[Q] Android app that shows what is draining battery? - Droid Incredible Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I'm using CM7, and I know it already has stuff built in but I'm still looking for something more detailed.
Something that shows exactly what app is draining, or how much battery the radio is using, etc. Any suggestions?

There is an app called System Panel, might be what you are looking for.

Watchdog Lite will show you how much CPU apps are using and will alert you if an app is misbehaving

Watchdog Lite works great.

top
If your processor is pegged and you're trying to figure out what process is doing it, it's hard to beat top.

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How do I find a process hog?

I have a happy EVO. It gets great battery life, until some process causes CPU usage to peg. And there it will remain until I reboot.
I looked at a number of task managers and utils like SystemPanel Lite. None them let me sort the processes by CPU usage like Windows Task Manager or better yet, Process Explorer by SysInternals. And most of them do not list all processes running. They usually show user apps.
How can I find which process is hogging of the CPU cycles?
kamiller42 said:
I have a happy EVO. It gets great battery life, until some process causes CPU usage to peg. And there it will remain until I reboot.
I looked at a number of task managers and utils like SystemPanel Lite. None them let me sort the processes by CPU usage like Windows Task Manager or better yet, Process Explorer by SysInternals. And most of them do not list all processes running. They usually show user apps.
How can I find which process is hogging of the CPU cycles?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
install quick system info
Are you using setcpu and do you have profiles enabled in it? This happened to me last night, CPU stuck at 100% until I rebooted... I had profiles enabled in setcpu based on how much battery % I had remaining.. I rebooted and it hasn't happened since.
Sent from my EVO running Myn's Warm TwoPointTwo and King's #10 CFS.
The paid version of System Panel has a monitoring feature that is exactly what you're looking for.
i second that the paid version of systempanel gives you a moniter feature that lets you go to history and view apps taking the most power as well as the processes. if you click the system porcesses entry it will open up and give you that information.
I origonally bought it intending to uninstall it withen 24 hours and then once i started using it have decided it was well worht the money and kept it.
@skittlesV1, thanks for the recommend. System Info looks like what I need.
@Drakhar, Funny. I didn't have SetCPU on when this happened to me twice. I just put it on partly because of this problem I was experiencing. I use profiles rights now. If I find they are a problem, I will take them out.
@_MetalHead_ & @omegasun18, Thanks for the info. I did not know the pay version would do that. It's a well polished app. I might end up buying it in the end.

Need educated!!!

I need educated on a few things, I'm concerned with the performance of my phone so I have it rooted and I have installed system panel to monitor things, autokill memory optimizer for ram of course as well as watchdog to alert me if any apps are outta control. Am I crazy for having these or is it a good idea? Also is there anything better I should use rather then what I already have? I just want my phone to run smooth and my battery to last bc I use my phone all day long
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
trembly01 said:
I need educated on a few things, I'm concerned with the performance of my phone so I have it rooted and I have installed system panel to monitor things, autokill memory optimizer for ram of course as well as watchdog to alert me if any apps are outta control. Am I crazy for having these or is it a good idea? Also is there anything better I should use rather then what I already have? I just want my phone to run smooth and my battery to last bc I use my phone all day long
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
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A lot of that is unneeded. I have System Panel, but only use it if I'm having problems with an app. Rarely is there a use for watchdog. On stable ROMs, I've never seen an app get out of control, and rarely on betas. So it justs sits in the background eating battery itself. Also try, using a stock speed, undervolted battery with SetCPU. If I'm trying to make mine last, I have a screen off profile of powersave 384/245, and regular of 700-800ish (I forget)/245 conservative.
PonsAsinorem said:
A lot of that is unneeded. I have System Panel, but only use it if I'm having problems with an app. Rarely is there a use for watchdog. On stable ROMs, I've never seen an app get out of control, and rarely on betas. So it justs sits in the background eating battery itself. Also try, using a stock speed, undervolted battery with SetCPU. If I'm trying to make mine last, I have a screen off profile of powersave 384/245, and regular of 700-800ish (I forget)/245 conservative.
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ok thanks, i installed setcpu and have two profiles set, one for when screen is off with settings similar to yours and another set to when my battery is >30%. could you please tell me what the governor options of on demand, userspace, or performance mean ?? also should i set priority's to anything other then the default 50 % ? thanks for the help

Programs that kill battery life??

