 2G only" but COMPLETELY. I can go a whole weekend, with normal use, without charging my phone if I need to. (From one Fri 6am to Sun 6pm give or take was my best)
The one I use (WiSyncPlus, there are others I guess) turns off the network automatically when I unplug the charger from my phone. Txt msgs piggy back the cellular network so no issue there, otherwise, if I want to jump on the internet or check the weather, I hit the toggle switch on my Home screen...in ~3secs I'm all set again. Toggle back off when finished.
Best $3 by far I've spent on an app for my G1.
i use APNdroid for that
No one mentioned using a ROM that allows changes to the CPU scaling.
I'm on Cyanogen 4.1.2.1 and I have it scaled from 245 to 527 with the CPU only jumping up to the next clock speed when it needs it.
So, most of the time, my phone is on 245 and it clocks to 383 and then 527 as needed. I had overclock widget set so it showed me the current clock speed. Once I was comfortable with the frequency and load under which it changed speeds, I removed the widget from the desktop.
I use my phone a lot and it lasts a full day easily.
if youre using a hero rom there is an option to completely turn off mobile networks so there is no data connecion at all.
i have to go with
turn the phone off
get a car charger
spare battery or extended one
Be warned that this thread is now outdated. There might be more current guides available…
THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO MAKING YOUR BATTERY LAST LONGER ON YOUR HTC HD2 WITH ANDROID
OK I suppose this should be stickied as I've found numerous threads saying various stuff, but not a single thread, dedicated solely to this, providing useful and organized info.
Note: This guide is by no means definitive. Please feel free to correct me and add more tips, I'll be sure to add them to this post.
STEPS:
1. Try out a few ROMs and Radios to see which combination works best for keeping Android run as long as possible.
I have yet to find the best combo for my phone, but generally, the lightest ROMs with not much bloat in them (lots of items removed, fast startup) work best. With Radios it's all trial and error – a Radio that works miracles for one user is useless for another. You just have to try and see.
I know this is probably driving you crazy as you can read it everywhere around, but this can't be stressed enough: Don't flash your phone with a ROM/Radio you're not absolutely sure won't brick it. No one wants you to brick your expensive device. Read the flashing guides very carefully before you go on and do it.
Updating your build's Kernel is also a good idea.
2. Make sure you boot Android up as fast after running Windows as possible.
This one is crucial as it seems to affect your battery a lot.
To aid this, you can:
Download and install this (free) app (Exceller Multiple Build Loader is what I use, but you can choose something else) for the WM6. It enables you to autoboot into Android in the timespan of three seconds after running Windows, which is what you ideally want to do.
Disable HTC Sense in WM, it's unnecessary if you just want to boot into Android and takes a lot of time to load up. To do this, go to System settings, press Home, go to the Items tab and uncheck HTC Sense. You may want to check Windows Default to have at least the Zune-style interface to start from, but this isn't necessary if you're ok with an empty homescreen in WM.
3. Decrease the system load by automatically killing apps you no longer use.
This one gives a fair battery boost. By default, Android keeps all apps ready in RAM even if you press Home or Back to exit them to make them start quickly next time you need them and to keep their state. Most apps have a suspend mode which enables them to demand close to zero system resources as they run in the background, but some don't and close to zero isn't zero.
Download and install Automatic Task Killer (free) from the Market.
It gives you a list of the installed apps and enables you to uncheck those you don't want to autokill. It can also add your new apps to the list automatically.
Don't forget to uncheck applications you need to be running constantly, such as SetCPU (see below).
According to hastarin, this doesn't give you a battery boost. See the "What DOESN'T improve battery life" section. You can use AutoKiller Memory Optimizer, if you want to tweak your RAM – this app lets you set the limits for automatically killing apps only when you're low on RAM, which in turn may give you a battery boost.
4. Decrease the CPU performance when it doesn't need to perform at full speed.
I'm sure you're proud of your HD2's Snapdragon running at 1 GHz, I know I am, but it also drains a lot of battery when running on full speed.
NOTE: Using SetCPU with hastarin's R8 Kernel makes it redundant as the Kernel already has an interactive CPU governor in it. Thanks to socrated13 and atticus182 for this tip.
Download and install SetCPU ($1.99) from the Market.
It allows you to underclock your CPU to save battery. You can set profiles and play around with them. Generally, you don't want to set the minimum frequency too low as some tasks may then consume significantly more time to complete, wasting the energy you gained.
If you just want to try the app first to see if it helps, you can get it for free (search for SetCPU here at xda) and donate later by buying it on the Market (and please do, the developer put a lot of effort into it).
5. [INFORMATIVE] See how much energy your phone drains.
This one is not compulsory, but helps to get a general idea of how much energy your phone drains when you do such and such.
Download and install the Current Widget (free) from this forum. Just do a search on "current widget" and it should be the first post that comes up (don't worry, yes it's under Samsung Vibrant, but it works just as good for the HD2)
It allows you to put a widget on one of your home screens, where you can see the current your phone is currently draining. Can be set to update at various intervals. I prefer 30 s as it gives me enough time to shut down an app and look at it to see how much current the app itself is draining.
6. Decrease the brightness of your display.
This saves an incredible amount of battery life. I know you love your AutoBrightness, but it sets the brightness unnecessarily high, so until someone makes an AutoBrightness app with customizable overall brightness (once I get into programming apps for the Droid a bit, I might do it), you're left with doing this yourself.
Download and install the Brightness Rocker Lite (free) app from the market.
It displays a brightness bar everytime you bring up the volume control and thus lets you quickly change the brightness. Use the minimum brightness to see everything clearly and you should conserve a lot of juice.
7. Only use wireless functions when needed.
Having the mobile data connection, wifi, GPS or bluetooth enabled all the time causes severe battery drain. Sometimes even after you disconnect, the data connection connects again without you even knowing, downloading Over-the-Air updates or Weather, draining your battery unnecessarily.
Have a quick way to monitor which services are on and to turn them off (preferrably, have a widget/widgets on your home screen - I recommend the native Android widgets).
8. Recondition your phone for your battery after flashing each new Android build. (Thanks to t1h5ta3 for this tip)
Flashing a new Android build erases the battery stats and automatically rebuilds them based on voltages it sees, i.e. you need to recondition after each flash to get max battery life. The values are stored in the following file: data/system/batterystats.bin – if you delete this file, you set the new ground for making a new one from the value you want.
You can use the "battery life" widget by curvefish to show you temperature, voltage etc. What you're going for is voltage larger than 4.2 V on full charge.
To recondition:
Turn off the phone, plug it in, preferably overnight.
Boot the phone up while still pluged in.
Delete the batterystats.bin file ether through adb or terminal.
Drain the battery fully, until it powers down. Wait a minute or two and reboot it to drain it completely.
Congrats... your phone now knows corect voltage values for 100% and dead.
To delete the batterystats.bin file:
Find the means to be able to punch in lines of code. You can do this either by downloading and setting up the Android SDK or using a simplifying app like Droid Explorer. Do a google search for whichever you prefer.
Punch in the following code:
Code:
rm data/system/batterystats.bin
Or just find the file in Droid Explorer and delete it.
What DOESN'T improve battery life:
Getting a slower (and thus presumably less power-consuming) SD Card – because a slower SD card actually makes things worse as it needs more time to perform a task and thus keep the CPU busy a longer time.
Underclocking your CPU too much – similar reasons
Killing tasks automatically immediately after closing them – this apparently makes battery life worse, because when a program is in RAM, it doesn't consume system resources, but when you run it again, it does. Thanks to hastarin for the clarification.
Useful threads concerning battery life:
[REF] UPDATE: ALL GOVERNORS! Save battery while running ANY Android build (featured by the xda crew)
battery voltage / wipe batt stats
Battery Solution the **FINAL POST**
Time to Recharge to Full Battery
[TIPS] Thoughts on improving battery life for Android on the HD2
[UPD] 48hours + battery with mDeejay Froyo Z v1.7
Best SD Card for Overall Android Battery Life
Increase Battery Life [WinMo registry tweaks - Need confirmation] (do give this a try)
Hope this helps. If you have more tips or on-topic threads, I'll be delighted to add.
also see http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=827355
a properly conditioned battery does wonders for battery life. a fully charged battery shuld be over 4.2v . i was finding that depending on the the true state of charge when flashing, that is the level that was being assumed by the phone as " 100%" charged. ie: when i flashed my current rom it quit charging @ only 3.7xx volts... far from fully charged.
see my thread on the file to delete etc.
edit: after doing alot more research; heres what ive found...
for what its worth: Li-Io battery technology realy isnt different whether it be a phone, rc car, etc...
our batterys are a single cell. ie: rated 3.7v
4.2-4.25v is concidered by the industry as fully charged
3.7v is nominal voltage
3.2v "shorted" voltage : ie: voltage sag due to max discharge @nominal voltage
3.0v discharged
2.5v protection circuitry kicks in.
this jives with what i am now seeing on my phone after wipeing stats and calibrating...
it is also a industry standard to fully discharge ( 3.0v )about every 30 discharge cycles.
edit
Thanks, I added your tip in the first post (will add the link to your thread too, forgot to do it now and can't edit within 5 minutes of last edit yet)
no problem.
im new to playing with the hd2, but been playing with android for well, just about 2 years (early G1 adopter)
it shocked me coming to this forum and seeing the same question worded diferently atleast 7 times on the first page.
lets hope mod's will sticky this..
