S4 major battery drain - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi so I have an S4 and the battery has been fine for months but all of a sudden it hardly will last through a regular day. It loses around 5% an hour with the screen off and 1% a minute with the screen on. I get around 45 minutes of screen on time a day which seems terrible. The main thing that is using it it android kernel and android OS. Any fix's? I am rooted and running 5.0.1 and have never changed the kernel. (At least not on purpose) any help is nice.

Related

Android OS bug and how it affects us all

This is not a battery thread. I just wanted to do some maths based on some findings of my own.
I post this screens, taken at 50% battery. I rebooted when full battery for a fresh graph. I'm running "stock" 2.3.4 KG1. Data is always on, two push mail accounts, display on Auto, no gaming, no photos for today.
So, if the graph are accurate (I really doubt that):
1. 17 hrs 38 mins total time on for 50%
from this:
-1 hr 48 mins phone calls
- 45 mins Android OS
-1hr 2 mins display on
-Android system (the thing responsible for widgets, push mail and so on, basically for apps) 7 mins 50 secs!
-Phone idle 16 hrs 35 mins. TIME WHEN NOTHING IS SUPPOSED TO BE RUNNING IN CPU FOREGROUND
- Navigon comes up with 11% BUT I NEVER USED IT- and there are no details on CPU usage either.
- I used 20 mins of sync Wifi for the later part of today, wifi doesn't show on the graph- no clue why.
Here I stand pretty puzzled:
1hr 48 mins of calling + 16 hrs 35 mins of idle is 18 hrs 23 mins! assuming that idle does not include when calls connected and screen off .
Here are the figures for the AOS and how life would be without it.
Android OS chewed 14 % of the 50 % battery. Calling ate 43% for 1 hr 48 mins. If it wasn't for AOS bug, I would have had power to call for some 36 more mins to get to the 50% battery. That's like 30% more talk time without the bug.
Display, set on auto, drained 10% of power for 1hr 2 mins. Android OS bug stole almost 30 mins of display time for every hour . This is 50% wasted power.
Phone Idle is 4% for 16 hrs and 35 mins. So, basically, every minute under raging AOS eats 0.31% of battery. for every 1% the phone idles for 4 hours and 9 mins (and ideal stand-by time of four and an half days ). EVERY MINUTE OF ANDROID OS EATS AWAY 1 HOUR AND 22 MINUTES.
Also, the Widgets and all other stuff are actually consuming half the power eaten away by AOS.
So, if by miracle, the faulty driver is resolved by Samsung, we should get :
30% more talk time
50% more display time
350% more idle time.
Or, for the connoisseurs:
Android OS comes in, battery goes flat. No miscommunication. You can't explain that.
Good post, my own experiences (i only have my GS2 a few days coming from a HD2)
I deleted my battery stats last night and left my phone on,data was enabled nothing like bluetooth/GPS,etc,brightness is set to automatic brightness the phone was at 99% and from 12.29am to 09.59am this morning when i checked it was 83%,not too bad i suppose but could be better, i have fast dormancy disabled and i froze the Samsung apps with Titanium Backup,however the Android OS was at 41% and Maps and Cell Standby both 15%, since then ive been using the phone for some Internet, 1 call and sent a few text messages and it's now currently 12.41pm and it's at 47% and the display now shows at 35% and the Android OS is 23%, im running Lite'ning ROM 1.5, does this seem normal or quite excessive im in 2 minds myself, does the Android OS usually be as high as that when in standby,when im using the phone for a period of time it appears to go down as low as 8%.
All I can say is, use ATK. Its just working great for me.
Regards.
Sent from GT-I9100
Thank you for this. It makes the problem clear to see. There are a lot of people saying things like "it all adds up to 100%" or "hey Android OS is high, but my battery life is very good".
As you say, we'd get much much better battery life if it weren't for this damn bug. Battery life can be good now. However with a 1650 mah battery, without Android OS wasting precious energy, it would be great...
Great summary!
More info
I have depleted the other 50% of battery so I'll post the values. The phone charged when connected to transfer the files. Well, at the end of the day, it looks like the that:
1. Voice calls drained 39% of battery for 3 hrs and 19 minutes.
2. Display is 2nd with 14% and 2hrs and 20 mins.
3. Android OS gets 3rd place with 12% and 1hr 20-this is the kernel running.
4. Android System- the one you bought the phone for- is pretty shy, only 9% . I repeat, here are all the widgets, Sammy updater, mail and so on.
...
Dialer is 6%, Navigon gets 8%, Cell standby - that's the radio FW- 5%
Phone Idle is the champ with 3% @ 31 hrs and 17 mins. That's the spirit.
Also, GPS status is eating 2,2% for every minute.
