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Found my battery hog!

Vehtemas

Android Expert
Jul 6, 2010
946
146
Ever since the over the air update I have noticed that the Android OS takes up significantly (40-50%) or more of the battery than the next highest process (even with the screen on for 3 hours).

For fun and giggles I uninstalled my battery indicator (program that sat in the notification bar and told me battery %) and boom, the Android OS is back down below the display. Granted it is still number 2 or 3 but it is significantly below the display now.

I feel like a fool for not looking into it sooner.
 
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Ever since the over the air update I have noticed that the Android OS takes up significantly (40-50%) or more of the battery than the next highest process (even with the screen on for 3 hours).

For fun and giggles I uninstalled my battery indicator (program that sat in the notification bar and told me battery %) and boom, the Android OS is back down below the display. Granted it is still number 2 or 3 but it is significantly below the display now.

I feel like a fool for not looking into it sooner.

Which battery monitor app were you running?
 
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Ever since the over the air update I have noticed that the Android OS takes up significantly (40-50%) or more of the battery than the next highest process (even with the screen on for 3 hours).

For fun and giggles I uninstalled my battery indicator (program that sat in the notification bar and told me battery %) and boom, the Android OS is back down below the display. Granted it is still number 2 or 3 but it is significantly below the display now.

I feel like a fool for not looking into it sooner.



Ever since the ota update the display has always showed as my battery hog in the battery stats. Android OS is always under 20% for me.
 
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Ever since the ota update the display has always showed as my battery hog in the battery stats. Android OS is always under 20% for me.

Remember - these percentages are the percentages that each app is using the battery. If Android OS is lower for you, that's generally a good thing - that means that Android OS isn't draining your battery when the display is powered off.
 
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Ever since the over the air update I have noticed that the Android OS takes up significantly (40-50%) or more of the battery than the next highest process (even with the screen on for 3 hours).

For fun and giggles I uninstalled my battery indicator (program that sat in the notification bar and told me battery %) and boom, the Android OS is back down below the display. Granted it is still number 2 or 3 but it is significantly below the display now.

I feel like a fool for not looking into it sooner.
what app are u using to judge the Android OS percentage? If you are using Task Manager, you are WASTING YOUR TIME! It is notoriously inaccurate for checking on the OS CPU percentage. You can try using something such as Android Assistant. Once you get to the CPU info screen, give it about 10 seconds to settle down. You will see that CPU percentage VARIES a LOT and will be LESS than what shows in Task Manager.
 
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Turns out I was a bit premature, the problem came back a couple of days later.

And the way I tell what is using the battery is the battery monitor built INTO the phone -- Settings -> battery and data manager -> battery.

I have used the screen for 42 minutes today and phone idle for 6 hours.

20% of the battery has been used and 48% of that 20% (aka 10% of the total battery) has been used by the Android OS which reports a total of 35 minutes 25 seconds of use...

So, the Android OS running for less time than my display is taking up over double the battery that my phone took up.

Screenshots:

Overview

Android OS

Display

Sooo, does anyone know what could be causing this?
 
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what app are u using to judge the Android OS percentage? If you are using Task Manager, you are WASTING YOUR TIME! It is notoriously inaccurate for checking on the OS CPU percentage. You can try using something such as Android Assistant. Once you get to the CPU info screen, give it about 10 seconds to settle down. You will see that CPU percentage VARIES a LOT and will be LESS than what shows in Task Manager.

P.S. I wasn't talking about CPU percentage, I am talking about the battery % of usage.
 
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Turns out I was a bit premature, the problem came back a couple of days later.

And the way I tell what is using the battery is the battery monitor built INTO the phone -- Settings -> battery and data manager -> battery.

I have used the screen for 42 minutes today and phone idle for 6 hours.

20% of the battery has been used and 48% of that 20% (aka 10% of the total battery) has been used by the Android OS which reports a total of 35 minutes 25 seconds of use...

So, the Android OS running for less time than my display is taking up over double the battery that my phone took up.

Screenshots:

Overview

Android OS

Display
I'm not exactly sure what you are saying. Honestly, your battery usage doesn't seem to be off. 20% in six hours isn't a lot for a smartphone.

And what do you mean the Android OS is running for less time than your display? The Android OS is ALWAYS running if the phone is on. If you don't have a lot of apps running, the OS (android) should be one of the biggest users of the battery.
 
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P.S. I wasn't talking about CPU percentage, I am talking about the battery % of usage.
You sort of are talking about CPU percentage and usage since you also describe the time things such as the Android OS are using the CPU. You said this in your above post...


...the Android OS which reports a total of 35 minutes 25 seconds of use...

That's just the time the OS has been using the CPU. That doesn't mean how long it's been on and running.

EDIT: Honestly it sounds like you are rather surprised at how much more battery a smartphone uses than say a regular multimedia phone. No way something like an Android or iOS or Windows phone will get 4 or 5 days on a single charge. Everyone I know that has a smartphone has to charge it everyday.

I am by no means a huge app person. I have like 4 widgets running, a photo contact, Weather Channel showing the temperature, the Verizon data usage, and Google search. I have Lookout and 2 message services running at all times so friends and family can get in touch with me. Occasionally I open a pdf file for class and such and check my email on my phone maybe twice a day. Most of my phone usage is for phone calls which maybe is an hour, perhaps a little more a day. If you have programs whose main purpose is to be in standby mode (such as my Skype is) you will have the OS be the major user of the battery.

The sad fact is, until battery technology improves, you will need to anticipate putting the phone on the charger at least once a day. I usually charge it at night while I am asleep. If I use the phone a lot during the day, I sometime throw it on the car charger to give it a quick boost. It's just the unfortunately reality of increased capabilities of phones.
 
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Turns out I was a bit premature, the problem came back a couple of days later.

