Help Phone Idle is Hogging my Battery

[Inspekt]

Can anyone tell me what phone idle is and why it appears to be using most of my battery? I went to bed last night at 100% charge and woke up this morning (6 hours) to find it around 70%.

When I checked the battery the vast majority of usage was for phone idle. Today, the same thing is going on. I charged up to 100% before I left now I'm down to 60% (~5 hours) after some use, and phone idle is again using a large part of the battery.

I reset the phone and it's been on for 59 minutes. When looking at the battery status phone idle has been on for 53 minutes.

What does this mean and what is going on?

Thanks!

 

[shook187]

You might not have the new update....It fixes that problem.

 

[zetterwing]

The update should help. Until then you can try the gamut of tweaks to get your phone to sleep properly. Start with reboot...toggle airplane mode on/off...go to running processes and kill off drm, media hub, and hotspot if its there(unless of course you use the Mobile Hotspot)...go to wifi settings and set the wifi sleep policy to never. Unless you grab an app like Autostarts you'll have to kill off the running processes each time you boot but until you get the update its a method to make sure your phone sleeps properly.

Open your dialer and key in *#4636*1111#
This gives you a lot of info and can tell you for sure whether your phone is sleeping properly. Specifically, battery history...time since boot/unplugged. Click on running and it tells time without sleeping. Should be proportional to the actual use of your phone.

 

[dug13]

Quick Question How does setting wifi sleep policy to never conserve the battery?

 

[GUARDiAN921]

Quick Question How does setting wifi sleep policy to never conserve the battery?

I too was wondering the same thing. But just have it set to never just in case. Doesn't hurt to know how it helps with battery life though.

 

[blueShift]

turning off always-on wi-fi/gps and data sync, plus the airplane mode trick, have me going well before 24 hrs on a single charge. Even my LG dumb phone (with data plan) couldn't do that. I flip on these services only when I need them.

I have a Sprint Airave (free, because my signal is so bad at home) which gives me a very strong signal; it also indicated that the stock Epic configuration was pinging the network constantly.

 

[zetterwing]

I too was wondering the same thing. But just have it set to never just in case. Doesn't hurt to know how it helps with battery life though.

Judging by the description of the DI18 update there was an issue with the wifi when in standby. Changing the sleep policy to never *may* have been the manual fix for this. I just know it works. I haven't tried changing it back even after the update. Maybe I can get more than 24 hours on a charge if I try that.

 

[JeffinCA]

Can anyone tell me what phone idle is and why it appears to be using most of my battery? I went to bed last night at 100% charge and woke up this morning (6 hours) to find it around 70%.

I had a similar problem with my EVO 4G, but it was the Dialer that ate up so much battery time.

Never figured it out. After a couple months, and probably for a non-related reason, that phone's app index was fried and I couldn't access many apps, so I re-initialized the phone.

Since then, the battery usage has been much lower. The Idle function does account for 26%, but that is less than WiFi and Cell Standby, and the phone has been on battery for 2 1/2 days and still has 60-70% if its energy.


Jeff