[Q] Battery consumption - Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey,
I could not find a thread like this via the search bar, so I am opening one up. How much battery does your stock S3 consume by just lying there? I am losing about ten percent overnight, which seems a bit too much for me. Is that normal?
Thanks!

Wait till you get about 70 percent discharge overnight then you'll have something to worry about.

krico said:
Wait till you get about 70 percent discharge overnight then you'll have something to worry about.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the reply, but that's not really what i wanted to know...

If you searched or read the multiple battery threads then you would have found that yes it is normal .
All depends upon what running .
jje

At night I turn off wifi and data, my battery drops 3%, with data on and wifi off about 5% ( about 8 hours)
Based on reviews on the net it is possible to get it drop 6% in 16 hours with data and wifi on, not getting to this myself but happy enough.

roter$baron said:
Hey,
I could not find a thread like this via the search bar, so I am opening one up. How much battery does your stock S3 consume by just lying there? I am losing about ten percent overnight, which seems a bit too much for me. Is that normal?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is very normal for Stock rom to consume that much battery.. However you can save more battery by going into Wifi > advanced > Keepy wifi on during sleep > Select Only when plugged in... Plus disabling wake up commands such as the ones for S Voice, or Google Now can increase battery life upto a great extent.
Also try turning off location services for apps that you don't use that often or the ones that don't really require location services that much.

I had 10 to 15% drop the night, after installing Chrome (because of google sync issue)
but after removed it.. im back to 6-7%
Anyway Dolphin is better

I can only say from memory ...
roter$baron said:
Hey,
I could not find a thread like this via the search bar, so I am opening one up. How much battery does your stock S3 consume by just lying there? I am losing about ten percent overnight, which seems a bit too much for me. Is that normal?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can only say from memory - a very clean S3 should get at most 2-3% discharge overnight (even with WiFi, data, BT and GPS started). That might no longer be achievable once you have a number of programs that interact and keep the CPU from staying into deep sleep.
Currently I am seeing at most 1-2% with my configuration - but that involves closing the 4 above before going to bed.(and to get to that point I had to drop a number of programs that were bad in this regard).
Do your own tests with that - look around after BetterBatteryStats.apk or something like that!

xclub_101 said:
I can only say from memory - a very clean S3 should get at most 2-3% discharge overnight (even with WiFi, data, BT and GPS started). That might no longer be achievable once you have a number of programs that interact and keep the CPU from staying into deep sleep.
Currently I am seeing at most 1-2% with my configuration - but that involves closing the 4 above before going to bed.(and to get to that point I had to drop a number of programs that were bad in this regard).
Do your own tests with that - look around after BetterBatteryStats.apk or something like that!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can I ask what your current configuration is?
I am currently running Omega v32.1 with the stock kernel.
I hardly use my phone during the day as I am at work for 12 hours, maybe send a few texts. 3g and sync are always on
I take it off charge at 5.30AM and when I get home at like 8PM it is down to less than 10%... and thats not even heavy use.
I have calibrated the battery using that batterycalibrate app for root users..

Related

[Q] mA usage in Battery Monitor Widget

Hi,
For those of you that have Battery Monitor Widget installed, what kind of average usage are you seeing with the phone idle, screen off?
On my old Desire it'd sit at something around low double digits, 10mA or so idle with the screen off...
On my new shiny SGSII it's at about 180mA odd, which may explain why I struggle to get a days usage out of it. I've tried different ROMs (stock rooted, lite'ning, currently on villain 2.4.2) and different modems (currently KG6) and have used Ti to freeze all of the samsung bloatware without any improvement...
What kinds of values are others seeing?
Thanks
Jon
in idle , i get average of 50-60mA .. but after 3,4 hours of idle , i can get it as low as 9-10mA .. running on sensation rom 1.4 .. in normal use , it will hike from 100+ma to 400mA ..
it's actually a bit higher than my last desire HD. which in idle can get as low as 4-5 mA .. i guess that's all depend on the kernel ..
seeing at your idle usage about 180mA, that's definitely have something wrong somewhere. gotta find what apps draining the battery
Just did a test while I was down the gym - with mobile data off, but streaming music to a bluetooth headset, it was down to 60-80mA. Turn it back on and it's gone back up again...
Gtalk is frozen, Latitude isn't signed in... Nothing obvious shows up in Better Battyer Stats.. Other than removing apps one by one, any bright ideas as to how to work out which is the culprit?
I think i read that HTC phones actuality give true mah battery rates where on the S2 it is only get`s estimated.
I fully charged it last night, and left it alone overnight. Perfect signal (local picocell about 10 ft away), pretty much everything disabled, all user apps, samsung stuff frozen - only google apps unfrozen. Background data disabled, bluetooth, gps, wifi off.
After a few minutes, after a short while at 60mA odd it sat idling at about 9mA pretty much all night - used about 8% overnight. I re-enabled background sync, now sat on my desk at work with a reasonable 3G signal it's sat at about 60mA.
Time to start unfreezing apps and see what's draining it!
=jon= said:
Time to start unfreezing apps and see what's draining it!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Install 'Better Battery Stats' for that.
Regards.
ithehappy said:
Install 'Better Battery Stats' for that.
Regards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's installed - I get a lot of events/0 and suspend listed in process, and not that many wakelocks listed...
I've just frozen the samsung email client (exchange) and the associated processes, and my usage has dropped from 60-100mA at idle to under 20 - looks like this may be the culprit!
Going to try unfreezing it and seeing if it goes back up again...
I gave up trying to freeze / unfreeze stuff - too much hassle.
So - did a factory reset this morning, so back to a totally fresh villain install. I even removed my 32G sd card in case that was causing issues..
Disabled automatic app re-installing, and have been slowly setting things back up while watching the juice usage.
Currently with touchwiz and all of the samsung crap frozen, no widgets running, my 2 gmail accounts and exchange activesync configured, and it's idling at about 50-60mA.
It's going to be a pretty drawn out process working out what's causing the drain

