Identifying battery hungry apps - Defy General

I've installed battery monitor widget, that gives battery graph in 1% resolution.
While idle (at night) I see a 1% consumption every hour and half.
Occasionally I see a higher consumption rate of about 1% every 45 minutes, always while idle.
I'm tring to pinpoint the guilty application. Using the built in android battery statistics seems to be of no use: consumption seems to be too low to be counted against other categories like screen, wifi or telephone itself.
So far I've proceeded by chance: I tried killing suspected apps and seeing battery graph after that.
Right now i've got a couple of suspects: vital player and open gps tracker.
Even if they are not in use (movie stopped and gps disabled) they seems to eat some more battery than the average background app.
Is there a more scientific approach?
Sent from my MB525 using XDA App

Watchdog Task Killer. Set it on real time and you may track down the app.
http://lifehacker.com/#!5608163/watchdog-monitors-your-android-for-run+away-processes

Or, from the same people as Battery Monitor Widget, a Process Monitor Widget. Remember to freeze both after you are done as they both drink battery juice to do their useful job.

+1 for Watchdog. SetVsel is also very good at undervolting; if you're into that sort of thing.

Related

Battery life too short? Watch this from Google developer!!!

Hi,
If you want to know how long your battery life will last when:
- Idle on 2G/EDGE
- Idle on 3G
- Idle on WiFi
- Browsing on EDGE/3G/WiFi
- etc.
What cost battery life the most?
You will learn that "waking up app for doing nothing" will cost you heavily on battery life.
Things like checking email while you have no new email, checking weather while you got the same result, or getting data online while you are not connected to the network.
And so on ...
Sit tight and watch this:
http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/CodingLifeBatteryLife.html
This special session from Google IO in the past CupCake era explained in detail, with measurements about almost every aspects of the phone that drain the battery.
Interesting enough that IDLE on 2G vs IDLE on 3G will cost you almost the same. And browsing in 3G is more efficient. So, in this respect, I think it is not necessary to set to 2G as most people said for auto-syncing.
At home, use WiFi, because it is more efficient for web browsing.
Choosing and planning your sync and widget will make big different on battery life!
Watch it your-self and share your thought.
i've just removed advanced task killer app, and seriously battery lif is like amazing normally by now i would be at around 50% i'm at 70% and have been using it more like 2 phone calls i normally don't make any and a tiny bit of browsing but that certainly improved it
slaming said:
i've just removed advanced task killer app, and seriously battery lif is like amazing normally by now i would be at around 50% i'm at 70% and have been using it more like 2 phone calls i normally don't make any and a tiny bit of browsing but that certainly improved it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So your saying advanced task killer is draining battery? Even when its not running ni the background. It can kill itself along with killing apps, so it shoul dnot constitute ANY drain on the battery when not running in the background.
Here what I experienced:
First of all, my phone settings:
- WiFi OFF (on when needed)
- Mobile network OFF (on when needed)
- Always on OFF
- Background data ON
- Auto sync OFF
- GPS OFF
- Bluetooth OFF
- 10% brightness (yes, my eyes is happy with that, seriously!)
- Using HTC "black" wallpaper
One day, I played around with killing tasks, not brutally killing, but just some of them like RADIO, MARKET, etc. Selectively killing.
Then I watched my battery usage, it drain quite a bit like 3% after 1 or 2 hours. I meant, it was really different compared to the other day when I did not touch task killer.
Today, I unplugged at 8:00 AM ... 100%
Now, 15:00 ... still 98% (after 7 hours!).
During that time, I played around a bit with Market via WiFi and SMS, no phone call.
Seriously, I got different result when using and not using task killer.
Try it yourself
mcgon1979 said:
So your saying advanced task killer is draining battery? Even when its not running ni the background. It can kill itself along with killing apps, so it shoul dnot constitute ANY drain on the battery when not running in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mcgon1979 said:
So your saying advanced task killer is draining battery? Even when its not running ni the background. It can kill itself along with killing apps, so it shoul dnot constitute ANY drain on the battery when not running in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yep plus i'd normally i don't have bluetooth and i forgot to turn it off today afer using my blutooth headphones, and still at 70% yeasterday it would have been dead by now and i didn't even use task killer to kill apps. maybe advanced task killer stops apps being killed by the android system.
mcgon1979 said:
So your saying advanced task killer is draining battery? Even when its not running ni the background. It can kill itself along with killing apps, so it shoul dnot constitute ANY drain on the battery when not running in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I find this one a strange (what seems to be) fallacy when coming to Android 2.x. When I got my Desire, the first thing I got was a task killer. Then, a widget to let me know hom much RAM I have left. When it got low, I used the TK to do it's job and free up some RAM.
But the permeating fallacy seems to be that a TK is needed. But it seems people are finding out, time and time again that it's not. And as people here are finding, it's detrimental. And after not using my TK for a while, I found out that though the RAM can get low, Android will do it's thing in the background and I never notice low RAM in my daily operation.
Some people on another forum put me onto some info sources that explained why TKs can make your battery life shorter. In short, they can kill tasks which have scripts that will respawn, thus causing higher CPU usage and draining battery a little bit quicker.
There were other reasons but I can't remember them right now. People should really let people know and educate them (including some popular websites like AndroidCentral.com that I like) that it's not necesary and actually a waste. (Though I use mine for doing things like file management, installing and uninstalling, but not task killing.)
I watched most of that video that was kindly posted. And if I get this correctly (please correct me if I haven't), when I'm in wifi range, I'd be better off leaving that on to do data transfer as there is a negligable passive battery consumption over 3G and 2G, but a saving when transfering data which grows as the data transfer grows.
But then wifi should be turned off when leaving the wifi area, as like 3G, it drains the battery to have it searching.
Since I'll be in a wifi zone for most of tomorrow, I'm curious if I can get through a full day with wifi left on...
what makes me wonder is if i go to the market, search for something then i go to browser for couple minutes and then go back to the home screen, will the market and browser use the 3g/h/g in the background?
sorry if the answer for this is in the video but do not have time to watch it right now.
It's been said many times that Task killers are not necessary on Android phones and that their use will almost always result in worse battery life and reduced performance.
I used to have two HTC Heros and proved pretty conclusively that the above was true by running a task killer on one but having the same apps. on both. I even reversed things in case the battery was better on one of the devices.
You will never convince some people though. It they want worse battery life and performance surely that is their choice.
I know I will never again put a task killer on an Android device.