Bottom line: if it wasn't for the AOS, I would have had -see below( let's be real and give each process it's share so I'll split the AOS drain to get everybody happy)- before running for the charger .
1. Phone calls. 5.6% more battery- and 23 minutes more of talk time.
2. Display. 1.7% 22 minutes more.
3. Phone idle 0.9 % almost 10 hrs.
The rest of ~4% is shared for Wifi, Cell Standby and android system.
These numbers are valid for my usage pattern, phone calls all day long/ that's why i bought a phone for/.
I might draw some lines here and reveal some facts ( the values might be different according to usage pattern):
ONE MINUTE OF:
AOS bug drains 0.15%
Voice calling (I live on a good network signal area) depletes 0.13%
Display on is lower than calling @ 0.10%.
GPS could be chewing 2% when polled thoroughly.
Widgets and other Sammy crap are not scary at all. In fact, I find them pretty decent under this SW revision.
Maybe some will find these values useful.
Maybe we don't realize the impact of implementing a bad driver. For me, it all makes a lot of sense and annoys me more. Too bad we not on Icrap's ship, the news would have been all over the web.
One last thing though.
There are 2 main issues withSGS2: AOS and wake up lag. Never listen to any wise guy that says the lag comes from deep sleep and you should be lucky if you have it because it means the phone is SLEEPING and not eating away battery. I've noticed lately a trend in trolling this issue. I am confident that the guys behind this reasoning are on the same level with the guys that came up with Killing task managers and empty ram crap in Linux. And they even wonder why the alarm is not working after RAM flush.....
Wake up lag is a side effect of some nasty crap hogging the CPU's front bandwith. I bet any trolls here that when the lag is gone so will the AOS bug be ( at least AOS will be under Idle in %).
My wild guess is a radio issue somewhere.
same problem omg :S i hate this !! but phone is great !!
KG3 Report
Hi,
I have a new report to post, this time under KG3 stock rom. This time WI-Fi off whole time. I used the car dock for 10 mins.
1 day 7 hrs and 57mins from full charge to 15%:
Voice calls 2 hrs and 35 mins -37 %
Display on auto 2 hrs and 27 mins 20%
Android system 13 % Cpu total 10m 16 s
Android OS 9% 53 min 45 s
Dialer 6% C
Cell standby 6%
navigon 4% pops up,never used it
Phone idle 4%
Although it seems the AOS got less cpu with this, the improvement is not so clear. I almost talked 1 hr less with this one.
My android is 49% of 15 hour up time from last charge but the CPU time is only 2 hours 15 minutes for it. Hardly 49% of up time. Do you think maybe firstly there is no bug, its a bug with reporting not AOS usage time and that the phone hardware just eats a lot of juice even in standby. Just a thought. The battery lasts pretty good for the fact that its so small, there's an amoled screen and a dual core processor. Perhaps even in idle the hardware just draws a lot of power to allow a quick jump from standby to fully activated without any waiting around.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
sohanlon07 said:
My android is 49% of 15 hour up time from last charge but the CPU time is only 2 hours 15 minutes for it. Hardly 49% of up time. Do you think maybe firstly there is no bug, its a bug with reporting not AOS usage time and that the phone hardware just eats a lot of juice even in standby. Just a thought. The battery lasts pretty good for the fact that its so small, there's an amoled screen and a dual core processor. Perhaps even in idle the hardware just draws a lot of power to allow a quick jump from standby to fully activated without any waiting around.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you post some screens?
Android system is 49%? the percents relate to the battery usage, not the time.
ALSO VERY IMPORTANT:
Dual core CPU should draw less power in standby/idle/sync. this is the idea behind dual/quad cores. If you have the time, read on how do they stack processes.
Deep sleep is not working properly. How come my WIN7 x64 wakes up in less than 1 sec from standby> win kernel is around 300 megs vs 17megs Android? It is a driver issue.
htc9420 said:
Could you post some screens?
Android system is 49%? the percents relate to the battery usage, not the time.
ALSO VERY IMPORTANT:
Dual core CPU should draw less power in standby/idle/sync. this is the idea behind dual/quad cores. If you have the time, read on how do they stack processes.
Deep sleep is not working properly. How come my WIN7 x64 wakes up in less than 1 sec from standby> win kernel is around 300 megs vs 17megs Android? It is a driver issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So instead of writing here, we should write to Samsung, correct? I hope this will be resolved soon, OTA update should do nicely!
tonycfc said:
