Develop Bugs

[Q] Battery testing

I've read in a bunch of other threads that people are getting awesome battery life out of their Z or G2. Mine is okay-ish. I had a hero before which seemed a bit better. there are a couple of odd things I thought I'd check tho...
First, the keyboard backlight turns on and off at seemingly random intervals while open. Anyone else got this?
Also I've seen screenshots of the battery use screen showing how much power is used by each system. The screen always is at least 75% on mine, even when its been sat in a pouch most of the time with just a couple of messages or a phone call- this seems quite different to other peoples experience.
Is there any reliable way of benchmarking the battery to check? If not, does anyone fancy helping me test?

im actually suffering from the same problem,
i thaught it was because the first week i was using it lots thats why the battery wasnt lasting long, but on monday morning with a full charge ,
only with a few calls , texts and checking train times on TFL , by the time i got to sleep that night the battery was on 30%
I was shocked , checked the battery useage meter , everything was below 5% except the screen which was was on a shocking 80%
I Then formatted the phone , restored to default , removed everything ,
set the brightness to lowest useable which was just above the 'o' on 'ok' in the brightness screen let it charge to 100% for use on tuesday.
Tuesday - Morn before i left for work it was on 100% , the only thing i had setup on it was email, brightness on low - but useable .
Screen must have been on onliy for 20 mins throughout the day
Got home , battery was on 45%
battery useage - again display was taking over 70% of it when it was hardly on .
I am RMA'ing this one tommorow
I think its an issue internally with something shorting on the display, battery shoudlnt be draining that much if its not on
Out of interest was yours a UK Desire Z ?

Yep. This sounds exactly like my situation in every detail. I couldn't believe reports from other people saying their batteries were at 92% after 12 hours- even without using mine at all this wouldn't happen.
Mine is a UK desire z, from play.com. I think its over 14 days so RMA might be tricky, although I know I have lots of rights thanks to distance selling regulations. Hope I can exchange without too much fuss.
Ooh, just thought of something. When I set the brightness really low on mine (below 20% or so) the screen flickers slightly. It's most visible on a totally white page. Does yours do the same? Faulty backlight maybe?

pizza65 said:
When I set the brightness really low on mine (below 20% or so) the screen flickers slightly. It's most visible on a totally white page. Does yours do the same? Faulty backlight maybe?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just tested mine, definitely no flicker.
Now my experience with the battery....
I play about half hour - an hour of games every day, plus about up to an hour wifi, using the xda app throughout the day using data, 10 - 15 txts and a few 1 - 2 min calls... Not too heavy usage.
I'm getting 30-36 hours, I'm happy....
BUT..... I have not plugged in through mains once yet. I read that charging through USB gives better performance... so far that is looking true.
I got the same kind of time out of my Hero using mains but that was with zero game time.

yes! pizza65 , i noticed the flickering too! , i thaught it was just my eye being twitchy ! Noticeable on internet browsing on low brightness! .
Mine was from handtec .. (amazon delayed too much) so changed last min,
it comes with a 2 year manufacturer waranty i think so even if you take it up with HTC direct they should be able to help if play dont.
I tried a diff radio and rom , but it made no difference.
Maybe the UK batch is still faulty , wasnt that the reason why it failed google testing and got delayed for release here?
Whats your hinge like ?
ddot what network are you on ?
same to you pizza65?
im on 02 , i dont think it is a network radio issue with switching of hspda/3g to 2g signals as it does say cell standby battery useage is around only 6% , but then again the phone could be false reporting

pizza65 said:
Is there any reliable way of benchmarking the battery to check? If not, does anyone fancy helping me test?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not really if you want realistic real-world results with data connectivity etc. It varies too much since everything counts like signal strength.
You can always just turn off everything and burn the battery with a movie but first thing you should do is a few dozen full discharges before you do anything. I've noticed that HTC (and other manufacturers too) pre-use their batteries ie. charge and recharge them until they're optimal for consumers, hence the whine about bad batteries when people buy new phones (and in reviews as well).

I'm on Orange, I don't think its network because, as you confirmed, the "battery use" screen says that the screen is draining all the power. If nobody else gets a flicker on low brightness (it can take a few seconds to see it, but once you notice it...) then it looks like our screens are the culprit. Maybe.
I've deleted batterystats.bin and fully charged, so ill give that another chance before talking to play.
Ddot, what percentage of the drain is from the screen on your z? Also, if you press 'display' in that menu it will say how long the screen has been on, what does it say?

