What is using my battery??? not a whine thread - EVO 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have been getting terrible battery life since I mistakenly reset the battery statistics in recovery.
I have recalibrated my battery, but I am only getting like 8 hours.
What can I use to see what is using the battery? I think there is something in spare parts, but I am not sure what to look at there.
Any apps or methods would help me determine what is chewing it up is much appreciated.

Bielinsk said:
I have been getting terrible battery life since I mistakenly reset the battery statistics in recovery.
I have recalibrated my battery, but I am only getting like 8 hours.
What can I use to see what is using the battery? I think there is something in spare parts, but I am not sure what to look at there.
Any apps or methods would help me determine what is chewing it up is much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It could just be that your phone is incorrectly reporting how much battery life you have since you reset them, and a couple days of usage will just allow it to gather more data and get more accurate.
But if there is an errant app draining your battery, a combination of spare parts and an app called SystemPanel should allow you to narrow it down to what's causing problems.
Plug your phone in for a minute, then unplug it, let the phone sit with the screen off for 25 minutes or so, then go to spare parts->Battery History, then choose other usage and since last unplugged. The running % should be close to the screen on %. If the running % is way higher than screen on, that means something is running while your screen is off.
I paid for the full version of systempanel for the system monitoring feature, but i think you can use the free version to just check which apps are running. Things like google voice should say running, but just about everything else should say background. If you have an app that you downloaded, but haven't been using in a while saying service, there's a good chance that's what's causing your phone to run the batteries out. Garbage apps like Grooveshark (which I still use because I can't live without grooveshark) will run even after you could have sworn you closed out of them.
The paid version of systempanel makes things easier because you can set it to monitor, then come back and look at what apps have been using cpu cycles even when the phone isn't being used. The system processes are always going to use cpu cycles, but apps like Swype will (or did at one point) keep the phone from properly sleeping, and you can tell by all the cpu they're using even when the screen is off.

Ah, that is a good point. 2 apps that I did change were I installed Tiger Text (neat app but rather sure that drains the juice) and I put on a different version of swype.
Thanks for the tips, I will run with that.

More reading I am doing I think the mistake I made, is that I reset my battery statistics when my battery was only half full.
I put in a full battery, reset statistics, and will let it drain, that should calibrate the phone correctly.
Thanks for the tips though, I will keep those in mind.

Related

Insane Battery Drain issues. [dying in <4 hours]