I'm no expert but from what I've been seeing the difference setCPU makes with the new hastarin kernel's is negligible. In fact I don't think you can use setCPU with with r8 anymore...
Excellent thread! All info was scattered throughout the forums, and this is a nice thread to sum up everything!
Indeed, using hastarin's R8 you won't need to use setCPU since hastarin has included an interactive governor in his kernel
R8 is a vast improvement over the older kernels, I would reccommend it to everybody that uses Android on his/her HD2!
Slampisko,
Very nicely done and there should be more informative guides like this!
Should be made an instant sticky.
PLEASE do yourself a favor and don't use an automatic task killer. Just because an app is in memory doesn't mean it's using CPU and therefore battery but it will use it to run it again after you killed it.
If you must tweak things here use Autokiller Memory Optimizer to change the levels the out of memory optimizer kicks in at.
Of course if you have an app that refuses to close or is just chewing cpu for no reason then manually killing it is fine.
More info linked in my FAQ in my sig.
Sent from my HTC HD2
Thanks for all the feedback! I'll edit the first post to include the additional info...
Hey guys, cool guide
I tried somes tuff, and read various posts, but somehow I cant figure out why my HD2 with MDJ FroYo Sense Clean v. 2.2 [kernel: hastarin R8] keeps sucking the battery empty so far.
Only program i installed in addition to the Android version mentioned above, is the Current Widget to the how much mA it drains.
Those are my settings:
MDJ FroYo Sense Clean v. 2.2 [kernel: hastarin R8]
GSM only (2G)
Data disabled
Wifi disabled
GPS disabled
Bluetooth disabled
syncing disabled (Background data + auto sync both disabled)
I also killed all running things that i think i dont need and still Current Widget shows me, battery drains in standby 55mA-60mA
So i was wondering what i am missing??? since most of the users get a standby mA of 8 or below... I tried for several days now, but somehow i cant find a solution...
just an update from me....
after conditioning the battery, im currently @27 hours since unplugging, gps, and wifi turned on the entire time, im @ 3.873v or 61%! granted, its been light usage its my secondary phone right now, but i am on the outskirts of service, and the week signal usualy sucks the battery...
ill update again , probably this time tomorow once it finaly dies...
<edit> as you can see in post #2, after 27 hours of up time, i still have higher battery voltage than what the phone was assuming was 100% on initial flashing of the rom...... just food for thought...
That's very interesting, t1h5ta3... Trying it right now, will edit post with results
<Quote>Killing tasks automatically immediately after closing them – this apparently makes battery life worse, because when a program is in RAM, it doesn't consume system resources, but when you run it again, it does. Thanks to hastarin for the clarification.<End>
Do not necessaryly agree. A 'program' is a collection of endless conditions and calculations that puts strain on the CPU. Unless a 'freeze program' function is built in to Android to literally freeze a program when its idle in ram the, the program will still continue to consume valueble cpu power just to stay idle albeit at a reduced rate. But having many program in memory in this state can tax the system performance draining the battery.
I don't have the file batterystats.bin in data/sytem!!!
Any help?
Edit: In fact i found it with root explorer search however i am enabling view of hidden files and i don't see it!
Does deleting it While in android by root explorer will cause any problem?!
@Life Engineer: Nope, I deleted it by Droid Explorer's console while having android up and running and nothing bad happened.
Slampisko said:
@Life Engineer: Nope, I deleted it by Droid Explorer's console while having android up and running and nothing bad happened.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BTW i don't agree saying that conservative is the best governor; i guess many accept with me; latest tests showed that interactive is the best and it worked for me!
You may consider putting it in the thread
@Life Governor: I was thinking about that too. Will edit thread.
Question when it comes to draining the battery which side do I drain it on win or Android?
@WCENIGHTCRAWLER: Android I suppose, as Android needs to know the correct voltage for drained battery.
Slampisko said:
@WCENIGHTCRAWLER: Android I suppose, as Android needs to know the correct voltage for drained battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm unsure on this as well. Maybe I'm a bit behind on all the dev that's happened. But I remember if draining battery in Android, it messes up with the build on the SD card.
Might give this a go tonight and see.
Battery issue (AndroidOS "bug") - workaround (3% loss over 9 hours!!!) - final update
Yes, I know, another battery thread. But after scouring many other threads for scraps of information, I feel I still have something to contribute on this widely talked about topic. If you’re not interested, don’t read or write on this thread – save your time, and mine. If it is useful to you, then great, please let us know. Here goes.
Like many people, I’ve been plagued with poor battery life on my SGS2. There are plenty of threads out there discussing how to trace the battery consumption back to the “Android OS” processes, specifically the “events” & “suspend” processes. Unfortunately, once isolating those processes, there’s not much we can do. Some say that when we get Android 2.3.4, battery issues might be solved, however:
My first Android phone was a HTC HD2, which was actually a WinMo phone that some clever people had managed to get a working Android ROM for. I started with Android 2.2.1, and as updates were released, upgraded to 2.2.2, 2.2.3, 2.3.1, 2.3.2, 2.3.3, and then I moved on to a new phone. All throughout these different Android versions, I had excellent battery life. The power draw on standby would be between 4ma – 6ma. (Unfortunately we can’t measure the power draw on our SGS2s.) If my phone was fully charged at night, I would wake about 8 hours later, to around 92% battery left. My SGS2 has more like 40-70% after that timeframe. The HD2 had great battery life before 2.3.4. We can all theorise about whether 2.3.4 will fix the issues, but I don’t know, you don’t know, and life goes on. (Personally, I suspect the Samsung base rather than the Android build, but that’s just a guess.)
So I decided to do a systematic approach to troubleshooting the battery issue on my phone, and identified the following possible causes & possible resolutions, based on other people’s comments, and a bit of logic:
• Battery itself
• Battery calibration
• Data connection
• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• GPS
• Location-awareness
• Latitude
• FastDormancy
• Phone connection
• SD card
• Kernel
• CPU speed
• Task killer
• Live Wallpaper
• Launcher
• Widgets
• Applications
• Stock vs custom ROM
• Hard-reset/data-wipe
Some details about my SGS2.I have a lot of applications installed, including the following that are always running (as services):
• WhatsApp
• PhoneWeaver
• Enhanced SMS & Caller ID
• NetQin Anti-virus
• Extended Controls
• Executive Assistant
• Enhanced Email
• Droidin
• Astrid Tasks
• SystemPanel
• SwiftKey X Beta
As well as the standard Samsung & Google background services.
I have used various versions of VillainROM, LiteningROM, and am now on CognitionROM 1.06. (All similar battery usage for me.)
I use LauncherPro Plus home launcher, and also have plenty of widgets on my screens:
• Beautiful Weather
• Agenda Plus
• Jorte
• Extended Controls
• Elixir (updating every 10 secs)
• LauncherPro Plus Facebook
• BBC News
• SetCPU (updating every 30 secs)
• 4 other miscellaneous small widgets
Ok, so here are my results, after testing most of the possibilities, for at least a couple of hours each, and some of them for longer:
Battery itself
I have 3 batteries, and all perform similarly, high drain occurs.
Battery calibration
I have used a battery calibration app several times, and followed the instructions to the letter, high drain still occurs.
This is however, still a useful process when changing ROMs, to help your battery stats be more accurate.
Data connection (tested for 8 hours multiple times)
Data connection turned off, high drain still occurs.
Wifi (tested for 8 hours multiple times)
Wifi turned off, high drain still occurs.
Bluetooth (I usually keep this off)
Bluetooth turned off, high drain still occurs.
GPS
GPS disabled, high drain still occurs.
Location-awareness
All location-awareness methods disabled, high drain still occurs.
Latitude
Never joined, high drain still occurs.
FastDormancy (tested for more than 8 hours in all 3 modes)
1. Default settings, high drain still occurs.
2. Configured for correct settings (my network supports FD) in /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases, high-drain still occurs.
3. Disabled FD completely, high drain still occurs.
Phone connection (tested for 10 hours)
1. Set to GSM only, high drain still occurs.
2. Flight mode enabled (ie all network off), high drain still occurs. This is significant!
SD card
Removed external SD card, high drain still occurs.
