Battery Performance - Specific Questions

[GDroid]

I'm not too pleased with the battery performance on my Droid. I just checked on what's using my battery the most, and I see the following:

Voice Calls - 44% - The last time I was on a voice call was 1 hour ago. How do I end this? I do have the Advanced Task Killer app on my phone, but it doesn't show that anything voice-related is running.

Display - 17% - No brainer here

Phone Idle - 13% - What does this mean??

Cell Standby - 11% - What does this mean??

I know I can reboot my phone, which will reset everything, but I appreciate if anyone can provide clarification on the above items.

 

[vincentp]

I'm not too pleased with the battery performance on my Droid. I just checked on what's using my battery the most, and I see the following:

Voice Calls - 44% - The last time I was on a voice call was 1 hour ago. How do I end this? I do have the Advanced Task Killer app on my phone, but it doesn't show that anything voice-related is running.

Display - 17% - No brainer here

Phone Idle - 13% - What does this mean??

Cell Standby - 11% - What does this mean??

I know I can reboot my phone, which will reset everything, but I appreciate if anyone can provide clarification on the above items.

I'll give you the best information I can muster.

Voice Calls - Not using any battery when you're not actually on a call. That percentage does not reflect current battery use but overall battery use. How much time have you spent on the phone since your last charge? Call time will usually be one of the biggest drains on your battery. My battery lasts forever mainly because my calls tend to be very few and far between.

Display - As you said, obvious.

Phone Idle - I have to assume that this process has something to do with catching incoming messages, showing notifications, updating widgets, etc. Something has to be running in order to process those requests even if the phone is locked and the screen is off.

Cell Standy - Probably similar. The phone always has to be connected to the network, so it is regularly transferring signal to towers in order to intercept calls, texts, and data.

Those last two are sort of just educated guesses, I'm not sure if that information is perfectly accurate.

 

[dougwilson2000]

That 1hour on the phone probally put about 10% drain on your battery. Of that 10% or so drain 44% was due to voice and so on as your numbers refect. Those numbers are all normal. You can talk for over 5 hours straight on your fully charged battery.

 

[inssane]

I have been checking my batt. usage regularly, and learning the phone - my batt performance has increased vastly, with me learning the apps.
That being said, I do not think that the battery usage monitor is real time, but I do not know the kind of delay either. I have noticed the voice calls being high as well a good 5-10 minutes after a call was ended.

 

[GDroid]

I have been checking my batt. usage regularly, and learning the phone - my batt performance has increased vastly, with me learning the apps.
That being said, I do not think that the battery usage monitor is real time, but I do not know the kind of delay either. I have noticed the voice calls being high as well a good 5-10 minutes after a call was ended.

Voice calls, as listed in my original post, was as high as 44% after my phone being idle for 1 hour. Now, I don't understand if that was the percentage AT THAT TIME, or that even 1 hour later, voice calls are still using 44% of the battery. If it's the latter, this is not good. I have a feeling it could be the latter because my battery drain was pretty noticeable from that 1 hour onward, but I have no hard facts to prove this. If it's not the latter, then the battery use shouldn't even list "voice calls" after the call has ended. At least, the delay should be 5 minutes or so after, not 1 hour. Weird.

Anyway, a phone with this power + widgets, etc, will be a battery drainer I guess. I'm coming from a BB Pearl, which was a baby compared to this phone.

 

[Garick]

Voice calls, as listed in my original post, was as high as 44% after my phone being idle for 1 hour. Now, I don't understand if that was the percentage AT THAT TIME, or that even 1 hour later, voice calls are still using 44% of the battery. If it's the latter, this is not good. I have a feeling it could be the latter because my battery drain was pretty noticeable from that 1 hour onward, but I have no hard facts to prove this. If it's not the latter, then the battery use shouldn't even list "voice calls" after the call has ended. At least, the delay should be 5 minutes or so after, not 1 hour. Weird.

Anyway, a phone with this power + widgets, etc, will be a battery drainer I guess. I'm coming from a BB Pearl, which was a baby compared to this phone.

its a history display...since the phone was last unplugged. The phone is not still using the battery an hour later. If you were on a long phone call and the phone hasn't been unplugged for very long that sounds completely normal

 

[CRPercodani]

As others have said, that battery usage is a history of what has used the battery since you last unplugged. It is not 'real time' in the sense that those tasks are currently drawing power off the battery. I hope this helps you understand better.

 

[crankerchick]

Voice calls, as listed in my original post, was as high as 44% after my phone being idle for 1 hour. Now, I don't understand if that was the percentage AT THAT TIME, or that even 1 hour later, voice calls are still using 44% of the battery.

The percentage is not how much the application is currently using of your battery. It is the percentage that the particular process or application has consumed based on your total battery consumption.

So if you unplug your phone at 100% charged, and 3 hours later look and you are 90%, then of course you have used 10% of the battery. The applications or processes listed are then each responsible for the % listed OF THAT 10% consumed.

So no, 1 hour later, voice calls are not STILL consuming 44% of that battery, but instead, given however much your battery % has decreased since last unplugged, voice calls make up 44% of that decrease.

There is an app called spare parts that will give you a better idea of what you are looking for. It tells you absolute %, not relative. It will tell you, since last unplugged, the phone has been running X % of the time, the screen was on for Y% of the time, BT was on for Z% of the time, and so on. Note that this app is doing anything special, it is just letting you statistics that the phone provides, but just there is no link in the settnigs screen to take you to them.

Then you can use the app you are using to see which things are actually hitting the battery the hardest. For example, on a light day, my screen is on 10% of the time, but it still accounts for like 30% of my battery consumption because its a big battery killer. It takes more juice to power the screen then say have bluetooth running. ON that same day, I could leave bluetooth on for 100% of the time, and it will only show up as maybe 4% in the battery consumption screen you are looking at.

So spare parts is useful for knowing how much you actually used something, and the screen you are looking at is useful for telling you how much that usage affected the battery.

Hope that makes things clearer.

 

[GDroid]

I understand now. I thought battery usage was real-time. Thanks all.