I love Android.
I think the customization is great, and since v4 it's smoother and feels more responsive.
There are LOTS of apps and it's better than iOS.
But i'm sick of the battery issues.
I've always loved trying new features, ROMs, apps, hacks and whatever.
I now have SGS3 and it's my third android device, and i've installed ROMs dozens of times, even on my friends' devices.
One thing that always kept me alert is the battery life - the maximum I can get from my battery is around 30 hours with my usage - 1/5-2 hours of screen, ~45 minutes talk, lots of standby.
But every now and then, my girlfriend, my dad, my aunt or my friend ask me 'why does my battery drain so fast?'
Sometimes its google maps.
Sometimes its mediaserver/media scanner
Sometimes - and only I can see it cause they are not familiar with tools like BBS, it's gsf (Google Services Framework).
The point is, when you have an Android device, you need to check the battery stats every now and then to make sure nothing is unusually heavy on the battery.
I am currently experimenting with ParanoidAndroid and AOKP, which are faster and more responsive than omega/stock.
Yesterday i went to sleep (6 hours) with 25% battery (after it lasted 15 hours) and I turned off the data connection and the wireless connection.
I woke up after 6 hours (lucky..) and I saw my phone if off. after I connected it to the charger and turned it on I saw mediaserver decided to wake up in the middle of the night, after It almost did nothing during the day, and worked for 5.5 hours until the battery died!
Today I unplugged my phone and in 1 hour of standby 10% of the battery were gone, I checked what happened using BBS and saw gsf again (that GTALK_SYNC whatever wakelock) was draining battery, after I thought I fixed it yesterday when I disabled app data and browser sync in the google account sync options). I rebooted and now it seems ok again, the phone is back to ~70-80-% sleep.
I want to emphasize that I don't like all the stupid battery tips that tell me to castrate my phone:
turn off wifi when it's not needed, turn down the brightness, lower the screen timeout, disable sync (wtf? but its a smart phone, I WANT push notifications!) and that sort of things.
I KNOW I can get >24hours of battery without disabling the basic features of my phone.
And the draining battery processes that I mentioned earlier can suddenly appear even in a stock ROM, so I don't think it's PA or AOKP's fault.
What I want is that google will finally build a supervisor entity that will check what causes an unusual battery drain, check if it makes sense, and disable that cause!
It's absurd that google maps application comes with default 'enable location reporting' that constantly drains your battery and for what?? google maps doesn't run in the foreground, why the hell will I want that background location reporting draining my battery? and if so, why do you put this option enabled BY DEFAULT? The average user doesn't know this sort of stuff, and get only 10 hours of battery out of a device that should ideally provide ~30 hours!!!
Just wanted to let it out of my system...
And to get useful battery tips if any...
Related
I was pissed off as my phone lost all the juice over the night and didnt have time for filling it in the morning as i have to go to my job. Also i am a privacy freak and from obvious reasons i dont like google apps, same goes for gmail (as i am using exchange server i dont need all the sync stuff there) which was my initial reason for preventing the application to start - i dont use ANYTHING releated to google/market and i dont have any account there, i never used it.
On rooted phone I started to prevent starting everything related to google and DRM, market etc. (autostarts https://market.android.com/details?id=com.elsdoerfer.android.autostarts):
- DRM*
- Factory Test*
- com.google.*
(i think this was all, i'll recheck if there was something else)
And guess what. The battery drain over the night is now around 2% and the phone is quite able to survive 2 days (not completely accurate as i had it connected to computer for 10 minutes in between to pump some files from it), after the second night i still had 12% of battery left.
If someone else is able to repeat that, please report the results and if someone is able to figure out which app exactly is draining the battery even batter.
One thing i dont really understand is what are those apps doing during the night, there is no reason to contact any of google services as i dont have any account entered, so wtf are they doing?!
To ROM cookers, please stop adding google apps by default, make them as package to be installed later if you wish.
I do not have any communication or at least there should be none over 3g (droidwall) and i dont want to kill aplications just to have peacefull sleep. I was searching for final solution and i have found it.
One solution is to switch off wifi and data connection in night and sure you will have better battery drainage.
Not entirely related but just a heads up for people, last night i downloaded that Getjar app and it decimated my battery overnight so i uninstalled it this morning.
I assume most on here know about https://market.android.com/details?id=com.asksven.betterbatterystats&hl=en this is the best app you can get when it comes to preventing battery drain (tells you exactly what is draining your battery)
seems getjar is eating away at the battery, dont understand why it needs to do that !
Go to the task manager and kill all running tasks, then clear ur RAM before going to sleep @ night.
I loose like 1-2%
Send from my Samsung Galaxy S II
I do not have any communication or at least there should be none over 3g (droidwall) and i dont want to kill aplications just to have peacefull sleep. I was searching for final solution and i have found it.