So instead of writing here, we should write to Samsung, correct? I hope this will be resolved soon, OTA update should do nicely!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Believe me, I've tried the highest official way there is. They keep blaming android/google. I even pointed them some apps that were using obsolete scripts and 4-5 ro.* that were hogging the cpu. All they answered is that is under revision. then somebody from the work asked me what the f*** is this communication about and told me to use the nexus S instead.
Here the results of a simple test I did:
KG3, CF-Root, 8 widgets, skype and viber, 2 e-mail accounts. The usage was roughly the same (mostly internet browsing, e-mail cheking and only a few voice calls 20min approx.) The difference is that in the first day I left the sync and WiFi on all the time. On the second day, I left both sync (including background sync) and WiFi off most of the day, except during the time which I was using it (browsing internet, updating market apps, checking e-mail, etc.) The result, as you can see in the screenshots below, is that with sync and WiFi off, I've got almost 26h extra of battery life (18h18min v 1d19h52min). So, for me at least, the battery drain is WiFi+sync.
Looking at the pictures, compare phone awake v screen on. With sync+WiFi, you'll see that the phone was awake many times with the screen off, whereas it didn't happen when the sync+WiFi was off.
Therefore, I think it is better to turn sync+WiFi on only when you really need it, and not all the time. That's what I'm going to do from now on.
Ah, no powersaving settings enabled in any case!
Android OS @2%
Still under KG3, nothing installed lately, nothing at all:
Full battery in the morning almost flat in the evening with very light usage- I on a sort of holiday ....
1. 16h and 2 mins it lasted
2. 57 mins of calling
3. 51 mins of display time
4. Android OS WAS 2 % running for a total of 3 mins
REALLY SAMSUNG?
I want my AoS back.....
i rooted the phone yesterday, screen on time was around 4 hours or so..10% drain per hour average with screen on-off.
freeze all bloatwares and aos went down to less than 10% (was in 40s).
will see battery improvement today.
after root, i still got the yellow rectangle at boot (havent remove it yet)..will it affect battery life? any input?
I froze the WIFI Sharing service and my phone went from dying 25% over 4 hours at work with almost no use (and WIFI off) to lasting all day, or not charging at night and lasting all night and through the next day.
Just saying.
iwang;16719645s in 40s).
after root said:
No
there are instructions posted to remove yellow triangle in the root thread .
jje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iwang said:
after root, i still got the yellow rectangle at boot (havent remove it yet)..will it affect battery life? any input?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you don't understand that the yellow triangle ONLY means that the kernel you have flashed does not have the correct signature (i.e. it is a custom kernel) then you shouldn't really be messing with root at all. How would this be relevant to the AOS bug or to battery life?
What is your view on juicedefender?
Battery savers are pieces of **** that turn help battery life by constantly changing the device on something more like Nokia soap.
My Personal view on software that claim to help save on battery was/is as it is about task managers on Android... somehow useless mainly for a few reasons:
1. They interfere with running processes and I haven't seen one really optimized for the system. Some are behaving limiting the performance. Which isn't a good thing.
2. I found that even Watchdog is a drain culprit when it's running after a limbo limbo process.
I have seen this issues before, in PC world. 8-5 years ago, Sony was loading their Vaio series with so much crap that the laptops were slow as a turtle right from a start up. They failed to listed then and lost almost 60% of their market. Others reacted faster and gave the option of removing crapware ( mainly proprietary sofware and trial) when ordering [ btw,of course, anybody could do it by msconfig but few were willing to mess it...].
I can't get it why Sammy, HTC, LG won't offer a barebone/unified Android. We could all get what we need from Market and this is why we have the markets war.
I don't want my update service running in background, nor do I need email app from Samsung...in order to get them off my back I need to root, Edit a file and make sure I mount the right permissions( or BUY something to do it for me) and so on, most people don't want/can't root , not mentioning the longer the chain the more links likely to break, including the warranty is voided ...WHY all the fuss to stop something I don't want?
Microsoft hit the nail in the head with their approach to WP7 (except closing it like Apple). That's because they had to deal with screamers for 20 years and they have a clue about crap ruining an OS.
And yes, I am still waiting to see a dev coming out with a pure Android Rom on whole XDA.... for any device. They all add something to it....a tiny tweak or a tiny thing.

