Database Users

Power Button and Data Retention BiG Problems

Hi All,
I have such a big Power issue with the Magician, or at least Orange's M500 version of it that i'm thinking of taking back the device :'(
It doesn't appear to be a device fault, but a design fault.
In the manual it says that if you press the power button for a short time (less than a second) it turns the PDA on and off. This seems to be correct.
In the manual it says that if you press and hold the power button for two seconds it turns the phone off, but this doesn't work. Instead it turns on and off the back light. If the PDA is on, it turns on and off the back light. If the PDA is off it turns it on with the backlight on.
Last night I turned my PDA into standby mode (As i can't turn the phone off) before going to bed. Around 3am in the morning my PDA woke up saying that the battery power was low. I turned the PDA back into standby mode but it complained later on that night. i.e. had a bad nights sleep last night.
I thought it best to remove the main battery so that it wouldn't continue to wake me up, making sure that the phone and PDA were turned off (no power) and let the data backup battery retain the data until i woke up (5 hours time). However, when i woke up the internal data backup batery was flat. It was fully charged before the i took the main battery out. It is supposed to last 72 hours right!!!!? What a nightmare!
I was wondering if anyone could help me answer these power related questions, as i love the device, but its useless if it won't retain the data when it says it should.
How do you turn the phone off so that nothing is running at all? (i.e. to make sure that the internal battery is only being used to retain my data)
Does activating bluetooth drain the main battery faster even when the PDA is in standby mode? (I think i may have left it switched on last night)
Why would the internal data retention battery drain flat in under 5 hours when the main battery is removed loosing all data? Does it need the main battery in place in order to work? Could the phone and the PDA in standby mode by running off of the internal power?
Thanks in advance to any help you can give. As you can imagine i'm very disappointed as i love the functionality of this device.
Neil

When you took the battery out and left it out, if you had slid the back down (this is the same as a power off) you would of been ok.
The action of sliding the back down and back up is equvalent to a power off. When you press the power button after this, it is like a cold boot. (Not a hard reset)
I hope that made sense.

So to power off the phone and PDA you have to slide off the battery cover and slide it back on again without taking the battery out. Surely there is an easier way to turn off the phone and PDA that to remove the battery cover?

Thats how i do it. I'm sure there is a different [proper] way, but i'm not sure what it is.

Hi
The main battery when flat enough to power off the pda should have 72 hours data retention, its designed that way... so if it goes flat on friday you will still have your data on monday. thats why it was designed that way and apparently it shuts of at 50% capacity.
Bluetooth active will drain more power.
the backup battery is only supposed to last around 20 mins or less, designed so you can take the main battery out without losing data. this is because Ram needs constant voltage to store contents. hence if you leave your main battery out for more time the backup battery has charge you will end up with a hard reset occuring.
The manual needs to be updated i guess. If you want to turn off the phone you can turn on flight mode which disables the GSM radio functions.
Oh and out of interest for the battery type Li ion, its actually better to keep them charged, they dont have cycles like older batteries. they only have a certain lifespan which starts from the date of manufactor and keeping them at low charge degrades them faster.
Enjoy
SpeedN

So up until the 50% point, pressing the power button just puts the PDA in standby and the Phone is still running. Only when the power goes below 50% ish does the PDA power off completely?
So after the phone is fully charged, the M500 battery life meter says there is 6 hours and 31 minutes of battery life in it. You say that the device will turn itself off at 50% battery life remaining, so that means it only has 3h 15m of useable time before it switches off? Can the phone / PDA be used when power gets below 50% or will it just not power up until its recharged?
Thanks for your help BTW very useful information.
Neil

The battery life meter will say eg 6h 31m, the device will turn off in 6h 31m give or take (usage dependant).
when the device is flat there will be still 50% capacity in the battery to allow for the 72 hours data retention. hope thats clearer.
when it is in that state it wont turn on I think...sorry been along time since i been in that state, untill you charge it.
SpeedN

