Help Whats sucking up the battery?

[deltaforce]

Hello folks,

I am using Galaxy S4 Play edition, and I have aftermarket battery of double capacity. The battery has been really lasting double the time that of the original battery. In last 2 days, its suddenly draining and the phone gets hot, nowhere near the battery but near the earpiece.

Any idea how do I find out why its getting hot and whats draining the battery? I removed Facebook and Groups app, but have facebook messenger app.

Thanks in advance.

 

[electricpete]

Post some screenshots of your battery screens.

 

[john59]

Funny enough my Samsung S4 has been draining the battery faster over the last week. I till haven't located the cause!

 

[deltaforce]

@electricpete
Can you elaborate which screens do you want me to post?
Settings->Battery?

 

[electricpete]

Yes. Battery graph w with the apps using it below. Also you might be able to Tap in the graph to expand it which provides "screen on" / device awake / wifi on / phone signal info below. Lots of time awake with screen off is one clue

 

[deltaforce]

@electricpete
Probably you are right. The graph attached. Can you offer any solution please?
Plus, do you know whats that star on the top? (The phone was just starting, hence no signal, but otherwise cellular signal is not an issue.)

 

[electricpete]

Yes, it definitely looks like a wakelock problem (some process is keeping your phone awake all the time). During the periods when phone was not awake, battery usage was much lower.

For general principle I would try rebooting and clearing cache in memory.

Assuming that doesn't work, the easiest ways to track down wakelocks is using root programs like Better Battery Stats. Do you have root access?

Do you recall any changes to the phone about the time the problem started?

 

[deltaforce]

I don't recall making any changes to the phone. I don't have root access to the phone. I could not find any easy root solution for Galaxy S4 (Play Edition) so didn't try, afraid of bricking it. If you know any easy to root solution, I would seriously look into it.

I rebooted phone yesterday and took the battery out for a few minutes. Since then, it hasn't warmed up. I do clean cache quite regularly using Easy Cache cleaner but that doesn't seem to be helping much.

 

[electricpete]

For general principle I would try rebooting and clearing cache in memory.

Sorry, I meant: "For general principle I would try rebooting and clearing cache in RECOVERY".

That sometimes works better than any other cache cleaning.

I think you can do it as follows (do NOT select factory reset from the menu)

1. If your phone is on, turn it off.
2. Press and hold the Volume Up and Volume Downbuttons, and then press and hold the Power button simultaneously for 10 seconds.
3. Use the volume buttons to highlight Recovery mode and press the Power button to restart into Recovery mode.
4. Use the volume buttons to scroll to "clear cache" then press thePower button to select it

Note: If at any point during the above steps your phone becomes unresponsive, you can restart it by holding down the Power button for several seconds.

 

[deltaforce]

1. Use the volume buttons to scroll to "clear cache" then press thePower button to select it

I don't seem to have that option. The options are
- Reboot system now
- Apply update from ADB
- Apply update from external storage
- Apply update from cache
- Wipe data/factory reset
- Wipe cache partition
- Reboot to bootloader
- Power down
- View recovery logs

There is no 'Clear cache' option on the screen

 

[electricpete]

My apologies. Should select "Wipe cache partition"
(it won't delete anything except for you cache, and it is a more thorough cache cleaning than any other)

 

[deltaforce]

Thanks.
Now that I just wiped cache partition, I will check the performance.