Help Phone never sleeps, battery dead by the end of the day

[jaydee77ca]

Hi,

I haven't been getting very good battery life (less than one day with VERY minimal actual use). I installed Android System Info and went to DashBoard, then Battery, then History. If I select "Other usage" and "Since last unplugged" it shows "Running" as 100%. When I click on the "Running" bar it says "Time spent without sleeping: 14h 43m 15s (100%)". So it looks like it hasn't gone to sleep at all since I unplugged it.

7 of those 14+ hours was spent sitting on my desk at work and 90% or more of the rest of the time was spent either in my jacket pocket or sitting on the table at home. I spent maybe 30 mins reading texts and browsing the market and didn't do anything else with the phone all day.

Should it not have gone to sleep for at least some of that time? Could this be why the battery is pretty much dead by the end of the day? Is there a way to figure out why it's not going to sleep at all?

Thanks!

 

[Kattrinakitten]

I have a coupe suggestions. One is to go into settings and change the screen time out settings and make sure your power saving mode is on. I also would recommend getting a task killer so that apps you aren't using while sitting at your desk at work are turned off.

 

[Jack45]

Task killers - CapFAQ

 

[jaydee77ca]

I have a coupe suggestions. One is to go into settings and change the screen time out settings and make sure your power saving mode is on. I also would recommend getting a task killer so that apps you aren't using while sitting at your desk at work are turned off.

I have Auto Brightness enabled, Screen timeout set to 30 seconds, and Power saving mode turned on.

I don't use a task killer for the reasons mentioned in the link Jack45 provided. I do have a Samsung widget on my home page that shows "Active applications" (apps that are actively using CPU and battery) and it always shows 0.

So I still don't know why it won't sleep.

 

[Kattrinakitten]

Maybe it has something to do with your synching settings for diff apps/widgets?

 

[jaydee77ca]

Something is definitely preventing it from sleeping. When I go to Battery History I see the following:

Other Usage - Since last unplugged
Running 100% (5h 29m 50s)
Screen on 7.9%

Partial wake usage - Since last unplugged
Android System 5h 20m 34s

The phone has basically just been sitting on my desk all morning (5.5 hours). From what I've been reading online with the screen on only 7.9% of the time there is no way it should be running 100% of the time.

Over those 5.5 hours on my desk the battery has gone from 97% to 67%.

 

[viny2cool]

Try rebooting ur phone by going in recovery mode. switch off your phone and Press volume key and power key together. You will have option to reboot.

Such problems are often solved by this method, if not I am not sure,

 

[jaydee77ca]

I found the culprit! It's TweetDeck.

Here's how I figured it out. I use JuicePlotter to track my battery usage and I remembered noticing something odd in the graph a few weeks back. My phone had gone all night (10 p.m. to 8 a.m.) and only lost about 10% battery. The next day while it sat on my desk all day (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) it lost about 40% battery. The slope of the graph was drastically different. At the time I didn't think much of it as I had just got the phone about a week before.

Here is the tricky part. I was using all the system tools and stuff to check the apps services running etc. and nothing was showing TweetDeck. It just showed Android System, phone idle, etc. I used Android System Info to look at the Battery history. Specifically, "Other usage" and "Partial Wake Usage" since last unplugged. I noticed that under Partial wake usage it showed Android System at 100% and under Other usage it showed "Running" at 100%. Basically, despite sitting on my desk for 8 hours straight the phone was not sleeping at all. Also, I noticed that it would always seem warm. So something must have been constantly running and preventing it from sleeping. However none of the system info tools could tell me what it was. They would just show Android system type components.

That's when I remembered the odd thing I had noticed in JuicePlotter a few weeks back. I went back to the graph and found that day when the use changed. It was November 9. I went in to Android System Info and sorted the installed applications by installed date and lo and behold the only app I installed that day was TweetDeck.

I used one day as a test day and just left the phone on my desk at work all day and didn't charge it. I lost about 37% of the battery in 8 hours. That night I deleted the TweetDeck widget from my home screen and set the application updates to “manual”. (I think the columns were set anywhere between 30 minutes and 6 hours). The next day I let it sit on my desk all day again and only lost about 15% battery in 8 hours. Also, I noticed that the idle temperature dropped from about 31 to 26 degrees celcius.

So TweetDeck was causing a 147% increase in battery usage/drain.

I wonder if such a scenario could/would happen on the iPhone? It would be incredibly difficult for someone who is not an IT person to go through that process and find the problem. Likely they would just assume they had to charge their phone every 8 hours. One of the drawbacks of Android in my opinion.

