Hello!
I updated to 7.0 last Friday and the phone has been acting very well, overall.
But I am having some problems with the battery life. In actuality, it can last 3 days in standby, but I feel like the "Phone Idle" is eating WAY too much battery regardless.
The drain when in standby, for example, should be closer to 1% for 7-8 hours, but for me it is closer to 7-8%, almost 1 % drain per hour in a supposedly sleeping state.
Right now, my stats are as follows, after 1 day and 10 hours (with 1 day 3 hours left):
Screen 30% (2h 23m SoT, 677mAh)
Phone Idle 20% (1d 10h, 459mAh)
Google Play Services 11% (radio active 1h 24m, 246mAh)
Cell Standby 10% (radio active 4m 45s, 234 mAh)
Android OS 6%
Android System 5%
... the rest is some apps with negligible usage.
So, this tells me that something is very wrong with Phone idle. It has consumed almost as much as the screen.
I read a lot about this issue and a large number of reports claim that doing a factory reset does not fix the problem. I am scared to do a reset, since Debloater no longer works in Android 7, and I will not be able to deactivate crap like all facebook services and What's New. So, it's a bit of a no-exit situation... I don't think rooting and using custom roms is a good idea for me, as I would like to retain warranty of my device until it expires. I plan to root and modify it after that.
Still, are any of you experiencing this issue since the Nougat update? Any ideas on how to solve it?
So far, suggestions include:
- removing SD card
- turning adaptive brightness OFF
- turning location accuracy to battery-saving mode
- turning Wi-Fi awake ON (only when charging), or OFF
- going to App settings and selecting 'reset all app settings'
- wipe cache partition by holding power and volume up keys (while phone is on) until you feel 3 vibrations
I've already done these things today (except sd cards, no way I am giving that up) so it's early to say if they helped.
Feel free to use this thread even if you just want to share your problem-free battery experience on android 7 with your Sony Z5C. I am curious to see how does a "perfectly fine" z5c unit perform in terms of battery, on Android 7. What is the "real" expected real-life performance?
Thanks for reading.
The things you suggest are not gonna change too much.
* Resetting app settings or removing your SD card is not gonna do anything at all.
* The location accuracy can make a little difference (let's say 2% at the end of the day) but the problem with location settings isn't HOW it's gonna look for a location, but HOW MANY TIMES. If you want longer idle, location services should be off (in one or another way) when your phone is sleeping.
In my eyes, with the things you have been doing is not worth the hassle.
** With Nougat, you still have the opportunity to extend your battery life a lot with apps like
Doze Settings Editor
My Android Tools
And you'll have to debloat.
I'm still testing these possibilities. But I just got on Nougat today, and with my initial settings, I broke some functionality I need. (Alarm Clock didn't work in deep sleep and I couldn't install WhatsApp). Maybe I get it working the way I want in the next few days or week, but I guess so.
** Having a kernel that allows you to change governors can also make a huge difference. Governors will give you the opportunity to buy (a lot of) battery life and to reduce heat, but you pay with performance.
** One more thing that can make a huge difference, is performing a clean install. So you need to install Nougat (or whatever ROM you use) on a clean system, and install your apps manually.
"I am curious to see how does a "perfectly fine" z5c unit perform in terms of battery, on Android 7. What is the "real" expected real-life performance?"
-->> With these things done and Doze/MyAndroidTools optimized, your phone shouldn't use more than 2-3% overnight. On an optimized MM (with XPosed/Greenify/Amplify) I had to recharge about 2 times a week. Maybe on Nougat it will be a little bit less because there's no XPosed/Amplify, but it should be possible that your battery life will be about three times as long as you have right now.
** If you want a better understanding about battery life, forget about these stats. You won't learn anything from the stats (like you gave us). Instead you can use an app like Better Battery Stats. Especially in (deep) sleep, knowing as much as possible about wakelocks is quite essential.
By the way, you can't call that a "real" expected thing. Battery life is always a compromise, and balanced with performance. Optimization (in the way I'm speaking about) is that much more than limiting performance/apps/widgets while you use your phone, and turning your phone in a dead object as soon as possible when the screen is off.
--jenana-- said:
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for this response, it's quite elaborate. But I am fully convinced that the Phone Idle issue is not due to ANY of my settings and should not plague a device, even if it is non-rooted. Most of the suggestions you added would require root, or operations that are beyond what I am willing to risk right now. Even the simple root would likely require me to downgrade to 6 and most likely brick my device due to unreliable nature of many of these guides.
