Related
Hi,
We all knew that we should not use task killer to kill apps, because when we hit the back button, the app will not active anymore ... but it will still occupy some memory (RAM).
When Android OS needs more RAM it will remove in-active apps to free some.
Related article: http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/ (GOOD READ)
We should not panic when we see a huge list of apps when we start task killer.
Ok, got it there ...
Now, I installed this app called Quick System Info (FREE):
http://www.cyrket.com/p/android/org.uguess.android.sysinfo/
Which you can use to see what kind of processes are still running or apps that are still occupying RAM. It could show you the amount of RAM and CPU resources that are being used by each app.
So, I went to the Quick System Info -> Processes, hit the "menu" button -> Preferences and set like this:
- Update Speed = Low
- Show Memory Usage [checked]
- Show CPU Usage [checked]
- Sort by = CPU Usage
- Direction = Descending
Go back and watch ...
Surprisingly, I saw "Market" app is eating 1% CPU resources once in a while ... again and again ...
Hey, I thought it (Market app) is suspended in the background? I don't have it active, I pressed the back button when I finished with it.
Why is it eating 1% CPU from now an then in the background?
Obviously, this will drain battery power for something that I don't need.
Any thought?
I am now wondering if I install other kind of process monitoring app, and see if the suspended Quick System Info is also eating CPU resources
Why should we not use task killers? I`ve used them on android for the last year otherwise like you say background tasks use resources slowing up the system.
Obviously dont close any system important apps but I`m always closing down background apps that I no longer require.
1% every now and again? I really wouldn't worry about that to be perfectly honest. The impact on battery life will be incredibly small, so much so I doubt you'd even notice if you weren't watching it like a hawk.
By far the biggest drain on battery life remains all of the wireless stuff (wifi, bluetooth and 3G internet) followed closely by the screen itself. Turn those off when not in use and the miniscule drain of suspended tasks won't be an issue.
I'm sure if Google thought suspended tasks would be an important factor in battery drain they would've designed it differently to start with.
Read this article
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
paulruk said:
Why should we not use task killers? I`ve used them on android for the last year otherwise like you say background tasks use resources slowing up the system.
Obviously dont close any system important apps but I`m always closing down background apps that I no longer require.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does every minute or so, and so far I found only this app (Market).
I just found out this morning before went to work, so I don't have time to inspect more.
Too bad I cannot see CPU TIME (the amount of time the process took 100% of cpu resources).
Noiz said:
1% every now and again? I really wouldn't worry about that to be perfectly honest. The impact on battery life will be incredibly small, so much so I doubt you'd even notice if you weren't watching it like a hawk.
By far the biggest drain on battery life remains all of the wireless stuff (wifi, bluetooth and 3G internet) followed closely by the screen itself. Turn those off when not in use and the miniscule drain of suspended tasks won't be an issue.
I'm sure if Google thought suspended tasks would be an important factor in battery drain they would've designed it differently to start with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that 1% would be it occasionally checking in with the market to see if any updates have been released for the programs you have installed, so that it can give you a notification when the update is released.
i would imagine that is what it is anyway.
and yes, 1% every so often is negligible, and if you killed just that process, i doubt you would notice any difference.
gogol said:
Surprisingly, I saw "Market" app is eating 1% CPU resources once in a while ... again and again ...
Hey, I thought it (Market app) is suspended in the background? I don't have it active, I pressed the back button when I finished with it.
Why is it eating 1% CPU from now an then in the background?
Obviously, this will drain battery power for something that I don't need.
Any thought?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not sure about this..
Have you noticed that you will get a notification if there is an update to application that is installed in your phone?
I think the marketplace doesn't have a push notification yet. So it periodically will check whether there is any update to the installed application.
Allright, that might be it ... the Market is checking for apps aupdate.
And most probably 1% is not much (I don't know how to measure this and translate it to battery life time). 1% every minute ... hmmm
1 hour of 1% cpu per minute = X % of battery life.
If we have N processes?
N = email check, weather check, friendstream check, RSS check, whatnot check
I`ll give you an example why I use a task killer.
Sometimes I use an app that goes online every few minutes and notifies me of any updates. I can 100% be certain this app even when in the background uses enough cpu to cause the phone to slowdown. Dont ask me why, maybe bad programming but this is the exact reason why I need a task killer to get rid of it.
Once its gone the phone is fine again. it happends on a few apps I own, so when I finish with them, I kill them.
I wouldnt recommend a task killer that kills everything, you just need to be selective.
That is a perfect example for using task killer
What I wrote in the first post is about using task killer to just kill apps without knowing anything.
In the past, I just select all and KILL ... Then the HTC Sense got reloaded
I was scared it could corrupt my phone ... lol.
paulruk said:
I`ll give you an example why I use a task killer.