 

[jaydee77ca]

TweetDeck might have only been part of the issue. After a day or so of less battery drain it appears that it's back to draining quite quickly again. Not quite as quick as when I had TweetDeck installed but quicker than after I removed the widget and changed the update frequency. I did run TweetDeck again after that day of good battery drain and upped the update frequency again to see if it was just the widget or the actual app that was causing issues. So perhaps running TweetDeck again caused some kind of process to spin off out of control. I just completely uninstalled TweetDeck so we'll see how things go from now...

 

[Enhanced]

I'm pretty much copying and pasting this in any threads that has people mentioning battery drain overnight:

I'm surprised no one really knows this but it is actually your WiFi that is causing the drain.

Turn off WiFi completely (leave mobile data on if you want) and you'll see that you'll lose 1-2% overnight. WiFi has an issue where it prevents your phone from sleeping, even if you have the WiFi sleep policy set to "When the screen is off". No need to return your Captivate like the others are saying. It's just that WiFi seems to be on all the time, no matter what, which causes your phone to hold a wakelock and not sleep (thus draining your battery).

I haven't found a solution to this so I just stopped using WiFi all together. I'm perfectly fine with using 3G data with the confidence of knowing that my phone is sleeping correctly.

I had EXACTLY the same problem as you when I first got my Captivate and I didn't know what the issue was. After some testing and observations, it is definitely WiFi that was the culprit. I went through the same thing as you with the Running % at 100% and the "Android System" holding a wakelock. Just stop using WiFi and you'll be fine. If you do decide to use WiFi, give it a reboot every so often as the sleeping issue will arise after a few hours of use with WiFi on. A reboot always corrects it.

 

[jaydee77ca]

I'm pretty much copying and pasting this in any threads that has people mentioning battery drain overnight:

I'm surprised no one really knows this but it is actually your WiFi that is causing the drain.

Turn off WiFi completely (leave mobile data on if you want) and you'll see that you'll lose 1-2% overnight. WiFi has an issue where it prevents your phone from sleeping, even if you have the WiFi sleep policy set to "When the screen is off". No need to return your Captivate like the others are saying. It's just that WiFi seems to be on all the time, no matter what, which causes your phone to hold a wakelock and not sleep (thus draining your battery).

I haven't found a solution to this so I just stopped using WiFi all together. I'm perfectly fine with using 3G data with the confidence of knowing that my phone is sleeping correctly.

I had EXACTLY the same problem as you when I first got my Captivate and I didn't know what the issue was. After some testing and observations, it is definitely WiFi that was the culprit. I went through the same thing as you with the Running % at 100% and the "Android System" holding a wakelock. Just stop using WiFi and you'll be fine. If you do decide to use WiFi, give it a reboot every so often as the sleeping issue will arise after a few hours of use with WiFi on. A reboot always corrects it.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying there's a bug in the WiFi such that if you use WiFi then it doesn't shut off properly and so later when it says it's off it's actually still on and consuming battery?

I had WiFi off when I had the problems with the battery draining super fast at work. I use WiFi at home but not at work and I always turn it off when I leave home. I can't see how WiFi would cause the issue if it's off unless there was some sort of but that caused it to not really shut off correctly.

Even so though, wouldn't it show the Wifi On and Wifi Running percentages as really high in Android System Info if it was staying on all the time?

 

[Enhanced]

That's because your phone is probably bugged by then. To prove it to you, do this:

Charge your phone to 100%. Turn wifi off and restart your phone. When it boots back up, don't turn on wifi at all and I guarantee your phone will sleep correctly and your battery will be fine. Again, don't touch wifi after the reboot.

I'll elaborate later when I have the time.

 

[jaydee77ca]

That's because your phone is probably bugged by then. To prove it to you, do this:

Charge your phone to 100%. Turn wifi off and restart your phone. When it boots back up, don't turn on wifi at all and I guarantee your phone will sleep correctly and your battery will be fine. Again, don't touch wifi after the reboot.

I'll elaborate later when I have the time.

Ok, so this morning I was having battery issues as mentioned (10% in 2 hours) even though I wasn't running the TweetDeck widget anymore which I thought was odd. But I DID have wifi on last night (after not using it all day since my last reboot). I uninstalled TweetDeck this morning, but I ALSO rebooted the phone (not just restart, but actual reboot). After that the battery usage went back to normal again (5% drain in about 5 hours). I just assumed it was from the TweetDeck uninstall, but maybe it was the reboot. I turned wifi on again when I got home today and looking at the battery graph it looks like it's declining really quickly again.