ATT version of SG2 sucks your battery?! *Fixed*

Update and FIX!
My phone is no longer draining massive amount of batt life when idle (3-5% after 7 hours of idle), android system usage is now down to 5-15% instead of 78-97% from before.
My fixes.
1. Turn off data syncing
2. Turn off wifi while on the road (so wifi doesn't constantly look for signals).
3. Clear memory
Yes, att installs a lot of bloatware that constantly update for changes.
If killing those services AND disabling data syncing doesn't help your problem, then you have a kernel problem (like myself).
If this is the case, do the following:
1. Take phone back to att and get a replacement
OR
2. Re-flash your android with the STOCK kernel found here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1286432
OR
3. Reflash with cognition x2 (reported to solve a member's problem, I didn't try this myself).
NOTE** This will root your phone, you will NOT get the exclamation mark during boot up, but kernel counter may be at "1" after this process.
Re-flashing my phone AND applying the three tricks I mentioned above worked for me..finally my phone is no longer crippled with crappy battery life and recharging is A LOT faster now.
I must be going crazy but this sg2 is killing me. I got it from Att yesterday and the battery life has been pretty HORRIBLE. (First time android user btw).
The phone will eat up 10% of my batter life after only 90 mins of idle. I checked the battery usage and Android OS is at around 78%!!! How do I fix this problem? I downloaded OS monitor and didn't really see anything that uses a lot of CPU, except for certain files syncing from time to time (but 2-3% usage usually).
Checked with battery spy and apparently the majority of the time, the phone was hovering around 200mhz 70% of the time and not deep sleep.
It's sad to have only 1.5 hours of display time with a battery of 45% left (7 hours total time)...coming from an Iphone 3gs, this is just unacceptable. I almost flashed to the 2.3.5 firmware but noticed it's NOT compatible with ATT's version of SG2.
I see people who have a total time of 2 days AND a screen time with 3 hours with 30% battery left. I wish I can get half that!
Running on 2.3.4, can't be the infamous drainage bug right? Thought that only happens with the 2.3.3s
Wifi on, application sync on, GPS off, brightness at 25%, using live wallpaper (the windmill). No active apps on. Downloaded aim, epocrates, battery monitor, cpu spy, and os monitor..rest of the apps are stock.
Update
According to my CPU spy
For the past hour that the phone was in idle
2:20mins at 1200mhz
4:52mins at 1000mhz
8:33 at 800mhz
1:28 at 500mhz
10:11 at 200mhz
33:36 in deep sleep
Currently Android CPU usage is @ 97%, display time of 7mins(2%)
2h 30mins since last charge (97% charge)..current power is 79%. Did nothing but idling and checking battery life.
So...that's 30 mins out of the hour in which my idling cellphone was hacking the pentagon....
Also the cellphone is a tiny bit warm to the touch (not cold)
I have 35% battery life remaining and have been unplugged for nearly 11 hours. This is significantly better than what I was getting with a Thunderbolt on Verizon, where I was needing to charge after about six hours of use. 11 hours and 35% remaining isn't the best in the world, but it's only been two days. The phone needs a few days to charge and discharge to determine true battery stats and will probably get better.
Being that this is your first Android battery life will not seem great but let it settle in for a few days it should get better.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using xda premium
Used Nexus S, LG Thrill, Samsung Focus, Infuse, This is the best Android phone for battery. I have 40% left with normal use (emails, calls, music, read news) at the end of the day. Huraaaaa
Singuy1234 said:
I must be going crazy but this sg2 is killing me. I got it from Att yesterday and the battery life has been pretty HORRIBLE. (First time android user btw).
The phone will eat up 10% of my batter life after only 90 mins of idle. I checked the battery usage and Android OS is at around 78%!!! How do I fix this problem? I downloaded OS monitor and didn't really see anything that uses a lot of CPU, except for certain files syncing from time to time (but 2-3% usage usually).
Checked with battery spy and apparently the majority of the time, the phone was hovering around 200mhz 70% of the time and not deep sleep.
It's sad to have only 1.5 hours of display time with a battery of 45% left (7 hours total time)...coming from an Iphone 3gs, this is just unacceptable. I almost flashed to the 2.3.5 firmware but noticed it's NOT compatible with ATT's version of SG2.
I see people who have a total time of 2 days AND a screen time with 3 hours with 30% battery left. I wish I can get half that!
Running on 2.3.4, can't be the infamous drainage bug right? Thought that only happens with the 2.3.3s
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you only got the phone yesterday, its way to early to make any judgments on battery life. Battery needs at least 3-5 days to settle in and build consistent battery stats.
Also, what are you settings? Auto Brightness, Bluetooth, GPS, auto syn(exchange emal, gmail, facebook, etc). If your not using these, they should be OFF. It's easy to manually refresh email, etc.
I've seen some people reporting very high Android OS(over 50%) but still getting solid battery life.
I'm at 1hr display time, heavy texting. 72% left, been unplugged for 12hrs
no people what this guy is talking about is the android os bug. i have it too. hopefully an upgrade or different rom will fix it. my phone has been unplugged 11 hours with only 1 1/2 hour display but android os has ran for 52 minutes and now im at 32% battery life. once this bug gets worked out the battery life will be amazing.
I don't think that there is an android OS bug. My android OS shows as being 42% with 13hrs of moderate use and I am still at 67% battery remaining. This is by far the best battery use I have ever experienced on an android device! My cappy would not even come close to this performance and this is on stock ROM and kernel.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using xda premium
I'm very happy with mine, this was the first total drain on a new battery so I know it will only get better.
Total time: 18hr 25min
Display time: 4hr 48min
I think it's the system os, not the hardware. There were a few times when the battery didn't discharge itself at 7%/hour (had it idle for 3 hours and it went down like 2%).