Kernel
1. CF-Root KE7, KE8, KF1, KF2, KF4, high drain still occurs.
2. Cognition 1.03, 1.04, 1.05, 1.06, high drain still occurs.
CPU speed
Throttled to maximum 800mhz, high drain still occurs.
Task killer
1. Advanced Task Killer auto-kill when screen off, high drain still occurs.
2. Advanced Task Killer auto-kill disabled, high drain still occurs.
3. Advanced Task Killer auto-kill every hour, untested.
Live Wallpaper
I use a LWP that I have written, and am fairly satisfied that the code is efficient, and does not take up any noticeable amount of CPU when the phone is in standby. However, untested.
Launcher
Tried using LauncherPro, high drain still occurs.
Tried using TouchWiz, high drain still occurs.
Widgets
Removed all my widgets, <insert fanfare> high drain disappeared!!!
WiFi Sharing
Not exactly the "Android OS bug", but it can cause other battery drainage issues. I freeze it with Titanium Backup to prevent any grief.
Applications
Untested.
Stock vs custom ROM
Untested.
Hard-reset/data-wipe
I am sceptical of this approach, as it changes too many settings. Yes, everything will be faster, with less issues, more battery life, etc, when you do a data-wipe. However, once you configure everything back to how it was before, you’re in the same boat as when you started, and none the wiser.
So! A couple of important findings:
1. With Flight-mode enabled, I get poor battery. This pretty much eliminates any possibilities of 2G vs 3G, FastDromancy, and anything else that uses phone/WiFI/BT type stuff.
2. Widgets are what trigger the issues for me. I use a lot of them, and some of them update frequently. Android should be able to handle this, but something (probably either Android or Samsung code) is adding some battery overhead. This may be fixed by Google or Samsung in the future, but until then, I need a workaround. The next step for me is to add my widgets back in gradually, and see which ones trigger the battery grief. I'll update this thread with my findings regarding which widgets cause me grief, once I have them.
I'm back to having all my location services, data, phone, HSDPA/3G, SD card, and other basic services enabled. The only thing I don't have, is widgets on my homescreen, and battery performance is good.
Hopefully this will be of some help to those people still struggling with battery issues! If you're having battery issues, remove your widgets, monitor for at least a few hours, and report back!
------------------------------------------------
Update - 23/06/11
Every night at 10pm, my Data, AutoSync, & WiFi, are all switched off by PhoneWeaver. This should mean that minimal battery life is being used. I still usually get 30-60% drain though, which as we all know, is due to the "Android OS bug".
Last night, after having removed all my widgets, I charged my phone to 98%, and it entered its usual "Night mode" at 10pm. At 7am this morning, it automatically (via PhoneWeaver) went back in to "Home mode", which enabled AutoSync & WiFi. At 7:15am, my alarm went off, woke me up, and I checked the battery usage. It was down to 95%.
That's 3% drainage over 9 hours and 15 minutes!!!
This is the battery life that we should be expecting when we have things like Data & WiFi turned off.
I value my widgets, but I also value battery life. I'm going to keep working to find a decent compromise between the two. In the meantime, if you need battery life now, maybe consider removing some or all of your widgets.
------------------------------------------------
Update - 24/06/11
Last night, I re-added all of my widgets except Elixir, charged the phone to 100%, and let my phone enter "Night mode" (Data & WiFi off). Again, 9 hours later, WiFi auto-enabled, sync operations completed, etc. I checked it at 9 hours 15 minutes, and battery remaining was down to 96% - only 4% drop over the 9 hours. Similar to the night before. Very happy with that.
I've done a couple of tests today, and have found that adding the Elixir widget back on, brings back the "Android OS bug" for me. I have a lot of items configured in my Elixir widget (including some that show internal storage usage and SD card usage), and although I had set it to update only every hour, it still seems to trigger the hogging of my CPU by "Android OS". I'm going to try some different configurations of the Elixir widget (as it is a useful app), but at this stage, I've narrowed the battery issue trigger on my phone, to Elixir.
I haven't really heard of any confirmations from anyone else, that removing widgets has helped with their battery issues, so if you do have success with this, please let me know. I doubt it's specific to Elixir, but if you're affected, then the trigger may be something similar on your phone. If you want to test, I suggest the following:
1. Freeze the "Wi-Fi Sharing" app in Titanium Backup, as it commonly causes other battery drain issues. (Use "Wireless Tether" if you need that functionality.)
2. Remove all widgets from your home screen.
3. Turn off Data & WiFi connections.
4. Stop any running foreground applications (such as games etc), or reboot your phone.
5. Charge your phone, and note your battery percentage.
6. Turn off your screen, and leave it off for at least 2 hours.
7. Turn your screen back on, and check your percentage.
8. If there has still been a high drain (any more that 1 or 2%), check your battery usage to see if "Android OS" is the culprit.
9. If it's something else, target that. If it's still "Android OS", then I guess widgets are not your trigger.
10. Let us know whether it worked for you or not!
------------------------------------------------
Update - 28/06/11
Probably the last update from me, as my battery usage is nice and stable now, and I have no other information to give.
Happy to hear success stories from a few people - removing widgets has improved their battery life. Obviously we don't want to be removing all of our widgets, as if we wanted to cripple our phones, we'd probably just get evil iPhones, instead of the powerhouse that is the SGSII. For me, I've been able to add all my widgets back in, and narrowed down the drain to Elixir. Fortunately, I've found that I can use Elixir without any issues, as long as I take out the CPU & storage card stats icons. Even though I had it set to update only ever hour, it would still drain my battery way too quickly. I can live without a running commentary on how much free space I have on my SD card, and how much CPU I'm currently using. (SystemPanel gives me all the monitoring I need.)
So if you're still having trouble, my advice is to:
first calibrate your battery with a battery calibration tool (or manually delete your battery stats file)
second, freeze the "Wi-Fi Sharing" app, and
third, check your widgets. Most widgets probably won't impact your battery noticeably, and shortcuts shouldn't either. Once you've tracked down the problem widget(s), try to determine whether you can reconfigure it/them to avoid the drain (perhaps with less updates).
Some battery usage results from posters:
lindsaytheflint - 0.32% per hour, over 9.5 hours, in flight-mode.
JJEgan - 0.08% per hour, over 13 hours, in flight-mode.
sjedwardz - 1.77% per hour, over 22 hours.
So we can get good battery life with these phones, even without 2.3.4, and with only a little bit of tweaking. Obviously, using the phones (i.e. screen on) will (and should) use the battery faster, so the important test is while the phone is in standby. Good luck!
lindsaytheflint said:
Yes, I know, another battery thread. But after scouring many other threads for scraps of information, I feel I still have something to contribute on this widely talked about topic. If you’re not interested, don’t read or write on this thread – save your time, and mine. If it is useful to you, then great, please let us know. Here goes.
Like many people, I’ve been plagued with poor battery life on my SGS2. There are plenty of threads out there discussing how to trace the battery consumption back to the “Android OS” processes, specifically the “events” & “suspend” processes. Unfortunately, once isolating those processes, there’s not much we can do. Some say that when we get Android 2.3.4, battery issues might be solved, however:
My first Android phone was a HTC HD2, which was actually a WinMo phone that some clever people had managed to get a working Android ROM for. I started with Android 2.2.1, and as updates were released, upgraded to 2.2.2, 2.2.3, 2.3.1, 2.3.2, 2.3.3, and then I moved on to a new phone. All throughout these different Android versions, I had excellent battery life. The power draw on standby would be between 4ma – 6ma. (Unfortunately we can’t measure the power draw on our SGS2s.) If my phone was fully charged at night, I would wake about 8 hours later, to around 92% battery left. My SGS2 has more like 40-70% after that timeframe. The HD2 had great battery life before 2.3.4. We can all theorise about whether 2.3.4 will fix the issues, but I don’t know, you don’t know, and life goes on. (Personally, I suspect the Samsung base rather than the Android build, but that’s just a guess.)
So I decided to do a systematic approach to troubleshooting the battery issue on my phone, and identified the following possible causes & possible resolutions, based on other people’s comments, and a bit of logic:
• Battery itself
• Battery calibration
• Data connection
• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• GPS
• Location-awareness
• Latitude
• FastDormancy
• Phone connection
• SD card
• Kernel
• CPU speed
• Task killer
• Live Wallpaper
• Widgets
• Applications
• Stock vs custom ROM
• Hard-reset/data-wipe
Some details about my SGS2.I have a lot of applications installed, including the following that are always running (as services):
• WhatsApp
• PhoneWeaver
• Enhanced SMS & Caller ID
• NetQin Anti-virus
• Extended Controls
• Executive Assistant
• Enhanced Email
• Droidin
• Astrid Tasks
• SystemPanel
• SwiftKey X Beta
As well as the standard Samsung & Google background services.