I will definitely be trying out the BBS non-root edition as soon as I get home and manage to activate it properly.
But, overall, a stock non-rooted android 7 should not drain as much battery in idle mode. I know that via rooting you can get as close to 0.2% battery drain per hour. But what about no root?
Ultimately, I will root the device at some point when warranty has expired, or is close to, and I will get it to drain extremely slow with xposed and some tweaking. But we shouldn't be required to do this for normal battery life. It's becoming ridiculous at this point.
BTW. Is doing the "Repair" thing from Sony PC Companion equatable to doing a "clean install"? In other words, can I do this without having to actually re-install a rom completely and without rooting the device?
Bobzee said:
Thank you for this response, it's quite elaborate. But I am fully convinced that the Phone Idle issue is not due to ANY of my settings and should not plague a device, even if it is non-rooted. Most of the suggestions you added would require root, or operations that are beyond what I am willing to risk right now. Even the simple root would likely require me to downgrade to 6 and most likely brick my device due to unreliable nature of many of these guides.
I will definitely be trying out the BBS non-root edition as soon as I get home and manage to activate it properly.
But, overall, a stock non-rooted android 7 should not drain as much battery in idle mode. I know that via rooting you can get as close to 0.2% battery drain per hour. But what about no root?
Ultimately, I will root the device at some point when warranty has expired, or is close to, and I will get it to drain extremely slow with xposed and some tweaking. But we shouldn't be required to do this for normal battery life. It's becoming ridiculous at this point.
BTW. Is doing the "Repair" thing from Sony PC Companion equatable to doing a "clean install"? In other words, can I do this without having to actually re-install a rom completely and without rooting the device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haha, I'm bad in keeping my stories short.
If you're non-rooted, you won't ever get that experience. Not even close. It depends on the apps you're using, but a few messenger-apps (like facebook/fb messenger/whatsapp) + some google apps like maps/calendar/... or weather apps rely heavily on location settings, and they always want to sync or connect with their mothership. To illustrate my point, at a certain point last year I had done some dirty flashes, I had quite some apps and widgets like this installed, but in the end it drained 30% battery overnight. After clean install + debloater it went down to 10% overnight. After heavily tweaking with Amplify/MyAndroidTools/Greenify and so on, it went down to 1% overnight.
Without root, the only thing major thing you can do is: clean install. Almost everything else (with a large enough impact on battery life) is beyond your control. Apparently the choice of developers is to implement smooth and always-up-to-date apps and widget, always ready to serve you the latest news/messages and so on. I agree with you that smartphones these days aren't lean at all. And there are no secret settings that will give you a much better battery life all of a sudden.
I've never used PC Companion. I've no idea what it does or how it works exactly. I don't think it's powerful enough to solve issues with wakelocks.
Literally:
* If you want control over Android, you need to root. Without root: no control whatsoever;
* Clean install = everything out, fresh start. You can't paint your wall without removing your paintings.
Thanks again for the great response. And PC Companion is Sony's default software that comes with their devices and is used to backup/reset/update, etc.
To clarify, I never expected any secret battery options that will solve all my problems. I was rather hoping that it's a well-known problem with a possible non-root solution.
As to rooting, yeah - I would love to do it, but I am afraid your guide won't work for 7.0, would it? I am already using 32.3.A.0.376-R2D. In any case, rooting so soon after buying it (a few months) is not something I am rushing to do.
Also, to add something else - my old Z1, when it was on KitKat 4.4, used to last me 5 days with low usage EASILY. The thing actually drained about 1% per night without having to root it, with the normal stock features and 3G network on all the time. Something just went wrong down the road for many manufacturers and their relationship with the android OS. The battery life became abysmal for me after android 5 and above it.
And then, at work, I have a Nexus 5x on my desk for testing, which lasts 6 days in standby with a battery which is not dramatically bigger, with no root. But it has no SIM card or 3g/4g on at all, only WiFi.
This brings me to believe that you are absolutely right about location services.
And a last question... if I am to root now, from FW 32.3.A.0.376-R2D, what would you say would be the most reliable method? I saw your guide and really liked it, but it seems to require MM to begin with. Seen many other guides, but in each guide there are responses about frozen/bricked devices, or issies with no working camera/finger scanner/etc... It's a bit worrying.
brokich said:
Thanks again for the great response. And PC Companion is Sony's default software that comes with their devices and is used to backup/reset/update, etc.
