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Hi
Had my phone a little over 24 hours and I may have a very poor battery
I have a LIVE screen on the one with the water and the leaves plus, I haven't made or received any calls but I have used it a little for internet and a few text messages
The green bar was on full about 5 hours ago and if I had to guess how long my use has been I would say 30 mins in total of the 5 hours, now my battery is indicating less than half full
Imagine if I was out all day making and receiving calls?
Does this sound normal?
This is normal for the first week or two , the battery is adjusting itself to your needs
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
It's absolutely normal and you'll really notice a difference in about ten days, a couple of weeks the most.
That said, live wallpapers do use more battery. I much prefer a static dark one
adding to that make sure your phones nicely drained before recharging to ensure you get a nice full charge for next time... i took my desire's battery at least 5 days to start having a long term charge
bettery
same here took a week also what really helped me is having advanced task killer and setting it to kill unwanted apps after i lock the screen
i dont think you should use task killer, the apps will end them selves, i used task killer and got alot of force close after and errors etc
however force stopping unwanted applications is also good.
Android system 30%
cell standby 25%
phone idle 17%
android OS 15%
Display 11%
Internet 2%
5 H 55M 55S unplugged, hahaha no joke its all 5's
and now my battery is almost dead surely this cant be right
has anyone ever been given a replacement battery for their phone or do they ask for the phone to be returned if this is infact a fault
Battery sucks, phone is power hungry. Get used to it
I've had 2 desires since a week after it was released, i can count on one hand how many times I've got through a day without plugging my phone in.
I get about 2 days on my phone if I don't mess around with it a lot or get many calls. I normally plug it on overnight. Every night.
Nowadays that seems normal for a smartphone. Personally I think the battery life is slightly better than the iPhone 3GS.
Angry Birds means it lasts about 4-5 hours...
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
It's all down to how your using your phone. If you have a live wallpaper and many widgets and apps that run in the background like running in the notification bar, then yes, your phone will die pretty fast. Also it depends on how much CPU your burning. When I first got my Desire, I was like WTF. This is useless battery life and was starting to play hell. Now it's fine. I can leave it for 2 days easily if I just text or flick through settings. It just depends on what your running.
BTW, no one should have a task killer. It defeats the purpose of Android. You can get a lot of force closes and other things. Just leave them alone and let the OS handle the apps. Android does end the process if it's idle, eventually, but it's not using anything really other than a bit of memory just to keep it going a little.
As GoogleJelly pointed out, it really does depend on what you do with your phone and what's apps/processes are running on it while the device is using battery. Even I found the battery life pretty poor at the beginning...I found it quite annoying having to charge this thing nearly every day.
After some light tweaking, I managed to get the battery life to go over 3 days and I now have no reason to complain about my phone Mind you, I'm not a heavy user....As for background apps, I think i've got about 5/6 apps running at a time...
EDIT: I've attached a screenshot of my battery meter.....
What app are you using to view your battey history?
I also tested task killer when I got my phone. I thought it was fixing battery life, but after bedding the phone in a bit I took it off to see how much difference it would make and I didnt notice any difference at all...
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
GoogleJelly said:
What app are you using to view your battey history?
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I configured Quick Battery app to go to battery history from my phone settings every time I tap on it. You can view your battery history through:
Settings > About phone > Battery use.
If you want the graph, just tap on the top layer which shows the length of time you've been on battery.
EDIT: This works for Gingerbread based ROMs (it's the standard feature lol)...can't remember this being on Froyo.
infinityharry said:
adding to that make sure your phones nicely drained before recharging to ensure you get a nice full charge for next time... i took my desire's battery at least 5 days to start having a long term charge
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This is irrelevant with Li-ion as this is a myth from the ages of NiMh batteries. Your battery will not get ruined if you don't discharge it completely before first charging.
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk
efcgenius said:
Android system 30%
cell standby 25%
phone idle 17%
android OS 15%
Display 11%
Internet 2%
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great guideline, thx
Evil_Cid said:
I configured Quick Battery app to go to battery history from my phone settings every time I tap on it. You can view your battery history through:
Settings > About phone > Battery use.
If you want the graph, just tap on the top layer which shows the length of time you've been on battery.
EDIT: This works for GIngerbread based ROMs (it's the standard feature lol)...can't remember this being on Froyo.
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Ah right, cheers for that. Didn't know it was all built in
One of the main reasons why new smartphone owners experience fast battery drain lies in the simple fact that they fill up seven homescreens with widgets that sync over mobile internet every hour or even more often, which really kills the poor juice like a massive gas leak.
