Overheating and bad battery? - Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey. Im running the latest cm9 bit im having issues with it now. My phone gets very hot very quickly, even whrn it has been dormant for hoirs and i run the xda app on mimimum brightness. The entire phome gets extremely hot whilst charging as well overnight, extrrmelty hot.
Now time for the battery drain problem. I have heard reports saying people get up to 0.5% loss and hour bit i am getting 10-20% loss an hour with no use.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA

To me that simply suggests you have a background service thats running constantly maybe some location service or download.
Remember just cause its running hot doesn't mean its overheating.

Cheers. Any idea how i can find this rogue program?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA

There aren't any shortcuts when it comes to squeezing maximum battery life out of the phone. There is no 'do X & W and end up with 0.5% drain'. Every phone is setup differently, every phone is used differently. Basically you need to nail down what's causing that drain, and if it's things like apps syncing, or notifications or whatever, you need to make a decision as to whether stopping those apps doing that is something you're prepared to live with to save some juice (that was just an example, btw; could be heaps of things causing battery drain).
For starters, get BetterBatteryStats from Google Play, then post logs/screenshots in the BBS thread (or here) & someone should be able to help you. One thing tho, do not install BBS, let it run for 10 minutes (or 30 minutes or even an hour) & then start posting stuff. Let it run for a couple hrs/overnight/a day, that way the info you get will be more meaningful.
Other than that, it's simply a case of reading (a lot; understatement). There is a wealth of info on here re: your issues. You just have to find it.
Ditto with the overheating thing. It's normal for the phone to get warm on charge (particularly if you use it while it's charging). I don't think there is a 'normal' temperature, that is, some people report their phone reaching mid-40's C & not having any probs when charging, whereas mine tends to max out at mid 30's if I've really run it down (mine tends to charge warmer when there's a lot less juice left in the battery).

I think it could be something elsebas it is happening on cm9 and sammy based roms.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA

You should also check CPU Spy and/or Badass Battery Monitor to identify what/when and why the Battery is drained. BBS is really good, but Badass is a little bit simplier to understand. CPU Spy help you to find out on which MHz your phone is running, sometimes that helps a lot.
As stated before, its a unique problem, not everyone is having the same issues, sometimes a normally working app is running wild or a new update from a previouslly good working app has a bug that gives your phone the creeps. Sometimes in BBS you will see eventX_XXXX messages, these are funny, because I never found out which process is behind this and aLogcat didn't help further (That was when I was on MIUI with my problems.). ATM I have no problems, so I don't need such apps, but aLogcat is funny to watch what happens there in the background and helps to find out what these eventX_XXXX Wakelocks and partial wakelocks are.

If its getting annoying hot near camera with no to little use you need a wipe or modem change.

I tried a wipe but unfortunately no difference. Can you suggest a better modem for me to use? Sorry if I am being annoying but I don't have much experience of this yet.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA

you have to find modems, I personally only flash stock roms so modems comes with it, or use mobile Odin to flash just the modem from same roms.
Check the general thread, there's one specific thread about heat and modem

Format
Format you phone + system + external sdcard from cwm before installing the rom and try again

Related

terrible battery life!

