Develop Bugs

[Q] Instant battery drops

Im getting some weird battery stuff, as well as the Android OS drain. If I restart my phone, once in a while It drops like 20-30%. i'll go from 46% to like 18%. I see the threads about slow draining, but mine seems to happen instantly sometimes (3 different times so far in a week), anyone have solutions? Got it from someone on ebay, can I still/should I RMA?

Someone posted a kernel fix in the international GSII forum, so we're either waiting for that to get ported over here or wait for samsung to release a fix. I have that same bug too. What percent r u getting on the Android OS? Mine is usually in the 60's.

Yeah I saw that thread, and I saw the 2 things causing it. Waiting for that fix I guess, hopefully it solves the big battery drops as well as the small draining. Mines pretty high, 30-50% I believe, and then cell reception takes 10-20% with LOS

That's alot better than mine. Although, I don't have that LOS problem. I'm running stock atm. Are u on a custom rom?

Running Starburst 1.5, stock was better for no LOS. But I like the customization on Starburst. Hopefully by the end of this week the kernel we be ported over.

Most likely a problem with the battery level algo and not an actual battery charge drop. It's probably showing the correct value after the reboot.

Using battery spy I was using like 12%-15% per hour, not even doing anything. Saw online that formating the SD card might help, just did, and now im using .8% per hour. The hell, something was scanning the SD card or something. Much better now, hopefully itll last 10-20 hours instead of 6 hours.
edit: so it went back up again. At .8% it will last 2 days+, but since the events keep taking the CPU, its draining it. I got it down to 4-8% by taking the SD card out. At least it will last a little longer. Cant wait for the fix, this baby will last days after.

Damn that sucks. I just formatted my card too cuz I was running out of options. Keep us updated tho.

so I think media scanner is draining, I downloaded rescan media root from android market and before I was draining at 12% per hour, but when I disable it with the app, it goes down to 5-6%. Anyone else try? Maybe thats something thats draining.

Oh btw have u tried turning off wifi? It only drained 6% after being off the charger for 9 hours. I havent touched the phone during that time span tho. Android os still in the 50s btw.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA App

These are my overnight stats when I was sleeping. It's usually worse when wifi is on.

manekineko said:
Most likely a problem with the battery level algo and not an actual battery charge drop. It's probably showing the correct value after the reboot.
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Click to collapse
this is almost definitely correct. battery doesn't drop 15-20% because of reboot...the reading is wrong. Battery drivers have been bad on a few of the latest android phones. Just look at when your phone stays at 99% for the first 3 hrs of use each day...what, does it just get really inefficient in the afternoon because of food coma from lunch?

toprock23 said:
Oh btw have u tried turning off wifi? It only drained 6% after being off the charger for 9 hours. I havent touched the phone during that time span tho. Android os still in the 50s btw.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
Trying now, seems to be charging faster too. I was mainly on wifi because cell standby was really high, keep getting LOS. But maybe I wont with wifi off now, and i'll see how battery does. ill keep you updated.

Still bad. Can only wait for the patches/fixes. 8 hours doing nothing almost. Sigh.
edit: sent to the galaxy support on twitter, see how that goes.
http://twitter.com/#!/GalaxySsupport/status/124174089085652992

Hey man, I got one more tweak for u to try. I just rooted my phone w/ the latest zenomax kernel and Starburst 1.5. Download setcpu and create a profile for "screen off". Set it to 200-500mhz on demand. In theory, this should prevent 100% cpu utilization while the screen is off. I'm testing this myself atm, so I can't give u my battery stats yet.

toprock23 said:
Hey man, I got one more tweak for u to try. I just rooted my phone w/ the latest zenomax kernel and Starburst 1.5. Download setcpu and create a profile for "screen off". Set it to 200-500mhz on demand. In theory, this should prevent 100% cpu utilization while the screen is off. I'm testing this myself atm, so I can't give u my battery stats yet.
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Click to collapse
Think I have the v3 version and 1.5 as well. I have setcpu set to 200-400 powersave. ive tried others and same. Suspend and events/0 keeping eating at the CPU. Thanks for the suggestions though.