If it is a night issue, try turning the display ON before unplugging the charging cord. I have used this method and the battery stays at 100% all night long.
Hi there,
I've had my Galaxy Player 5.0 for over a month now, and it's been exhibiting a weird battery drain problem. I have everything set up to drain as little battery as possible when the device is sleeping. I've got auto-sync off, Juice Defender Plus to automatically disable Wi-Fi... it's working beautifully most of the time. I can go for days without the battery draining at all when I'm not using it. But then it inevitably hits a point where I turn it on and lo, like half the battery charge is gone. I check BetterBatteryStats often to monitor this problem, and it usually shows about the same awake time as screen on time, which is what you'd expect. When the problem kicks in however, the device shows hours and hours of extra awake time.
Two new kernel wakelock entries appear at the top:
gpsd-interface
GPS
Those account for pretty much all the extra awake time. I can break these wakelocks by turning on the GPS, starting Google Maps, letting it read my location, closing Google Maps and finally turning off GPS again. I never use Google Maps or GPS the rest of the time, but these wakelocks keep coming back every few days. I've searched everywhere for any mention of "gpsd-interface" and I found nothing.
Any idea how I might be able to fix this?
Thanks, Nir
My Samsung S3 battery goes from fully charged to "low battery" often before I get home from work. I just put up with it because troubleshooting Android is such a pain even with Better Battery Stats.
But by exceeding my data quota this month I see exactly what the problem is. Android 4.3 disabled data last night because I went over my quota.
It is now 6:02PM and my battery is at 82% when it would usually be at 5% by now. I still used my phone almost exactly the same amount as I have a desktop at work. My battery usually goes down to 5% just doing nothing in my pocket and making a few calls and texts and some music listening.
My poor battery life is due to all the data transfer bull Google is doing in the background every day.
Better battery stats can identify the process like Bam_dmux or fast dormancy, but it doesn't tell you which apps are actually calling the wakelock.
If Android did keep proper track of this I am sure many apps would be deleted (including Google Apps) from phone in a instant.
But it is too much trouble to try to figure out which one it is so we just put up with 6 hour standby battery life when the manufacturer claims 72 hours.
What a mess ..... I am going to have to research "restrict background data" now to waste more of my time.
Looking at Data Usage in setting doesn't help much because it only tells how much not how often
HaHaHaHa: Google Search on = android "restrict background data" gives 192,000 hits
Does anyone know a good site or method to do this?
Fixed Battery Issue
Well I managed to solve my battery problems at least until the next round of updates.
Previously ..... Galaxy S3 goes from full battery to empty by about 4:00PM in the workday ... mostly phone is sitting in my pocket. No surfing, occasional call.
Then I blocked background data for:
1) Play Store (I am tired of useless updates anyway)
2) Medscape
3) MPR
4) EMAIL ( confirmed this does not affect Gmail notifications )
Then Removed Accounts:
1) All associated with Samsung
2) WeChat and program
So only Accounts for Dropbox, Google, Scribd and Whatsup are left
Nothing else changed
It's 10:00PM and I still have 60% battery ..... sometimes getting pissed helps as I have been putting up with this for a month.
Unfortunately I don't know which were the offenders.
Sirandar said:
My Samsung S3 battery goes from fully charged to "low battery" often before I get home from work. I just put up with it because troubleshooting Android is such a pain even with Better Battery Stats.
But by exceeding my data quota this month I see exactly what the problem is. Android 4.3 disabled data last night because I went over my quota.
It is now 6:02PM and my battery is at 82% when it would usually be at 5% by now. I still used my phone almost exactly the same amount as I have a desktop at work. My battery usually goes down to 5% just doing nothing in my pocket and making a few calls and texts and some music listening.
My poor battery life is due to all the data transfer bull Google is doing in the background every day.
Better battery stats can identify the process like Bam_dmux or fast dormancy, but it doesn't tell you which apps are actually calling the wakelock.
If Android did keep proper track of this I am sure many apps would be deleted (including Google Apps) from phone in a instant.
But it is too much trouble to try to figure out which one it is so we just put up with 6 hour standby battery life when the manufacturer claims 72 hours.
What a mess ..... I am going to have to research "restrict background data" now to waste more of my time.
Looking at Data Usage in setting doesn't help much because it only tells how much not how often
HaHaHaHa: Google Search on = android "restrict background data" gives 192,000 hits
Does anyone know a good site or method to do this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Day5
Since I made these changes my battery life has been greater than 60% every single night no matter how much I use the phone. Maybe it was WeChat.....
Play Store Issues from the OP
My battery life bliss was cut short by issues with my gmail account and sync probably caused my "restrict background data" on the play store.
Previously restricting background data on Play Store and WeChat improved my battery life from 100%-0 in 8 hours to 100% to 90% in 8 hours
BUT
This seems to cause issues with gmail and Google sync. Neither would work and I had to uninstall and clear data for both to get them working again. It said the sync was "experiencing difficulties".