I have the same issue with battery performace. I've moved to Desire Z from my old Desire which had AMOLED display. On my old one, the display taked 5-8% of battery. On Desire Z I have minimum 50%, but ussually ~70%.
After reading that some people can use their DZs like "for two days of heavy use (gaming, browsing)" or "5% for 6 hours" I can't understand how?
Comparing to old Desire my DZ have poor battery performance. But the specs tells it must be much better.
I'll publish my battery usage stats after some days. Maybe it'll be useful.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

In additional.
I have stock Sense ROM with root and S-Off. No overclocking kernel. My SetCPU profile is set for 245 MHz when screen is off.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

Interesting read...desire users, amoled etc. cynogen mod, 2.2 android:
http://code.google.com/p/cyanogenmod/issues/detail?id=2012
Another snippet:
http://www.goodandevo.net/2010/08/h...ry-and-possibly-double-your-battery-life.html
a variation:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6796078&postcount=1
i'm in similar shoes like you guys. i'll try these.
I'm using SetCPU 245MHz idle, stock Z rom.

tbalden said:
Interesting read...desire users, amoled etc. cynogen mod, 2.2 android:
http://code.google.com/p/cyanogenmod/issues/detail?id=2012
Another snippet:
http://www.goodandevo.net/2010/08/h...ry-and-possibly-double-your-battery-life.html
a variation:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6796078&postcount=1
i'm in similar shoes like you guys. i'll try these.
I'm using SetCPU 245MHz idle, stock Z rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very interesting, thanks for sharing

And a really "geek" method here quoted from cyanogenmod issue:
Comment 27 by david.j.erickson, Aug 19, 2010
Now, I was still having abnormal drain on my battery. As suggested in the Wiki and also confirmed in another cyanogenmod post, clearing the battery stats can help. I followed this procedure:
Fully charge the battery, says Full and 100% under Settings - About phone - Status.
Reboot into recovery, wiped battery stats. Phone still plugged in at this point.
Reboot into rom, checked to make sure battery was still Full and 100%.
Unplugged phone.
Killed it, used Maps on Wifi and messing around. Killed it in about 3 hours or so.
Tried turning it on a couple times to make sure it was *dead* dead. It still tried to boot, but couldn't complete without shutting off.
Plugged phone in, booted it up. It may be better to not turn it on until it is fully charged, but this is just what I did.
Let it charge overnight, next morning took it off charger since it was full.
I have noticed pretty good battery life since doing this. This morning on my bus ride in I pretty much constantly played some Storm8 games and used Listen with Bluetooth, was only down to about 82 or 84%, can't remember. This is on par with previous CM release for me.
Not sure why this rom in particular had so much worse battery drain out of the gate, and not just for me. Fortunately it seems correctable. Maybe if a few of you could give this a try and see if it improves your battery performance we could conclusively say battery calibration is the solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

What about the flicker? Can anyone confirm that?

I have a UK (read: QWERTY) Desire Z, first batch.
I tried reprodocuing the flicker by lowering the brightness completely and looking at a blank white page in the internet browser. Couldn't see it. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough.
That said, I'm not getting the great battery life that most seem to be getting, and the stats always show the Display as being the number one drain. HOWEVER, it doesn't seem quite as bad as you guys are saying.
Right now, it looks like this:
Unplugged for 18 hours and 16 minutes, battery at 36%
Display accounts for 41% of the drain
It has been on for 50 minutes.
(stock ROM, running an IM client 24/7, synced to three email addresses... Typoclock seems to use 2% of the battery every time as well, which seems relatively high for such an innocuous little widget)

Yeah. I have some slight flickering too, slight when low light set.
Uk stock.
I dont think high display percent is an issue too much reading cyanogen issue comments.if you use nothing but low cpu burden apps, display should eat most.
Also if i have it off, power is eaten by cell standby.
Im still hoping for a settled battery log mentioned in forums.