Battery Life

Here's my results so far.
So, after 8 hours or so, 50% battery life... 4G service, 3-4 bars whole time.
Everything looked ok, other than one thing... Skype... Which I did not open today, kept the phone awake for 41 minutes... hmmmmm! Also had about 30 minutes of browser time, and 52 min of display time. This includes probably about 20 emails pushed down and about 50-60 texts sent and recieved total. Display is definately a battery hog!
Uptime - 8:23
Awake time - 2 hours.
So battery life isn't great, but its running about on part with my DInc, and that one had Nils ROM on it.
I'd love to know why Skype kept the phone awake like that... Never got opened this morning, and I freshly booted it this morning after bump charging it.
ssoares01 said:
Here's my results so far.
So, after 8 hours or so, 50% battery life... 4G service, 3-4 bars whole time.
Everything looked ok, other than one thing... Skype... Which I did not open today, kept the phone awake for 41 minutes... hmmmmm! Also had about 30 minutes of browser time, and 52 min of display time. This includes probably about 20 emails pushed down and about 50-60 texts sent and recieved total. Display is definately a battery hog!
Uptime - 8:23
Awake time - 2 hours.
So battery life isn't great, but its running about on part with my DInc, and that one had Nils ROM on it.
I'd love to know why Skype kept the phone awake like that... Never got opened this morning, and I freshly booted it this morning after bump charging it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i had an older version of Skype that i was using for some time(i just liked that particular release because it gave me the least 'issues').. anyway, lately i'd notice that the skype icon was showing that it was constantly attempting to "reconnect".. and upon inspecting battery use, skype had managed to use 42%. i finally gave in, uninstalled the version i had & then installed the latest build and now it's not doing that anymore.
So about 6% per hour, which is where my Dinc was when left on 3G. When left on Wifi and untouched during a busier day at work, it'd be around 2-3% per hour. I've left mine untouched for the past 2 hours or so, and System Monitor shows battery usage pretty much flat, with 4G on. So it looks like this shouldn't be much worse than the Dinc with light usage.
voxigenboy said:
i had an older version of Skype that i was using for some time(i just liked that particular release because it gave me the least 'issues').. anyway, lately i'd notice that the skype icon was showing that it was constantly attempting to "reconnect".. and upon inspecting battery use, skype had managed to use 42%. i finally gave in, uninstalled the version i had & then installed the latest build and now it's not doing that anymore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, I just installed it from the market to check out to see if video calls were supported. Worked well, I'll probably just uninstall it. I did the reg. Skype version rather than the VZW version.
rboddy said:
So about 6% per hour, which is where my Dinc was when left on 3G. When left on Wifi and untouched during a busier day at work, it'd be around 2-3% per hour. I've left mine untouched for the past 2 hours or so, and System Monitor shows battery usage pretty much flat, with 4G on. So it looks like this shouldn't be much worse than the Dinc with light usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah - it seems like its about the same as my DInc has been, although I feel like under constant use, the RZ holds up for a little longer (like surfing the net, etc)