Hi all, I'm new to this part of the xda forums as I had a nexus before, just got the upgrade to the Atrix, rooting,unlocking of bootloader everything went well but I just flashed Aura's from with feux kernel and im getting really really bad battery life, like I'm talking 4-5 hours. There is one process thats really confusing me, its just called "x" and its sitting there taking about 35% battery, my screen is taking 55% battery.
It's getting really annoying as my nexus used to give me about 12 hours and the only reason I moved to the atrix was to get the better battery life that I saw with all my atrix touting friends (they all had 1-2 days battery life) I'm about to flash homebase and see if that fixes it but I don't know whats going on. I have a UK MB860 and I used http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1196747&highlight=t-mobile+root to root. Pleaseee can someone help!
X is the webtop and there is a fix somewhere for that (doesn't completely work). Just flash CM7 beta. Its much better than any other ROM and has the best battery life. Everything except the finger print scanner and webtop work.
Also I had really good battery on the Ying Yang ROM.
Speedily sent from CM7 Beta
I think I might give CM7 a go you know, I loved CM on the nexus, even after it killed the memory chips it was still good! Im going to try it, is it really stable?
EDIT:
since updating to CM7 and Wiping my battery stats I have some how gained 39% battery!
amzter said:
I think I might give CM7 a go you know, I loved CM on the nexus, even after it killed the memory chips it was still good! Im going to try it, is it really stable?
EDIT:
since updating to CM7 and Wiping my battery stats I have some how gained 39% battery!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't had any issues with it. And the gain is very odd.
Speedily sent from CM7 Beta
Try alien, i had some battery issues with some other roms and kernels and tried alien and all is good.This phone comes with an 1930Mah battery one of the largest i've ever seen and it lasts me 12 hrs on heavy use.
battery stats
I've had great battery life on the atrix, now I'm getting a good look at the atrix on the 4800mah battery. I'm a heavy user and I could not get over 24 hours. And now I have 59 hours and I have yet to actually see how far I can take it. Cm7 beta. Juicey....
I find that all gingerbread roms have horrible battery life compared to froyo on the atrix. Cm7 battery is worse but the phone is smoother. Faux 1.3ghz kernel has even worse battery.
Regardless of the radio or magical method of resetting the battery state you use.
1:25 screen time and at 47% battery. Been off the charger for 6:15. It will make it through my 10hr shift with about 20% remaining if I'm lucky, usually I just toss it on the charger.
Background data is off, email and social apps are manual sync and wifi is off.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium App
one weird thing I am seeing is the display which is at 0% brightness is using 91% battery
Also the better battery stats app says my actual battery is 91% but the phone is reporting 66% I wiped thenbattery stats but nothing!
please help!
If you haven't taken a look at it, give this a shot:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1198333
Starting to mess around with your phone opens up a world of things that can go wrong. Learn to calm down, search the forums, and try a variety of fixes before giving up on something.
...and use nandroid.
ian426 said:
If you haven't taken a look at it, give this a shot:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1198333
Starting to mess around with your phone opens up a world of things that can go wrong. Learn to calm down, search the forums, and try a variety of fixes before giving up on something.
...and use nandroid.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was just about to post that lol. Also make sure every time you flash a new rom you are at 100% if not that is a sure fire way to cheat yourself out of battery life. I don't know if I'm just one of "the lucky ones" but I easily get over 16+ hours with moderate usage. I'm running CM7 beta with quite a few things frozen.
Ok so I followed the guide to perfection and it didn't improve the battery life one bit! I'm trying hard to find a t-mobile radio I can flash as I have read around it could be my radio that is the culprit and I am also getting rubbish HSDPA readings, I should be getting full bars but since switching to homebase Im only getting one bar.
Using watchdog I have noticed that the Xorg process is using over 50% cpu which does not seem right to be and I believe that because its a linux process Watchdog can't kill it. Is there anyway of fixing this?
1) Uninstall Tango, Facebook and Handcent SMS if any of the three are installed. They are huge battery drainers and you can find less battery hogging substitutes
2) Freeze any unnecessary apps, I believe there is a thread somewhere in the General section that has a pretty decent freeze list (if you flash CM7, you will have very little to freeze but that's good!)
3) Keep brightness down to a minimum when you can, I've noticed kicking the brightness up rather high can be pretty demanding on your battery
4) Set SetCPU Profiles to something like this...
Screen Off 216/216
Charging 1100/216
In Call 456/216
Battery <20% 456/216
Battery <10% 216/216
5) If you have the proper kernel set the CPU govner to power saver.
6) Undervolt, test yours and never apply set on boot unless you are positive it's stable, mine are something like this...
1100 MHz -50mV
1000 MHz -50mV
912 MHz -50mV
750 MHz -50mV
608 MHz -100mV
456 MHz -150mV
216 MHz -200mV
This way when you're phone is idling with the screen off, in a call or low on battery it is undervolting heavily to save maximum amounts of battery
With this setup I can get 30+ hours pretty regularly with moderate-to-heavy usage (weekdays/non-work days), 22-25 hours with more heavy usage (work days) and close to 48 hours with little usage (weekends).
It all depends on your usage and your phone but I have found this setup here to work fairly well.
I am currently on CM7 Beta, stock CM7 radio and stock CM7 kernel, running at 1100/216 when above profile conditions aren't met. 32% been running since 9 am this morning, it is now 3:15 am, today was a long workday.
I can almost guarantee (almost) that its your rom/kernel combination. Had same problem til I changed.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium App
fastboot erase osh
That will nuke your webtop & fix your problem.
I'm now using faux kernel for CM7 and that hasn't improved anything, in fact I think it it has made it worse. It's getting really irretating because using the watch dog app it always says there is one linux process on every rom I use that is clocking at over 50% cpu usage and It won't let me kill it (probably because it's a linux process), its really annoying me because all I want is my phone to work properly but to enjoy the full rooting experience. I know countless amounts of people with atrix's and they get a full day and a bit out of their phone with heavy usage i can't even manage 10 hours!
amzter said:
I'm now using faux kernel for CM7 and that hasn't improved anything, in fact I think it it has made it worse. It's getting really irretating because using the watch dog app it always says there is one linux process on every rom I use that is clocking at over 50% cpu usage and It won't let me kill it (probably because it's a linux process), its really annoying me because all I want is my phone to work properly but to enjoy the full rooting experience. I know countless amounts of people with atrix's and they get a full day and a bit out of their phone with heavy usage i can't even manage 10 hours!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Watchdog eats battery like a mthrfckr, get away from that. Install BetterBatterStats instead & look for wakelocks. Which linux process are you noticing with that high cpu usage?
How many hours of screen time do you get in those 10 hrs?
Have you tried with a fastboot wipe & internal storage format prior to installing a new rom? Are you using the latest recommended radio for your phone?
amzter said:
please help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turn background syncing off if you are using that, and get in the habit of doing manual updates.
Too many times (with ANY Android device) people leave background syncing on and it tries sending/receiving data in a weak signal spot when you don't realize it. That's like a hot knife through butter on a battery.
Leave syncing off permanently if possible! That's a huge improvement right there for anyone...
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium
ccrows said:
Turn background syncing off if you are using that, and get in the habit of doing manual updates.
Too many times (with ANY Android device) people leave background syncing on and it tries sending/receiving data in a weak signal spot when you don't realize it. That's like a hot knife through butter on a battery.
Leave syncing off permanently if possible! That's a huge improvement right there for anyone...
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a bit radical, no?
I'd say use Green Power so the phone can update every half hour or hour. It's a smartphone at the end of the day..