And yes, everything is turned off except the sync app data and wifi. There's no option to turn off 4g btw. It's just weird how sometimes it's in this mode of power drainage, and then sometimes it doesn't drain much..but most of the time, it's draining.
I seriously doubt the phone can only run 2.5 hours worth of heavy usage or 12 hours of standby (it should last days!). If this is "normal" for android, then maybe I should have a visit back to att and exchange for an iphone (and I really don't to!)
Sledutah said:
I'm very happy with mine, this was the first total drain on a new battery so I know it will only get better.
Total time: 18hr 25min
Display time: 4hr 48min
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that is freakin incredible. i am gonna try a restore or something im down to 28% life. 1:40 display android os 1 hour.
can you please post the cpu total time in android os so i have an idea
VFO said:
I don't think that there is an android OS bug. My android OS shows as being 42% with 13hrs of moderate use and I am still at 67% battery remaining. This is by far the best battery use I have ever experienced on an android device! My cappy would not even come close to this performance and this is on stock ROM and kernel.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
can you please post the cpu total time in android os so i have an idea
VFO said:
I don't think that there is an android OS bug. My android OS shows as being 42% with 13hrs of moderate use and I am still at 67% battery remaining. This is by far the best battery use I have ever experienced on an android device! My cappy would not even come close to this performance and this is on stock ROM and kernel.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree - as I said in the Android OS drain thread, even in "good" situations, Android OS displays way high on our systems. I think it's a reporting bug.
I dropped 2% in 5.5 hours completely idle (sitting on my shelf) last night - Android OS was at over 60%. It seems that so far for me, the higher it is, the better my battery life is.
I drop around 15-20% in 9 hours of being mostly idle at my desk at work - it's a weak-signal location so the radio eats much more battery.
One thing is that unlike first-generation GalaxyS devices and interim ones like the Infuse, the GS2 has a coulomb-counter type of battery gauge. This type of gauge sometimes needs to be calibrated with multiple charge/discharge cycles or it will misreport battery state of charge. (However, when calibrated, it's much more accurate.)
Edit: I do have some power management tweaks in the kernel I'm running, but they don't make that much off a difference except in some high-drain corner cases in my experience. I'll be releasing it sometime later this week depending on how well these antibiotics do their job.
Do i need to install a battery app to see the percentage? or we have a way?
Install this app:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=15869868#post15869868
If you see "DataTracker-FD" or "Fast Dormancy" as the top wake lock, go into dialer
dial *#*#9900#*#*
disable Fast Dormancy (FD).
By default, the Samsung Galaxy S II has Fast Dormancy support enabled. One of the goals of Fast Dormancy is to increase the battery life of a device, by limiting the amount of signaling between the phone and the cell network. But, when Fast Dormancy it is not enabled in the network and is enabled on the phone it ironically works the other way around, and actually drains more battery than before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That applies to the I9100.
As far as I can tell, the I777 has FD disabled by default. (This may change once I9100 ROM ports start showing up)
Okay, charged my battery to 97%(I got a beep saying it's fully charged). Idled for the past 2 hours and 22 mins. Battery is at 86%.
According to the battery, my screen account for 2%, and the android system accounts for 97%.
This is a stock phone guys, I have no apps installed!
Entropy512 said:
One thing is that unlike first-generation GalaxyS devices and interim ones like the Infuse, the GS2 has a coulomb-counter type of battery gauge. This type of gauge sometimes needs to be calibrated with multiple charge/discharge cycles or it will misreport battery state of charge. (However, when calibrated, it's much more accurate.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you calibrate it?
sweetboy02125 said:
Do i need to install a battery app to see the percentage? or we have a way?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Settings > About phone > Battery usage
WillEat4F00d said:
How do you calibrate it?
Settings > About phone > Battery usage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm talking about live battery display. I installed no lock and have no lock screen to see how many % left.
sweetboy02125 said:
I'm talking about live battery display. I installed no lock and have no lock screen to see how many % left.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just search up "battery indicator" in the Market and you'll get a few to choose from.
I too got mine yesterday and started tinkering around with installing apps and such to test out all functions before I rooted it and move onto cm7 most likely. The 1 things I noticed was that the battery was NOT completely full when it was first turned on at the store so once it got a little lower after playing with it I charged it up overnight. Today the battery was WAY BETTER and was not dead yet. I have been using it NON STOP today, rebooting it, testing it, trying to root it, rebooting some more, some time using tango to test it out, watched a Netflix movie, pretty much taking full advantage of it all day. I finally decided to charge it up and use my Captivate a bit. I didn't keep track of usage and times today but I KNOW it lasted a WAY LONGER time with all I was doing with it than my Cappy. Tomorrow I will check more out possibly before putting on a rom.
So LOOOONNNNGGGG STORY short make sure you charge it up once you get it before messing with it too much and then it will LAST LONGER.
Sent from My KickAss Captivated CM7 OC'd 1.5Ghz/Undervolted
After two nights of completely draining then recharging the battery to full, the battery has gotten significantly better. I'm trying to drain it again before I go to bed tonight but I don't think I'll make it.
I played the entirety of Toy Story 3 on max brightness, and only burned 20% of the battery!

