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Help Rapid Battery Drain

maltexx

Lurker
Jan 13, 2012
6
0
I've had the nexus since mid-January. I'm on an unrooted stock 4.0.2 with an extended battery. I had become fairly accustomed to how much life I could get off a charge and was fine with it. But two days ago I had shut down my phone with 66% battery left after 15 hrs (I rarely use it during the workday). But yesterday, the phone drained off the rest of the battery in 5 hours.

While at work, I leave the phone with WIFI off, GPS off, NFC off, and on 3G only (I had the WiFi on while at home). The only widgets I run are the power manager, weather channel, and battery noif. To my knowledge the only things that were changed on the phone between the two days were updates to the Twitter, Yelp, and Tether apps.

Based on what I've read on forums, I would imagine something is keeping the phone awake based on 5 hrs of awake time on 2.5 hours of CPU time, but I have better battery stats installed and the longest partial wakelock is only 10 minutes. There are kernal wakelocks that are longer but I'm not sure if that's normal.

I've attached some screen shots from the battery settings page and the log from better battery stats taken from when there was about 10% left. The sharp drop begins when I booted up my phone yesterday. I'd really appreciate any help anyone can give as to why the battery drained so quickly despite no changes in usage habits.

Thank you
 

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If you're getting 19+ hours on an extended battery, I'd say that's a good day with the Nexus. It has processes that will use energy no matter what you do.

If you really want/need more, I would suggest Juice Defender on the Market. The free version gave me almost half again the battery life; the Plus version nearly doubled it. I have full use of my Nexus (4G all day, nearly constant Bluetooth streaming of music, calls, texts and surfing) all day and still have battery left over at bedtime when I put her on the charger.

Give it a try on the default settings and see how it works.
 
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That's very odd.
The 5 hrs awake time and the high Android OS usage does indicate you have a lot of background processes running. But that seems more relevant to the first 3/4 of the graph than the last 1/4.

The big sudden drop at the end is perplexing to me because it doesn't coincide with screen on time or awake time. Usually if some process is running, you'll see a big dip like that with a lot of awake time. It does however coincide with some "green" signal time which often means there is a data connection that is active.

I don't have any ideas....only just here to say hmmmmm.
 
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Just had something really weird happen. I was in CWM flashing AOKP b26. I accidentally rebooted instead of going back up and when it started booting to AOKP I battery pulled so I could get back into CWM and flash gapps/etc. When I go back into CWM the 2nd time, the battery had gone from 30% in the first CWM session to 1% and it had only been like 5 minutes, tops. WTH?? :thinking:
 
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I have had the extended battery for several weeks now. At first I was getting 10+ hours with it which was much better than the 5-6 I was getting with the standard battery. And now the extended battery has been draining so fast. It has been 2 hours at work and already down to 52%. My settings and usage has not changed at all. I still have no idea how users are getting so much battery life when i have never been able to with any of the 2 standard or 1 extended batteries I own!
 
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I have had the extended battery for several weeks now. At first I was getting 10+ hours with it which was much better than the 5-6 I was getting with the standard battery. And now the extended battery has been draining so fast. It has been 2 hours at work and already down to 52%. My settings and usage has not changed at all. I still have no idea how users are getting so much battery life when i have never been able to with any of the 2 standard or 1 extended batteries I own!

Post your battery screens. The main screen, the display screen, the android OS screen and the graph screen.
 
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This weird thing just happened to my battery while reading this thread. I let it drain down to 2% (as usual) and plugged it in while continuing to listen to my music. The music quit playing and my battery jumped from 5% up to 38% instantaneously!!

I did a quick screen capture. It continually started dropping, must've tried to 'fix' itself. I rebooted anyways and it came back at 5%. Anybody have this happen?

E5ym0aNc
 
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This weird thing just happened to my battery while reading this thread. I let it drain down to 2% (as usual) and plugged it in while continuing to listen to my music. The music quit playing and my battery jumped from 5% up to 38% instantaneously!!

I did a quick screen capture. It continually started dropping, must've tried to 'fix' itself. I rebooted anyways and it came back at 5%. Anybody have this happen?

E5ym0aNc

Things like this were reported in other battery threads before. I also had sudden surprise battery jump like +30% after rebooting on the charger. I think the battery gauge in ICS has some bug. So when it shows sudden big jump or drop without any apps accounting for it, it's probably not very accurate and somewhat erratic. I think this is one of the bugs that needs to be fixed.
 
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Post your battery screens. The main screen, the display screen, the android OS screen and the graph screen.

Results from today at work with my extended battery:
Screenshot_2012-02-29-13-45-04.png

Screenshot_2012-02-29-13-45-08.png

Screenshot_2012-02-29-13-45-27.png

Screenshot_2012-02-29-13-45-33.png

Screenshot_2012-02-29-13-45-41.png


And proof that when I first got the battery in late January, I did get better battery life. I had this screenshot saved on my phone from 1/31.