After about half a year of use I've reached a stage where I use just 2 screens on my Desire (CM 6.1.1), of which page no2 is a full 4x5 agenda and Page one has just one actively updated widget (home weather).
Combined with restricting network usage of random apps by means of DroidWall and underclocking the processor at certain parameters (eg. battery <50%) the phone lives for 2 days pretty easily, with moderate browsing, music etc included.
But TBH I've really decided that the battery usage is absolutely random because some days it just drains like there's no tomorrow with no apparent reason that I've been able to identify. Carry a spare microUSB wire tbh :/
I read so much myths in this thread concerning Li-Ion batteries.
First of all Li-Ion batteries do have instantly the capacity they are intended for. Even 5 charges won't change that. The only thing which can change over time and charge-cycles is your phone recognizing a new voltage level as "full" (read more: "calibrating htc desire battery") or you playing less with the phone or having power-consuming apps uninstalled.
Also a full first charge is not necessary. This "requirement" are from past days with NiCd or NiMH battery-types.
Read more: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
System of a pWne!^ said:
I read so much myths in this thread concerning Li-Ion batteries.
First of all Li-Ion batteries do have instantly the capacity they are intended for. Even 5 charges won't change that. The only thing which can change over time and charge-cycles is your phone recognizing a new voltage level as "full" (read more: "calibrating htc desire battery") or you playing less with the phone or having power-consuming apps uninstalled.
Also a full first charge is not necessary. This "requirement" are from past days with NiCd or NiMH battery-types.
Read more: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
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The calibration during the initial week or so of using the phone arises from phone-side calibration, not the battery itself, which is why deleting battery stats from recovery can at times resolve battery issues :V
Phone didn't last half a day after flashing CM 6.1.1; after a couple of days I charged it to 100%, deleted the stats and voila, it's about as perfect as a terrible smartphone battery can get.
With these larger screens and powerful processors, I can't say I'm totally surprised at the lower battery life compared to all the iPhones. They have smaller screens and the O/S is more tightly controlled and optimized for the hardware to maximize battery life.
With that said, I must admit, I'm somewhat disappointed with the battery life on this S3. I've now had it for two weeks so after lots of tweaking, rooting, apps installs and configs, battery and task monitoring, etc, I've kind of settled into my normal usage pattern which is typically pretty easy on the phone as more than 50% of the time I'm working from my home office with the phone plugged into USB so it is rare I have to leave in the morning and go the whole day without having to eventually sit back down at my computer and plug the phone back in.
However on the weekends, with kids sports and such, I'm now seeing the limitations on battery life on this phone. I have it set to:
Auto Display Brightness
No updating of apps unless on WiFi
GPS and Wifi turned off when I leave the houose (automatically via Llama - I turn them on only when I need them)
Power Saver Mode, all options except CPU power saving checked. (Kind of bought the phone for fast CPU although I'm not a gamer - just a multitasker and web browser)
Auto Screen Tone Turned On
Most other specific apps that have option to not download data except wifi I have that option turned on (aside from Taptu news feeds - 2 hour updates and Alerts from ESPN ScoreCenter - get maybe a couple alerts every few hours)
Haptic feedback turned off
Here's where I was shocked. First time I did some serious browsing was in a movie theater where I got there early and had about 20 min to burn so I did constant web browsing over the LTE connection. Watched batter plummet about 15% in 15 min. Whoa!
So is this just "how it is" with this phone that heavy LTE data usage eats battery like no tomorrow?
Other thing I noticed, is Using GSam, I see a task usually being in the top 3 or 4 most of the time with around 15-20% of the App Battery Usage total. It's called "System (*wakelock*)" and when I look at properties it shows around 6-8 wakelocks and Included Packages is just one "PowerAMP Full Version Unlocker" Included Processes: *wakelock* and com.maxmpx.audioplayer. But this is when I'm not using PowerAMP. In fact it happens after phone has been rebooted and I have never launched PowerAMP once!
I did notice something similar on the HTC One X+ I tried then exchanged for the S3 where I found a task associated with beats audio was eating up CPU/Battery when no music app was open as if it was periodically scanning my large MP3 library of 2,600 songs. Maybe PowerAmp is doing something similar?
I've found I'm not the only one noticing this:
http://forum.powerampapp.com/index.php?/topic/2662-battery-drain/
Well, first off, i think the main reason why the iPhone gets better battery life isn't because of the smaller screen or iOS being "optimized for the hardware". It's probably more due to the fact that it doesn't really run much of anything in the background. Very few apps actually continue to run when you leave them. It's kind of a pseudo-multitasking environment.
