Abnormal drain? [idle x Android OS]

[Kicksilver]

Fellows, I've always thought there was "something" sucking my battery more than it should, and tonight I decided to perform a test. I charged it to 96%, closed all running apps and let it idling in my table while I slept with mobile enabled.

This took place at 3:56am, as you can see in the screenshot.

At 9:00am I woke up to take a medicine and check my battery, and I noticed that in 5:04h it drained 20% of my battery... I noticed Android SO is always on the top, so I went to check how long it's been using the CPU for...

Yes, 22min while idling. What exactly is Android SO? What demands it? Because the device was idling the whole time.

Then I slept again and woke up at 10:30am, and rechecked the battery...

Again, it kept draining heavily without any screen activity, and the Android SO was growing constantly:

So I took another nap and definitely got up at 12:39pm, and...

In the graph it shows no screen nor activity, but the drain is high and constant... I know the system needs juice to run, as well as the cell services, but I think this 4,4%/h is too high for an idling device, and Android SO is too high. On my friend's Galaxy S it is always under 10 minutes of usage, and it's a Galaxy S i9000b with the same kernel/base band/android version as mine.

I would accept a drain like 2%/h, but I'm getting more than double of that...

Does anyone have an idea of what it could be? I'm really suspicious about this Android OS...

I hope I can be helped, because I can't full rely on my phone because sometimes it's dead when I most need it.

Specs: Samsung Galaxy S i900b (brazilian), Android 2.3.3
Running services: Whatsapp
Bluetooth, GPS, Sync = off

Thanks a lot.

 

[tyler79durdan]

Since I cannot read the language posted, but i am familiar with the logo next to what says "Android SO", I can tell you first, that Android SO is Android OS which is the system that runs your phone. Your Operating system. This leads me to believe that Your system is not sleeping after idle, and in the pictures you posted I see the alarm is set. So those two things in conjunction are causing your battery drain... In My Opinion.

Set your phone to sleep after "x(your choice) amount of time". Also If you dont have to use your alarm on your phone, then dont. It is my opinion that these two are your problem.

PS it will taqke a few days after adjusting settings to start really noticing a difference. Also good battery charging habits are a plus i.e. let your phone drain completely before charging, and let your phone charge completely before use. Using your phone on the charger is never ideal. Leaving your phone plugged in for extended amounts of time after a complete charge will raise the heat in your battery, thereby reducing the life of said battery.

 

[Kicksilver]

Since I cannot read the language posted, but i am familiar with the logo next to what says "Android SO", I can tell you first, that Android SO is Android OS which is the system that runs your phone. Your Operating system. This leads me to believe that Your system is not sleeping after idle, and in the pictures you posted I see the alarm is set. So those two things in conjunction are causing your battery drain... In My Opinion.

Set your phone to sleep after "x(your choice) amount of time". Also If you dont have to use your alarm on your phone, then dont. It is my opinion that these two are your problem.

PS it will taqke a few days after adjusting settings to start really noticing a difference. Also good battery charging habits are a plus i.e. let your phone drain completely before charging, and let your phone charge completely before use. Using your phone on the charger is never ideal. Leaving your phone plugged in for extended amounts of time after a complete charge will raise the heat in your battery, thereby reducing the life of said battery.

Hey,

Android SO = Android OS
Exibir = Display
Tela ligada = Screen on

I will retry this test tonight without the alarm, but this makes no sense, why would google make an OS that you can't use the alarm because your device might be dead by the morning?

Also, where exactly do you set the system to sleep?

 

[tyler79durdan]

How are your charging habits, the condition of your battery(found by calling *#*#4636*#*#* and looking in the battery section).

Your battery could be bad.

Also Im not saying that the alarm is causing your problem, Im saying that the only constant i see between pictures is your alarm which runs off of your OS, thereby causing you system to work. If you alarm is causing the drain, you will know when you shut it of and your Android OS goes down.

Im sorry that this doesnt make sense to you, maybe someone else can try to help you.

EDIT: I no longer run GingerBread and cannot remember where all the settings are. You'll have to look, Also switching from 3G to 2G networks can save a ton of power. Shutting off wifi when idle can help... etc.
Peace.

 

[Kicksilver]

How are your charging habits, the condition of your battery(found by calling *#*#4636*#*#* and looking in the battery section).

Your battery could be bad.

Also Im not saying that the alarm is causing your problem, Im saying that the only constant i see between pictures is your alarm which runs off of your OS, thereby causing you system to work. If you alarm is causing the drain, you will know when you shut it of and your Android OS goes down.

Im sorry that this doesnt make sense to you, maybe someone else can try to help you.

Peace.

This battery is 3 months old mate, the system says it's on good health. Charging habits are from 1-5% to 100% daily.

Yes, I will redo this test tonight without the alarm and I'll report back here.

But as you said, my system isn't sleeping, there must be some setting/app preventing it from sleeping.

I just talked to a friend with the same device as mine, ans his uptime is 8hours and Android OS only used CPU for 2 minutes!!!! Mine is ate 39 minutes right now, with 10 hours of uptime!