I have used various versions of VillainROM, LiteningROM, and am now on CognitionROM 1.06. (All similar battery usage for me.)
I use LauncherPro Plus home launcher, and also have plenty of widgets on my screens:
• Beautiful Weather
• Agenda Plus
• Jorte
• Extended Controls
• Elixir (updating every 10 secs)
• LauncherPro Plus Facebook
• BBC News
• SetCPU (updating every 30 secs)
• 4 other miscellaneous small widgets
Ok, so here are my results, after testing most of the possibilities, for at least a couple of hours each, and some of them for longer:
Battery itself
I have 3 batteries, and all perform similarly, high drain occurs.
Battery calibration
I have used a battery calibration app several times, and followed the instructions to the letter, high drain still occurs.
Data connection (tested for 8 hours multiple times)
Data connection turned off, high drain still occurs.
Wifi (tested for 8 hours multiple times)
Wifi turned off, high drain still occurs.
Bluetooth (I usually keep this off)
Bluetooth turned off, high drain still occurs.
GPS
GPS disabled, high drain still occurs.
Location-awareness
All location-awareness methods disabled, high drain still occurs.
Latitude
Never joined, high drain still occurs.
FastDormancy (tested for more than 8 hours in all 3 modes)
1. Default settings, high drain still occurs.
2. Configured for correct settings (my network supports FD) in /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases, high-drain still occurs.
3. Disabled FD completely, high drain still occurs.
Phone connection (tested for 10 hours)
1. Set to GSM only, high drain still occurs.
2. Flight mode enabled (ie all network off), high drain still occurs. This is significant!
SD card
Removed external SD card, high drain still occurs.
Kernel
1. CF-Root KE7, KE8, KF1, KF2, KF4, high drain still occurs.
2. Cognition 1.03, 1.04, 1.05, 1.06, high drain still occurs.
CPU speed
Throttled to maximum 800mhz, high drain still occurs.
Task killer
1. Advanced Task Killer auto-kill when screen off, high drain still occurs.
2. Advanced Task Killer auto-kill disabled, high drain still occurs.
3. Advanced Task Killer auto-kill every hour, untested.
Live Wallpaper
I use a LWP that I have written, and am fairly satisfied that the code is efficient, and does not take up any noticeable amount of CPU when the phone is in standby. However, untested.
Widgets
Removed all my widgets, <insert fanfare> high drain disappeared!!!
Applications
Untested.
Stock vs custom ROM
Untested.
Hard-reset/data-wipe
I am sceptical of this approach, as it changes too many settings. Yes, everything will be faster, with less issues, more battery life, etc, when you do a data-wipe. However, once you configure everything back to how it was before, you’re in the same boat as when you started, and none the wiser.
So! A couple of important findings:
1. With Flight-mode enabled, I get poor battery. This pretty much eliminates any possibilities of 2G vs 3G, FastDromancy, and anything else that uses phone/WiFI/BT type stuff.
2. Widgets are what trigger the issues for me. I use a lot of them, and some of them update frequently. Android should be able to handle this, but something (probably either Android or Samsung code) is adding some battery overhead. This may be fixed by Google or Samsung in the future, but until then, I need a workaround. The next step for me is to add my widgets back in gradually, and see which ones trigger the battery grief. I'll update this thread with my findings regarding which widgets cause me grief, once I have them.
I'm back to having all my location services, data, phone, HSDPA/3G, SD card, and other basic services enabled. The only thing I don't have, is widgets on my homescreen, and battery performance is good.
Hopefully this will be of some help to those people still struggling with battery issues! If you're having battery issues, remove your widgets, monitor for at least a few hours, and report back!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the in-depth analysis.
I figured it as much that it had to be Active Widgets that cause a higher drain than normal. I dont have any widgets active and dont have any drain, but I can see them running as a service.
I always wondered that if they were removed from the service, will the battery life improve or not make any difference, since the widget isnt really running, only the service. Force Quiting the Widget Service only has them come back shortly after.
Ok I jump in. I've the same issues. Now I disabled my lockscreen (widget locker) and deleted all my widgets. I'll report later if this was the key. BTW what about the screen settings for the brightness? I've set my brightness to 40% static.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
What kind of router do you have? Your drain is to high to be just the android-os bug.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
[germany]merlot said:
BTW what about the screen settings for the brightness? I've set my brightness to 40% static.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't looked at the brightness, as I've been troubleshooting the drain issue purely for when the phone is in standby (i.e. screen off). My display is set to automatic brightness.
TheGhost1233 said:
What kind of router do you have? Your drain is to high to be just the android-os bug.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My home WiFi router is not the issue. I only have WiFi enabled for a few hours each day, but my drain is always. My tests included disabling all network connections.
A drain of 30-60% (i.e. resulting in 40-70% left after 8 hours from a 100% charge) is typical of the kind of issues a lot of people have been having. If it wasn't so bad, so many of us wouldn't be so desperate to have it fixed. And yes, my battery usage in both the built-in battery tracking, & SystemPanel, both indicate "Android OS".
Hmm..it could be because I also have high drain and I currently have 13 widgets on my homescreens:Simple calendar, Simi Clock, Spotify, 7xHangping chinese, Snowstorm (update every 3h), CNN(update every 6h), Pure messenger(update every 6hours).
I wouldn't want to get rid of any of those widgets because after all these are the main difference compared to iPhone. What is the point of having Android if you just want the icons on your homescreen.
On the other hand I have been wondering one other issue with the battery drain. When I used to have Touch Pro 2, I used many different ROMs and there the battery was hugely affected by which radio it had. For example I live in Finland and if I used chinese rom with chinese radio the phone did work but the signal was never as good as with European/Finnish radio and also more drain affected.
I noticed similarity when updated to Hong Kong firmware, I didn't get so good signal in any place and I think I lost more battery.
Of course this isn't the whole solution if the battery drain is high also with the airplane mode. But for me even if I turn the data off and use only 2G I get pretty decent battery. So I think there is more than one problem effecting this.
I THINK that CNN widget might be quite bad for the battery..that I could try to get rid off..
There have been plenty of reports of people with a specific router that, once connected just one time, will cause high drain until you do a factory reset. And yes it also displays under android-os but it's a second bug.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
I lost 30% battery from 100 to 70 in 8 hours i slept. The only thing that was on was the yahoo mail push service. I deleted all the widgets that came pre-installed except the time/date one on the home screen. The phone was locked with screen off and brightness set to 0.
Is this normal? I have frozen a lot of samsung apps and services that are not needed.
Maybe its launcher pro, I might try deleting that and see how it goes for a while
Hi TS,
good effort here. i am wondering, after you removed all the widget and experiencing better battery life, does Android OS still use high usage?
this is the first android phone that i notice Android OS taking up such a significant portion. all my previous phones, one hardly notices it's usage in the battery stats.
Great list with tests! Although I don't think widgets are causing the high drain. It's something more deep underlying in the stock ROM... All working ROMs are based on the stock one and that's why we all have the Android OS bug.
I've seen people that report no Android OS drain on AOSP ROM (which someone only got booting, it's not usable but there is no battery drain). On the MUIUI ROM which we also got booting is also no battery drain...
What we can do now is WAITING... until we either 1. get a new updated ROM from samsung which solves the issue. or 2. we get a clean and stable CM7 ROM
Thanks my opinion...
Think I'm going to post this everywhere as there seems to be huge amout of people that blame poor battery life on this bug even if it's not the case.
The example of my phone:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
djfatrod said:
Maybe its launcher pro, I might try deleting that and see how it goes for a while
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, next thing I was going to try was a different launcher. I may still try switch to TouchWiz, and putting on all my widgets. Launcher Pro doesn't have any such issues with other Android phones I've had, but there may be something in the SGS2 code that causes an incompatibility.
sunwee said:
Hi TS,
good effort here. i am wondering, after you removed all the widget and experiencing better battery life, does Android OS still use high usage?
this is the first android phone that i notice Android OS taking up such a significant portion. all my previous phones, one hardly notices it's usage in the battery stats.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After removing the widgets, Android OS is no longer high. Other things are now higher (such as when I use the phone etc) which is what you'd expect in Android.
I agree with you - I haven't had this issue on other phones either.
(TS?)
d3sm0nd said:
Great list with tests! Although I don't think widgets are causing the high drain. It's something more deep underlying in the stock ROM... All working ROMs are based on the stock one and that's why we all have the Android OS bug.
I've seen people that report no Android OS drain on AOSP ROM (which someone only got booting, it's not usable but there is no battery drain). On the MUIUI ROM which we also got booting is also no battery drain...