Screenshot_2012-01-31-22-54-40.png


I work in midtown Manhattan. I religiously keep it on 3G.
 
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Results from today at work with my extended battery:


And proof that when I first got the battery in late January, I did get better battery life. I had this screenshot saved on my phone from 1/31.


I work in midtown Manhattan. I religiously keep it on 3G.

Wow. That's awful. What brightness level do you set your display at? What does your signal strength read while you are at work? What kinds of things are you doing while you have the phone on? I'm wondering if you are using data intensive apps or something that is causing a lot of battery drain. From the graph it looks like you have a pretty weak network signal. Combining 3G data use and a low signal could be draining your battery excessively, but it still seems CRAZY high especially on an extended battery. Are you rooted by any chance? I'm wondering if somehow the phone doesn't know its an extended battery and if resetting battery stats would help.

I might have to do a test tomorrow and turn off wifi to see what that does to my battery use. One day last week I had the same 2:45 of screen on time as you did but on my regular battery on mostly wifi and made it 29.5 hours (my wife was using my charger that night).
 
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Post your battery screens. The main screen, the display screen, the android OS screen and the graph screen.

Wow. That's awful. What brightness level do you set your display at? What does your signal strength read while you are at work? What kinds of things are you doing while you have the phone on? I'm wondering if you are using data intensive apps or something that is causing a lot of battery drain. From the graph it looks like you have a pretty weak network signal. Combining 3G data use and a low signal could be draining your battery excessively, but it still seems CRAZY high especially on an extended battery. Are you rooted by any chance? I'm wondering if somehow the phone doesn't know its an extended battery and if resetting battery stats would help.

I might have to do a test tomorrow and turn off wifi to see what that does to my battery use. One day last week I had the same 2:45 of screen on time as you did but on my regular battery on mostly wifi and made it 29.5 hours (my wife was using my charger that night).

I am not rooted. I am not that technical. Lol.
I have the brightness on auto.
The signal says -93 dBm 2 asu

I will respond to the occasional text or google chat message while at work. I don't use it to get on facebook or surf the web as I can do that from my work PC.

My apps haven't changed at all to cause the battery to deteriorate in the past month. The only widget I have is the calendar and accuweather.

I had tried juice defender but i didn't like it as I need the data connection so I can get my emails and gtalk (I do not have access at work to my gmail).

I don't really know how to read the graph to see what the signal is or lack thereof.

I wish I was getting 29 hours!! I never even came close!!

I had ordered the battery online. Do you really think they will let me return it a month later?
 
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Yes nothing has changed. I have had the phone (my 3rd one) since 12/26. I had standard battery first which sucked so a month later I got the extended battery. It was fine at first, didn't change any settings, and it has deteriorated.

Your keep awake time for Android OS seems extremely high. I'd suggest downloading BetterBatteryStats and looking at the Partial Wakelocks. Should help to identify whatever is constantly waking your phone up.
 
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Your keep awake time for Android OS seems extremely high. I'd suggest downloading BetterBatteryStats and looking at the Partial Wakelocks. Should help to identify whatever is constantly waking your phone up.
I forked over the $2.89 for this app. I looked at the partial wakelocks and i am not entirely sure how to read all this. However, all the apps start in minutes down to seconds. None of them are awake for hours. The most is Kik messenger for 7 minutes (and I didn't even use it today). Next is gmail for 5 minutes. It gives a count and a percentage as well.
 
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I am not rooted. I am not that technical. Lol.
I have the brightness on auto.
The signal says -93 dBm 2 asu

I will respond to the occasional text or google chat message while at work. I don't use it to get on facebook or surf the web as I can do that from my work PC.

My apps haven't changed at all to cause the battery to deteriorate in the past month. The only widget I have is the calendar and accuweather.

I had tried juice defender but i didn't like it as I need the data connection so I can get my emails and gtalk (I do not have access at work to my gmail).

I don't really know how to read the graph to see what the signal is or lack thereof.

I wish I was getting 29 hours!! I never even came close!!

I had ordered the battery online. Do you really think they will let me return it a month later?

try using a power control widget and manually adjusting screen brightness. I think your screen must be too bright. Is there a really bright light above your desk at work? Set your brightness using the widget to its lowest setting. Bump it up only as needed. I really think that your brightness is killing the battery.

as for the graph, the bar labeled 'mobile network signal' tells you the strength of the signal. Green is good. Bright yellow is decent. Grayish-yellow is bad, red is terrible. Your signal seems mostly in the grayish range.

I just had my worst battery day on my GN on Wednesday. Only got 14.5 hours. 2:45 screen on. 2:00 streaming Sirius via 4G. 0:45 of talk time. I really hit on all the big drains that day!
 
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