figured i'd chime in here. i've had days where the battery was fine and days where the battery was absolute trash. it's happened on stock, and it's happened on root. but it almost always seems to coincide with LOS. the first picture is one of several instances where i've had pretty fast drain followed up by an instant dump in charge under normal use. it's strange how after the drop, it slowly works back up then levels off and drains normally. the 2nd pic is from today. i left my phone at home on accident when i went off to work, and when i returned, i had LOS and this battery stat. you can tell where i lost signal . the last pic is from yesterday while i had the phone at work all day and light use; a nice consistent drain.

FU battery drops and FML
Ok so i read all the posts in this thread and i understand theres a issue that effects the phone from even knowing what the battery % is. i had to post these though. i was at 47% then rebooted my phone. phone boots up and yehhh! woop woop 8% now mind you if you look at the graph it shows a nice constant cerve downward but steady because i was using my phone the entire time. now after the restart/batery drop of 40% i kept using the phone constantly but its funny how it took me over a hour of screen on to go from 8% to 5% !!!!! i bet to get from 5% to 1% it will take 2 more hours for sure. you can see the graph start to flatten out like its a super battery after the 40% drop because it didnt really drop to 8% !!! normally i wouldnt care since my phone battery last just as long, it just goes down really slow from 8%-1% but at 5% it auto dims screen and wont let me use my camera for the next 2-3 hours while i knock off the remaining "4%" of battery left. fml

Get Starburst v1.6. He removed DRM processes which should lower Android OS usage and thus battery draining. Plus with the LoStKernel, I haven't had any issues with losing signal since.
Also, use Titanium backup to remove running services that you don't need. I got rid of the stock email client, digital clock, media/social hub if you don't use those. They don't take up a lot of ram, but every little bit helps.
My battery life has improved after battery calibration. I suggest you calibrate if you didn't already so your battery usage graph may be more accurate. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the tips! I was wondering how you would calibrate the battery. Is it the same as wiping battery stats from CWM?

G Pro Kitkat Battery hogs

is it just me or is the kitkat ROM really sucks----battery pretty well?
I also notice that the CPU usage does not drop to 20 percent idle but when I used other ROM (JB based) it becomes 5 percent.
RAM usage is good but I think it hogs the CPU. I used cpuz on measuring the cpu usage

fafalafafa said:
is it just me or is the kitkat ROM really sucks----battery pretty well?
I also notice that the CPU usage does not drop to 20 percent idle but when I used other ROM (JB based) it becomes 5 percent.
RAM usage is good but I think it hogs the CPU. I used cpuz on measuring the cpu usage
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Click to collapse
Where can I get the JB rom for OGP?
For me, Android was best at JB and went backwards with KK.
Yes, I've noticed absolutely horrible battery life with KK. KK just feels like it is several different parts all just thrown together.

The only reason I think is that theoretically JB uses more battery is that the system uses more voltage than the kitkat. however, what's less voltage use if the CPU is always busy and wakeups are just everywhere.

Hi guys, maybe you could post in some battery stats so we could know more about whats draining your battery in particular and suggest some fixes. I've actually experienced the opposite with kitkat-battery life for me improved. There was even an instance that I got the phone to last 30 hours, with 5 hours, 48 mins. screen. On another instance I got 15 hours life and 5 hours 25 mins screen on. I just lost the screenshots as I had to reflash stock when i was doing some G3 mods., but nevertheless i could post some new ones.
I value batter life was well and i'm curious to see how yours could be improved too..