Using battery optimazation processes like juice defender, and even having advanced task killer working, lowering my brightness, and otherwise just having everything turned off like wifi, GPS, and all that business, im still seeing OUTRAGEOUS battery drain,
using the cyanogen nightly build.
this morning in 25 minutes
lost 16 percent battery
after coming off a 6 hour charge..
So.
the question is.
Where to start?
What to do, my phones just not makin it, its dyin all the time.
majorbro said:
Using battery optimazation processes like juice defender, and even having advanced task killer working, lowering my brightness, and otherwise just having everything turned off like wifi, GPS, and all that business, im still seeing OUTRAGEOUS battery drain,
using the cyanogen nightly build.
this morning in 25 minutes
lost 16 percent battery
after coming off a 6 hour charge..
So.
the question is.
Where to start?
What to do, my phones just not makin it, its dyin all the time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are a few suggestions i would make. Just for background information have you used other Roms and if so was the battery ok for them or is this the first custom rom you have used? (just to compare to see if it is a new issue you are having with CM)
ok first i would get rid of the task killer. they do more harm then good Android will auto kill tasks and MANY of the tasks it kills are just stored in memory and are inactive causing little to no actual battery drain.
you can turn GPS back on it doesnt drain battery when not i use and can be useful to ahve on if you lose your phone.
If you havent done it yet search the forums and download SetCPU (or get it from the marketplace for a small fee) there are several posts about battery saving profiles on the forums or you can find one here.
A good post that has worked from some is to turn enable always on mobile ON (if previously turned off), turn auto sync ON (if previously turned off) TURN news / stocks/weather - OFF but keep your single google account turned ON.
I have no idea why or if this would work but have seen posts saying when they did this it did actually help.
If you havent tried to re calibrate your battery or the HTC charge method yet i would try hose as well (calibrate by charging to full draining it all the way till it shuts off then charge it back to full with out interrupting the charge.) The HTC charge method is to 1)charge the phone 8+ hours 2)unplug it and immediately turn it off 3)charge it for 1 hour. 4)power the phone on 5)unplug it for 2 minutes 6) then charge it on for another hour.
If you still arent getting very good battery life you can look for the app SystemPanel, if you purchase the full version you can get a history and see the top apps draining your battery (should let it run at least 24 hours while you use the phone normally so it can build data) this should show if you have an app that is hogging the battery. After all this if you are still having problems then you may try another rom or you may have a bad battery.
If i had to guess if this is a new issue i would bet that since you wiped to install CM6 you lost battery stats so a calibration and htc recharge will greatly reduce the problem.
your reply absolutely kicked ass, ill start trying all your suggestions tomorrow, im so happy i got an amazing answer from someone here and not flamed for being a dumb noob.
thanks again!
1. Get rid of CyanogenMod, flash Snacks 9.7 or DamageControl 3.2.3
2. Get rid of task killer
3. Turn off 4G/Bluetooth/GPS
To tell you the truth get rid of Juice Defender. I have never found it to help at all. It could even be the thing that is killing you. Get SwitchPro and and add the data connection to the widget. If you turn it off when you aren't using the phone, I have gone 2 hours without seeing 1 percentage drop. Just tapping a button to turn it on when you need it is nothing, and it takes about 15 seconds to reconnect. Juice defender is supposed to be doing the same thing while the screen is off, but as I said I don't think it works.
Other than that like Omega said, SetCPU really helps especially when you have the screen off if you set up the profile for everything. His advice is pretty solid, I just found another battery recalibration to work better which is to charge it for 8 or more hours with the phone on, unplug it, and then shut it off. Then plug it in and wait for it to turn green again, and unplug it wait for the light to turn off and repeat plugging it waiting and unplugging it 10 times with the phone off. Each time takes only about a min or so.
And there is no reason to get rid of CM, I use it and get equal battery than I did with DamageControl.
majorbro said:
your reply absolutely kicked ass, ill start trying all your suggestions tomorrow, im so happy i got an amazing answer from someone here and not flamed for being a dumb noob.
thanks again!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem at all i did a LOT of research and fiddling before i got my battery life to a level that i found sufficient. I use batterydefender/ultimate juice add on and it does turn off and on my 3g once set i had it set up right. Juice defender says i get x1.6 battery life right now according to it. I will say when i had juice defender alone it never said anything but x1 so it may be the add on helping. According to SystemPanel it uses almost no battery power (over 2-8-24 hours all show under .1% to give an example swype shows .1% and i do roughly 40 texts a day and very little keyboard use otherwise) so i dont think it is the main cause but you can always try the suggestion to turn off/on data yourself as well.
Any way let us know how everything works out for you and if you are testing each one at a time what made the biggest difference (i did almost all my battery saving stuff in bulk so no idea which one gave the most benefit for me just know doing all of it worked lol)

[Q] A Case for Task Killing?

