[Q] Android CPU Monitor Questions - Idle CPU 10% - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi XDA folks! Sorry if this has been posted before, I looked and can't find any information.
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I installed CPU memory monitor on my Note 3 and closed all background applications in "active applications". I also greenify literally everything that doesn't cause a problem. However, the CPU usage on my android device, with absolutely nothing open except the CPU monitor, is about 10%.
On my PC, when idle, the CPU usage never goes above 3% (i7 @ 4.5ghz), however shouldn't my phone do the same? The most resource intensive process is cpumonitor itself - using 2% CPU. System stays about .5-3%.
My theory is that, because the phone is underclocked to a very low frequency when idle, any little task will use a bit of CPU percentage. Is my theory correct?
I also noticed a lot of RAM is used idle, but this is no problem to me. I know unused RAM is better, it is good that Android caches everything it can.
Thanks a lot

Related

[Q] X10 CPU speed stays low after idle

I'm having the problem that my X10 was slow when using it after a longer period of idle. I installed SystemPanel to check out which app was causing this. There I found out that it wasn't a particular app (although FaceRecognition does pop out sometimes), but the CPU is used for 100%, staying at 245MHz. The time it takes to get to 1000MHz is total arbitrary, and it's usually staggers around between this range instead of staying at 1000MHz.
Is it allright that the CPU speed keeps changing within this range ? And does anyone have an idea whats causing the CPU to stay at 245 MHz for too long after being idle ?
Default battery plan is set to "ondemand", which means the cpu will automatically adjusts itself regarding usage. But it's weird indeed it stays at 245MHz, as on mine it often goes to 998MHz just for few things
You can force/restore it with setcpu (maybe) ?
Altough your phone is lagging, your battery should stand for weeks with this clock