And the way I tell what is using the battery is the battery monitor built INTO the phone -- Settings -> battery and data manager -> battery.

The major problem is that the reporting for "Android OS" is not discrete enough. It is not telling you the exact processes that are using the battery - are they widgets? Background sync processing? Managing memory between processes? Managing CPU? Making apps that you haven't run for a while inactive?

I have used the screen for 42 minutes today and phone idle for 6 hours.

20% of the battery has been used and 48% of that 20% (aka 10% of the total battery) has been used by the Android OS which reports a total of 35 minutes 25 seconds of use...

So, the Android OS running for less time than my display is taking up over double the battery that my phone took up.

What does this mean - "double the battery than my phone took up"? I'm not sure what you mean - your phone takes up the battery that it takes up - Android OS is part of your phone, so how can it take up double?


Sooo, does anyone know what could be causing this?

Do you have any homescreen widgets? Try deleting all of them to see of that makes things better (though see my comment in the next paragraph). Did you install (under the Accounts app) a Facebook or Twitter account? Unless you need to sync the contact data, get rid of them, use the official apps, and set them to sync data manually (only when you are in the app). Do you get a lot of Gmail messages delivered in the background? Not much that you can do about that, though you can try turning off background sync (which will affect contacts and the calendar as well.) Do you have any apps (such as an app like Weatherbug) that shows data in the notification area? All of these, because they are managed by Android and not by the apps themselves, likely show up under Android OS (GMail will show up only when the GMail app is actively displayed as the foreground app, since it uses a service process to background sync rather than poll for data.)

As others have said, 20% of battery life drawn in 6 hours is pretty good for an Android phone. If you do not want a multi-tasking phone that looks for messages in the background, you really should have bought a different phone OS than Android.
 
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What does this mean - "double the battery than my phone took up"? I'm not sure what you mean - your phone takes up the battery that it takes up - Android OS is part of your phone, so how can it take up double?

I get the feeling he is trying to seperate the Android OS from the general operation of the phone which it's not. The OS is the phone and is always running. I hope he responds to clarify this point because that is what I am getting from his messages.
 
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Sorry, apparently I was drunk this morning and was horrible on my clarification.

Anyways, I was making a statement that ever since the last OTA update the Android OS application has shown consistently 20-30% higher than my display usage -- this never happened before the last OTA where it was the Cell Standby and Phone Idle that were much higher.

Just find it odd that this is the first phone where the OS takes up so much battery life.

And I know phones need recharging every night, I have had an android in one form or another for the past 3 years now.

I was originally thinking there might be a rogue OS application, but I have a feeling from your responses that this is an accepted battery graph.
 
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Sorry, apparently I was drunk this morning and was horrible on my clarification.

Anyways, I was making a statement that ever since the last OTA update the Android OS application has shown consistently 20-30% higher than my display usage -- this never happened before the last OTA where it was the Cell Standby and Phone Idle that were much higher.

Just find it odd that this is the first phone where the OS takes up so much battery life.

And I know phones need recharging every night, I have had an android in one form or another for the past 3 years now.

I was originally thinking there might be a rogue OS application, but I have a feeling from your responses that this is an accepted battery graph.

The Android OS is not an application - it is the entire set of apps on your phone that run as a part of the Android Core OS.

Just like in your computer OS - it's not one single file that is running.

Perhaps this will make it make a heck of a lot more sense as to why it is showing this. I'd expect the entire OS to constantly take up more battery than just the display unless the display is on almost constantly.....

And I don't think this is the first phone where the Android Core apps are taking up so much battery - this is the first that Android Core was used in reporting extensively.

And yes, this is an acceptable graph.
 
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Sorry, apparently I was drunk this morning and was horrible on my clarification.

Anyways, I was making a statement that ever since the last OTA update the Android OS application has shown consistently 20-30% higher than my display usage -- this never happened before the last OTA where it was the Cell Standby and Phone Idle that were much higher.

Just find it odd that this is the first phone where the OS takes up so much battery life.

And I know phones need recharging every night, I have had an android in one form or another for the past 3 years now.

I was originally thinking there might be a rogue OS application, but I have a feeling from your responses that this is an accepted battery graph.

Well it's hard to know if it's normal or not because each individual chooses what background apps they have running and what they will do.

But I know for me, I have very little running so the OS itself takes up a greater percentage if the battery use unless im really making a lot of calls on a particular day.

Since your battery usage doesn't seem out of the ordinary, I would say that what happened, and this is only a partially educated guess, is that the OTA actually fixed some things so that some things weren't taking up unneccessary processes thus weren't a drain on the battery like they were. That would mean that the percentage of battery usage by the OS would increase by default.
 
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Anyways, I was making a statement that ever since the last OTA update the Android OS application has shown consistently 20-30% higher than my display usage -- this never happened before the last OTA where it was the Cell Standby and Phone Idle that were much higher.

There are some possible explanations for this. It may be that the latest OTA fixed a problem in cell standby that was causing that to spike battery in the old build. Battery is always used by something, so if cell standby usage is decreased then something else will be using battery (though because cell standby is better, total battery usage will be less.) And, again, it may be that you have changed something else - started using a homescreen widget; some other app that is listening for background updates - that is making the Android OS process spike higher. Besides the OTA, what else have you changed? Have you added any apps? Updated any apps that listen for background updates? Or, as I said, added any widgets that get data somehow (weather, battery status, calendar, photos, manage music, etc.)?
 
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So I finally bought Titanium Backup Pro and froze 61 applications, tons and tons of the stupid preinstalled crap.

I followed the list in the Root forum but I did choose a few extras that I do not use.

So far, just a smooth as before, just a ton less of apps and it seems to be fine.

I will let you all know at the end of day how the battery life goes and also tomorrow during the full day.
 
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