[Q] 4 hour battery life - Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I've had my SGS2 for several months now and haven't had too many issues up until 1-2 weeks ago. I have Hotmail setup with EAS and push on the phone and normally I'd get through a day without charging my phone. However about 2 weeks ago I was overseas and had no internet coverage, I added a couple of contacts in and 1/4 of them synced. The other 3 haven't no matter what I tried (Editing, deleting & re-adding via Vcard, deleting and manually adding) which I think *may* be a possible cause of Exchange consuming a lot of battery power.
Anyhow I installed BBS as the phone battery graph shows the phone being awake a lot, and sure enough Exchange is causing a lot of wakes, but there's also wakes I have no idea what they are from.
Does anyone have any suggestions on fixing Exchange & my battery issue? Screenshots attached.

Install CPU Spy for the store. It'll probably show your phone is not using its deep sleep state, may be not even the lower CPU frequencies either.
This happened to me once also, and the problem was with the Mail Exchange as you're guessing.
One quick way to diagnose that is to do the following.
Go to
System Settings --> Applications --> Running
Find Email and Exchange Services, click on it and Stop everthing you can.
After confirming these services have stopped, go back to CPU spy, click on your menu soft key, and Reset Timers. This will clear the times your phone has spent in each CPU state. Now, exit CPU Spy, lock your phone and return in 10 mins or so. Open CPU Spy, it should show that for most of that time your phone has been in Deep Sleep and has used the lower CPU States a little bit also.
When this happened to me it got so bad that the phone was continously 'locked' on 1200Mhz. Stoping Exchange services was the only way it would 'unlock'.
I had the LUXURY of having being able to reflash my rom and getting rid of the problem (which may have been caused when i updated my rom without wiping), but i don't think you are rooted / using a custom rom.
In which case it's probably a good idea to find your Email and Exchange app in --> Manage Apps --> All, and clearing Cache and Data for both. Note you'll loose all your emails and settings, (which you'll be able to retreive when you resync it etc).

I was having same problem with the stock email. My battery which used to last about 12h heavy usage now doesn't last 7h idle. I fully charged last night and removed from charge before going to sleep, woke up this morning battery was drained.
The exchange email program wasn't allowing the system to deep sleep which was being a pain, after much reading everywhere I decided to delete my exchange accounts (hotmail, gmail), clear the cache and restart the exchange config.
At the moment, seems to have worked but many people who have done this have said that with the time the problem will return so it's not a fix really.
I'm willing to see how long it will work, give it a try as well.
If doesn't work, try K9, touchdown or a any other alternative email client of your like but don't forget to remove your account from the stock. When I removed my accounts from the stock email program, my battery went only 2% down in over 2 hours.

O_Kara said:
I was having same problem with the stock email. My battery which used to last about 12h heavy usage now doesn't last 7h idle. I fully charged last night and removed from charge before going to sleep, woke up this morning battery was drained.
The exchange email program wasn't allowing the system to deep sleep which was being a pain, after much reading everywhere I decided to delete my exchange accounts (hotmail, gmail), clear the cache and restart the exchange config.
At the moment, seems to have worked but many people who have done this have said that with the time the problem will return so it's not a fix really.
I'm willing to see how long it will work, give it a try as well.
If doesn't work, try K9, touchdown or a any other alternative email client of your like but don't forget to remove your account from the stock. When I removed my accounts from the stock email program, my battery went only 2% down in over 2 hours.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, last night the exchange has started playing around again. Deleted my accounts and installed Touchdown.
It has made a incredible difference, in 4 hours my battery has gone down 8%.
My only problem with touchdown is that it doesnt push emails to my both accounts simultaneously, I need to physically switch account to receive those emails.
I also tried K9 but as I couldnt set up my hotmail account it didnt work for me.