First, the set up.
I have an Incredible running Skyraider 2.52 with the 2.6.32.15-adrynalyne kernel. I use SetCPU to set some rather aggressive battery preservation, chief among them being the profile that sets the CPU to 245mHz on screen off (using the Powersave scaling so as to eliminate CPU polling). I have Autokiller set to near absurd levels (the Ultimate preset). I even use Autorun Killer to disable some nonsense apps from starting at boot. Needless to say, battery is a priority.
Also, I should note that I am using the 1750 mah Seido battery.
This morning, I charged my phone to 100% (even a little beyond that, as I charged it with the phone off, but not until I hit the green). I unplugged the phone from my car charger at 9:20 AM. Wifi, Bluetooth, and mobile network were all off. I literally did not touch my phone for the next ten minutes, and yet...
By 9:30 AM, I was at 90%!
I quickly started up Froyo Task Killer, which allows me to force stop programs through Android's own task management. I closed several useless but likeable apps (like ONN and G4) and put my phone back in my pocket.
By 12:47 PM, after not touching the phone again, I was at 80%.
Clearly, you can see the difference in battery usage while otherwise in standby.
Is this a clear case for killing tasks, or is there something else at play? I know that task killers are a cause for serious debate, and 2.2 doesn't play nice with them, but this is a pretty weird case.
You're making an assumption that the battery discharge rate (or rather the displayed rate) is linear. In my experience, this is not the case.
You make an excellent point. However, in most ordinary circumstances, and certainly while running stock Eclair, I usually found that the first 10% battery drain took longer, certainly longer than 10 minutes.
Either way, 1% per hour is, all strange battery magic aside, pretty remarkable for a phone that is in standby with screen off in pocket. Especially when given the lengths I've gone to in attempts to extend said battery life.
once froyo hit i uninstalled my task killer.... haven't looked back since.
I currently run SystemPanel by NextApp.
It will prove to you that task killing is practically a placebo but I highly recommend it just to be aware of whats ACTUALLY killing your battery.
I use the stock battery and the OEM 1500mah. I am pretty happy with what I can get out of the extra capacity battery.
Try turning off 3G when you don't need it using the HTC widget.
If you can't stand the stock apps that always start up on your phone but don't want to delete them do as I did and get the full version of titanium backup (3.99) and freeze all the apps. Out will pretty much just like the name says, freeze the apps. You can then thaw them out when you need them.
I got almost 2 days up time and like 12 of those were up on the 1500 battery. Now I have the 2150 i am at 50 hours up and 10 hours awake with still 50 percent to go, that's first charge too, can't wait till it breaks in
Oh and I was reading somewhere that one of the roms has a problem like that. It might be the skyraider
Sent from my Incredible using tapatalk.
mihneagabriel said:
If you can't stand the stock apps that always start up on your phone but don't want to delete them do as I did and get the full version of titanium backup (3.99) and freeze all the apps. Out will pretty much just like the name says, freeze the apps. You can then thaw them out when you need them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Autostarts would probably be an easier way of doing this.
kensikora said:
You make an excellent point. However, in most ordinary circumstances, and certainly while running stock Eclair, I usually found that the first 10% battery drain took longer, certainly longer than 10 minutes.
Either way, 1% per hour is, all strange battery magic aside, pretty remarkable for a phone that is in standby with screen off in pocket. Especially when given the lengths I've gone to in attempts to extend said battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
why would you bother having a smartphone if your intent is to leave it in the pocket? I get about 24+ hrs uptime one one charge (stock bat). Generally on WiFi, GPS, and Max Brightness for half of it.
Charge at work since I'm at my desk and no problems. Battery life is great, but if you don't want to use the phone in attempts to get max life, seems quite pointless to own such a powerful device.
Skyraider 3.1
You can go into battery info in the settings and see what is causing battery drain.
In my experience, most drain is when I'm inside a building with poor reception and my phone is on overdrive trying to find signal. Usually I turn on airplane mode and use WiFi if that's the case.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
Maybe its the kernel. Also I would stop killing the apps, not to save battery but because since they were stopped by the user, the Android system might start them up again almost instantaneously. But this depends on core processes and weather Android is done processing any info or other stuff from that app.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
MMBosstones86 said:
why would you bother having a smartphone if your intent is to leave it in the pocket?
Skyraider 3.1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not aiming for battery life alone, but I like to leave work and not need to recharge for an hour before I head out. I leave it in my pocket at work because, well, I'm at work. Although I do usually get in a few levels of Angry Birds or Shoot U.
The question is, how can I minimize battery use when my phone is idle so that I have the battery to screw around with it when I want to or have time.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
mihneagabriel said:
If you can't stand the stock apps that always start up on your phone but don't want to delete them do as I did and get the full version of titanium backup (3.99) and freeze all the apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never knew what that did. I knew the feature existed, but hadn't bothered looking into it. I already bought the full version for totally hands-free installs, so I guess I can now take care of Peep and Flickr.
sl0wd0wn said:
Autostarts would probably be an easier way of doing this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had never heard of Autostarts. I seem to find that any apps that aim to disable startup entries always fail to list the apps I am most interested in blocking, but for 90 cents, I am definitely willing to give it a shot.
Edit: I haven't had a chance to determine its effect on battery life, but Autostarts is brilliant. It makes so much more sense to actually change startup entries than to try and stop a task after it starts. I also was unaware of how many events trigger apps to start. That is one powerful app.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
The 10% drop at the beginning has nothing to do with apps or task killing. It's a bug, the battery isn't telling the software the correct percentage it is at. Killing apps won't do anything to fix it.
If you want to 'fix' it, do a bump charge. Turn off your phone when it hits green, keep it charging till it hits green again.

HTC Desire bad battery, how do i improve it?