i9100 sudden battery drain

Hello there. I have a Galaxy S2 i9100 for almost 2 years now, and it's been working properly since until yesterday.
As I just bought a Galaxy S4, I am now using the i9100 with a voice-only SIM card (from work), so data connection is disabled (I have Juice Defender managing its wi-fi, since I only use it at home at night). During the day, every connection stays disconnected, with the phone only being used for some work calls. That way, the phone generally ends the day with over 70% battery.
But yesterday, all of a sudden, in the beginning of the evening it "cried" about having 15% battery. I found it quite weird, as I had barely used the phone the whole day long. Barely an hour after, when I got home, it had only 1% when I went to plug it on the charger.
It spent the night charging, and now this morning, after barely 1h20 on the battery without any real usage the phone was already at 89%, while the S4 was still at 99%.
I took some screenshots of the Android built-in battery usage page (which I forgot to look at yesterday), and I see compared to the S4, Android System is draining quite a lot (24% on the i9100 x 2% on the i9505). The same happens to Android OS (25% on the i9100 x 13% on the i9505). On the other hand, the standby is smaller on the i9100 (9% x 25% on the i9505).
I did absolutely nothing different with the phone yesterday. In fact, as it's Sunday and I do not receive phone calls on Sundays, I barely used it the whole day long, so I cannot understand why all of a sudden it began draining battery like this.
Any help on narrowing down the possibilities would be welcome.
Thanks!!!
If you're using the original battery that came with the phone/one you bought around that time, I'd be buying a new one.
Indeed I am using the original battery (although I have a replacement one, which I'll test tomorrow).
And even though you might be right on acquiring a new one, it doesn't explain why all of a sudden it had such a huge drop on performance from one day to the other (and not something that happened day after day).

Battery backup reduced quite.

Hello.I use this masterpiece about a year now with really heavy usage.I almost charge it every day,or about 5 times a week the less..In the first 10 months with KITKAT i had always about 10-11 SOT hours.After 10th month also with kitkat,SOT reduced to 9-10 hours.At this point i updated to lollipop cause a certain mod that wasnt supported from kitkat.The SOT about 1 month remained same as kitkat.And finally the last month i notice that SOT has reduced to 7-8 hours.Also to mention that after 8th month the battery has veeery sudden drop from 16 to 8%.It drains about 1%/minute!From 8% and bellow it drains much more smoothly compared to 16%—8%,but not as smooth as 100%—16%.Is there any way to calibrate battery or to find out if is battery issue?
Thanks for possible help.
kos25k said:
Hello.I use this masterpiece about a year now with really heavy usage.I almost charge it every day,or about 5 times a week the less..In the first 10 months with KITKAT i had always about 10-11 SOT hours.After 10th month also with kitkat,SOT reduced to 9-10 hours.At this point i updated to lollipop cause a certain mod that wasnt supported from kitkat.The SOT about 1 month remained same as kitkat.And finally the last month i notice that SOT has reduced to 7-8 hours.Also to mention that after 8th month the battery has veeery sudden drop from 16 to 8%.It drains about 1%/minute!From 8% and bellow it drains much more smoothly compared to 16%—8%,but not as smooth as 100%—16%.Is there any way to calibrate battery or to find out if is battery issue?
Thanks for possible help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For starters, if there was a 8 hour reduction in SOT in the course of a month, something must have happened. Either the way the device is being used, or the apps you are running. No two ways around it. Also, if it drops 1% every minute your battery has either become defect (dropped the device lately?) or again, something is draining it.
There are apps you can download to check what drains the battery and hog memory etc. Don't know their names, so Google it. Otherwise, I would do a back up and then do a factory wipe. Test the factory wipe for a day or two without restoring and check if the battery drain remains the same. If not, there is indeed something you are running that is causing it.
Lastly, our Li-Ion batteries lose their capacity over time. SOT will significantly reduce over 15 months or so, depending on usage maybe earlier. If I leave my screen off the entire day I lose around 15- 20%, if I use it I get maybe 4 to 5 hours playing games with my Bluetooth headset connected and WiFi/LTE. If I watch movies it's a bit less. Just how it is.
thanks dude.i loose 1% only between 16%-8% very weird..no i never dropped it and i notice that battery drops the same way either when is just formatted or not..if i leave it allday with screen off i loose just about 2%...