As for the S3's battery life.... it could be PowerAmp causing it. I also don't see why you'd want to keep power saving on the CPU off. It doesn't really seem to have that much of an impact on performance that i've seen while generally using the phone for web browsing and such. And no matter what phone you're on, LTE will kill the battery in no time flat.
I think you should give some time to settle your battery first...even after flashing a new rom its take couple of days for the battery to settle down. The first day i used my phone, the battery doed in 4 hours...now after 4 months it lasts for 15-16 hrs of normal to heavy use.
LTE does eat lots of battery, whenever i go in LTE area i have to switch my data off to keep my phone alive. That's why people like to have the ability to switch between LTE and HSPA+. Search to find that mod.
You can never compare iPhone with S3. As the above poster said, there is no multitasking in iPhones. The screen is small and not as good as S3. SAMLOED screen takes lots of battery.
viny2cool said:
I think you should give some time to settle your battery first...even after flashing a new rom its take couple of days for the battery to settle down. The first day i used my phone, the battery doed in 4 hours...now after 4 months it lasts for 15-16 hrs of normal to heavy use.
LTE does eat lots of battery, whenever i go in LTE area i have to switch my data off to keep my phone alive. That's why people like to have the ability to switch between LTE and HSPA+. Search to find that mod.
You can never compare iPhone with S3. As the above poster said, there is no multitasking in iPhones. The screen is small and not as good as S3. SAMLOED screen takes lots of battery.
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I totally agree with you. You have to give it time to settle in. You can also run a battery calibration to try and help as well. I have LTE here in Omaha and I usually get at least 15 hours before I need to charge my battery. I have a QCell battery and it works awesome.
I will live with the battery life so I can actually see the screen without having to squint my eyes. I used to have an iPhone as well but that was years ago now and Android will always be the best.
Don't get me wrong, as a "Power User" coming from the iOS Jailbreak world, hardware and customization-wise, I love this phone a lot more than I like my iPhone - but mostly it's the big screen that I'm enjoying. Have had a couple crashes in the first two weeks which never happened in iOS but no biggie.
So I suspect its primarily the LTE, but combined with large screen, true multitasking O/S, etc, obviously battery life is a challenge. I would slightly criticize Samsung for maybe being a little too obsessed with keeping the phone thin. I know you can buy the bigger batteries with a replacement cover but that looks like it really adds major thickness to phone. They should have went for a 2500-2700 mah battery and increased the thickness slightly IMHO.
But hey, at least the battery is removable. So I can spend little money and get a QCell, charge it and keep it in my car or on my desk and if I know I'm not going to be able to charge the phone all day, just pop the extra battery in my jacket pocket.
The LTE usage is a bit of a mystery to me. You would figure, with LTE, you can download files faster so you spend less time actually using the phone. But obviously it appears the energy consumption is trumping the increased efficiency in data transfer! Too bad.
Why the battery 'breaks in' over time is even more of a mystery. This latest battery technology should not have any sort of break-in or memory issues. But I'm no battery expert. But my gut says there's something else at play. I've seen many threads over past couple of years that discuss an issue relating to Android doing some sort of "media scan" after boot and/or periodically. Maybe the battery break-in is more about the databases the O/S is creating and updating in the background "settling down" more than anything to do with the characteristics of the physical battery changing?
One thing is for certain though, battery life IS a common issue for most higher-end Android smartphone users. Not a deal breaker in the least for me, but will be interesting to see how the phone "seasons" over time regarding battery. I used Titanium Backup to freeze Power Amp and downloaded N7 instead just to rule Power Amp out. I just took a 1.5 hour shopping trip. Didn't use LTE data. But spent about 45 minutes at the grocery store using their wifi to access all my coupons and shopping lists. Battery was 97% when I left house, 77% when I got home. Ouch. Well, that was probably more like a 2 hour round trip. Still 20% in 2 hours is not good especially considering I had 0 talk time and wasn't using LTE data.
The crazy thing is, Gsam says 12% screen, 86% apps. Under apps it says 23.6% Kernel, 19.3% Media, 19.3% N7 Player!!! And I didn't play any music!!!! This is leading me more and more to believe this all has something to do with having an extremely large music collection (2600 songs) on the phone and the phone is building a database and it just takes time. Pure guess.
Get his app disable autostart of the applications that are not needed. Also, get betterbatterystats to get a more detailed idea of whats going on with your phone.
how bad is your battery life? fwiw my wife's iPhone 5 gets horrendous battery life. makes the s3 look like a miser.
