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Battery life draining too fast; "Android OS" to blame?

I've noticed that my battery life is draining somewhat faster than seems reasonable...
After 7 hours away from my charger I'm at 36% remaining, and frankly haven't used the phone much today. Two 5 minute calls and a bit of playing with email.
The battery status shows that 'Android OS' is using 43% of the battery at the moment. Next after that is the screen at 19%.
Is that normal? Or have I installed something that is draining away at it? What is the best app to identify the malevolent drainer?
Many thanks in advance!

my "Android OS" is always somewhere around 2-3%. You running stock build? mebby reboot the phone and check again?

Stock build.
Have rebooted and killed most of the apps that came along with the reboot. Will watch it over the rest of the day and see if the problem repeats.

Screen usually 70% Android 2-3%.
Mine was horrible then i saw an app G backup.that I had on auto eating up 40%... changed it to manual and eliminated that and an overheating issue... Wierd.

I have been having issues with battery life also. My cell standby was using 65-85% between charges. It would go down to 20-25% battery life after 7-8 hrs with little to no use. I did a factory reset and everything was great for one day, cell standby dropped to about 4%. I added some apps, recharged overnight, and in the morning after 1 hr battery was down to 80%, cell standby back up to 75%. not sure if it's an app i installed or not. At home i have been using a different micro usb charger, not the stock one. I'm wondering if that could be the cause. I did a 2nd factory wipe this morning and now cell standy is back to 4%. I'm going to only use the OEM charger and only add apps 1 at a time to try and narrow down the cause.

do you have the 3g problem?
my guess is ... if your phone keep switching between 3g/edge or umts/hsdpa
you keep using wireless radio and thus consumes much more power

no, I've never had any 3g problems, other than only getting a max download speed of about .8Mbps.
I called HTC about the high cell standby usage and they suggested - turning screen brightness all the way down, turn off GPS, turn off bluetooth, turn off wifi, etc... If I have to have everything turned off so my battery won't die then what's the point of having an otherwise awesome phone. It's been an hour now since unplugging and cell standby is at 20%, battery life at 98%. I guess we'll see...

Battery issues are almost always due to apps (or services) running, especially ones that are constantly using a data connection.
That's why Apple don't allow the iphone to run anything in the background ;-)
If it was fine after reset and then bad after you added some apps then you know one of them is to blame......
My nexus one has been unplugged for 24 hours now and is at 66% (fairly light use in that time to be fair).

it's possible that android synching could cause usage to spike to those levels, but that shouldn't be happening very often.

I leave syncing on all the time and my phone is easily 14 or 15 hours to get to 20% with what sounds like heavier usage than what konsta is reporting.

I read some guy solved most of the battery issues by turning off GPS. I'm now following this practise after a full charge from completely dead to see how it goes. I normally have to charge once per day, I do use the phone quite a lot, not much for phone calls though, twitter, facebook, sms, tech news etc!

I think that my "Android OS" drain must have been a one-time event (hope so, anyway). After my reboot I'm now up to cell standby as my primary usage. I've spent a fair bit of time in the last few hours in patchy signal areas, so seems fair.
Will see how long it lasts tomorrow.

I agree that the GPS seems to be the biggest battery killer. Completely drained my machine in next to no time when I was playing with Copilot live.

I am actually impressed with the battery life on the n1. I can keep GPS on and use it, playing games on the train and answering emails and calls all day long with seesmic constantly running and easily get through the entire day. If I don't charge it overnight I will be about 15-20% remainig in the morning. I have stock android os on an unlocked n1.

Power drain solved....
Hi every one.
My battery life to was abismal, that was until I read this over on Modaco.
GSM 2G+3G ("WCDMA preferred") drains battery over 5 times faster than exclusive 3G ("WCDMA Only")
Average battery drain / hour when phone is idle with screen off:
1-Standard shipping mode WCDMA prefered, i.e. both 2G and 3G enabled, Wifi off): 10% / hour
2-Alternate WCDMA Only mode, 3G exclusively, no Wifi: 1.7% / hour
So I tried changing the phone settings from WCDMA prefered to WCDMA only. WOW battery life instanly better!!! 3G still works and phone OK.
To do this enter *#*#4636#*#* on phone dial pad, select phone information, then scroll down to selection box, change set preferred network type to WCDMA only. Switch phone to airplane mode, then switch airplane off and watch your battery performance increase by 300% plus...