My 2 cents:
If I "use" the phone, I have to plugin it every night.
If I do not "use" it (nobody calls that day, no browsing or GPS (Just work!)), I plugin it every two day (ex. mon - wed - fri).
The display is always 65-80 % of the "drain problem".
Today the stats are:
7.30 am: full chargerd 100%
7.30 pm: display drains: 70% in 1h : 21m - battery at 20%
I leave automatic background gmail sync on (only daylight, I use the "Flight mode" overnight)
No bluetooth, no wifi, no gps, brightness 35-40%

lordevol said:
I leave automatic background gmail sync on (only daylight, I use the "Flight mode" overnight)
No bluetooth, no wifi, no gps, brightness 35-40%
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No phone either.

I'm on a North American Desire Z and I see the display using 70%-80% of the battery when I have the display on for approximately two hours out of the day. I keep my display quite dim too, at 20% brightness.
I'm also running everything stock. No root, no custom ROMs, no anything.

Isnt display percentage actually the display driver cpu time eaten?its just a theoretical value isnt it, not watts gone? It seems obvious that its eating a lot as it refreshes all the time regardless of display light level.

My screen on is only 33% today, im sure its usually higher though. Maybe its due to me flashing stuff all day. Ill do a full charge tonight and report back Sunday.
...bought from e2save, a part of carphone warehouse.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

[Q] Battery life + heating trouble.

Here's a thing that keeps bugging me - either i'm doing something wrong, or there's something wrong with my settings, or maybe it's defective battery or device, in the end (gosh, hope not).
So the problem is, running mb525 with xd11.2.5 (nordic .177 - based), VSel 300/22,650/32,100/52, stock battery, few if any "side" programs- basically Elixir and DroidWall.
a) I know people around do get 24+ hours from their Defy's, and by the look of the battery size it's OK. But I hadn't been able to get close to that, much less go "2 days" - battery go down in 12 hours of "ordinary use" or so.
Battery Manager always shows "mobile standby" as the foremost juice gnawer (50%+).
b) The ordinary use above is - wifi bt gps off 99%, data on 50% of time. I'd say it's very fair, and really expected to, as they say in spam mails, last longer All sorts of process monitors, task managers and killers absolutely fail to find any "rogue app" that could've been responsible (and I control those managers themselves pretty tightly, aswell). Other people running xd1 rom do not report same problems.
c) But that's not the worst of it. At times, my battery would really heat up. Not cannot-touch heat up, but, well, speaking my native Celsium, if the normal operating temp is 32-34, when it's "hot" Elixir would show 40, even 43. That's still far from scary, but not sure if normal either - noticeably warm to the touch.
Last two times it really heated was
- when i DLed a big (20mb+) app from Market over 3g - it took about 5 minutes and by the end of it back battery cover was seriously hot, 43 Celsium seemed accurate or even understated.
- while doing full nandroid backup in Clockwork recovery (heck, neither ROM nor VSel aint loaded yet!). Again about 4-5 minutes and 40*C, give or take.
Granted, I can't guarantee it's battery itself or something in the phone (core, anthena) spreading the heat, but net result is the same.
So, any idea what's the problem is and what should I do?
Any advice, similar experience and other helpful bits are greately appreciated. I fell in love with Defy bigtime, but quite honestly, 12 hours battery life is not something I can live with Especially when people are getting 48 out of the same device with the same battery
P.S. Might be a baseband problem as it's a UK-bought defy with Nordic ROM being run in Russia... but i've no idea how to check it out or fix...