Conserving battery, Hungry apps etc

Hey guys, thought it might be a good idea to share with each other what apps/settings are mauling their battery life...
Personally at the advice of beards, I used systempanel app to try and monitor app cpu usage etc.
I was experiencing large battery drain overnight, so I decided to leave it running for 1 night. By the morning I had lost about 30 or 40% of battery and systempanel told me that Fancy Widget was using about 11 or 12% avg of cpu (if I remember correctly).
I removed Fancy Widget, turned off Data (with APNswitch) and also stopped systempanel (which prob contributed some of the usage itself) when I went to sleep the other night and the batt was at 40% usage. In the morning I turned on my phone and was greatly surprised to learn that the phone was STILL AT 40%... didn't even lose 1% wooooot
So.. I'd like to put my suggestions out
Batt hungry apps: FancyWidget (maybe...? but I'm surprised that other people don't seem to have a problem so maybe its my human error?)
Phone settings:
Data:3G data seems to consumes a lot!!!
I suggest leaving on 2G if you want to keep auto syncing apps etc, and swapping to 3G when you really need the speed (browsing/downloading).
If you want to totally maximise battery usage, turn off data completely every time you put the phone on standby, and turn off all autosyncing apps.
I also believe Wifi consumes less battery than 3G usage, although I haven't done any serious testing, I managed to use wifi on and off for about 5 hours at a lanning event and I still had a fair bit of batt left.
Recommended apps:
I recommend APNswitch to turn off data. I like it because you can use it as an app, not just a widget, as I've found all the APN widgets too be ugly. It also uses the notification bar wisely
Other experiences:
According to systempanel, samsung widgets (feed, buddies, daily briefing) all consume very little CPU (less than other widgets in my experience. I've kept them all as they seem beautiful to me
To XDA members, anyone else experience bad batt life with fancy widget?
Please feel free to critisize any of my claims, I hope we can help each other out with sharing battery life tips, good/bad apps etc.
EDIT:
Wallpapers:(thanks gadjet0)
Live wallpapers seem to consume a lot. Also having read discussion about the power consumption of oleds, I put a pure black background on my device. Whether it's actually reducing power or not I have no scientific evidence.
Thanks should pin this!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Have you tried any live wallpaper, I got the feeling that they put a drain on the battery!
Yes, all its true what have writed oswade. I was make this thing with my Galaxy, and battery life have very growing...
Regards
also try tasker, I have set profiles to put phone into airplane mode at night, during day the data is off, but comes on every 15 mins or when the screen is turned on (like juicedefender i think its called) works brilliantly and conserves battery.
I can unlpug phone at 5am and still have around 60% at 9pm with light usage, while before I would get to evening and battery would be close to dead!
Glad that I'm not the only ones.. I suffered quite bad. Full charge ard 6pm..was playing robo zone for an 1hr+. Batt left 50%. Arghh..
Does black or darker background uses more batt?
I'm using beautiful widget.
Sent from my GT-I9000
oswade said:
Hey guys, thought it might be a good idea to share with each other what apps/settings are mauling their battery life...
Personally at the advice of beards, I used systempanel app to try and monitor app cpu usage etc.
I was experiencing large battery drain overnight, so I decided to leave it running for 1 night. By the morning I had lost about 30 or 40% of battery and systempanel told me that Fancy Widget was using about 11 or 12% avg of cpu (if I remember correctly).