gadjet said:
Hi every one.
My battery life to was abismal, that was until I read this over on Modaco.
GSM 2G+3G ("WCDMA preferred") drains battery over 5 times faster than exclusive 3G ("WCDMA Only")
Average battery drain / hour when phone is idle with screen off:
1-Standard shipping mode WCDMA prefered, i.e. both 2G and 3G enabled, Wifi off): 10% / hour
2-Alternate WCDMA Only mode, 3G exclusively, no Wifi: 1.7% / hour
So I tried changing the phone settings from WCDMA prefered to WCDMA only. WOW battery life instanly better!!! 3G still works and phone OK.
To do this enter *#*#4636#*#* on phone dial pad, select phone information, then scroll down to selection box, change set preferred network type to WCDMA only. Switch phone to airplane mode, then switch airplane off and watch your battery performance increase by 300% plus...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you on T-Mobile?

gadjet said:
Hi every one.
My battery life to was abismal, that was until I read this over on Modaco.
GSM 2G+3G ("WCDMA preferred") drains battery over 5 times faster than exclusive 3G ("WCDMA Only")
Average battery drain / hour when phone is idle with screen off:
1-Standard shipping mode WCDMA prefered, i.e. both 2G and 3G enabled, Wifi off): 10% / hour
2-Alternate WCDMA Only mode, 3G exclusively, no Wifi: 1.7% / hour
So I tried changing the phone settings from WCDMA prefered to WCDMA only. WOW battery life instanly better!!! 3G still works and phone OK.
To do this enter *#*#4636#*#* on phone dial pad, select phone information, then scroll down to selection box, change set preferred network type to WCDMA only. Switch phone to airplane mode, then switch airplane off and watch your battery performance increase by 300% plus...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you on T-Mobile? Do you have a fairly strong 3g. signal ? if one did have a fairly strong 3g signal would this still be advisable?

rockky said:
Are you on T-Mobile? Do you have a fairly strong 3g. signal ? if one did have a fairly strong 3g signal would this still be advisable?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi rockky.
No I am on Orange, I usually only get a full strength 3G at my works and not usually at home, however since getting a Nexus 1 i now get a limited 3G at home..

after uninstalling mobile defense and city caller id my bat went back to normal.

I noticed pretty good battery improvement when I turned off GPS (only turn it on when I need it).

baseband_xmm_power kernel wakelock drains my battery!

Hi, I don't know what to do, I'm running 4.2.1 stock on my 32 3G N7. The tablet cannot go in deep sleep because of constant baseband_xmm_power kernel wakelocks. I tried factory reset, but the problem persists. For example with 5h the screen off, there are >4 hours partial kernel wakelocks.

Same here and I'm sick of it. Sometimes my Nexus manages to enter deep sleep but I still see a significant percentage of that kernel wakelock. It also happens that wifi won't shut off on sleep, and I'm talking about when it truly enters deep sleep, and it's correctly configured.

I have the same problem. Battery life is really poor due to this. My LP core is running at full tilt for at least half the time the screen is off, preventing deep sleep.
I found a suggestion that turning on flight mode and then rebooting might help, but I think the problem recurs pretty quickly if not immediately.
Saw a post that said it's due to the modem switching power levels when radio reception is poor. That would definitely make sense in my case — 3G reception fluctuates a lot at home and I am constantly losing connection. I have removed the SIM and will check it in the morning to see if there's any improvement. (Using BetterBatteryStats).
Hope this bug gets fixed in the next update. Almost thinking I should have got the vanilla wifi model
________________
EDIT: Removing SIM overnight doesn't help. Over the course of 8h screen off, baseband_xmm_power was active for 7h 46m!

I'm having the same problem, only when mobile reception is poor. Unfortunately, my mobile coverage at home is currently near-zero, which makes using my tablet as an alarm clock a dicey proposition unless I plug it in overnight.

Battery drain while sleeping

Hello
I have a samsung s4 i9500 new phone about 4 months old. I encoutered many battery problems so i installed Arrow rom, which i fell in love with it in a sec, it had everything and the battery life was just amazing. (Thanks to all who contributed into making this amazing rom).
But something happened when i installed an app about adds and it kinda restored my phone yo factory settings, i didnt care much for the reset, but i found out that my battery life ia no longer like before. Let me give you my states before and after.
Ps: i reinstalled the rom hoping better resulta but it was the same
I sleep usually at 1pm and wake up at 10. Thats 9 hours, when my phone was fine it only drained about 10% or 12%.
But as in for today for example, i slept 7 hours and it drained 20%.
Most of the draining came from android oa at 89%.
Please note that before i go to sleep i always charge my phone to 100%
Is there something wrong? Ill do any test to solve mu problem.
Thanks all