[Q] Question about S2 battery usage

Hi everyone
So I recently got a S2, upgraded it from stock Gingerbread to stock ICS via Kies, then flashed CM9. CM9 was great, but I quickly noticed worse battery drain than that of GB. I sorted out all wakelocks, now facebook is the top one in better battery stats list and it's only 10mins in a day so I don't think that's a problem. When charging, vbus_present shows up and keeps the phone from sleeping, but that's a normal thing when the phone is plugged, right? CPUspy shows the phone is in deep sleep the majority of time I don't use it, so I assume I have no wakelock problem.
But even then, the battery still seems a bit bad. When in deep sleep with wifi and mobile data off, it would lose around 1.5% per hour; and with moderate/high use (internet with wifi or gaming), I'd be lucky to have it last 3 hours. Charging to 100% from zero takes about 3 hours.
I also tried recalibrating the battery through BC, but haven't noticed too much of a difference.
Recently I found a guide on disabling fast dormancy via the build.prop file. Still waiting for results though.
So, my questions
1, My battery usage seems normal, doesn't it? 1.5% per deep sleep hour is acceptable I guess, but 3 hours of usage seems a bit short. Too short.
2, What effects does fast dormancy have?
1) Totally unacceptable. Mine lasts at least 7-8 hours with high use..
Does your phone heat up while the heavy use ???
What brightness level do you use for the display ???
How many apps do you have that can gain internet access ???
2) By default, the Samsung Galaxy S II has Fast Dormancy support enabled. One of the goals of Fast Dormancy is to increase the battery life of a device, by limiting the amount of signaling between the phone and the cell network. But, when Fast Dormancy it is not enabled in the network and is enabled on the phone it ironically works the other way around, and actually drains more battery than before.
Luckily, Fast Dormancy can be disabled on the phone. For the Galaxy S II, do the following:
Dial *#9900#
Press “Disable Fast Dormancy“
Press “Exit“.
Easy as that!
Thanks for the suggestion I have brightness manual and at around 20%. Wifi is disabled when not used, and mobile data is always turned off unless I need it, so basically apps only get internet access when I want them to. I have also disabled sync for both google and facebook, but fb still pushes notifications to me while it's connected. Is that a major battery drain, and if yes, how to disable it?
Anyways, facebook, instagram, youtube are the only apps than can access the internet. No messengers or anything that may keep a wakelock.
My phone doesn't heat up during normal use, maybe a bit when I do some gaming (Max Payne?)
Also, *#9900# doesn't do anything on my phone. It doesn't bring up a menu or anything like that.
Bump. Guys?
Delivered using Nyan Cat's rainbow powers.
Install BetterBatteryStats (search for it on here/Google Play), might help you nail what's causing the drain.
Yes I did, as said in my original post. After a night the highest wakelock are just around 10 minutes, and that one was facebook. Uninstalling it however had no effect.
Delivered using Nyan Cat's rainbow powers.
Thinking logically, there's got to be something else in those stats (partial wakelocks in particular) that's causing that drain. There's no way having fast dormancy enabled/disabled is either going to cause/fix the drain you've mentioned getting '3 hours of usage'; (I can get 5 & a bit hours screen on with CM9 & variable usage/mostly 'moderate' use) given everything else you say you've tried.
Post BBS logs here if you want someone to have a look.
Edit to add - Also post a screenshot of the 2nd screen in settings/battery, the one that has history 'details' at the top, with the 'mobile network signal' bar underneath the main battery graph.
Here you go: pastebin.com/1UwicChJ
I just registered half a day ago and don't have enough posts yet to paste links, so sorry the phone was only on battery for nearly 2 hours with some light browsing and facebook, but I hope it works.
Anyway, I looked through my running processes, and dsp manager is the only non-OS process running, besides facebook. I got CM9 so it came by default. Could dspmanager be the culprit?
Delivered using Nyan Cat's rainbow powers.
It's a new phone he's got there and I doubt it could be anything battery related itself.
I'm using CM9 nightlies and I get around 9 hours moderate use. It has been said though that a lot of these CM9 builds have battery drain and heat issues.
I use Juicedefender to help with the battery life which seems to work.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
MistahBungle said:
Edit to add - Also post a screenshot of the 2nd screen in settings/battery, the one that has history 'details' at the top, with the 'mobile network signal' bar underneath the main battery graph.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
About 1/3 of this time was on wifi browsing. The drop is much more drastic if I play games.
Delivered using Nyan Cat's rainbow powers.
A couple of observations. There's nothing that stands right out in the BBS log. The other one is, looking at that graph you've lost ~15% over a bit under 2 hrs. The screen has been on most of the time the phone has been awake (confirmed by the BBS log) if you look at the respective bars. You've also been using WiFi for most of the time the screen has been on/phone has been awake.
Roughly speaking, going by the screenshot, you'd get ~5hrs+/- screen on time if you kept using the phone in the same way you had during that just under 2 hrs, and this is pretty much normal. I haven't had drain issues for ages, so I double checked my details on the 2nd screen of settings/battery to make sure CM9 is reporting these details accurately (screenshot attached). Certainly in my case, this screenshot reflects what my phone had been doing for the just under 5 hrs it had been off charge/since last reboot; that is, >90% of the time in idle/deep sleep. So it probably isn't CM9 reporting these details inaccurately in your case either.
The BBS log & screenshot don't illustrate the problem you talked about in your OP. Now, if I had to take a stab in the dark at what's causing problems when you do have them (and FWIW, I do believe you're having the problems you mentioned in your OP at times), in the absence of any other info, maybe your WiFi router is constantly sending the phone packets (what's been referred to as a 'dirty router' on here before) when you're connected to WiFi & not actually using it. This scenario has been known to cause relatively high levels of drain.
So to be honest with you, based on that screenshot & the BBS log, I'm not really seeing a problem.
Now, if you want to post the same again when you actually have a problem with drain similar to what you described in your OP, happy to have a look at them. But for that ~2hrs covered by the BBS log & screenshot you posted, that's pretty much normal.
MistahBungle said:
A couple of observations. There's nothing that stands right out in the BBS log. The other one is, looking at that graph you've lost ~15% over a bit under 2 hrs. The screen has been on most of the time the phone has been awake (confirmed by the BBS log) if you look at the respective bars. You've also been using WiFi for most of the time the screen has been on/phone has been awake.
Roughly speaking, going by the screenshot, you'd get ~5hrs+/- screen on time if you kept using the phone in the same way you had during that just under 2 hrs, and this is pretty much normal. I haven't had drain issues for ages, so I double checked my details on the 2nd screen of settings/battery to make sure CM9 is reporting these details accurately (screenshot attached). Certainly in my case, this screenshot reflects what my phone had been doing for the just under 5 hrs it had been off charge/since last reboot; that is, >90% of the time in idle/deep sleep. So it probably isn't CM9 reporting these details inaccurately in your case either.
The BBS log & screenshot don't illustrate the problem you talked about in your OP. Now, if I had to take a stab in the dark at what's causing problems when you do have them (and FWIW, I do believe you're having the problems you mentioned in your OP at times), in the absence of any other info, maybe your WiFi router is constantly sending the phone packets (what's been referred to as a 'dirty router' on here before) when you're connected to WiFi & not actually using it. This scenario has been known to cause relatively high levels of drain.
So to be honest with you, based on that screenshot & the BBS log, I'm not really seeing a problem.
Now, if you want to post the same again when you actually have a problem with drain similar to what you described in your OP, happy to have a look at them. But for that ~2hrs covered by the BBS log & screenshot you posted, that's pretty much normal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay, much appreciated so I guess I'll take it from your reply that 5 hours with wifi browsing isn't too bad. Seems okay, but I still find it a bit strange that (in my case) wifi browsing uses just as much battery as games do. I always thought it was a light activity!
Or maybe it wasn't the battery that had a problem, but that I set my expectations a bit too high. I came to this S2 from a BlackBerry 9700, whose battery would last half a week with very frequent use. But anyway, I just got this phone for a week, so I consider myself a pretty heavy user. Probably when I get familiar with it, I won't feel the need to play with it every five minutes and battery will last a bit longer then! xD
Nah. Anything with screen on is far from 'light activity'. Screen consumes far & away the most juice. In saying that, I've seen some people on here say they can get 8-9 hrs screen on with 2000mAh battery. How they do it I have absolutely no idea.
But if yeah, 5 hrs with the screen on most of the time whether browsing or playing games (games in particular are very CPU/GPU intensive & thus use a lot of zzzzs; unless they're really basic games like chess or similar), or anything else isn't too bad. Can you do better ? Obviously, if people say they can get 8-9 hrs. But it's not a matter of doing A, B & C and you'll magically end up with massive screen on times. Every phone is setup & used differently, and getting the absolute max out of every charge takes a lot of trial & error and experimenting with settings/setup.
There are tons of threads about the subject on here if you feel like going down that path. For me, I'm happy with the battery life I get these days because you can really obsess over it & spend a lot of time stressing over it/trying to maximise it for often very little gain. I'd rather simply use my phone a lot during the day & charge it at night.
Yeah Crackberries are like Japanese cars, they can run on fumes pretty much ;-) Having a dual core processor, a decent GPU & a huge screen kinda changes things.
There is one thing you can do fairly easily tho. And that's to make sure the phone spends as much time as possible in deep sleep when you're not using it. That will ensure that you have enough juice to get you by when you do want to use it. Simple ways to help achieve that is to turn off data/WiFi completely when you're not using it (tho many people don't like to do this for different reasons; which is perfectly OK if you're happy to live with the resultant drain), and make sure you've got no apps that are doing things they shouldn't be doing (like syncing, for example) while the phone should be sleeping. Again, there are lots of threads about same if you ever feel like a bit of light reading ;-)
So yeah, if you do find you experience drain that's not normal/outside the usual pattern you have, definitely post details & people can have a look for you. And as you said, you'll get to know what really is normal with regard to drain & so on is as you use the phone more (I tended to use it constantly for that first couple of weeks as well).
nyancatland said:
Okay, much appreciated so I guess I'll take it from your reply that 5 hours with wifi browsing isn't too bad. Seems okay, but I still find it a bit strange that (in my case) wifi browsing uses just as much battery as games do. I always thought it was a light activity!
Or maybe it wasn't the battery that had a problem, but that I set my expectations a bit too high. I came to this S2 from a BlackBerry 9700, whose battery would last half a week with very frequent use. But anyway, I just got this phone for a week, so I consider myself a pretty heavy user. Probably when I get familiar with it, I won't feel the need to play with it every five minutes and battery will last a bit longer then! xD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Already took such measures. Wakelocks killed my battery over my first night with the phone, and I woke up after 7 hours to find a ~50% battery completely empty. Now things are alright, I clear CPUSpy stats before I sleep and wake up to around 95% of deep sleep time. Overnight drain varies between 5 and 10%.
And yes, yes you are right. Maybe I should stop going nuts. I'm checking BBS and CPUSpy every hour, reading every XDA thread on battery, and calculating my battery drainage every morning I wake up :laugh::laugh::laugh:
Re: dirty/'noisy' WiFi networks, have a look at this post as an example of what I was talking about above.
MistahBungle said:
Re: dirty/'noisy' WiFi networks, have a look at this post as an example of what I was talking about above.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Umm...so I just woke up, and noticed a wakelock in the kernel category. It was PowerManagerService, and it occupied around half an hour. Overnight, aftet I've slept 10 hours (got a day off ), my battery came from 24% down to 13%. That's a rate of roughly 1% per hour. Is that normal? And also, what is that PowetManagerService wakelock?
Delivered using Nyan Cat's rainbow powers.
Fantastic. Looks like you got your 10 posts That tip is about as useful as "don't plant cauliflowers in concrete".
trojans63 said:
Turn off wifi and dont play games and your batter will last longer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Galaxy Player 5.0 - uneven battery drain?