Sometimes I use an app that goes online every few minutes and notifies me of any updates. I can 100% be certain this app even when in the background uses enough cpu to cause the phone to slowdown. Dont ask me why, maybe bad programming but this is the exact reason why I need a task killer to get rid of it.
Once its gone the phone is fine again. it happends on a few apps I own, so when I finish with them, I kill them.
I wouldnt recommend a task killer that kills everything, you just need to be selective.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes thats a bit extreme killing everything.
I`ve also used startup auditor in the past. That stops some apps loading at startup , for example footprints, never use it so I kill it before it gets a chance to load up. Have to be careful what you limit though as some tasks are used by others.
That Startup Auditor is interesting, does it work as expected?
Or you encountered some quirks or issues with it?
Yeah, I don't quite like with the way Android startup (or HTC?), for example: FM radio ... it also started automatically after reboot.
paulruk said:
Yes thats a bit extreme killing everything.
I`ve also used startup auditor in the past. That stops some apps loading at startup , for example footprints, never use it so I kill it before it gets a chance to load up. Have to be careful what you limit though as some tasks are used by others.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
gogol said:
That Startup Auditor is interesting, does it work as expected?
Or you encountered some quirks or issues with it?
Yeah, I don't quite like with the way Android startup (or HTC?), for example: FM radio ... it also started automatically after reboot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems to work fine, not sure what help it is though hehe, in terms of speed/memory savings. I stop the radio , bluetooth,google talk and footprints. But I also use it to start some apps automatically.
I found this list of what you can/can`t disable. You can still run them after startup, just they wont load automatically when you start the phone.
safe
Google Partner Setup
Network Location (if not using apps which need geolocation regularly. ie. Gmaps, GeoTag, etc.)
Bluetooth Share (if not using BT device)
Email (if not using email service other than Gmail)
Messaging (if using 3rd party sms app, ie. Handcent SMS. or if infrequent texter)
Calendar (if calendar is not used regularly)
Calendar Storage (if calendar is not used regularly)
Voice Dialer (if not used)
Google Talk Service (if GTalk is not used regularly)
Maps (if GMaps is not used regularly)
unsafe
Clock
Media Storage
Android System
Gmail Storage
Sync Feeds
Dialer
System Updater (not sure about this one)
My Uploads (not sure about this one)
Download Manager (not sure about this one)
Each time my app killer kills apps, it kills over 20 apps each time. 5 mins after it does that, at least 5 apps start up again on its own, not counting the ones that I want to leave open.
Is this just accepted as is? Seems like our battery would last longer if we didn't have 25 apps running for so much of the time. Any idea whats going on and how to remedy this?
Well, you may be killing off system apps, which some will auto run because they perform important tasks for your system. Like if you kill Google partner setup, my upload, etc. Then when you start the market it will start those apps up again because it needs them to run. Or an app might be running as a service but is in the empty state. When you kill it, it is gone from the list but will appear when that service is called by the system
oh ok, that makes sense...ill look into my services settings.
Also, when you see things where the app is in an empty state, its not really consuming any resources, or battery really. If you have a custom Rom, there should really be a minimal amount of services you have to kill, Android OS does a pretty good job managing your resources to that extent.
Battery Save Like RandomKing
I find myself regularly repeating many of these suggestions on many threads to many different people on how to extend your battery life. When not in use, my phone loses at most only 1-2% battery per hour! So I'm making one thread in the Epic forums dedicated to maximizing battery life while trying to explain why these steps will work. Some battery improvements come at the cost of performance or lack of certain services. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of these steps.
Step 1: Brightness & Battery
Let's face it. Our Android phone screens are huge. This feature is the largest, and completely unavoidable battery-drain. The only way to limit it is to not use the screen... ergo... not use your phone. But that clearly makes no sense, so how to limit that drain? Well, a good step is to turn down your screen's brightness to the lowest you can read clearly, don't hurt your eyes! For night-time use, there's an app that can turn the brightness down even lower called Screen Filter(Thanks to iModMM for the find!). Also, choose a nice dark background, something in the black color range. For all phones, the darker the color, the less brightness used, less power consumed! But for our Epic's Super Amoled screen, specifically, a black pixel is technically an "off" pixel. That's right, every black pixel on your screen is a part of your screen not being powered, since the Super Amoled does not need backlighting. Blackle is also a good alternative to the standard Google site for a black themed search engine, though it doesn't seem to be mobile optimized. Also, lock your screen with that nice little button on the top right side of your phone. Don't wait for it to lock itself! As far as the battery itself goes, charging to 100% can be tricky. The moment that led turns blue, your phone has generally reached 100%, but it will generally trickle charge between 97 and 100 after that. A good way to charge to 100 percent is to use an external charger, which generally come with 1 or 2 spare batteries for about $20. This way, the moment your battery dies, shut down, and pop a fresh one in.