16 - 20 hours would be reasonable IMHO, or a average drain of 4-5% per hour. assuming you're actually using the thing... I never understood people who cripple the thing and never touch it in order to get max life.
Russ77 said:
how bad is your battery life? fwiw my wife's iPhone 5 gets horrendous battery life. makes the s3 look like a miser.
16 - 20 hours would be reasonable IMHO, or a average drain of 4-5% per hour. assuming you're actually using the thing... I never understood people who cripple the thing and never touch it in order to get max life.
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Iphone5 has a bigger screen then previous apples and it's also Lte. It's multitask has been improved too. It's not a secret its battery life plummeted.
Sent from my SGH-I747M using xda app-developers app
You know when someone pushes away an iPhone groupy I'm pretty sympathetic but this post is just a noob rage idiotic post. I didn't even read through all your points but will just say you need to spend more time learning
-there is autobrightness on root (and non rooted) and in fact autobrightness doesn't necessarily save battery...as much utiltiy as having say a brightness notification in the app bar or something like lux that allows you to control brigntness by environment/app etc
-it says nothing of what you have running in the background, spam apps, wakelocks etc (bbs) The fact your apps and music is taking up more battery than say cell tower stanbdy and screen display is an obvious red flag
- says nothing of how you checked your connections and how reception is in your area
Another point is the iphone 4 and 5 are MUCH thicker than the galaxy s3...they hold relative to the backgroudn processes etc running, a much larger and thicker battery. The same physical thickness of the s3 battery you could buy a battery with nearly twice as much juice.
We dont' know how you optimized your phone for your uses or whether you cleaned up processes, apps etc, how cleanly you flashed. Go and learn then come back and cry
Wow.... you tell him to learn then come back and cry.... say it's a "noob rage idiotic post".... and yet:
jazee said:
Other thing I noticed, is Using GSam, I see a task usually being in the top 3 or 4 most of the time with around 15-20% of the App Battery Usage total. It's called "System (*wakelock*)" and when I look at properties it shows around 6-8 wakelocks and Included Packages is just one "PowerAMP Full Version Unlocker" Included Processes: *wakelock* and com.maxmpx.audioplayer. But this is when I'm not using PowerAMP. In fact it happens after phone has been rebooted and I have never launched PowerAMP once!
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I'm sorry... but exactly what did he not mention about wakelock's?
You obviously didn't read the first sentence of my second most before you posted this, which said:
Don't get me wrong, as a "Power User" coming from the iOS Jailbreak world, hardware and customization-wise, I love this phone a lot more than I like my iPhone
I know all about Better Battery Stats, bla bla bla. I'm no idiot. Just giving some initial impressions and asking for a little further guidance.
zetsui said:
You know when someone pushes away an iPhone groupy I'm pretty sympathetic but this post is just a noob rage idiotic post. I didn't even read through all your points but will just say you need to spend more time learning
-there is autobrightness on root (and non rooted) and in fact autobrightness doesn't necessarily save battery...as much utiltiy as having say a brightness notification in the app bar or something like lux that allows you to control brigntness by environment/app etc
-it says nothing of what you have running in the background, spam apps, wakelocks etc (bbs) The fact your apps and music is taking up more battery than say cell tower stanbdy and screen display is an obvious red flag
- says nothing of how you checked your connections and how reception is in your area
Another point is the iphone 4 and 5 are MUCH thicker than the galaxy s3...they hold relative to the backgroudn processes etc running, a much larger and thicker battery. The same physical thickness of the s3 battery you could buy a battery with nearly twice as much juice.
We dont' know how you optimized your phone for your uses or whether you cleaned up processes, apps etc, how cleanly you flashed. Go and learn then come back and cry
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Click to collapse
Well here's an update. As I mentioned, I froze PowerAmp and installed N7 instead. I could have swore I reset the GSAM battery monitor, AFTER N7 scanned all my media files. Yet once again, like PowerAmp (via System *wakelock*) N7 was third highest battery eater over 2 hours of "normal" usage WITHOUT LTE Data Use, only Wifi and NO TALK TIME and WITHOUT USING N7!
So I dumped N7 and installed Player Pro. Just went out again for 2 hours to my son's basketball practice. Spent the 1.5 hour practice reading e-mail and doing some web surfing ALL ON LTE! Battery went down like no more than 10% !! At the beginning of the practice I played a song in Player Pro for a few seconds then backed out of the app. Checked GSAM 2 hours later, no significant PlayerPro battery usage!
It is more and more looking like something is going on with PowerAmp and N7 regarding cataloging of large music collections. So I'll stick with Player Pro and see how things go over the next few days.
