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I have been getting terrible battery life since I mistakenly reset the battery statistics in recovery.
I have recalibrated my battery, but I am only getting like 8 hours.
What can I use to see what is using the battery? I think there is something in spare parts, but I am not sure what to look at there.
Any apps or methods would help me determine what is chewing it up is much appreciated.
Bielinsk said:
I have been getting terrible battery life since I mistakenly reset the battery statistics in recovery.
I have recalibrated my battery, but I am only getting like 8 hours.
What can I use to see what is using the battery? I think there is something in spare parts, but I am not sure what to look at there.
Any apps or methods would help me determine what is chewing it up is much appreciated.
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Click to collapse
It could just be that your phone is incorrectly reporting how much battery life you have since you reset them, and a couple days of usage will just allow it to gather more data and get more accurate.
But if there is an errant app draining your battery, a combination of spare parts and an app called SystemPanel should allow you to narrow it down to what's causing problems.
Plug your phone in for a minute, then unplug it, let the phone sit with the screen off for 25 minutes or so, then go to spare parts->Battery History, then choose other usage and since last unplugged. The running % should be close to the screen on %. If the running % is way higher than screen on, that means something is running while your screen is off.
I paid for the full version of systempanel for the system monitoring feature, but i think you can use the free version to just check which apps are running. Things like google voice should say running, but just about everything else should say background. If you have an app that you downloaded, but haven't been using in a while saying service, there's a good chance that's what's causing your phone to run the batteries out. Garbage apps like Grooveshark (which I still use because I can't live without grooveshark) will run even after you could have sworn you closed out of them.
The paid version of systempanel makes things easier because you can set it to monitor, then come back and look at what apps have been using cpu cycles even when the phone isn't being used. The system processes are always going to use cpu cycles, but apps like Swype will (or did at one point) keep the phone from properly sleeping, and you can tell by all the cpu they're using even when the screen is off.
Ah, that is a good point. 2 apps that I did change were I installed Tiger Text (neat app but rather sure that drains the juice) and I put on a different version of swype.
Thanks for the tips, I will run with that.
More reading I am doing I think the mistake I made, is that I reset my battery statistics when my battery was only half full.
I put in a full battery, reset statistics, and will let it drain, that should calibrate the phone correctly.
Thanks for the tips though, I will keep those in mind.
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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
Can someone please give me some advice on what to do with my battery! Only been on for about 7 hours and I'm already at 34%!! Well 33 as of now.. This is NOT normal! Only talked for about an hour total today! I always have wifi on because I don't have a data plan! -Medium usage.
-pics enclosed!
-system info/rom/kernel info!
-please help!! Thanks!
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium App
Some advice I can shed on this is having Wifi on all the time, (by all the time you mean at least 24/7), that could be a strong point why your battery life is low. Another thing is the number of apps that require data being pulled running in the background
1. Having Wifi on for the time you state is bad if you don't have a signal. Reason why is that since there is no signal for your Wifi to obtain it will continue to search and fail, search and fail which actually drains some good amount of battery being forced to repeat such a task unlike when having a steady signal it's usage becomes minimal
2. High number of data pulling apps also works the same except then have the option to change the time they pull data which can be usually found under settings/options tab
Try these out and let us know how it goes =]
xArcane1x said:
Some advice I can shed on this is having Wifi on all the time, (by all the time you mean at least 24/7), that could be a strong point why your battery life is low. Another thing is the number of apps that require data being pulled running in the background
1. Having Wifi on for the time you state is bad if you don't have a signal. Reason why is that since there is no signal for your Wifi to obtain it will continue to search and fail, search and fail which actually drains some good amount of battery being forced to repeat such a task unlike when having a steady signal it's usage becomes minimal
2. High number of data pulling apps also works the same except then have the option to change the time they pull data which can be usually found under settings/options tab
Try these out and let us know how it goes =]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info
When I have wifi on, I am always somewhere where I have wifi. I do leave it on while driving, but that's no more that a few minutes until it reconnects.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium App
Hmmmmm
I barely noticed that you are running a custom rom. After flashing the new rom did you wipe battery stats? If not, that can actually affect battery life as all roms run differently and different data is applied to the battery stat
There are two ways to go about wiping the stats. You can boot into recovery and Wipe Dalvik Cache under the advanced settings or you can download Battery Calibration from the marketplace which in my experience is a lot easier
Battery Calibration
The instructions are inside the app on how to implement the process
I had this rom for a while but when I flashed it, I did not wipe data or anything. I decided to wipe data to give it a try and reflashed it. I charged it completely and calibrated it. I am in the process of running the battery until it dies so I can recharge it to complete the calibration process.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium App
Be sure to post back your results and hopefully if nothing has improved I'll try again to assist you =]
Ran it last night untill it was dead and let it charge throughout the night. Testing battery life now! Will post results when at 8 hours. Would post at 7 again but I am gooing on a college visit today and won't be using it then.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium App
DroidCell said:
Ran it last night untill it was dead and let it charge throughout the night. Testing battery life now! Will post results when at 8 hours. Would post at 7 again but I am gooing on a college visit today and won't be using it then.
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Click to collapse
DO NOT drain the battery until it dies!!! Just down to 15-20%, then charge to full, repeat a couple times. Over-discharge is not good for Li ion batteries.
People on here keep recommending it, or saying they do it. Its NOT a good idea, and proliferating this bad advice needs to stop. Draining the battery to dead is bad for the life of the battery. Also over-discharge can possibly render the battery unable to take a charge, requiring you to buy a new battery. It doesn't happen often, but its happened to a few different people on this phone, and other phones as well.
redpoint73 said:
DO NOT drain the battery until it dies!!! Just down to 15-20%, then charge to full, repeat a couple times. Over-discharge is not good for Li ion batteries.