What we can do now is WAITING... until we either 1. get a new updated ROM from samsung which solves the issue. or 2. we get a clean and stable CM7 ROM
Thanks my opinion...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree - I don't believe the widgets are the cause, but I do think having widgets is triggering the high drain. Something in Samsung's build is doing it.
I'm sure on a AOSP, MIUI, or CM7 the issue won't occur. It doesn't occur on proper builds on other phones. Just something in Samsung's build.
Definitely looking forward to a working non-Samsung build!
Personally I doubt, that the Battery usage stats from android give enough details about the battery usage. Therefore I think its misleading...
Btw, I am on stock rom KE7, no bug/drain here...
aurelm said:
Think I'm going to post this everywhere as there seems to be huge amout of people that blame poor battery life on this bug even if it's not the case.
The example of my phone:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure what this adds, or how it's relevant. I don't think you read my first post properly, or if I was unclear, then I apologise.
The issue I was having, was that my phone was discharging very rapidly, even under various different scenarios, including my phone display being switched off for 8 hours, and flight-mode being enabled, etc. After this 8 hours of non-use, the battery would have discharged by 30-60%, and the "Android OS" processes (specifically, "suspend" and "events") were taking up around 90% of the usage.
This thread is not about debating the existence of the "Android OS bug", nor about how to identify it. This thread is about testing to see what can be done to workaround the "bug".
I think you also missed my statement in the first post: "If you’re not interested, don’t read or write on this thread – save your time, and mine."
pik1 said:
Personally I doubt, that the Battery usage stats from android give enough details about the battery usage. Therefore I think its misleading...
Btw, I am on stock rom KE7, no bug/drain here...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
System Panel gives quite a bit of useful detail around things like CPU usage, which is a significant factor in battery usage.
lindsaytheflint said:
System Panel gives quite a bit of useful detail around things like CPU usage, which is a significant factor in battery usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is actually interesting to see that there is Accu weather, AP mobile, digital clock and all those rest apps in the memory even thou I dont use them and never even opened them.
Sight...maybe I have to root the phone once again and freeze those apps after all even thou I was wishing that I could just keep my phone close to stock.
Is the "Acer Iconia Battery Saver" app (sorry, not allowed to post links yet) useful at all or is it obsolete if on HC 3.1 and higher?
My understanding is that it is all about disabling phone.apk and telephony.apk (by renaming or moving from /system/app to some backup location) so that there is no battery juice wasted on the cell signal discovery in our Wifi only A500 models.
I am running stock 3.1 ROM and I see that those apps (phone and telephony) are present in /system/app (both 'apk' and 'odex') and yet I do not see anything in the "battery use" statistics about consumption by cell service. Does it mean that those apps are already disabled and therefore "Acer Iconia Battery Saver" (or disabling of phone.apk and telephony.apk tick) is obsolete and unnecessary.
I know people were reporting good results with "Acer Iconia Battery Saver" app earlier on when they were still running it on 3.0 (and yes they saw cell usage in the battery use stats).
But is it relevant now? Thanks in advance for your replies....
Since all reports of 'improved battery life' from removing those apps is circumstantial, it is about as relevant now as it was back then.
It is my opinion that there could be no battery usage if there was no hardware there to begin with. It was a ghost stat and hence had no effect on battery life.
Of course people will disagree but since no quantifiable data exists, (that isn't based solely on personal opinion and uncontrolled tests) the argument is kind of moot.
Well, I hear your point. And that is why I am trying to get to the bottom of this.
I understand your point about if cell hardware is absent then there should not be any battery drain to begin with. However, it is not completely accurate. The running software could easily account for the drain. Theoretically, if those two apps constantly run trying to ping the supporting cell hardware, that will still waste some battery (and maybe significantly so if, as some reports claim, the ping algorithm implemented in such a way that it is very aggressive about trying to detect the signal while it is absent).
Also, it is strange that people who reported the battery life improvement from using "Acer Iconia Battery Saver" or the hack (by manually removing phone.apk and telephone.apk) claimed that while they DID see the appropriate consumption entry ("cell usage" or something like that) in the battery usage stats before the the same entry disappeared after they implemented the hack or deployed the saver app. Of course, maybe it is a red herring after all.
Anybody, who actually tried the saver app or implemented the hack cares to clarify?
I have a rock here. It claims to ward away bears from attacking me in my sleep.
No bears have attacked me in my sleep ergo, the rock must work.
You cite unsubstantiated claims. Again, there is no quantifiable data that proves removing telephony/phone.apk had any affect on battery life.
Polling nothing with nothing = nothing.
While yes, running software can certainly account for *some* drain but, more to the point, its the LCD panel not the application itself (baring any serious CPU intensive apps or memory polling) that chewing through juice. Hardware use is really the only way to drain the battery in any significant way. Having Maps sitting on stand-by (which you didn't launch) with Wifi off will not drain your battery of any significant amount in the same way that telephony/phone.apk on standby would if there is no hardware there for it.
Considering those ghost stats were showing 45 - 48% battery use, the return now that it's gone doesn't add up. Even a tech rep told me of the tests he did there was less than a 0.2 return in battery life. That's an insignificant amount.
Android OS juggles memory and stand-by applications from one end of the spectrum to the other with little to no difference in battery life. Force closing background apps (and saved-states) that HC has put into standby will net you nothing but a high risk of instability.
bingo bango?
Surgar in the gas tank.
I to agree with gamma.the standby could have been using some CPU cycles.but very little.I have-not seen any change in battery life now that it's gone.
I think that you would really see a lot more battery savings using apps like SetCPU, Brightness Level or even by setting your wallpaper to be something darker and definitely not a live wallpaper. Since the screen is really the main battery user I tend to be very picky about the brightness level and that is why I use a widget to be able to control the setting easily. With that said, if getting rid of these 2 phone apps will save some battery then let me know.
I just use airplane mode then turn wireless back on. Sounds like a winner don't it?
Sent from my Acer Iconia A500 running HoneyVillain 1.1 HC 3.2 for A501, OC'd 1.5GHz
highly doubt it makes a diff
You can always just edit /system/build.prop and add ro.carrier=wifi-only to the file - done this on my current rom, but I cannot say I see any evidence for increased performance / better battery life. Who knows; without a controlled test any evidence via personal revelation is pretty meaningless.
I was having battery issues and used BetterBatteryStats to hunt done the app that was using my battery. It isn't a free app but well worth the cost. Be sure and read the FAQ
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.asksven.betterbatterystats
Was wondering about this too
I am fairly new to the android world but after some reading i finally put honeyvillian and the kernel on my acer and was noticing it said please install SIM card. i looked in settings > about tablet > Battery use and it said Cell Service 20%!!!!!!!!! after alot of searching and reading i found out about the ro.carrier=wifi-only thing in system/build.prop i just changed it tablet booted just fine now just waitin to see if it helps my poor battery. Cell Service is gone from the list in settings now tho so hopefully it will be ok
So Charged iconia last night to full started using at around 8AM its currently 7:39 charge is at 26% I have been using it alot during these 11.5 Hrs did take an hour nap and left it on. definately helped use to have to charge before now. Although i do hear of ppl whos will run for days without being charged kinda makes me wonder how much they really use it in those few days tho? I am really using it tho to play music download stuff still in process of gettin it just the way i want it too so that may be another reason it doesnt last forever.
I just got a new A500 last week and I looked after starting it and while it was running 3.0.1 and the battery status did show Cell Phone using the battery towards the top of the list.
Upgraded to 3.1 and checked again and there is no mention of the Cell Phone using the battery so it appears that the issue was fixed in 3.1
lk757 said:
Is the "Acer Iconia Battery Saver" app (sorry, not allowed to post links yet) useful at all or is it obsolete if on HC 3.1 and higher?
My understanding is that it is all about disabling phone.apk and telephony.apk (by renaming or moving from /system/app to some backup location) so that there is no battery juice wasted on the cell signal discovery in our Wifi only A500 models.
I am running stock 3.1 ROM and I see that those apps (phone and telephony) are present in /system/app (both 'apk' and 'odex') and yet I do not see anything in the "battery use" statistics about consumption by cell service. Does it mean that those apps are already disabled and therefore "Acer Iconia Battery Saver" (or disabling of phone.apk and telephony.apk tick) is obsolete and unnecessary.
I know people were reporting good results with "Acer Iconia Battery Saver" app earlier on when they were still running it on 3.0 (and yes they saw cell usage in the battery use stats).
But is it relevant now? Thanks in advance for your replies....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I bought the battery saver app and it made absolutely no difference. I don't mind sacrificinga dollar to experiment, but the experiment is done. Save your dollar. Edit your build.prop
Hello, taken that I came from a mammoth battery of 6000 mA of the Ulefone Power, the 3000 mA of the ZTE Axon 7 just fails short to lasting me a day.