Ali Omran said:
Hello
I have a samsung s4 i9500 new phone about 4 months old. I encoutered many battery problems so i installed Arrow rom, which i fell in love with it in a sec, it had everything and the battery life was just amazing. (Thanks to all who contributed into making this amazing rom).
But something happened when i installed an app about adds and it kinda restored my phone yo factory settings, i didnt care much for the reset, but i found out that my battery life ia no longer like before. Let me give you my states before and after.
Ps: i reinstalled the rom hoping better resulta but it was the same
I sleep usually at 1pm and wake up at 10. Thats 9 hours, when my phone was fine it only drained about 10% or 12%.
But as in for today for example, i slept 7 hours and it drained 20%.
Most of the draining came from android oa at 89%.
Please note that before i go to sleep i always charge my phone to 100%
Is there something wrong? Ill do any test to solve mu problem.
Thanks all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi.
U should install BBS app and post "other" and "partial wakelocks" screenshots so that we can tell what's eating up yr battery life.
Cheers.

deep sleep!
Yeah BBS is definitely the way to go..also you might want to check skipjack's awesome thread for better batt life when idle (insanely )
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2357417
I got better batt life with my s4 after i did some of their tips on this thread..
Sweetdreams to your phone's battery! ))

I have attached my files, btw the battery is kinda weird, one day it drained about 40% but somedays drains way less, keep in mind that when i go to sleep i turn off my wifi and use edge network, and power savor too.

Some solutions that I follow that kind of stopped severe battery drain and got the phone in deep sleep mode:
- Disable "Scanning Always Available" from Advanced settings of WiFi
- Disable GPS and 'Use Wireless Networks' from Location settings menu
- Greenify apps and a few services
- Before putting the phone down for good, clear all the recently opened apps by pressing and holding the HOME button and clearing them all. Then open up the task manager and clear RAM.
- To get the phone into deep sleep (you can monitor this using a free app called WakeLock detector, available on PlayStore), if you have the habit of switching on the screen and then switching it off whilst being in the lockscreen mode (just like you check time quickly without unlocking the device), the S4 DOES NOT go into deep sleep mode even though the screen is switched off.
To solve this, you need to unlock the screen, get to homescreen and switch off screen from there instead of directly locking/switching off the screen without unlocking the device. Yes, it's hell and I don't know why this issue persists :/

[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.

Recommendation for battery friendly ROM

Hi all,
I purchased my X720 a couple of weeks ago and am still not settled with a ROM which I'd say I am satisfied with battery performance.
Tried LineageOS and it drew more than 5% idle during my sleep ~7 hours. Then I tried Validus and basically the battery drained after a day with minimum use. In both case I only installed 1 or 2 apps other than the gapps. Maybe I didn't get everything right. I am even considering going back to stock or a debloated version of stock.
I just want to check if anyone can recommend any ROM that draws less then 1% each 2 hours idle (not on flight mode). I don't mind whether it's MM or N as long as the google framework works.
Thanks in advance.
B

Best I've gotten without heavily tweaking and underclocking is 0.6 hr. With some work I got it down to 0.3. still working to improve it. This is on Turbo's Miui Rom v 10A. I got 2 days 18 hrs until it hit 5% battery left. That was with 3hrs 42mins SOT. The Rom has a few issues with setting not sticking on reboot. My watch crashes the rom (Android Wear). Finally the lock screen doesnt work with smartlock. Sure is pretty though.
Another option would be a stock based rom that's debloated.
Any of the nougat roms seem to have relatively high drain like 1.0 / hr was the best I have seen.

Stock still has the best battery life out of all the ROMs available. If you install an app that forces deep doze then you should be able to get much lower idle usage. However, you'll lose a lot of notifications. That's the trade-off...
One that I've used before going back to stock was Naptime: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.franco.doze
I guess greenify also has that functionality, but it seemed buggy to me (but it is probably more stable now).

Omni drains 0-2% overnight for me. However, if you're in poor coverage (orange/red) you'll lose more battery regardless. I keep my phone on 2G overnight and data is automatically turned off by force doze.
Also remember that apps can prevent the device from entering deep sleep, so a rogue app could be the cause of your drain. Facebook, Snapchat, etc. Those are battery hogs.

Ace42 said:
Omni drains 0-2% overnight for me. However, if you're in poor coverage (orange/red) you'll lose more battery regardless. I keep my phone on 2G overnight and data is automatically turned off by force doze.
Also remember that apps can prevent the device from entering deep sleep, so a rogue app could be the cause of your drain. Facebook, Snapchat, etc. Those are battery hogs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
force doze?

I found best battery stock rom by AIBA (23S and 26S new) in Russia forum its good rom:
https://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=783366m click on second topic under recovery and select alba19986
For Nougat I found Ground Zero rom I tried Tipsy battery is pretty good, try few other roms but seems to drain too much for my like.