Help Optimus V with Defective Battery(?) - How to kill apps?

[Cars066]

Hey guys, I'm new here and totally glad to be here on what looks like a great community site - looking forward to some great development and support on this site... Anyway, I just got my teeth into an Android 2.2 (froyo) powered Optimus V. I had seen another post on this but I'd like to detail everything and maybe make an official thread here.

My Optimus V has had pretty horrible battery life as of yet. It has gone about eight hours at the very outside, with apps frequently disabled through both an app killer and the native service manager.

Additionally, I was wondering if it is possible to uninstall the pre-loaded apps such as Poynt and gChat that I never use.

What is the recommended way to prevent apps such as Maps and Where from starting back up as soon as I force stop them - in order to save battery life.

Day 1:
-Fairly infrequent web browsing (MAYBE a half-hour at the most)
-Roughly 70 messages sent or received (half and half)
-Maybe an hour and a half total of app use between Where, News & Weather, VM Account Settings, Downloads, Marketplace, and so on.
-Perhaps 10 minutes total of voice-calling time
-Frequent re-organizing of the apps, app exploration, and playing with system settings (i'd estimate about 4 hours or so)

**Phone lasted from about 7:30 AM off the charger to 3:45PM automatic shut-off at 0% battery.

Thanks a ton, and I'll be watching this thread frequently on my Optimus V ^.^



UPDATE: Yesterday it came off the charger around 8AM, and made it to around 1PM untill the battery was down to 10 percent or so.

This was with intermittent airplane mode while service was sparse. Perhaps an hour or two of web surfing at most, as well as maybe half an hour of downloading and playing apps.

All power - consuming things such as GPS and WiFi turned off at least 90 percent of the time. Screen brightness all the way down.

I mostly used it for texting and some visiting web pages, checking email, and a few ten minutes or less voice calls. Albeit I did obsessively unlock the phone to check all feeds and play with it at some times, as usual.

I used appkiller frequently to shut down the browser and stuff when not in use. Next I'll try it sans appkiller.

**Is this on-par or good for most smartphones?

 

[TVCCS]

Hey guys, I'm new here and totally glad to be here on what looks like a great community site - looking forward to some great development and support on this site... Anyway, I just got my teeth into an Android 2.2 (froyo) powered Optimus V. I had seen another post on this but I'd like to detail everything and maybe make an official thread here.

My Optimus V has had pretty horrible battery life as of yet. It has gone about eight hours at the very outside, with apps frequently disabled through both an app killer and the native service manager.

Additionally, I was wondering if it is possible to uninstall the pre-loaded apps such as Poynt and gChat that I never use.

What is the recommended way to prevent apps such as Maps and Where from starting back up as soon as I force stop them - in order to save battery life.

Day 1:
-Fairly infrequent web browsing (MAYBE a half-hour at the most)
-Roughly 70 messages sent or received (half and half)
-Maybe an hour and a half total of app use between Where, News & Weather, VM Account Settings, Downloads, Marketplace, and so on.
-Perhaps 10 minutes total of voice-calling time
-Frequent re-organizing of the apps, app exploration, and playing with system settings (i'd estimate about 4 hours or so)

**Phone lasted from about 7:30 AM off the charger to 3:45PM automatic shut-off at 0% battery.

Thanks a ton, and I'll be watching this thread frequently on my Optimus V ^.^

Battery life reportedly improves after the first few charging cycles. The only way to get rid of the pre-installed apps (so far) is to root the phone.
Theres an app I found called Fast Reboot that is a sort of wipe out all running tasks app I can use to kill most everything..it doesnt actually reboot the phone.

WiFi and Bluetooth are the biggest power users, and if youre not using the GPS, that should be off as well. Im looking at it from the perspective of a Palm Treo owner...and I dont see the battery life as all that band on mine. Of course, I also have chargers galore at home and in car.

 

[harvickchick]

If 2.2 is the same as 2.1 in this, you can't delete stock apps without rooting your phone.
That does seem to be pretty short battery life...are you using wifi/background data? Are you on an area where sometimes you pop outta service? I notice if I'm driving to the city there are areas where I have no service, causing my phone to search, which drains the battery faster. Idunno. Just an idea.
I don't have this phone so I can't say much about the battery life :X

It's still new...maybe others can chime in on this?

 

[tuukka87]

The battery on mine seems to be pretty good, I use advanced task killer, set to auto kill, so every time I hit the lock button or the phone goes into standbye mode all apps running are killed.