ArcanisX said:
Here's a thing that keeps bugging me - either i'm doing something wrong, or there's something wrong with my settings, or maybe it's defective battery or device, in the end (gosh, hope not).
So the problem is, running mb525 with xd11.2.5 (nordic .177 - based), VSel 300/22,650/32,100/52, stock battery, few if any "side" programs- basically Elixir and DroidWall.
a) I know people around do get 24+ hours from their Defy's, and by the look of the battery size it's OK. But I hadn't been able to get close to that, much less go "2 days" - battery go down in 12 hours of "ordinary use" or so.
Battery Manager always shows "mobile standby" as the foremost juice gnawer (50%+).
b) The ordinary use above is - wifi bt gps off 99%, data on 50% of time. I'd say it's very fair, and really expected to, as they say in spam mails, last longer All sorts of process monitors, task managers and killers absolutely fail to find any "rogue app" that could've been responsible (and I control those managers themselves pretty tightly, aswell). Other people running xd1 rom do not report same problems.
c) But that's not the worst of it. At times, my battery would really heat up. Not cannot-touch heat up, but, well, speaking my native Celsium, if the normal operating temp is 32-34, when it's "hot" Elixir would show 40, even 43. That's still far from scary, but not sure if normal either - noticeably warm to the touch.
Last two times it really heated was
- when i DLed a big (20mb+) app from Market over 3g - it took about 5 minutes and by the end of it back battery cover was seriously hot, 43 Celsium seemed accurate or even understated.
- while doing full nandroid backup in Clockwork recovery (heck, neither ROM nor VSel aint loaded yet!). Again about 4-5 minutes and 40*C, give or take.
Granted, I can't guarantee it's battery itself or something in the phone (core, anthena) spreading the heat, but net result is the same.
So, any idea what's the problem is and what should I do?
Any advice, similar experience and other helpful bits are greately appreciated. I fell in love with Defy bigtime, but quite honestly, 12 hours battery life is not something I can live with Especially when people are getting 48 out of the same device with the same battery
P.S. Might be a baseband problem as it's a UK-bought defy with Nordic ROM being run in Russia... but i've no idea how to check it out or fix...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dude.. Try using another sim card and see if you see any improvement in the battery.. The sim card you are using might be old and may be the phone is not able to suspend it when it is in deep sleep mode..

It is normal for this battery to heat up when running different big things....3G ussualy causes it to heat up
I get 2-3 days....i dont know why you get only ~12 hours. When i bought this phone i "formated" the battery (some people say that is no needed for newer batteries) - charged it 3 times, each 8 hours (from 0% - when phone powers off itself to 100%)
If you are using Nordic version you SHOULD change your baseband (900/1800/2100 in Russia)

stefa_vr6 said:
If you are using Nordic version you SHOULD change your baseband (900/1800/2100 in Russia)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I kinda fail at it, asked in original thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1052745&page=4 - basically it's either "850/1800/2100" called ChinaME722 1.10 or "900/2100" variants...
How do I check if the phone is "able to suspend or not"? I just got a just-pulled-out-of-holder-card new SIM card from my operator less then a week ago (old one wouldnt work with net access at all, for some reason).
Is it the same as SetVSel's "limit to vsel1 while screen is off" (which I have enabled the whole time), or a different thing?
Just today had another "controlled use", unplugged right with hte last post (e.g. 11 hrs ago, give or take), 1.5 hr voice calls total (2x of 45 mins), 1hr GPS on + data on for GMaps, 20 mins watching youtube via browser, the rest standby with everything off. 2 hours ago battery hit 30% where my VSel goes to "paranoid mode"(99% + vsel2 limit) and there it stays so far. Battery manager attributes 38% battery usage to "mobile standby" and 31% to voice calls.

^^tough luck

Have you tried watchdog? 3g also drains a lot try minimizing background apps to see if there are differences in the batt life. As for the battery, check if it is bloated or bulging. If it is then you need to replace it. If phone is still in warranty. unroot and have it checked out. Good luck
Sent from my MB525 using XDA App

At one time my Defy got into a state similar to the one you describe; unaccounted by any measurements battery rundowns (in my case also excessive data use). Only a reset to factory settings (wipes and all) restored sanity to the phone operation.
____
Tapped into XDA app on Moto Defy

As wrote earlier, data/3g is completely disabled most of the time - batt drain still there.
I currently switched baseband to chinese 850/1900/2100 - will see if it changes anything. Also with some luck some people might just know the "correct" baseband to set for Russia (either here or in baseband svitcher topic).
Will give watchdog a try, but then again, i've been closely monitoring processes with tons of other stuff. Almost nothing's running (as I hadnt installed much yet). Plus the fact that "battery usage" gives foremost percentage to mobile standby hints the problem might be there, not in runaway app.
Had several wipes, if all else fails i'll try some different base ROM (e.g. not .177 nordic). Admittedly, I hadn't used anything else much so far.
And for "double tough luck", as said, friend brought Defy to me from UK, so getting is serviced it no easy task - if I find the battery to be in fault, might be easier to just order a replacement (or that Mugen extended one).
I still kinda hope it's some kind of settings/software/ROM glitch and not a hardware problem. The battery looks and feels OK most of the time - I would've definitely seen an obviously defective one. It charges and discharges pretty linear, any soft I tried that checks battery (such as Elixir or SpareParts) returns normal. Uptime not counting deep sleep and real uptime are different, hinting the device does enter sleep at times (no idea if properly).