Step 2: Using a Custom Rom
At this point, there are many Epic 4G custom roms out, and if you're in this forum, you've likely rooted or are trying to root. Well I will not go into rooting directions here. Take a look at one and see how it fare's out-of-the-box for you. If you choose to use my customized rom, you will find a task manager with a preset ignore list, ready to use as a one-tap app-closing widget; as well as the service-freezing patch mentioned below in Step 8 ready for execution through a terminal, and my entire setup(among many other mods, apps, and tweaks tested for the greatest battery performance). These are just roms I've used myself to great results. Many others exist. Updated 7/6:
RandomKing's Customized Rom
2.2.1 EC05 v.1 Plus [Journaled w/Genocide 1.0] [Screenshots]
SyndicateFrozen Rom
2.2.1 EC05 v.1.2
Bonsai Rom
2.2.1 EC05 v.4.1.1 Not Supported on XDA. Sorry.
Midnight Rom
2.2.1 EC05 v.5.3
Step 3: Disable Unnecessary Services
First and foremost, disable all location services, wifi and gps based. This will affect certain apps like weather apps, you'll simply have to deal with static locations. Next, disable data sync. Contacts will not synchronize with Gmail while this is off. You will have to enable it sporadically. The Gmail app also will not function while this is off, I recommend using the email app and simply adjusting the refresh interval. You can always manually check your own email . Likewise, you may put your phone into airplane mode altogether if you don't plan to use it for an extended period of time, such as school, work, swim meet, movies, or on an airplane.
Step 4: Task Killers and JuiceDefender
First, let's get JuiceDefender out of the way. It's a neat app, and in certain ways, effective. However, it's own effectiveness comes with certain contradictions. It disables nearly all signals, which will include, for example, Google Voice. In my experience, this app hindered certain other services, and if anything may have drawn further on my battery. My recommendation is to stay away from it. Now onto Task Killers, they are good, and they are evil. Let me explain. Many of us may find issues closing all the apps we open, and sometimes forget we left something open. A task killer can easily ensure that you've closed all of your programs. Now onto the bad. Task killers can try to kill certain system services. This is generally BAD. Certain services shouldn't be killed, and others can't be killed, and the ongoing battle only further drains your battery while trying to kill services that AREN'T actually bad. So on that note, the worst part of task killers is AUTO-KILL. Disable it! Kill it! Kill it with FIRE! I use Advanced or Adao Task Killer, with no auto-kill. It is one of the only widgets I use, and I simply tap it before I lock my phone each time.
Step 5: Widgets
If you don't need them, don't use them. Almost all widgets make continuous unnecessary calls to the Android system, and this can be a huge battery draw. Even simple widgets. Through all my testing, there's only 2 widgets I have approved thus far: Advanced Task Killer, Power Control. Other disapproved widgets: Pandora, Winamp, Weather(ALL OF THEM), etc.
Step 6: SetCpu, Voltage Control, and Over/Underclocking
As with much of this thread, this is opinionated and empirical theories. Through my testing, Overclocking is unnecessary, and guaranteed to draw on the battery. Most of these roms come from fantastic devs and are, by default, blazingly fast. Overclocking is completely redundant in my opinion, and I'm generally all about speed. Underclocking/undervolting may preserve more battery, but my opinion on the matter is similar to my feeling on widgets. If you don't need it, don't do it. If you feel the need to use these apps, a generally accepted setting for battery preservation is to undervolt to 800 max. and 100 min. (if your phone can handle it, some may experience wake-locks, raise min. to 200) on conservative governor, adjusting your profiles for when the phone is locked, unlocked and etc.
Step 7: Unnecessary Apps
Free apps are great, aren't they? But how many have you gathered, just because they're free? Now how many of those don't you use, but regularly draw on your phone regardless. There's an easy way to roughly check. Open your settings. Now go to Applications. Manage Applications. Take a look at which are running that you have not opened. Using a task killer prior, and waiting a couple minutes to see what re-opens may be a good way to check which apps are continuously running in the background and evaluate if they can be removed.
Facebook --- Notorious for running in the background. Disabling notifications may help.
Latitude --- Largest offender of location service usage. Neat app. Huge battery hog.
QIK/Fring --- Any video chatter really. If you don't use them, remove or disable them.
Browser --- Large ram usage. Try Dolphin Mini or Miren.
Step 8: Freeze Services
Using Titanium Backup Pro, MyBackup Pro, or Bloat Freezer (yes, non-free apps) freeze any of the following services:
sns --- (Will disable sns)
snsaccount --- (Will disable Facebook contact integration)
drm --- (May affect media programs like mediahub)
drmcontent --- (May affect media programs like mediahub)
systemupdater --- (Best disabled if on custom rom)
Enter the following commands into the Android Terminal to manually freeze the above services:
Code:
su
pm disable com.sec.android.providers.drm
pm disable com.sec.android.app.sns
pm disable com.samsung
Simply enter the previous commands into the Android Terminal while substituting "enable" for "disable" to manually defrost these.