I felt in love with the screen of the Axon 7, just to find is the highest ranking sucker for battery, which makes me have to set it black and white and dim it…. This really sucks. ;-(
I have excellent sleeping battery savings 0 to 1% using the wakelock software, but is just when I turn on -> the screen starts draining the battery quick!.
I have installed 341 user apps and 163 system apps (I debloated heavily the phone, stock launcher, gmail, photo)…. Please notice that I have paid for the PRO versions off all the software shown here. Please respect the developers and show support by buying software that help us improve our day by day usage of the Phone.
By the way I have a A2017G with a ZTE A2017GV1.0.0B03 with rooted phone + locked boot loader
I atached a file to be opened with “My App List” which is a free Google Play app so you can download all the files I mention in the thread that belong to Google Play. The apps missing are Xposed files and you have to find them in the repository - > Xposed modules will be identified with (X). Some of the titles are in Spanish (I am a Spaniard) so I have provided a screen capture so you can identify the apps icon in Google play or use “My App List”.
I will not provide the configurations, at this point, per app (just a short description)…. Maybe we can do that in another thread to define optimum performance of the Axon 7 battery once we filter out which apps we shall use
My idea is that people share their 5 cents of which apps/tricks they use for battery savings so we could create an “optimal configuration” with the recommended settings.
[No message]
Phone Signal (2g/3g/4g) + Wifi
1. Intelli3G (X) : Switch to 2g when phone off, turn off data when Wifi connected
2. PNF Root: Changes the pulse interval of the Cellphone and the Wifi
3. Auto Pilot: If phone signal drops bellow a certain value then the phone goes into airplane mode and checks every xminutes for good signal, instead of pinning all the time
4. Gestor de red wifi: Uses gsm towers to localize the wifi hot spots for the network you connect to. If you are in an area where you do not have a network it will disconnect Wifi. Good option if you forget, like me, to turn off the Wifi when I leave home
CPU / System Tweaks
1. BootManager (X): Turn Off apps in the StartUp list
2. Auto Start Manager: Turn off apps in any event (aka if you turn the GPS on I do not want Google Maps to go on until I click it, etc)
3. CPU Turner: change governors / CPU speed in per profile configuration
4. Smart Booster Pro (X) : Control RAM and close apps as needed
5. HEBF Optimizer: Kernel Optimizer, FStrim,Zipalingn, Battery Savings, etc..
Wakelock / Sleep
1. DS Ahorro de Bateria (X): Deep sleep when screen off and control how often it wakes to ping Email/Whatsapp, etc..
2. Force Doze: Force doze right away after screen off
3. Amplify: Turn off wakelocks or control pulse
4. Greenify (X): Hibernate apps
5. No Wakelocks: Block all wakelocks per app, useful for killing wakelock of games or non notification apps, for example.
6. Power Nap: Stop wakelocks/services/alarms from waking the phone during standby
7. XDA forum thread: [Guide]0%[0,0%/h] Idle Battery Drain on Stock Rom (Xposed & Amplify Required!) from Celestial Fury . This is the BIBLE of wakelock management!!
8. Doze: Prevent apps from using cell or wifi internet connection when in sleep mode.
Screen Savers
1. Color Changer: Set the screen Black and White. It is the only app that I have found that allows setting a widget to on/off both in the launcher and in the pull down notification menu.
2. Pixoff Battery Saver: Huge battery saver – Turn off (a.k.a black) leds of a pixel so you save battery, I can achieve 50% savings with acceptable resolution. You can generate also your own pattern.
3. Screen Filter: Filter to dim the screen
4. Screen Saver: Black
5. Any App that I can set black theme
6. Substratum: Theming app, I use Dark themes (paid for them): Domination / Inversion UI/ Swift Black
7. Boot Animation: Change your Boot animation to a dark one
8. TeamBlack: Change to black multiple apps: Whatsapp, Tapatalk,Playstore,Keep, etc..
9. GravityBox: Set swipe the notification bar on, so you swipe your finger left and right to quickly change the DIM.
Battery Checkers and Wakelock Analizers
1. Wackelock Detector : Wackelocks / Greenify apps
2. GSAM Battery Monitor: Wakelocks / Plot
3. BetterBatteryStats: Wakelocks / Plot
Miscellaneous
1. Root Toolbox Lite: Clean Dalvink / Cache after TRWP .zip installation
2. Prevent Running: App will only execute if on intentionally clicked
3. Battery Calibration: After each rom installation, reach 100% charge and erase Battery_Stats
4. Battery Draining: After calibration, a quick cycle of discharge to 0%.
[No message]
WoW! @j77moduss you've done a great work here. One petition, please add links to the apps and to that Bible guide for wakelock management.
Well I did this:
1. Install a debloated ROM and my list of apps. I have about 190 apps.
2. Use Amplify to detect and limit wakelocks.
At this point the deep sleep is almost nothing so I did not focus on wireless signal optimization. It wouldn't bring any significant juice.
3. Find a good CPU and I/O governor/scheduler. I am using ATK Balanced Zhana profile for the Interactive governor, initially designed for the One Plus 3 and working excellent on our Axon 7. This balanced profile can increase the SOT to 7-10 hours without any lack of performance. There are more aggressive profiles such as X.A.N.A. for ramping up and down the cores, able to provide up to 14h of SOT. But the lag and the jittering when scrolling is very annoying when using an extreme battery saver CPU profile. However those profiles are there just in case. In a charging emergency they could be very useful. Kernel Adiutor is my favorite app for Kernel tuning, and it is compatible with our stock kernel.
I am happy with the current setup. I am benchmarking (Using BetterBatteryStats) the current battery performance with different profiles. I am planning to install Naptime or ForceDoze (Naptime seems to be better, What do you think?), however I do not use much the Doze mode except at night. While at work I need to receive emails, messages, etc, while driving I use Spotify and At home I often browse internet when I am not playing with it. And again, The battery problem is more related to the screen and CPU than any other subsystem of the device after working out the software wakelocks.
Saludos
100 % stock here, no debloated, no unlocked bootloader, nothing. Just using out of the box.
5:35 hours SOT is a fantastic battery performance.
Go thru 25 apps installs, unlock bootloader, etc etc for let's see... +1:30 Hs of SOT ? Really worth the pay and time spend in this?
I am missing something here?
Sorry but is a honest question, not trolling at all.
Enviado desde mi ZTE A2017U mediante Tapatalk
Altomugriento said:
100 % stock here, no debloated, no unlocked bootloader, nothing. Just using out of the box.
5:35 hours SOT is a fantastic battery performance.
Go thru 25 apps installs, unlock bootloader, etc etc for let's see... +1:30 Hs of SOT ? Really worth the pay and time spend in this?
I am missing something here?
Sorry but is a honest question, not trolling at all.
Enviado desde mi ZTE A2017U mediante Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It all depends on the mix of apps you use. There are some apps that are not well polished and they have too many wakelocks, or incompatibilities with some combinations creating too much battery drain. When you install more than 150 apps and you use more than 4 or 5 social apps along the day you begin noticing a huge reduction in your battery. Not to mention Spotify, Google app, Google fit, etc. Well know for keeping your phone from going to a low power mode.
As I said before, the culprit of all this problem is basically 3:
1. Wakelocks: avoid your device to enter into low power mode, this makes your phone to waste too much battery at night or when you are not using it for some minutes.
2. CPU throttle configuration: Default governors and schedulers are usually not tuned. The manufacturers do not pay special attention to this and it is critical for having a smooth device with good battery. The ramp up and down parameters are critical here. A good profile can provide you more than 10 hours SOT without any lack of performance. Sincerely, ZTE should pay attention to this since the hardware is much more powerful than just the default 5 or 6 hours of SOT.
3. AMOLED screens are very good at saving power, and if you have your theme configured in black then the screen can contribute a lot in expanding the SOT figure. Some people use the phone more than 6 hours per day and they require to apply those mesures. probably +1:30 H of battery juice can be the difference between requiring a power bank or the battery charger.
With this phone I do never have to charge it during the night. And the car charger during commuting to work is in excess enough for keeping it alive and healthy the whole day and night and with better performance when I need it. You do not need 25 apps to do so, and probably the package @j77moduss is sharing with us is excessive and for sure overwhelming to the standard user. Maybe not 25 but 5 or 6 apps to fix the 1, 2, 3 problems and another 5 or 6 to monitor the behavior in case of excessive drain is really common and can help you on extending several hours the SOT of your terminal while reducing the idle consumption.
Altomugriento said:
100 % stock here, no debloated, no unlocked bootloader, nothing. Just using out of the box.
