Develop Bugs

Why is Android System taking up 60% of my battery?!?!

hey folks,
i need some direction with a particular problem...
check out the attached screenshots. why is the "android system" percentage so high?? i'm still in my learning stages, so i'm not sure how i can get rid of some of the processes, which i know are seriously harping on my battery life (which is great, but it can be much better, ya know?)..
any help would be appreciated!

It's so high because you were probably using your phone for the two minutes it was unplugged. Therefore, android system took up the majority of the battery used so far (which might be next to nothing since it was only two minutes).

Get a good task manger. You can exclude apps you want running and kill ones you don't. Also, there's a lot of battery optimization in rooted roms.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

psychopsilocin said:
It's so high because you were probably using your phone for the two minutes it was unplugged. Therefore, android system took up the majority of the battery used so far (which might be next to nothing since it was only two minutes).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, unplugged, it's usually 30-40% anyway. that's waaaay too high, especially since i keep hearing it being 2-3% here on the forums.
dglowe343 said:
Get a good task manger. You can exclude apps you want running and kill ones you don't. Also, there's a lot of battery optimization in rooted roms.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i don't really like to have a task manager. i'm wondering what kind of processes are useless. or maybe it's my dc rom that's letting them run?

Is it doing it all the time or just once in a while?
*This was posted from my Evo 4G*

snake411 said:
Is it doing it all the time or just once in a while?
*This was posted from my Evo 4G*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, right now, it's at 4%, but i haven't touched it to use it, and it's unplugged. but, yesterday, i was at work, and i only used it a few times to text, respond to emails, check twitter (cyanogen stalking lol), and check time. it was at 30-40% at those times.

im new with android operating system so this might not be the entirely correct .. from my experience once you use the phone for multitasking and not closing the applications .. thats when that happens.
it also seems to happen when your batteries critically low and u click on the battery usage prompt that comes up.. hope that helps..
*This was posted from my Evo 4G*

[Q] Best light-weight ROM that includes 4G usage?

Hi, I'm new here and new to the Android platform in general - just bought my Evo 4G last week.
I rooted the phone and have been using the Fresh ROM, but have noticed that it has some pretty severe battery-draining issues, unless I'm just using the wrong apps and settings.
Either way, I wanted to try out some other ROMs but I cannot find anything that works well so far. I tried out Cyanogen but of course it has no 4G access. Kind of a waste of that extra $10/month huh?
MIUI had some acclaim on the forums, but once again: no 4G according to the update log.
I had read on MakeUseOf or a similar site that the Baked Snack ROM is a good option for staying purely lightweight.
Before trying any other ROMs, I wanted to get some community feedback. I generally use these apps for my phone:
Browser
Google Voice
Gmail
DropBox
Endomondo
Pulse (RSS Feeds)
Which ROM would be most recommended to maximize performance and battery life with these apps, while still taking advantage of 4G capability?
Thank you for the help.

Every phone is different so someone's experience with a particular kernal/ROM will not necessarily be the same for you.
You mentioned bad battery life you also mentioned that you bought the phone last week. Since its a new toy, all you are thinking about is spending time on it. If you have 10 hours worth of battery on a full charge but 6 of those hours are awake then you are getting good battery life.
I recomend just breaking in your toy (not breaking it) and you'll notice much better battery life and time goes on since you'll be using it less.
In the meantime:
1. limit your 3g when you're not using data
2. limit your screen brightness
3. live wallpapers are nice, but they can use some battery
4. I sign out of gtalk and make sure to turn off automatic logging in
5. Sync as often as you need to but not more than that.

Good points, thank you. And yes I've been using it constantly.
Nevertheless, I downloaded Advanced Task Killer to monitor what's going on at different times. I notice certain native apps always kick themselves on, and I was hoping to disable those.
For instance, Voicemail is constantly turning itself on and I don't need it - I use Google Voice. Is there a way to disable or uninstall this altogether?
On reboot, I notice a whole list of about 10-15 apps that start themselves up too, which I usually proceed to shut down since I obviously don't need all those running in the background. Is this a good idea?