If you would like a shortcut for this method, check out the patch in This Thread Also Included In RandomKing's Rom..
Step 9: Journaling
Journaling... some love it, some hate it. The fact remains, journaling enables extra write cycles. While this will prevent data loss, it also means more cpu usage. It follows that battery should last longer with journaling disabled. You can use chris41g's mod HERE to turn Journaling on/off at will.
Step 10: Turn it Off and Spend Time With Loved Ones
That's right. You're obsessing with your phone. Leave it be. Do something meaningful and memorable. Have fun with life! This is just a phone.
More coming as it comes to me! Including mods, apps, etc. aimed at improving battery life. Feel free to leave your own suggestions or questions! If this guide and it's features have helped you in anyway, leave THANKS so I know whether or not to keep up on it!
Y is this in q&a?
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA Premium App
Because its an answer to many questions posted here.
-Sent from my Random Epic.
many good suggestions here RandomKing.
this stuff is all so useful to us newer users out here, maybe this should be stickied (either here or in general).
jarcher1971 said:
many good suggestions here RandomKing.
this stuff is all so useful to us newer users out here, maybe this should be stickied (either here or in general).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! I have no control over where this belongs, I just know its an answer to many questions and would be noticed here.
-Sent from my Random Epic.
has anyone noticed an effect on the phone's ability to sleep when you manually reorder the apps alphabetically in the app drawer? I kept having problems and factory reset 2x. Now I did find 3 troublesome apps that although not apparently running in the background, kept my phone from sleeping simply by being installed. I also stopped ordering my apps, deleted the troublesome apps and now it seems my phone is working correctly. I wonder if that (editing the default order) could also prevent the phone from sleeping? Any thoughts?
rando991 said:
has anyone noticed an effect on the phone's ability to sleep when you manually reorder the apps alphabetically in the app drawer? I kept having problems and factory reset 2x. Now I did find 3 troublesome apps that although not apparently running in the background, kept my phone from sleeping simply by being installed. I also stopped ordering my apps, deleted the troublesome apps and now it seems my phone is working correctly. I wonder if that (editing the default order) could also prevent the phone from sleeping? Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can't say I've noticed this, but I've been on launcherpro for quite some time now. Perhaps you could share more details on your setup?
-Sent from my Random Epic.
I'm non rooted stock EC05. I used to use EDIT in the app drawer to rearrange my apps in alphabetical order (they don't arrange themselves automatically this way after rebooting). I had noticed in spare parts that my phone was never sleeping and killing my battery. I did a factory reset and it worked as advertised. I slowly added apps back until I found two that seem to prevent my phone from sleeping so I uninstalled them. Phone worked fine for a while but then started acting up again. I repeated the procedure, leaving only the apps my wife's phone had (hers always sleeps like a baby), but then my phone started up again. Tried another reset but this time decided to leave the apps in the order they put themselves and so far so good...wondering if that was doing something or if it is an app update that goes bonkers?
rando991 said:
I'm non rooted stock EC05. I used to use EDIT in the app drawer to rearrange my apps in alphabetical order (they don't arrange themselves automatically this way after rebooting). I had noticed in spare parts that my phone was never sleeping and killing my battery. I did a factory reset and it worked as advertised. I slowly added apps back until I found two that seem to prevent my phone from sleeping so I uninstalled them. Phone worked fine for a while but then started acting up again. I repeated the procedure, leaving only the apps my wife's phone had (hers always sleeps like a baby), but then my phone started up again. Tried another reset but this time decided to leave the apps in the order they put themselves and so far so good...wondering if that was doing something or if it is an app update that goes bonkers?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm. If you can't narrow it down to a certain app, I'm not totally sure what it could be. Have you tried clearing the data/cache of Twlauncher? You could try a launcher like LauncherPro, you don't have to be rooted to use a different one.
No but if the problem comes back up I will try some of those...these are the 3 apps that when loaded caused problems: NIV Bible, Document Scanner, [I now have relacement apps for each of these now] and most recently Espn Score Center, but my wife had all of thse but the doc scanner and had no problems
i would check in spare parts to see which apps may be holding a partial wake lock. for me the facebook app was not letting my phone sleep until i disable all of its notifications.
jarcher1971 said:
i would check in spare parts to see which apps may be holding a partial wake lock. for me the facebook app was not letting my phone sleep until i disable all of its notifications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Likewise. This is why I removed facebook altogether. The new mobile site has proven to be pretty useful now.
-Sent from my Random Epic.