I am always afraid of programs that will drain my battery.. I am some what new to the android.. I understand killing apps with an app killer program was bad, so I removed "Advanced app killer"
My battery life with the Fresh rom is doing pretty good..
But the fact that I don't have an app killer always scares me.. For example..
I just got that Tikl program that allows a walkie talkie type of conversation..
I keep thinking its constantly running and draining the battery.
Same with Vlingo.. I have the Widget so I can turn it off but if I go into running programs its there..
Are these programs draining battery?
Is there a list someone came up with, that list programs that are bad and drain?
Being that we don't/shouldn't have an app killer (coming from the CE mobile land)
just becasue an app is still active in the background doesn't mean it's using cpu or battery. One of the best apps you cen get for monitoring this type of thing is systempanel. If you set it up to mionitor, it will tell you exactly how much battery and cpu each app has used over the past 2 hours, 8 hours, day, etc.
+1 for SystemPanel. It is the first app I ever purchased for Android and is still one of the best.
Watch out for camera360 its a battery drainer.
Sent from my supersonic yea....
See.. even those Alps scare me.. for systempanel to gauge the CPU programs are using ... well that means systempanel needs to be running alllllll the time..
fachadick said:
just becasue an app is still active in the background doesn't mean it's using cpu or battery. One of the best apps you cen get for monitoring this type of thing is systempanel. If you set it up to mionitor, it will tell you exactly how much battery and cpu each app has used over the past 2 hours, 8 hours, day, etc.
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Click to collapse
sent using my evoh
fastfed said:
See.. even those Alps scare me.. for systempanel to gauge the CPU programs are using ... well that means systempanel needs to be running alllllll the time..
sent using my evoh
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Click to collapse
The amount that systempanel uses is negligible, and its usefulness is worth it. Besides, once you use it to find your rogue apps, you can uninstall it. Again though, the amount of CPU and battery that it uses are really almost nothing.
Remember, this isn't windows, where things keep running in the background, using up cycles and draining battery.
Sent from my blah blah blah blah
An alternate to systempanel is WatchDog. It's the same idea. You should really download it for peace of mind. You will see that for the most part that most apps fade to the background if you're not actively using them. I used to use ATK but after using WatchDog to monitor CPU usage I see that the OS does a pretty good job of keeping stuff in control.
In regards to your concern about the CPU monitoring app using too much memory or CPU power, don't worry. It is pretty minimal. In WatchDog you can set how often you want the app to monitor. Alternately you can do a live reading where you see what is draining the CPU at that very moment (well actually in 5 second intervals)
SantinoInc said:
An alternate to systempanel is WatchDog. It's the same idea. You should really download it for peace of mind. You will see that for the most part that most apps fade to the background if you're not actively using them. I used to use ATK but after using WatchDog to monitor CPU usage I see that the OS does a pretty good job of keeping stuff in control.
In regards to your concern about the CPU monitoring app using too much memory or CPU power, don't worry. It is pretty minimal. In WatchDog you can set how often you want the app to monitor. Alternately you can do a live reading where you see what is draining the CPU at that very moment (well actually in 5 second intervals)
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this is true, I use both watchdog and systempanel, and have them both on all the time. Although its a great app, and works perfectly, watchdog does use up a bit more CPU than I would like though.
Sent from my blah blah blah blah
OK I got system panel and have it running. Not sure I know what I'm doing LOL. I did check off a couple things in the settings. Like to check the monitoring and stuff. I guess some of you can explain to me what to check.. please... in the meantime I am looking at the CPU circle.. it sits anywhere from 6.6 to about 10 or so.. then sometimes it spikes to 65-70 percent ...
sent using my evoh
Ok cool. First of all, ignore the spikes you see in the CPU wheel. You'll notice that it spikes whenever you touch the screen or scroll. What you want to do is make sure you have monitoring checked off in settings. Then leave it overnight. The first time you use the phone in the morning, the first thing you want to do is go to menu, then monitor, then history. At the top of that screen are your options to view the timeframe and whether you're looking at the graph showing CPU vs usage vs battery, or the top apps. for the graphs screen, if you have high CPU with high battery drainage when there's no usage, then you have a rogue app.That top apps screen shows which apps ate using the most battery/cpu by percentage, and you can tap each app listing for more detail.
Sent from my blah blah blah blah
