Running AOSP ish rom and applied the latest GPS fix (can't remember exactly which one).
So I have been running this rom for a long time, like since it was released. The only issue was the gps was still crappy. I did the hardware fix but that didn't help. About 2 months ago I saw a new fix which involved changing the info in the gps settings page. Anyway, gps is fast to lock (like 5 seconds) and is accurate now.
Around the same time I did the gps fix, I noticed I started having worse battery life. I hardly use my phone during the day and some days don't make a call or use gps, internet (other auto email notifications) etc but I notice my battery is down to 10-20% at the end of the day, approx 10 hours after taking it off charge. This is while at work with no wifi connected and no way the gps could get a lock.
Now if I am off, going from place to place in my car (connected to my bluetooth head unit) and when at home the phone sitting on a table, connected to wifi and with a reasonable ability to get a gps lock, my battery is still 80-90% charged at the end of the day.
What could be causing this? I have thought that when at work I have a worse signal and that the momentary loss of signal and the searching for a signal may cause this. How about the fact that it isn't connected to wifi but there are a couple available?
Thanks for any info.
I work in an office which is a level below ground in central Sydney so most of my work day I am out of reception.
Now I do venture into reception areas so every now and then so don't want to turn aeroplane mode on and off all the time.... So please don't suggest this.
With my previous phone (i8000) I didn't have such a drain on battery when out of reception all day from what I remember. I used to get really long standby times but I didn't use the screen anywhere near as much.
Now I know the phone will use more power in low reception areas because it needs to turn the sensitivity up to get clear signal. But the i9100 seems to drain much more than all my other phones I have used.
I am on stock I3 firmware with CT Root kernel. I have a high level of 44% Cell Standby with only being on for 6 hours (and out of reception for 3 of them) even though I have used the screen for 1 hour and that only shows 37% of usage. I don't remember it being this bad on H3 but to be honest I didn't really check for comparison of usage.
Is this normal? My old O2 phone on win mo used to go into a state of sleep for searching for reception when at work because it used to take a few minutes sometimes, after I got into reception zone, to realise I had reception. The i9100 seems to get it straight away which makes me think is it polling all the time I am at work and draining the battery more because it tries so hard?
Hope I made this clear.
So it appears like from research this high drain is fairly common on android devices when in no reception areas. I could understand why it would happen in low reception areas where the phone uses more power to pick up a weak signal. But why would the phone continually do this in a NO recpetion area. I thought samsung would have made the phone relaise it has no reception and only try every 5 minutes or so...
I never noticed this on my i8000 or any of my win mo phones before it. I assume they realsied there was no reception and stopped polling at full strength the whole time I was at work. This would have been indicated by the slight delay of leaving my bilding before getting messages sometimes where now its instant. But without the battery usage stats I can't compare.
I have tried to find an app that automatically puts the phone into aeroplane mode when NO signal for 30 minutes or something. And keep s turning aeroplane off every 5 or 10 minutes or so. But I have yet to find anything.
I realise there are programs that will use GPS and do it automatically but this is not ideal. I only want it to happen when I have no reception.
Any ideas of ways to fix this without me manually putting my phone into aeroplane mode when I'm in my office and remembering to take it back out when I know I should have reception? I don't want to use location based because this doesn't work when I go up one level.
Just bumping my ancient thread.
After an app that will recognised NO reception for long periods and automatically put flights mode on. Then turn flight mode off briefly every 5 minutes or so to check if reception is back.
In my office I have no reception but if I go up two levels I do. So time based automation does not suit nor does location based unless it knows what level I am on.
See above for the long story
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
Heya all.
I'd like to know is there some android application that can control my 2G/3G settings based on a rule (something like AutomateIt, which does not do that) so that it stops my phone from trying to connect to 3G network when signal is low or lost?
Let me explain - I go twice a week to a gym which is actually in the basement of a building, and my carrier's network is very weak there, mostly no signal at all.
During those 2hrs period I've noticed that my battery drainage is larger than when I'm in the reach of the network.
Since I know that cell phones tries to log-on to the network using maximum power, and that 3G uses more juice than 2G, I concluded that my phone is trying to reconnect to 3G network when it looses signal instead of doing nothing.
Now, I don't exactly know how phones in general behave when they loose signal alltogether (I think they go from 3G down to 2G and then should go into some passive, listening-only mode, waiting for the beacon from the cell tower), but I guess that in such cases it would be better for me to force the phone to go to 2G (and keep reconnecting/listening on 2G) and later on, when it detects 3G, switch back to it.
Unfortunatelly, AutomateIt does not have radio control and I can't use it like I do at night to turn off sync and data and turn it on in the morning.
Also it does not have a rule related to network signal strength/type/whatever.