Yeah I found the same thing...but I would log out of Facebook too. Also the problem reappeared after a factory reset and I had not gone into Facebook. Are you saying that even if you don't log in, it can stop your phone from sleeping? My phone started doing it again a few days ago for no apparent reason, and I was able to stop that behavior by: finding and moving 2 apps from the phone to SD card (I thought I had gotten all of them), clearing any cache from different apps, and rebooting.
jarcher1971 said:
i would check in spare parts to see which apps may be holding a partial wake lock. for me the facebook app was not letting my phone sleep until i disable all of its notifications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That wouldn't tell me anything when I had the problem. The only thing was Android System....and....the phone wouldn't sleep even if in airplane mode! Which meant it had to be a process or app doing it all the time. I had never thought to clear cache, but I wonder why doing that works? Also there's a menu option in Spare Parts about Button Behavior which leads you to believe you can make the phone sleep but the menu says "only available in Ver 1.5". I've checked the market and can't find a ver 1.5 Spare Parts...
rando991 said:
That wouldn't tell me anything when I had the problem. The only thing was Android System....and....the phone wouldn't sleep even if in airplane mode! Which meant it had to be a process or app doing it all the time. I had never thought to clear cache, but I wonder why doing that works? Also there's a menu option in Spare Parts about Button Behavior which leads you to believe you can make the phone sleep but the menu says "only available in Ver 1.5". I've checked the market and can't find a ver 1.5 Spare Parts...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe it means android 1.5, because that says "End Button Behavior", and no new phones have Call and End buttons on them. Because the "Fancy Screen Rotation" says 1.5 only also.
Sent from the only thing i need.
RandomKing said:
Step 6: Unnecessary Apps[/CENTER]
Free apps are great, aren't they? But how many have you gathered, just because they're free? Now how many of those don't you use, but regularly draw on your phone regardless. There's an easy way to roughly check. Open your settings. Now go to Applications. Manage Applications. Take a look at which are running that you have not opened. Using a task killer prior, and waiting a couple minutes to see what re-opens may be a good way to check which apps are continuously running in the background and evaluate if they can be removed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you mean "Now go to Applications. Running Services." Going to Manage Applications will show all non-system applications and not tell you what is currently running, AFAICT.
Or am I mistaken?
Thanks for this thread.
prodigyplace said:
I think you mean "Now go to Applications. Running Services." Going to Manage Applications will show all non-system applications and not tell you what is currently running, AFAICT.
Or am I mistaken?
Thanks for this thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, there is a "Running" tab inside Manage Applications. An app doesn't have to have a service to be running.
Sent from the only thing i need.
zanderman112 said:
No, there is a "Running" tab inside Manage Applications. An app doesn't have to have a service to be running.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for clarifying, Zanderman. Somehow I never noticed that tab before.
rando991 said:
That wouldn't tell me anything when I had the problem. The only thing was Android System....and....the phone wouldn't sleep even if in airplane mode! Which meant it had to be a process or app doing it all the time. I had never thought to clear cache, but I wonder why doing that works? Also there's a menu option in Spare Parts about Button Behavior which leads you to believe you can make the phone sleep but the menu says "only available in Ver 1.5". I've checked the market and can't find a ver 1.5 Spare Parts...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds to me like a system process may be the cause rather than any particular application. For me also I had issues early on with the SNS service forcing itself to restart continually and being a battery drain. It usually takes a force stop on that service followed by clearing data in the sns app and rebooting to fix. Don't know if that will work for you, but hope it helps.
Sent from the communications console of the NX-01 using a universal translator
My tips you can add:
1. I always, no matter what, always have brightness on lowest setting! If you have a hard time seeing in sun, than do auto, but turn off when don't need to, I have on low 24/7. Then at night, I have this app called screen filter which lets you lower brightness then default setting(good on eyes).
2. I always have auto-sync off. If you want emails etc. configure with ur preferences. And most of the time background data. But with background data off, you don't have access to market and have to enable for use. Don't get notifications. Lately, haven't been getting WhatsApp messages. This is optional.
3. In wifi settings, network notification turned off. Haptic feedback and all vibration disabled. Sounds on key clicks or anything disabled. Auto rotate screen off. No window animations. Screen timeout, 15 seconds. Keyboard timeout, 3 seconds. In location, use wireless networks and gps satellites unchecked.
4. No live wallpaper! No bright colors! I use a black background for wallpaper!! Try to go a little dark, not bright, stay away from white! Id recommened, the full black wallpaper. Also on ur homescreen, avoid widgets! Especially ones that use live web feed like, facebook, scorecenter. These are battery suckers!
5. I delete all apps I do not use! Stock and user. Download titanium backup to fix this issue. I freeze, system updates, swype, drm content, drm content launcher, sns, snsaccount. I uninstall the stock browser, use dolphin!! I also uninstall, all sprint bloatware, my files, gmail, email, talk, news and weather. Uninstall all stock and user apps you don't use! Check spare parts to see what runs in the background that you don't use. Another thing to add, I uninstall swype and android keyboard and use better keyboard gingebread edition 8.
