Help Andriod OS battery hog

[johnston1364]

Hi

I have had my S4 for about 3 months after having an iphone for the past 4 years. I pretty much worked out everything I need to and have been very impressed with the device since the switch. However this weekend the battery has died extremely quick with very little use. I found checking my battery usage that both Android OS and Android idle are using 26% and 16% of my battery which seems a bit excessive and the device was getting hot over the weekend which leads me to think something is running in the background.​

I am sure someone will tell me to use the search bar but I am new to this. It is running Android 4.2.2.​

Thanks for the help in advance as I would to find out why this is happening!!!​

 

[nuked]

Not sure why it is happening but there is an excellent free app called "GSAM Battery Monitor" on the Play store that goes in depth on what is eating your battery. It breaks it down into categories of phone, screen, phone radio, wifi, held awake, bluettoth and app usage.

Great app!

 

[icedtea]

I think we need to accept the fact that the battery issue is not really resolved even on the latest galaxy unit

 

[jejb]

Try rebooting it when stuff like that happens. Kind of like Windoze that way, needs the occasional reboot.

 

[icedtea]

Try rebooting it when stuff like that happens. Kind of like Windoze that way, needs the occasional reboot.

tried that before. . same issue will arise since Android OS is the one running your phone..

 

[jejb]

tried that before. . same issue will arise since Android OS is the one running your phone..

Yes, but in this case, the battery drain issue came up all of a sudden. It was not a long term, chronic thing. So a reboot is worth a try, and sure won't hurt anything.

 

[Goodspike]

tried that before. . same issue will arise since Android OS is the one running your phone..

That is not necessarily true. It could be another program accessing the google service that is showing battery drain. I've had that pop up a couple of times and rebooting has made the problem go away. Unfortunately I've not been able to tell which program is the culprit, assuming it's not the service indicated that used the power.

Note that the OP said that the unit had been running hot.

 

[jj14x]

However this weekend the battery has died extremely quick with very little use. I found checking my battery usage that both Android OS and Android idle are using 26% and 16% of my battery which seems a bit excessive and the device was getting hot over the weekend which leads me to think something is running in the background.​

Android OS and Android idle using 26/16% battery doesn't really say much. You'd need to also review what else consumed the battery (what %), and also, how long was it off charger, What is device idle time, and what was remaining battery %?

For instance, if your phone was off charger for 2 minutes, those numbers mean nothing. But if your phone was off charger for a day, and these percentages were the highest battery user among all apps, and you had a few hours of screen usage, then this would be something to look into.


For example, at this moment, my phones shows 15% Android OS use, and 11% cell standby, and 34% device idle - off charger for 13 hours, battery at 89%. I wouldn't worry about those percentages at all because I had taken the phone off the charger just before I went to sleep (after a full charge), and it wasn't used all night, and it has only been in actual use for the past 3-4 hours (with about 1 hour or so of screen-on time).
Even when you aren't actively using your phone, the OS is still running, the radios are still looking for signal, and so, those will show highest percentage.

(I hope that makes sense).

You also mentioned that the battery was getting hot. Assuming your phone was not on the charger, that is something that should be looked into - again, look at what app (besides Android OS, device idle etc) was using most battery. Are you in a good cell coverage area? (if coverage is bad, radios will be looking for good signal all the time causing battery drain)

 

[Goodspike]

I think we need to accept the fact that the battery issue is not really resolved even on the latest galaxy unit

Also not true. I'm not having any battery issues. I do have times where Google Services is doing something, and will cause maybe 10-15% more battery drain than normal. I don't consider that a serious issue.