Develop Bugs

[Q] Display taking up WAY too much battery life.

I am using Super Z Sense enhanced v3.1 with incredikernel installed. I've used my phone for around 10 minutes of browsing, and the rest of the time the screens been off. It's been unplugged for 3 hours 20 minutes. I unplugged it after fully charging it and now its at 68%. The display has been taking up 79% of the battery, even though the screens been off most of the time. What do I do?

lower the display?
and every ROM displays things differently. If your battery isn't affected don't sweat it. I personally haven't run that ROM so I can't help you there.

It is on miminum brightness, and my battery is greatly affected. Not using my phone I have maybe 12 hours of standby battery life.

I'm having the exact same problem..... backlight is turned off and my display is using 79% of the battery.... I'm in cyangenMod 6.1...
any ideas?

OlympusGod said:
It is on miminum brightness, and my battery is greatly affected. Not using my phone I have maybe 12 hours of standby battery life.
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Click to collapse
I've replicated the results with a brand new battery from Verizon (after several charges, the capacity should be fine now) and both CM7 (Build 45 from Gridlock) and Uber Z RC2 and several different kernels. I think this is just the design of the phone, or I got two defective batteries in a row

There's an important piece of information missing here... Is your Incredible's screen the SLCD type or AMOLED type? SLCD screens don't use any more power due to what's on the screen due to the type of backlight (same light illuminates the whole screen), whereas on an AMOLED display, each pixel is its own source of light. That's why on an AMOLED display, darker themes offer better battery life as the pixels aren't having to light up as much to display the content.
Might need that info.

I have a slcd display....
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

I've got an Amoled

Another important question: 3G or wifi for most of the day?
I can get 6-8 hours out of a standard battery running on 3G with wifi disabled, but if I am on wifi I can get 18-20 hours...

I spend most of my time in 3g.... I'm in the nightly cm6 rom with #21 kernel now and I'm getting the 20 hours I was hoping for.... life is good.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

Wifi on maybe 20% of the time.

OlympusGod said:
I am using Super Z Sense enhanced v3.1 with incredikernel installed. I've used my phone for around 10 minutes of browsing, and the rest of the time the screens been off. It's been unplugged for 3 hours 20 minutes. I unplugged it after fully charging it and now its at 68%. The display has been taking up 79% of the battery, even though the screens been off most of the time. What do I do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same things running Z ROM's. I switched to Myn's Warm TwoPointTwo, and the display is low, right now 7%, and same usage patterns. 3G all day at work (8 - 5), Wi-Fi all night until morning.
Maybe a phone call a day, maybe...emails/TweetDeck/texts/web browsing otherwise. It seems that that's the way Z ROM's on this phone run...?

I too have this problem on any aosp rom ive ran on it whether it be gingerbread or froyo. The display will take up a good 80 percent battery life, making my Seidio 3500mAh battery able to barely able to get through the day. However, on a sense rom the display takes maybe 5 to 7 percent and the battery will last 3 or 4 days. I was wondering if anybody managed to figure out a solution to this, as I want to run gingerbread but can't due to the battery issue.
My incredible is of the slcd type. Any solutions worth trying?

having the same issue with CM7 nightly builds... display using over 70% all the time... terrible battery life. otherwise CM7 seems very stable, thanks to all those involved in making it happen, you guys rock!
any help with the battery/display issue? thanks

Don't forget, these are percentages. Each rom/kernel combo calculates the percentages differently. Your may be getting actual better life, but the meter says 70% of the total usage because the Android System and other services aren't using nearly as much battery vs a stock kernel/stock rom.

The problem we have here though is that the battery life is greatly affected. Stock battery gets maybe 12 hours standby on a fresh install and screen mostly off. My Seidio 3500 barely makes it through a full day on any aosp rom yet lasts 4 days on a sense rom.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

Sync
Another couple players in battery life besides display are frequency and quantity of accounts synched, as well as GPS on/off.
Not magic bullets to battery savings since Display is the resource hog in this instance, but you may (should) be able to squeeze several additional percentage points out of the battery by tweaking the synch quantity & frequency, as well as toggling GPS to off unless it's needed.
Mindblowing if the 3500 doesn't last a day on a full charge.
Absent that, I've read varying opinions on whether the xx.9 radio is a battery eater.