blitzkriegger said:
Hi guys, maybe you could post in some battery stats so we could know more about whats draining your battery in particular and suggest some fixes. I've actually experienced the opposite with kitkat-battery life for me improved. There was even an instance that I got the phone to last 30 hours, with 5 hours, 48 mins. screen. On another instance I got 15 hours life and 5 hours 25 mins screen on. I just lost the screenshots as I had to reflash stock when i was doing some G3 mods., but nevertheless i could post some new ones.
I value batter life was well and i'm curious to see how yours could be improved too..
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Click to collapse
What a battery life. 15 hours screen time?
how can we accurately measure? because I only use CPU-Z and installed DS battery saver to save power. right now it only used 2% of my battery during the night. (from 1:45 - 5:50am)
I see. can you tell me what app should I use to determine CPU usage of each app/service?

fafalafafa said:
What a battery life. 15 hours screen time?
how can we accurately measure? because I only use CPU-Z and installed DS battery saver to save power. right now it only used 2% of my battery during the night. (from 1:45 - 5:50am)
I see. can you tell me what app should I use to determine CPU usage of each app/service?
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Click to collapse
No, my battery lasted 15 hours, and my screen-on time (total time i spent using the phone) was 5+ hours coz i basically used my phone then for gaming the whole day I suggest you download gsam battery monitor app (it also has a temperature_bat. Usage graph), as well as wakelock detector. Another alternative would be better battery stats. What you would need to observe would be the apps and wakelocks draining your battery both when you are using your phone, and also when its idle.

I also notice that battery capacity is 2A in which it should be 3.140A right?
this shows on kitKat but on jellybean, it's 3.140A again.
is there something wrong with the detection of battery capacity?

fafalafafa said:
I also notice that battery capacity is 2A in which it should be 3.140A right?
this shows on kitKat but on jellybean, it's 3.140A again.
is there something wrong with the detection of battery capacity?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What happened was that in kitkat, the permisssions required to be able to access battery stat files changed. Thus, apps w/c could freely access the batter stats in JB cannot gain complete access in Kitkat. This is the case for some battery monitor apps w/c now have lesser accuracy in reporting battery. No worries though, as there are means to bypass this problem. If you have xposed you could install a module for this. Also, some apps like gsam battery monitor come with a separate root companion app. Once you install those batter stats will be accurate.

Here's a screenshot of my battery stats for today..might not be 5+ hrs of screen on as i did a lot of rebooting today (themed with g3 tweaksbox). Nevertheless, this is just to show that kitkat has the potential to provide good battery life. Also enclosed is a screenshot of one of the battery apps i use, gsam.

Hey everybody! I have some findings I absolutely must share so you can benefit as well.
I've been doing some tinkering and I've find a way to significantly increase battery life on the OGP.
First thing you'll want to do is put your phone into airplane mode.
Second, turn your screen brightness down as low as it will go. I mean, all of the way down.
Third, don't play any games on your phone.
Try those three tweaks and see what kind of battery improvement you get.
Unfortunately, Camera has stopped.

Perry2547 said:
Hey everybody! I have some findings I absolutely must share so you can benefit as well.
I've been doing some tinkering and I've find a way to significantly increase battery life on the OGP.
First thing you'll want to do is put your phone into airplane mode.
Second, turn your screen brightness down as low as it will go. I mean, all of the way down.
Third, don't play any games on your phone.
Try those three tweaks and see what kind of battery improvement you get.
Unfortunately, Camera has stopped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just so you know, first my cell radio and wifi were both on the whole time. Second, i was on auto brightness the whole time. Third, i played clash of clans as you see in there.