So I think you might be on to something. It seems that the wifi isn't turning off correctly or something. Or could it be some kind of combination of having wifi on, the wifi sleep policy, and the fact that I'm running JuiceDefender which is only turning data on for 1 minute every 15 minutes? I always thought wifi would use less power, especially if it's sleeping. But it seems there's some kind of bug that prevents the phone from sleeping if the wifi is on. Is this an Android bug or a Samsung bug? Do you have to an actual recovery mode reboot or just power off and then on again?

 

[Enhanced]

Ok, so this morning I was having battery issues as mentioned (10% in 2 hours) even though I wasn't running the TweetDeck widget anymore which I thought was odd. But I DID have wifi on last night (after not using it all day since my last reboot). I uninstalled TweetDeck this morning, but I ALSO rebooted the phone (not just restart, but actual reboot). After that the battery usage went back to normal again (5% drain in about 5 hours). I just assumed it was from the TweetDeck uninstall, but maybe it was the reboot. I turned wifi on again when I got home today and looking at the battery graph it looks like it's declining really quickly again.

So I think you might be on to something. It seems that the wifi isn't turning off correctly or something. Or could it be some kind of combination of having wifi on, the wifi sleep policy, and the fact that I'm running JuiceDefender which is only turning data on for 1 minute every 15 minutes? I always thought wifi would use less power, especially if it's sleeping. But it seems there's some kind of bug that prevents the phone from sleeping if the wifi is on. Is this an Android bug or a Samsung bug? Do you have to an actual recovery mode reboot or just power off and then on again?

These are my findings from the month that I have had the phone. When my phone drained 70% overnight one night, I pretty much had the same reaction as you - what did I install that made my battery drain? I started to uninstall pretty much everything and did a reboot and it seemed like my phone was fine when I was in Spare Parts. My phone was sleeping and I just chalked it up to a bad app that I installed. Throughout the next day, however, I noticed that the problem returned. I was again frustrated, but more so this time because I didn't install anything new. Again, in a fit of rage, I uninstalled pretty much everything to the point where it was stock. At this point, I thought what the hell? Why not just reformat (factory setting) the phone? I did this and when it came back, everything was good again. I made it a point to not install any apps for a few days and keep the phone as stock as possible. The night I went to bed, I left the phone off the charger and it drained again. At this point, I thought there had to be a defect with the phone. I was almost to the point where I was going to get a replacement, but out of sheer randomness, I decided to turn off WiFi and leave my phone using mobile data indefinitely. I went to bed the next night and lo behold, I wake up with only 1% drained. I tried this again the next night and the same thing, only a few % drained. Running % was down and Android System wasn't holding a wakelock. I began to install the apps back onto my phone and strictly only used mobile data from then on. My phone hasn't had an issue since. It's been a few weeks now.

Few things:

- To answer your question, it has nothing to do with the sleep policy or any apps you download. It's just something faulty with the sleep policy. It seems that no matter what policy you change it to, WiFi will not let the phone sleep. If you set the policy to "never", you'll notice that the Running % and Android System will be maxed out. The bug is that even when it's set to "When screen is off", it still doesn't really do that.

- When I say reboot, I mean just a simple restart (turn the phone off and turn it back on).

- When WiFi is turned on, it seems like it doesn't "bug" until a few hours down. For example, what I noticed is (at 100% battery) when I turned WiFi on, it would sleep correctly and everything for a few hours. But once I got down to like 60%-40% (3-4 hours later) it would then all of a sudden decide to not sleep and hold a wakelock. This means that it isn't instant. It takes time to "bug".

- Once it is "bugged" nothing will "unbug" it until you restart. That's why, in my last post, I told you to restart the phone before you discredit WiFi as the culprit. You having WiFi off later on in the day did nothing as it was already "bugged".

- My suggestion is to simply leave WiFi off and use mobile data. I'd rather have the piece of mind knowing that my battery isn't draining then have an extra 2-3x the speed. Nothing I do on my phone is that speed intensive anyways. But then again, the reason I can do this is because I have a 6GB data plan. For those that have a limited data plan or would still prefer to use WiFi, just reboot every so often when you noticed your phone isn't sleeping. It really is a hassle though.

Tell me if you have any new findings. I wouldn't mind using WiFi again, but for me right now, it's never touched anymore and I get by fine. Hope this helps!

 

[BookLover]

Hmmm...I have my wifi set to Never Sleep. Juice Defender set to turn off Mobile Data from 1130pm to 6am, keeping wifi on during that time.

My drain was only 1% from 12am to 430am (I woke up and checked some email, did some lite surfing, for about 45 mins); went back to sleep from 530am to 6am - 0% drain.