I figured out my solution. Update your radio. 2.15.00.07.28 doesn't like aosp roms, so I upgraded to 2.15.00.11.19. MUCH better on the battery life (doesn't run my Seidio 3500 dead in just one day, more like 3 now) although as a previous poster suggested, the percentages in the battery life display are just that. Percentages. The display still shows ~50% of the use, however the life has returned to normal.
Link to radio images: http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/files/category/25-htc-incredible/
And I know some of you are wondering "How in the f&$* can the radio affect the displays power usage?" To be honest, I don't know the answer to that either. I just tried this on a hunch and it seemed to work. Full day of not exactly light use (browsing while wifi tethering, some bright sun use as a navigation device, texting all day) and no forced attempts to be frugal with power (letting the screen time out on its own instead of immediately poking the power button, accidentally left wifi on most of the day, automatic brightness with a lot of full sun use...) and I'm still over 60% after 14 hours. Your mileage may vary.

[Q] Poor battery life with non Sense ROMs

Dear all,
I have a EURO Desire Z.
When I use a Sense based ROMs (in fact, stock or Virtuous) I have a fairly nice battery life, that is, in the 30 hours range.
However, with any kind of CM6 or CM7 (or even Vilain ROMs), the battery life is really reduced. Like 12-15h max (almost without any use).
The battery monitor will show that most power is eaten by Cell Standby, Wifi and Bluetooth. I tried different radios, but the result is still the same. I also tried various CPU governor settings, but it didn't change the big picture.
Any idea on what may be wrong ?

I found that CM6.1.1 did that to me too, but reverting to 6.1 got me very good battery life. While I like the Sense widgets, I much prefer vanilla for everything else so i have't lived with a Sense rom long enough to see if it gets better battery life than CM6.1

nbougues said:
Dear all,
I have a EURO Desire Z.
When I use a Sense based ROMs (in fact, stock or Virtuous) I have a fairly nice battery life, that is, in the 30 hours range.
However, with any kind of CM6 or CM7 (or even Vilain ROMs), the battery life is really reduced. Like 12-15h max (almost without any use).
The battery monitor will show that most power is eaten by Cell Standby, Wifi and Bluetooth. I tried different radios, but the result is still the same. I also tried various CPU governor settings, but it didn't change the big picture.
Any idea on what may be wrong ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the exact same issue as you with CM6 (retarded <12 hr battery life with light-moderate use). After seeing your post, I've decided to try a sense rom for myself. Will post results tonight or in a day.

Nope. Still drains like ****.

This may be teaching you to suck eggs, but are you recalibrating your battery after flashing a new ROM?
I found my battery life was immediately atrocious after flashing, until I completely drained the battery til phone wouldn't switch, then charge while switched off, until green light + a couple of hours. Then wipe battery stats in ClockworkMod.
After this, I found my battery life on CM 6 was really good.

setspeed said:
This may be teaching you to suck eggs, but are you recalibrating your battery after flashing a new ROM?
I found my battery life was immediately atrocious after flashing, until I completely drained the battery til phone wouldn't switch, then charge while switched off, until green light + a couple of hours. Then wipe battery stats in ClockworkMod.
After this, I found my battery life on CM 6 was really good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I never did that. I'm not really familiar with the "battery calibration" stuff, but it sounds like something that will help to get good linearity in battery capacity estimation over time.
What I'm pretty sure, though, is that at some point (like 10-12h), the phone turns itself off. I believe that it has to do with insufficient voltage at battery terminals, rather than some sort of estimation of remaining capacity.
Or am I totally off ?