If you have not done this already, adjust your cpu to save your battery juice. Set the cpu governor to powersaver or interactive mode if you just using the phone to send msg and make calls. I let my phone run on msm-dvcs and when I'm not plug in. Check out ROM toolbox if you're rooted. Seriously folks, instead of complaint about how much the roms suck the juice, try these different ways to see they make any difference for you.
Sent from my LG-E980 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Perry2547 said:
Hey everybody! I have some findings I absolutely must share so you can benefit as well.
I've been doing some tinkering and I've find a way to significantly increase battery life on the OGP.
First thing you'll want to do is put your phone into airplane mode.
Second, turn your screen brightness down as low as it will go. I mean, all of the way down.
Third, don't play any games on your phone.
Try those three tweaks and see what kind of battery improvement you get.
Unfortunately, Camera has stopped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's pretty much a tablet use. You want great battery buy a zero lemon battery, the bulk is worth it, I got 3 days with very heavy use

Perry2547 said:
Hey everybody! I have some findings I absolutely must share so you can benefit as well.
I've been doing some tinkering and I've find a way to significantly increase battery life on the OGP.
First thing you'll want to do is put your phone into airplane mode.
Second, turn your screen brightness down as low as it will go. I mean, all of the way down.
Third, don't play any games on your phone.
Try those three tweaks and see what kind of battery improvement you get.
Unfortunately, Camera has stopped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found a way to make my phone last a long time. I just turn my phone off and don't use it. I wish I would have though of this sooner.
Sent from my LG-E980 using xda app-developers app

[Q] Battery consumption while playing music + charging question

Might seem an odd question, but how much should I expect the battery to drain on the M8 while playing music?
Reason I ask is because I use my phone to help me sleep (brown noise) every night.
I use an app called "Chromadoze" which has been fine for me up until now.
My old Nexus 5, which I partially got rid of because of the battery life, would drain approx 25% in 8 hours using Chromadoze.
However, using the same app on the M8 drains 50% in 8 hours, which seems excessive for a phone touted as having far better battery life (and indeed it normally does under normal use).
Thinking it might be the app, I generated a (59 minute) brown noise file and converted to FLAC and copied to the phone, and set that to play on repeat. This still gave a drain equivalent to 50%. I thought the Snapdragon 801 was mean't to be very economical on the battery for music, but that ain't happening here. I even have the phone in flight mode (as always). The battery stats are telling me that indeed the "music" is to blame.
I'm disappointed with this as I could stream actual music from the cloud all night on the Nexus and get less drain than that.
The other thing thats proved to be disappointing is the time it takes to charge. I have a 2A blackberry charger that I used on my N5 that charged it in just over an hour, but this M8 takes well over 2 hours on the same charger. I realise it has a bigger battery, but its still only 10% difference and it should probably only take an extra 10 minutes or so, not double the time. Can I enable fast charging on this device, after all, the 801 again is supposed to be able to support it.
I am a tad disappointed with my move to the M8 so far because of these issues; it has better battery life overall but these issues make it significantly less useful to me.

I have such an issue with this phone, that whenever I use (so deep sleep isn't allowed) the 50% of the cpu time is always at 1036mhz, which is too much even for listening to music.
Check out by yourself, how the cpu is working, by installing cpu spy (additionally you can install wakelock detector).
If it's the cpu's fault then you may try to set custom settings (max speed) for cpu when the screen is off.
Sent from HTC One m8, or maybe not anymore

Thanks for the reply. I'll check those apps out you recommend.
My next move is to try again with the power saver turned on, and see how it goes, failing that as well, I could try without the boomsound activated, as I'm sure extra EQing will use CPU power.
I hope I can resolve it, as it will be disappointing if not, especially as I really liked the Nexus as a phone but thought this would be a nice upgrade in most respects (bar camera).

I personally think that this power saving mode just sucks, all it does is that it saves data, but not cpu, as it doesn't put apps to sleep, as stamina mode on xperia devices does.
Just make a quick test, turn on your app, then switch to cpu spy, reset the statistics (so you get statistics only while using your app) and turn off the screen and wait few minutes.
Sent from HTC One m8, or maybe not anymore

When your listening to music at night is your WiFi on and connected?
Ive noticed a strange bug on my device.
When my device is in stand by mode and wifi is connected my CPU usage never drops below 30%. I use SystemPanel Pro to check that.
Now with WiFi off and in stand by mode my CPU usage is between 3-7% with spikes to 10-15% every 20-30 minutes. To me that seems normal.
So if you do have WiFi on while its playing music for those 8 hours test it with WiFi off.

