Ridiculous Battery Life - Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I previously made a thread regarding low battery life.
After a week of use and more testing, here's what I gathered.
(Note: I have GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi always disabled, brightness lowest)
My phone will completely drain out in 6-7 hours.
I found the culprit: Cell Standby
1.) Cell Standby always uses the most battery, often 60%+.
2.) Phone Idle often follows with 30%+.
So, to verify my theory that the screen isn't the issue, I turned on airplane mode.
I proceeded to watch a 1 hour comedy, and battery life dropped from 60% to 50%.
This is lower battery usage than if it were sleeping with cellphone on.
I then noticed that my signal hasn't been good (provider sucks, no choice, all of em here sucks).
So, I placed my phone on, but asleep inside a locker for 2 hours (no signal).
When I took it out, it was very warm at 40+ C and battery life dropped about 20-30% per hour.
I've tried turning 3G off, turning always-connected off or downgrading 2g.
The result has always been the same. It still sucks bigtime.
It seems like Nexus One also has this problem, anyone notice similar problems?

I've googled and been told that this is "normal", because the phone increases power to secure a signal.
However, I've clearly owned phones and placed them in signal-less lockers prior to this, and trust me when I say most of them drop 5% per hour max.
20-30% per hour is horrible, and clearly the phone is overpowering its components.

There are some certain Radios you can flash to improve how your phone uses power to pick up a signal, Requires root access tho.

Can you please point me to those radios? I've already tried updating my radio to latest.
My phone is already rooted.

My battery is a joke and I have tried many different things. I always have to charge it by around 3pm everyday during week as It will almost die on way home.
I take it of charge at 7.30am by 9.30 it could be down to 86% and then it judt continues to drop by 3 It can be between 60 and 50% if lucky, by time i'm tenmins from my house I get 15% and warnings.
I use basically for txt, some net usage and sometimes playing a game 10 - 20 mins tops and or read ten mins of books.
I have all updates off only manual and screen down low etc - doing my head in!
G2 (HERO!)

choccy31 said:
My battery is a joke and I have tried many different things. I always have to charge it by around 3pm everyday during week as It will almost die on way home.
I take it of charge at 7.30am by 9.30 it could be down to 86% and then it judt continues to drop by 3 It can be between 60 and 50% if lucky, by time i'm tenmins from my house I get 15% and warnings.
I use basically for txt, some net usage and sometimes playing a game 10 - 20 mins tops and or read ten mins of books.
I have all updates off only manual and screen down low etc - doing my head in!
G2 (HERO!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im facing the same level of battery drain, but i have 3G turned on constantly with updates from facebook every hour twitter updates every 15 mins and mail app every 30 mins. And i mostly use my phone for music and SMS with occasional browsing.

aziz831 said:
Im facing the same level of battery drain, but i have 3G turned on constantly with updates from facebook every hour twitter updates every 15 mins and mail app every 30 mins. And i mostly use my phone for music and SMS with occasional browsing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Strange, I always have 3g on, and still play a lot with my hero (games and such)
Still it survives about 36 hours on 1 battery load. Without 3g it holds out for 72 hours.

Post #1 on the thread below seems to have a working solution (re-interpreted below)
It seems to be something to do with the battery stats and charging via usb through PC instead of via the mains.
You have to clear your battery data when your phone has really really low battery (this is probably the MOST IMPORTANT step) (you can do this through recovery mode in amonRa). Once the battery data is clear, switch back on (before plugging in) and drain the battery so that your phone switches off by itself (playing music loud and switching wifi, data connect etc, etc is suggested in the thread).
Once battery has died, plug in your phone WHILE it is STILL OFF, then when the battery shows green (will probably take longer to charge because this time it is getting a full charge), UNPLUG BEFORE you switch it on. and you should notice the significant difference. - Oh yeah make sure you switch off all those data connections and wifi and all those other things that you used to drain the battery - unless you use some of them of course
EXTRA TIP given on the thread: TIP!! Remeber when changing and flashing new roms to unplug the phone from charge *(i.e. unplug from your PC) (edit Bad4ss) * after you boot!
TO answer LennyUK's Q below ( and so that the next page doesn't start to quickly before this suggestion is read ) I think why it is suggested for the first boot after this process to be done while off is because it is already off because of the drain AND because it will get a clean full charge up for the first time after a battery data wipe. Because while it is on it will be depleting the battery even if it is in a small way - after that you can do it whichever way you want *nudge-nudge-wink-wink-say-no-more*
Source:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=647460