[Q] NFC effect on battery life

Hello,
I want to know if my experience is common or not. I had my phone at ~90% and changed it to airplane mode to try and conserve battery while I went snowboarding. Got back to the phone about 7 hours later and it was dead. Plugged it in and turned it on and found out that "NFC Service" took up 80% of my battery for those 5 hours. When I turn NFC off this does not show in the battery log, but I don't want a major potential feature of this phone to be unusable. Anyone else experience NFC destroying their battery?
Thanks.

I am noticing my Galaxy Nexus not lasting as much as my Rezound did, but it had a larger extended battery. I also use Ultimate Juice to enable / disable my internet connection. So with my extended battery + ultimate juice + brightness on 30% or so I still have 29% battery after a full 25 hours. I would just disable NFC because I do not see it in my battery usage. It is only useful for Google Wallet, and wireless charging (correct me if im wrong).

I use the NFC quite frequently during the day by having various profiles set up around my house, and my battery seems to be fine. Are you using a custom rom or kernel? If the NFC battery issues always occur, I would try reflashing your Nexus. Seeing as NFC itself doesn't eat a significant amount of power, I would guess that the Android OS is being kept awake by the process.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

Well I got annoyed and was one day from the end of my return window so I went to Verizon and told them I wanted another phone. They gave in and I just got the new one. Hoping the phone was the problem. I was unrooted with 4.0.2 installed. I don't have a huge need for NFC, but I don't like to think a feature of the phone was completely useless to me when I have seen others who leave it on with no ill effects.
Thanks

Very litlle battery life on my GIO

Hello all,
Am i the only one that is having problems with the battery life on the galaxy gio?
I charged the phone today at 5 in the afternoon, by 8(3 hours after) 70% of battery, charged it with the wall charger and i rebooted it when the battery was full to close all tasks.
In 3 hours without any wifi, only 1 sms received, no calls and no other tasks was executed i lost 30%.
What can i do to improve the battery?
Are you experiencing any similar problems?

Coiso said:
Hello all,
Am i the only one that is having problems with the battery life on the galaxy gio?
I charged the phone today at 5 in the afternoon, by 8(3 hours after) 70% of battery, charged it with the wall charger and i rebooted it when the battery was full to close all tasks.
In 3 hours without any wifi, only 1 sms received, no calls and no other tasks was executed i lost 30%.
What can i do to improve the battery?
Are you experiencing any similar problems?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can wipe battery stats, and turn things like gps wifi data autosync unused apps etc off, for some things you need root acces
Sent from my GT-S5660 using xda premium

What rom you have ?
I have problems with battery life too...but because i play games. Is weird because you didn't do nothing like browsing or play games and your battery was eaten.
Try a full wipe.

Also search the market for PowerTutor, it might be able to help finding what eats your battery, as what you describe this is not normal.

If you've rooted your phone you can calibrate your battery. There's an app for this in the market. It just wipes the battery stats file and creates a new one. I've head that it is good with every rom change to calibrate the battery Hope this helps! GL!

Actually it's good to flash every new ROM when you have fully charged battery. If you fail to do this you'll have to calibrate the battery and it might not be easy to do right the first time.
SO much easier to flash having full power

Battery stats wiping
IIRC google denied that battery stats wiping would actually increase the battery life: http://www.xda-developers.com/andro...-battery-stats-does-not-improve-battery-life/

I assume, you have things like WiFi, BT or GPS turned off... Then you maybe might try another launcher. Samsung's TouchWiz is quite a power eater.

nvlty said:
IIRC google denied that battery stats wiping would actually increase the battery life: http://www.xda-developers.com/andro...-battery-stats-does-not-improve-battery-life/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It won't increase battery life, true, but think - when you unplug the charger? When your phone says "100% charged", right? And if your battery starts are wrong the phone may say "I'm charged" when it's actually, say, 40% charged or whatever.
Wiping stats should also provide more accurate battery indicator when it gathers new stats after some usage.