Hi, I would normally use Airplane mode, so no radios at all, unless I wanted to stream from cloud, I've not done that yet since I had the phone, though.
I've just done my first test with CPUspy as suggested, Over 35 minutes it spent 10 minutes @ 1,036 MHz and the remaining time (about 67%) @ 300 MHz.
I'm trying it again with the supposed "Power Saving" function on.

Result with Power Saving on
1,036 MHz - 7:32 - 17%
300 MHz - 24:29 - 57%
Deep sleep - 8:29 - 19%
BUT, i have a feeling the power save mode may have killed it off to go to sleep but I couldn't confirm as it hadn't occurred to me until I had messed about.
So it is slightly better provided it didn't kill the music.
All of this was with a program called "7digital" which appears to be built in. Going to try in PowerAmp next.

PowerAmp seems to look much more economical.
95% (just over an hour) spent @ 300 MHz with just 2:26 spent at 1036 MHz.

Tried my brown noise last night and it drained 34% in 6 hours. Still a pretty poor performance.
Looks like I'm going to have to try and find an alternative way to do this.
I do wonder if the Google play ROM would help as I never had a problem on the nexus 5.

Are those the statistics when your phone hasn't been used at all or was your program running at this time?
If the program wasn't running and you have such a cpu usage then it is probably some deep sleep issue (wakelock detector should help identifying the app responsible for that).
Anyway, just use some app to limit the cpu usage while the screen is off.
This phone likes to be stuck at 1036mhz and for example you could limit it to about 500mhz.
Ps. Power saving mode won't kill these apps, so don't worry.
Sent from HTC One m8, or maybe not anymore

mr.loverlover said:
Are those the statistics when your phone hasn't been used at all or was your program running at this time?
If the program wasn't running and you have such a cpu usage then it is probably some deep sleep issue (wakelock detector should help identifying the app responsible for that).
Anyway, just use some app to limit the cpu usage while the screen is off.
This phone likes to be stuck at 1036mhz and for example you could limit it to about 500mhz.
Ps. Power saving mode won't kill these apps, so don't worry.
Sent from HTC One m8, or maybe not anymore
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those statistics were with the music player 7digital running a brown noise file, but nothing else was being used on the phone.
Later I used PowerAmp which does give a more efficient performance, but sadly, still not good enough really considering my N5 was OK under the circumstances.
I find myself in two minds as to whether to try the GPE ROM anyway, as I don't find the phone as responsive as the N5 either... and maybe it will help with this issue too.

tameracingdriver said:
Those statistics were with the music player 7digital running a brown noise file, but nothing else was being used on the phone.
Later I used PowerAmp which does give a more efficient performance, but sadly, still not good enough really considering my N5 was OK under the circumstances.
I find myself in two minds as to whether to try the GPE ROM anyway, as I don't find the phone as responsive as the N5 either... and maybe it will help with this issue too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GPE (and other non-stock based ROMs) will be much faster, that's damn sure, however I don't think this will solve the problem, as HTC one m8 has some weird issue with it's CPU.
I also don't know why it's using this 1036mhz continously, but you can't go below 300mhz if the device is working (like playing music).
Tty to limit your CPU at all the time (not only when the screen is off), that should also save some battery, however the battery life is still nothing considering the one from Xperia Z1.

In case anyone is interested, I did the conversion to GPE. Much better, now feels as fast or faster than my n5, but it now charges much faster and the battery life seems as good as before. Will try and test with some music at some point in the coming week to see if there is any improvement but I have my suspicion that it won't make much difference as I think it could possibly be the more powerful output and boomsound that increases battery drain... But.... We'll see.