[Q] [HELP] battery drain really fast

I know this question has been asked really lots of times, but I didn't seem to find cases similar to mine.
there doesn't seem to be any wakelock (except 2 which is incredibly short) and it was in deep sleep mode all the time. but yet, it drains almost 5% per hour which i find is really too much...
I've tried lots of firmware (litening, wamanlite, turkbey, stock, ICS) and removed all the unnecessary bloatware to reduce wakelocks to a state as shown in attachment. but still, they do not have any results, still get less than 1 day life without any usage at all...
Could this be hardware problem? I find it gets hot really fast even when i'm just facebooking.
Or is there anything else can i try to do? this device really started to disappoint me ever since the battery life looks like this.
any help will be greatly appreciated.
tonyvyp said:
I know this question has been asked really lots of times, but I didn't seem to find cases similar to mine.
there doesn't seem to be any wakelock (except 2 which is incredibly short) and it was in deep sleep mode all the time. but yet, it drains almost 5% per hour which i find is really too much...
I've tried lots of firmware (litening, wamanlite, turkbey, stock, ICS) and removed all the unnecessary bloatware to reduce wakelocks to a state as shown in attachment. but still, they do not have any results, still get less than 1 day life without any usage at all...
Could this be hardware problem? I find it gets hot really fast even when i'm just facebooking.
Or is there anything else can i try to do? this device really started to disappoint me ever since the battery life looks like this.
any help will be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
maybe try out BetterBatteryStats, duuno but maybe this could help?!
cheers and good luck!
Try Hydrogen-ICS latest version, it seems to be "the rom" today
Battery life is very good and its overall a stable system.
Make sure to "Fix Permission" after first start, reboot recovery and do it.
Also sometimes "to much junk" in your SD card can cause battery drain, copy your files and format the SD card, you might see some diffrence. (i did)
tonyvyp said:
I know this question has been asked really lots of times, but I didn't seem to find cases similar to mine.
there doesn't seem to be any wakelock (except 2 which is incredibly short) and it was in deep sleep mode all the time. but yet, it drains almost 5% per hour which i find is really too much...
I've tried lots of firmware (litening, wamanlite, turkbey, stock, ICS) and removed all the unnecessary bloatware to reduce wakelocks to a state as shown in attachment. but still, they do not have any results, still get less than 1 day life without any usage at all...
Could this be hardware problem? I find it gets hot really fast even when i'm just facebooking.
Or is there anything else can i try to do? this device really started to disappoint me ever since the battery life looks like this.
any help will be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you got 20Hrs out of your phone? grats! as of lately i've been trying alot of different roms and different customization settings from kernel tweeks to CPU tweeks (undervolting/underclocking) and im even turning off every extra setting that consumes battery power apart from wifi
on best with a 2000Mah battery i get 13 hrs on standby and 4 hrs if im playing a game - these days my phone doesnt charge anymore - it discharges even when plugged in
I recommend downloading HydrogenICS, it's good! Download Battery drain, so you can see how fast your battery is being drained.. Also, let your battery go down to 5% then charge your phone
Something is seriously wrong - you've hardly used it, looking at those graphs.
I'd try a stock anything, and if you get similar drainage send it in for repair/buy a new battery.
this is'nt normal , in sleep mode i can get 20 hours and only lose 9%
use hydrogen and neak , and try , if you get the same result so it will be hardware fault
the 3g data it kills the batt very fast,i don think u got a hardware prblm,cause 20hrs an still to go is good ive seen ppl reporting worse...dude instal better batt stat,3g watch dog but remember batt saver apps too run in bckgrnd so i suggest u stay on a stable rom wiv a custum kernel like siyah or neak an watch the batt in better batt stat.....wen i need more juice i switch to airplane mode in nite then rebot in the morning....i don hav any tweaks or uv,oc but ive seen the batt is very good wen i don use the data or wifi or download or update,pm me if any doubt......cheeeerz
You flashed different ROMs the last days? First thing is you should only flash with full battery and after flashing it needs some time (three full battery cycles e.g.) untill the battery works fine for the ROM.
And you may recallibrate your battery. Turn the mobile off and load the battery to full. Then go to CWM and reset your batterystats. Now unload till the mobile goes of and reload to full with mobile off. If you doe this for e.g. 3 times the battery should be recalibrated.
I must say Omegas ICS + Speedmod or Siyahs Kernel. Best ever. Or checkout Paradoxxxs rom very stable but for me not so good xD
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
B3311 said:
Something is seriously wrong - you've hardly used it, looking at those graphs.
I'd try a stock anything, and if you get similar drainage send it in for repair/buy a new battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yea i know right...i'll try Hydrogen ICS as they everyone recommended and see how it goes first.
evaworld said:
this is'nt normal , in sleep mode i can get 20 hours and only lose 9%
use hydrogen and neak , and try , if you get the same result so it will be hardware fault
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what is "neak"? sorry i am still newbie
rocky23 said:
the 3g data it kills the batt very fast,i don think u got a hardware prblm,cause 20hrs an still to go is good ive seen ppl reporting worse...dude instal better batt stat,3g watch dog but remember batt saver apps too run in bckgrnd so i suggest u stay on a stable rom wiv a custum kernel like siyah or neak an watch the batt in better batt stat.....wen i need more juice i switch to airplane mode in nite then rebot in the morning....i don hav any tweaks or uv,oc but ive seen the batt is very good wen i don use the data or wifi or download or update,pm me if any doubt......cheeeerz
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
bro, 20 hours is with 99% deep sleep is seriously wrong. better battery stats cant tell me nothing, since i have no wakelocks or whatever, and all those battery savers apps, they spent more battery than they can save. when those screenshot is taken, i can tell you for sure, bluetooth, gps, 3g, wifi, auto sync etc everything was turned off. even brightness is 10% (which is even lower than auto brightness settings). anyway thanks for the reply
ElenaPower said:
You flashed different ROMs the last days? First thing is you should only flash with full battery and after flashing it needs some time (three full battery cycles e.g.) untill the battery works fine for the ROM.
And you may recallibrate your battery. Turn the mobile off and load the battery to full. Then go to CWM and reset your batterystats. Now unload till the mobile goes of and reload to full with mobile off. If you doe this for e.g. 3 times the battery should be recalibrated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nope, i always try at least 5-6 battery cycles after flashing to see the real graph. and i've read in this forum somewhere, calibrating battery by deleting batterystats is useless for this phone.
Kaffee4Eck said:
I must say Omegas ICS + Speedmod or Siyahs Kernel. Best ever. Or checkout Paradoxxxs rom very stable but for me not so good xD
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
speedmod is a kernel like siyah rite? i've use siyah before, but it doesn't seem like much help. nonetheless, will try them ^^
thanks for all the replies and recommendation, will try different rom & update again (probably in 4-5 days for trying 2 roms
