All I can find are vague descriptions. Nothing saying what exactly it's doing. From my experience thus far it's doing nothing. I am not getting better battery.
frigidazzi said:
All I can find are vague descriptions. Nothing saying what exactly it's doing. From my experience thus far it's doing nothing. I am not getting better battery.
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From what I know it lowers the CPU clock speed and decreases brightness. All with the intent of saving battery.
I read that while it DOESN'T limit the CPU, it does lower the brightness and cuts out your data/BT/location/NFC in order to preserve the little bit of battery.
Edit: And syncs.
Sfkn2 said:
I read that while it DOESN'T limit the CPU, it does lower the brightness and cuts out your data/BT/location/NFC in order to preserve the little bit of battery.
Edit: And syncs.
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I don't think it actually does any of that though. I have been using it a lot the past few days half on half off. I still get all MMS and emails right away plus my photos are syncing with google. My brightness doesn't change (auto or not). plus I have BT and WIFI on all the time for smart watch and of course data usage . Maybe the processor, but im not even sure of that. Guess I could do benchmarks with it on and off and see. I just feel like this feature is doing nothing at this time. On my nexus 5 I could really see the processor throttle and brightness him with battery saver.
frigidazzi said:
I don't think it actually does any of that though. I have been using it a lot the past few days half on half off. I still get all MMS and emails right away plus my photos are syncing with google. My brightness doesn't change (auto or not). plus I have BT and WIFI on all the time for smart watch and of course data usage . Maybe the processor, but im not even sure of that. Guess I could do benchmarks with it on and off and see. I just feel like this feature is doing nothing at this time. On my nexus 5 I could really see the processor throttle and brightness him with battery saver.
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Mine only does that under 15% battery. Seems like its doing nothing over that.
Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk
The default is under 15% and when it kicks in, i definitely notice a difference in the phone.
You can change it to immediately from 15% and i bet you will notice a difference at any battery percentage.
Cpu speed is not affected, just checked this.
Brightness was indeed cut off considerably, haven't checked for other things yet :good:
I figured out why it wasn't working for me. Simply clicking the icon to green in the pull down only enables it when it gets before 15 percent. Didn't force it on now like I thought it was.
Why is there so little discussion on this feature? I found very few threads on this and this was the most active conversation even though it is so old. I found out today I could enable this feature at anytime, not just at 5 or 15%. So I have it enabled at 100% battery and testing today. Upon enabling battery saver mode and restrict idle apps, the screen immediately went dim. I turned it back up slightly. I also noticed apps acting different. Toggling between apps is quicker and the animations are gone. Also, I'm using chrome and it's acting different. It's hard to explain, but if I'm navigating from one website to another, it is feels like it is refreshing every time, it doesnt feel faster. Im not sure what it is doing but someone with more experience will probably be able to pinpoint exactly what is happening. It's not standard chrome behavior.
mattnin said:
Why is there so little discussion on this feature? I found very few threads on this and this was the most active conversation even though it is so old. I found out today I could enable this feature at anytime, not just at 5 or 15%. So I have it enabled at 100% battery and testing today. Upon enabling battery saver mode and restrict idle apps, the screen immediately went dim. I turned it back up slightly. I also noticed apps acting different. Toggling between apps is quicker and the animations are gone. Also, I'm using chrome and it's acting different. It's hard to explain, but if I'm navigating from one website to another, it is feels like it is refreshing every time, it doesnt feel faster. Im not sure what it is doing but someone with more experience will probably be able to pinpoint exactly what is happening. It's not standard chrome behavior.
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Not sure with the Chrome part of it. I use a different browser. With FireFox everything feels about the same as before.
I also noticed the animations are removed so there is no fancy domino effect or sliding going on. It's all instant and to be honest it feels heck of a lot quicker this way.
Screen is much more dim and is extremely conservative for the most part.
Clock speed is the same. Although I wonder if there is some sort of under the hood change such as MPDecision switching over to battery saving mode. It personally makes no sense to leave it as is considering in the past it use to cap the clock speed.