Related

Battery drainage during flightmode

Good morning xda-users.
ive got a questions - as already mentioned in topic - concerning battery drain during flightmode.
As everbody knows in flightmode all connections are off, which can save a bit of battery.
But what about programms, that are configured to get information over and about the connection. E.g. email sync every 2 hours from 2 imap accounts, time sync and especially WMLonglife which I configured that it cuts off the internet connection when its 60 seconds in idle -> so WMLonglife have to check every 60 seconds if programm is using the internet connection, if not wmll disables the connection.
would it be worth to disable that processes over night or wouldnt it be worth concerning battery drainage.
greetz Jan
For the email, you can just adjust the off-peak times so that emails are not checked at night.
I'm not sure if your question was regarding not running wmll at night so that it doesn't drain the battery when it runs it's checks? If that is the case then I don't think you have anything to worry about as I don't think that it checks every 60sec, as that would be wasteful. I'm guessing instead it only checks if the data connection is active, so if data is off, it doesn't do anything. Also, I'm guessing that the way it checks for data, it barely adds any drainage whatsoever; you might want to ask the app developer the specifics there.
Thanks for ure reply, regarding email retrieval times...didnt find an option to configure a timespace when I want to receive the mails...As mentioned im using 2 imap accounts...earlier when i was using pop3 accounts like hotmail there was an option to confgure it...
Last night I disabled alle data connections at wmll: lost 2% of battery.
Two days ago with email syncing every 2 hours, time syncing, facebook syncing, wmll ive lost 6% in flightmode.
I think I will code an programm for me, which disables the useless data services during flightmode.
Thanks anyway
greetz jan

[Q] Synch interval with gmail?

So I tried to get my work to get me a blackberry because I need to check my work email when I am not there at nights, weekends, etc. They saw I had a thunderbolt but I tried explaining how the battery wouldn't last. Well that wasn't good enough so today I synched my works email (corporate gmail account) to my phone and I am getting the push notifications just like I wanted, and the battery is terrible just as I said it would be. Is there any way to adjust how often it checks for new mail to push notifications through? I feel like there has to be some way but I searched and found nothing for the thunderbolt. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
Not sure if this would work for you, but you could go into your accounts & sync setting and uncheck the autoupdate for your google business account (since I don't have one, not sure if it will allow you separate out google accounts). Then only go in and manually sync it when you need it?
The only thing with that is I have to manually sync which defeats the purpose of it
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
How much mail do you actually get pushed?
I get quite a bit of mail to my regular google account because I've tied all my other accounts to my google account and I don't have any real issue with extreme battery drain?
I had an android since the G1 first came out and with each successive phone I've gotten, I've never noticed that mail is a real big battery drain on any of them.
I would say 15-20 mails a day. However one of our clients is west coast based so I tend to get a lot after I leave work. This is definitely a battery killer by multiple hours. I'm going to try my damndest to get a blackberry and show them how awful it is but I need something in the mean time to get me through the day. My phone didn't last 9-6 today
I can't believe something as simple as an interval adjustment isn't built into the gmail app. I searched all over and several people have asked this but there is never a solution. I wonder if I could use another email app that is adjustable instead of the official gmail app.
The easiest solution is to check one of the apps, such as Juice Defender, that can turn off your network connection when not in use. You can set them to periodically enable them to turn data back on to allow things like emails to come through.
And GMail push notifications act just like Blackberry-style push notifications of email. It isn't constantly checking the server for new emails. It gets notified only when new emails arrive. Something else is likely causing your battery problems, not the push notifications. I'd check some of the battery threads around for other tips to increase battery life before making any major changes.
I've never heard of email being the culprit to any battery problems, so you might want to see if there are some rogue apps you have that are causing this battery drain.
As for email, I use Tasker. I have a profile that turns auto-sync on at 6:15 AM and every three hours after that at a quarter past, then I have a profile that turns auto-sync off at 6:17 AM and every three hours, so I only get email at a quarter past, every three hours
Not sure how elegant of a solution this is for you as you work for a company and might have some emails that you need to respond to ASAP.
joshnichols189 said:
As for email, I use Tasker. I have a profile that turns auto-sync on at 6:15 AM and every three hours after that at a quarter past, then I have a profile that turns auto-sync off at 6:17 AM and every three hours, so I only get email at a quarter past, every three hours
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use Tasker as well, with it checking only between 6:30am - midnight. However, I check mine every 20 minutes normally. If they need to get in touch with me faster than that, they should have called in the first place. I played with Juice Defender prior to discovering Tasker though, and it is much easier to set up.(Just not nearly as powerful as Tasker, which I love playing with)
rotorocker said:
I can't believe something as simple as an interval adjustment isn't built into the gmail app. I searched all over and several people have asked this but there is never a solution. I wonder if I could use another email app that is adjustable instead of the official gmail app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Push is more efficient than interval, that is why you don't see interval adjustments.
Well as others have said, I don't think it's the emails causing your issues. I get way more emails than that in a day and my phone comes off charger around 5am and doesn't usually get back on a charger until at least 9pm or later. I'm not saying I still have half a charge left, but I also don't have my phone yelling at me to plug it in either because it's low.
Hmm good to know about how those push notifications work. I guess it's just a coincidence that when I synched my email a couple days ago that I noticed the battery went noticeably down. I might try out tasker though. Thanks
It could have been also your signal strength when you were trying to sync that could have caused a bigger drain.
If you had a weak signal, your phone would have been trying to "juice" up the connection to keep you connected resulting in a larger than normal battery drain.
Just a thought.
this is true since I moved from central jersey (manalapan) to North Jersey (wallington) I am now in 4g constantly and maybe I should look into switching to 3g for a bit.