Surely the easiest way to solve this (and yes I was fooled by the manuals answer to press and hold) is to enable flight mode(which turns the phone off) then turn off ? there are a few apps/ shortcuts that will switch to flight mode easily, you then simply press the off button.
Or did I miss something

I think when we push the power off button (or if we select the machine to be powered off after a period of idle time, through setting), the machine will be off except GSM functions. So when you turn on again, it takes a few seconds to make the machine runs.
You can try if you turn off the button, after few minutes (should be more than 180 seconds), then push the Green button to dial, it takes 3-5 seconds to make the dialing pad comes out.
If you do not select the machine to be power off after a period of idle time, you can use other software to "screen off" the machine, so that when you push green button to dial, it comes out very quickly.
If you turn off the GMS, and turn off the PDA, it will not really get into sleep but will be in the state of retention of data. In any case, when you wake up the machine it takes a few seconds.
Therefore, when you are on the run (say on the street) and make calls frequently, do not power off the machine so that you can make calls quickly.
That is only my experience, I have checked other HP and XDA phones, same results. So nothing to do with the speed CPU and size internal ram.
When the machine is ON, I under clock to 208, the dialing pad also comes out very quickly.

flight mode = on , thats all, it turns the gsm function off, so battery would last long.

[Q] Weird battery behavior, high power consumption on sleep mode.

I noticed something suddenly different with my A500's battery. I have Battery Monitor Widget installed and I track the battery drain. Previously when the tablet is on sleep mode it consumes between 3-7mA; which I think is normal. But now for some reason when the tablet is on sleep mode the power consumption doesn't immediately drop to the minimum. It decreases slowly. it took an hour to decrease from 200mA to 100mA then another 3 hours from 100mA to 20mA. All during sleep mode. Long sleep is no problem. I lost about 7% over 8 hours of sleep mode. But if I use it for a minute with 1 hour intervals it never goes down 150mA. I loose 3% power every hour over a minute of use. I've gone as far as factory resetting the tablet but it's still the same.

I had the same problem. Turned out to be a leaky widget. Couldn't tell you which one, since I installed quite a few and then got rid of the en-mass.
Do you have anything non-sotck, other than the battery widget installed? Might want to look at those first.

sparky999 said:
I had the same problem. Turned out to be a leaky widget. Couldn't tell you which one, since I installed quite a few and then got rid of the en-mass.
Do you have anything non-sotck, other than the battery widget installed? Might want to look at those first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have factory reset the tablet and my only installed widget is the battery monitor widget. Maybe that's what's causing the leak. I wonder if there's any alternative to that app that can do the same thing.

[Q] Fluctuating Battery Usage Overnight - Why?

I have a new Samsung S4. Trying to learn how best to configure it to minimise battery usage and to ensure I don't install apps that eat battery. There's nothing wrong with it, battery usage is fine, just trying to get the best out of it; whilst keeping as much functionality as possible without having to constantly turn things on and off. I'm trying to avoid rooting it.
As a starting point, I'm checking usage overnight, when blocking mode and power saving are on, with wi-fi and data off; but with the alarm clock set.
I have an i-onik 7.85" tablet on Android 4.2.2 - with a deep sleep battery saver app set to slumberer ("always deep sleep when screen off") it only uses about 2% of battery overnight - the battery currently holds about 3600 mAh - so that 3% equates to 108mAh.
First time I tested my Samsung S4 (the european LTE version 9505), (actually I think I had wifi, data, location setting turned on and power saving turned off), it used 4% battery overnight. Not bad, 4% of 2600 mAh is 104 mAh. Still I thought I might do better. I tried the deep sleep app on slumberer but inexplicably the usage then jumped to 12% (whereas it at least halves battery usage on my tablet). I've since un-installed deep sleep battery saver and started turning off wi-fi, data, and turning on power saving - so I'd expect it to use 4% or less battery overnight.
The actual battery usage instead increased to around 9% to 12% - although the settings used might have varied.
Three nights ago I made sure that all apps were closed, and everything turned off as above - battery usage overnight was still 9%. I used WakeLock Detector and found that a Morrisons App was causing wakelocks. I uninstalled that, and the next night the battery usages was down to 6% with much fewer wakelocks. Still not as good as before though.
I then found there were wakelocks due hotmail and gmail sync - hotmail I changed from push sync to sync every 4 hours, gmail I changed from hourly sync to manual sync and I also turned off master sync. I also turned off location setting. That cleared the wakelocks for these apps, but battery usage last night had increased to 9%.
So, despite the same settings and less wakelocks (and it was in deep sleep all night except for 16 minutes), battery usage increased from 6% to 9% - still no where near the 4% I had at the start despite making various changes that should reduce battery consumption.
The only significant wakelocks last night were:
com.domobile.applock (via alarmManager) awake 35s giving 992 cpu wakelocks
com.google.android.google (google app) 7 wakeups
Can anyone think of any cause for increased battery usage from 6% to 9% despite more time in deepsleep, less wakelocks (other than the 2 above but there were many more wakelocks the night before lasting several minutes) and location setting turned off. I wonder about starting again from a factory reset ... NB every night before going to bed I've rebooted the phone, and charged it to between 90% and 96% and it's been tested over the same period of time. Is it normal for battery usage when the phone is sleeping to vary so much?