So using battery saver today along with restrict apps in background, the former definitely shuts down background data. I noticed Google play store not authenticating paid for apps. I had to go to the play store to launch the app and re-authenticate. That is where I received the warning that background data is off. I have a weather widget and that does not appear to be updating as that uses background data. I have a barometer widget and that does appear to be working as that uses sensor data. All that is required to re-enable background data is to uncheck restrict background apps under the battery saver mode. As of right now, I am at 71% battery and 2 hours 14 minutes screen on time, 3 hrs 53 minutes on the battery. I'm mostly using chrome while screen is on and podkicker and listened to about an hour of audio and a little bit of teamspeak usage with my Bluetooth headset. Brightness is at 37% which is pretty dim in this mode. I'd say it's equal to 15% in regular mode bit good enough to see.
Update, I went all the way to 25% battery remaining yesterday and I had right at 5 hour SOT. In my opinion, this mode is not worth the hassle. Background data is off and that breaks a few things. Screen is pretty dim and I ended up turning it up anyway. I have had similar battery life in the past anyway. I have had 7 hours 20 minutes of SOT before without this mode on and all my widgets working. I'm going to leave this mode off.
It saves battery
mattnin said:
Update, I went all the way to 25% battery remaining yesterday and I had right at 5 hour SOT. In my opinion, this mode is not worth the hassle. Background data is off and that breaks a few things. Screen is pretty dim and I ended up turning it up anyway. I have had similar battery life in the past anyway. I have had 7 hours 20 minutes of SOT before without this mode on and all my widgets working. I'm going to leave this mode off.
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yup..i feels like the batrey saving mode is draining more batrey life than not using it..is there a solution for this ?
I have had my P20 for about three month now... and it's OK but the Huawei "enhancements" and some other things are very frustrating.
1) Almost none of my "background" stuff works... Meaning things like Google Photo backup, SMS Backup & Restore scheduled backups, and other scheduled services don't run until I open the apps. Not much good to have automatic backups if they aren't automatic. Also, Google Rewards does not notify me of new surveys. Things that happen in the background seems to happen for a short time after you open the app, then they just stop.
2) Multitasking is a joke... On my old Moto G5+, I could have Facebook, Candy Crush Saga (don't judge, I have invested too much time to quit), Pandora, MeWe, Gmail, Messenger, Nine Mail, and a host of other apps running with no issues switching back and forth without them "reloading". On my P20 with the same RAM and supposedly a faster processor, if I am in Candy Crush Saga and switch to Facebook, then switch back, Candy Crush reloads when I was in the middle of level... Much less trying to have Pandora or a few other things going simultaneously. And yet I typically have 1.8-2.1GB of RAM available, it's impossible to actually multitask without apps restarting constantly.
3) Delayed or no notifications... From most apps... Gmail, Facebook, XDA, Nine (a real problem, this is my work email), Calendar, etc. Almost every app that isn't open gives delayed notification, sometimes a minute or two, sometimes hours, sometimes not until it is opened. Other times notifications show up, but no sound is given at all.
These things all seem to be related to how aggressive the memory and application management is to maintain the battery... Sort of making up for the hardware's inefficiencies through software. But it works, battery life is quite good.
4) Inability to change "default" apps like the Gallery... I hate the Gallery, but I love Google Photos as the "gallery" app. You can change it in the settings to the default, but few applications "honor" that setting. And for some reason the Gallery doesn't see all the photos I download with Photos. Weird... And even when you set other non-Huawei apps as defaults, it only works sometimes. This goes back to EMUI's software framework I think. Never had this issue on Motos, Nokias, Pixels, etc.
5) More of an annoyance than anything else, but what the heck is with the lock screen wallpaper? I can't get rid of the Huawei papers, they show up no matter what I do or how many of my own I add, the stock ones keep showing up. I have gone into the lock screen settings and disabled ALL of the embedded ones, and only my folder of about 50 or so images, and I keep getting the stock Huawei ones show up in the rotation.
Then there is the lockups... For example, open Google and search for something, switch to images, and maybe turn on GIF filter or something... This thing will grind to a halt in nothing flat, granted my old Moto would lag a bit, but it was 100 times better than this thing. I get the same thing in some apps but not others without consistency. Or if my UC-One app for work rings, sometimes it works, other times it locks up tight and needs a hard reboot to recover... No other phone out of the 80 or so at work does this. It's just so inconsistent.