Uninstalling and reinstalling gmail and play seems to have fixed my battery issues .... even without background data restrictions.
Sirandar said:
My Samsung S3 battery goes from fully charged to "low battery" often before I get home from work. I just put up with it because troubleshooting Android is such a pain even with Better Battery Stats.
But by exceeding my data quota this month I see exactly what the problem is. Android 4.3 disabled data last night because I went over my quota.
It is now 6:02PM and my battery is at 82% when it would usually be at 5% by now. I still used my phone almost exactly the same amount as I have a desktop at work. My battery usually goes down to 5% just doing nothing in my pocket and making a few calls and texts and some music listening.
My poor battery life is due to all the data transfer bull Google is doing in the background every day.
Better battery stats can identify the process like Bam_dmux or fast dormancy, but it doesn't tell you which apps are actually calling the wakelock.
If Android did keep proper track of this I am sure many apps would be deleted (including Google Apps) from phone in a instant.
But it is too much trouble to try to figure out which one it is so we just put up with 6 hour standby battery life when the manufacturer claims 72 hours.
What a mess ..... I am going to have to research "restrict background data" now to waste more of my time.
Looking at Data Usage in setting doesn't help much because it only tells how much not how often
HaHaHaHa: Google Search on = android "restrict background data" gives 192,000 hits
Does anyone know a good site or method to do this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just got this phone about a week ago and right away I noticed that battery life was very low. I tried doing some charge cycles and I even got a brand new Anker battery but nothing changed. I looked at the battery usage and the graph is just steadily dropping with very minimal screen usage. I have turned off background syncing on everything and I disabled notifications on most of my apps (all but Facebook and Instagram) and still the battery goes dead in under one day of standby. Looking at battery usage I noticed that Android OS,Android system, and Google play services are pretty high on the percentage (I do have auto updates disabled though). I know the battery shouldn't be dropping from one day of standby. I've also checked some other posts where people say to turn off auto brightness and notifications and I've tried all of that to no avail. Also on the battery graph the scene time is of most of the time, but the puzzling part is that the awake time is only dotted a few times, no large bars that might be huge background processes. And speaking of background processes, most of my running apps say they've been on since the time my phone had turned on (not sure why). Please help me out on how I can fix this, I can post screen shots if needed
Wipe it and flash latest firmware with Odin, disable all the bloat.
boomboomer said:
Wipe it and flash latest firmware with Odin, disable all the bloat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! I'm trying that right now, I'll tell you if it worked
It did not work Could this be a faulty device? Here is a screenshot of one hour of usage after factory reseting. As you can see on the running apps (my phone was on for about 8 mins in the picture) there are a few processes that stay running from startup and never stop.
p.s. I also went disabled all running apps that were possible and that didn't look important (clock widgets, SNS, Stock Daemon, etc.)
It's a stock T-Mobile LG G5. I get around 2-2.5h SOT. Overnight it drops the battery by 8-11%. There are 34 screenshots in the ZIP file below, showing GSAM Battery monitor and BetterBatteryStats data. I've never used BetteryBatteryStats before so if someone could help me identify the culprit I'd greatly appreciate that.
The signal strength is excellent and the always-on display is disabled. The bluetooth and GPS are always enabled. I should mention that last week I put the phone in Airplane mode and the drain stopped, but obviously it's not a solution.
1.) why do you know, that the gsm signal is excellent? Because you can see 5 stripes in the notification bar? That is not real! I can see 5 stripes too, but this at 15 ASU.
But 100% signal is = 30 ASU! So this result can differ even you believe you can see 100 signal quality.
2.) my system is running on 20p. No BT and no Wlan (no NFC) with 8% for 24Std. (150 user apps installed)
3.) wifi and G-Mail polling sucks much battery power too! you should switch it of to compare! or is it real necessary to be on over the night???
4.) what’s about the google fitness app? this app needs power to check the sensors.
5.) Twitter; Google; G-Mail; Fotos are syncing many times! You can see together more then 800 wake ups!
no wonder that this together will suck your battery empty!
i would suggest you to switch off BT and W.Lan over the night! This should spend a lot of battery power too! Same for syncing and background data traffic.
Try to use 3C Battery Monitor app. there you can see the power consumption every 10 min in the night.
read this too! -> https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=74381087&postcount=327
I have 55 ASUs, so the connection is not the problem. Last night it only drained by 1%. I had both Bluetooth and GPS enabled so I don't think they are the problem either. Twitter, Gmail also were enabled and they actually pulled and displayed some notifications, yet the drain was minimal.
What I think sometimes happens is Google app or Play Services goes crazy starts waking up the phone for no reason. Would you agree based on the screenshots? Or could it be some bug in the OS that does this?