Battery life -- How to

I got 12% battery drain in 17 hours, standby. I'm not a pro at android but I might give a little tut. on how to save battery life to the max. Atleast, it works for my P500 so it should work for you & for any other android device as well.
Uninstall every unnecessary app, including system apps (those apps, that does not mess up with the system stability - If you uninstall Email app, you will not solve your problems with Gmail app).. same with Messaging. That said, leave as minimum apps in the background as you can. App killer does not solve this problem, it just closes bg apps - they restart after some time. I'm using ATK (Advanced Task Killer), It usually kills 1 - 3 apps, so.. I have a minimum of apps running in the bg.
Basic stuff.. turn off your 3G, wifi, bg sync, gps when not in use. If you need to check your email, use 2G network only option, not 3G. Use 2G always when you don't need 3G speed. Screen brightness is not that important if you set it to anywhere below 70%. It should not drain the battery that fast.
Setcpu - profiles - governors--
My profiles are as follows
Charging - 480min - 748max
Battery <90% - 245min - 600max
Battery <70% - 245min - 600max (U can live with one profile for the battery, I have 2 in case I want to change the 2nd profile)
Screen off - 122min - 245max -- This is what saves my battery in standby.
The governors are ondemand for usage & conservative for screen off.
I'm using Void.echo rom with tapps & gapps modules, uninstalled everything I don't need.
I hope this helps If anyone has a better idea on how to save battery life, please share yours as well.
Thanks for your post, but actually most background apps don't drain battery. I have made lots of experiments (removing system aps, preventing autorun etc., and I don't see any major difference in battery life. So now, I'm on stock 2.2 and I'm now at 80% after almost 30h use: about 20 min talk, 10-15 min wi-fi (mail), 10-15 min EDGE. The latter by the way drains battery more than wi-fi. So instead of messing with system apps I recommend putting the phone in airplane mode during the night and as mentioned in the above post - not using 3G when not needed (EDGE has decent speed).
thats the why linux works !!! use all the memory u possibly can...These Microsoft *****es have changed the way computers were supposed to be used not reinstalling windows and other crapware all the time..Switch to Debian while its still time
And i use these settings
screen off 245-245 powersave (otherwise phone gets hot Its summer in india)
600-245 ondemand otherwise
kopchev said:
Thanks for your post, but actually most background apps don't drain battery. I have made lots of experiments (removing system aps, preventing autorun etc., and I don't see any major difference in battery life. So now, I'm on stock 2.2 and I'm now at 80% after almost 30h use: about 20 min talk, 10-15 min wi-fi (mail), 10-15 min EDGE. The latter by the way drains battery more than wi-fi. So instead of messing with system apps I recommend putting the phone in airplane mode during the night and as mentioned in the above post - not using 3G when not needed (EDGE has decent speed).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If there are many apps running in the bg, phone runs out of ram, so it tries to free up some space constantly. I think that drains battery, not the apps themselves. As well as the more cpu power is used, the faster it drains battery. Airplane mode shuts off any connection, so either that or you could just shut down the phone during night. Hmm you could tell me how to prevent app autorun, i have not looked into that.
btw juicedefender does wonders with the phones battery i had a 2% percent over night normal mode (not airplane) no 3g/Edge/Wifi/Bluetooth active and just sleeping
sarfaraz1989 said:
thats the why linux works !!! use all the memory u possibly can...These Microsoft *****es have changed the way computers were supposed to be used not reinstalling windows and other crapware all the time..Switch to Debian while its still time
And i use these settings
screen off 245-245 powersave (otherwise phone gets hot Its summer in india)
600-245 ondemand otherwise
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True about windows & linux hehe. You havent tried 122-245mhz on screen off? Ofcouse, it lags even when i receive an sms, it's something like this - the screen turns on, then after 2 sec. i hear a notification, then after 1 sec. i see the sms but that does not make any problems for me, it's extreme powersaving
I don't get the point of airplane mode while you're sleeping.
If you don't want to get calls while sleeping, shouldn't it be better if you turn off the phone?
I had a good experience with JuiceDefender until now too. Last night my phone was 100% and no airplane mode while sleeping. It drained only 3%.
SoundTone said:
If there are many apps running in the bg, phone runs out of ram, so it tries to free up some space constantly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I've read, Android doesn't swap. It'll just kill the background apps on it's own. I don't think there even is a swap unless you root, rom and create one on your uSD.
rapharias said:
I don't get the point of airplane mode while you're sleeping.
If you don't want to get calls while sleeping, shouldn't it be better if you turn off the phone?
I had a good experience with JuiceDefender until now too. Last night my phone was 100% and no airplane mode while sleeping. It drained only 3%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's more convenient, because the on/off process is quite slow...in contrast - airplane mode on/off is 3-4 secs. In airplane mode you can still use wi-fi. Last night the battery drained only 1%