NoCatharsis said:
Good points, thank you. And yes I've been using it constantly.
Nevertheless, I downloaded Advanced Task Killer to monitor what's going on at different times. I notice certain native apps always kick themselves on, and I was hoping to disable those.
For instance, Voicemail is constantly turning itself on and I don't need it - I use Google Voice. Is there a way to disable or uninstall this altogether?
On reboot, I notice a whole list of about 10-15 apps that start themselves up too, which I usually proceed to shut down since I obviously don't need all those running in the background. Is this a good idea?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Get rid of your task killer immediately - it does more harm than good. Quit worrying about apps popping up when you don't use them.
If you want to uninstall apps you don't use that are "system" apps get Root Explorer.

Yeah - if you want a good app killer, get System Monitor from the Android Market...its only a few bucks and it gives you a lot more insight as to what is being used and what is not. I had Task Killer, but it stopped working when the OTA Froyo update was launched - which sent me searching a Froyo compatable Task Killer...

JayStation3 said:
Yeah - if you want a good app killer, get System Monitor from the Android Market...its only a few bucks and it gives you a lot more insight as to what is being used and what is not. I had Task Killer, but it stopped working when the OTA Froyo update was launched - which sent me searching a Froyo compatable Task Killer...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Task Killers are not needed on a andriod device it only restart the app thus causing problems and battery drainage in the long run...Most experienced users can tell you that they will do more harm to your system then good...system panel is a good app for figuring out if you have a rogue app taking up all your cpu and not letting your phone sleep...good luck happy flashing

Again, I appreciate all the advice here, but I don't believe anyone has addressed the issue at hand:
What are some good options for a light-weight ROM that allows usage of my 4G capability?

Android System High Usage

Hi guys,
Anyone have an idea what would cause my battery stats to have very high "Android System" usage all of a sudden. No new apps installed.
Thanks

I'm seeing this get pretty high as well. Starting to wonder... TW really limits the information in the Battery Status dialog. Hopefully we'll get ROMs soon that have more detailed information like I had in MikG.

Splaktar said:
I'm seeing this get pretty high as well. Starting to wonder... TW really limits the information in the Battery Status dialog. Hopefully we'll get ROMs soon that have more detailed information like I had in MikG.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you recently start seeing this? Or has it been from the beginning?

mikea3000 said:
Did you recently start seeing this? Or has it been from the beginning?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It has always been a bit higher than I am used to. I just grabbed the new version of betterbatterystats from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809
Hopefully I can use this to figure it out.
Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

Splaktar said:
It has always been a bit higher than I am used to. I just grabbed the new version of betterbatterystats from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809
Hopefully I can use this to figure it out.
Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please keep me posted if you find anything

System Panel works really well for me I found. Paid version is totally worth it, too.

Just another thought/question...
I am assuming since it is "Android System" causing such high usage ( I have 5% battery left and android system is 30%), that it cant be an app I installed causing the issue.
It has to be something that is either part of the stock ROM (I am stock, not rooted) or something core to the android operating system. PLease let me know if you agree with my logic that it cant be an installed app.
Just trying to find the root cause at this point or determine if I have to hard reset which I dont feel like doing.
Thanks again

The original SGS2 has an issue similar to this.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1290020
They discovered with it that the processor has to ramp back up to 800MHz to do its pre-deep sleep tasks, in addition to taking longer than normal to do those tasks. So with a phone that woke up often to sync, even limiting the processor to 200 MHz with the screen off, it still spends a considerable amount of time at 800 MHz. I don't think they have a fix, but you can work around by limiting the amount of syncing the phone does while sleeping.
Don't know if this is related, since TMO SGS2 doesn't use the Exynos.

Thanks for the reply. My problem is that the battery usage for android system used to be 5% or less and now out of the blue is 25-30%.

Did you change any sync settings? Setting up an email account or maybe a widget to sync could do it. The phone has to do a bunch of system related tasks when it wakes up and goes to sleep, and those fall under "Android OS", so even if it is waking up to sync for an app, the system still has to do stuff, and more than usual when coming out of sleep. Like the other thread said, the original SGSII does all these things at a far higher clock speed than it needs to, and takes longer than most phones do.
I myself don't have the phone yet, nor do I have an original SGS2, but you could look up much of the same information the gentleman who wrote up the OP in that thread I linked to see if the issue is related.