I removed Fancy Widget, turned off Data (with APNswitch) and also stopped systempanel (which prob contributed some of the usage itself) when I went to sleep the other night and the batt was at 40% usage. In the morning I turned on my phone and was greatly surprised to learn that the phone was STILL AT 40%... didn't even lose 1% wooooot
So.. I'd like to put my suggestions out
Batt hungry apps: FancyWidget (maybe...? but I'm surprised that other people don't seem to have a problem so maybe its my human error?)
Phone settings:
Data:3G data seems to consumes a lot!!!
I suggest leaving on 2G if you want to keep auto syncing apps etc, and swapping to 3G when you really need the speed (browsing/downloading).
If you want to totally maximise battery usage, turn off data completely every time you put the phone on standby, and turn off all autosyncing apps.
I also believe Wifi consumes less battery than 3G usage, although I haven't done any serious testing, I managed to use wifi on and off for about 5 hours at a lanning event and I still had a fair bit of batt left.
Recommended apps:
I recommend APNswitch to turn off data. I like it because you can use it as an app, not just a widget, as I've found all the APN widgets too be ugly. It also uses the notification bar wisely
Other experiences:
According to systempanel, samsung widgets (feed, buddies, daily briefing) all consume very little CPU (less than other widgets in my experience. I've kept them all as they seem beautiful to me
To XDA members, anyone else experience bad batt life with fancy widget?
Please feel free to critisize any of my claims, I hope we can help each other out with sharing battery life tips, good/bad apps etc.
EDIT:
Wallpapers:(thanks gadjet0)
Live wallpapers seem to consume a lot. Also having read discussion about the power consumption of oleds, I put a pure black background on my device. Whether it's actually reducing power or not I have no scientific evidence.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did you stop "systempanel"?
borchgrevink said:
How did you stop "systempanel"?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Couldn't figure that out either... probably need to use a task-killer or reboot.
So what do you recommand (or anybody else) to replace Fancy Widget ?
I don't really want a HTC like Clock but I want a digital clock like this ?
Beautiful Widget for exemple ?
And i don't know why an app which automatically turn on/off the 3G when ur using the brownser/market doesn't exist already ? That will be great !!!
What's wrong with fancywidget? Seems fine on my device.
If using Juicedefender,do I still need Advanced Task Killer?
Then What?
Hi!
We have industry best hardware configuration.
But we
1) can not Use live wallpapers
2) can not Use 3G for many hours
3) can not Use considerable number of applications from the market
4) can not watch two full length movies
5) etc.................
If you want above
1) Purchase additional battery and put in your pocket
2) Power adapter/ Travel adapter always carry with u
If you are roaming for more than six hours, then it's bad.
this is not only for Galaxy S most of the samart phones fall in this.
What can we do????????
-G
Dude, I have a Samsung Galaxy Ace
As soon as I got it I installed fancy widget and some other programs. My phone was lasting only 6 hours. I sync to corporate, gmail, facebook and a few others. At first I thought 'bad phone'. I uninstalled Fancy Widget last night and voila my phone is fine. It'll last a day+ now.
What the hell is wrong with that app?? Why does it need so much compute? Its just a widget that shows time??