Thanks to those with the constructive criticism. This has been one of the pluses of moving to Android. There's a lot larger population of "Power Users" than on iPhone that are willing to help someone relatively new to the platform.
yea... that's the one thing i had a feeling it might have been doing, but wasn't exactly sure as i've never really been that media-crazy with my phones. Good to see that you found the issue, though.
jazee said:
Why the battery 'breaks in' over time is even more of a mystery. This latest battery technology should not have any sort of break-in or memory issues. But I'm no battery expert. But my gut says there's something else at play.
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Yeah, "battery break-in" is a bit of a misnomer. What's actually happening is that the stats the OS keeps on the battery capacity and usage are being rebuilt. It takes a few charge cycles for your system to "learn" what it needs to accurately show you remaining capacity, etc.
jazee said:
So I dumped N7 and installed Player Pro. Just went out again for 2 hours to my son's basketball practice. Spent the 1.5 hour practice reading e-mail and doing some web surfing ALL ON LTE! Battery went down like no more than 10% !! At the beginning of the practice I played a song in Player Pro for a few seconds then backed out of the app. Checked GSAM 2 hours later, no significant PlayerPro battery usage!
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Good move! I use PlayerPro and I love it. It's one of my few "must haves", not least of which is its ability to sync ratings back to iTunes with iSyncr. None of the other major players have this. This is important for me as I'm also an iOS refugee and I still have all my music in iTunes.
jazee said:
Well here's an update. As I mentioned, I froze PowerAmp and installed N7 instead. I could have swore I reset the GSAM battery monitor, AFTER N7 scanned all my media files. Yet once again, like PowerAmp (via System *wakelock*) N7 was third highest battery eater over 2 hours of "normal" usage WITHOUT LTE Data Use, only Wifi and NO TALK TIME and WITHOUT USING N7!
So I dumped N7 and installed Player Pro. Just went out again for 2 hours to my son's basketball practice. Spent the 1.5 hour practice reading e-mail and doing some web surfing ALL ON LTE! Battery went down like no more than 10% !! At the beginning of the practice I played a song in Player Pro for a few seconds then backed out of the app. Checked GSAM 2 hours later, no significant PlayerPro battery usage!
It is more and more looking like something is going on with PowerAmp and N7 regarding cataloging of large music collections. So I'll stick with Player Pro and see how things go over the next few days.
Thanks to those with the constructive criticism. This has been one of the pluses of moving to Android. There's a lot larger population of "Power Users" than on iPhone that are willing to help someone relatively new to the platform.
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power user here too coming from iphone 3g, 3gs, 4 to samsung skyrocket, note, nexus to the current at&t sgs3. all have been jailbroken and rooted for "customization" purposes and the first thing i noticed going to the android phones was how poor the battery life was when compared to any iOS device; even when the devices were stock. I can deal with it because of how much customization i can do with android that i can't do on iOS so for that reason alone i stick with android. and also nothing apple has done has impressed me with their iPhone series yet. might pick up an iPad mini retina one day :laugh:
anyways, back to your battery issue. have you tried going to stock rom or formatting just to make sure its not a hardware issue? i know for mine, one time my data partition that had my music had some corrupt file that had the media scanner always running and killing my battery. i had tried everything and there was no way that in 8 hrs i'd have < 30% left with no usage. i finally deleted and formatted everything, went to pure stock with no files except for my contacts and no email sync. then i got 15 to 20 hours... that's usual for the sgs3, a tad less than my old iphone 4. that told me my battery wasn't bad.
i ended up keeping an eye on wakelocks and re-installing all my apps and putting all my music back on and my battery issue dissapeared and i'm happy. still have poweramp installed, but moved to using google music for cloud and local music. what made me really happy was going to a hyperion battery and the slimmer extended sedio case for 2 to 3 days of battery life on this sucker for a decent price. :good: still have the stock batter for backup too!
I'm not on a Custom ROM. Just rooted.
I installed Better Battery Stats to see how it worked. Don't like it as much as GSAM. Seems you can get a bit lower-level process info upfront, but the graphing is barely readable and it doesn't show percent usage of battery for each process. Just number of s(econds) and blue and red line? Maybe I'm missing a setting? I think BBS may be popular as maybe it existed before GSAM (formerly Badass Battery Monitor I think) or maybe there is just something about BBS that I haven't realized yet is a major advantage over GSAM? They both do the job. Sorry for going off on a tangent.
