Develop Bugs

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?

[Q] Battery life

How's the battery life on this phone? I'm thinking about getting it.

Battery life is *ok*.... But for me, i can unplug my phone at 7am i the morning, and by 10pm when i go to bed, im typically around 15%-30%.
To do it, i use a task killer (i prefer the one by rhythm software). I keep things closed that dont need to be running. Also, i dont use the stock launcher, i believe that launcher is part of the problem since once i switched from it my battery life increased quite a bit! I use Launcher Pro.
Turn off your location settings (wireless networks and gps). Keep your screen timeout low, like 1 minute, and get yourself into the habit of pressing the power button to shut off your screen when your done.. Prevents butt-calls and saves battery!
A lot of people say the battery sucks, and keeping everything stock-ish, yes it sucks.. But when you customize the phone to your own feel with a few small tweaks, its better than most phones!

PMad said:
Battery life is *ok*.... But for me, i can unplug my phone at 7am i the morning, and by 10pm when i go to bed, im typically around 15%-30%.
To do it, i use a task killer (i prefer the one by rhythm software). I keep things closed that dont need to be running. Also, i dont use the stock launcher, i believe that launcher is part of the problem since once i switched from it my battery life increased quite a bit! I use Launcher Pro.
Turn off your location settings (wireless networks and gps). Keep your screen timeout low, like 1 minute, and get yourself into the habit of pressing the power button to shut off your screen when your done.. Prevents butt-calls and saves battery!
A lot of people say the battery sucks, and keeping everything stock-ish, yes it sucks.. But when you customize the phone to your own feel with a few small tweaks, its better than most phones!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How long is your screen on, on average?

I just bought the qcell 3850mah extended battery and I have to say it was worth the $20
Sent from my LG-P930 using XDA

hotweels258 said:
How long is your screen on, on average?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very hard to say! But i send around 5000 text messages a month, probably spend at least an hour a day on the internet, checking emails, etc... Maybe another hour doing other random stuff? Lots of text messages and a couple hours with other stuff.. So not a TON, but not a little either.

at the beginning you will hate it !
a couple of recharges and drains till the phone shuts down
ofcourse root and remove all the bloatware and do battery calibration, and now... its the best battery on a smartphone i have ever owned !
lasts much longer than my second phone iphone 4S and xperia S
definitely much better than the S2

Battery's Great Now!
I've rooted, switched to Go Launcher, and running Juice Defender balanced profile. With moderate, surfing, messaging, email, and occasional tethering, I'm getting 2+ days. Manage to get a nice LTE signal from home. Dang! It's faster than my AT&T U-verse.

2+ days sounds very impressive. I must say its true the battery life gets better after some time, but for me its now about 18+ hours with not so much use. I guess it also depends what kind and how much apps you've installed and if they run in background-mode.
I've made the weird experience that sometimes for maybe 1-2 hours the battery status remains on one level, but later it drains a lot in very short time (usage is same like before). So unfortunatly not really reliable.

vodovodo said:
at the beginning you will hate it !
a couple of recharges and drains till the phone shuts down
ofcourse root and remove all the bloatware and do battery calibration, and now... its the best battery on a smartphone i have ever owned !
lasts much longer than my second phone iphone 4S and xperia S
definitely much better than the S2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Forgot to mention what this guy said! Remove the bloatware! Tuns of that crap stays running in the background whether you like it or not! So if you use Titanium Backup after rooting, you will definitely have one of the best batteries on the market! I woke up and unplugged my phone at 5:30am, here it is 19 hours later and my battery is at 31%

[Q] First timer - Pl suggest ROM upgrade to improve battery

Hello Champs.. I am first time user to this forum so pls excuse any idiot questions if it may seem.
I tried to go through threads to find answers but got completely confused, so though to put my question in simple words here.
I have Desire HD running task killer and Juice defender ultimate with extreme power saving option set and also optimized settings but still my phone don't last more than a day of normal usage. I just check emails, read news and call.. I do not play games and use any CPU intensive app. Phone is not rooted and running 2.3.5v of android
One of my friends told me after flashing ROM, battery power is improved by 40% in case of his tablet, so I am wondering if there is any suggestion for me to use for my Desire HD mobile. I have tried all options at application and settings level to improve the battery life.
As I am not too techincal in this field, if someone could write me few high level steps from start to end to get better battery life ROM and / or jellybean on Desire HD, I'll try to find out low level details of those steps in this forum and root (and flash) my mobile.
My sole requirement is to get as much battery as possible and if possible, some latest android version (4.1 or 4.2) to avail the new features.
Also, would there be an option to take the snapshot of current mobile setup in case if rooting / flashing goes wrong, I could revert back to the current version without loosing settings / data.
Thanks for your help.

two things, go to settings>about phone> battery
Or something like that. Take screenshots of your battery consumption, and the amount of time for each. Without that we can't know what's really causing your battery drain.
That said, a day of use will pretty much wind down your phone, the DHD has a very poor battery, decent sized screen, and most modern smartphones don't last terribly long anyways. However, you said you weren't using it too hard, so I'm not sure what it could be
As for juice defender, make sure that the intervals are set to no less than 15 minutes. 10 minutes pushing it. if you set it to 5 minutes, your phone will constantly be waking up from sleep (ultra battery saving mode), and constantly enabling and re-enabling radio. That'll cause more drain than it will save. At 15 you'll notice definitive increases, and at greater your battery will only get better.
Get rid of the task killer, or disable autotask killer and keep task killing to an absolute minimum. Never kill all your user apps at once. Kill only very large resource hogs (e.g. after playing a game, kill it). An autotask killer is very bad for your phone, and for your battery. Linux naturally tries to keep as many processes 'running' or cached in the background, using up a lot of your ram- it makes multitasking better, so in linux this is a good thing. With windows, it does the opposite, and if you run out of RAM you're screwed. A task killer will try to ruin that behavior, and in the end both performance and battery life will suck. It hurts battery life because after you kill that app, it'll just restart itself in the background- using more CPU therefore battery. Plus it also wakes your phone up from sleep when it needs it. I would only recommend a task killer for a phone with 512mb of RAM.
If it's an older battery, you could also have lost a lot of it's charge. I recommend installing battery monitor widget, and letting it run in the background. It'll estimate your mAH (battery capacity). If it's over 1,000, you're fine. If it's around 800, not bad, still doable. If it's at around 600, I would recommend going in for a replacement battery. I'm using an Anker 1500 (amazon), and I highly recommend it. Mugen 1600 is very good one, but it'll cost you a lot more money. I would not recommend an original HTC one.
finally, installing a custom ROM may or may not help battery life. With HTC Sense based ROMs, I've noticed a battery increase. In AOSP (unmodded, as google intended) gingerbread ROMs, you'll also notice a battery increase. With AOSP ICS, JB4.1.2 and 4.2.1 battery life is hit and miss, some ROMs will get you better battery, some will get you worse. You'll need to experiment around with it.
Also, yes you can backup everything after you install a custom recovery. I recommend looking up AAHK (advanced ace hack kit) on google and youtube, as well as rooting and S-OFF in general on youtube.

Thanks for your reply... Really appreciated. I'll look at the suggestions and see if it is unnecessary to root if 1 day battery is expected.
Do you think recommended high power battery actually improves usage time or people just compare their used up battery with new high capacity ones and think they hv got more juice in it. If high capacity ones really give another 2-3 hours of browsing as compared to OEM 1230 mah battery, I would rather buy it instead of flashing Rom.
Sent from my HTC Desire HD A9191 using xda app-developers app