Charging the battery inconsistently might lower the battery life. And letting it discharge to much does the same. I generally avoid letting it go under 50% and unplugging it before 100%.
I don't know what causes your issues, but if you want full control over your phone, you will have to root.
I also had 2% drain over night at some point, but now I have 4%. But this may also be rom related.

Thanks. I'm on stock ROM. I have rooted other devices but then find some apps don't work, and of course I want to maintain my warranty.
Each day my battery is generally dropping to about 30% at which point I charge it up to between 90% and 95% before turning turning most things off ready for bed.
At some point I may leave it plugged in overnight instead - is that a bad thing?
What do you mean by charging inconsistently? Sometimes my battery may be around 50% though more often around 30% when I start it charging.

apwood said:
Thanks. I'm on stock ROM. I have rooted other devices but then find some apps don't work, and of course I want to maintain my warranty.
Each day my battery is generally dropping to about 30% at which point I charge it up to between 90% and 95% before turning turning most things off ready for bed.
At some point I may leave it plugged in overnight instead - is that a bad thing?
What do you mean by charging inconsistently? Sometimes my battery may be around 50% though more often around 30% when I start it charging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By charging inconsistently I mean exactly what you said. You charge between 90 and 95% generally, instead of leaving it to charge 100%.
Somebody said that if you live in the EU you will not lose your consumer rights. I guess that includes the right to have your phone repaired because it is in warranty. Other people have reported that the phone service accepted and repaired their phone even though it had knox flag 0x1.
There isn't much you can do on stock unrooted roms in order to reduce battery consumption.
You battery drain is probably caused by weak signal strength. Having bad signal uses more battery. The screen and the phone radio use the most power on the phone. If you put our phone in airplane mode there should be almost no battery loss. If everything is turned off.
On my old device I used to put in airplane mode during the night. I had 0% drain over night in airplane mode.