I don't see why the same thing cannot be achieved by charging with the phone on, just as long as you don't change between phone being on or off during the charge i.e. if you start charging with the phone on leave it like that the whole time and visa versa

Bad4ss said:
Post #1 on the thread below seems to have a working solution (re-interpreted below)
It seems to be something to do with the battery stats and charging via usb through PC instead of via the mains.
You have to clear your battery data when your phone has really really low battery (this is probably the MOST IMPORTANT step) (you can do this through recovery mode in amonRa). Once the battery data is clear, switch back on (before plugging in) and drain the battery so that your phone switches off by itself (playing music loud and switching wifi, data connect etc, etc is suggested in the thread).
Once battery has died, plug in your phone WHILE it is STILL OFF, then when the battery shows green (will probably take longer to charge because this time it is getting a full charge), UNPLUG BEFORE you switch it on. and you should notice the significant difference. - Oh yeah make sure you switch off all those data connections and wifi and all those other things that you used to drain the battery - unless you use some of them of course
EXTRA TIP given on the thread: TIP!! Remeber when changing and flashing new roms to unplug the phone from charge *(i.e. unplug from your PC) (edit Bad4ss) * after you boot!
TO answer LennyUK's Q below ( and so that the next page doesn't start to quickly before this suggestion is read ) I think why it is suggested for the first boot after this process to be done while off is because it is already off because of the drain AND because it will get a clean full charge up for the first time after a battery data wipe. Because while it is on it will be depleting the battery even if it is in a small way - after that you can do it whichever way you want *nudge-nudge-wink-wink-say-no-more*
Source:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=647460
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you do this on non rooted phone? How do I get into recovery mode?

I think the analysis is flawed. I also think the stats information doesn't tell you everything. For example, yesterday I had 60% cell standby, 20% WiFi, 20% phone idle. Consumption was 45% in 24 hours.
Previous to yesterday, I had high battery consumption. So yesterday was a breakthrough but YMMV. I removed the PCSCII and the Mail app (I don't sync with Exchange and I don't sync with a PC as such - I don't run Windows). I also disabled auto task killer. I rebooted without being connected via USB to power or to PC. Suddenly power consumption became similar to Modaco ROMs.
Last night, I also disabled the setCPU application and rebooted. 6% battery consumption in 9 hours. 34% cell standby, 33% WiFi, 33% phone idle. Consumption was 45% in 24 hours.

how have you improved battery usage, ive tried resetting battery stats, draining battery, fully charging, using kimera 1.5 and with no wifi no bluetooth, not using phone in few hours it was down to 63% and in 10mins had dropped to 59%

i had similar battery problems but today i changed radio versions into a different one, now i get almost full signal all the time and battery usage is geatly increased (went down 2% in 4 hours as compared to 10%/hour)
so i suggest finding a radio that give you good reception

immya said:
i had similar battery problems but today i changed radio versions into a different one, now i get almost full signal all the time and battery usage is geatly increased (went down 2% in 4 hours as compared to 10%/hour)
so i suggest finding a radio that give you good reception
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which one did you use?