JustVass said:
It won't increase battery life, true, but think - when you unplug the charger? When your phone says "100% charged", right? And if your battery starts are wrong the phone may say "I'm charged" when it's actually, say, 40% charged or whatever.
Wiping stats should also provide more accurate battery indicator when it gathers new stats after some usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my experience the battery indicator may work a bit odd (e.g. it goes fast to 40% then stays there for ages). But it didn't keep the battery from charging to full, even when it indicated 100% it still kept charging. But to stay in the topic, clearing the stats might help the "dropping by 30% really fast" issue

Yup, that's what I was talking about - wiping stats won't improve battery life, but might fix indicator accuracy

It could be your background applications eat too much mobile data. Check out your background applications and disable them. Stick with 2G also it improves battery life a lot

if the phone and battery are ok, and you don't have Wifi/BT/3G/EDGE/max_screen_brightness/ or high CPU usage background apps, you should get something like in the attached picture:

AT least for me CM7.2 really improved battery life up to 2 (TWO) days!
Unfortunately CM9 ruined this again and brought it back for ~8h...

esilviu said:
if the phone and battery are ok, and you don't have Wifi/BT/3G/EDGE/max_screen_brightness/ or high CPU usage background apps, you should get something like in the attached picture:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The z stands for days??
Sent from my GT-S5660 using xda premium

voetbalremco said:
The z stands for days??
Sent from my GT-S5660 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, is romanian language

SilviuMik said:
Yes, is romanian language
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh ok..
Z means day, sounds logically.
In dutch we call it 'dag'
Thats kinda good battery life, but also without nearly using your phone
Sent from my GT-S5660 using xda premium

You can use CM 7.2 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1381355
It is stable and saves battery better than stock rom.

Another thing to check is that Wifi is set to disable when the screen turns off or when plugged in... If not, you can loose 50% battery life in 6 hours. (Which i did once. NOT FUN.)
As well, apps that sync in the background. Ie, mail checking your inbox every hour for new mail; facebook, twitter, myspace checking for new notifications every hour; leaving apps using GPS running in the background like Navigation, My Tracks, etc. Those sorts of things can drain a battery really quickly, beacuse it has to wake up the phone, get the phone to get the required data over the cellular network then go back to sleep again, instead of just letting the phone sleep.
Another thing you can do is to make sure you kill apps. IE, don't use the home button to exit the app, use the back button. That will kill the app instead of leaving it running in the background.
Its kinda funny, this is all stuff people have mentioned already, but it seriously can be the difference between a half a day and a whole day on a battery...

[Q] Utterly HORRIBLE battery life across batteries and ROMs

Hey XDA
I'm having absolutely HORRIBLE battery life with my GIO. I've gone through extensive testing to find the root of the problem but nothing seems to be the cause. So far i've had to charge twice, maybe three times a day.
So here's the story. A couple of months ago I noticed my Gio's battery was dying quicker so I flashed another rom [Particle Mod] over it. I was happy, until I found out the problem persisted. Then I flashed a 2.3.7 Cyanogen mod, the battery still wasn't lasting and the battery life was only slightly worse owing to CYMOD.
I then flashed the GALAXYICS beta, and it's getting even worse. I've even bought new 1600mAh batteries to see if it was the battery's fault. Apparently not, so I went back to stock for a day or too to see what it was like, and I was still lucky to get 12hrs out of it with featherweight usage.
I simply do not know what to do, I've tried numerous battery mods [flashable zips etc] and they've only done a tiny bit. Lately I've been playing with clockspeeds but it seems to only make a difference if I raise the minimum speed, the extra top end performance is nice though.
So, what I'm saying is this normal for a Gio? Is it a hardware fault? software? 4th dimensional? I'm at a loss, and I think the infamous Samsung cell standby drain is to blame.
Attached is screenshots of general battery screen, Cell standby and the Graph. I've been switching between 2G and 3G, Airplane mode on and off, and listening to music for an hour or so and It seems to have utterly crippled the device doing simple tasks, and I've done EVERYTHING to minimize the drain by lowering screen brightness to %0, turning off vibration, animations, wifi, GPS, BT, radio, everything except google contacts sync and a couple of root things in between like deleting the batt stats.
The new batteries help somewhat, but I still can't last long enough for a single school day... FFUUUUU!
I really don't want to have to buy a new phone, I'm only 14 so I can't work to get one, and I can't just ask my parents because then I'm just being a spoilt brat. I want to make this phone last as long as possible [Until I can work for a Google Nexus or something] and the battery isn't helping.
Thanks for reading.