Hi,
I've had the Galaxy player for a few months now, and I'm generally very happy with it. Although I get pretty decent battery life out of it, I'd say normally about five to ten days of idle time with roughly six hours of screen on time and about as much wi-fi on time, with maybe an additional three hours as a music player, one issue relating to battery drain appears to be constant. I'm currently back on stock, but this also happened on Eryigit -- I get very slow drain from about 100-80%, then it seems like the battery goes into freefall, going down from 80% down to 25% in a matter of an hour to an hour and a half of regular use, then slows down again until the battery dies. I tried calibrating the battery several times with no difference. I'm guessing I'm getting pretty good use of the battery overall, but this erratic drainage pattern makes me feel like I'm too often close to running out as the device spends around half the time I'm using it at 25% or less. I've read somewhere that the battery level measurement on the Galaxy Player 5.0 is highly inaccurate, and in fact is only a guess based on the voltage output of the battery. I still have to wonder though, is this a normal pattern for this device?
Thanks, Nir
Hey. I've noticed a similar pattern via battery monitor widget, tho nowhere even close to ws prononced as yrs. I generally monitor the mA rate and it goes from -2ma steadily until 80%, the rate then speeds up. W moderate usage, i get roughly 2 days out of the sgp before charging, when there's roughly 30% or less left.
I also remembr some folks mentioning that the battery wont report greater than 80%; i imagine that 80% acts a sort of border where he readings r concerned.
Try out that program i mentioned to monitor usage. Personally, im on entropys kernel and chips rom (occasionally switching to paranoid android), have undervolted it slightly, and added a few init.d scriptsl aiming for optimal battry life. Also, try out watdhdog lite to monitor any apps that might be wakelocking improperly and Gemini app manager to disable ann0ying apps from starting on boot.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda app-developers app
Bah, I think I might have gotten a bum battery. Any idea how much screen on time/wi-fi on time you're getting with a full charge? I use BetterBatteryStats to measure, which also helped me diagnose GPS-related drainage issues (those kernel wakelocks went away when I stopped turning off the GPS, but I'm pretty sure it's a stock kernel issue). I'll try out battery monitor. Thanks!
Well, given that you can have it on idle for 6 days, it might not be thay persay
Actually, onnsecond thought Powertutor is prolly better suited for your issue. It can monitor power use per application
High display brightness; wifi that doesnt sleep even w screen off (it never sleeps by default); apps that enable things like gps, that makes requests and sends info w.o yr consent thru wifi- these, among 0ther things, drain battry life and are other things to consider
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda app-developers app
---------- Post added at 10:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:53 PM ----------
nirslsk said:
Any idea how much screen on time/wi-fi on time you're getting with a full charge? I use BetterBatteryStats to measure, which also helped me diagnose GPS-related drainage issues (those kernel wakelocks went away when I stopped turning off the GPS, but I'm pretty sure it's a stock kernel issue). I'll try out battery monitor. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And cant say. I usually do 2-3 days before i recharge; i rarely go under 20% and dont game
Also, just caught this- gps is a huge power suck. Like huge. That may be yr problem.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda app-developers app
It was same for me on stock rom and every other rom..70% of time from 100 to 10 it is staying on 75% and 25%..and when its on 25% it can last all day with moderate usage dont moving from 25.Its because device only measure voltage which is innacuare ,voltage dont drop linear like mah.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA
well i had that prob with my old SGP but since i messed it up andgot it replaced it doesnt stop at 80% for like an hour it just charges straight through tht was before i had enthropys512 kernel flashed....now the battery is faster to charge
Well, I suppose another plug for Battery Monitor Widget-
It provides a handy estimate for discharges/recharges that's proved pretty accurate. After entering the actual battery capacity and a few cycles, the app estimates charge and discharge time based upon that as well as the readings it receives. The discharge estimate isn't as accurate as I'd like, but that's probably due to my sporadic usage. The charge time, however, should be accurate since charge times are charge times are charge times.
Jeez- I should like contact the dev for a commission on the app at my rate.
Re-flashing the kernel might help, if A) killing GPS (except when, obviously, you're actually using it) and B) getting rid of those wakelocks (try Watchdog Lite-free) don't work. Eryigit's ROM, from what I remember, already has the Entropy kernel baked in
If you do some search through the past threads, you will find some discussions on this very topic.
Even though the battery performance of the device seems to be quite on par with other Android devices I have used, the amount of battery charge that is being reported is, a general guess at best. As it is, it only shows the charges and discharges only at 5% increments and on top of that, as OP stated, it seems to jump around a lot.... 100%-80% normal drain... jump down to 30% and hold... etc... heck! My device will show full charge and the moment I take off the charger, it drops to 80%... I have 4 5.0 devices and they all do that... I have stock GB, ICS and Custom GB roms and all are showing the same thing. I believe it has to do with the way the charge state is being reported... It must be a hardware glitch and I guess that is why no matter what rom you are on you will see this erratic battery % report.
I have stopped worrying about it since it does not seem to actually affect how the battery is performing.
Oh yes, I saw that post when I was skimming search results, but got fixated on the not charging above 80% part and didn't realize it was the same issue. I guess this is normal then. Thanks!
Regarding GPS: It actually doesn't seem to affect my battery life unless I'm using Google Maps, in which case the GPS flashes in the status bar and yes, the battery drains much faster. Confirmed regarding Eryigit and its custom kernel not having the same GPS wakelock issues. I went back to stock because I wanted something really light, what I ended up doing is using Titanium Backup to uninstall anything that showed up in the apps drawer or task manager that I didn't need. That made everything really nice and fast. Of course you could do the same thing with Eryigit. That might be my next move. Or maybe just try the custom kernel with the Stock ROM.
80%
alljokingaside said:
Hey. I've noticed a similar pattern via battery monitor widget, tho nowhere even close to ws prononced as yrs. I generally monitor the mA rate and it goes from -2ma steadily until 80%, the rate then speeds up. W moderate usage, i get roughly 2 days out of the sgp before charging, when there's roughly 30% or less left.
I also remembr some folks mentioning that the battery wont report greater than 80%; i imagine that 80% acts a sort of border where he readings r concerned.
Try out that program i mentioned to monitor usage. Personally, im on entropys kernel and chips rom (occasionally switching to paranoid android), have undervolted it slightly, and added a few init.d scriptsl aiming for optimal battry life. Also, try out watdhdog lite to monitor any apps that might be wakelocking improperly and Gemini app manager to disable ann0ying apps from starting on boot.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah. I'm currently using Paranoid Android and it only charges to 80%. When I unplug and plug in the device it starts charging again.
I love the Galaxy Player 5.0, but it really bugs me the way Samsung so often completely abandons its customers past the point of purchase. Charging problems, bogus battery level readout, GPS off battery drain, screwy unusable GPS compass... and forget about Android updates. The US version never even got 2.3.6. I really wish there was a viable non-Samsung alternative to the 5.0, but there doesn't appear to be anything else out there that's like it.