 

[Cars066]

Thanks to all that replied! Glad to see everyone's so helpful. yes actually a good two or more hours were spent in areas with no service and apps such as maps were background active for perhaps an hour or two. However, wifi, gps, syncing, and such were off for most of the phones battery span. Also this was first day and first charge...

But I am not familiar with rooting.

 

[Cars066]

Auto kill? excellent. I will check that out and get back with tomorrows charge number two results.

And TVCCS, are those complete charge cycles, like down to dead and back to full?

I also drained the battery to 0 the first (and only) charge. How bad is that for my phone and/or battery?

 

[TVCCS]

Auto kill? excellent. I will check that out and get back with tomorrows charge number two results.

And TVCCS, are those complete charge cycles, like down to dead and back to full?

I also drained the battery to 0 the first (and only) charge. How bad is that for my phone and/or battery?

I haven't run the phone down to more than about 30% so far...I have chargers at home and in the car, and am always in the habit of using them. You won't hurt the battery by doing a full draw down to my knowledge, but I don't think it will help it, either.

Lithium-ion battery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[csiemers]

The battery on mine seems to be pretty good, I use advanced task killer, set to auto kill, so every time I hit the lock button or the phone goes into standbye mode all apps running are killed.

That might be part of the issue of the short battery life. Try without the Task Killer for a few days and see if it improves.
I have an Optimus V as well and I'm getting 1 1/2 - 2 days of battery life without the task killer.

You have to realize that each time the task is killed, Android will eventually try to load it into memory, which doesn't mean it is running. Then if you have it on Auto Kill then the task killer kills it again and Android then tries to reload, and the cycle repeats actually eating up more battery than you are trying to save if you just left the apps loaded.

-Cary
www.youtube.com/tanksandplanes (Intercept and Optimus V videos)

 

[Cars066]

csiemers - okay, thanks a bunch. I'll try temporarily uninstalling the task killer app.

still not doing to well- even with sparse use of apps. will update tonight!

Thanks a bunch for the replies.

TVCCS - By charge cycles, you mean approximately 100% drained and charged - even if not all at once? So i can expect improvement in a few days, perhaps?

 

[TVCCS]

csiemers - okay, thanks a bunch. I'll try temporarily uninstalling the task killer app.

still not doing to well- even with sparse use of apps. will update tonight!

Thanks a bunch for the replies.

TVCCS - By charge cycles, you mean approximately 100% drained and charged - even if not all at once? So i can expect improvement in a few days, perhaps?

Actually...no...just normal use...as I said...I'm usually charging after getting down to 30-60%, and the battery life seems fine to me. It does seem like it's gotten better after the first 2-3 cycles.

One thing I have noticed, however, is if I leave the phone in standby mode during the night without having it on a charger, it seems to drain fast...I've had it be dead twice in the morning now when I didn't put it on a charger...I'm testing out a lot of things, and will try and figure that one out as well. Not sure if it's because I'm leaving apps running...or wifi...or what. I think one thing that could easily be draining people's systems is that GMail is setup to be checked automatically on a regular basis as a default, and there may be others as well. I'm also wondering if LiveWallpaper running in the background may be draining batteries, and I'm sure there's discussion about that out in Web land.

 

[Cars066]

Bit of an update here, day two is now listed in the first message of this post. Optimus V and other Android users -- how does your battery use compare?

 

[TVCCS]

Bit of an update here, day two is now listed in the first message of this post. Optimus V and other Android users -- how does your battery use compare?

It's been suggested elsewhere here that there are apps running overnight that are draining the battery. There's an app called alogcat that will snapshot the system log at intervals if desired. I'm going to try and run it tonight with the V off the charger to see what it shows as far as possible sources of battery drain...the big ones mentioned so far are wifi, bluetooth, and the phone hunting for 3G signals if 3G drops. There are also a lot of apps out there that have automatic querying to update built into them, like Weatherbug, that have settings that can be adjusted based on battery status, but I'm almost sure others will be more problematic.

At some point, if these issues continue, people will likely need to start listing installed Apps to look for cross matches, etc.

 

[supermodelo]

It's been suggested elsewhere here that there are apps running overnight that are draining the battery. There's an app called alogcat that will snapshot the system log at intervals if desired.