HTC Desire bad battery, how do i improve it?
http://myhtcdesire.com/tag/battery-life
trying this now, but any other?
Actually this article from androidcentral is really complete in terms of settings to reduce battery consumption:
androidcentral.com/keeping-your-charge-how-improve-battery-life-your-android-phone
You can also have a look at this one from howtogeek:
howtogeek.com/howto/25319/complete-guide-to-maximizing-your-android-phones-battery-life/
When battery drains a lot it is important to find the cause, in this case tools like systempanel are useful, but keep in mind that it is a good thing to stay away from task killers as explained on lifehacker [what are task killers and why you shouldn't use them]:
lifehacker.com/5650894/android-task-killers-explained-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
Hope this will help !
A bad battery is mainly due to either it being faulty or by a stupid amount of usage. Remember that using 7 home screens, live wallpaper, widgets, apps running in the background. All of this counts towards usage. I don't know about calibrating a battery. Some people say it works, some say it doesn't.
I did a little useless experiment the other day where I had my phone at 55% battery and I decided to see how much battery would be used over 24 hours with as little usage as possible. I managed to get 8% of the battery used using 2mA. Hope that puts something into perspective for you.
I tried CPU tuner on the stock ROM and it gave some life to my battery, but I've just flashed a new ROM recently, so hopefully it'll work better.
GoogleJelly said:
A bad battery is mainly due to either it being faulty or by a stupid amount of usage. Remember that using 7 home screens, live wallpaper, widgets, apps running in the background. All of this counts towards usage. I don't know about calibrating a battery. Some people say it works, some say it doesn't.
I did a little useless experiment the other day where I had my phone at 55% battery and I decided to see how much battery would be used over 24 hours with as little usage as possible. I managed to get 8% of the battery used using 2mA. Hope that puts something into perspective for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you clarify "as little usage as possible" to get that 8%? Do you mean like switching off everything, or simply not using the device but keeping all the apps as they were?

a good battery saver app?

i've tried different ones in the past when i had the thunderbolt and none made a difference whatsoever.
i see the big name one seems to be Juice Defender, but that was one that didn't do anything when i had the thunderbolt.
is there one that actually does make a difference with the Incredible 2?
The best way to save battery and maintain your usage is to make sure you don't use apps that misbehave. Using automated task killers don't really help if you are already doing this.
nimdae said:
The best way to save battery and maintain your usage is to make sure you don't use apps that misbehave. Using automated task killers don't really help if you are already doing this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, i use a program called 'Bloat Freezer' to supposedly "freeze" apps i don't use/need. other then that i have another program called 'Watch Dog' that pretty much just alerts me when an app is using a ton of CPU & allows me to kill it.
i know not to use task killers though as those 'tasks' will automatically start right back up & the process of going back & forth ends up wasting battery.
voxigenboy said:
well, i use a program called 'Bloat Freezer' to supposedly "freeze" apps i don't use/need. other then that i have another program called 'Watch Dog' that pretty much just alerts me when an app is using a ton of CPU & allows me to kill it.
i know not to use task killers though as those 'tasks' will automatically start right back up & the process of going back & forth ends up wasting battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found the best battery saver is by things you can do.
turn off animations
turn off auto-brightness - put as low as possible, I found 50% is nice.
turn off wifi - WHEN NOT IN USE - TURN TO TURN OFF AFTER 15 MIN.
turn off mobile data WHEN NOT IN USE - OR MAKE IT SO IT TURNS OFF WITH SCREN OFF
turn off bluetooth -WHEN NOT IN USE
DO NOT OVER CHARGE, try to charge at night fully with phone off. don't leave it on the charger fully charged for a long time, (like over night).
set auto sync to 6 hours or so, or sync when open. or even better set to manual.
also a nice black background will help
all these things in the end will help you out, I get 2 days on stock battery with medium usage
Juice defender is legit I'm running the not free version and helps me out. Autostarts is a helpful app too
I don't think its gonna hurt anything to leave the phone plugged in overnight, and the dark background would only matter on OLED screens, not LCD.
Both the battery and the phone have circuitry to prevent overcharging. Leaving plugged in overnight and left on is perfectly safe.
k_nivesout said:
I don't think its gonna hurt anything to leave the phone plugged in overnight, and the dark background would only matter on OLED screens, not LCD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea high brightness.doesn't kill mine at all...and these phones can't over charge. HTC and if you use a cm based Rom, trickle charge from 90% to 100% and then discharge and charge from 95-100 until unplugged. It's why when you unplug it it drops to like 96% really fast.
sent from an under rated phone
The battery life on the inc two is amazing stock. I have had no problems with any unnecessary battery drain .Notrooted but still pluggingaway two days between each charge
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA Premium App

In need of a battery replacement?

I've tried numerous ROMs numerous times and I think I may have damaged my battery. It was over 50% whenever I had to do something with it so it's not that.
Battery drains quickly no matter which ROM I'm using and even when not in use, it drains 1-2% every minute. Just want to make sure if it is before I go out and buy a battery. I miss my 17 hours of general use and now I haven't even gotten close to that
What do you guys think? I've had this phone for almost a year now. 11 months and 20 days? LOL
You could try wiping the battery stats, or using lower voltages, or removing apps that use background services, etc.
jacklebott said:
You could try wiping the battery stats, or using lower voltages, or removing apps that use background services, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've done all that and still.1 hour off the charger and I'm at 68%
Batteries when put under stress will wear out. If you were trying roms that ran the battery extra hard, and you've had the phone for a while, you may just need a replacement.
Sent from a Galaxy far, far away

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