5:35 hours SOT is a fantastic battery performance.
Go thru 25 apps installs, unlock bootloader, etc etc for let's see... +1:30 Hs of SOT ? Really worth the pay and time spend in this?
I am missing something here?
Sorry but is a honest question, not trolling at all.
Enviado desde mi ZTE A2017U mediante Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Based on your numbers (even though they're anecdotal we can use them as a point of reference), that's giving you a 26% increase in battery with software optimization alone. I would say that's pretty damned good and worth the effort.
However, I do agree that getting 5:35hrs of SOT is pretty awesome straight out of the box. That's one of the first things that blew me away with this phone. All this power and you're getting 5:30 SOT. I light game, mid user with videos/music, but I have all my google/exchange sync to push, and have an Android Wear device connected pretty much all the time. So I expect to hit the battery a little harder than most users.
Another thing that stood out to me was the stock build. Granted, it's not as polished as some of your heavy hitters out there, but it also has a lesser footprint than most (I'm looking at you HTC and REALLY looking at you Samsung) Rooting and debloating the stock ROM has been absolutely perfect for me. I like to know exactly what my phone is running and honestly, it's worked out quite well.
Hello again, a suggestion like Lord Kelvin said "what you do not measure you cannot improve"
I have a suggestion to verify how is really running the best configuration and it is Untutu Battery test.
Maybe we could post our configuration and the Untutu result.
Any other suggestions?
@j77moduss, these are my comments on the battery extension app pack in blue:
Phone Signal (2g/3g/4g) + Wifi
1. Intelli3G (X) : Switch to 2g when phone off, turn off data when Wifi connected
2. PNF Root: Changes the pulse interval of the Cellphone and the Wifi
3. Auto Pilot: If phone signal drops bellow a certain value then the phone goes into airplane mode and checks every xminutes for good signal, instead of pinning all the time
4. Gestor de red wifi: Uses gsm towers to localize the wifi hot spots for the network you connect to. If you are in an area where you do not have a network it will disconnect Wifi. Good option if you forget, like me, to turn off the Wifi when I leave home
I leave wifi, bluetooth and LTE signal activated the whole day and night. During nigh I have about 1% drain so the cell phone signal (very low at home) or wifi are not significant energy drainers lately. Probably the monitoring task of those apps are consuming about the same wireless energy you are saving with them.
CPU / System Tweaks
1. BootManager (X): Turn Off apps in the StartUp list Usually you install things you need. Stopping push notifications removes part of the functionality, otherwise they are not started.
2. Auto Start Manager: Turn off apps in any event (aka if you turn the GPS on I do not want Google Maps to go on until I click it, etc) What are you using this for? GPS is not by any means a huge battery drainer in this phone.
3. ]CPU Turner: change governors / CPU speed in per profile configuration This is the main cause of battery drain. An optimized profile can even duplicate the screen on time.
4. Smart Booster Pro (X) : Control RAM and close apps as needed This is actually a very bad idea. Free RAM equals to wasted RAM. reading from RAM take less energy than reading from the flash storage. While the app is cached in the RAM it is not using energy until it is required. If you flush the RAM then next time your phone will use a lot more energy and time to reopen the app. This was an issue Jellybean. Nowadays clearing RAM is something we should avoid at all cost. RAM is a cache for the apps, so use it as much as possible.
5. HEBF Optimizer: Kernel Optimizer, FStrim,Zipalingn, Battery Savings, etc.. Filesystem optimizations could be improved by just switching to F2FS filesystem. This doesn't require zipaligns and it helps on saving energy and extending the life of your flash storage.
Wakelock / Sleep
1. DS Ahorro de Bateria (X): Deep sleep when screen off and control how often it wakes to ping Email/Whatsapp, etc..
2. Force Doze: Force doze right away after screen off
3. Amplify: Turn off wakelocks or control pulse
4. Greenify (X): Hibernate apps
5. No Wakelocks: Block all wakelocks per app, useful for killing wakelock of games or non notification apps, for example.
6. Power Nap: Stop wakelocks/services/alarms from waking the phone during standby
7. XDA forum thread: [Guide]0%[0,0%/h] Idle Battery Drain on Stock Rom (Xposed & Amplify Required!) from Celestial Fury . This is the BIBLE of wakelock management!!
8. Doze: Prevent apps from using cell or wifi internet connection when in sleep mode.
Numbers 1,2 and 6 seems to be somehow doing the same thing. What is the best from your point of view? why? Numbers 4 and 5 seems to be the same, however I do not find any use for them without losing functionality. No. 8 falls into the phone signal group. In this group the true game changer is Amplify.
Screen Savers
1. Color Changer: Set the screen Black and White. It is the only app that I have found that allows setting a widget to on/off both in the launcher and in the pull down notification menu.
2. Pixoff Battery Saver: Huge battery saver – Turn off (a.k.a black) leds of a pixel so you save battery, I can achieve 50% savings with acceptable resolution. You can generate also your own pattern.
3. Screen Filter: Filter to dim the screen
4. Screen Saver: Black
5. Any App that I can set black theme
6. Substratum: Theming app, I use Dark themes (paid for them): Domination / Inversion UI/ Swift Black
7. Boot Animation: Change your Boot animation to a dark one
8. TeamBlack: Change to black multiple apps: Whatsapp, Tapatalk,Playstore,Keep, etc..
9. GravityBox: Set swipe the notification bar on, so you swipe your finger left and right to quickly change the DIM.
We have one of the best screens in the market. This AMOLED Samsung panel is excellent. The absence of backlight is a great for battery savings so the more black you have, the less relevant the screen is for the SOT. Number 2 and 3 seem to be similar and I am curious about them and have my fears regarding the extra CPU required to process the screen. Which one is better? The big thing here is number 5. Number 8 is also interesting. The rest are not providing a significant advantage.
Battery Checkers and Wakelock Analizers
1. Wackelock Detector : Wackelocks / Greenify apps
2. GSAM Battery Monitor: Wakelocks / Plot
3. BetterBatteryStats: Wakelocks / Plot
I really recommend everyone to use Accubattery for at least one week to learn how to properly charge the battery. The rest of the statistics are provided by the las couple of apps you listed. Nonetheless all the battery apps are needed when you are actively tuning your phone, after a while they become useless garbage until you face another huge change such as a new ROM.
Miscellaneous
1. Root Toolbox Lite: Clean Dalvink / Cache after TRWP .zip installation This is useless in current OS. Now since the huge transition to the new ART (Android Run Time), the OS detects new installed apps so cleaning dalvik / Cache is just adding more useless drain to the battery since the AOT compiler has to process all the apps instead of only the new one. In the old times this was beneficial, not it is something you must do only if it is absolutely required.
2. Prevent Running: App will only execute if on intentionally clicked I am curius about this. what is the purpose of it regarding battery saving?
3. Battery Calibration: After each rom installation, reach 100% charge and erase Battery_Stats Why? Battery stats are aso wiped when you do a clean flash. If the OS is good enough it should take cate of recalibrating the battery. It only takes a few seconds.
4. Battery Draining: After calibration, a quick cycle of discharge to 0%.[/QUOTE] NEVER!!!!!!! There are 2 states really dangerous for the battery. One is full charge. If you reach full charge, it means that you have stressed the battery a lot in order to reach that state. New hardware battery managers just avoid reaching 100% charge just to extend the battery life. It is a common technique for PC laptops. Accubattery is one of the few battery managers that is actually focused in extending the life of your battery. You won't want to have 20% less battery after 1 year of charging it to 100% each night. Well, the second and most dangerous state for a Li-ion battery is to reach full depletion. A state of deep discharge can make it impossible to recharge again since some batteries require an extra kick not provided by the charger. Do never leave any device on until depleted, if you leave it fully discharged for a while, chances are that you will need to replace the battery. The bottom line of this is: avoid 100% charge, 85% is fair, as much as %90 and do NEVER reach full depletion. If you r phone reaches 6% just turn it off completely.
There are other ways to improve the battery such as switching to F2FS filesystem with optimized mount options. F2FS is specifically designed for flash storage. It reduces the write cycles and optimizes the use of the cache so it is far more energy efficient than the linux etx4. On the other side, it extends the life of your flash storage, including the emmc and the micro SD card die. Less writes means less wear.
Also avoid unnecessary apps, they will drain battery when rebuilding the ART AOL cache and requires extra processing for the launcher as well as for the OS in general.
I am quite happy you opened this thread with this discussion. There are other users around here such as @JeromeLeung also looking for the best performance vs. battery balance for the Axon 7.
I attach some screenshots of my battery evolution and stats for today.
Basically it drained about 1% during 5 hours at night. At work the signal is even worse and depend on the place in the building. However I spend a lot of time on wifi. At work and during the morning the screen was on for 8 hours while the battery level only drop 50%.