I have a stock Optimus V, no downloaded apps. I get about 7 hours of battery, maybe 9 if I literally do not use the phone at all from a full charge. I have turned off bluetooth, wifi, gps, google syncing, and set brightness to lowest. Screen lock after 30 seconds. Oh yeah, and it's discharged/re-charged 3 times, still crappy battery life. Clearly it's not just some apps or some settings or leaving something on that's killing the battery.

Also, I don't know what this means, but the battery usage screen shows "Cell Standby: 64%, Android System: 16%, Phone Idle: 16%, Display: 7%". It seems like I remember one of those not being there before. And 103% battery usage sounds bad to me. What exactly is "cell standby" and how can i reduce its use?

 

[TVCCS]

From what I'm reading, and my first test, at least, seems to bear out, is that the phone hunting for a 3G signal can drain the battery, even on standby. There's a small Network settings app that can be used to switch the phone to CDMA only when idle (or otherwise) that may help with battery drain issues.

https://market.android.com/details?id=de.mangelow.network

 

[xbrokdikdogx]

I just wanted to make sure you guys know that draining a lithium battery is in fact a very bad thing to do. On older ni cad and nihm batteries once a month you would let the battery drain completely to retrain the battery to get the full charge, this does not work on lithium batteries though. Each discharge will remove a little capacity and if you do this enough you will be replacing the battery pretty quick. Also keep the battery from heating up too much because that will destroy your battery quick.

I am trying out Android Assistant, free from the market, just because I like to see what my phone is doing and so far I love it. It shows charts of what is using which resources. Anyway, swype so far uses more battery than anything else I have. Also, the screen is almost always the biggest culprit for battery drain. Manually set the screen to the lowest brightness setting that is comfortable. If you go outside a lot just get an app or widget that lets you adjust the screen brightness up for when you go outside.

 

[Cars066]

Great Posts -- So far, putting my phone in airplane mode when I know I have no service or little service has gotten me to about 1-1/2 days of battery life with intermittent, brief gaming, internet, and app managing (mostly a few calls and texts). It's a shame the proximity sensor can't seem to auto adjust backlight a la the original Droid. Anyway, thanks a ton for the replies as I'm getting used to my phone.

I've seen a thread on psx emulator on Optimus V -- is this even possible? haha.

 

[satguyjim]

I got my Optimus V yesterday, took 6 hours to charge from 29% (How I got it in the package), I turned everything off except CDMA and wireless data, it drained down to 78% in 8 hours (Overnight), I then recharged it and then left CDMA on but turned off wireless Data, 8 hours later I was still at 99%! and this is with 3 - 4 bars of signal. Looks like wireless data is the culprit, it does not go into idle when not being used. Hopefully that APP in the thread can help this, gonna give it a try.

Remember all, this was a test with me NOT using the phone at all, sitting on my kitchen counter.

Jim

 

[fmetaljacket]

Hi all,

Just wanted to chime in on this, as I've been having the exact same problem. I bought 2 Optimus V's for my wife and I, installed mostly the same apps (Angry Birds, Quick Settings - only difference is I also installed the Yahoo Mail app to check my secondary email account).

The past 2 nights, we've had our phones side-by-side off the chargers with all the extraneous battery killing stuff off (wifi, GPS, bluetooth - basically all but auto-sync) and mine has a dead battery in the morning while hers barely has a dent. This was especially annoying this morning since I've now brought my charger to work so it arrived home with a full charge in the evening and wouldn't even turn on at 6AM.

One thing I've noticed is that my phone alternates wildly between 3G (3 bars max at my house and 4 at work, although it is constantly going up and down in both places) and 1x where the bars are also constantly in flux.

I talked with VM about this this morning and they said it was likely an issue with the battery. When I mentioned the reception issues they said to take the battery out and see what happens.

It's still the same.

I'm taking mine back to Radio Shack and getting a new one. I can't even receive calls on mine at the office when it has 3-4 bars.

In any case, this leads me to believe that the radio is a big culprit since I also have a huge percentage of "standby" eating up the battery, with up to 50% of "time without service" listed in the details when, again, my wife and I both have 3-4 bars at any given time.

 

[gvc]

Hi all,

Just wanted to chime in on this, as I've been having the exact same problem. I bought 2 Optimus V's for my wife and I, installed mostly the same apps (Angry Birds, Quick Settings - only difference is I also installed the Yahoo Mail app to check my secondary email account).

