Root Cyanogenmod 7 Battery Issue

[Ran_Van]

Hi Guys,

First time poster on the forum so please bear with my stupidity if this topic has already been covered 100 times over.

I've been using the Cyanogenmod 7 for just over a week now and I initially though it was the best thing since sliced bread. On the first day of using, I went to work in the morning, checked my battery 5 or so hours later and was delighted to see it had only drained a pathetic 7%.

However, after using the phone a little more frequently after work, the battery drain was really surprising, I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary, checking Facebook every so often, checking Twitter from time to time and also Reddit - that's pretty much it. I first noticed it when my battery was on 84%, I had a quick peek on reddit for 10 or so minutes, (no videos or anything) and after using it for 10 minutes my battery had dropped by 22%!!

This has been carrying on now for the last week, while the phone is idle the battery drain is barely noticeable, but when using ANY apps, the drain is incredible.

I'm really stuck with this, any help whatsoever from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

hmmm, tbh if its not draining much when idle i dont think its to do with cyanogen.
screen on and browsing does use alot of battery especially if you are touching the screen alot, havfe brightness levels up and displaying lots of white and colours. also browsing uses your radio data and if using 3g/hsdpa then your battery will drain quicker.

That said you might also want to get setCPU (purchase or register on xdadevelopers) and switch the governor mode to "ondemand" and see if that helps you.
when i use my phone on the train for reading news i find in a 40minute jouney i can lose up to 30% battery (on any rom)

when you are sayign 10mins is it "really" 10 mins or is it a guestimate as you didnt note the actual time. you might be longer than you think

 

[Ran_Van]

I've been testing it over the last week and when I say 10 minutes, I mean that accurately.

I've very conscious and observant of the battery use on this phone and have been for over a year now, the difference from using the stock ROM and Cyanogenmod 7 is pretty plain for me to see, I'd certainly like to think something else could be causing the issue, but I don't have a clue how to pinpoint it.

I realise what you're saying is correct, battery can drain quickly when not paying attention, but I am paying attention and feel as though I'm having to be conservative all the time and it's getting me down. I've been tried "ondemand" and "conservative" settings with no joy whatsoever.

I've tried researching this but I'm having a very hard time trying to find other people with this same specific issue!

 

[Rastaman-FB]

do not use conservative.
make sure you do not have any task killers

i would also state that the battery drain is caused by cpu cycle, screenstate, brightness, signal/data usage.
youve said yourself its fine on idle so it would have to be one of those things however your stock rom would use the same cycle, screenstate, brightness, data as your cm7.
maybe the battery is getting older and doesnt hold the power as well as it used to.
try flashing a rooted stock gingerbread rom like teppic76's and see if its any different

the only other thing that it could be gingerbread using more

 

[Fishyweb]

Although not quite the same symptoms, I'm also having some battery oddities since flashing CM7.0.3 a week ago (the first custom ROM I've tried since rooting).

I noticed a couple of days ago that my phone suddenly powered down while I was using it, and while the battery was reported as being about 40%. When I repowered, it said 0%.

I recharged, and then let it discharge again, and it spontaneously powered down again, at 20-something %.

I should say that the rate of discharge from full charge to spontaneous power down seemed fairly normal. The point here is that it was powering down way before the battery was reported as being at a critically low level.

I did some forum browsing, and found references to needing to recalibrate your battery after flashing a new ROM. Therefore, I downloaded Battery Calibration from the market, followed its instructions (I think), and tehn went through a further test. Again, a spontaneous power down at 20-something %.

I then found a forum posting from SUroot suggesting another recalibration method, using Recovery to clear the battery stats. I'm now in the process of going through that method, having fully charged, cleared the stats, and fully discharged. I'm now going through an uninterrupted charge. Hopefully, that will have the problem licked.

Anyway, like I say, the symptoms are different to the OP's, but I mention it here in case a recalibration helps with that issue.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

Although not quite the same symptoms, I'm also having some battery oddities since flashing CM7.0.3 a week ago (the first custom ROM I've tried since rooting).

I noticed a couple of days ago that my phone suddenly powered down while I was using it, and while the battery was reported as being about 40%. When I repowered, it said 0%.

I recharged, and then let it discharge again, and it spontaneously powered down again, at 20-something %.

I should say that the rate of discharge from full charge to spontaneous power down seemed fairly normal. The point here is that it was powering down way before the battery was reported as being at a critically low level.

I did some forum browsing, and found references to needing to recalibrate your battery after flashing a new ROM. Therefore, I downloaded Battery Calibration from the market, followed its instructions (I think), and tehn went through a further test. Again, a spontaneous power down at 20-something %.

I then found a forum posting from SUroot suggesting another recalibration method, using Recovery to clear the battery stats. I'm now in the process of going through that method, having fully charged, cleared the stats, and fully discharged. I'm now going through an uninterrupted charge. Hopefully, that will have the problem licked.

Anyway, like I say, the symptoms are different to the OP's, but I mention it here in case a recalibration helps with that issue.

yeah the calibration problems are an issue that affects roms from time to time especially when moving from sense to aosp.

 

[Ran_Van]

Thanks to you both for getting back to me on this, I'll try re-calibrating using recovery to clear the battery stats and see if it helps me out at all and I'll let you know the outcome.