I was so annoyed with this issue that I decided to do a factory reset. I dont think it helped.
So far after being off the charger for 2 hours....I sent 5 texts, browsed web for about 5 minutes. I am down to 87%. Display time is 46%, used for 18 min and android system is 17% with stay awake time at 3 minutes, and there are other items taking up battery at 5% or less like cell standby, android os, market
Does this seem normal, I never rememver android system taking up over 5% even with little usage. I am actually pissed because I would have thought that a factory reset would have helped for sure.
BTW, I am only syncing one acct, Google

I've been watching with betterbatterystats for a couple days now. I've got Skype running in the background so I expect that to use some battery and cause some wake ups.
But it has turned out that location services and updates have been doing a lot more, as much as 7000 in one day. They show up as something related to Maps, but I think that it might be Latitude. So I have disabled that location tracking. We'll see if it helps, there isn't much more using my battery. It is just something keeping it from deep sleeping.
If this doesn't work I'll look at other location apps like weather and such. I already uninstalled Accuweather after reading about how they transfer your location tracking information over the Internet unencrypted!
Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

Possible ATT JB update battery drain fix - root only

I had been getting some higher battery drain with JB than I was with ICS, both were on rooted stock ATT roms. Early on I had posted that it was about the same as ICS, but after more and more use, I was starting to find that it really wasn't. I was consuming about 5-8% per hour idle and 10+ while actually using it. The idle bothered me the most because, obviously, using a phone will drain the battery
Two things have stood out as the high consumers: Media Scanner and poor signal.
To address the media scan drain, there have been suggestions to change CWM settings to backup as .tar rather than default .dup. This ONLY works if you re-do each nandroid that was a .dup as a .tar, delete the .dup backups, and clear the unused backup data through CWM. This removes the blobs folder files which will be in the thousands.
To address the poor signal drain, I flashed the UCLH9 modem (see modems thread in the development forum). Better Battery Stats is not showing any drain caused by poor signal, and this is also reflected by actual usage, the signal is simply... better.
Consumption is marginally higher than on ICS but not nearly as high as I was experiencing. If this has already been covered, my apologies for eating up server space...

Could you alternatively put a .nomedia file into the clockworkmod folder on the device? Would that prevent it from scanning that folder?

Well I'm bone stock and not rooted, I have no backups and the media is eating my battery like mad since the update. I've killed the process several times but it starts back up on its own. The only way I know to fix it will require root.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

There is a rogue app in the stock TW that is doing it. I have seen it in every 4.1.2 port. Run a de-bloat and it will go away.

Do you know what bloat exactly is causing it?

shoestar said:
There is a rogue app in the stock TW that is doing it. I have seen it in every 4.1.2 port. Run a de-bloat and it will go away.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have all the att and Samsung bloat frozen via TiBu.

Trust me, something is there. I never had the chance to figure out exactly which app it was though. I have a feeling that it may have something to do with a Samsung app.
I would suggest using OS Monitor from the Play Store. Make it show all system processes and see if you can dig deeper into it.
Edit: Also, here is my humble opinion too. People keep wanting new and better features. Well, that always comes at a cost. Just remember that. The iPhone boys are learning that the hard way too.

shoestar said:
Trust me, something is there. I never had the chance to figure out exactly which app it was though. I have a feeling that it may have something to do with a Samsung app.
I would suggest using OS Monitor from the Play Store. Make it show all system processes and see if you can dig deeper into it.
Edit: Also, here is my humble opinion too. People keep wanting new and better features. Well, that always comes at a cost. Just remember that. The iPhone boys are learning that the hard way too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with that sentiment... I'm considering reverting back to ICS but the smoothness of jelly beans is too enticing.
after making these changes yesterday I got a 40% battery consumption over 9 hours with average use which IMHO is plenty.