The process hogging the battery the most now is Google Maps and I know from searching and reading this is VERY common. It can be related to ANY app wanting to poll your location. I'm not yet sure though if the usage is excessive. Looks like not. I turned off all of the Location settings in Maps (but left "Location and Google search" in main Location Setting ON as I read that really defeats a lot of functionality. Google Now wasn't happy I turned of Location History (in Maps) but I still get the current commute times and local weather on my Google Now so I have yet to discover any big disadvantage of turning off most (not all) of the Location settings in Maps if you don't want to share your location or see your location history.
Apparently Google Now and potentially other apps like Facebook, etc. want to use Google Maps to poll where you are. One user said turning off History helped on the battery - makes sense as now Google Now isn't constantly trying to see where you are even if the phone is just sitting on your nightstand! I hate that big brother feeling so anytime an app has an option to turn location awareness off, I usually use it. When I go to use Maps I just turn the GPS on. But I still need to learn what I'm missing out on, when turning off some of these settings. Now I'd like to figure out how to get GPS to turn on automatically any time Maps is manually launched and then turned off automatically anytime maps is closed! That would be nice. Surprised that function isn't built-in to Android as opposed to just prompting you to take you to settings. Guess I may have to break down and learn how to code in Tasker instead of using Llama for my automation needs.
I've left the phone unplugged for what, 8 hours now. Very light usage today. I'm at 80%. BBS is showing 3.5%/hour. That's 28 hours. But like I said, no talk time on the phone today, a half dozen texts, no web browsing and maybe 30 min of total app usage so I would expect 3.5%/hour.
Bottom line is it looks like I don't have any major issues like I had on the stupid HTC One X+ that was getting hot. Seems like the media player switch is what did the trick. I'm just curious why apps as popular as N7 and PowerAmp would be any different. It could have been just timing in that I switch to Pro Player about the time the O/S was done doing it cataloging of the media or whatever it does. I'm sure 2,600 high bitrate songs (14GB) of songs on the sdcard is pretty above average for your typical Android User. Wish there was more in-depth technical documentation on some of these processes though published by Google for us Power Users to read if so desired. Guess that's why we have XDA Forum.
-- add --
Duh, just saw the first condition in Llama is "Active Application" the problem is, I only want the GPS to turn on when I manually launch the app myself. I hope an app trying to use Maps in the background doesn't trigger the GPS on. Guess I'll find out.
-- add --
I forgot why this isn't possible. Google doesn't want to allow ANY apps to turn GPS on/off automatically due to privacy issues. Is there a setting to let the user decide this? Make me feel like they're treating me like an idiot!
I have a 2 year old S4 Mini (GT19195), currently running latest stable CM 13.
The phone is working fine except for the occasional (once a week or 2) unexplained battery drain.
With my fairly light daily use, the battery is lasting over 2 days. <And can usually run 4 or more hours screen on.> However, in the last few months, at random times (even with phone asleep - screen off for > 10 min, so presumably in doze), the phone will heat up, and battery will drop 5-10% per minute. After the phone shuts off from dead battery, recharging and restarting the phone will return things to normal, until the next time.
During these episodes, the phone behaved normally, I did not notice any lag on waking up the phone, switching/opening apps, etc. The battery meter page showed no unusual process using the battery (none of the process actually showed any increase in % battery use); except for the battery life dropping off a cliff as I watch. <I noted that the battery usage stat never adds up to 100% even in normal use ... It might show 10% screen, 5% Android, etc, but all that only adds up to 50% or so from full charge to when the battery is near dead.>
Anyone seen this before? Is this a sign of an ailing battery, or something else? Can this be a software problem - like something running away in the background? <Of note is that this happened once when I had completely wiped the phone and had the fresh install of CM 13 + Gapps (micro) ... so if this is software, it would be something in stock Android, rather than a 3rd party app.>
Thanks for reading & responding.
@JohnSoong
This sounds like the processor is stuck on max frequency. Either it is an app(s) playing up or some other process that is keeping the CPU working when it should sleep.
The first thing I would do is install BetterBatteryStats app or something similar to see what is keeping the device awake. You could also try to grab a logcat, but you would need to catch the incident and either plug into a pc with adb or run an app like catlog
JohnSoong said:
I have a 2 year old S4 Mini (GT19195), currently running latest stable CM 13.
The phone is working fine except for the occasional (once a week or 2) unexplained battery drain.
With my fairly light daily use, the battery is lasting over 2 days. <And can usually run 4 or more hours screen on.> However, in the last few months, at random times (even with phone asleep - screen off for > 10 min, so presumably in doze), the phone will heat up, and battery will drop 5-10% per minute. After the phone shuts off from dead battery, recharging and restarting the phone will return things to normal, until the next time.