People on here keep recommending it, or saying they do it. Its NOT a good idea, and proliferating this bad advice needs to stop. Draining the battery to dead is bad for the life of the battery. Also over-discharge can possibly render the battery unable to take a charge, requiring you to buy a new battery. It doesn't happen often, but its happened to a few different people on this phone, and other phones as well.
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Click to collapse
You seem to know a lot so i'm gonna ask ya redpoint. People say there is a built in safety zone so even when the battery is reporting as 0 it really isn't. The batteries do not allow themselves to get below a certain threshold for the reason you are explaining. Is this not true? Lots of people who know nothing of xda or cell phones in general let there phone run the whole way out for whatever reason. I would think that cell/battery manufacturers would take that into consideration.
the reason people used to tell you to drain the battery complete was based on an older battery tech that has what you would call a "memory" it needs to "memorize" it's lowest and highest point in order to calibrate the battery. Li-ions do not need that. They actually keep track of your charge cycles.
suppose it can handle 1000 cycles. on the first day, you used up 75% of your battery and put it on the charger to max. then the next day you use another 75% and do the same thing. at this point what actually happens is that the battery will count this as 1.5 cycles rather than 2 cycles. But redpoint is right.
Do NOT drain the battery completely when it's a Li-ion battery. it's old advice for old tech battery that is legit for that type of battery but not Li-ion batteries.
To calibrate your battery, you just use your phone normally. It will figure out where it is supposed to be as you use and charge it over the course of a few days.
better battery life
Notice on the graph, the screen was not on for a while though...
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium App
xsteven77x said:
You seem to know a lot so i'm gonna ask ya redpoint. People say there is a built in safety zone so even when the battery is reporting as 0 it really isn't. The batteries do not allow themselves to get below a certain threshold for the reason you are explaining. Is this not true? Lots of people who know nothing of xda or cell phones in general let there phone run the whole way out for whatever reason. I would think that cell/battery manufacturers would take that into consideration.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is true that there is a built in 'safety zone' so that the battery does not drain completely to zero.
However, it is also true that this 'safety zone' can and HAS failed for some users (including some who are on these forums)
With the way that Li-Ion batteries work, and 'calibrate', there is no added benefit to draining it completely to zero. If there is no benefit, then the risk is not worth it.
DroidCell said:
Can someone please give me some advice on what to do with my battery! Only been on for about 7 hours and I'm already at 34%!! Well 33 as of now.. This is NOT normal! Only talked for about an hour total today! I always have wifi on because I don't have a data plan! -Medium usage.
-pics enclosed!
-system info/rom/kernel info!
-please help!! Thanks!
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
These ideas ran through my mind reading your post:
I. You might want to calibrate your battery. I've run into many instruction how to do this (just google the keywords: Desire Z calibrate battery), but basically the ones that do NOT require you to drain your battery to zero first, came down to this:
0. Turn Fastboot OFF!
1. Power on your Desire then connect to your Charger and Fully charge until the LED changes Green.
2. Disconnect your phone from the charger and then power off.
3. Reconnect your phone to your charger with the power off and wait for the green LED.
4. Disconnect the phone from the charger and power it on.
5. Once the phone has fully booted / ready to use ... power off again.
6. With the power off connect the phone to the charger and wait for the green LED.
7. Disconnect from the Charger then power on and use normally.
Many people seem to have greatly increased their battery life just by following those simple steps. I am currently in the process of trying it myself, but will probably need some hours before I can verify if the overall life has significantly increased.
II. You might want to install an App like "Watchdog lite" for a longterm check if you have any apps or processes, that work as a battery eater in the background.
III. if the above tips should fail, you might want to upgrade your radio and maybe also align the radio library (RIL), to match it best with your radio and ROM. But do a lot of reading and research before actually performing that task, since this is nothing for beginners and might even make things worse. This thread might be a good point to start your research.
hope that helps,
Tronar
Today's myth debunking:
"The battery indicator in the status/notification bar is a reflection of the batterystats.bin file in the data/system/ directory."
No, it does not.
This file is used to maintain, across reboots, low-level data about the kinds of operations the device and your apps are doing between battery changes. That is, it is solely used to compute the blame for battery usage shown in the "Battery Use" UI in settings.
That is, it has deeply significant things like "app X held a wake lock for 2 minutes" and "the screen was on at 60% brightness for 10 minutes."
It has no impact on the current battery level shown to you.
It has no impact on your battery life.
Deleting it is not going to do anything to make your more device more fantastic and wonderful... well, unless you have some deep hatred for seeing anything shown in the battery usage UI. And anyway, it is reset every time you unplug from power with a relatively full charge (thus why the battery usage UI data resets at that point), so this would be a much easier way to make it go away.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105051985738280261832/posts/FV3LVtdVxPT
Already threads on this..
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
i've known this for like 2 years. wiping batterystats.bin does nothing whatsoever. i just never have the energy to post it around the forum since you see so many people saying to wipe batt stats.
i tried to open the stats file one time and all it looked like to me was the same info you see in the battery settings menu with the list of apps used on battery, and wakelocks etc.
glad this is finally getting out there!
I also suspected this was the case but as I got what I expected from my battery I never really looked in to it although I have read the nonsense calibration posts etc.
Thanks for posting mate its confirmed my thoughts!
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
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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...