GDReaper said:
By charging inconsistently I mean exactly what you said. You charge between 90 and 95% generally, instead of leaving it to charge 100%.
Somebody said that if you live in the EU you will not lose your consumer rights. I guess that includes the right to have your phone repaired because it is in warranty. Other people have reported that the phone service accepted and repaired their phone even though it had knox flag 0x1.
There isn't much you can do on stock unrooted roms in order to reduce battery consumption.
You battery drain is probably caused by weak signal strength. Having bad signal uses more battery. The screen and the phone radio use the most power on the phone. If you put our phone in airplane mode there should be almost no battery loss. If everything is turned off.
On my old device I used to put in airplane mode during the night. I had 0% drain over night in airplane mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks - that's a good point about signal - my mobile signal and wi-fi signal does seem to vary, so that could contribute to fluctuating battery usage. I decided to test that by using airplane mode and have started charging to 100% on your advice. Unfortunately when trying to dismiss the prompt to upgrade to lollipop, I accidentally started the upgrade, with no way to cancel it. (For me, lollipop really seems a downgrade, I've lost a lot of functionality I used all the time in KitKat).
The bad news it that on lollipop overnight last night, despite using power saving mode and airplane mode, and basically everything else off including sync, it lost 7% of battery.
So I decided to do a factory reset, thinking it would go back to KitKat - but it didn't - it stayed on lollipop. It did give me the option to choose which extra apps to install (including some Samsung ones) - I declined to install any extra apps, and also turned off automatic app updates - I then turned off sync, backup and anything else that I thought might eat battery - leaving the phone with the most basic set up possible. I've not since installed any apps except Talk2Go.
The good news it that since the "factory reset" to lollipop, I've tested it for two periods of 4.5 hours on airplane mode, everything off, and I did not turn on power saving mode. The battery lost less than 1% - in fact for my last test it stayed at 100%. So either the reset fixed battery loss on lollipop, or the power saving mode was actually causing battery loss!
I'll investigate that and report back for the benefit of other users. I'll then gradually update my settings and see what, if anything causes battery usage to increase when on airplane mode. Of course it's also possible that battery usage might increase without changing anything, as per some reports from those upgraded to Lollipop - if so I'll report on that - and confirm if a reset seems fixes it.
Lollipop is supposed to have a battery saver mode - but it seems to be missing in the stock OTA update to S4 - does anyone know how to use this mode? It sounds better than Samsung's own power saving mode (especially since that might actually be causing battery drain rather than saving battery!)

apwood said:
Thanks - that's a good point about signal - my mobile signal and wi-fi signal does seem to vary, so that could contribute to fluctuating battery usage. I decided to test that by using airplane mode and have started charging to 100% on your advice. Unfortunately when trying to dismiss the prompt to upgrade to lollipop, I accidentally started the upgrade, with no way to cancel it. (For me, lollipop really seems a downgrade, I've lost a lot of functionality I used all the time in KitKat).
The bad news it that on lollipop overnight last night, despite using power saving mode and airplane mode, and basically everything else off including sync, it lost 7% of battery.
So I decided to do a factory reset, thinking it would go back to KitKat - but it didn't - it stayed on lollipop. It did give me the option to choose which extra apps to install (including some Samsung ones) - I declined to install any extra apps, and also turned off automatic app updates - I then turned off sync, backup and anything else that I thought might eat battery - leaving the phone with the most basic set up possible. I've not since installed any apps except Talk2Go.
The good news it that since the "factory reset" to lollipop, I've tested it for two periods of 4.5 hours on airplane mode, everything off, and I did not turn on power saving mode. The battery lost less than 1% - in fact for my last test it stayed at 100%. So either the reset fixed battery loss on lollipop, or the power saving mode was actually causing battery loss!
I'll investigate that and report back for the benefit of other users. I'll then gradually update my settings and see what, if anything causes battery usage to increase when on airplane mode. Of course it's also possible that battery usage might increase without changing anything, as per some reports from those upgraded to Lollipop - if so I'll report on that - and confirm if a reset seems fixes it.
Lollipop is supposed to have a battery saver mode - but it seems to be missing in the stock OTA update to S4 - does anyone know how to use this mode? It sounds better than Samsung's own power saving mode (especially since that might actually be causing battery drain rather than saving battery!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Samsung probably replaced the stock lollipop battery saver with their own battery saver.
You could return to kitkat by flashing via Odin. Doing so will not give you knox status 0x1 and you don't even need root.
On second thought, you have the new bootloader so you probably won't be able to do it without tripping knox..
From what I saw, battery saver changes only the minimum screen brightness to a lower value than normal and it changes the CPU governor to a more battery friendly one.
This is what I observed on the GPE rom battery saver mode.