Thanks so much!
So tomorrow I can look at the top Apps and if it shows zero percent I assume it means the app is good ?
fachadick said:
Ok cool. First of all, ignore the spikes you see in the CPU wheel. You'll notice that it spikes whenever you touch the screen or scroll. What you want to do is make sure you have monitoring checked off in settings. Then leave it overnight. The first time you use the phone in the morning, the first thing you want to do is go to menu, then monitor, then history. At the top of that screen are your options to view the timeframe and whether you're looking at the graph showing CPU vs usage vs battery, or the top apps. for the graphs screen, if you have high CPU with high battery drainage when there's no usage, then you have a rogue app.That top apps screen shows which apps ate using the most battery/cpu by percentage, and you can tap each app listing for more detail.
Sent from my blah blah blah blah
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sent using my evoh
Also real quick... should I do a reboot before bed and then turn on monitoring ?
sent using my evoh
fastfed said:
Thanks so much!
So tomorrow I can look at the top Apps and if it shows zero percent I assume it means the app is good ?
sent using my evoh
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Exactly. Chances are though, there will be a few items there over zero percent. That's ok. If you have anything over say 2 percent over the last 8 hours when there was no usage you may want to consider getting rid of it. Or at least keeping your eye on it. The goal here is to show a horizontal line for battery when there's no usage.
Sent from my blah blah blah blah
fastfed said:
Also real quick... should I do a reboot before bed and then turn on monitoring ?
sent using my evoh
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You can, but its not necessary. Besides, this isn't a test environment, you're looking for the battery leeches for how you normally use the phone. And monitoring should always be on.
Sent from my blah blah blah blah
OP, I hear you. An app simply running in the background won't exactly kill the battery, unless it's actively using a connection and CPU.
You should be wary of ANY app that requires a constant connection in the background and doesn't use Google's Cloud to Device Push service. Tikl is one of them and one of the reasons why I don't use it.
Even if Tikl or other apps like Fring, tango, and most IM apps use their own private push servers, they are still separate concurrent connections and they all send different keepalive signals to maintain the connection.
Some high quality apps that DO use Google C2DM thus using little to no battery in the background while still allowing you to receive messages:
- BeejiveIM
- Trillian Beta (Free if you search google)
- WhatsApp
- SpringPad (With push alerts and bookmarks)
- Chrome To Phone
- Stock apps such as Gmail and Google Talk
- Any other app that lists "Allow device to send cloud to device messages" instead of just "Full internet access" under Internet Permissions when installing.
Some apps are known to hurt battery life such as:
- Ebuddy, Meebo and most IM apps besides BeejiveIM and Trillian
- Tango Video Calls (Even with latest update)
- TweetDeck with default settings (Checks for new tweets every THREE minutes by default for EVERY column! Insane)
- Twitter , the official client checks for new tweets every 15 minutes.
- Qik, one of the lousiest written apps I have ever seen
Also, read the reviews and test them if you're not sure. It's very unfortunate that developers still seem to ignore battery life. That's exactly the reason why Apple(And now even Microsoft) had to "spoonfeed" them by not allowing them to have deeper access to the system.
zeuzinn said:
Some apps are known to hurt battery life such as:
- Ebuddy, Meebo and most IM apps besides BeejiveIM and Trillian
- Tango Video Calls (Even with latest update)
- TweetDeck with default settings (Checks for new tweets every THREE minutes by default for EVERY column! Insane)
- Twitter , the official client checks for new tweets every 15 minutes.
- Qik, one of the lousiest written apps I have ever seen
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+1 on the qik and tango mentions. Those two were especially terrible - tango was so bad, i didn't even bother trying the new version.
Boy I really hope tikl isn't that bad.. I love that program. My dad and I use it all the time
sent using my evoh
OK.. I woke up, looked at the program and LOL XDA took 2.8% I did forget to exit though , tikl took 1.3% the next one was system at .3% the rest showed zero. I looked at the graph and I had a spike at 4am(ghosts in my house?) Besides that everything looks OK?
sent using my evoh
fastfed said:
OK.. I woke up, looked at the program and LOL XDA took 2.8% I did forget to exit though , tikl took 1.3% the next one was system at .3% the rest showed zero. I looked at the graph and I had a spike at 4am(ghosts in my house?) Besides that everything looks OK?
sent using my evoh
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ok - so other than tikl, you don't have any problem apps. Now you just need to monitor daily to see whats getting used - if an app is showing a high percentage when you haven't used it (or baerely used it), you may want to get rid of it.

