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Help is anybody's camera killing there battery?

150_cav

Android Enthusiast
Dec 16, 2009
390
33
this isn't another "oh the battery sucks" thread. i'm just curious if my camera app is running in the background for some reason.

here is my little story. we will take the past three days for example. Monday i took ONE picture and all day under menu>settings>about phone>battery>battery use..... it said the camera app used 94% of my battery and that was after a days use.

tuesday then rolls around and i didn't use my camera and i had charged my phone monday night but whats weird is it still said the camera app used about 87% of my battery and my battery died QUICK that day.

today is wednesday and so far the only time i used my camera was when i quickly opened the bar code scanner app but i didn't even scan a code i just opened it for maybe 3 seconds and today it says the camera used 47% of my battery.

is my camera app staying open even though under running services it isn't there and neither is it there when i use task killers such as "Android system Info"

any help would be grand. i'm afraid to use my beautiful camera!!!
 
That is strange. Never had an issue with my camera sucking up all the battery and I've had days where I've taken something like 60+ photos, plus applying whatever effects with Vignette.

If anything.. I've noticed my Incredible has been getting better with battery usage as time goes on. Used to be I'll be down to 50% or less after work (charged til 7:30AM, get off work at 5:30pm) - nowadays I'm closer to 70% of battery life by the time I get off. Stock battery, medium usage, etc.
 
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That is strange. Never had an issue with my camera sucking up all the battery and I've had days where I've taken something like 60+ photos, plus applying whatever effects with Vignette.

If anything.. I've noticed my Incredible has been getting better with battery usage as time goes on. Used to be I'll be down to 50% or less after work (charged til 7:30AM, get off work at 5:30pm) - nowadays I'm closer to 70% of battery life by the time I get off. Stock battery, medium usage, etc.

do you turn the internet off?
 
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What was the Android Systems usage, and your usage patterns? Sometimes the name for Android System will be overwritten with a different apps name ( IE: It says Camera but it was actually Android System. )

under the menu>setting>battery>battery use it says camera and android system, not one thing but two different things, idk if that answers your question
 
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Get System panel, and use it to select the camera and "End task" it. This will make sure the camera is completely closed and not killing your battery, because that one does use a LOT of power.

for the most part the android operating system does a great job of managing tasks and i'm fine having 40 mb free ram, i'm not the type of person who feels freeing up every drop of ram will magically make their phone faster but my only problem is the camera app.

i downloaded system panel, first off kinda cool. but most important it doesn't say the camera is running :( kinda wish it did
 
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up time 397:52:22
awake time 60:14:58

Holy crap reboot the phone occasionally!! But yes I've had the camera eat the battery both on the Dinc and on the Eris running 2.1. Doesnt happen all the time, just enough to be annoying.

I check the battery usage after using the camera then check a little later if it continues to increase, reboot the phone...only solution I've found as of now.
 
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Holy crap reboot the phone occasionally!! But yes I've had the camera eat the battery both on the Dinc and on the Eris running 2.1. Doesnt happen all the time, just enough to be annoying.

I check the battery usage after using the camera then check a little later if it continues to increase, reboot the phone...only solution I've found as of now.

i think my phone heard you cuz it did it on it's own :'(
 
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Turn geotagging off on the Camera if it isn't already.

If System Panel doesn't list an application as actively running, then I would trust it. You already have the correct outlook about Android.

just curious, do you really think turning off geotagging will really help or are you just throwing out ideas? either way i'm doing it, wait it was already off
 
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If you have geotagging on then it does suck up battery. The GPS is tracking your movements. I don't exactly understand what is going on with your camera but I just press the ATK widget that you can download from Market after I use a big app like that. It helps to keep the memory free and it brings peace of mind.
 
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lol i love having HUGE up times, that way i can say lame things like "my phone has mad ups"

that is lame yo ;)

My wife complains her phone starts acting goofy sometimes and I look and I think the most I saw was 500 hours uptime or something like that, I did a :eek: Told her to reboot it once a week and call it good.