[Q] Investigating a battery drain issue

Hello all,
A few months ago I became a proud owner of a Moto Defy, a great rugged phone that has been working great for me until just last week. For some reason the battery life was cut drastically! So bad that while the screen was off and not touched at all, the battery percentage would go from 100% to 40% in four hours.
what was even worse was when I would connect the charger, the phone would charge completely in less that 1 hour! I didn't seem to matter if I was browsing the web, playing music over the loud speaker, or just leaving it alone, the battery seemed to fall the same.
I began to research online for some answers since I couldn't believe that the battery would just go bad just like that! first I installed a custom recovery that had the option of wiping the battery stats, but that didn't work. then I stumbled across this thread on a battery bug in the android os 2.3.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1039696
Even though the os on this defy is 2.2.1 I thought I was on to something. they talked about an app called watchdog. I also found an app called Battery monitor widget, which allowed me to see the battery usage in milli-amps.
I got concerned when during the day, I noticed a spike in the battery usage that was crazy! the app showed where the usage went from 99ma to 2399ma drain and I lost 8% of the battery in that one minuet! Keep in mind that the battery is only rated at 1500mAh to begin with. With that being said, I was thinking I have a short in the phone! The spike happened again later on that brought my phone to it's knees!
while reading further into the thread, I installed watch dog lite. Immediately after the installation finished, I started getting flagged for an app using over 60% of the cpu while the screen was off! Fancy widget 1.3, I had liked this app so much on my old Moto cliq, I imported it over to my defy.
Maybe I have found the culprit, I donno. This is just my experience so far, if anyone can add to this, please do. I will continue to monitor the phone and the activity of the apps. I am still shocked about the battery drain spikes that I saw! I am still, to my knolage, running the stock rom that came with the defy, now with the addition of Clockwork MOD recovery installed.

i have issues too, in the last week my battery dies in 13-14 hours with normal use. before that, it lasted 24-25 hours with heavy use. i also have sudden pattery percentage drops (which is probably the same as yours, that 8% in one minute). i already tried reflashing sbf/cm7, calibrated battery with cwm and app, nothing seems to work. now i disabled boot oc and use setvsel, and installed battery monitor widget and watchdog lite, maybe those will help :S
sent from my cm7 defy...

Since I installed rc1.5 my battery last for a fairly long time. It droped from 100% to 26% in 23 hours with medium use (data connection always active, when I used it heavily I turned on 3g, I used wifi and I was on a sunny place so the screen was bright)
Sent from my MB525 using xda premium

many have reported battery drain on rc1.5, seems its not present in every case. just installed 110909 nightly, so cant really report on that yet, but ill do as soon as i can.

Im on CM& RC 1.5, my battery last me a long time (more than 30 hours) using a lot of wifi + edge data, and lots of calls and sms, so i guess i dont have the battery drain bug

[Q] Battery draining at 8% an hour, normal?

Hey, everyone!
So my phone's been having a few issues, and I've been trying to figure out the cause, but to no avail.
I've had my S3 for about a year (ran stock ROM for a month, then switched to Paranoid, then Quantum, and now SlimKat) and I noticed my battery life decreased significantly, namely after I started using Fast Charge, so I promptly disabled that. I used to be able to leave my phone on idle for about 2 days at a time before the battery finally gave out, and recently my battery was barely lasting 3 hours, which really isn't good. I'd charge my phone to 100%, go to sleep, and by the time I woke up (I sleep on average 8 hours) my phone would be completely dead.
I bought a replacement battery (of which I'm pretty sure is genuine, but there's no real knowing), but I noticed my battery's still draining pretty quickly. More specifically, according to BetterBatteryStats, it's draining at 8.4%/hr on idle. My phone's gone from 98% to 75% in the last 2 hours with me only turning the screen on three times for the span of maybe 5 seconds each to check the battery level.
Any recommendations? I charge my phone with my PC and PS3 via USB with two different cables, if that's relevant at all.
Also, the apps I have installed are Skype, Facebook, BBS, Chrome, Snapchat, and a bunch of games to keep me entertained on long bus rides.
Also, for those with Bell, how much would they charge to possibly replace the phone in case someone else is going? I still have a year before my contract allows me to get a new phone.
My current phone is the I747M, running the latest SlimKat version and kernel.
Attached are screenshots from BetterBatteryStats.