To clarify, I never expected any secret battery options that will solve all my problems. I was rather hoping that it's a well-known problem with a possible non-root solution.
As to rooting, yeah - I would love to do it, but I am afraid your guide won't work for 7.0, would it? I am already using 32.3.A.0.376-R2D. In any case, rooting so soon after buying it (a few months) is not something I am rushing to do.
Also, to add something else - my old Z1, when it was on KitKat 4.4, used to last me 5 days with low usage EASILY. The thing actually drained about 1% per night without having to root it, with the normal stock features and 3G network on all the time. Something just went wrong down the road for many manufacturers and their relationship with the android OS. The battery life became abysmal for me after android 5 and above it.
And then, at work, I have a Nexus 5x on my desk for testing, which lasts 6 days in standby with a battery which is not dramatically bigger, with no root. But it has no SIM card or 3g/4g on at all, only WiFi.
This brings me to believe that you are absolutely right about location services.
And a last question... if I am to root now, from FW 32.3.A.0.376-R2D, what would you say would be the most reliable method? I saw your guide and really liked it, but it seems to require MM to begin with. Seen many other guides, but in each guide there are responses about frozen/bricked devices, or issies with no working camera/finger scanner/etc... It's a bit worrying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The guide I wrote is actually outdated. I wrote it in the first weeks after MM was released.
IF you want to root, it's actually not that difficult.
0. Prepare your computer, because you need the right drivers and some tools.
1. If it's the first time you unlock your bootloader, you might want to backup your TA-partition. I leave the details to other people, there are great guides about it in this subforum. As far as I know, to do this, you need to go back to marshmellow. I've never done this, because I unlocked my bootloader before there where any tools or any knowledge available about how to do this. So my original TA partition is gone forever (and I've never missed it).
2. Flash Nougat. This is really simple. You only have to download a (large) file, click a few buttons in flashtool, drink a coffee, and it's done.
3. Make a kernel with Rootkernel. It's basically like following a recipe, and in the end you have a file (the kernel) which you can install with the tools on your computer. In this step, you made root access and TWRP-recovery.
4. Reboot
Personally (and I know not everybody will agree), I wouldn't bother with backup of the TA partition. So *I* would just unlock the bootloader and move on. But your first step should be: make yourself familiar with basic adb commands and with how to make and restore a (full) backup. I really don't know why it causes so much problems for some people. It's true, sometimes you run into unexpected behavior. But then you have 2 options. Go back to last TWRP-backup or get your **** together and start from scratch.
By the way, if I was you (with your priorities), I wouldn't upgrade to Nougat. There are much more tools available to optimize marshmallow. Install some of them, get familiar with them, and in a few days you have a reliable and battery-friendly system.
Hm, these are some fair points.
Thanks for that little root guide - but why would you skip backing up the TA partition? Wouldn't that break some core functionalities? At least that's what I've read (cause I did go through most of the root guides for MM in this section).
I guess people have problems because the guides are sometimes incomplete, or people themselves are not following them properly. I would not expect myself to mess-up instructions, and whenever I have problems with guides, it's usually some kind of disparity between my side and their side. Or the guide is wrong, or something is missing. Many things can go wrong, yeah.
It's not that I am not willing to take risks, it's more that I might end up getting the overheat issue at some point - and at that point I would like to use my warranty. If I mess up anything, the warranty will be lost too soon.
Furthermore, I believe Nougat is far superior to MM, and I am willing to wait unofficial development to continue for at least another year. Perhaps in that time the z5c will have stopped receiving official updates, and we can all settle on some rooted, stable and working version of (probably) 7.1 or smth a bit after it, with working Xposed framework as well. At that point I would like to root and truly make the device shine in terms of battery life.
But for now, I'll have to limit myself with a factory reset at MOST.
I am doing an experiment now, after charging the phone completely. Turned location services off, and google services to "battery saving mode". I've turned wi-fi to off and am just going to be using a constant LTE connection. Auto sync is on.
I'd like to see how the phone handles this configuration without further intervention. So far, after 30 minutes post-charge, it's still sitting at 100%. But I'll have to check the overnight drain to verify any actual improvement. In any case, my 100% charged phone predicts 3 days of standby in the battery settings.
edit: looks good after 1 hour (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwg-0GLG0gP9Wmt1ekZCTFNnS3c)
brokich said:
Hm, these are some fair points.