And my last gripe is the data lag... At random times, regardless if on mobile data or WiFi, it will just lag out for 10 seconds to 2 minutes, usually once or twice a day, but not consistently... Everything looks fine, good signal strength regardless of source and other devices work fine, but no data will be moving and videos freeze and buffer, Facebook pictures don't load, etc. Granted, this really started after the May 2019 update.
It sounds like I hate this phone, but I do like a lot of things about it... The battery life if good, the charge times are good, the camera is excellent, the sound quality is acceptable, nice screen, not too big or overweight. But man, that new Pixel 3a XL at $20/month is sure looking pretty good.
Am I all alone here, or do others have the same issues?
Oh dude. 99 % of things you mentioned can be handled in the phone settings like telling phone not to shut apps in the background. You should Google before you write things down.
Ragarding your last point with lag: try doing a soft reset and install you carrier settings once again.
I've got the phone for half a year now and after searching and changing some settings it works better than anything else I've seen on a phone I paid 350 EUR for.
EuBir said:
Oh dude. 99 % of things you mentioned can be handled in the phone settings like telling phone not to shut apps in the background. You should Google before you write things down.
Ragarding your last point with lag: try doing a soft reset and install you carrier settings once again.
I've got the phone for half a year now and after searching and changing some settings it works better than anything else I've seen on a phone I paid 350 EUR for.
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I take no offense from your comment, but I am not a noob... I have been working with Android since Eclair and smartphones in general much longer, including working on several ROM development teams and am an RC here. I did Google and DID turn off Huawei's "App Launch" management that I assume you are talking about trying to stop the optimizations from EMUI, and a few other things, but this is AFTER that. Although some of them seemed to help a little, it doesn't fix the problems.
Not only have I soft reset, I have done complete factory resets and all of my carrier settings are current... The lag also occurs on WiFi.
My post was kind of a rant, not necessarily looking for a solution unless there was one, and I was looking to see if I was the only one with these issues. Nor am I saying this isn't a good phone... Many of the things I have talked about would not bother many people.
In my case, I'm happy with the phone. Obviously I had some other problem, especially in some of the points you mentioned in the post. As the backup of Google Photos that did not work, but when I opened the app. However, selecting that all applications start manually has worked correctly for me.
I have disabled several applications using ADB. I know it does not erase them definitively, but hey, it's something. I also hate or just do not like the amount of applications that the phone has installed, I see them as unnecessary. I've always tried to use Google apps: calendar, dialer, calculator, clock, contacts, file manager, keep notes, etc. (that means I also disabled the original dialer).
But there is something that haunts me since I upgraded to EMUI 9. And it is a bug in recent applications that has a blue shadow that only appears when using a launcher. As I read, the solution is to disable the EMUI launcher, I did it once, but I prefer the appearance of recent applications of EMUI 9 than the previous ones. (Although I believe that this is poorly implemented).
Disable Huawei power genie app. I think it will solve all your problems with background apps.
You can find instructions online.
Your battery will take a small hit.
The biggest issue is the wifi, very capricious
I have no problem watching a 1080p stream on twitch... but loading the newsfeed on FB, twitter, is sometimes impossible. I have to switch to 4g to load the newsfeed and it's very annoying ... Sometimes i can browse the internet for 5minutes, then nothing would load, for no reason ...
The battery management settings is also very aggressive, and notifications often displayed 1h, 2h late. Occasionally i get a "1 message from " " ... 1 day" on messenger app
One thing i really miss is viper4audio ... I did everything, i can't get this thing to work.
Appart from that, it's a good medium range phone.
maxime4611 said:
The biggest issue is the wifi, very capricious
I have no problem watching a 1080p stream on twitch... but loading the newsfeed on FB, twitter, is sometimes impossible. I have to switch to 4g to load the newsfeed and it's very annoying ... Sometimes i can browse the internet for 5minutes, then nothing would load, for no reason ...
The battery management settings is also very aggressive, and notifications often displayed 1h, 2h late. Occasionally i get a "1 message from " " ... 1 day" on messenger app
One thing i really miss is viper4audio ... I did everything, i can't get this thing to work.
Appart from that, it's a good medium range phone.
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I don't know what phone you have.I think you are on a wrong thread.This is for Huawei P20 which is a premium phone not a midrange phone.