Yeah you're a spoiled brat. This is not great but not extraordinarily bad. My epic 4g touch spends the day on the charger.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda app-developers app

Well, it seems to be all right with your battery. And your '1600 mAh' battery was just a fake. A lot of people get scores like this

What I am worried about is not so much the capacity, it's the RATE at which it drains. I see a lot of "stair steps" on my graphs so I'm not so sure, especially when checking the other phones in the house "a Galaxy Ace and 2 HTC Incredible S's] they seem to have a more consistent curve, I notice my batteries will drain by as much as %5 in half a minute, which is either a reporting bug or inconsistent strain.

Have you tried to do a wipe and test it with no installed apps?

Do not trust the "stairs", it is just bad reporting (as you said).
In my case when I switch on 3G or WiFi, it happens that the battery drops by 10% instantly.
The only value that is relevant is the total duration between a full charge (100% charge + several hours still plugged) and the "low battery" indicator.
According to my own experience, the things that drains the most are :
- 3G network : this is the main factor, by far.
If you can, try to stay in 2G mode most of the time, switch to 3G when needed, and as soon as not needed anymore go back to 2G.
- WiFi / BT
If you switch On/Off very often, or is always On and you moves very often (changing hotspot), then WiFi / BT will be a very important battery drain factor.
- Multimedia
Videos / MP3 drains battery a lot.
If you can, switch to "airplane mode" or switch off the phone during night.
Finally, with 3G / WiFi / Multimedia usage mix, a "One Day" autonomy is good.
I'm sorry but you will not find any smartphone that can pass "One Day" with that usage type.
With my own usage (very few calls, sms, wifi) and with above tricks, my Gio lasts 4-5 days.
PS : As you mentioned, available ROMs are very unequal as far as battery drain is concerned.
Stock ROMs (and moded ones like Adrenaline) are the champions of battery life, while ICS ROMs are the worst.
CM7.2 ROMs are in between.

I agree with Vilo76. When you don`t have wireless or 3g, or play any music/games, you can actually get a few days of life from your phone, but if you do some of the stuff i just said, the battery life is going down like crazy...
The only think you can do to get some bit of juice out of your phone is if you format your battery, but actually that is just for a better battery reading, not actually extending your battery life...

By the way, I can't figure out why phone manufacturers don't use more long lasting batteries ...
There are many many examples of batteries that are about the same size as a phone one, but deliver way more mAh.
Among others :
- House wireless alarms keypad batteries are the same size but can be as much as 3000mAh ...
- Classic cylindrical AA or AAA accu can be as much as 4000mAh ...
While a typical phone battery hardly ever exceed 1500mAh.

Okay, I'm back and I have some results for today
3G Is DEFINITELY using more in Australia on idle, while 2G is a bit less brutal
There is something cause my phone to wake intermittently, I've turned sync and location services, and killed any apps that may be checking the net etc, but it's still waking up with screen off.
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Today I decided to do something bit extreme, I ran the phone an airplane mode all day with the original "dead" battery, I only lost %20 all day with 1hr or so music usage, phone standby is up but Cell standby isn't there at all [Obviously].
Something's telling me that's it the cell radio and whatever is waking my phone up is causing the suck. I'm upgrading to GalaxyICS CM9 beta10 today with a full dalvik, battery and cache wipe, so we'll see how that goes
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MORE NEWS
Good news this time! I've installed a Cyanogen Mod 7.2 on their [The one that's updates through Goomanager] and the battery is holding steady at 100 idling for 1hr on 2G.... Not sure if I have to calibrate but I think I've fixed it, it's working better than stock!