During these episodes, the phone behaved normally, I did not notice any lag on waking up the phone, switching/opening apps, etc. The battery meter page showed no unusual process using the battery (none of the process actually showed any increase in % battery use); except for the battery life dropping off a cliff as I watch. <I noted that the battery usage stat never adds up to 100% even in normal use ... It might show 10% screen, 5% Android, etc, but all that only adds up to 50% or so from full charge to when the battery is near dead.>
Anyone seen this before? Is this a sign of an ailing battery, or something else? Can this be a software problem - like something running away in the background? <Of note is that this happened once when I had completely wiped the phone and had the fresh install of CM 13 + Gapps (micro) ... so if this is software, it would be something in stock Android, rather than a 3rd party app.>
Thanks for reading & responding.
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That sounds like an issue I've had for several months, also running CM13 (Official) nightlies & Open GApps micro, unfortunately I've never had the time investigate (well I did once but it worked fine, I couldn't recreate the problem). It is currently happening less than once a week so not a major issue for me.
I've noticed several times that the phone felt hot, I've then used the Trepn profiler app, it would show the web browser running at 30-50% cpu constantly, so stuck as per @noppy22, though not at 100%. I have tried all the major browsers and they have all done it at some point, also most have crashed at some point, which I suspect may be related. Normally just the browser app crashed but yesterday using Chrome the phone FC and rebooted itself. Crashes seem to happen when I touch screen or scroll (though one may not have been when touching). Also XDA app crashed (1st time) when scrolling a couple of weeks ago, so probably not just browser issue on some sites as I thought previously, but might be unrelated. The stock battery meter did not show particularly high battery usage by browsers, though were a little elevated in % terms but hard to tell due to different usage patterns and not checking when things are good! I have noticed a bit of lag, which now makes we run trepn, if it shows high than expected usage by an app I close the app, which fixes it even if I go back to the same web page. This morning I woke up and my phone was off, I put it in my night-time profile (wifi & data off) that normally only uses a few % overnight but last night it must have used more than 30% of battery that was left, first time this has happened.
The other thing to consider is how good is your battery? At 2yrs old it could be tired if it's had a hard life (though yours maybe not) or you have allowed it to get very hot eg I did one trip using gps nav with phone mounted in windscreen cradle driving direct into the Aussie sun when my battery was about 2.5yrs old, thinking back I now think this was when I first noticed my battery was really dropping of quickly when around ~40% charge (though it was faster with more charge remaining also than my new battery, I would say), so think I the high temp the phone got to that day affected the battery. I think 4hrs of screen on time may be marginal, I was only getting about 3 to 3.5 when my battery dropped off fast, my new battery is giving me 6hrs SOT (mostly using browser app), so possibly you just need a new battery as only one other user has reported high cpu usage like I have.
Battery stats not adding up to 100% is normal.
I've just installed BetterBatteryStats, so I'll give it a week of so and see if it catches anything. So far nothing unusual in the stats.
I am leaning towards this being a hardware issue, likely the battery. Since the phone responded fairly normally during the overheat & battery drain episodes, this does not seem to me an app taking over the CPU. If the CPU was occupied by an app, shouldn't everything else be slowed down?
I have so far noticed no particular pattern to these episodes, and I cannot reproduce it at will. It is infrequent enough for now that I can live with it (although an unexpected dead battery is annoying.) I will see if the monitoring app pick up anything.
Hey guys,
Maybe you have to try to flash your stock or custom kernel again.
Thats probably the problem.
Xheers
When I got mine a few years ago the media process kept getting stuck and overheating/draining my phone and even a reboot wouldnt fix it. I found out because I was using the system panel app and monitoring cpu of system processes. I ditched and deleted the gallery app (it was trying to create thumbnails for 100+gb of photos and videos) for quick pic v.4.5.2 on every phone I've used ever since and haven't look back.
Ive noticed that on battery history, its showing large blocks of the phone being completely awake. I've never seen this until this week. Phone is sitting right now and it shows a solid awake for maybe an hour or so.
GSAM shows 68%, 2hours SOT and 2 hours awake. I'm on Project FI if it matters. Signal is fine. History is also not really showing anything consuming large amounts of battery. Phone doesnt feel warm but the other day it definitely heated up and Play Services was towards the top (not the case currently).
I'm slightly confused.
Google phones use twice the battery in screen off state than other manufacturers' phones. That's because they have to update Google Now cards ALL OF THE TIME. You can disable it, but then you lose functionality. It's really quite annoying, because you have to use 3rd party apps to gain the same functionality.