6. Disable refresh interval in facebook, do it manually when you are going to use it!
7. Use setcpu. Undervolt to 800max and 100min on conservative governor. Set profiles, when phone is locked and etc.
8. Now lets talk about juicedefender and task killers. Juice defender will work and is a good app! BUT: if ur a person like me, I text a lot in whatsapp and when u lock screen it disables data, so u wont get texts. Download it, take a look at it, try it out. I recommend using agressive mode. Now lets talk about task killers. Personally, I think they dont work at all, and actually waste battery then save it. I just would say don't use one, and use samsungs stock task killer(actually works!)
9. Use a custom rom and kernel. Always be up to date on updates. I usually use, SRF and midNight. All about preference.
10. Extended battery FTW!!! Buy a seidio extened battery! May cost some money, but will greatly increase battery!!! Or get a cheap asian knockoff on ebay.
11. Disable data and put phone into airplane mode when it wont be in use for a period of time. Like at school or work. I usually keep data off during school. You will see a difference with data on and off.
12. Always keep wifi, bluetooth, gps, 4g off when not in use. They will drain battery crazy!!! Wifi will search for networks constantly, same basic thing with gps and bluetooth.
13. Also do full charges!! At night shut off phone and let it charge for a good 8 hours. Then in morning, turn on still plugged in. The charging indicator will be red, leave it alone till its blue. Go get dressed and eat some breakfast lol. Then when you come back it should be blue. And when on boot, let it finish media scanning, don't interrupt it!!
I can guarentee if you follow my tips, you will see a significant increase in battery life!
These are my tips!! I will add more if I can remember some more!
Typed this all on my Epic!!
I have had the Captivate Glide for little over a month now. It was the rooted rogers version but I flashed AT&t's rooted ICS on to it.
Major issues were battery life and GPS.
Without changing any software I wanted to solve the issues or make them tolerable at the least. Probably better ways of doing this, but this is what works for me.
I assume everyone else is like me and downloaded tons of apps that we like. I personally have 30 downloaded with some form of Google being responsible for at least five of them. I also synced my google account, as well as my outlook account and skype account.
I do not game on my phone I prefer the console style of gaming but I digress.
Simple battery life can be saved obviously by closing or backing out of applications when not in use. You must be avid about this in order to preserve battery life. If you have not altered your ICS it comes with an "Active Applications" widget that makes this simple and easy. Within that widget is an even better function that allows you to clear memory on your ram. Do that for superior battery life as it will close down any program running including back ground processes.
You should also have widgets that allow you to toggle WIfi, and GPS, Bluetooth, brightness, screen time out, sync, and settings. <Extremely helpful in saving battery life. Wifi should be used whenever possible. If your phone is running processes that use data and it probably is, its better to use Wifi for your battery. Turn Wifi off when you can not secure a connection because the phone searching for wifi to connect will eat your battery.
Turn off GPS when not in use. If using an app that likes to have your location you can keep GPS on but turn it off when not directly in use it saves battery like no tomorrow.
Screen brightness is also a huge factor in battery Life. If you Go bright you die, simple as that. Make your screen as dim as you can but still comfortable to see depending on what you are doing. Again the widget makes this super fast and easy but you can go into the settings and adjust this by percentage if you are particular. Other wise the widget allows Bright, half bright, auto bright, and no bright. No bright will save tons of life so learn to see in the dark haha.
Screen timeout at 15s will save tons but can be annoying if your in the process of using your phone. I uses it and just tap my screen if I need it to stay light but trust me it gets old fast but so does a dead battery.
Go to your individual synced accounts and adjust the sync intervals to specified times if possible. Usually find it once you open whatever account and go to its settings. That gives the battery some life in between syncing which uses data and eats battery.
Go to settings and toggle system power settings. This Saves a huge amount of battery life and I have no idea why. You may be tempted to customize but don't. The system power saving is far superior from my experience so far.
One last and final thing to save battery life. The Google Play Store. It runs a ridiculous amount of Background processes. Go to settings, then, data, find the play store and click it, scroll to the bottom and restrict the background data. You will have to turn it back on in order to use the play store and some other apps which leads to my next topic...
GPS
This captivate glide has a notorious rep for being ****ty in these here forums. I am here to tell you its not all true. I am not a software guy as you can see all of my advice is simple common application usage advice. I previously had the SGH-I827 and its GPS was spectacular so I found it hard to believe the captivate glide GPS would not perform well. In fact when I began to use it, it did not. It was glitchy and unreliable. Terrible at best. I thought I was going to have to buy another phone or do some software stuff I had no clue of. I was patient.
And for myself I figured it out.
Everything you do to this phone is reflected in its functions.
All the things I suggested to save Battery Life impede the GPS of this phone. Take that in...
I started over from scratch resetting back to factory settings. (leaving the Stock rooted ics). If your google account backs up all your apps they will begin to re download immediately once you sync your account again, BUT STOP IT!
Don't let anything Upgrade or Download to your phone automatically. This is crucial.