Solution is to reboot the phone OR unmount by going into settings, storage and unmount the USB there instead of from the notification bar. I think this solution works but have not tried it myself.

rebooting whenever the os gets out of hand, or unmounting the SD card, is not a viable option IMHO.
my post was directed toward root users who have cwm installed and are experiencing the media drain because of the blob files. the modem change I tried because all the reliable jelly bean ports seem to use the H9 modem. a weak mobile signal is detrimental to battery life, as is a weak or intermittent WiFi signal.
believe me, on my rooted phone, these two changes made a real and noticeable improvement in battery life in JB. I've gone half the day today on ICS and half the day on JB. battery consumption is now within the range I had on ICS.
one the one hand, I believe that some increase in consumption is due to the "omg I has the jelly beans and I'm going to use the bejeasus out of my phone" factor. I also believe that a good number of fixes and patches are simply a placebo effect. BUT, my phone had been getting hot and tearing up the battery due to signal searching in areas where it had been fine prior to the update. heck, we have an att tower within 100 ft if my office, I typically pull 69-70mbps at work. on the k3 modem I was regularly dropping data or losing LTE. not anymore.

Un mounting then re mounting seems to have worked for me the process can now be killed!
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

1% in the last hour and it wasn't idle the whole time. sent a few texts and spent a few minutes on Facebook. I'll take it...

Check you facebook mine wa at 51% I uninstalled it and re installed fixed battery drain
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app

Argh. k3 modem has been simply horrible. was constantly losing data though I initially thought it was the rom i was using. Is it safe to back flash from k3 to h9 or is there a certain procedure that needs to be done?

mtl171 said:
Argh. k3 modem has been simply horrible. was constantly losing data though I initially thought it was the rom i was using. Is it safe to back flash from k3 to h9 or is there a certain procedure that needs to be done?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used the CWM flashable zip from the thread in development. I did the typical cache/dalvik cache wipe first.
the last4 hours the phone was on my nightstand unplugged doinga sleep drain test. 0.3% per hour.

Ok I have found something running on my SGS3 that wasn't running all the time before and now its open constantly. I need to know if anyone knows if this one is safe to FC and then disable. Any help would be appreciated. I mean heck I wake up in the morning and this is running and I definitely am not using maps in my sleep.LOL anyways anyone know?

bogdaryl said:
Ok I have found something running on my SGS3 that wasn't running all the time before and now its open constantly. I need to know if anyone knows if this one is safe to FC and then disable. Any help would be appreciated. I mean heck I wake up in the morning and this is running and I definitely am not using maps in my sleep.LOL anyways anyone know?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what is it?

OOPS! Sorry about that. MAPSserviceSamsung. I finally found the list of apps safe for disable and it is safe to disable. I'm seeing a bit of improvement in battery life. I also uninstalled facebook and reinstalled it and since doing these 2 things I'm things are getting much better.

I will have to try these. My battery is horrid. My OneX got easy 30+ hours of heavy use to a charge. My SG3 is lucky to get 8 hours. I average 10% an hour on mild use, heavy use and its as high as 15%
Sent from my SGH-I747M using xda premium

bogdaryl said:
OOPS! Sorry about that. MAPSserviceSamsung. I finally found the list of apps safe for disable and it is safe to disable. I'm seeing a bit of improvement in battery life. I also uninstalled facebook and reinstalled it and since doing these 2 things I'm things are getting much better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd like to see that list too if you don't mind sharing the info
I think I'm going to do a factory reset soon. Pretty sure that these drains are caused by some leftovers from ICS...

[Q] Apps randomly starting/stopping; Unused apps being cached?

Since I noticed this behaviour last night, I've been obsessively watching various apps start and stop on their own. On the App Manager's "Running" tab, I keep seeing several apps start and stop on their own, despite the fact that I've turned off any network-related syncing or listening options in their individual settings.
Also, there seem to be far too many apps in the Cached Processes screen, most of them I haven't run at all for a long time.
Is this behaviour normal? (Android's, not my obsessing...)
I'm worried that something else is going on in the background and killing my battery. Or worse, scanning my system. (Though I did run an antivirus without any problems being detected.)
Thx.

I recently asked a similar question regarding lowering background processes allowed. Whether background and cached apps affect battery. I learned it is a trade off between using more battery to restart or pull from cache. I opted to do a heavy debloat and freeze certain apps or processes I don't need. I also use cool tools to watch my memory and CPU info and battery monitor widget pro to monitor mA and CPU temp. I enjoy trying to max out efficiency. I didn't see my post anymore in the last few pages but if its further back the guys linked me to some great info about processes. Sorry for not linking thread. I will when I get a chance. Hope it helps you too.