[Q] Seidio 3000mAh Battery

I've had this battery for several months now and I'm just now starting to wonder why my battery life is so abysmal as compared to others with it. It'll probably last around 18-20 hours a day with about a half hour of music playing through Winamp, JuiceDefender, Lookout, and Tasker running constantly, an 100-800 core clock, and low brightness.
Somehow, I think I should be getting better battery life. It has been similar to this regardless of what ROM I use.
Do you all think it's the battery or just the phone?
Obviously, I'm unable to return it. I would just like to know what others think.
Kanojo said:
I've had this battery for several months now and I'm just now starting to wonder why my battery life is so abysmal as compared to others with it. It'll probably last around 18-20 hours a day with about a half hour of music playing through Winamp, JuiceDefender, Lookout, and Tasker running constantly, an 100-800 core clock, and low brightness.
Somehow, I think I should be getting better battery life. It has been similar to this regardless of what ROM I use.
Do you all think it's the battery or just the phone?
Obviously, I'm unable to return it. I would just like to know what others think.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
POSSIBLE ISSUES:
(Answering these yourself should help pin point the problem just by re-reading your own answers)
- How "old" is the battery?
- What are your min/max CPU frequencies?
- What services are running in the background?
- Did you have this problem on the stock battery?
- What app do you mainly use?
- Does that app drain battery?
Kanojo said:
It'll probably last around 18-20 hours a day with about a half hour of music playing through Winamp, JuiceDefender, Lookout, and Tasker running constantly, an 100-800 core clock, and low brightness.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With optimal settings and unnecessary ram hogging apps removed, you should be able to get more hours than that on the original battery half the size.
JuiceDefender should be unnecessary and I found it to inhibit me more than it proved useful.
Lookout is neat, and I do like it, but as I don't see a huge need for it I don't have it installed.
My personal favorite task killer is Advanced Task Killer which I use to cleanup my phone before locking it, you know, close the various apps I just opened . However, I have disallowed it from auto-killing, as this has proved detrimental and in vain when services killed generally immediately restart themselves and consume less battery than the auto killing program attempting to kill them.
A good check on certain apps is to go to Manage Applications under Settings and check your running apps. About 1-2 minutes after a good task kill, check to see which apps have restarted. If any you recognize are running that you didn't start, you may consider removing them. Especially anything that tries to access location services.
Edit: Almost forgot, I don't use any widgets except for Task Killer and Power Control. All others drained more battery than I cared for, and this I tested extensively.

[Q] App: OS Monitor - Power consumption?

I've been using an app called "OS MONITOR" https://market.android.com/details?id=com.eolwral.osmonitor&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5lb2x3cmFsLm9zbW9uaXRvciJd since I got my GN and I'm now on a mission to improve the battery life by seeing what programs I can disable/live without for the sake of battery life.
I've got the app running in the task bar and monitoring CPU usage with a refresh rate of 2 seconds.
Now from what I've noticed in battery settings, it doesnt seem to keep the phone awake and i still get 2+hours of screen time with fairly heavy usage.
Anyone familiar with the app and its power consumption?

High Background Load / Battery Drain?

I figured that even in standby the Tab S does consume too much battery (5-10% per hour). And a times gets unresponsive and warm. Seamingly there are some processes producing background load. Probably media indexing, syncing, etc. Probably WhatsApp, Facebook, google+
I would like to check, which processes/apps are responsible and in case change configuration or deinstall.
So which is the best tool to track suspicious processes/apps?
Or is there a list of apps that are known to be resource hogs?
I got the impression that the build in monitor (via settings/battery) does not report correctly. I get 60-65% Display, plus 10-20% Android System, all the rest is rather minor. But battery capacity runs down rather quickly even when display is off, so these numbers seem to be not plausible.
Just fresh reboot and youll see touchwiz consumes 2GB of ram
Theres some power consuming background process. Mine idles at 3 hours and will still be the same percentage. I used to have 1.2gig of used RAM on idle time. You may want to install 'quick system info' to monitor app activities

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