[Q] Very odd problem - Mail stops syncing

Hi guys,
Very odd problem with the Mail application on my Thunderbolt. Sometimes it refuses to automatically download mail and sync during peak times and the only explanation I can think of is that the system is in power save mode even though I have power save disabled.
-Auto-sync is enabled
-Background Data is enabled
-Power saver is totally disabled
-Update schedule is set to Every Day and within the peak times.
-Not using juice defender or task killer
-Stock android.. just did a clean install with the MR2
-Set to 15 minute intervals, 8am to 11pm peak time.
I'm pretty savvy with the android system and honestly am at a loss as to the reason why this happens. I can sometimes fix it by toggling the background data and sync multiple times but I do not have a clear cut solution yet.
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
I have seen people have problems with synching while using task killers that have an auto-kill mode and people who use Juice Defender.
Yep, not using a task killer as those are proven to be useless
What about Juice Defender, do you use that? Also you listed that you have your synch schedule set for everyday during peak times...do you mean once a day on peak times or what interval do you have it set as?
Do you notice any other app that uses an internet connection malfunctioning during the day?
15 minute intervals during peak times. My peak times are 8:00am to 11:00pm. I don't really notice any other app besides mail malfunctioning. But then again I don't really have any apps that use the internet. Facebook seems to be giving me notifications on time. It's really just the mail app which refuses to update automatically. Some tinkering around and syncing all seems to sometimes fix it but i have no clue how. Such an odd and annoying problem.
arh2o said:
15 minute intervals during peak times. My peak times are 8:00am to 11:00pm. I don't really notice any other app besides mail malfunctioning. But then again I don't really have any apps that use the internet. Facebook seems to be giving me notifications on time. It's really just the mail app which refuses to update automatically. Some tinkering around and syncing all seems to sometimes fix it but i have no clue how. Such an odd and annoying problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't mention what you are trying to sync with the mail app, but I had the same problem with my Incredible and exchange. After deleting and restoring my settings 4 times, I bought Touchdown for $20 on the market and have never looked back. They offer a fully functional 30 day trial. If its exchange you are trying to sync, its the way to go.
XDA Premium via Gingeritis 1.0
It's actually a gmail account i'm trying to sync. I think it's a problem with the mail app since i get facebook notifications on time. Very very frustrating. The mail app just refuses to sync properly.

Battery drain over night FIXED(!?)

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.