im on tmobile uk, changes radio from
63.18.55.06JU_6.35.09.26 to
63.18.55.06JU_6.35.08.29
made alot of diference
you should ty out diferent radios and find one that gives the best reception, it will be different for different providers and countries
also i did this...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=647460
i unplugged my phone from the charger after doing this at 6am, it had 100% charge
its now10:45 pm, i have 44%charge left...its crazy
before i used to run out of juice around 10 hours after i charged my phone, its not been almost 17 hous and i got 45% left
i seriously suggest doing this

immya said:
im on tmobile uk, changes radio from
63.18.55.06JU_6.35.09.26 to
63.18.55.06JU_6.35.08.29
made alot of diference
you should ty out diferent radios and find one that gives the best reception, it will be different for different providers and countries
also i did this...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=647460
i unplugged my phone from the charger after doing this at 6am, it had 100% charge
its now10:45 pm, i have 44%charge left...its crazy
before i used to run out of juice around 10 hours after i charged my phone, its not been almost 17 hous and i got 45% left
i seriously suggest doing this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will use that radio too seeing as I too am on T-Mobile in the UK. When you say to use the link and suggest doing it, I take it you mean the "get to 10% -> get to recovery mode -> wipe battery info -> reboot and drain battery 'til off -> charge while off and the take off charger once charged and switch on..
'cos I tried that and still having problems - am using the new Villain 4.0 beta2, so maybe the radio change in combination to this is what will work - I'll try it tonight when I get home.

immya : many thanks i now hove phone back
flashed radio 63.18.55.06_6.35.05.31
and lost 1% over night
previously on LOST
radio 63.18.55.06JU_6.35.09.26 lost 56% overnight
perhaps issue with 2.1 roms is the latest radio and not latest kernal
BTW using sensehero at moment as was trying 1.5 roms to get better battery, and that didnt work.
some one maybe sticky this info , if anymore find it a saviour. will report back after work, mayeven be able to use data syncing again

Related

Battery Drain

Hi,
I've been noticing that my Hero has been gulping battery down VERY fast.
In general, the battery lasts 7-8 hrs, which is not acceptable (I'm out for 12+ hrs).
My usage is not heavy. Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS are rarely, if ever, on.
I do read some news and surf the web a little but only for 2-3 of those 7-8 hrs.
Is my battery life normal?
I've been reading people achieving 12+ hours with their stock battery...
2 or 3 hours websurfing is very heavy on the battery, much more so than phone calls. One of the biggest drains is the screen and you having it on for 2 - 3 hours is going to drain the battery I guess
Seems very poor, much poorer than my iDevice that I use more frequently.
Today, after flashing the 2.1 ROM, it has gotten worse.
Battery's down to 40% in 6 hours, and Battery Usage shows 50% phone idle, 50% cell standby.
I've not even touched the phone since unplugging it 6 hours ago ;S
Is it possible I've a defective battery?
If your battery is down to 40% after 6 hours of it being idle (no screen but switched on) then either you have some power hungry app(s) running in the background or the battery is defective.
At the moment my battery is showing 40%. It was last charged about 40 hours ago, and I have had it switched on the whole time with some light use, picking up emails in the background and occassionally switching the screen on.
I ran task killer and sync was off.
One thing I didn't do was charge it for 10-13 hours straight on first charge; I just unplugged it when the led turned green in ~4 hours (impatient...).
Could this have affected battery life?
Nope - when the LED is green it is fully charged. No minimum charge times suggested in the manual.
peterc10 said:
At the moment my battery is showing 40%. It was last charged about 40 hours ago, and I have had it switched on the whole time with some light use, picking up emails in the background and occassionally switching the screen on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is amazing battery life, I never get more than 24 hours with similar use... what ROM and radio are you using Peter? Also, where are you and what network are you on?
I am in UK on Orange, and have standard Orange ROM and Radio - not the latest one but the one they had before 2.73.61.5.
I have read lots of complaints about battery life, but I think mine is fine for a smartphone. I am a relatively light user of a phone - don't do lots of surfing or watching videos. A few phone calls, very few texts, checking emails and listening to some music is all I normally do with it. The other thing I do use it for is I always have the sat nav on while I am driving, but in that case it is plugged into my Brodit mount and charging from the car.
This latest spell may have been helped because I have not been out over those 40 hours - spent the weekend at home, which means that the Hero has been logged into wifi rather than trying to use mobile data. And not used it to make calls or texts or used the music player.
I notice keep Internet connection active take a lot of battery. Go to settings and turn it off and try to see whether the problem exist. It'll will take you a few seconds to re-establish the connecting whenever you need it... not so unbearable considering it'll save a lot of battery.
Same, I notice the mobile chip is using abnormal amounts of battery.
In the morning I watched a 40 minute episode of drama.
Battery dove from 100% to 65%.
To preserve battery life, I turned Airplane mode on.
When I was done with the episode, there was still 55% battery left!
I'm pretty shocked at the battery drain.
I'm using one of the new 2.1 ROMs. They're known for having a bit of a battery-hunger. I solved it by installing the app Ultimatejuice from Market. it's a pay app, but it's worth it. It's also another app called juicedefender (free, less options) that I used before I bought the Ultimate. It also worked good! Now my battery lasts the whole day without any problem