Battery Drain + Overheating + related/unrelated

Hello all! I have been a silent user of these forums for a while now. I am finally turning to you all for some help because I am unable to determine if the issues with my phone should be treated as related or unrelated.
My phone: Image attached, no outside URLs. In short, Galaxy S2, ATT, 4.0.3, not rooted.
I have had this phone since about March. Ironically, I had a model of the captivate that was subject to the random shut offs. ATT worked with me and since my upgrade was so close, they moved it up a bit. Badaboom this phone. Enough with the stories.
Applications: Some utilities I have on this phone include juice defender, advanced task killer, onavo data manager, eco battery protector. I do admit to the use of applications like instagram, facebook and browsing through some websites, but the effect on my phone is not necessary what I am looking to fix. Also, I use ADW, but I have been a long term user of ADW and find it to be light on my battery usage. Never even shows up in my battery summary. I just feel you should know.
The issue: My phone is being a pain in the rear. I am trying to determine if my overheating and poor battery life are related. When in idle, my phone can drain within about 5 hours. When I first started noticing this, I would make sure wifi and sync were off 'cause I really didn't need it on at work. Still, maybe saved myself 45min of battery life in idle (some screen usage to check time and w/e). Then when I charge, the phone gets so hot I start to worry. I was used to my captivate getting kind of hot, mostly because of the cheat cover, so I've stopped using it and charging with it. Right now, I mostly use a dock to charge my phone overnight, but still, when I take it off its hot as Hades.
Usage: I have noticed a significant difference with juice defender on/off, maybe about a couple hours worth of usage. Usage for me is usually gmail, texting and sometimes yahoo instant messenger. (Yahoo has been pretty light on my battery, never really noticed too much : I have noticed a significant difference with juice defender on/off, maybe about a couple hours worth of usage. Usage for me is usually gmail, texting and sometimes yahoo instant messenger. (Yahoo has been pretty light on my battery, never really noticed too much and that kind of drainage is normal). Heavy usage might include me using my phone as my GPS when driving. I do this while plugged in otherwise it would be off before I exit my hometown. The overheating gets so so so hot that I might unplug it for a bit and turn the AC on. :crying: Also, I use things like instagram, facebook, gizmodo but I make sure to kill those tasks when I am finished using the various utilities I have. I make sure I'm on wifi when I use those and I have them set to only working over wifi with onavo.
Other Issues: Recently, there have been issues with charging. I have had random moments where my phone does not register it is being plugged in until I pull the battery. At first I thought it was my car charger and maybe the fuse on it was a dud but when I got home and tried my dock, it was still nothing. Then I tried USB to my computer and still nothing. After a battery pull, this was fixed. Happened about 2 times over the past 2 months.
.. I don't know what to do to get a balance back. This has been going on for about 2 months now and I can't keep looking for a power source a mere 4 hours into usage.
I am considering looking towards rooting and seeing what customization I can do to manage my phone better and achieve a balance right for me. I am familiar with the process and proficient enough to work through it. Due to my phone feeling too new, I have been avoiding it. I would hate to shell the money out for a new battery, given this phone is less than a year old.
Please please please gurus .... I need your help. I don't know what to do to get back to having my smartphone work for me efficiently.
Well first get rid of the battery savers. In my experience they crashed my brothers phone and don't save battery in the slightest. Just remember to turn WiFi and data off using a toggle. Also download betterbatterystats from the xda forums and cpuspy from play store and let the phone do its thing for a day
Sent from my SGH-I777
Task killers do nothing. Juice defender used to help back in GB days. No longer needed. Just use the phone normally. Also did u say yer on the stock ICS kernel? I was gonna suggest a factory reset to clear data and cache but if yer on stock ICS kernel don't do that.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2
The first thing I would suggest is to get rid of the stock ICS root then custom rom ICS after that get a little app called battery calibration, fully charge the phone and calibrate the battery i have used this app and swear by it as far as juice defender i have used it and never really cared for it it really never did what is said it would.

[Q] It's the battery issue again!