Bubba Fett said:
I recently asked a similar question regarding lowering background processes allowed. Whether background and cached apps affect battery. I learned it is a trade off between using more battery to restart or pull from cache. I opted to do a heavy debloat and freeze certain apps or processes I don't need. I also use cool tools to watch my memory and CPU info and battery monitor widget pro to monitor mA and CPU temp. I enjoy trying to max out efficiency. I didn't see my post anymore in the last few pages but if its further back the guys linked me to some great info about processes. Sorry for not linking thread. I will when I get a chance. Hope it helps you too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! I'll take a look in your post history to see if I can find it.
I'm less concerned with whether or not the apps are actually running or cached, what worries me is that they all seem to be constantly starting and stopping for a few seconds. Watching the Running apps screen I can see many different apps cycling over and over. The process starts, goes on a few seconds, then stops. Then another one pops up. Then another, etc etc.

I looked back about a dozen pages and couldn't find it anymore but I think it was diablo009 that gave me links to some really helpful stuff he had written. I'm not super proficient in maneuvering the forums but maybe you can find his posts with that info another way. Good luck.

Not sure if it loads my signature when posting from phone. But if it does, check Android Memory Management link in my signature.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

Bubba Fett said:
I looked back about a dozen pages and couldn't find it anymore but I think it was diablo009 that gave me links to some really helpful stuff he had written. I'm not super proficient in maneuvering the forums but maybe you can find his posts with that info another way. Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
(This is the one I found.)
I'm aware of that RAM usage with Android from similar articles I read last year, but it was really the automatic starting and stopping of processes/services that bugged me. I think it might just be a situation where if the app's on your phone there's nothing you can do about it if you've granted network access permissions. I probably naively assumed that if you granted those permissions where would be settings to disable network access within the apps.

Some of my observations:
An app prefetched into memory does not use CPU.
A prefetched app could be wiped from memory if more RAM is needed. After the memory intensive app quits, this could be loaded back.
If an app is used frequently, it would be one of the prime candidates to be considered for prefetching.
An app loaded (not prefetched) uses CPU based on its work, like it could be a daemon looking for updates.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

diablo009 said:
Some of my observations:
An app prefetched into memory does not use CPU.
A prefetched app could be wiped from memory if more RAM is needed. After the memory intensive app quits, this could be loaded back.
If an app is used frequently, it would be one of the prime candidates to be considered for prefetching.
An app loaded (not prefetched) uses CPU based on its work, like it could be a daemon looking for updates.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The last one is what I am worried about. There are apps that are starting processes and then stopping repeatedly. A couple dozen different ones, including ones I have barely ever used. I've looked at some of those apps' settings and disabled any notifications or update checking, basically anything network related, but they keep showing up in my running apps/processes list throughout the day.

Not sure how Google market checks for app updates. It could be querying installed apps at regular intervals to check for their versions to compare to versions in market.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

diablo009 said:
Not sure how Google market checks for app updates. It could be querying installed apps at regular intervals to check for their versions to compare to versions in market.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's one thing I wondered about, but I have Google Play updates off. I guess it's possible that it still checks, though.
Thx for the reminder! I'm going to double-check my Play settings just in case something was reset during an update.

You could try something like Rom toolbox pro to stop startup programs if you use them infrequently. I have had a few issue stopping certain apps but a little tweaking and it works well. Juice Defender also has the option for disabling apps from accessing data/wifi or neither. I don't know about the process though. Thanks for spotting your name Diablo and helping out. Great info on the topics.

.Arkham said:
Since I noticed this behaviour last night, I've been obsessively watching various apps start and stop on their own. On the App Manager's "Running" tab, I keep seeing several apps start and stop on their own, despite the fact that I've turned off any network-related syncing or listening options in their individual settings.
Also, there seem to be far too many apps in the Cached Processes screen, most of them I haven't run at all for a long time.
Is this behaviour normal? (Android's, not my obsessing...)
I'm worried that something else is going on in the background and killing my battery. Or worse, scanning my system. (Though I did run an antivirus without any problems being detected.)
Thx.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree that if you don't use it, uninstall if you are able. Otherwise just disable it. This is unusual though. I randomly go into cached processes and only the things I use or that the system needs are there. On a rare basis something additional might pop up.