XE7 - Terrible battery with Mobiel Data, not bad on Wifi

Upgraded to KE7 yesterday using Odin.
Before going to bed around midnight, I had the phone connected to charger for a couple of hours, so the battery was fully charged at a hundred %.
Before turning in, I disconnected the charger, and disabled Wifi (generally battery life is worse on mobile data then Wifi, in my experience atleast). Around 8 am I woke and found the phone had switced itself off, completely drained. The phone that was fully charged, should've been on idle most of the time. I have 2 exchange account configured for Push, 1 F/book account, Whatsapp, Tango, NO live widgets. I think these are the main users of data/background processes. The phone had died in 8 hours, possibly less as I'm not sure exactly when it had switched off.
Put it back on charge again, left it charging for a few hours, around noon time, it was back up to a 100%, so, disconnected charger, now. 8 hours, 21 minutes later, the battery is sitting with 44% left, so, I would get circa 15 hours of usage on Wifi.
Under Wifi, 60% of the battery usage comes form Android OS...
Has anyone else noticed the same, iis there any fix for this... has Samsung fixed anything worthwhile in the jump from KE2 to KE7??
Riz
Hadn't quite figured what was causing pretty good battery in some circumstances and very poor in others. This would explain it and would be consistent with the stuff I was doing when I noticed the quickest drain.
Can't offer definitive proof, but certainly a very plausible working hypothesis. Solution anyone??
RizSher said:
Upgraded to KE7 yesterday using Odin.
Before going to bed around midnight, I had the phone connected to charger for a couple of hours, so the battery was fully charged at a hundred %.
Before turning in, I disconnected the charger, and disabled Wifi (generally battery life is worse on mobile data then Wifi, in my experience atleast). Around 8 am I woke and found the phone had switced itself off, completely drained. The phone that was fully charged, should've been on idle most of the time. I have 2 exchange account configured for Push, 1 F/book account, Whatsapp, Tango, NO live widgets. I think these are the main users of data/background processes. The phone had died in 8 hours, possibly less as I'm not sure exactly when it had switched off.
Put it back on charge again, left it charging for a few hours, around noon time, it was back up to a 100%, so, disconnected charger, now. 8 hours, 21 minutes later, the battery is sitting with 44% left, so, I would get circa 15 hours of usage on Wifi.
Under Wifi, 60% of the battery usage comes form Android OS...
Has anyone else noticed the same, iis there any fix for this... has Samsung fixed anything worthwhile in the jump from KE2 to KE7??
Riz
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you should test it a few more times before concluding that it's due to mobile data vs wifi...?
I have just logged on to this forum to complain about the same issue! After KE7 battery has gone worse than before!!!!
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
Boogweed,
Normally yes.. but I've always noted worse battery performance on gprs/3g than WiFi, which is why I tested the phone mobile data at night.
Its a recurring problem.
Riz

[Q] Battery and BT issues - Anyone?