I can't use some timer app that would simply turn on/off airplane mode during that period, because I might not go to the gym sometimes, or I might simply be late or leave the gym later, so I'd still have larger battery drainage, even for a short period of time.
Many words, but I hope everybody understands my problem.
Cheers.
OK is it possible that nobody knows the answer to this?
I know that 2g/3g autoswitching should do it's job but watching my power drainage I get the feeling that phone keeps trying to force 3g and that eats the battery.
Sent from my Prime
what are others thoughts on some of the pros and cons of this update? i'm thinking it will actually save battery to have wifi 'always on' in standby mode rather than repeatedly switching between a on/off state which uses more energy.
It will definitely eat more battery if it's always on under the lockscreen...
Also there is an option to deactivate notifications when new wifi hotspots are around.. if you are about battery life you should deactivate this..
Ikkari said:
It will definitely eat more battery if it's always on under the lockscreen...
Also there is an option to deactivate notifications when new wifi hotspots are around.. if you are about battery life you should deactivate this..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I keep my Wifi always on because it consumes the least battery (vs 3G, LTE, etc).
If I don't play games on my Lumia 920 the battery can last 3 days.
This update is freezing my phone Dunno why but I have tested it. I occasionally get a freeze now and then, but when the keep wifi is on, it is like every couple of hrs... Will test it more though.
Ikkari said:
It will definitely eat more battery if it's always on under the lockscreen...
Also there is an option to deactivate notifications when new wifi hotspots are around.. if you are about battery life you should deactivate this..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wrong unless your phone is using 5-year old wifi chip.
Correct me if I am wrong, but is the wifi on this phone an on demand type system? From what I see on mine, the wifi unless being used for an actual update or downloading other content goes to sleep when the lock screen is on. It then wakes up if there is an update pushed to it or if something else needs it or of course if you unlock the phone. At least that is the way it appears that mine works.
Also your radio service are going to use much more power than the wifi will as they are higher power transmitters and receivers. There is a reason wifi only works within a few hundred feet and radio works for several miles that is due to the power difference. Of course with more power you get more battery consumption.
In the case of conserving the battery you are better off to use wifi when possible, leave it on and let the phone control it.
In my experience keeping Wifi on permanently lead to a remarkable decrease in battery life. That will depend on where you are though. If I have it sitting at home where it has Wifi connectivity it's likely that I would see better battery life because all actual transfers will happen via Wifi. At work though it can't connect to the Wifi network (private phone, work network) and so I have 3G running anyway while the phone keeps looking for Wifi networks to connect to.
The problem boils down to the fact that while you can switch off Wifi completely because everything can still work using 3G you can't switch off the phone part completely because only data is done over Wifi but you still need the mobile connection to receive calls/SMS.
I would suggest to anyone to simply try out what works better for them. For me it worked best to let Wifi deactivate automatically as it had been the default in WP since WP7 came out.
foxbat121 said:
Wrong unless your phone is using 5-year old wifi chip.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe Wifi is using less power when you are downloading something and need a lot of data... But when your phone is idle... Constant on Wifi is using far more battery power than 3G that checks for email or weather every 1-2 hours...
Simple enough...if you are consistently in an area with a WiFi signal, leave WiFi "always on"...it will consume less battery. If you're in an area without WiFi signal then turn it off, as searching for a signal will help run your battery down.
Sent from my LG-E970 using Tapatalk 2
Ikkari said:
Maybe Wifi is using less power when you are downloading something and need a lot of data... But when your phone is idle... Constant on Wifi is using far more battery power than 3G that checks for email or weather every 1-2 hours...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Again, simply not true unless you are using a 5-year old phone. Even if you are in an area that has no wifi connection, the extra drain caused by searching for Wi-Fi networks is minimum in a modern OS and modern chipset. I have left all my android phones (the ones that offer Wi-Fi always on feature for a few years now) wifi on all the time. Never have felt much difference vs if I turn wifi off. It annoys me that WP didn't offer this capability for so long.
foxbat121 said:
Again, simply not true unless you are using a 5-year old phone. Even if you are in an area that has no wifi connection, the extra drain caused by searching for Wi-Fi networks is minimum in a modern OS and modern chipset. I have left all my android phones (the ones that offer Wi-Fi always on feature for a few years now) wifi on all the time. Never have felt much difference vs if I turn wifi off. It annoys me that WP didn't offer this capability for so long.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tested a lot of phones Android and WP, my experience is that wifi always on is a battery killer... And I'm talking about state of the art hardware... It's just my 2 cent's but i keep it off...