 

[mite_jan]

change kernel
i found the standard cm7 kernel which was in MIUI rom also to cause the battery drain

find some compatible kernel for that rom and try it

 

[Abdur]

do not use conservative.

I was wondering why we should not use conservative. I have been looking for ways to improve my battery life, and found this guide for the HTC MyTouch4G running CM7.
Settings to optimize battery on CM7 [Last Updtd May 8, 2011] - CyanogenMod Forum
There it says that if I do have the standard CM kernel, I should use Conservative. I was wondering what was different for the Desire, which would make it a bad idea to use the Conservative Governor.


(I reanimated this topic from the dead, because I didn't want to create a new topic for something that already exists. )

 

[Rastaman-FB]

choose it and youll see.
it lags, doesnt improve battery too much and has problem waking
in a few cases its been noted to have negative effect on desire where batter seems to deplete

its up to you.

test it, it would hurt you

CM7 is a battery eater
i would use manu 1.4 axi have cfs kernel
set the min value to 128 and have the governor as "on demand"

 

[Abdur]

choose it and youll see.
it lags, doesnt improve battery too much and has problem waking
in a few cases its been noted to have negative effect on desire where batter seems to deplete

its up to you.

test it, it would hurt you

CM7 is a battery eater
i would use manu 1.4 axi have cfs kernel
set the min value to 128 and have the governor as "on demand"

Thanks man. Does that Kernel work with CM7? (I am on the conservative atm, nothing wrong happened so far, but then again, its only been around 5 hours.)

 

[Hadron]

Yes, ManU GB kernels work with CM7 (or did up to about 2 months ago, when I last used CM nightlies).

 

[Abdur]

Thanks man!

*Goes off to read about flashing Kernels*

Cheers.

 

[dan55]

hi
I found manu and dGB not so good.
cm7 seems ok for me. no worse than any other rom imo.

I do seem to find that straight after flashing new rom battery is good and then
gets no so good with more time :-\ odd

cheers
dan

 

[Abdur]

hi
I found manu and dGB not so good.
cm7 seems ok for me. no worse than any other rom imo.

I do seem to find that straight after flashing new rom battery is good and then
gets no so good with more time :-\ odd

cheers
dan

This was my exact experience with CM7.1
The 3-4 days after I first flashed it, it worked like a charm with 20 hours of battery life with moderate to heavy use. Now, just playing music seems to drain it....
(thats where I got the underclocking etc ideas) And CM7 comes with its own SetCPU...

Either way, I have to learn how to flash kernels some day, why not now?

 

[Hadron]

Kernel flashes are easy. Nandroid first, as with any flash, but otherwise there's nothing to it: boot into recovery, flash kernel .zip, reboot, job done.

 

[Abdur]

Kernel flashes are easy. Nandroid first, as with any flash, but otherwise there's nothing to it: boot into recovery, flash kernel .zip, reboot, job done.

Oh man, thanks again for your assistance!
I was reading this: arighi's blog: HOWTO: install a custom kernel on HTC Desire and was frankly, quite lost....

Also, before flashing should I return CPU settings to normal?

 

[dan55]

yes so easy even I have done it :-D

 

[Hadron]

I've not found SetCPU to be a problem with AOSP kernel flashes, but if you want to play uber safe you could disable the "set on boot" before the flash, then restart it afterwards.

 

[dan55]

me neither

 

[Abdur]

choose it and youll see.
it lags, doesnt improve battery too much and has problem waking
in a few cases its been noted to have negative effect on desire where batter seems to deplete

its up to you.

test it, it would hurt you

CM7 is a battery eater
i would use manu 1.4 axi have cfs kernel
set the min value to 128 and have the governor as "on demand"

So: 2.6.35.8 ManU-Version 1.4 Gingerbread-HAVS-AXI-CFS ?
Just making sure.

Edit: I have done it!
So now instead of ONDEMAND, I decided to use Smartass, because I heard that Smartass aggressively dials down the frequency when sleep etc.

Should help with battery life, I will begin testing now.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

i wouldnt use smartass either, youll see why. you might have trouble waking and I had issues where the cpu locked at lower mhz and wouldnt release until i manually changed the freq.

ondemand is good as its a bit like smartass where it only uses the frequencies its needs at the time. AXI uses intelligent stepping depending on state and hav's dynamically adjusts the voltages depending on mhz

hope that helps

 

[Abdur]

i wouldnt use smartass either, youll see why. you might have trouble waking and I had issues where the cpu locked at lower mhz and wouldnt release until i manually changed the freq.

ondemand is good as its a bit like smartass where it only uses the frequencies its needs at the time. AXI uses intelligent stepping depending on state and hav's dynamically adjusts the voltages depending on mhz

hope that helps

Thanks again for all your help man I did notice some waking problems with Smartass... (I had to pull battery once....)

ONDEMAND it is.

Cheers.

Edit: Thanks a lot to Hadron and Dan as well

 

[dan55]

hi,
yeah im just using the built in cm7 ondemand setting - seems ok

battery took a hammering today though - only managed around 8hrs - screen was on a lot though

cheers
dan

 

[Abdur]

What is the max frequency that you use? I am using 998 MHz (stock speed) but it seems to lag....