Extrapolating these values to a full battery level, the SOT is about 16 h
During the day I attended 3 phone calls and multiple Skype and WhatsApp calls. I used Spotify during the round trip commuting using Bluetooth. I browsed internet, I used XDA labs app, mail (tons of them), text messages, Skype, hangouts and WhatsApp messages. 4 pictures and I also had to install one app.
I only applied 4 tweaks to get this:
1. Optimized F2FS filesystem
2. Amplify
3. balanced AKT Xhana CPU profile (amazing performance)
4. Dark themes in several apps
All that using ZADmix7 ROM with stock kernel as the base system. I also enjoy premium sound with Viper4Arise that takes some CPU for the audio enhancement while playing music during commuting.
So yes, only 4 tweaks can almost triplicate the screen on time, increase performance and solve the deep sleep problem.
Oki said:
I attach some screenshots of my battery evolution and stats for today.
..... snip .....
I only applied 4 tweaks to get this:
1. Optimized F2FS filesystem
2. Amplify
3. balanced AKT Xhana CPU profile (amazing performance)
4. Dark themes in several apps
.... snip ....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the in-depth analysis. Can you explain "Amplify", which of the 5 "Xhana Balanced" profiles you used & looks like you are fine-tuning an update to the application of F2FS? How will that change F2FS implementation for those of us that haven't made the change yet?
amphi66 said:
Thanks for the in-depth analysis. Can you explain "Amplify", which of the 5 "Xhana Balanced" profiles you used & looks like you are fine-tuning an update to the application of F2FS? How will that change F2FS implementation for those of us that haven't made the change yet?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think they released a new all in one script called AKT that only has 2 Xana and 1 Zhana profile. Simpler! :laugh:
JeromeLeung said:
I think they released a new all in one script called AKT that only has 2 Xana and 1 Zhana profile. Simpler! :laugh:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I'll check again. I had downloaded the AKT just yesterday.
amphi66 said:
Thanks for the in-depth analysis. Can you explain "Amplify", which of the 5 "Xhana Balanced" profiles you used & looks like you are fine-tuning an update to the application of F2FS? How will that change F2FS implementation for those of us that haven't made the change yet?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The one I was using yesterday was the Xhana profile. It is under the balanced submenu of the AKT command. It won't work on stock kernel unless you enable init.d support before flashing the AKT profiles ZIP. Regarding the F2FS optimization, please read the updated OP of that thread, In my latest posts in that thread I explain the procedure to integrate the mount options in init.d. The rebuild of the filesystem structure with optimized values is about to be simpler, since we are tuning the new TWRP 3.0.3-f2fs with backported F2FS drivers from Android 4.10. Do not use it yet since it can destroy your data partition if you use it as any other TWRP!!!! 3.0.3-1 is the safest so far. But you are safe if you already have a backup of your /data and /sdcard folders.
Oki said:
The one I was using yesterday was the Xhana profile. It is under the balanced submenu of the AKT command. It won't work on stock kernel unless you enable init.d support before flashing the AKT profiles ZIP. Regarding the F2FS optimization, please read the updated OP of that thread, In my latest posts in that thread I explain the procedure to integrate the mount options in init.d. The rebuild of the filesystem structure with optimized values is about to be simpler, since we are tuning the new TWRP 3.0.3-f2fs with backported F2FS drivers from Android 4.10. Do not use it yet since it can destroy your data partition if you use it as any other TWRP!!!! 3.0.3-1 is the safest so far. But you are safe if you already have a backup of your /data and /sdcard folders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Got it. I have HawkPepper, just above "Project'. The F2FS optimizations look interesting, but a bit confusing at this point. I used F2FS on my N5, but it was simply a question of having a kernel that supported, saving sdcard contents, changing structure from TWRP and copying tbe data back again.
amphi66 said:
Got it. I have HawkPepper, just above "Project'. The F2FS optimizations look interesting, but a bit confusing at this point. I uses F2FS on my N5, but it was simply a question of having a kernel that supported, saving sdcard contents, changing structure from TWRP and copying tbe data back again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Axon 7 stock kernel supports F2FS, so you just have to do basically what you did with the N5. However there are some mount options that can optimize the structure created during the data restore, and that depends on the F2FS implementation. There are also some problems with the encryption, this is why I wrote the guide for the Axon 7.
Oki said:
The one I was using yesterday was the Xhana profile. It is under the balanced submenu of the AKT command. It won't work on stock kernel unless you enable init.d support before flashing the AKT profiles ZIP. Regarding the F2FS optimization, please read the updated OP of that thread, In my latest posts in that thread I explain the procedure to integrate the mount options in init.d. The rebuild of the filesystem structure with optimized values is about to be simpler, since we are tuning the new TWRP 3.0.3-f2fs with backported F2FS drivers from Android 4.10. Do not use it yet since it can destroy your data partition if you use it as any other TWRP!!!! 3.0.3-1 is the safest so far. But you are safe if you already have a backup of your /data and /sdcard folders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you mind sharing the Amplify wakelocks/alarms/services settings you have on your phone? Just bought the app, but have no idea what is safe to tweak without breaking the phone </3
Pollito788 said:
Do you mind sharing the Amplify wakelocks/alarms/services settings you have on your phone? Just bought the app, but have no idea what is safe to tweak without breaking the phone </3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't limited the system too much. I do not want to get rid of receiving messages or limiting location services, so I allowed the wakelocks to be active every 180 sec. I limited: GCoreFlp, Location ManagerService, NlpWakeLock, AudioIn, bluedroid_timer, NlpCollectorWakeLock.
Same for alarms: com.droid27.twc.ACTION_TIMER_TICK, ch.bitspin.timely.widget.UPDATE_ACTION and com.android.chrome/com.google.ipc.invalidation.external.client.contrib.AndroidListener$AlarmReceiver.
I have not limited any service. I do not want to save battery while losing features.
I was losing about 1% through the night so I do not need to go very aggressive on Amplify configuration. I just force close Spotify after using it since I see it drains the battery when not in use. Amplify is not per-se a battery saver, it helps you on controlling rogue apps.
As you could see, the magic for saving battery is not Amplify, but the good tunables for the Interactive CPU governor and IO scheduler provided by AKT. These days I have been testing different Governors and I have found that BurnoutPR3 is best for benchmarks but for a daily driver Balanced Shana profile is awesome. With it I get from 10 to 16 hrs. of SOT depending on the high load time I put on the CPU (pictures, video recording time, youtube...).
I never charge the phone by night with the Axon 7 since I do not need it, all thanks to QC 3.0, I barely charge it in my car while commuting to work and by night, if I am under 40%, I load it about 25 mins to 70% and next morning while my 15 mins commuting time it reaches about 85-90% (never full charge it if you want your battery to last more than a few months). Short sessions of quick charge are healthier than long sessions to 100%. On the other hand do never leave your battery run out of charge or close to 0%. AccuBattery app can teach you how to get healthier charging habits.
Saludos
Oki said:
I haven't limited the system too much. I do not want to get rid of receiving messages or limiting location services, so I allowed the wakelocks to be active every 180 sec. I limited: GCoreFlp, Location ManagerService, NlpWakeLock, AudioIn, bluedroid_timer, NlpCollectorWakeLock.
Same for alarms: com.droid27.twc.ACTION_TIMER_TICK, ch.bitspin.timely.widget.UPDATE_ACTION and com.android.chrome/com.google.ipc.invalidation.external.client.contrib.AndroidListener$AlarmReceiver.
I have not limited any service. I do not want so safe battery while losing features.
I was lust losing about 1% through the night so I do not need to go very aggressive on Amplify configuration. I just force close Spotify after using it since I see it drains the battery when not in use. Amplify is not per-se a battery saver, it helps you on controlling rogue apps.
As you could see, the magic for saving battery is not Amplify, but the good tunables for the Interactive CPU governor and IO scheduler provided by AKT. These days I have been testing different Governors and I have found that BurnoutPR3 is best for benchmarks but for a daily driver Balanced Shana profile is awesome. With it I get from 10 to 16 hrs. of SOT depending on the high load time I put on the CPU (pictures, video recording time, youtube...).
I never charge the phone by night with the Axon 7 since I do not need it thankls to QC 3.0, I barely charge it in my car while commuting to work and, if by night I am under 40% I load it about 25 mins to 70% and next morning while my 15 mins commuting time it reaches about 85-90% (never full charge it if you want your battery to last more than a few months). Short sessions of quick charge are healthier than long sessions to 100%. On the other hand do never leave your battery run out of charge or close to it. AccuBattery can teach you how to get healthier charging habits.
Saludos
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I appreciate the detailed explanation. Thanks a bunch !