Help KitKat Nightmare

[FireToad]

Hey guys, I have had my note 3 (AT&T) for about two weeks now and I was loving everything about this phone, especially the battery life, but the KitKat "upgrade" completely took away my favorite thing about the phone. Now after this update android processes have been eating up my battery like never before. I used to be able to get two days out of this phone back when I was on 4.3 with medium usage (reddit, twitter, YouTube, GBA emulation, and the occasional visit to the android forums) but now I get maybe a full day if I am lucky and this really, well, makes me mad to say the least. The thing that makes me mad is that myself and 3 of my other friends that are running 4.4.2 get crap for battery lives on their phones. I am not upset that I don't go two days with out charging anymore, I am upset that I CAN'T, the option was taken away from me and maybe a few of you guys too. It kind of makes me wonder if they test these updates before they release them.

Thanks for any responses in advance.

Also a side note, the AT&T updater has been in my processes since the update was completed, and it just has a gray button that says "Continue update" so if anyone on AT&T responds is there any light to be shed on this particular situation?

 

[Ridethesplit]

Same issues here mate.
In settings
I turned wifi off in sleep. Loads less wifi battery useage.
Turned location services off for Google search. Google search and ads does far too much geo stuff in the back ground.
Increased screen timeout to 1 minute
Turned on smart view
Turned off air gesture as it keeps turning the screen on in your pocket.
And as a result I seem to be back to normal battery use as before kit kat.
Much happier.
Also installed elixir and the widget which allows you to keep your cpu use percentage on the notification tray. And keep track of what is killing your battery.
For me it was Google search (in the background)

 

[Ridethesplit]

Also. Make use of this widget.
It tells you what apps are running in the background.
If the ring is green they are hardly using any cpu, however if the rings go red they are killing you battery. If you tap the icon it shows you them all and let's you kill them from there.

 

[4nshu]

Where do I get this widget ??

 

[FireToad]

I will try to figure out what is eating up my battery. There are a lot of things going on under "Android Processes" I just wish that all of theses processes we were listed as seperate under the manager so we don't have to go on a witch hunt to find what is killing out phones. I will investigate how to find out what is going on. How did you track down what is killing your phone? Thanks for the help.

 

[FireToad]

Google play

 

[The_Chief]

Hi Firetoad and 4nshu! Welcome to Android Forums!

Yeah, I'd kinda like to know what that widget is too. Having great difficulty finding it in Play

 

[Ridethesplit]

It's pre installed I think in my list of widets

 

[Ridethesplit]

After doing all the above I got my battery usages from



To

 

[Ridethesplit]

Which might not look a great difference. But my battery is like 70% now, instead of 20% by this time of day.

 

[dynomot]

I'm presuming that widget is just called "Active apps". It would be good to have.

 

[NJRonbo]

Since KitKat on AT&T...

Battery usage has increased.

Tethering (which I pay for) doesn't work well. Disconnects often.

GPS does not work for all software

 

[FireToad]

I took Ridethesplit's advice and downloaded elixir, there is really nothing that was taking up too much processing power. And Google search's CPU demand was negligible. I am stuck and really pissed off to say the least because this phone has a massive battery for a mobile. I guess there is not much I can do at this point other than wait for Google to release 4.4.3 and for good ol' Sammy here to port it over to us...

 

[kokiangel]

Thanks for the tip about the Active Apps widget. I had not even noticed it in my widgets list before. It sure does pay to read these forums!

 

[Xxmen]

I'm presuming that widget is just called "Active apps". It would be good to have.

The widget is called "Active Apps Manager".

 

[dynomot]

The widget is called "Active Apps Manager".

Thanks Xxmen. I looked and found it pre installed - a senior moment for sure.

 

[John Jason]

The widget is called "Active Apps Manager".

It does the same as the Task Manager app that came pre-installed, and which I have been using all along. The only difference I see is that the Active Apps Manager" icon displays the number of active apps, where the Task Manager icon does not. Also, the Active Apps icon has the label under it, in spite of the fact that I turned off labels for all icons.

 

[evohicks]

Also, the Active Apps icon has the label under it, in spite of the fact that I turned off labels for all icons.

Do you have to be rooted to do this?

 

[The_Chief]

Evohicks, you don't necessarily have to be rooted if you have a launcher that does it. I have Apex Pro Launcher and you can do just about anything you want with icons: label them, un-label them, and even resize them.

In Apex Pro, go to Apex Settings -->Drawer Settings --> Hide App Labels and check it.

 

[evohicks]

Evohicks, you don't necessarily have to be rooted if you have a launcher that does it. I have Apex Pro Launcher and you can do just about anything you want with icons: label them, un-label them, and even resize them.

In Apex Pro, go to Apex Settings -->Drawer Settings --> Hide App Labels and check it.

Thanks, nice to know.

 

[John Jason]

Do you have to be rooted to do this?

I am not rooted. But I do use the Nova launcher, which is probably where the option to turn off labels came from.

 

[Rukbat]

Not that it helps with 4.4 yet (unless (I missed the memo), but once we can root 4.4, Greenify does a great job of keeping apps from draining the battery.