It's not a 800€+ phone, and there's the p20 pro. I bought it for 379€ in europe, just a month after it's release. So for me it's more a medium range phone ^^ the top medium range
costindaemon said:
Disable Huawei power genie app. I think it will solve all your problems with background apps.
You can find instructions online.
Your battery will take a small hit.
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Click to collapse
Thank you so much for this. I was so tired of having to reload recent apps. It was so bad on my phone that just switching between 2 apps would close the first.
maxime4611 said:
It's not a 800€+ phone, and there's the p20 pro. I bought it for 379€ in europe, just a month after it's release. So for me it's more a medium range phone ^^ the top medium range
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Well,for me there are the specifications that make a phone premium/midrange or entry-level.The P20 has specifications that matches a premium 2018 phone.If you were so lucky to find a new P20 in spring 2018 for less than 400 euros,good for you.
costindaemon said:
Disable Huawei power genie app. I think it will solve all your problems with background apps.
You can find instructions online.
Your battery will take a small hit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ryandos said:
Thank you so much for this. I was so tired of having to reload recent apps. It was so bad on my phone that just switching between 2 apps would close the first.
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You don't need to disable the Power Genius app, it can actually do some good... disabling it is functionally equivalent to going to Settings -> Battery -> App Launch and turning off "Manage All Automatically" and that will leave you like most other Android device with the kernel managing everything.
I disabled this at first after @costindaemon mentioned it, but Gmail app notifications, especially for non-Gmail accounts, got wonky... So I re-enabled Power Genius but turned it off as I stated above, then went through the apps and turned some on that I wanted "suppressed"... Gmail is an enigma here though, if it's management is turned off I had issues with notifications and accounts, and in App Launch it had a warning saying something like that, so I turned it on for that app and it's been good since. I have since just monitored the usage with GSAM's App Sucker and anything high on the battery usage list that I didn't want I turned on the Manage Automatically for that app and it no longer misbehaved. Think I have found the happy medium here.
I still have some issues with the phone, most just annoyances now... not to the level of frustration I was at before though. Still looking at that Pixel 3a XL though... it's in the cart, financing approved, but I just can't seem to pull the trigger yet. lol
acejavelin said:
You don't need to disable the Power Genius app, it can actually do some good...
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You're right. I made a mistake in thinking that disabling power genie worked, when in reality it was just rebooting my phone that temporarily fixed the problem.
I did a bit of googling into a "ram leak" on the P20 and it was actually because I was using a 3rd party launcher (Nova). The solution was to disable the stock Huawei launcher, and since I did that 2 days ago my free ram has not gone below 1000mb. I've installed another launcher in case Nova mucks up.
But it looks like you've moved onto the 3a now, hopefully it's better than the awful software experience that comes with this phone xD. I definitely won't be buying Huawei in the future.
Ryandos said:
You're right. I made a mistake in thinking that disabling power genie worked, when in reality it was just rebooting my phone that temporarily fixed the problem.
I did a bit of googling into a "ram leak" on the P20 and it was actually because I was using a 3rd party launcher (Nova). The solution was to disable the stock Huawei launcher, and since I did that 2 days ago my free ram has not gone below 1000mb. I've installed another launcher in case Nova mucks up.
But it looks like you've moved onto the 3a now, hopefully it's better than the awful software experience that comes with this phone xD. I definitely won't be buying Huawei in the future.
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Yeah, I got my Pixel on Monday... Already think it's 10 times better, except the camera. That 2x "optical zoom" was damn nice although the Pixel's pictures seem a better quality even though they take longer to process. For the camera, I'm still giving the edge to the Pixel but I haven't played with it much yet.
All my issues are gone now and battery life is noticeably better. The Huawei will be going up on the local classified ad sites soon, hopefully the market for them isn't completely tanked.
Sent from my Pixel 3a XL using Tapatalk
Your lockscreen issue is solved by deleting the excess wallpapers from the lockscreen. As you cycle into the first one, tap it and...
Any issues you have don't exist for me. Likely because i always first disable/uninstall most major google apps immediately.
Any problems i've noticed don't appear to me as device specific but rather OS related. To me, this thing performs quite well with impressively low battery drain by comparison.