Can anyone tell me what's going on with my bat?

[Iggs]

So for the past few weeks I've been doing some observational experiments with my battery and i've noticed the following trend... its completely effin wonky!! at some points i'll have wifi and autosync off before i go to bed with 90-100% bat and by the time I wake up its dead.

Last night I was near the end of battery life so I set the phone to recharge, it recharged to full and I had wifi turned off.. went to bed.. just got up and lo and behold I have a dead phone... other nights its done the complete opposite.. wifi turned on and it wont have drained more than 10% while I sleep...

Do I need to get a new battery or are all android phones like this cuz this is starting to get kind of annoying now.. i have class in half hour and I really like to keep my phone with me at all times.

 

[Tyseyh]

Download spare parts and look up the partial wake usage. See if something is keeping your phone awake coz that aint right.
my phone has been on 14 hours ( was on over night ) an im on 61% charge left.

 

[speedycolzalez]

Download SystemPanel [1]. That will tell you what's using the processor over a given period.

My phone has been on 30 hours and I still have 59% left (admittedly, I haven't been using it much - just the odd call and text)

[1] you might have to pay for it. I don't think the Lite version does the usage history. It's well worth whatever it costs.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

so let me get this right? it died while on charge overnight?

EDIT:
im an idiot just re read it

 

[EddyOS]

Could just charge it each night and then see what it does during the day...makes it a bit easier to track the power usage

 

[funkmuncha]

Sounds like a rogue app.

 

[amlothi]

so let me get this right? it died while on charge overnight?

EDIT:
im an idiot just re read it

You aren't an idiot. The original post was not very clear at all. I also had problems piecing together the series of events.


My phone uses only half the battery over the course of ~15 hours each day. That's with me using it and things on.

If you battery is dying overnight without you using the phone, there's a problem.

 

[Iggs]

You aren't an idiot. The original post was not very clear at all. I also had problems piecing together the series of events.


My phone uses only half the battery over the course of ~15 hours each day. That's with me using it and things on.

If you battery is dying overnight without you using the phone, there's a problem.

I don't understand what was unclear.. I didn't really think it needed to be said that I unplugged the phone from charging after it was fully recharged... anyways..

Tyseyh: I downloaded Spare Parts but what is it exactly that I'm looking for? CPU usage shows nothing being used heavily except 'android system' and the value for that is very small as for bat usage the largest values I have are (this is 'total in all time' and NOT 'since last unlplugged'):

Running - 29.7%
Wifi On - 37.5%
Wifi Running - 37.5%
Screen on - 6.8%
Phone on - 0.3%

SpeedyColzalez - I will see what Tyseyh has to say about the info I got from Spare Parts, if the problem persists then I'll give SystemPanel a try.

Just a bit of an update, I've been monitoring the levels for the past couple days.. with wifi off in about 4 hours i'll be at ~50% battery remaining. I don't even have that many apps (I'm aware of the Desire's internal memory situation and as such only keep to apps that I need... the only really 'weird' app that I have is HD space and Sky Wallpapers the rest are fairly standard - dropbox, logmein, AndExplorer, APKInstaller, Gtunes Music, Handcent, IMDB, PowerAMP, Reddit is Fun, and Where's my Droid.

 

[Iggs]

Bit of an update.. so I monitored the battery yesterday during the day... at 8AM it was at 100% by 530 it was around 28%.. all I used the phone for was txting (about 50 msgs) call (for 2 mins) MP3 player (good portion of the day as I was on campus from 8 til about 4) so I would say probably at least a couple hours worth of MP3 listening and NO WIFI.. by 830 the phone had died and needed to recharge

My question is does this sound about right to you guys? After the phone died I recharged it to about 80% and unplugged it.. went to bed woke up this morning to the phone beeping telling me that it had 15% charge remaining and that I had to turn it off.. this is with WIFI OFF..

One other thing I forgot to mention was that I installed the Swype APK and when i go to running services it is on could that be the cause of it?

 

[Griff_LI]

WiFi off may be a miscalculation. Without WiFi your phone will hunt for a data signal (unless you switch mobile data completely) - if you're in a certain signal-strength area you may be switching constantly from 3G/H to 2G/E which will use-up more battery. Or in low-signal areas you'll be constantly finding and then losing the data connection which will cancel any syncing and when the connection comes back it will re-start it.

Whatever your signal strength if you have an available WiFi network it takes less power to connect to that than to an OTA network.

I leave WiFi on constantly and get over a day from the battery. At work the WiFi is very dodgy (stupid buggy firewall that the IT dept won't let me fix)) so I don't get much of a data connection but I leave it connected because the mobile signal is virtually nothing and the hunting would kill the battery.

The only thing I can't comment on is the MP3 usage. I don't use it for very long (listen to iPlayer at work) so I can't say whether that would kill the battery.

HOWEVER - if you're losing 65% of the battery overnight I'd have thought you have a rogue app. Mine loses somewhere between 0 and 10% overnight - a couple of percent on average. WiFi constantly on (and connected).

 

[Iggs]

that's actually very interesting because the place I'm in right now has pretty poor reception usually getting around 1-2 bars.. until I walk outside and then I'm back at full.. I'll definitely try leaving wifi on overnight tonight to see if it makes a difference... as for the app situation.. do you think i should get some kind of task killer app to see if it makes any difference?

 

[Griff_LI]

No. Task killers are unnecessary. Find the rogue app and remove it.

 

[Iggs]

No. Task killers are unnecessary. Find the rogue app and remove it.

Griff you are the man!.. I gave the wifi thing a shot last night... between 12-6 I lost 5% battery from 97% to 92% with wifi turned on... looks like you may have figured it out... I also did download Advanced Task Killer and killed a bunch of apps before I went to sleep but I doubt this did anything. But for now looks like its problem solved.. I'll try again tonight and let you know but thx a lot man.

1 question I have tho is if the WIFI is turned on doesn't the phone still have to be connected OTA to receive phone calls and texts or does it keep the signal between data and phonecalls/texts separate?

 

[Griff_LI]

I'm pleased for you. If you're still listening... lose the task killer it'll only mask any problem and that's only if it doesn't cause any of its own.

If you need to kill apps (and you only need to if they've gone wrong) you can do so from Manage Applications (or System Panel). ATK is a throwback to the earlier versions of Android (when task management wasn't quite so well-defined). Since 2.1 there has been no need for one and (from my experience) they cause more problems than they fix.