Thanks for that little root guide - but why would you skip backing up the TA partition? Wouldn't that break some core functionalities? At least that's what I've read (cause I did go through most of the root guides for MM in this section).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mwa, yes and no.
Yes 1: By unlocking bootloader you break your TA partition and loose functionality.
Yes 2: If you ever want to go back to a phone which is unrooted and locked with all functionality, you need that backup.
No 1: There are DRM-fixes. Rootkernel (and the entire 2nd or 3rd step in my other comment) will fix DRM-keys too. And about every modified kernel you'll find over here has that DRM-fix + a few tweaks, so you don't have to worry, you won't miss anything.
I guess there are two kind of people. Some people say "You never know if you ever gonna need it, so you would be stupid not to back it up. After you click that button it will be gone. Forever." They are right. Some people say "Why bother, it's too much work, in the end you'll loose that backup, and actually you won't ever use it. And if it doesn't go smooth, it will give you unnecessary stress". They are right too. I'm in the second group. And I don't want to convince you that what I say is anything better than what others say, I'm just explaining my view...
Also, a lot of tools we use to experiment and tweak the sh#t out of our Z5C are highly experimental and not debugged. I don't care because partially it's a fun way to play around with it and I don't rely on my phone. If it doesn't work tonight, I'll find a way to make it work tomorrow. Again, that's my view...
By the way, I had to send my phone back to sony with a problem (unrelated hardware issue), and my warranty wasn't void.
Ha, that's very interesting. Perhaps they didn't bother to check for root at all, or they did and did not care. Maybe it's really hit and miss...
Overall, I am not extremely worried about it, as the device has actually been acting good so far, with no sign of hardware problems.
Also, I am not really going to gain that much by rooting Android 7, and I have no desire to have to stay on 6. When Xposed is well-developed and reliable on nougat, I'll probably go through the most promising method I can find and do the modifications that are required.
And yeah, I get your point about having fun, and I agree completely. But this device is important to me and I can't really risk it at the moment.
Anyways, the device is at 98% after 3 hours + of idle, which doesn't look too bad. I think perhaps adding the Greenify app might improve it a bit more, making it quite strong as a result, without the need of any root.
On more thing. Actually battery life on Nougat seems to excellent.
I did 4 things (not much work):
1) Edit doze settings more aggressively Doze Settings Editor, with the built-in "GeraldRudi"-preset. It should work on non-root too, but with slightly less aggressive settings.
2) Greenify, of course without the XPosed settings, and without aggressive doze. I think this didn't have any impact on battery performance/deep sleep, because Doze Settings was much more aggressive.
3) Tasker-module to put auto-sync off at night.
4) Kernel Adiutor to set governor to interactive. Obviously at night there was about no load on the CPU at all, but I did it to reduce heat.
All the rest is pretty standard. A lot of Google Apps are installed, messengers (FB messenger, WhatsApp) and social media, I even have a weather widget installed; all working normally.
Overnight it didn't use any power: 0,0% drain per hour; 0% over a 10h period of time. -->> battery stats
That's insane!!!! Big ups
I will absolutely try the Doze editor.
Sadly, no tasker with no root, but I might as well turn off auto-sync manually at night.
The kernel editor, I'm guessing, is also off-limits for me with no root.
What I did was to just turn off location and use greenify. My current idle draw is 0.66%.
But your is perfect. That's exactly what I want to achieve. Close to 0% draw when idle. That's how it should be.
Do you think it will be possible to achieve similar results with just the doze settings from step 1? (+turning auto sync off at night)
Bobzee said:
That's insane!!!! Big ups
I will absolutely try the Doze editor.
Sadly, no tasker with no root, but I might as well turn off auto-sync manually at night.
The kernel editor, I'm guessing, is also off-limits for me with no root.
What I did was to just turn off location and use greenify. My current idle draw is 0.66%.
But your is perfect. That's exactly what I want to achieve. Close to 0% draw when idle. That's how it should be.
Do you think it will be possible to achieve similar results with just the doze settings from step 1? (+turning auto sync off at night)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your idle time doesn't look bad at all. Without something like that Better Battery Stats it's hard to guess if some apps use CPU/power/... or cause unnecessary wakelocks, but if you use 6-7% over 10h idle time, it's not that bad.
As far as I know, changing governor without root is a no-go. Not possible, only the system has the right permissions. By the way, this should affect idle time that much, it mostly affects your phone while you use it.