i read somewhere that changing the CPU speed doesnt change the voltage, thus it does not affect battery life... anyone can confirm this???
As far as I can remember from school, a logic gate uses more power when switching, thus a higher frequency would also mean higher power drain (higher frequency = more switching of the logic gates), without voltage modification.
Voltage is changed in order to keep stability - higher voltage means a more stable logic signal, and a faster switching gate, and thus people reccomend using a higher voltage for higher frequencies/lower voltage for lower frequencies.
Thus, a CPU with so many logic gates does not operate just like a simple resistor. In fact it is worse, because when you use higher voltage AND higher frequency power drain is increased much more.
On the other hand, most modern CPU's simply deactivate CPU regions when idling, so, in case of our hardware (constant voltage) there should not be such a great difference when idling (most of the CPU is powered down). The only thing is for the phone to be REALLY idling (no background tasks eating too much of the CPU when screen off).
Basically, what this means is that if you want extreme power saving use a governor with 128MHz minimum and have as few background services as possible (or at least the ones that are there should be optimized for the least CPU usage).
Now I use the standard governor (248 - 600) and I thing my idle power drain is OK.
I guess I will test a governor that is plain 600MHz and one wit 320 or 480 as a minimum, in order to see if power drain is higher when using a lower lag configuration.
And, just as a guess, if background tasks are triggered by timers, a governor with just 600MHz (or 320 - 600 or 380 - 600?) could (just a wild guess) mean that background tasks take less time to execute, and leave the CPU to si more in IDLE mode, causing a very similar power drain as an extreme power saving governor. But this is just a guess, i have not tested it yet. And it also depends on what apps you have (what the apps do when phone is sleeping).
Basically, my best advice would be to watch the apps (after you install a new app, wait for a night to see if the new app causes a higher drain; if it does, search for another app that does the same thing)
spaic said:
As far as I can remember from school, a logic gate uses more power when switching, thus a higher frequency would also mean higher power drain (higher frequency = more switching of the logic gates), without voltage modification.
Voltage is changed in order to keep stability - higher voltage means a more stable logic signal, and a faster switching gate, and thus people reccomend using a higher voltage for higher frequencies/lower voltage for lower frequencies.
Thus, a CPU with so many logic gates does not operate just like a simple resistor. In fact it is worse, because when you use higher voltage AND higher frequency power drain is increased much more.
On the other hand, most modern CPU's simply deactivate CPU regions when idling, so, in case of our hardware (constant voltage) there should not be such a great difference when idling (most of the CPU is powered down). The only thing is for the phone to be REALLY idling (no background tasks eating too much of the CPU when screen off).
Basically, what this means is that if you want extreme power saving use a governor with 128MHz minimum and have as few background services as possible (or at least the ones that are there should be optimized for the least CPU usage).
Now I use the standard governor (248 - 600) and I thing my idle power drain is OK.
I guess I will test a governor that is plain 600MHz and one wit 320 or 480 as a minimum, in order to see if power drain is higher when using a lower lag configuration.
And, just as a guess, if background tasks are triggered by timers, a governor with just 600MHz (or 320 - 600 or 380 - 600?) could (just a wild guess) mean that background tasks take less time to execute, and leave the CPU to si more in IDLE mode, causing a very similar power drain as an extreme power saving governor. But this is just a guess, i have not tested it yet. And it also depends on what apps you have (what the apps do when phone is sleeping).
Basically, my best advice would be to watch the apps (after you install a new app, wait for a night to see if the new app causes a higher drain; if it does, search for another app that does the same thing)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know about CPU's as much as u, but simple logical thinking helps here.. Low frequency + minimum of bg tasks = great power saving, I have now used the phone for 36hours without charge, 61% battery left. That is not only idling, i write about 50 to 150 sms a day & use the phone for other stuff too. So, those governors & frequencies i mentioned earlier in this post, helps a lot.
fransisco.franco thinks otherwise read the his post that contains the link to his rom devoid.francov6(ROM is cool btw and unfortunately i have a slow sdcard )
I think the first post is by far the best I have seen so far.
Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk
Wow, only 1% all night?
I'll take a deeper look at your tips!
I use devoid.franco with franco.kernel v12. From all ROMs I've isntalled, it's the best: great performance and long battery life.
I get 5% battery drain in 7:30 hours (at night), without doing anything special, without running a custom ROM and without uninstalling apps. I just make sure GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi and data are off before going to bed.

