Battery sucked b4, but wow...REALLY sux on JB

[Tim K]

Yaksha,
Can you post shots of the battery stats graph? Also, if you click on "cell standby" do you have a lot of time without signal?

My initial thought is you have a weak 3g signal.

On wifi I drop less than 1% per hour idling overnight.

 

[Yaksha]

Yaksha,
Can you post shots of the battery stats graph? Also, if you click on "cell standby" do you have a lot of time without signal?

My initial thought is you have a weak 3g signal.

On wifi I drop less than 1% per hour idling overnight.

Sure, I'll run it for the day on 3G and post a screenshot. I completely forgot to get a screenshot of that when I was doing this.

Also, I do live in a pretty major metropolitan area (Phoenix), so it's not like I am in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Yaksha]

Yaksha,
Can you post shots of the battery stats graph? Also, if you click on "cell standby" do you have a lot of time without signal?

Screenshots from today:

What color should the Mobile Network be?

 

[metal571]

2 bars isn't great. Mobile Network is green if you have around 3-4 bars, so that's one sign your phone is not in the best signal area of all. It looks like the stock Email app is also eating away at battery. Better Battery Stats would tell more.

 

[Tim K]

As for signal colors:
Red is NONE.
Bright Yellow is BAD (almost none - like -120dbm)
Dull Yellow is not good (like -100+dbm, mine's at -108 now).
Greyish-yellow is OK (like -90dbm)
Green is Strong.

All very technical definitions, I know! I wish they did more sensible colors instead of 4 shades of yellow.

By comparison, mine is almost exactly the same as yours. Between dull yellow and greyish yellow. I know I am in a fringe-y 4G area, so sometimes I flip from 3G to 4G. And I vary from -90dbm to about -112dbm just sitting in my house. I would not describe my signal as "good". I've run a number of comparisons between WiFi and 3G/4G, and WiFi by far uses the least power. A weaker 3g/4g signal will cause a significant battery drain as the phone hunts for a better signal and even boosts power to try to improve signal.

If you can, use WiFi whenever possible as this will greatly improve your battery life. I don't see anything else that appears to be draining your battery. Looks like minimal screen time, some background processes (probably exchange and some syncs), and no loss of signal... so nothing jumps out at me as a problem.

 

[metal571]

I'm dumbfounded...you guys actually call that normal drain? There must be an incredible difference in power draw from CDMA vs GSM phones then, because my standby on HSPA draws about 1.5%/hr on idle. Wow.

 

[Sandroidfan]

I'm dumbfounded...you guys actually call that normal drain? There must be an incredible difference in power draw from CDMA vs GSM phones then, because my standby on HSPA draws about 1.5%/hr on idle. Wow.

I don't think that's normal drain even on 3G CDMA. Mine drains about 2~3% per hour on CDMA with medium signal (90~100dbm). I think he got something going on in background.

 

[metal571]

I don't think that's normal drain even on 3G CDMA. Mine drains about 2~3% per hour on CDMA with medium signal (90~100dbm). I think he got something going on in background.

Yeah, it looks like the stock Email app holding a wakelock if you look at the wakeups in that battery stats shot. He needs to use Better Battery Stats and look at Partial Wakelocks over a period of time to confirm it.

 

[snuggles]

Holy crap, what is your screen time?

I didn't take any screen shots yet. Ill let it run down again and take some snap shots.

 

[Yaksha]

Yeah, it looks like the stock Email app holding a wakelock if you look at the wakeups in that battery stats shot. He needs to use Better Battery Stats and look at Partial Wakelocks over a period of time to confirm it.

I just installed Better Battery Stats, but I've never used it before. Is there anything I need to do?

 

[Tim K]

Nope. Just set it to 'partial wakelocks' and 'since unpugged'. Post the results. Basically you are looking for processes that continuously or repeatedly woke up the cpu.

Usually it will be something in the top 5. Look for either a high 'time'.... lots of minutes. Or really high counts like in the hundreds.

Keep in mind that high counts can be normal as there are many processes that should be running in the background. For example, i was streaming radio this morning so i have an 'audio out' wakelock of 25 minutes. We are looking for ones that shouldn't be there.

You can either just list out the top 5-10 causes and their times/counts or choose 'dump to file' and post that.

 

[Yaksha]

So I'm guessing I must've done something wrong with Better Battery Stats?

 

[metal571]

So I'm guessing I must've done something wrong with Better Battery Stats?

you must have restarted at some point. can we see "since boot"?

 

[Yaksha]

Since boot doesn't look much different.

The uptime on my phone is 47 hours.

 

[metal571]

Since boot doesn't look much different.

The uptime on my phone is 47 hours.

Strange. Plug and unplug the charger, and data should start to appear when you hit the refresh button up on the top right when it is set to "since unplugged"

 

[Yaksha]

I rebooted the phone and it seems to be gathering data now.

So I know the mail is kinda high up there, but it's only using 5 minutes worth of battery (unless I am reading that wrong).

It seems like for being on for almost 10 hours, nothing has really used very much.

 

[metal571]

So I know the mail is kinda high up there, but it's only using 5 minutes worth of battery (unless I am reading that wrong).

It seems like for being on for almost 10 hours, nothing has really used very much.

Yeah so what I'm seeing is that your wakelocks actually aren't that bad. Because the bars in BBS are pretty close in size, and all the top wakelocks are under 1%, wakelocks are hardly the concern here, although they do affect the phone somewhat. What is really affecting the phone is the fact that you only have 2 out of 4 bars, so that's not the best signal in the world. This is why Cell Standby is right up there with Idle in Android's default battery use menu, so, mainly, your radio is using up most of the power, followed by some wakelocks held for very short periods of time (you're right, 5 minutes over 10 hours is very little). The best way to save power would be just to toggle your data completely off when you don't need it in your environment.

 

[Tim K]

Yeah. Not too bad. Honestly though, unless you NEED it I would turn off Facebook. Sure it wasn't a big drain but what does it need to spend syncing in the background for 4 minutes. Email doesn't spend that long syncing. That tells me Facebook is sending a lot of data... and really, even though its a small drain its not necessary.

The only real advice I can offer is to use WiFi or move or change jobs to someplace with a better signal