Doze Editor should make a difference, because it speeds up the time after you turn off your device to put it in deep sleep. Out-of-the-box, that takes a long time (I don't know how long, but it's suggested to be about 30 minutes). Standard settings in Doze Editor, which you can use with adb and without root, bring that back to 3 minutes. It's fully explained in that Doze Settings-thread.
Thanks for the info
I tried Greenify since last night and it seemed to actually slow my device down. I could literally sense lag in the OS and nothing else could explain it. There was also a delay with every hit of the power button before the screen comes on. This, to me, was more bad than good, so I uninstalled this app. Perhaps it truly is a bit useless, or even detrimental to performance without root.
These Doze settings is what I will be trying out tonight, but I fear it might be a similar story to Greenify and not help me much without having root, or even potentially slow the device down?
Furthermore, I uninstalled all Google Play services updates and re-installed it. It used to take ~450mb of space, now it's back to ~150mb.
Hopefully, this will improve the Google services battery drain, because right now it is on the top of the list:
79% battery left, 2d 16h remaining:
25% google play services
15% phone idle
15% screen
12% cell standby
So, play services is still hogging too much battery, even with location off.
I re-installed it, so I have yet to see if this has any positive effect.
Z4 tablet problem too
I'm getting high battery drain on idle on my Z4 tablet, haven't attempted any fix yet.
My experience is a very big battery drain even if a clean install. I used MyAndroidTools to stop all unnecessary Google Play Services , with Kernel Audiutor I selected interactive governor CPU, with Doze I used GeraldRudi presetting. Switching off LTE, wifi, bluetooth and data , in less than 3 hours I loose 30% of battery, can not arrive to evening with a charge. I am back on 6.0.1 and I am able to recharge my Z5C every two days !
alpadolmeri said:
My experience is a very big battery drain even if a clean install. I used MyAndroidTools to stop all unnecessary Google Play Services , with Kernel Audiutor I selected interactive governor CPU, with Doze I used GeraldRudi presetting. Switching off LTE, wifi, bluetooth and data , in less than 3 hours I loose 30% of battery, can not arrive to evening with a charge. I am back on 6.0.1 and I am able to recharge my Z5C every two days !
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Click to collapse
That definitely sounds like you have one of those problematic units, with overheating and extreme battery drain, or perhaps it was due to a bug in the 7.0 ROM you used.
I am still able to get 2 days of my phone with 7.0 and no root, but that to me seems very unsatisfactory. Such a battery should easily last you a week with a single charge with LTE on, if you keep it idle most of the time. In my case, that's up to 3 days. If you see jenana's battery stats, it is possible to achieve almost 0.0% drain per hour at the cost of some performance. In those conditions, with ULTRA stamina on, your phone should last about a full month in idle mode with active network signal reception during that full period of time (but not LTE and other extras).
6.0.1 should be even better due to the Xposed framework, but I don't think that more than a month is a realistic with any OS and the current batteries.
Surely, 2 days is ridiculous. I don't use my phone much some days and the drain seems to be flat. It should be ALMOST 0% per hour. I assure you, even auto-syncing should be fully usable at all times without any kind of insane battery drain.
roycol said:
I'm getting high battery drain on idle on my Z4 tablet, haven't attempted any fix yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems I am in the same boat as you I really was enjoying Nougat, but I cannot live with half a day of charge. Last thing to try unrooted nougat and phh's superuser. Maybe this can resolve the massive drain. It is sad, really. I will report back with my findings...
I would appreciate any hint on to overcome this issue.
Cheers everyone!
Poor for me. I can get a day's worth out with about 3 to 4 hrs SOT but usually now my battery is less than 10% when I put it on charge. Marshmallow I was easily getting 4hrs SOT and down around 20 to 30% battery left. I love nougat but battery life is really poor. I have a mate who had x compact and 2 hrs SOT only uses about 25% battery. I just don't get it, so must be Sony with a poor ROM and not tested correctly or nougat not designed for this phone.
Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk
Hey, I can not understand it when people say the battery runs better than never before. I updated to 32.3.A.0.378, Sony has put the CPU on the best performance "performance". So with me runs the Z5C on the settings max. 10 hours. In the plaintext, I need root to convert this as it did at Marshmallow "interactive".
For everybody that experiences battery drain and heat problems: try rooting the phone with phh superuser instead of superSu. I couldn't get through a single day with superSu. Now, the phone is cool and endurance of battery is back to normal.
Sent from my E5823 using XDA Free mobile app