Google maps upgrade must not be allowed. Instead use the current version that comes with the ice cream sandwich OS. (includes the navigate button we all like as well as the places icon) Everything else can then be downloaded or upgraded in the play store manually.
Now, for the tricky part. you have been saving battery life using all the propper previously mentioned techniques but now you want to use GPS. First thing you need to do is uncheck system power settings.. Then allow google play services to have its background data back. Settings, data, google play scroll bottom yea uncheck it. Turn your screen timeout to 10min. Now toggle GPS back on. But wait one more thing, Clear the ram. All done in that order Now when you go to maps you should get a lock in under a minute and it will be reliable. No way of stopping GPS from consuming a ton of battery but if you dim the screen and charge it while in use you will see battery life gains instead of losses.
Thanks for reading my personal usage experience so far. I have yet to take the update to GPS to see if it still works in the same fashion because I am a coward and I like my GPS right now. Let me know if anyone experiments further. With the rooted ICS OS.
Anyone know how I might go about diagnosing why my phone has been running much warmer than usual? Just browsing Facebook (posts, not video) for about 5 minutes with brightness around 25% the temp was up to 41 degrees. It happened earlier today when I was just using Chrome, and it happens most days now. The issue began when I updated to 11.2.8.8 (the very next day), and the phone overheated several times the first few days, evidenced by the system warning about temperature, then recovering several minutes later. I haven't seen the system warning since then, but it's frequently above 40 degrees just doing everyday tasks. Oddly, I haven't noticed it overheating when playing games.
I usually run Omega kernel, which has always run cooler than stock during both normal use and heavy gaming, but this issue has occurred with both stock and Omega, so it's not kernel-related. The only magisk modules I have installed are debloater (for YouTube only), font manager, and systemless hosts, so that's not it either.
Maybe some app going haywire (how to find it? Nothing in battery usage) or some system behavior that changed in 11.2.8.8? Anyone else have this issue or find what's causing it?
That's just how this phone is. It was worse when the phone released before all of the updates. They've been slowly trying to fix it with each update. The 888 is a hot *****.
TheKnux said:
That's just how this phone is. It was worse when the phone released before all of the updates. They've been slowly trying to fix it with each update. The 888 is a hot *****.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I remember having that complaint when I first got it, especially when gaming, but it's been fine for me since like April, until this last update. And with Omega several degrees cooler. So there has to be something new causing it....
terlynn4 said:
I remember having that complaint when I first got it, especially when gaming, but it's been fine for me since like April, until this last update. And with Omega several degrees cooler. So there has to be something new causing it....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What version of Omega are you on? What build of OOS? AA, BA, DA? Are there any unusual rogue apps that you've noticed running more than usual?
TheKnux said:
What version of Omega are you on? What build of OOS? AA, BA, DA? Are there any unusual rogue apps that you've noticed running more than usual?
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Click to collapse
Latest version of Omega (8/7) since yesterday, but was having the same issue on the previous build (7/30). I'm on OOS 11.2.8.8 BA.
I haven't noticed any apps using more battery than expected, but I guess that might be part of my question... If there are any, what's the best way to find them? I'm not seeing any useful info in BBS or anything in GSam I wouldn't expect, except overall battery drain is a bit higher when it's been running hot. I do have a lot of apps installed and should probably clean up what I don't use, so I guess that's a place to start.
Find which apks are using the battery.
Google system apks are prime suspects.
Trash apps like FB, WhatsApp, LinkedIn... none of that junkware runs on my device, ever.
Examine all startup apks closely, take out the trash.
Power management can end up causing excessive battery usage, try turning it off.
Track down each battery hog and deal with it on a case by case basis rather than the flip a switch shotgun approach.
I use Karma Firewall's logging feature to help track down offenders.
Dependencies... sometimes the source of the high usage is hidden. What apks and services are running? What apks are using what services and why? What's apks are getting cached first when you clear them all? Any memory leaks?
Play with it... Androids wuv attention
blackhawk said:
Find which apks are using the battery.
Google system apks are prime suspects.
Trash apps like FB, WhatsApp, LinkedIn... none of that junkware runs on my device, ever.
Examine all startup apks closely, take out the trash.
Power management can end up causing excessive battery usage, try turning it off.
Track down each battery hog and deal with it on a case by case basis rather than the flip a switch shotgun approach.
I use Karma Firewall's logging feature to help track down offenders.
Dependencies... sometimes the source of the high usage is hidden. What apks and services are running? What apks are using what services and why? What's apks are getting cached first when you clear them all? Any memory leaks?
Play with it... Androids wuv attention
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good ideas. I just installed Karma Firewall and will see if it turns up anything.