Final post from me on this thread.
Its been several weeks now since I've had the GPE firmware installed on my HTC One M8, and I don't regret it one bit.
The battery life is at least as good, but I possibly think better, I'm generally always averaging 4+ SOT, whereas it would be just shy of that with the Sense ROM. The phone is also noticeably quicker at all times...
Finally though, the high battery usage during music IS cured. Using the Chromadoze app I talked about in post #1 results in 20% drain in 8 hours (compared to 50% on a Sense ROM). That is much better. I also no longer wake up to a warm / hot phone. And it charges faster.
So, in summary, the GPE ROM turns the M8 into the phone it should have been since day 1. I just wish it had the Sense camera, but the stock one is perfectly usable.

4% drain I'm just 7min?....

I barely got this tablet yesterday and already seeing fast battery drain. I don't have that much apps/games. I rooted it today in the afternoon but I don't think it will drain the battery.... What's the deal here?

This is my 10.1

geeshiet said:
I barely got this tablet yesterday and already seeing fast battery drain. I don't have that much apps/games. I rooted it today in the afternoon but I don't think it will drain the battery.... What's the deal here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's always an initial drain that is rather fast due to the fact that the charging is not perfectly optimized, notably while it's new. Even though it says 100% it's most likely not the fact. On the other hand due to the large screen the screen uses a lot of power. When using Cyanogen for maybe 20-30 min/day I'm still at 97% the next morning w/o charging. But, I use a lot of mods and settings trying to optimize battery usage. Once you get used to the device and start experimenting with ROM's, settings, mods I'm sure you will find a way to optimize it to your flavor.

The tablet has to scan all directories for media.
Here are some really good tips. You can also shut off a lot of samsung bloatware. I have probably 50 things shut off along with below tips I get amazing battery life and never any lag. Not a fan of magazine touchwiz so using nova and couldn't be happier.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2782239

For a new device, you need to cycle the battery to about 10%, then fully charge, to set the battery meter "high" and "low" flags (some call this "calibrating the battery meter"), before you can expect the battery meter readings to be anywhere accurate.

8.1 Battery Drainig - Recommended EX Kernel Settings?

I'm new to my Pixel 2 XL and have the 8.1 update and am seeing horrible battery life. Noticed others in here also experiencing this and wondered if any of you have some recommended settings for EX Kernel that can improve battery life? I only use the phone for notes, camera, calls, messages, etc... Daily use type of stuff. I don't play any games on my phone other than Hearthstone and it doesn't require much to be smooth and I watch some YouTube here and there but it also doesn't require much so anything I can do to get those 6 hour SoTs everyone raves about with this phone.
Standby is great, in use is just embarrassing.

Mine is opposite. It easy to get 6 or more hours SOT using the phone but the thing drops like 10% battery overnight even with battery and data saver on.

AndrasLOHF said:
Mine is opposite. It easy to get 6 or more hours SOT using the phone but the thing drops like 10% battery overnight even with battery and data saver on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well that's not good. I would much rather deal with on drain than stand-by.

CJ-Wylde said:
Well that's not good. I would much rather deal with on drain than stand-by.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A kernel will not stop a badly behaving app from drawing too much power, or not dozing when it is supposed to. You would be better served in using a battery drain app to find your wakelock/bad actors and deal with them. Beyond the information you can get from the improved Google battery applet, GSam and BBS are two apps that can help pinpoint the application or service causing excessive battery drain. It is not the kernel, and as flar2 states, the new chips are so efficient with power there is almost no room for improvement battery-wise. Most people leave it on the default settings, and use it for extra features and customization.
https://elementalx.org/the-truth-about-kernels-and-battery-life/

I agree 100%, I just thought some settings adjustments with the kernel could do some good and maybe someone might have some ideas on what would help the in-use battery consumption. I'm currently clean flashed with only Google APPs and Nova Launcher installed along with EX Kernel and Magisk no modules. Battery drain only shows android system... Not a lot to tell me what it really is. Will try the apps you suggest