UPDATE: I ended up installing QuantumROM again, plus the latest LeanKernel, and I went from 80% battery to 20% battery idle in the span of 12 hours, which isn't as nice as I'd like, but is LEAGUES better than it was, considering it used to completely die in 4-5 hours of idle time.
Any tips to squeeze out a bit more battery life without sacrificing a ton of performance? My governor is interactiveX and my scheduler is ROW.

Rae Ayanami said:
UPDATE: I ended up installing QuantumROM again, plus the latest LeanKernel, and I went from 80% battery to 20% battery idle in the span of 12 hours, which isn't as nice as I'd like, but is LEAGUES better than it was, considering it used to completely die in 4-5 hours of idle time.
Any tips to squeeze out a bit more battery life without sacrificing a ton of performance? My governor is interactiveX and my scheduler is ROW.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try installing better battery stats
It sounds like something is keeping your phone from getting into deep sleep. That program will help you find it. Figure out what is causing the wakelock and you can probably use privacy guard in your ROM to block wake up / keep awake for that app or service.

From what I've checked, it seems to be from Google Play Services, but I've done everything in the book (Wakelock Terminator, running an init.d script to disable Google Play Services, etc.) but I'm still running into issues. and SystemUpdateService is 88% of why my phone's not going into deep sleep. The other two are AudioMix (5%) and google.android.gms ConfigFetchService (2%).
Any suggestions?

I have same issues using quantum rom,I switched to touchwiz roms because they are more battery efficient, 8% / hour is not normal,My battery drains 1-2% / 6 hr ( with flight mode) in touchwiz roms.

Rae Ayanami said:
From what I've checked, it seems to be from Google Play Services, but I've done everything in the book (Wakelock Terminator, running an init.d script to disable Google Play Services, etc.) but I'm still running into issues. and SystemUpdateService is 88% of why my phone's not going into deep sleep. The other two are AudioMix (5%) and google.android.gms ConfigFetchService (2%).
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've never run quantum, but if it has privacy guard you can use that to block this. In privacy guard enable showing built in apps. Find Google play services in the list and long press it. In the list that opens deny keep awake and wake up for Google play services.
I've always got the best battery life out of ROMs based directly on aosp like slim. Cm and other cm based ROMs are a close second.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!
I ended up figuring out some weird convoluted way to disable Google Play Services, but something's still preventing me from deep sleeping completely. When I checked this morning, my Deep Sleep was at 66% (better than 0) and I only lost about 10-15% battery.
I'll keep you all updated!

Random Battery overheat & drain - Software issue or Hardware?

I have a 2 year old S4 Mini (GT19195), currently running latest stable CM 13.
The phone is working fine except for the occasional (once a week or 2) unexplained battery drain.
With my fairly light daily use, the battery is lasting over 2 days. <And can usually run 4 or more hours screen on.> However, in the last few months, at random times (even with phone asleep - screen off for > 10 min, so presumably in doze), the phone will heat up, and battery will drop 5-10% per minute. After the phone shuts off from dead battery, recharging and restarting the phone will return things to normal, until the next time.
During these episodes, the phone behaved normally, I did not notice any lag on waking up the phone, switching/opening apps, etc. The battery meter page showed no unusual process using the battery (none of the process actually showed any increase in % battery use); except for the battery life dropping off a cliff as I watch. <I noted that the battery usage stat never adds up to 100% even in normal use ... It might show 10% screen, 5% Android, etc, but all that only adds up to 50% or so from full charge to when the battery is near dead.>
Anyone seen this before? Is this a sign of an ailing battery, or something else? Can this be a software problem - like something running away in the background? <Of note is that this happened once when I had completely wiped the phone and had the fresh install of CM 13 + Gapps (micro) ... so if this is software, it would be something in stock Android, rather than a 3rd party app.>
Thanks for reading & responding.