I have exactly same problem. On GB over night(7 hours), battery consumption was around 9%. On ICS more than 20%, but nobody touch phone. I try few roms: wanamlite, omega, bezke, pure. Now i have hydrogen. Better battery stats shows nothing special. Only thing what i can think is wi-fi. if i turn off seams to be better, not that dramatic, but anyway not that good like on GB.
strange...
let me ask this... what does the yellow color in the phone signal mean? anybody got any clue?
shouldn't it be green/gray ?
in my phone whenever i have green/gray in the battery view the bar hardly goes down on idle but i see a big drain compared to green/gray when it becomes yellow even in idle
let me post a pic to clarify...
i was complaining about sudden batt drop on cm9 ics, i know its 2 diff roms but still the yellow bar got my attention in both pics...
just searched google and came up with red= no signal, yellow=very bad signal to no signal, green = good signal/full
bad signal makes the phone look for the signal in a bad way using a lot of the battery...
guess i found out why my batt suddenly dropped so bad compared to the rest of the bar...
id suggest flashing a couple of modems and testing how good of a signal u get with each and sticking with the one that works for u, if its a weak signal from the provider then find a better provider that covers ur place with better reception...
start from there and then if batt life is still bad search search and search... best of luck with ur phone...
@mazroui
in those 7 hours your phone should lost 9 - 10% of battery, but not more than 20 unused, what is process causing that usage?
for me: i charged phone before sleep, when wake up after 7h i had 20% left.
Android OS - 92% , rest for cell standby, phone idle and screen. Wi-fi was setup to sleep when screen is off. Better batery stats show that wi-fi was on for almost whole time
Cell Standby and Phone Idle using that much of your power means that the signal in your area is horrible and the phone is struggling to maintain a decent connection with the towers, this can drain a tremendous amount of battery depending on how bad the signal really is, the yellow bar means it's not optimal but there is a large degree of variation between the top end and bottom end of the yellow bar spectrum. Try a different modem or move your phone to an area with better reception and see if you still get this sort of drain.
Android OS is misreported by practically every Kernel because for some reason Samsung accidentally made Screen On add to the Android OS bar, so your Android OS usage is actually AOS + Screen On, for the most part high AOS usage can be ignored as a source of drain using the phone info battery screen, I would look elsewhere for the problem. Sometimes rogue apps hide their wake locks in another wake lock, for instance if you have facebook or many of the IM programs on your system, they poll their servers a lot causing a kernel wake lock called 'svnet dormancy' (in gb) or 'multipdp' (in ics) this causes a lock of 5s to ensure proper packet transfer, if your app is requesting packets every 4 seconds, then its essentially a permanent wake lock but may not be reported as the app being the source.
mazroui said:
strange...
let me ask this... what does the yellow color in the phone signal mean? anybody got any clue?
shouldn't it be green/gray ?
in my phone whenever i have green/gray in the battery view the bar hardly goes down on idle but i see a big drain compared to green/gray when it becomes yellow even in idle
let me post a pic to clarify...
i was complaining about sudden batt drop on cm9 ics, i know its 2 diff roms but still the yellow bar got my attention in both pics...
just searched google and came up with red= no signal, yellow=very bad signal to no signal, green = good signal/full
bad signal makes the phone look for the signal in a bad way using a lot of the battery...
guess i found out why my batt suddenly dropped so bad compared to the rest of the bar...
id suggest flashing a couple of modems and testing how good of a signal u get with each and sticking with the one that works for u, if its a weak signal from the provider then find a better provider that covers ur place with better reception...
start from there and then if batt life is still bad search search and search... best of luck with ur phone...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IF yellow means poor signals then strangely iam getting yellow line but the signal bar shows full signals on home screen.
Any comments
cuteboy1 said:
IF yellow means poor signals then strangely iam getting yellow line but the signal bar shows full signals on home screen.
Any comments
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a defect with Android where good signal strength is mis-reported on this screen as yellow, even if you have 100% signal.
Until you go to About Phone > Status, just once. Then when you go back to this screen, it will start reporting as green if you have good signal.
I've tested this out on my phone, and confirmed it... try it out yourself.
I stopped caring about it, so I just ignore it unless it gets reported as red.
thracemerin said:
Cell Standby and Phone Idle using that much of your power means that the signal in your area is horrible and the phone is struggling to maintain a decent connection with the towers, this can drain a tremendous amount of battery depending on how bad the signal really is, the yellow bar means it's not optimal but there is a large degree of variation between the top end and bottom end of the yellow bar spectrum. Try a different modem or move your phone to an area with better reception and see if you still get this sort of drain.
Android OS is misreported by practically every Kernel because for some reason Samsung accidentally made Screen On add to the Android OS bar, so your Android OS usage is actually AOS + Screen On, for the most part high AOS usage can be ignored as a source of drain using the phone info battery screen, I would look elsewhere for the problem. Sometimes rogue apps hide their wake locks in another wake lock, for instance if you have facebook or many of the IM programs on your system, they poll their servers a lot causing a kernel wake lock called 'svnet dormancy' (in gb) or 'multipdp' (in ics) this causes a lock of 5s to ensure proper packet transfer, if your app is requesting packets every 4 seconds, then its essentially a permanent wake lock but may not be reported as the app being the source.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Signal in my area is far from perfection, but in same location, on GB i had 9% consumed over night, but not 70 %. I turn off GPS, BT, leave only wi-fi and data. And over night when nobody touch phone, screen is off.
kangi74 said:
Signal in my area is far from perfection, but in same location, on GB i had 9% consumed over night, but not 70 %. I turn off GPS, BT, leave only wi-fi and data. And over night when nobody touch phone, screen is off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you look at the graph in the right pic you can see that the curve is less severe when WiFi is active, while this doesn't prove my point that its a network issue it does increase my suspicion that the issue is mobile data related.
kangi74 said:
Signal in my area is far from perfection, but in same location, on GB i had 9% consumed over night, but not 70 %. I turn off GPS, BT, leave only wi-fi and data. And over night when nobody touch phone, screen is off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Something is horribly wrong with that. Do a full wipe. If it still does that, reflash your firmware. If it STILL does that, maybe flash to a newer stock ICS firmware? Then as a last resort, you may want to go back to GB.
---------- Post added at 03:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:41 PM ----------
thracemerin said:
If you look at the graph in the right pic you can see that the curve is less severe when WiFi is active, while this doesn't prove my point that its a network issue it does increase my suspicion that the issue is mobile data related.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This guy may be onto something, actually. First thing you should try is flashing a different modem. THEN do all the stuff I said above.
EDIT: just noticed you're in Oz. Try flashing a T modem. Most Australian users report much better results with both battery and signal after doing this.

