How can I figure out what apps are using up all of my battery. My phone doesn't stay charged nearly as long as it did when I first got it?
Thanks
Thanks
Killing or force closing apps won't help
How can I figure out what apps are using up all of my battery. My phone doesn't stay charged nearly as long as it did when I first got it?
Thanks
I agree with that in theory, but wind up using killers for two reasons: (a)they do seem to provide more free memory, and (b) if they
I agree with that in theory, but wind up using killers for two reasons: (a)they do seem to provide more free memory, and (b) if they
I agree with that in theory, but wind up using killers for two reasons: (a)they do seem to provide more free memory, and (b) if they
You can go to Settings > Battery or Settings > About phone > Battery depending on your phone and take a look to see what is using the most battery. It is important to note that this is just showing you what percentage each item is responsible for. The "screen" will always be at the top and Android OS, Phone Idle and Cell Standby will typically be up there too. You can select many of these to get more information as well.
Overall, it is probably one of three things that is consuming more battery power on your phone.
1) An app you have installed is not playing nice and is not shutting down properly or running in the background too much. You can check you apps to see which ones are set to auto update and adjust their times if needed (weather apps/widgets, facebook, Google +, Rss or news readers are big culprits). A live wallpaper is also an app that can cause a big decrease in battery life. Task Killers are another battery killer, if you are using one then it is probably a good idea to get rid of it. Anything that gets your CPU going will consume battery.
2) You are in an area that has poorer signal than you used to be. Poor signal will kill your battery faster than just about anything else. Check your signal out a few times a day and see if it is significantly different in any of the areas you go to on a regular basis.
3) You. If you are using the phone more than you used to or doing something different with your phone now then your battery life will be different. Are you streaming more media, playing games or surfing the web more than you used to? Anything and everything you do with the phone will use up battery even just turning it on.
As someone mentioned, listing your apps can be helpful sometimes. Plenty of members here have run into apps that just eat batteries and know what to avoid. Letting everyone know what you have on your phone can go a long way towards solving the problem.
Good luck.
Going into A and B of you post:
A: In Android free memory is wasted memory. If you phone is running properly then it will fill up most of your RAM with apps that are waiting to launch. If you kill all your tasks then the only thing you are doing is freeing up that memory for the moment, then the system will refill it with apps again. This uses up more CPU and drains the battery faster. It is also important to understand that an app in memory isn't necessarily using any battery.
B: There isn't a "task killer" installed in Gingerbread. There is an "active task manager" that is designed to stop running apps if a problem were to arise, but it wasn't a task killer that could blindly go in and kill everything. As far as them being "nasty" I wouldn't go that far, but I would call them unnecessary. Task Killers were around in the early days of Android when 1.5 and 1.6 didn't handle running applications as well and the phones had very little memory, but they have been pretty pointless since Froyo. If you read anything on how Android actually handles memory and/or applications then you understand they are a waste.
The big battery eaters on an Android phone are the screen and data.
The screen is the typically the number one power consumer on an Android phone. It typically accounts for the largest draw. Screen brightness is one of the ways to limit the amount of power the screen consumes and I have seen many people comment on keeping the screen at about 40% with auto-brightness off as a solid battery conservation technique. Another, for phones with AMOLED displays is to use a black background as it requires less power with these screens to show black than any other color. Live wallpaper is another thing to avoid if you want longer battery life. The screen will continue to consume power as long as it is on though.
Signal can really be the biggest battery killer though. Your phone will try to get signal at all cost. If you are in a bad coverage area or an area with poor 4G/3G signal then it is a good idea to go ahead and turn data off while you are there. This isn't too much of an issue if you are just driving through, but if you work or live in a poor coverage area then Wifi is your friend. Since your phone will constantly try and search for signal you can almost watch the power drain when in a poor coverage area. In fact turning off data on most phones will give you longer battery life than any other measure you take to conserve power. With data the power consumption will always be less with Wifi than it will with 4G or even 3G. 4G is a known power hog for most phones. A solid Wifi signal requires much less power than a 4G or 3G signal.
As for the other things you mentioned, I generally turn off Bluetooth when I am not using it. I have no idea how much of a battery drain it is, but if I am not going to be using it I have no need to leave it on and test it out. GPS is a different story because it only uses the battery when the icon is in the notification bar. If the icon isn't up there then an app isn't using it and your not burning battery. Location services are running majority of the time and are not a significant enough hit on battery life to really be concerned about. NFC is similar. I don't know if it is running all the time or off when away from a tag, but I leave it on and never seen a solid power draw off of it in the battery information.
Hope that helps.
The upgrade from Froyo to Gingerbread is very worthwhile and you should do it. Why haven't you already?
Watchdog Task Manager works by monitoring your CPU
Why did it bother you?
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