Disclaimer: I don't have solid proof of this, I just compare battery usage between Samsung phones and Pixel XL. S6 Edge, Note 7 were using less than 1% for 2 hours of screen off time. The Pixel is eating up battery at a rate of about 1.75% for 2 hours of screen off time. Both phones have similar battery sizes.
It seems ok now. Sleeping quite well. Just confusing to see blocks of awake time when the phone is doing nothing.
My buddy and I both have this issue randomly. Phone is either waking up every couple minutes or just stays awake for the entire day. No apps say what exactly is causing the awake time but we r sure its a google app of some sort. Normally a reboot helps or fixes but we never had this issue up until last month or two now. Same apps as usual nothing really different. Its frustrating that the issue is untraceable
i have both a silver and black hwatch, neither of which are more than a few months old. ive had a hwatch using the same mostly black watch face and the same brightness and tilt to wake settings since 11/2015 so im pretty familiar with my battery. normally at the end of a day im at 40% or so, 25% if its been a really long 18-20h day. plenty of battery to never worry about having to get it to a charger mid-day, even if i got out after my 12h shift at work. last wed i was wearing my black watch and leaving said 12h shift and noticed my face was dark, and my battery saver was on because i was only at 9%. didnt think much of it, every now and then i have a hiccup and a simple power cycle and full charge fixes it. but the next day my silver one also was struggling to make it through a non-work day. i hadnt made any recent changes or installed any new apps. the fairly terrible wear battery stats listed watch idle highest at around 7-8%, followed by screen, daily tracking and up at 1-3% each. i dont use the daily tracking app, but there doesnt appear to be a way to disable it, so no new pattern changes. my pixel did upgrade to oreo on 8/21, but i had no issues that day or the next. figured a factory reset may be in order, so i reset the black hwatch but the same problems persist. im not usually getting quite down to battery saver by the end of the day, but i definitely need to put it on the charger as soon as i get home and today my silver watch did run all the way down kind of out of nowhere, since it didnt come off the charger until around 10am and was at 15% by 10-1015pm. any thoughts?
They are simply useless watches!
kellybrf said:
i have both a silver and black hwatch, neither of which are more than a few months old. ive had a hwatch using the same mostly black watch face and the same brightness and tilt to wake settings since 11/2015 so im pretty familiar with my battery. normally at the end of a day im at 40% or so, 25% if its been a really long 18-20h day. plenty of battery to never worry about having to get it to a charger mid-day, even if i got out after my 12h shift at work. last wed i was wearing my black watch and leaving said 12h shift and noticed my face was dark, and my battery saver was on because i was only at 9%. didnt think much of it, every now and then i have a hiccup and a simple power cycle and full charge fixes it. but the next day my silver one also was struggling to make it through a non-work day. i hadnt made any recent changes or installed any new apps. the fairly terrible wear battery stats listed watch idle highest at around 7-8%, followed by screen, daily tracking and up at 1-3% each. i dont use the daily tracking app, but there doesnt appear to be a way to disable it, so no new pattern changes. my pixel did upgrade to oreo on 8/21, but i had no issues that day or the next. figured a factory reset may be in order, so i reset the black hwatch but the same problems persist. im not usually getting quite down to battery saver by the end of the day, but i definitely need to put it on the charger as soon as i get home and today my silver watch did run all the way down kind of out of nowhere, since it didnt come off the charger until around 10am and was at 15% by 10-1015pm. any thoughts?
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Unfortunately my new H W2 Classic (bought only 20 days ago) battery life is about 4-5 hours when worn on hand, ADO ON, WiFI OFF, Brightness 3, Wrist Gestures OFF, Tilt to Display is ON.
At these same settings when i place the watch on my table, it will last for less than 6 hours and I wake up to a watch running on fumes!
I am returning it as I read so many people have done so with defective batteries, MOST certainly.
Good luck finding someone willing to share any real useful info, AS no one seems to know what the heck is happening!
Personally, I think these watches are CHEAPLY BUILT.
MY SMASUNG GEAR S3 IS NOT MUCH BETTER EITHER, though it is supposed to be KOREAN!!!
I am really disappointed with these HUGE names who fail to make a simple watch! TAKE A LESSON FROM APPLE! Limited functionality but even their Model 2 (which I have) does more than these watches and with real battery life that lasts at least a day!
Now, we wait for Apple to make their watches run on Android!
One thing to note, as I am writing this response I noticed the Power Usage on my watch increased 3% by Google Play Services and my battery dropped from 83% to 79% in about 3 minutes! Sure at this rate I will have no power in about an hour and a half! Could it be Google Play Services killing these watches?!
I've always had fantastic battery life on my original until the last few months