@JohnSoong
This sounds like the processor is stuck on max frequency. Either it is an app(s) playing up or some other process that is keeping the CPU working when it should sleep.
The first thing I would do is install BetterBatteryStats app or something similar to see what is keeping the device awake. You could also try to grab a logcat, but you would need to catch the incident and either plug into a pc with adb or run an app like catlog

JohnSoong said:
I have a 2 year old S4 Mini (GT19195), currently running latest stable CM 13.
The phone is working fine except for the occasional (once a week or 2) unexplained battery drain.
With my fairly light daily use, the battery is lasting over 2 days. <And can usually run 4 or more hours screen on.> However, in the last few months, at random times (even with phone asleep - screen off for > 10 min, so presumably in doze), the phone will heat up, and battery will drop 5-10% per minute. After the phone shuts off from dead battery, recharging and restarting the phone will return things to normal, until the next time.
During these episodes, the phone behaved normally, I did not notice any lag on waking up the phone, switching/opening apps, etc. The battery meter page showed no unusual process using the battery (none of the process actually showed any increase in % battery use); except for the battery life dropping off a cliff as I watch. <I noted that the battery usage stat never adds up to 100% even in normal use ... It might show 10% screen, 5% Android, etc, but all that only adds up to 50% or so from full charge to when the battery is near dead.>
Anyone seen this before? Is this a sign of an ailing battery, or something else? Can this be a software problem - like something running away in the background? <Of note is that this happened once when I had completely wiped the phone and had the fresh install of CM 13 + Gapps (micro) ... so if this is software, it would be something in stock Android, rather than a 3rd party app.>
Thanks for reading & responding.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That sounds like an issue I've had for several months, also running CM13 (Official) nightlies & Open GApps micro, unfortunately I've never had the time investigate (well I did once but it worked fine, I couldn't recreate the problem). It is currently happening less than once a week so not a major issue for me.
I've noticed several times that the phone felt hot, I've then used the Trepn profiler app, it would show the web browser running at 30-50% cpu constantly, so stuck as per @noppy22, though not at 100%. I have tried all the major browsers and they have all done it at some point, also most have crashed at some point, which I suspect may be related. Normally just the browser app crashed but yesterday using Chrome the phone FC and rebooted itself. Crashes seem to happen when I touch screen or scroll (though one may not have been when touching). Also XDA app crashed (1st time) when scrolling a couple of weeks ago, so probably not just browser issue on some sites as I thought previously, but might be unrelated. The stock battery meter did not show particularly high battery usage by browsers, though were a little elevated in % terms but hard to tell due to different usage patterns and not checking when things are good! I have noticed a bit of lag, which now makes we run trepn, if it shows high than expected usage by an app I close the app, which fixes it even if I go back to the same web page. This morning I woke up and my phone was off, I put it in my night-time profile (wifi & data off) that normally only uses a few % overnight but last night it must have used more than 30% of battery that was left, first time this has happened.
The other thing to consider is how good is your battery? At 2yrs old it could be tired if it's had a hard life (though yours maybe not) or you have allowed it to get very hot eg I did one trip using gps nav with phone mounted in windscreen cradle driving direct into the Aussie sun when my battery was about 2.5yrs old, thinking back I now think this was when I first noticed my battery was really dropping of quickly when around ~40% charge (though it was faster with more charge remaining also than my new battery, I would say), so think I the high temp the phone got to that day affected the battery. I think 4hrs of screen on time may be marginal, I was only getting about 3 to 3.5 when my battery dropped off fast, my new battery is giving me 6hrs SOT (mostly using browser app), so possibly you just need a new battery as only one other user has reported high cpu usage like I have.
Battery stats not adding up to 100% is normal.

I've just installed BetterBatteryStats, so I'll give it a week of so and see if it catches anything. So far nothing unusual in the stats.
I am leaning towards this being a hardware issue, likely the battery. Since the phone responded fairly normally during the overheat & battery drain episodes, this does not seem to me an app taking over the CPU. If the CPU was occupied by an app, shouldn't everything else be slowed down?
I have so far noticed no particular pattern to these episodes, and I cannot reproduce it at will. It is infrequent enough for now that I can live with it (although an unexpected dead battery is annoying.) I will see if the monitoring app pick up anything.

Hey guys,
Maybe you have to try to flash your stock or custom kernel again.
Thats probably the problem.
Xheers

When I got mine a few years ago the media process kept getting stuck and overheating/draining my phone and even a reboot wouldnt fix it. I found out because I was using the system panel app and monitoring cpu of system processes. I ditched and deleted the gallery app (it was trying to create thumbnails for 100+gb of photos and videos) for quick pic v.4.5.2 on every phone I've used ever since and haven't look back.