[Q] Transformer Prime Battery Issues

Sorry if this has done the rounds, but im new to forumn and none of the posts seem to have all my symtpoms.
I bought a few weeks ago a tf201. everything is great, bar two points.
1) - battery life is emmense when docked on the keyboard and in use, and undocked. BUT when i leave it docked it just seems to refuse to go to sleep and manages to chew up just about all the battery overnight. from the battery monitor in settings the wifi and screen stay on overnight so it loose 5-10% or so an hour.. not great
2) not sure if this is related to the above, but again only happens when docked. if it does go to sleep (i think). when i come to wake it, nothing happens. in the end i have to press the power and volume buttons to reset it, then it wakes back up again. interestingly when its dones this it doesnt appear to have lost much battery charge.
So it seems that either it doesnt want to sleep, or if it sleeps, it sleeps a little too much.
im running the latest OTA ICS update as of last week and havent got that much installed widget wise etc. Ive been pouring over the forums for people with similar issues and the nearest i can find is people recomending using flight mode apps to keep the tablet from completely sleeping. this sort of works but the batteries then need charging every 2-3 days, which is better than daily but not great.
any pearls of wisdom as this for me is ruining an otherwise great device...
ianc24 said:
Sorry if this has done the rounds, but im new to forumn and none of the posts seem to have all my symtpoms.
I bought a few weeks ago a tf201. everything is great, bar two points.
1) - battery life is emmense when docked on the keyboard and in use, and undocked. BUT when i leave it docked it just seems to refuse to go to sleep and manages to chew up just about all the battery overnight. from the battery monitor in settings the wifi and screen stay on overnight so it loose 5-10% or so an hour.. not great
2) not sure if this is related to the above, but again only happens when docked. if it does go to sleep (i think). when i come to wake it, nothing happens. in the end i have to press the power and volume buttons to reset it, then it wakes back up again. interestingly when its dones this it doesnt appear to have lost much battery charge.
So it seems that either it doesnt want to sleep, or if it sleeps, it sleeps a little too much.
im running the latest OTA ICS update as of last week and havent got that much installed widget wise etc. Ive been pouring over the forums for people with similar issues and the nearest i can find is people recomending using flight mode apps to keep the tablet from completely sleeping. this sort of works but the batteries then need charging every 2-3 days, which is better than daily but not great.
any pearls of wisdom as this for me is ruining an otherwise great device...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe try setting WiFi on sleep to never under the advanced WiFi settings?
Sent from my PG86100 using xda premium
Email Accounts set to "push"
Email clients connecting to Exchange usually have a "push" option that continuously syncs with the mail server. Some of them (like Touch down which is what I use) allow you to set off work times when it won't be polling the server so I set it not to poll between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM.
Also, look at the accounts and sync area in the settings and see what other stuff is being synced. I had no idea until I looked just now how much stuff is getting synced under my gmail account. It's not just mail and calendars like I thought but also a long list of other things.
Then, looking under "Backup and Restore" in the settings, I'm seeing that it's doing a "backup app data, wifi passwords, and other data to google servers". I'm assuming that means all my mail etc. When I first set up the tablet a couple of days ago I noticed that all the wifi connections from my Droid 3 showed up so that was the first time I realized that my phone must be doing this too...
That's a security issue in that by my employer's rules, sensitive company data isn't supposed to be stored on other people's servers so my exchange data really should not be backed up to google. And it doesn't make any sense to do that anyway. If one of my devices dies and gets replaced, when I configure the account on the new device, all the data will sync from the mail server anyway.
The point being that I'm discovering that there is a huge amount of stuff being synced from my android devices that I didn't even realize. That could be bogging down the network (particularly if on a connection that's slow to begin with) and also causing battery drain.
I'm experimenting with turning a lot of stuff off that I don't figure I need - both for the phone and the tablet - to see what difference it makes.
ratman6161 said:
Email clients connecting to Exchange usually have a "push" option that continuously syncs with the mail server. Some of them (like Touch down which is what I use) allow you to set off work times when it won't be polling the server so I set it not to poll between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM.