I think 60 hours was the best I ever managed, now I have a bunch of spare batteries and a desk charger so mine gets re booted all the time anyway, i just swap when the batt that's in it is dead if it doesnt make it all day.
 
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do you turn the internet off?


I don't really have anything turned off. I even leave GPS on because I know it only really goes on when you use an APP that requires it. I have WIFI off, but I'm reading in another thread that using WIFI when you have the option to rather than 3G actually saves battery.. so I might find a way to turn that on too.. though have it go off when not in use so it doesn't keep searching.

Only thing I've done differently is "topping off" my charge in the morning. When the alarm goes off, I turn off my phone to let it continue to charge while I'm getting ready for work.
 
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If you have geotagging on then it does suck up battery. The GPS is tracking your movements. I don't exactly understand what is going on with your camera but I just press the ATK widget that you can download from Market after I use a big app like that. It helps to keep the memory free and it brings peace of mind.

Geotagging does NOT track your movements. Where do you people come up with this stuff? lol

All it does is gets a quick GPS lock when you are taking a photo, then imprints the location on the photo, then the GPS turns right back off. Stop spreading such misinformation, you'd think these phones were made by the CIA or something, the way people talk about the GPS.
 
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just curious, do you really think turning off geotagging will really help or are you just throwing out ideas? either way i'm doing it, wait it was already off

If you have geotagging on then it does suck up battery. The GPS is tracking your movements. I don't exactly understand what is going on with your camera but I just press the ATK widget that you can download from Market after I use a big app like that. It helps to keep the memory free and it brings peace of mind.

Yeah Geotagging destroys the battery. If it's off then I'm not sure that it's the camera.

If you look at System Panel, what does it show running?

What about checking Spare Parts or *#*#4636#*#* > Battery History and looking at CPU and network usage? Is Running 100%?

Edit: I agree with the poster above that it doesn't track your movements, but it does use more power than not having it turned on.
 
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My wife complains her phone starts acting goofy sometimes and I look and I think the most I saw was 500 hours uptime or something like that, I did a :eek: Told her to reboot it once a week and call it good.
Wow. This is when I realize how truly happy I am with my DInc (coming from the world of WinMo phones). After reading this thread, I checked my uptime and it's at 662:34:37. Can you say almost a month without rebooting? I believe the only time was when they OTAed the Exchange update.

What's even better about it is that it's just as snappy as it was day one. Not only have I not had to reboot it, I haven't even thought about it.

I am going to be ordering a Seidio 1750 mAh battery, though... not because I'm unhappy with the stock battery life (which has been quite good) but because I want to have two batteries. Just in case I have to go a couple days without charging.
 
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I don't really have anything turned off. I even leave GPS on because I know it only really goes on when you use an APP that requires it. I have WIFI off, but I'm reading in another thread that using WIFI when you have the option to rather than 3G actually saves battery.. so I might find a way to turn that on too.. though have it go off when not in use so it doesn't keep searching.

Only thing I've done differently is "topping off" my charge in the morning. When the alarm goes off, I turn off my phone to let it continue to charge while I'm getting ready for work.

wow

and ya i read that about the wifi too its just im never around wifi
 
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Wow. This is when I realize how truly happy I am with my DInc (coming from the world of WinMo phones). After reading this thread, I checked my uptime and it's at 662:34:37. Can you say almost a month without rebooting? I believe the only time was when they OTAed the Exchange update.

What's even better about it is that it's just as snappy as it was day one. Not only have I not had to reboot it, I haven't even thought about it.

I am going to be ordering a Seidio 1750 mAh battery, though... not because I'm unhappy with the stock battery life (which has been quite good) but because I want to have two batteries. Just in case I have to go a couple days without charging.

same here, after i got rid of my third windows phone (htc touch pro) i was asked if i missed windows and i said "oh ya, i mss my phone freezing and having to pull the battery and missing calls and not getting text messages and having a resistive screen...... oh wait- those are bad things"
 
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