[Q] CPU Consumption

An user spotted that my apps uses a lot of CPU due to the fact that it downloads a lot of images and to do so it uses separate threads.
I think i can lower this CPU Consumption by making each thread download more images, less threads = less CPU. maybe, i do not yet know, that's not my problem.
My real question is the following:
to monitor the app i use "System Tuner", once i start the app it downloads the images and it uses the CPU, ok, on this process CPU consumption might get to almost 50% (!), but why when this process is finished the CPU Consumption does SLOWLY decrease it's value? Should i worry about this values?
This process can take up to a couple of minutes it's not the whole app, when this process is not running CPU Consumption can be 3/5 %
Thanks

[Q] Overclocking Concept

Hi Guys,
I am a noob here. I have never used a android phone before, not even a iPhone - so basically no smart phones.My first smart/android phone would be Nexus 4 which would be coming tomorrow.
I have been reading threads to understand andriod architecture and believe have understood to certain extent.
I have a question in clocking the CPUs and Voting.
As I understand, we have 3 states -Max, Min and Sleep for a single CPU core
Max - The frequency (clock speed) which CPU executes or maximum speed which CPU sends signals to its components and get the response back. This would be used when the system is on - which means when user is doing some process.. like texting, video chat, gaming (this case GPU is also involved) etc.
Min - This would be for background process when the user/phone is idle - that when screen is off (eq - gmail sync, facebook sync etc..)
Sleep - Screen off and no background process , the core will be in sleep.
And the battery level will be directly propotional to speed of CPU with respect to the volting.
Now lets say there is a single core processor in a phone which can clock upto 1.5GZ. and the stock kernel comes up with Max - 1.3GZ and MIN -0.5 GHZ.
Question is abt overclocking minimum frequency
1. why not overclock the Mn frequency to 1.3Ghz? because the backgroundprocess would be fast and phone/core will be sleeping after that,
which means process consumes more battery at that particular time but overall baterry should be efficient as there would be more sleeping time.
2. About volting, so far I have not seen min and max volting. So is there only one voltage/power drawn for max and min CPU speeds by CPU?
Please correct me if any of my statements is wrong.
Appreciate your help,
Thanks,
Franklin B.
Overclocking the minimum frequency to 1.3ghz would probably decrease your processor's life if you use your phone too much but I have been actually increasing my phone even 200mhz more than it was in stock ROMs, i've been using my device for more than 2 years and it still works perfectly. Finally, it all depends on how much your phone is good.
I also decreased the cpu min and max frequency when phone sleeps to 256 mhz which decreased a lot battery consumption.
Hope i helped !
Don't forget the THANKS button
1.you can but your battery life will be drastically reduced! There is a good amount of time after the screen is off and before the phone sleeps! So if over clock the min to 1.3Ghz, the processor will be running at 1.3Ghz till it goes to sleep! But if that's what you want you can do that!
2 . I'm not so sure about this topic either but I think the processor operates at a particular voltage and I could be wrong!
Sent from my GT-P3100 using Tapatalk 2
Thank you Guys
Franklin Bernard said:
1. why not overclock the Mn frequency to 1.3Ghz? because the backgroundprocess would be fast and phone/core will be sleeping after that,
which means process consumes more battery at that particular time but overall baterry should be efficient as there would be more sleeping time.
2. About volting, so far I have not seen min and max volting. So is there only one voltage/power drawn for max and min CPU speeds by CPU?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, I received your PM. I agree with the guys about the heat issues, longevity, and battery life etc. The answer to your question #2 will help you better understand things.
In all kernels, there are frequency/voltage scaling tables. For every frequency step (clock speed) in the table, it corresponds to a specific voltage. It gets a bit more complicated than this of course, but that is the basic way things are setup in the kernel. The higher the frequency, the higher the voltage is required to be to keep the CPU (or GPU, bus, RAM etc.) stable at a given clock speed. The more voltage, the more current, and the more heat is generated. The longer you stay at higher clock speeds/voltages, the better the cooling system you need to have. Supply regulators are defined to feed the core and rail voltages so that the processor can live in a happy environment no matter what it is being asked to.
As far as power consumption, it's all about getting a unit of work done in a timely/efficient fashion using the least amount of power consumption. If the phone is sleeping, the word "timely" takes on a different meaning so then it is mostly concerned with power consumption and getting the background tasks completed effectively without having the phone experience the sleep of death (SOD). What you are talking about is the theory of "race to sleep" so that the work can be done quickly and the phone can go back to sleep where it uses the least amount of power (clocks actually turn off during deep sleep and cores are turned off). However, there is a happy medium to this theory and heat and battery consumption are the main enemies. Heat can also rob efficiency, more current is required when a circuit heats up. The more a phone wakes up to do syncs for email, apps, social networking, missed calls etc., that work can stack up throughout the day. The question comes down to how can the device get this work done using the least power and keep the device cool. On the N4, the lowest frequencies can use ~700-800mV per core while the highest frequencies can use ~1100mV. There is a drastic difference in the amount of heat generation between this range.
I think this should give you the general idea and maybe more that you wanted to know! Here are some links to check out if you are interested. Google and you will find many many more articles and research papers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage_and_frequency_scaling
http://atrak.usc.edu/~massoud/Talks/Pedram-dvfs-Taiwan05.pdf
Thanks a ton !!!

[SD][LineageOS 14.1] Battery drain by system and cores working at full speed.

Hello,
1. Battery drain when screen on. According to GSam stats, it is caused by system and kernel. These two things have about 40% usage each. I disabled google calendar and few other apps that wake up device frequently.
Any ideas?
2. CPU keeps to work at full speed while screen on. It's cool anyway, but:
- 1 to 4 cores have 60-70% usage
- 5 to 8 cores have 0-2% usage
You can see it's really unnecessary to keep 2GHz on 5-8.

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