[Q] Need help figuring out battery drain

Hi everyone, I'm relatively new to using android devices, i've played with some of the devices my friends own as well as a tablet my brother owns but this is my first personal device.
Anyways, I've had the phone for around 3 days now? It's going great but I feel like the battery is draining a bit fast and I'm not sure if I'm "normal" by standards or if my phone is slightly problematic.
I've attached the two screen shots below
Man things I do on my phone are Gmail, Push email for work, browsing, WhatsApp, Gchat and occasionally music and maybe 20-30 minutes of video.
As you can see from the graph there were two very short moments where I was charging the battery as well due to transferring some files. Finally, I've had a chance to completely drain the battery once but haven't had a chance to do one of those long charges people talk about but have through multiple charging occasions gotten it to 100, although right when I unplug it it goes to 99%.
Thanks!
EDIT: My phone wakes up quite a lot I think because I quite a few work emails a day, around 80-100 in addition to another 20 or so gmail emails a day. Thanks.
I have my own problems about the battery life too. Specially on standby mode all turned off (wifi,sync,gps,data,etc) 93% when I sleep then when I woke up battery goes down to 80%
are you too experiencing this as well?
haven't tried that yet, I attributed my battery drain to email, could be another problem then.
Start with Better Battery Stats from the market and look for wakelocks .
jje
There are a few posts on battery issues.
I too had battery issues and in my case it was a couple of things.
I put the screen onto auto brightness and put wifi onto off when phone asleep.
These 2 things fixed my totally. I know lots of other people are having issues and its neither of these things but these are what helped me.
I also got an app to stop apps starting up. There are a suprising amount of apps that start when your phone starts up that you dont need to be running.
I think having wifi on constantly and getting 19 hours out of a charge is darn good for android.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA
bordikun said:
I have my own problems about the battery life too. Specially on standby mode all turned off (wifi,sync,gps,data,etc) 93% when I sleep then when I woke up battery goes down to 80%
are you too experiencing this as well?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have experienced this after about a week of use. I left the phone when it was 95% and after an hour in stand by, it drops to the 80 something mark, b/w 84-86% any more people who experienced this?
Leilei_z said:
I have experienced this after about a week of use. I left the phone when it was 95% and after an hour in stand by, it drops to the 80 something mark, b/w 84-86% any more people who experienced this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. Drain is about 2.5% per hour on stand-by overnight.
wscaddie56 said:
I think having wifi on constantly and getting 19 hours out of a charge is darn good for android.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup, I had WiFi on pretty much on at home and at work and it certain does chew through your battery! Started at 7am at 100%, back home by 8.30pm and at 20-30%. By 10-11pm, it's on charge again.
Usage is fairly average, x2 30 mins of music to and from work, emails on push, send and receive texts, a couple of calls here and there.
I didn't save snapshots of some tests I carried out, but I'll try to recreate the situations again and upload them.
It seems if you have your WiFi settings, Keep on during sleep to Always, it's constantly draining your battery, even if your handset is on standby. I've left mine to Never, but have found only a small improvement to battery life.
Attached is my current usage WITHOUT WiFi as much as possible, there are a few power spikes where I've had to use WiFi and to connect to PC to transfer some documents, download some Apps. Also I'm NOT at work for the last two days, so usage has drastically dropped. Loooking good at 2D 1H 50M, battery at 45%
You can see for most of the first day where I haven't used WiFi there is a slow, but steady drop, the first major drop was when I was playing a game on the way home, then it's steady again. The biggest drop was when I used WiFi to download the odd app or two, then I turned it off again.
Hope this helps the OP in answering some questions about finding out what is draining the battery.