hey, so i have ran pretty much every "jelly bean" rom out there for this phone for about 2-2.5 months. maybe less. note sure..
anyway, the battery has been horrible! on every rom.. I have a 2700 mAMP battery, and a regular Samsung battery. I have to use both once a day for this phone.. now I have no idea what is making the phone loose percentage after percentage of battery as fast as it has for me, but everytime i post i get about 0 luck from people that either have the same issue, or just people saying they have heard it a million times. i probably should have put this in the "Q&A" thread, but maybe i forgot. can someone, preferably more than one, help me out here?? i don't get how other people say they have 8 or more hours of screen on time with half the battery left. it just doesn't make since. I am loving the android system. but this could be anything! the apps in the background. the kernel, maybe I didn't clean my cache or something. i can't raise my brightness up to far or it'll drain my battery, jamie in the paranoid thread said he had his batter on 100 percent and had excellent battery. so I'm far from confused here. do I need to get another phone, or what. very much apprentice the help from as many people as possible. I love my phone, but I hate that i have to focus on using two battery a day with this phone.
Same here battery draining pretty quick on all jb ROMs.
Sent from the TermiNOTEr!
Battery usage is highly subjective..
It's nearly impossible to determine a baseline Usage expectancy, simply due to the untold number of variables that drain the battery.
We know the obvious power users ....the display, wifi, data ..
But it gets far more difficult to track the Usage after that.
We know that JB is not optimized for our device, but it's getting better, and until we see a true JB kernel with the rom matched to it, the battery is going to suffer.
Then of course we have the many services that users run, along with countless apps ...
Long story short ....maybe a more stable choice would work better? ?
Like ICS, At least until JB calms down a bit ...
I'm actually running Saurom as I type this ...and my battery life is excellent.
JB just isn't quite there yet ...IMHO ....g
to get better battery turn brightness to lowest usable setting, turn off sync for any non essential apps, turn off soft key lights, flash a kernel that lets you under volt and under clock, try different govonors and io schedulers, turn off gps, put in airplane mode when not using. these should help. keep in mind cell signal strength will also impact battery and 4g will kill it faster then 3g. i am on cm9 stable under clocked to 1.18 undervolt all by 25mv( not much change but i like to be safe) ondemand and sio and get amazing battery life.
What's your screen-on time? 4 hours is the close to the limit on ANY rom for our Notes. You have to make sure it's not some sort of confirmation bias going on here.
gregsarg said:
Battery usage is highly subjective..
It's nearly impossible to determine a baseline Usage expectancy, simply due to the untold number of variables that drain the battery.
We know the obvious power users ....the display, wifi, data ..
But it gets far more difficult to track the Usage after that.
We know that JB is not optimized for our device, but it's getting better, and until we see a true JB kernel with the rom matched to it, the battery is going to suffer.
Then of course we have the many services that users run, along with countless apps ...
Long story short ....maybe a more stable choice would work better? ?
Like ICS, At least until JB calms down a bit ...
I'm actually running Saurom as I type this ...and my battery life is excellent.
JB just isn't quite there yet ...IMHO ....g
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you so much man! i actually went to at&t and they mentioned that too. they said the kernel im using isn't fully optimized for the phone yet. other words. the phone wont support it. he said basic stock ics is the best thing to do now. he also said. these forums are for phones from Europe as well. not just for AT&T in the us. again, the ROMS these devs are making are not supported for the phone, and is kinda like a mimic of something its not. he said jelly bean was out, but i don't know where to get it. can someone tell me how to install ICS, because when I download it, and use KIES, it installs the system, but never fully completes the process.
trancemusic+1 said:
thank you so much man! i actually went to at&t and they mentioned that too. they said the kernel im using isn't fully optimized for the phone yet. other words. the phone wont support it. he said basic stock ics is the best thing to do now. he also said. these forums are for phones from Europe as well. not just for AT&T in the us. again, the ROMS these devs are making are not supported for the phone, and is kinda like a mimic of something its not. he said jelly bean was out, but i don't know where to get it. can someone tell me how to install ICS, because when I download it, and use KIES, it installs the system, but never fully completes the process.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure...
At the top of the general note section, you will find the "note super everything thread"....
Scroll down to find the ICS info you need...
There are many great ICS roms, and you will find that your phone is "MUCH" better running on the software that was intended for it..
Do the homework in the superthread, and read, read, read......then if you have more questions....just PM me, and we'll get ya up and running....g
gregsarg said:
Sure...
At the top of the general note section, you will find the "note super everything thread"....
Scroll down to find the ICS info you need...
There are many great ICS roms, and you will find that your phone is "MUCH" better running on the software that was intended for it..
Do the homework in the superthread, and read, read, read......then if you have more questions....just PM me, and we'll get ya up and running....g
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you so much! I will get right to this
I never got more then 2 hours screen on time on any ROM, just figured that was normal.
Ugh.
That is low scout ....
I pull 3 hours average ...
Must be the internut ..on XDA ....LOL ......g
gregsarg said:
Ugh.
That is low scout ....
I pull 3 hours average ...
Must be the internut ..on XDA ....LOL ......g
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm in the same boat as manel, never gotten anywhere above 2h on screen time. Maybe additional 10m or so. Figured it was normal lol
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
Battery life is purely subjective. No two people will have the same experience.
Have you used an app like CPU spy to make sure the phone is going into deep sleep? Rogue apps keeping the phone in a wake lock can seriously affect battery life, but its hard to say if anybody's apps are doing that, because we all use different apps and there's no list of apps that keep a wake lock, so you need to use something like CPU spy to see if you are going to deep sleep when your screen is off.
Related to apps as well, don't use any task killers or constantly kill apps when you exit them. A lot of people think killing apps is necessary when it completely is not. Android, since donut or eclair, manages its RAM very well, so that when a properly written app (ie. It's not keeping a wake lock) is in RAM, it's just in a frozen state not using any CPU cycles. Constantly killing well written apps hurts battery life, because restarting the app fresh is much more processor intensive than pulling a frozen app out of RAM. Plus you don't have to deal with annoying loading/splash screens.