Testing continues - for the first few nights battery drain was less than 2% on airplane mode, but it wasn't repeated last night. It drained 9% with exactly the same settings (ie everything off except the alarm clock, no foreground processes running and airplane mode on).
I've installed a few apps - one from TalkTalk, one from Three Mobile, a terminal emulator and wakelocks detector. So have now uinstalled the first 2 to see if they are causing the drain - BUT I suspect it's a bug in this release of Android Lollipop.

apwood said:
Testing continues - for the first few nights battery drain was less than 2% on airplane mode, but it wasn't repeated last night. It drained 9% with exactly the same settings (ie everything off except the alarm clock, no foreground processes running and airplane mode on).
I've installed a few apps - one from TalkTalk, one from Three Mobile, a terminal emulator and wakelocks detector. So have now uinstalled the first 2 to see if they are causing the drain - BUT I suspect it's a bug in this release of Android Lollipop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Many people have problems with the stock lollipop. Samsung messed up.
It might also be the battery. I have my phone since november. My battery used to drain 2% over night. Now it drains 4% over night. Basically it drains very fast to 96%, from there it drains normaly, depending on the usage. This happens on every rom I tried and with even the most battery oriented settings.

You seem to be using applock. If you don't need it you can delete it and get rid of a few wakelocks.

Strange-Higher Battery Drain on Medium Power Saving Mode/Adaptive Power Saving Mode

The 'adaptive power saving' mode is resulting in higher battery drain overnight (about 8-10%) compared to optimized mode (2-3%). I have tested this for a few nights and the results are the same. Disabling the adaptive power saving helps but this is not the solution as it defeats the very purpose of the feature. It's a similar issue with 'Medium Power Save' mode. Enabling this makes no difference to standby battery and overnight drain is anywhere between 6-10% compared to optimized mode. I dont have the screengrabs but I'm sure of this issue. Not sure if its just me or is this an Android 10 issue. (S10+ Exynos here).

linom said:
The 'adaptive power saving' mode is resulting in higher battery drain overnight (about 8-10%) compared to optimized mode (2-3%). I have tested this for a few nights and the results are the same. Disabling the adaptive power saving helps but this is not the solution as it defeats the very purpose of the feature. It's a similar issue with 'Medium Power Save' mode. Enabling this makes no difference to standby battery and overnight drain is anywhere between 6-10% compared to optimized mode. I dont have the screengrabs but I'm sure of this issue. Not sure if its just me or is this an Android 10 issue. (S10+ Exynos here).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i am using s10e, and i experiencing similar problem with yours. Medium power save mode drains more battery than ootimized mode.
That sounds ridiculous, samsung must fix it.

Battery drain Fossil gen5

Hi all,
Since a few days I have a huge battery drain om my Fossil gen5. It never was the best battery, but it lasted from 6am till 9-10pm before it went in battery saving mode (without sport exercise)
Now it's already in batt saving mode after 10 hours .
Everything is "on" except WiFi, nfc and OK google detection. The same settings and apps as a month ago.
Are there any tricks/mods/custom roms to extend battery life without compromises in functionality?
I already did a reinstall, but unfortunately it didn't affect the battery life.
Hope someone can help me

[email protected] said:
Hi all,
Since a few days I have a huge battery drain om my Fossil gen5. It never was the best battery, but it lasted from 6am till 9-10pm before it went in battery saving mode (without sport exercise)
Now it's already in batt saving mode after 10 hours .
Everything is "on" except WiFi, nfc and OK google detection. The same settings and apps as a month ago.
Are there any tricks/mods/custom roms to extend battery life without compromises in functionality?
I already did a reinstall, but unfortunately it didn't affect the battery life.
Hope someone can help me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Other than turning off things like Location (as you already have Wifi and NFC off), not too much else than uninstalling apps you don't need, and turning off Notifications on most of your apps except the main essentials you want.
Turn off Always On displays, or the Tilt/Tap to Wake (they do consume more battery and it's just as easy to hit the main crown).
Only turn on Location/etc when you need them rather than on all the time.
Also the little battery inside, if you've been using it from 0% charged to 100% the whole time, instead of keeping in in 20% ~ 80% (ie: not charging more than 80% or so), the battery itself will deteriorate after a while. Keeping it between 20% and 80% typically keeps most Li-Ion/Po batteries healthy longer. (kind of why wireless ear buds can't hold a charge anymore after 2 or 3 years).