How do you manage startup apps and running services? I used to use Servicely, but with Android 11 I find that even when I disable apps at startup they still start on their own, and it seems to use more battery than it saves. I've since disabled all apps of that kind and just let Android manage things itself. The only thing I do is go to individual apps and turn on battery optimization and disable background data if not needed, and I keep apps I don't use often in Icebox, including Facebook, which is the only social media type app I have. (Uninstalling FB isn't an option unfortunately.)
What do you mean by "which apps are getting cached first when you clear them all?" and how might I find it there are memory leaks?
terlynn4 said:
Good ideas. I just installed Karma Firewall and will see if it turns up anything.
How do you manage startup apps and running services? I used to use Servicely, but with Android 11 I find that even when I disable apps at startup they still start on their own, and it seems to use more battery than it saves. I've since disabled all apps of that kind and just let Android manage things itself. The only thing I do is go to individual apps and turn on battery optimization and disable background data if not needed, and I keep apps I don't use often in Icebox, including Facebook, which is the only social media type app I have. (Uninstalling FB isn't an option unfortunately.)
What do you mean by "which apps are getting cached first when you clear them all?" and how might I find it there are memory leaks?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Karma's logging feature doesn't work in 10 and above I believe, I run Pie. See what you got though. It will still block apk internet access though and uses almost no battery.
The battery optimization option can cause erratic behavior and I never use it. Close apps when done with them. Brave browser for instance will run in the background until closed.
Developer options>running services memory leaks show up as an apk who's memory usage just keeps increasing with time. It can get quit large. These are rare and poorly coded programs. More common on Windows.
Keep an eye though for memory hungry apps as they may be using excessive power but not always. Small memory users can be worse. Dependencies, sometimes a apk or service keeps making repeated requests because of a disabled apk or service.
Killing Goggle play Services and Playstore when not needed will help battery life.
Google backup Transport, Framework and Firebase are always disabled on my device.
All carrier, manufacturer, and Google feedback are disabled.
I have a Samsung device and I use its Device Care app to clear the cached apks. Then watch as they repopulate. You'll need an app that does this. In running services you can disable a suspect apk and see how long it takes to come back. I find that Device Care is more effective though and that ability has let me track down some misbehaving system apks saving me a reload.
FB is weaponized and a proven liability. Known data miner. Purveyor of disinformation and dissent. It has ruined countless lives and careers. It deliberately makes you have load the app to be able to send messages. If this last year hasn't taught you what you need to know...
I used it for one month 15 years ago and knew what it was back then. It's far worse today.
Don't feed the beast.
blackhawk said:
Karma's logging feature doesn't work in 10 and above I believe, I run Pie. See what you got though. It will still block apk internet access though and uses almost no battery.
The battery optimization option can cause erratic behavior and I never use it. Close apps when done with them. Brave browser for instance will run in the background until closed.
Developer options>running services memory leaks show up as an apk who's memory usage just keeps increasing with time. It can get quit large. These are rare and poorly coded programs. More common on Windows.
Keep an eye though for memory hungry apps as they may be using excessive power but not always. Small memory users can be worse. Dependencies, sometimes a apk or service keeps making repeated requests because of a disabled apk or service.
Killing Goggle play Services and Playstore when not needed will help battery life.
Google backup Transport, Framework and Firebase are always disabled on my device.
All carrier, manufacturer, and Google feedback are disabled.
I have a Samsung device and I use its Device Care app to clear the cached apks. Then watch as they repopulate. You'll need an app that does this. In running services you can disable a suspect apk and see how long it takes to come back. I find that Device Care is more effective though and that ability has let me track down some misbehaving system apks saving me a reload.
FB is weaponized and a proven liability. Known data miner. Purveyor of disinformation and dissent. It has ruined countless lives and careers. It deliberately makes you have load the app to be able to send messages. If this last year hasn't taught you what you need to know...
I used it for one month 15 years ago and knew what it was back then. It's far worse today.
Don't feed the beast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info, it's interesting. However, if you're running Pie & not even using a OnePlus device, none of this is going to be applicable to my issue which is specific to OOS 11.2.8.8 on this particular device, only present since last month's update.
Re: FB - I'm required to use it for my job (well, second job), and I need it on my mobile device in order to do that job, so it's not going away. Freezing it when not in use is the best I can do.
terlynn4 said:
Thanks for the info, it's interesting. However, if you're running Pie & not even using a OnePlus device, none of this is going to be applicable to my issue which is specific to OOS 11.2.8.8 on this particular device, only present since last month's update.
Re: FB - I'm required to use it for my job (well, second job), and I need it on my mobile device in order to do that job, so it's not going away. Freezing it when not in use is the best I can do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You cross platform OS version and manufacturer to find solutions. I have a lot of posts here but few asking for help because I do the above or just keeps at it until I work it out as it's my issue.
*shakes head*
You've painted yourself into a corner.
@terlynn4 I use BatteryGuru because it uses root to find rogue apps that are draining battery unnecessarily. Give it a go and see if that helps pinpoint the problem at all.