Hi everyone,
I've received my two S2 devices last week. Both are now with Madmacks 1.4 ROM.
However, here my issues:
1) On both phones, they seem to eat battery faster than I digest water. If 3G is on, Juice Plotter says 8-9h runtime. I usually see "Screen" as taking up to 50% usage (although I'm using it on the lowest level of brightness and 30s timeout).
When I turned 3G off, it goes up to 28-30h (in Juice Plotter). However, 3G is extremely important for me. I dont need syncing by the minute, but I need my data synched every 30-40 minutes. I also wish to use whatsup, skype or talkbox (which consume less than 3-4% according to Bat. usage).
Any ideas on why the consumption is so HYSTERIC? (for comparison, on my Nexus, the same config would eat my bat in ~20-24h, definitely not 8-9h). Last night I've lost from 7pm to 1am over 45%!
2) Bluetooth issues. On one of my devices, I paired it with my car. At first it worked great. The second time I used it my car didn't recognize the device although BT was on. When I palyed with my device and tried "pairing" manually eventually the device "froze". Black screen. Can't shut it off. Got heated pretty fast .. 10-15 minutes later I took the batt out. It drained 45% of my battery!!!
It happened again the next day. However, this time, when I got into the car, the car didn't recognize the device. I took it out, noticed its already frozen. Very Hot. Batt drained 35% aprox.
any ideas?
How come S2 isn't crashing software that gets stuck or drains battery while CPU heats up? didn't have a chance to check the application widget and close it myself.
Thank you!

[Q] Atrix Battery Drain Issue

I have an Atrix 4G running Neutrino 2.9 EE, with a new battery I bought only a few weeks ago because I thought my old battery was dying. But I'm having the same problem with this one. I can't get it to charge past 70% or so, and the charge seems to drain very quickly, about 1% every 15-20 minutes. I checked the battery usage, and Phone Idle is taking up around 60-70%. I've got wifi off, the screen turns off after one minute, and the brightness on half. I'm really at a loss as to what's causing this, so any help would be great.
Battery stats
Barman1942 said:
I have an Atrix 4G running Neutrino 2.9 EE, with a new battery I bought only a few weeks ago because I thought my old battery was dying. But I'm having the same problem with this one. I can't get it to charge past 70% or so, and the charge seems to drain very quickly, about 1% every 15-20 minutes. I checked the battery usage, and Phone Idle is taking up around 60-70%. I've got wifi off, the screen turns off after one minute, and the brightness on half. I'm really at a loss as to what's causing this, so any help would be great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to use all battery till your phone turn off, when charging again go to recovery and clean battery stats, rebbot and charge to full battery, see if your bar go to %100, i install battery widget and have an option for motorola phones, enable that option, that help me a lot,
Good luck!!!:fingers-crossed:
---------- Post added at 10:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:12 AM ----------
Barman1942 said:
I have an Atrix 4G running Neutrino 2.9 EE, with a new battery I bought only a few weeks ago because I thought my old battery was dying. But I'm having the same problem with this one. I can't get it to charge past 70% or so, and the charge seems to drain very quickly, about 1% every 15-20 minutes. I checked the battery usage, and Phone Idle is taking up around 60-70%. I've got wifi off, the screen turns off after one minute, and the brightness on half. I'm really at a loss as to what's causing this, so any help would be great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
or you can try this
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1198333:D
Barman1942 said:
I have an Atrix 4G running Neutrino 2.9 EE, with a new battery I bought only a few weeks ago because I thought my old battery was dying. But I'm having the same problem with this one. I can't get it to charge past 70% or so, and the charge seems to drain very quickly, about 1% every 15-20 minutes. I checked the battery usage, and Phone Idle is taking up around 60-70%. I've got wifi off, the screen turns off after one minute, and the brightness on half. I'm really at a loss as to what's causing this, so any help would be great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Battery drain issues, it seems, are as varied as "My car is making a noise that goes like this: ____"
Do you have the battery calibration app off the market? A full charge is 4200 mV (or really close to that value), regardless of what percentage your phone is displaying.
If your phone is getting up above 4100 mV, then the battery is fine. You can trick the phone back into displaying a more accurate percentage for a while, but it's not permanent:
- Charge the phone as high as it will go
- Shut the thing off and pull the battery
- Plug in the phone, wait for the question-mark icon to appear
- Re-insert the battery, let it sit for a few minutes (10? 20? no magical number here)
- Turn the phone back on. Percentage should be a lot closer to 100%.
If you're getting a decent charge but the battery is genuinely draining quickly, well... all I can offer is my experience from this summer. My major symptoms were:
- Losing an entire charge in the course of 8-9 hours, but ONLY when wifi/mobile data were turned on
- *Extreme* phone lag when wifi/mobile data turned on. Every single app would force close. Not fun at all.
- Checked what's using the battery, and "Contacts" was responsible for ~5% of the charge.
After six weeks of debugging hell, wiping, reflashing stock, etc I found out my contacts were nonstop-syncing (and duplicating, and duplicating, like rabbit offspring) on one particular email account. Killed the email account, got a functional phone back. Battery life returned to normal. All that to say, one misbehaving app (even a stock misbehaving app) can trash the phone's performance.
If you can stand it, try returning to something completely stock and not restoring any of your apps/data for a few days.