Extreme Battery Drain after OneUI 2.1 / September Security update

Hello all, it's been a while since I've posted but this is quite a serious issue and could some guidance. A few weeks ago, I finally updated my Galaxy S9+ to Android 10 after being on 8.0 for so long and it's been a decent update so far. I had gripes with SoT not being the greatest but it was tolerable. Last night, I received an update for my phone and I installed it. Didn't think too much of it and continued on. I charged from my phone to ~87% today, used it lightly while working. By the end of my shift, I had 50% left.
I left the house to go for a 81 minute walk with 47%. I usually don't worry about having enough juice to make it back home but I experienced the worst battery drain I've had with this device so far. During my 90 min walk I:
listened to Spotify using my Galaxy Buds (one ended up dying towards the end because I forgot to charge them)
Checked Instagram occasionally and responded to some texts
Took 2 pics in Snapchat
Had a short video call on Messenger
It was right after the video call I noticed my battery was at 17%, which I thought was very strange. I don't leave apps running in the background for long and I have a habit of closing them out when not actively using them and I noticed the battery kept on draining despite there being no apps open besides Spotify.
Turned on the medium power saving and within a few minutes, I was at 5%. Decided to kill everything and pit my device on max power saving mode for the first time since I've owned the device. By the time I was home, my phone was at 1%.
I'm really baffled at how the battery drained at an exponential rate. I'm a medium user and I've had this phone since late 2018. Never leave location services on, never used AOD, and used the FHD display instead of QHD along with dark mode.
I'm hoping today was just an outlier as I want to keep this phone for another 2 years, but if this happens on a consistent basis I'm gonna have to start searching for a new device.
In the meantime, I have charged my phone to a 100% and disconnected the phone and observed the following:
Within 2 minutes of disconnecting, battery went from 100 - 98%. Not a good sign considering it was just idling
The battery continue to drain every other minute and I could see the battery go down on each unlock
Wiped the cache partition and I went from 93 to 94% for a brief moment prior to the phone going back to the same pattern
This is very worrisome to me as I don't believe the phone will last until midnight, I'm wondering if it's possible to roll back to the previous update.
TL;DR - After the update yesterday, the battery drained at an exponential rate despite light to medium usage
Also, here's some screenshots of my battery usage
http://imgur.com/a/lx5xXSY
I know this isn't the answer you are looking for, but all I can do is suggest changing the battery and doing a full, stock firmware flash via Odin to completely wipe your phone.
I recently replaced my phone's battery and did flash the firmware and my battery is really hanging in there. My battery was also 2 years old and before, I would get about 3h SOT when I play a game (and I do a lot). Now, I'm getting 5h SOT no problem with about 2-3h gaming included, so I really do suggest a battery change. I'm thinking you could be able to squeeze another 1 or 2 years into this amazing phone.
Battery replacement
ShaDisNX255 said:
I know this isn't the answer you are looking for, but all I can do is suggest changing the battery and doing a full, stock firmware flash via Odin to completely wipe your phone.
I recently replaced my phone's battery and did flash the firmware and my battery is really hanging in there. My battery was also 2 years old and before, I would get about 3h SOT when I play a game (and I do a lot). Now, I'm getting 5h SOT no problem with about 2-3h gaming included, so I really do suggest a battery change. I'm thinking you could be able to squeeze another 1 or 2 years into this amazing phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How hard was it to remove the battery? I bought one but unfortunately also a toolkit which seems to be only for iphone, what screw size has the s9+?
aaronanyaralu said:
How hard was it to remove the battery? I bought one but unfortunately also a toolkit which seems to be only for iphone, what screw size has the s9+?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, I had someone paid to do it lol I didn't trust myself.

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