When I don't charge overnight and wifi is always on my battery drops about 40%
with only 3G on about 8-10%
Foxbat: you can leave it any way you want to do it. I'm not saying Microsoft should remove the feature. But in my experience keeping Wifi on kills the battery faster. I tested it for my use case with always on and with Auto and in the end: Auto it was for me.
The best advice you can give to people is: try it out yourself and you will see what works best for you.
A picture or two says it all. See the attached files for my two testing: one with wifi always on for 24-hour and one with Wi-Fi in auto mode for 24-hour:
The right picture shows 0.0%/hour under current discharge rate... pretty impressive
Ikkari said:
The right picture shows 0.0%/hour under current discharge rate... pretty impressive
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The keyword is 'Current' -- means at that moment. You can derive the same thing from the left in various sections. The key here is that I don't see any discernible difference. Certainly not a battery killer in any sense as you claimed.
If you look at the first 12-hour period of both chart (when the phone is mostly sleep and not used), the result is almost identical. FYI, there are three push emails connected all the time: Hotmail, GMail and Corporate Exchange Email.
Yes the keyword 'Current' -- means at that moment... so your phone is not discharging although your screen is on... Very accurate app...
Ikkari said:
Yes the keyword 'Current' -- means at that moment... so your phone is not discharging although your screen is on... Very accurate app...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, what you saying is that if you have the screen on, you will see your battery percentage drop immediately? You should return your phone if that is the case.
Battery app get its information from the phone OS reporting. If the OS reported the same battery percentage over a short period of time, the discharge rate won't be anything other than zero. That's limitation of the platform, not app.
Instead of criticize the app which is not the point of the post, why don't you post your findings where leave Wi-Fi always on kills your battery?
it' % per hour... and your phone is using currently using 0,0% per hour so if you leave it like that it will run for ever... so where is the mistake?
Ikkari said:
it' % per hour... and your phone is using currently using 0,0% per hour so if you leave it like that it will run for ever... so where is the mistake?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
% per hour is a unit of measurement. It doesn't mean you have to take one hour to measure it in order to claim its rate. That will be average rate on that hour, not current rate which is meant to see what your current usage pattern is. It can't be used to predict your battery life. If you notice that when you take your phone off the charger, it will stay on 100% for quite some time before it starts to drop. Does that mean your phone battery can last forever? Think about it before post these ridiculous statements.
Foxbat - you are trying to tell us how our devices should behave while we are telling you how they actually behave in the real world out there. You can repeat your 5 years story as often as you want to but it clearly doesn't live up to the factual reality we experience every day and I guess after trying it out with different ROMs on the 920 and leaving all other settings the same I know the effect it had pretty well.
Nice to know though that you are having a different experience with different devices.
Hi, New to XDA, also new to the S4, currently my battery life is quite bad, I am attaching a couple of screenshots so that you can get a better idea of whats happening with my phone.
Here is a list of items that are on:
GPS
WIFI
Mobile Data
Sync ( Google account only )
Brightness ( Auto )
The problem I have is that I have heard a lot of people say they get 3-4 hours of screen time, as you can see from the image below, I have only had 38 minutes of screen time, one thing I will add is that my screen gets warm when I am using it ( you can feel its warm/hot when you touch it ), is this ok?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
there have been a lot of reports saying if you are on wifi and idling battery drain is really bad
how bright is your screen set at?
not very good results, I would buy another battery first, no hurt in having a spare, and see if it is doing the same, cause, looks like you have nothing really eating up the battery. Then if that does not work, I would go for a replacement.
Good Luck!
First, are you rooted and/or running a custom ROM? If so, was your battery any better on stock? I'd hate to suggest it, but Verizon would anyway, have you tried a factory reset, and run without apps to see if it's any better? You're right, though, that it doesn't look like much is killing the battery. I'd go for the replacement through Verizon if it doesn't improve.
chrismyu said:
there have been a lot of reports saying if you are on wifi and idling battery drain is really bad
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the bad Wifi Idle battery drain..After 2 weeks of trial and error (and reading through tons of Shark Logs) I tracked my issue down to Multicast being enabled on one of my access points.
I recommend the OP log into all of their Access Points/Routers and disable any reference to Multicast...Of course you wont be able to on a school or work network (unless you have the proper authority and about 300 change management endorsements..but I digress).
I have several AP's in my house..little did I know that an old WRT54G (with tomato firmware) had Multicast enabled..it was causing a lot of noise on my LAN and only my S4 and S3 were affected...No other Wifi devices seemed to care..and I wasn't even connected to that Access Point..It is just an old AP I have on for some Legacy devices on my LAN.
Once I disabled Multicast, my Idle battery returned to normal..Then I had the "runaway Google Services" issue that some people have, but then I just disabled all Location services on my phone and that returned to normal.
TLNR - Disable Multicast on you home router and any access points you have on in your LAN.