Don't be offended man, I thank you got trying to help me.

 

[tyler79durdan]

Your issue could be a rouge app causing the system to work also, try looking for it by going into your applications->running and look for unusual apps that may not need to be running. If you find a suspect, kill it and watch to make sure it doesnt come back on. If it does this could be your rouge app, i would suggest finding an alternative app that does the same thing.

EDIT: No Offense Taken

 

[Kicksilver]

These are the running services:

 

[Kicksilver]

Almost going to bed, gonna test it without any kind of connection.

ps: EarlyMon, I'm needing some of your wisdom here.

 

[chanchan05]

Facebook messenger, if you are logged in, will ping the internet every now and then. Same case for whatsapp.

Email is dependent on how often you set it to sync, it will ping the internet like every hour or whatever time interval you set.

It doesn't matter if you aren't connected to the internet at the time. Within the given refresh rate, those apps will activate and then try to connect to the interent then sleep again. If I remember correctly Facebook Messenger pings at every 15min, then if it receives a message stays active for like 5-10min before sleeping again, hence the battery drain.

 

[Kicksilver]

This sucks....

I tried this night without any connectivity...

The result...

@chanchan,

I uninstalled Facebook/Fb messenger yesterday, didn't change a thing.

I'm helpless, I think I got a messed up device.

 

[Kicksilver]

I asked that friend of mine to perform the same test as I did, to let the device idle for some hours with mobile network enabled, this is what he got:

I guess 52 seconds of Android OS really helped his battery, whereas I got 32 minutes...

This can't be.

 

[chanchan05]

Try downloading PowerTutor. It will give you a more accurate reading of battery using processes as compared to the inbuilt one.

 

[GoNavy]

I had bad battery drain from my Avail Z990 as well, downloaded "BadAss Battery monitor" and "Powerful Control" widgets. Badass Battery showed me that my phone was being held awake by AT&T mobile care app and the GPS was running non-stop. Did a force close on mobile care, re-booted my phone then used the Powerful Control to shut down everything 3G, wifi, bluetooth, and GPS. I am thinking Mobile care or GPS was acting up, the above action must have snapped it back to working right..lol..Now my phone sleeps all night, I use maybe 2% of my battery. So I guess one of those two things was causing my problem, don't which. Take a look at Badass Battery monitor it's free, they also have a paid, but the free gives you a lot of info, on whats going with the phone and apps. I now only turn things on when I need them and I get two or three days use on one charge, the powerful control widget puts everything at one touch access.

 

[jerofld]

When is the last time you rebooted your phone? Can you remove the battery? If so, shut down the phone, remove the battery, and let it sit for a minute or so. Then reinstall the battery and see if you still have the bad idle. If you have no removable battery, just shut it off for a minute and reboot.

Are you rooted? It doesn't look like you are, because most ROMs like to add battery percentages to the battery monitor. But if you improperly flash a ROM -or your phone just doesn't like that particular ROM-, it can cause the Android OS to act funky.

But my bet is that you need to let the phone stay shut off for at least a minute to let it clear out some bad stuff from RAM. It could also be that something is screwed up in your cache or dalvik cache partition. If you're not rooted, the only way to fix that is to do a factory reset.

 

[Kicksilver]

Thanks for the replies buddies.

So, I've always noticed this happens after some days of activity time... Like 3 days after I restarted the phone. A reboot will fix it, for another 3 days.

But I'd like to SOLVE this for once, and not having to worry about rebooting the device...

@jerofld, when I performed those tests, it hadn't been rebooted for aproximately 6 days.

 

[Kicksilver]

ps: do all of you here reboot your devices frequently?

 

[chanchan05]

Not really, my device just sometimes gets turned off by itself due to battery drain, so that counts as a reboot. Plus its recommended to calibrate your li-ion battery about once every 3mos anyway.

 

[spikeithard]

I had a similar problem of battery going from full charge at 1am to almost dead my 7 am while sleeping. I factory reset phone and seems to be A LOT better now but still not near where it was when i first got it.

 

[Kicksilver]

I am willing to do a factory reset, but there's a lot to be lost...

As our friend said, this can't be normal. My system must be messed up.

 

[Kicksilver]

So, I did a master reset yesterday, and it's been fine since then.

But I'll need to analyse it for some days before taking it for granted.

I'll keep reporting here. (as if anyone cared )

 

[funpig]

+1 on "Power Tutor" app. It is free and will show which app or system is using up your battery.

 

[Kicksilver]

48 hours of activity, and still looking good.

 

[Samus]

48 hours of activity, and still looking good.

How's everything turning out? I'm having the same problem with my DROID4.

 

[Kicksilver]

So, I found out its a bug in the kernel.

After 70-ish hours of up time, the bug returned and I had to reboot my device...

I hope Samsung's update to the Galaxy S can solve this. But until then, I'll need to keep rebooting it every other day not to have to worry about this.

Sad...