[Q] Battery usage app?

Is there a good app that shows you a break down on what apps are using your battery the most? Right now I just look at the battery use under settings (running cm7), but I was wondering if there was anything more detailed.
Thanks
I'm sure there are others, but Spare Parts also has some pretty good info.
I use Battery Monitor Widget and it shows basically any kind of Battery info I can think of.

Battery problems

I flashed the honeycomb battery icon. I have another app that I've been using (Android booster) that is a task killer. it shows my battery life, it was right on before the new icon but now they don't match up the widget says I have 10% more life in my battery then my battery icon on my status bar. Is there any way to fix this problem? or should I just deal with it
Thank you in advance
sent from my rooted speak and spell
xethcore said:
I flashed the honeycomb battery icon. I have another app that I've been using (Android booster) that is a task killer. it shows my battery life, it was right on before the new icon but now they don't match up the widget says I have 10% more life in my battery then my battery icon on my status bar. Is there any way to fix this problem? or should I just deal with it
Thank you in advance
sent from my rooted speak and spell
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1st off, I'd recommend dumping any "task killer" as the GN2 has this functionality built in, especially since we're talking about battery performance...
2nd, I'd concentrate more on wakelock settings, and if I had to download any app it would be those that helped manage this. This way you can force everything to sleep when your not using your phone...
Also, depending on the governor, you may need to adjust your phones clock throttling upon waking/using the device, custom may be your best bet, but there might be a "built-in" profile that works perfectly for your particular individual usage
Sent from my SGH-T889 using xda app-developers app
For some reason, I seem to only be able to manage about 5 hours of screen time. I've heard of people getting 6-8 hours.
I'm using this ROM http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2150145 but for some reason, that thread isn't very alive..
I tried the jedi ROM, but I just can't stand it when developers change little things about the UI. Is 5 hours normal for a ROM that's mostly stock? I'm using the UNEAK kernel.
PhxDroid86 said:
1st off, I'd recommend dumping any "task killer" as the GN2 has this functionality built in, especially since we're talking about battery performance...
2nd, I'd concentrate more on wakelock settings, and if I had to download any app it would be those that helped manage this. This way you can force everything to sleep when your not using your phone...
Also, depending on the governor, you may need to adjust your phones clock throttling upon waking/using the device, custom may be your best bet, but there might be a "built-in" profile that works perfectly for your particular individual usage
Sent from my SGH-T889 using xda app-developers app
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Thanks for the info phxdroid86:thumbup: will check into it. I did get rid of the task killer started using the stock one, I like it.
sent from my rooted speak and spell

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