Also, look at the accounts and sync area in the settings and see what other stuff is being synced. I had no idea until I looked just now how much stuff is getting synced under my gmail account. It's not just mail and calendars like I thought but also a long list of other things.
Then, looking under "Backup and Restore" in the settings, I'm seeing that it's doing a "backup app data, wifi passwords, and other data to google servers". I'm assuming that means all my mail etc. When I first set up the tablet a couple of days ago I noticed that all the wifi connections from my Droid 3 showed up so that was the first time I realized that my phone must be doing this too...
That's a security issue in that by my employer's rules, sensitive company data isn't supposed to be stored on other people's servers so my exchange data really should not be backed up to google. And it doesn't make any sense to do that anyway. If one of my devices dies and gets replaced, when I configure the account on the new device, all the data will sync from the mail server anyway.
The point being that I'm discovering that there is a huge amount of stuff being synced from my android devices that I didn't even realize. That could be bogging down the network (particularly if on a connection that's slow to begin with) and also causing battery drain.
I'm experimenting with turning a lot of stuff off that I don't figure I need - both for the phone and the tablet - to see what difference it makes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The exchange DATA, meaning your actual mail does not get backed up explicitly anywhere with vanilla Asus/Google ICS Firmware. What it backs up is account settings, and the options you select. Backing up all your mail would be awesome (under the right circumstances, such as when you need that backed up, and some apps will do so, but generally for a fee.
OP, for battery concerns, make sure that in settings, Asus Customized setting that "Mobile Dock Battery Saving and "Disconnect network during sleep are both selected. The latter option stops most or all synching when sleeping.
It sounds like you are experiencing SOD (Sleep of Death) not quite as horrible as it sounds, but if you have to push power button and or/ Power + Volume for 8-10 seconds to get it bac, does it then vibrate and reboot, or just come back to the Homescreen imediately? If it's the first one, look up SOD. I have had only ONE event since .28 rolled, and before that perhaps a dozen on .21, and NONE before that so it's due to SOME recent changes to firmware, at least in my case. Interestingly, I was able to stop it on .21 by disabling the same option we have been discussing. The two battery savers in Asus customized, and WiFi, Advanced: "Keep WiFi on during sleep" (You have to hit the "three dot" menu and choose advanced from WiFi Settings.
Anyway keep us posted, and let me know if you have SOD, or just a deep sleep - if you REALLY want to know how often and how long your tablet spends in deep sleep get CPU Spy (no root require, I believe) and after several hours, it will let you know what the CPU has been doing, for what percent of that time. it is an AWESOME way to determine how much deep sleep you are experiencing with the device.
My battery is not really satisfying.. though i uses only 15% brightness, it sucks up my battery like hell... 10% decrease in an hour... is this normal?
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
skarfreak said:
My battery is not really satisfying.. though i uses only 15% brightness, it sucks up my battery like hell... 10% decrease in an hour... is this normal?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
10% in one hour of using?? so 10 hours???
I guess you should be more than satisfied........:good:
possible win
Many thanks for the suggestions.
I think i was get the dreaded sleep of death as when it slept to 'wake' it i had to reboot it.
Ive run through all the suggestions here + a few suggestions from the forumns, setting wifi to never, adjusting the dock battery usage, checking my sync options. In sheer frustration i removed all widgets and removed a shed load of apps (both pre-installed and ones that i had installed) installed cpu spy and tested. interesting that it appears to be ok now. charged the dock and transformer up on firday night and its still got juice today, all be it that dock is nearly dead and the transformer has 80%+ thats with 2-3hrs use every day and obviously sleeping...
one thing i did note. when it was docked before and 'sleeping' in the transformer battery was low it would charge for long period when it was sleeping? it doesnt seem to do that now. if the transformer battery is low and i sleep it. the power \ charge light stays on for 10-15 mnutes then goes off.. so def looks like something was keepign it awake.
go to settings/asus customized settings and scroll down to battery saving and check the two power saving settings :good:

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