The past 2 nights, we've had our phones side-by-side off the chargers with all the extraneous battery killing stuff off (wifi, GPS, bluetooth - basically all but auto-sync) and mine has a dead battery in the morning while hers barely has a dent. This was especially annoying this morning since I've now brought my charger to work so it arrived home with a full charge in the evening and wouldn't even turn on at 6AM.

One thing I've noticed is that my phone alternates wildly between 3G (3 bars max at my house and 4 at work, although it is constantly going up and down in both places) and 1x where the bars are also constantly in flux.

I talked with VM about this this morning and they said it was likely an issue with the battery. When I mentioned the reception issues they said to take the battery out and see what happens.

It's still the same.

I'm taking mine back to Radio Shack and getting a new one. I can't even receive calls on mine at the office when it has 3-4 bars.

In any case, this leads me to believe that the radio is a big culprit since I also have a huge percentage of "standby" eating up the battery, with up to 50% of "time without service" listed in the details when, again, my wife and I both have 3-4 bars at any given time.

Excessive Battery Drain (Even On Standby) - Android Forums

 

[maylea]

This may not affect everyone but make sure google maps is updated as well as my tracks if you use my tracks. When I first got the phone maps and tracks was not turing on and off the gps correctly killing my battery. Once I updated, the gps worked correctly and battery life increased. I also use curvefish widgets to easily turn off and on gps,wifi,etc. I also don't use a task killer as I have noticed using one actually drained the battery faster on 2.2. After heavy use all day, I am still at 65% battery at 8pm. Battery life on this phone is way better than on Sprint Hero.

 

[jnicole]

Excessive Battery Drain (Even On Standby) - Android Forums

I did what was suggested on this site and it improved my battery life significantly! Thank you very much for sharing this information

 

[jetfactor]

I just wanted to make sure you guys know that draining a lithium battery is in fact a very bad thing to do. On older ni cad and nihm batteries once a month you would let the battery drain completely to retrain the battery to get the full charge, this does not work on lithium batteries though. Each discharge will remove a little capacity and if you do this enough you will be replacing the battery pretty quick. Also keep the battery from heating up too much because that will destroy your battery quick.

I am trying out Android Assistant, free from the market, just because I like to see what my phone is doing and so far I love it. It shows charts of what is using which resources. Anyway, swype so far uses more battery than anything else I have. Also, the screen is almost always the biggest culprit for battery drain. Manually set the screen to the lowest brightness setting that is comfortable. If you go outside a lot just get an app or widget that lets you adjust the screen brightness up for when you go outside.

tried out Android Assistant. it was fun to see all the different things working on my battery life, but then after just a little bit my phone started having major lag. i suspected it was the app, so for kicks i disabled it, and bam, phone was working fine again. so far, JuiceDefender seems to work pretty well for me. when the screen is off it conserves, a LOT, and switches off the 3G until you wake it up again. if this is an issue for you, i wouldn't recommend it.

 

[gvc]

tried out Android Assistant. it was fun to see all the different things working on my battery life, but then after just a little bit my phone started having major lag. i suspected it was the app, so for kicks i disabled it, and bam, phone was working fine again. so far, JuiceDefender seems to work pretty well for me. when the screen is off it conserves, a LOT, and switches off the 3G until you wake it up again. if this is an issue for you, i wouldn't recommend it.

I use Android Assistant all the time with no lag whatsoever.

 

[chrissurra]

I took the task killers and battery saving apps off and merely use setcpu to set the processor to 245mhz when the screen is off I also have 3g/bluetooth/gps off and changed the wifi policy to turn off when the screen turns off.

I took it off the charger at 8am and still have 97% at lunch time.

Make sure to monitor the "cell standby" I have the fix from xda on my phone that automatically puts the phone into airplane mode when it starts up.

I have been averaging about 2 days per charge.

 

[KentInPhilly]

Using that mangelo network app to toggle the CDMA settings back and forth has been the only thing that let me get decent battery life (see Excessive Battery Use link in a previous post for details). Before that, I couldn't go from 8AM to 5PM at work without killing the battery.

Now I go from 7AM to 10PM without it dying... I charge it at night because it's convenient, but I think I went from 8AM to 6PM yesterday and was still at about 70% battery usage.

Check the battery usage stuff in the About screen. Before I toggled the CDMA settings, "Cell Idle" used to take up a bunch. Every once in a while Gallery will hang and chew up battery, but killing it will clear it out.