My wifi is on the whole night (Juice Plotter shows this). So, at least on my phone, wifi is not draining the battery by keeping a wakelock on the phone.

A more likely culprit is some program in the background constantly connecting to the internet or otherwise using CPU. Not sure how to troubleshoot this though.

But I am going to say that wifi alone was not the cause of your or OP's problem unless there is a defect in the phone.

About a week ago, I uninstalled a few apps, because my phone WAS draining during the night. But I can't remember what I uninstalled. Missed Message Flasher was definitely one of them. I wish that the Market kept track of uninstalled apps. I'd be able to give better details then.

 

[jaydee77ca]

Well, I turned wifi off, rebooted my phone, and haven't turned wifi back on since and my battery has been WAY better. If I don't use the phone much then I only lose about 10-15% from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Previously I was losing about 60%. JuicePlotter now shows an estimate of about 25-30h remaining from a 100% charge whereas it used to only show about 12-15h. So, I don't know.

Given the battery history said that it was Android System keeping the wake lock I doubt it was a specific application or it would have listed that application instead. (This happened after installing an update for WeatherBug for example. I noticed bad battery drain afterwards and sure enough in the battery history WeatherBug was listed top on the wake lock list by a huge amount. A reboot fixed that.)

I don't have UltimateJuice but I use JuiceDefender Free to only turn on data for 1 minute every 15 minutes. My wifi sleep policy was/is set to turn off when the screen turns off. I'll try setting wifi to never sleep as you have and see if that affects anything. Perhaps it's the sleep setting that's causing the problem.

 

[jaydee77ca]

My wifi is on the whole night (Juice Plotter shows this). So, at least on my phone, wifi is not draining the battery by keeping a wakelock on the phone.

Just to clarify also, the issue didn't seem to be when wifi was enabled, but after I turned it off after having it on for a while.

I turned wifi on last night to do some app updates and such and then turned it off again and rebooted. I haven't had wifi on since. Today my battery is draining really fast again. It was fine for the last week when I wasn't using wifi. Now all of a sudden it's draining quickly again. All the battery history says is "Running" and under partial wake lock it says "Android System".

So, I'm not sure what's going on. Unfortunately "Android System" is not very descriptive or helpful.

If owning an Android phone means rebooting constantly, debugging applications, and trying to find out what's killing my battery all the time then I might sell this thing and get an iPhone. My phone should be a device, not a job.

 

[sremick]

If owning an Android phone means rebooting constantly, debugging applications, and trying to find out what's killing my battery all the time then I might sell this thing and get an iPhone. My phone should be a device, not a job.

I'm a hardcore geek and I rarely have to reboot my phone. Can't even remember the last time.

Android devices are more like handheld computers than phones. They are like desktop computers and the user holds some responsibility for being in-charge of what they choose to put on their device and how it works. It is the price and trade-off of having such power and freedom. If you truly want a watered-down, restricted, limited playground with a nanny then indeed perhaps the iPhone is for you. It's not for the rest of us though.

It's like this:

Versus this:

 

[opflame]

Could this be a Rogers Captivate thing?

I recognize a few folks in here and I think they are using Rogers as well.

On my stock phone I noticed the wifi policy would work (i.e. would shut off in sleep mode). Now it never goes to sleep no matter what I set it to. I'm thinking of doing a factory reset.

I'm curious if one of the apps like juicedefender or launcherpro has messed something up....whether in the wifi policy or it kept it awake.

 

[opflame]

Could this be a Rogers Captivate thing?

I recognize a few folks in here and I think they are using Rogers as well.

On my stock phone I noticed the wifi policy would work (i.e. would shut off in sleep mode). Now it never goes to sleep no matter what I set it to. I'm thinking of doing a factory reset.

I'm curious if one of the apps like juicedefender or launcherpro has messed something up....whether in the wifi policy or it kept it awake.

I installed that Android System info and it seems I'm nowhere near as bad of shape as your Captivate. It appears to be going to sleep and hardly any wakelocks, however my wifi connection is staying on while its sleeping (and not listening to my wifi sleep policy)

Running - 53.8%
Time spend w/o sleeping 35m 26s

Biggest partial wake lock is Android system @ 3m 17s. Google and Email is in there but in the seconds.

Wifi is at 95% on (the other 5 I had it off) so it definitely isn't shutting off even though the Captivate is sleeping.

 

[opflame]

Well after learning that the default WiFi sleep policy is 15 minutes when set to "When screen off" it would appear that the policy is working.

However I do notice that I am also victim to the wakelock with Wifi.