Also, like others have said, using the lowest brightness possible, and turning off sync for any unnecessary apps will help battery life. GPS doesn't matter so long as you don't keep something running that uses it. If an app isn't using GPS, then GPS isn't using battery. I always leave my GPS on and do not notice a difference compared to turning it off. If you're paranoid about GPS leave it off, but it's annoying to have to turn it on every time you want to use an app that requires it. You can also disable location access in most apps like Facebook, twitter, etc where you don't need GPS really, and that will make leaving it on even better. If you don't use GPS much anyways, leave it off.
Like somebody said, your cell signal can greatly affect your performance, so use WiFi whenever possible, and even put a data toggle in your pulldown so you can disable cell data when you don't really need it. WiFi in general uses less battery than cellular data, so I use it whenever possible.
I've also noticed that how you use your screen on time also has a great effect on battery life. When I have extended lengths of constant screen on time where the phone starts heating up and whatnot, I see much less battery life than if I just use my phone here and there intermittently. Long stretches of screen on time stress the processor and battery heating them up and making them less efficient, where as short stretches allow the processor time to stay at a cooler, more efficient temperature. If you game at all on your phone, you've definitely experienced this, as you know that your phone heats up due to the extended lengths of screen on time and heavy processor usage. Gaming is a no-no if you're striving for better battery life.
With following those guidelines, my Note sees about 3.5 screen on time with JB on Gubment Cheeze. I would get around that on ICS as well, and I don't remember what it was on GB. Fellow testers and teammates for Gubment Cheeze have seen up to 4 hours and a little more even on JB, so it's definitely possible to have decent battery life on JB.
It really comes down to your own personal usage.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
(quoted)(Related to apps as well, don't use any task killers or constantly kill apps when you exit them. A lot of people think killing apps is necessary when it completely is not. Android, since donut or eclair, manages its RAM very well, so that when a properly written app (ie. It's not keeping a wake lock) is in RAM, it's just in a frozen state not using any CPU cycles. Constantly killing well written apps hurts battery life, because restarting the app fresh is much more processor intensive than pulling a frozen app out of RAM. Plus you don't have to deal with annoying loading/splash screens. )quoted)
I was not aware of this info....many thanks for the heads up...I always supposed that since the ram was consumed with applications, that those apps were pulling CPU usage from the device...
that is clearly not the case......g
Yep, no problem. If you go back to a touchwiz based ROM and go into the stock task manager, it shows you what's taking up RAM, as well as the CPU usage of each thing in the list. If the apps are working properly, pretty much everything will show very little to 0% CPU usage, and ones that are using it heavily will even be highlighted in yellow or red depending on their CPU usage %age. Unfortunately aosp based ROMs don't have that task manager, one of the things I miss from touchwiz.
Every time a non-techy friend buys a new android, it seems the overly aggressive sales rep that sold the phone to them 'helped' them get to know the phone and installed a task killer, specifically advanced task killer. I always just uninstall it without telling them and see how long it takes them to notice lol.
It's still useful in certain instances, for example if you have an app that doesn't run well but you still like/need to use, but in general practice android does a much better job of managing itself. Besides, if you have an app that you know runs poorly and hogs your processor in the background, but you still need to use it, with most aosp based ROMs you can set your phone so that long pressing the back button kills the current app, essentially making task killers useless.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
welchertc said:
Battery life is purely subjective. No two people will have the same experience.
Have you used an app like CPU spy to make sure the phone is going into deep sleep? Rogue apps keeping the phone in a wake lock can seriously affect battery life, but its hard to say if anybody's apps are doing that, because we all use different apps and there's no list of apps that keep a wake lock, so you need to use something like CPU spy to see if you are going to deep sleep when your screen is off.
Related to apps as well, don't use any task killers or constantly kill apps when you exit them. A lot of people think killing apps is necessary when it completely is not. Android, since donut or eclair, manages its RAM very well, so that when a properly written app (ie. It's not keeping a wake lock) is in RAM, it's just in a frozen state not using any CPU cycles. Constantly killing well written apps hurts battery life, because restarting the app fresh is much more processor intensive than pulling a frozen app out of RAM. Plus you don't have to deal with annoying loading/splash screens.
Also, like others have said, using the lowest brightness possible, and turning off sync for any unnecessary apps will help battery life. GPS doesn't matter so long as you don't keep something running that uses it. If an app isn't using GPS, then GPS isn't using battery. I always leave my GPS on and do not notice a difference compared to turning it off. If you're paranoid about GPS leave it off, but it's annoying to have to turn it on every time you want to use an app that requires it. You can also disable location access in most apps like Facebook, twitter, etc where you don't need GPS really, and that will make leaving it on even better. If you don't use GPS much anyways, leave it off.
Like somebody said, your cell signal can greatly affect your performance, so use WiFi whenever possible, and even put a data toggle in your pulldown so you can disable cell data when you don't really need it. WiFi in general uses less battery than cellular data, so I use it whenever possible.
I've also noticed that how you use your screen on time also has a great effect on battery life. When I have extended lengths of constant screen on time where the phone starts heating up and whatnot, I see much less battery life than if I just use my phone here and there intermittently. Long stretches of screen on time stress the processor and battery heating them up and making them less efficient, where as short stretches allow the processor time to stay at a cooler, more efficient temperature. If you game at all on your phone, you've definitely experienced this, as you know that your phone heats up due to the extended lengths of screen on time and heavy processor usage. Gaming is a no-no if you're striving for better battery life.
With following those guidelines, my Note sees about 3.5 screen on time with JB on Gubment Cheeze. I would get around that on ICS as well, and I don't remember what it was on GB. Fellow testers and teammates for Gubment Cheeze have seen up to 4 hours and a little more even on JB, so it's definitely possible to have decent battery life on JB.
It really comes down to your own personal usage.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a very big heads up. Thanks. But thing is when I have wifi on. Don't I need to be connected to wifi network first before it actually can help me??
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
trancemusic+1 said:
That's a very big heads up. Thanks. But thing is when I have wifi on. Don't I need to be connected to wifi network first before it actually can help me??
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true. What kind of signal strength do you get where you are at? Does your phone bounce back and forth to lte. I have noticed when i go from a strong signal to weaker signals or band switching a lot, my battery drains rapidly.
Use cpuspy, as mentioned, to verify you do see deep sleep. Also, i find if rooted, that seting the min speed to 192 helps quite a bit.

Categories

Resources