[Q] Question about S2 battery usage

Hi everyone
So I recently got a S2, upgraded it from stock Gingerbread to stock ICS via Kies, then flashed CM9. CM9 was great, but I quickly noticed worse battery drain than that of GB. I sorted out all wakelocks, now facebook is the top one in better battery stats list and it's only 10mins in a day so I don't think that's a problem. When charging, vbus_present shows up and keeps the phone from sleeping, but that's a normal thing when the phone is plugged, right? CPUspy shows the phone is in deep sleep the majority of time I don't use it, so I assume I have no wakelock problem.
But even then, the battery still seems a bit bad. When in deep sleep with wifi and mobile data off, it would lose around 1.5% per hour; and with moderate/high use (internet with wifi or gaming), I'd be lucky to have it last 3 hours. Charging to 100% from zero takes about 3 hours.
I also tried recalibrating the battery through BC, but haven't noticed too much of a difference.
Recently I found a guide on disabling fast dormancy via the build.prop file. Still waiting for results though.
So, my questions
1, My battery usage seems normal, doesn't it? 1.5% per deep sleep hour is acceptable I guess, but 3 hours of usage seems a bit short. Too short.
2, What effects does fast dormancy have?
1) Totally unacceptable. Mine lasts at least 7-8 hours with high use..
Does your phone heat up while the heavy use ???
What brightness level do you use for the display ???
How many apps do you have that can gain internet access ???
2) By default, the Samsung Galaxy S II has Fast Dormancy support enabled. One of the goals of Fast Dormancy is to increase the battery life of a device, by limiting the amount of signaling between the phone and the cell network. But, when Fast Dormancy it is not enabled in the network and is enabled on the phone it ironically works the other way around, and actually drains more battery than before.
Luckily, Fast Dormancy can be disabled on the phone. For the Galaxy S II, do the following:
Dial *#9900#
Press “Disable Fast Dormancy“
Press “Exit“.
Easy as that!
Thanks for the suggestion I have brightness manual and at around 20%. Wifi is disabled when not used, and mobile data is always turned off unless I need it, so basically apps only get internet access when I want them to. I have also disabled sync for both google and facebook, but fb still pushes notifications to me while it's connected. Is that a major battery drain, and if yes, how to disable it?
Anyways, facebook, instagram, youtube are the only apps than can access the internet. No messengers or anything that may keep a wakelock.
My phone doesn't heat up during normal use, maybe a bit when I do some gaming (Max Payne?)
Also, *#9900# doesn't do anything on my phone. It doesn't bring up a menu or anything like that.
Bump. Guys?
Delivered using Nyan Cat's rainbow powers.
Install BetterBatteryStats (search for it on here/Google Play), might help you nail what's causing the drain.
Yes I did, as said in my original post. After a night the highest wakelock are just around 10 minutes, and that one was facebook. Uninstalling it however had no effect.
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Thinking logically, there's got to be something else in those stats (partial wakelocks in particular) that's causing that drain. There's no way having fast dormancy enabled/disabled is either going to cause/fix the drain you've mentioned getting '3 hours of usage'; (I can get 5 & a bit hours screen on with CM9 & variable usage/mostly 'moderate' use) given everything else you say you've tried.
Post BBS logs here if you want someone to have a look.
Edit to add - Also post a screenshot of the 2nd screen in settings/battery, the one that has history 'details' at the top, with the 'mobile network signal' bar underneath the main battery graph.
Here you go: pastebin.com/1UwicChJ
I just registered half a day ago and don't have enough posts yet to paste links, so sorry the phone was only on battery for nearly 2 hours with some light browsing and facebook, but I hope it works.
Anyway, I looked through my running processes, and dsp manager is the only non-OS process running, besides facebook. I got CM9 so it came by default. Could dspmanager be the culprit?
Delivered using Nyan Cat's rainbow powers.
It's a new phone he's got there and I doubt it could be anything battery related itself.
I'm using CM9 nightlies and I get around 9 hours moderate use. It has been said though that a lot of these CM9 builds have battery drain and heat issues.
I use Juicedefender to help with the battery life which seems to work.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
MistahBungle said:
Edit to add - Also post a screenshot of the 2nd screen in settings/battery, the one that has history 'details' at the top, with the 'mobile network signal' bar underneath the main battery graph.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
About 1/3 of this time was on wifi browsing. The drop is much more drastic if I play games.
Delivered using Nyan Cat's rainbow powers.
A couple of observations. There's nothing that stands right out in the BBS log. The other one is, looking at that graph you've lost ~15% over a bit under 2 hrs. The screen has been on most of the time the phone has been awake (confirmed by the BBS log) if you look at the respective bars. You've also been using WiFi for most of the time the screen has been on/phone has been awake.
Roughly speaking, going by the screenshot, you'd get ~5hrs+/- screen on time if you kept using the phone in the same way you had during that just under 2 hrs, and this is pretty much normal. I haven't had drain issues for ages, so I double checked my details on the 2nd screen of settings/battery to make sure CM9 is reporting these details accurately (screenshot attached). Certainly in my case, this screenshot reflects what my phone had been doing for the just under 5 hrs it had been off charge/since last reboot; that is, >90% of the time in idle/deep sleep. So it probably isn't CM9 reporting these details inaccurately in your case either.
The BBS log & screenshot don't illustrate the problem you talked about in your OP. Now, if I had to take a stab in the dark at what's causing problems when you do have them (and FWIW, I do believe you're having the problems you mentioned in your OP at times), in the absence of any other info, maybe your WiFi router is constantly sending the phone packets (what's been referred to as a 'dirty router' on here before) when you're connected to WiFi & not actually using it. This scenario has been known to cause relatively high levels of drain.
So to be honest with you, based on that screenshot & the BBS log, I'm not really seeing a problem.
Now, if you want to post the same again when you actually have a problem with drain similar to what you described in your OP, happy to have a look at them. But for that ~2hrs covered by the BBS log & screenshot you posted, that's pretty much normal.
MistahBungle said:
A couple of observations. There's nothing that stands right out in the BBS log. The other one is, looking at that graph you've lost ~15% over a bit under 2 hrs. The screen has been on most of the time the phone has been awake (confirmed by the BBS log) if you look at the respective bars. You've also been using WiFi for most of the time the screen has been on/phone has been awake.
Roughly speaking, going by the screenshot, you'd get ~5hrs+/- screen on time if you kept using the phone in the same way you had during that just under 2 hrs, and this is pretty much normal. I haven't had drain issues for ages, so I double checked my details on the 2nd screen of settings/battery to make sure CM9 is reporting these details accurately (screenshot attached). Certainly in my case, this screenshot reflects what my phone had been doing for the just under 5 hrs it had been off charge/since last reboot; that is, >90% of the time in idle/deep sleep. So it probably isn't CM9 reporting these details inaccurately in your case either.
The BBS log & screenshot don't illustrate the problem you talked about in your OP. Now, if I had to take a stab in the dark at what's causing problems when you do have them (and FWIW, I do believe you're having the problems you mentioned in your OP at times), in the absence of any other info, maybe your WiFi router is constantly sending the phone packets (what's been referred to as a 'dirty router' on here before) when you're connected to WiFi & not actually using it. This scenario has been known to cause relatively high levels of drain.
So to be honest with you, based on that screenshot & the BBS log, I'm not really seeing a problem.
Now, if you want to post the same again when you actually have a problem with drain similar to what you described in your OP, happy to have a look at them. But for that ~2hrs covered by the BBS log & screenshot you posted, that's pretty much normal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay, much appreciated so I guess I'll take it from your reply that 5 hours with wifi browsing isn't too bad. Seems okay, but I still find it a bit strange that (in my case) wifi browsing uses just as much battery as games do. I always thought it was a light activity!
Or maybe it wasn't the battery that had a problem, but that I set my expectations a bit too high. I came to this S2 from a BlackBerry 9700, whose battery would last half a week with very frequent use. But anyway, I just got this phone for a week, so I consider myself a pretty heavy user. Probably when I get familiar with it, I won't feel the need to play with it every five minutes and battery will last a bit longer then! xD
Nah. Anything with screen on is far from 'light activity'. Screen consumes far & away the most juice. In saying that, I've seen some people on here say they can get 8-9 hrs screen on with 2000mAh battery. How they do it I have absolutely no idea.
But if yeah, 5 hrs with the screen on most of the time whether browsing or playing games (games in particular are very CPU/GPU intensive & thus use a lot of zzzzs; unless they're really basic games like chess or similar), or anything else isn't too bad. Can you do better ? Obviously, if people say they can get 8-9 hrs. But it's not a matter of doing A, B & C and you'll magically end up with massive screen on times. Every phone is setup & used differently, and getting the absolute max out of every charge takes a lot of trial & error and experimenting with settings/setup.
There are tons of threads about the subject on here if you feel like going down that path. For me, I'm happy with the battery life I get these days because you can really obsess over it & spend a lot of time stressing over it/trying to maximise it for often very little gain. I'd rather simply use my phone a lot during the day & charge it at night.
Yeah Crackberries are like Japanese cars, they can run on fumes pretty much ;-) Having a dual core processor, a decent GPU & a huge screen kinda changes things.
There is one thing you can do fairly easily tho. And that's to make sure the phone spends as much time as possible in deep sleep when you're not using it. That will ensure that you have enough juice to get you by when you do want to use it. Simple ways to help achieve that is to turn off data/WiFi completely when you're not using it (tho many people don't like to do this for different reasons; which is perfectly OK if you're happy to live with the resultant drain), and make sure you've got no apps that are doing things they shouldn't be doing (like syncing, for example) while the phone should be sleeping. Again, there are lots of threads about same if you ever feel like a bit of light reading ;-)
So yeah, if you do find you experience drain that's not normal/outside the usual pattern you have, definitely post details & people can have a look for you. And as you said, you'll get to know what really is normal with regard to drain & so on is as you use the phone more (I tended to use it constantly for that first couple of weeks as well).
nyancatland said:
Okay, much appreciated so I guess I'll take it from your reply that 5 hours with wifi browsing isn't too bad. Seems okay, but I still find it a bit strange that (in my case) wifi browsing uses just as much battery as games do. I always thought it was a light activity!
Or maybe it wasn't the battery that had a problem, but that I set my expectations a bit too high. I came to this S2 from a BlackBerry 9700, whose battery would last half a week with very frequent use. But anyway, I just got this phone for a week, so I consider myself a pretty heavy user. Probably when I get familiar with it, I won't feel the need to play with it every five minutes and battery will last a bit longer then! xD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Already took such measures. Wakelocks killed my battery over my first night with the phone, and I woke up after 7 hours to find a ~50% battery completely empty. Now things are alright, I clear CPUSpy stats before I sleep and wake up to around 95% of deep sleep time. Overnight drain varies between 5 and 10%.
And yes, yes you are right. Maybe I should stop going nuts. I'm checking BBS and CPUSpy every hour, reading every XDA thread on battery, and calculating my battery drainage every morning I wake up :laugh::laugh::laugh:
Re: dirty/'noisy' WiFi networks, have a look at this post as an example of what I was talking about above.
MistahBungle said:
Re: dirty/'noisy' WiFi networks, have a look at this post as an example of what I was talking about above.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Umm...so I just woke up, and noticed a wakelock in the kernel category. It was PowerManagerService, and it occupied around half an hour. Overnight, aftet I've slept 10 hours (got a day off ), my battery came from 24% down to 13%. That's a rate of roughly 1% per hour. Is that normal? And also, what is that PowetManagerService wakelock?
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Fantastic. Looks like you got your 10 posts That tip is about as useful as "don't plant cauliflowers in concrete".
trojans63 said:
Turn off wifi and dont play games and your batter will last longer
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