Is there anything we can do to complain to Rogers or Samsung about this? Perhaps this will be a 2.2 fix?

Is this fixed by a "power off" or do you need to go into the service menu and reboot it?

 

[jaydee77ca]

I'm a hardcore geek and I rarely have to reboot my phone. Can't even remember the last time.

Android devices are more like handheld computers than phones. They are like desktop computers and the user holds some responsibility for being in-charge of what they choose to put on their device and how it works. It is the price and trade-off of having such power and freedom. If you truly want a watered-down, restricted, limited playground with a nanny then indeed perhaps the iPhone is for you. It's not for the rest of us though.

Ha! Are you serious? How constructive.

Are you saying that nobody should expect their desktop computer to just work? If so then I am amazed at how complacent we've become in that regard, since I would think that expectation would be perfectly justified.

 

[jaydee77ca]

On another note, I am still getting some weird battery behaviour.

I use both JuiceDefender and JuicePlotter and for a while the JuicePlotter widget was showing about 30-40 hours estimated remaining battery life after a full charge (usually around 35) but lately it's gone down to 22-30.

Also, I have JuiceDefender set to only enable data for 1 minute every 15 minutes. I disabled JuiceDefender one night just to see what would happen and my battery went from 62% to 26% from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. (36% over 8 hours) When I looked at my JuicePlotter graph in the morning it showed that data had been enabled the entire night.

The previous night, with JuiceDefender enabled, JuicePlotter showed it went from 66% at 12 a.m. to 52% at 8 a.m. (14% over 8 hours)

What's REALLY weird though is that same night, JuicePlotter showed it staying at 66% from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. It didn't drop at all over that 5 hours. I thought that was very strange. I haven't seen that happen since so I'm not sure what caused it. I didn't change any settings or apps. *shrug*

 

[sremick]

Ha! Are you serious? How constructive.

Are you saying that nobody should expect their desktop computer to just work? If so then I am amazed at how complacent we've become in that regard, since I would think that expectation would be perfectly justified.

No, I'm saying that an Android phone is not a VCR. It's not an iPhone. It's not a dumbphone. It's a software platform... effectively, a computer... with a customizable OS running on varied hardware that allows and encourages users to install any number of 3rd-party applications, utilities, and games. This is not helped by the fact that everyone and their gerbil on here is encouraged to root their device and even flash buggy hacked ROMs. This results in an extremely varied and somewhat unpredictable end result and environment which the manufacturer can't always be held responsible for.

With great power comes great responsibility. Or, to quote JFK: ""To whom much is given, much is required."

Yes, you can expect it to "just work". But you also have to expect that if it doesn't "just work" the reason might be your own doing and not the computer's fault. Google can't help it if you installed some 3rd party app that's now going rogue and creating an unpleasant/unacceptable experience for you.

 

[jaydee77ca]

Yes, you can expect it to "just work". But you also have to expect that if it doesn't "just work" the reason might be your own doing and not the computer's fault. Google can't help it if you installed some 3rd party app that's now going rogue and creating an unpleasant/unacceptable experience for you.

Well, that is kind of like Microsoft not addressing the issues with it's OS and just saying "Sorry you have a virus but we can't help it if you choose to run Outlook".

I am fine with the reason being "my own doing" if I was doing something out of the ordinary. Installing apps should not be considered out of the ordinary. You should be able to install apps, even bad apps, and still be able to either 1. have the phone work or 2. easily identify the problem app so it can be removed. In my opinion right now Android does not offer either option. In fact, in order to even try to debug such a situation you have to install even more third party apps!

And how do you know which apps are good or bad? Certainly not the rating or the comments. I have seen spam apps rated highly. And most of the comments on apps are people advertising for their app store site or whatever. Totally useless.

In my opinion it is also ridiculous to tell people to turn off data, 3g, bluetooth, gps, account sync, live wallpapers, home widgets, etc. to conserve battery. These are features of the phone. You should be able to use them and still have your battery last at least a day. Why get a smart phone if you have to turn everything off in order for it to last? I mean imagine if you bought a car and the battery kept dying and they told you just to turn off the heater, lights, radio, etc.? However in this area the limitation is likely on the battery technology rather than the OS. It's understandable that OS and app developers will push the limits of the processor and platform while the battery capabilities still lag. (A similar situation as the smart car area)

I am not anti-Android, nor pro-Apple. I just think that the OS needs to be a bit more sophisticated if it expects to compete as a device platform.

Anyway, our discussion doesn't really belong in this thread since it's way off the original topic so if we want to continue it we should start a separate thread.