S9 Plus Exynos battery Problem

Hi all! My s9 Plus has been acting weird lately. It's dropping around 40 percent battery during night. It used to drop 10 percent at normal but now it's dropping like crazy. I have tried resetting the phone to factory but it's still the same
Even wiping out cache is not having any effect. This battery drop only happens when display is off.
Any fix please, i don't want to replace the battery! I'd rather sell it than that.
Thanks for your reply!
geez, very useful battery consumption screens you attached here. Maybe you are one of those type of people who leaves charging their phones over night, or charging while using it? If yes-then well in such cases batteries rarely last 2 years without losing 30% of capacity.
Also, it's sufull to FULLY discharge battery, when it turns off itself and then when phone is off connect charger and leave it until it' fully charged, this way os ad real battery "calibration" synchronizes. Sometimes os may show higher % then in reality and boom 15% and your phone turned off by itself.
To battle discharge overnight - put phone into flight mode and see if it still discharges so fast (everybody should put in flight mode at night, to not fry little brain they still left). If this helps-this may be because of cellular signal is weak in your apartment or data (wifi) is weak and phone uses too much power to amplify it. Anyway in android you can easy see what uses most power.
Also i always unlock my phones and root them to install custom roms and kernels, they 99.99% of the time will ALWAYS gets me better battery life then stock. WIth all phones i had -i charge them at most every 3rd day. I have a life so i dont spend my life on phone, this helps too to save batery
Also my DATA or Wifi is always off when i dont need it. I turn it on when i need something from internet, and turning it off when im done (good for security too)
afigienas said:
geez, very useful battery consumption screens you attached here. Maybe you are one of those type of people who leaves charging their phones over night, or charging while using it? If yes-then well in such cases batteries rarely last 2 years without losing 30% of capacity.
Also, it's sufull to FULLY discharge battery, when it turns off itself and then when phone is off connect charger and leave it until it' fully charged, this way os ad real battery "calibration" synchronizes. Sometimes os may show higher % then in reality and boom 15% and your phone turned off by itself.
To battle discharge overnight - put phone into flight mode and see if it still discharges so fast (everybody should put in flight mode at night, to not fry little brain they still left). If this helps-this may be because of cellular signal is weak in your apartment or data (wifi) is weak and phone uses too much power to amplify it. Anyway in android you can easy see what uses most power.
Also i always unlock my phones and root them to install custom roms and kernels, they 99.99% of the time will ALWAYS gets me better battery life then stock. WIth all phones i had -i charge them at most every 3rd day. I have a life so i dont spend my life on phone, this helps too to save batery
Also my DATA or Wifi is always off when i dont need it. I turn it on when i need something from internet, and turning it off when im done (good for security too)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Man! I play games on this phone and when the battery is low I charge and use it at the same time. Does that means that my battery has fried out? Shall i geta new one now... but the battery drain is same when screen is on... only screen iff drain is fast.
Suggest the best battery rom that you use please!
Thanks for your precious reply!
Regards

Categories

Resources