Help Battery drain out of the blue

[epicIllini]

Hey everyone,

So I've been getting pretty good battery life (about 14-16 hours on average) when I use the airplane mode trick and kill the Media Hub service. However, my phone has not been able to sleep since the past 2 days and the battery is draining quickly.

The up time indicates that the phone cannot go to sleep. I'm just surprised because I haven't changed any of my phone settings so I don't know why this is happening. I uninstalled the last app that I downloaded and that didn't help.

Should I try doing a hard reset? Are there any apps that will specifically tell me what is keeping the phone awake?

Thanks

 

[Frisco]

Hello epic.

Sudden fast battery drain can be related to apps just installed or apps just configured differently, most often syncing or background updating apps that are set to do those things automatically rather than at the user's manual request.

I'd check things such as gmail, facebook, weather, etc for those settings and change them accordingly to see if that remedies the battery issue.

Speaking of facebook, that one in particular has a reputation of going into a "sync loop," wherein the syncing does not stop and the battery suffers.

Sometimes one syncing app will interact with another, by accident of course, by syncing at the same time, interfering with the other app's sync and thus causing both to loop.

I had a bad experience with Weather Bug Elite draining my battery, so I dumped it in favor of MyCast. ymmv..

I doubt if a factory data reset is necessary, but keep it in mind if the above changes don't help.

Good luck! Post back your results.

I moved your question to the Support area for you.

 

[epicIllini]

Thanks for the advice Frisco. Unfortunately, I could not figure out which app, if any, is responsible for the battery drain.

I am considering doing a factory reset. This wouldn't be a big problem for me because all of my contacts are synced, and I don't care if my apps lose data. My question is if there would be anything wrong with reformatting the sd card. I have all of my pictures backed up so Im not worried about that.

What do you guys think?

 

[leftkidney]

really strange - me also

started after day light savings started - I had a data outage in my area (Metro Detroit) and my text messages were showing say 5:32am as sent and the response would show up as 4:33am and would be above the one I sent so I would have to scroll up to see it

after this I had to do a profile update and prl as well to get things working again, I tried to power cycle but nothing so I called sprint and they told me that I had all red "X" on my account for the data provisioning and I had to do a profile update and prl update so I did that and it fixed the problem

but now I have bad battery life and the strangest part is that you know that microphone that can be used to do stuff, like say "Call - Jeff - Mobile" and it would call jeff mobile - well now it will randomly just do a google search for the words "call jeff mobile" - I showed this to the guys at the sprint store and they didnt know what to say other then do a phone restore and see if that fixes the problem

so yea now bad battery life and my voice dialing doesent work all the time, it will google the phrase instead of calling the person

 

[epicIllini]

My problems have also arisen after day light savings started. I did a factory reset and reformatted the memory card and I am still having the same problem!! My phone will not sleep! I did a profile update and prl update. I kill the media hub service and do the airplane toggle trick. I don't know what to do! Is there an app on the market that will tell me specifically which apps are running constantly?

 

[Kelmar]

epicIllini - Try downloading "Spare Parts" from the market.

Click Battery History and change the top tab to "partial wake usage"

 

[epicIllini]

epicIllini - Try downloading "Spare Parts" from the market.

Click Battery History and change the top tab to "partial wake usage"

Ok, so I downloaded spare parts and here is what I found:

When I checked partial wake usage, there aren't any applications that have been on for a long time. The longest one, Android System, is on for a total time of 7 minutes.

I clicked on other usage. It says that the time spent without sleeping is 1 hour 45 minutes and the time spent with screen on is 30 minutes.

All of this information is from the time since my phone was unplugged. Also, the time since boot is 7 hours and 23 minutes.

Is the discrepancy between the time spent without sleeping and the time spent with screen on big enough to account for the fast battery drain?

After about 7 hours of being unplugged and under very light usage, my battery is at level 32. I was experiencing much better battery life just a few days ago.

What do you guys think of this information?

Thanks for the help

 

[Kelmar]

Try going though the other options and see if anything sticks out.

 

[epicIllini]

I can't figure out what the problem is! Do you guys think that Sprint would be capable of fixing this? If not, would they give me a replacement? I'm guessing that they wouldn't but it's worth a shot.

 

[scrufton]

I am having a very similar issue. I was about to start my own thread when I saw this one. I have never been able to fix this awake problem. I thought it was fixed with the last software issue but a day later it started again. I can usually go half a day with no problems and then out of nowhere it wont sleep. And spare parts doesn't show anything staying awake. Android system will show higher than normal when the problem is happening but not 100%.

 

[epicIllini]

The problem just disappeared today! I took my phone off the charger at 9am and it was full until 3:30pm. I didn't use it much, but at least I know that it's sleeping now. Hopefully the problem won't come back again. I can't tell you what fixed the problem, because I didn't do anything. It just started sleeping again!

 

[mjben]

DAY 1:
Funny yours just disappeared- mine just started! My phone has been plugged in all day, and has been dieing all day. It just keeps draining and draining with no explaination- even while on the charger! I sure hope mine just disappears as well.

I turned off the auto sync on facebook, and installed spareparts per the above responces. I also undid a couple of recent file moves I made on my sdcard just to be sure and I turned off my gmail auto-retrieve.

Furthermore, I'm going to be turning it off to charge it fully before bed, then at bed time unplug it and turn it on with airplane mode on- for testing.

On a side note, I also had the text message time issue, and the voice dialer/google serach issue during the weekend of daylight savings. I had JUST got my phone though, so I was figuring that I was doing something wrong regarding the dialer (the text messages I chalked up daylight savings, which ruined my evening BTW!)

DAY2:
I fully charged before bed, then put it in airplane mode while I slept. Battery hardly dropped all night! Nice. However, after waking and turning service back on, my battery has drained 20% in one hour- just sitting, screen off, doing apparently NOTHING AT ALL.

I am concerned that my rooting and changing the stock kernal may have caused this. Perhaps the phone is continuously trying to update, but can't? I'm just speculating.

Also, I have NEVER got 12 hours of straight use out of my Epic right out of the box. It's almost always needed charging while being used, but this is terrible! It dies while on the charger with the screen off!

DAY 3:
It just stopped. It stopped yesterday, actually. IDK if it was anything that I did, or if it just stops as suddenly as it starts. It's back to normal again.

 

[scrufton]

This all quite strange. Mine also fixed its self last weekend. It normally wouldn't make it half a day without getting stuck awake 100%. My phone has been on since last weekend without any problems. A also did nothing to change this.

 

[Sedan_Clan]

I will keep my eye on this.

 

[ERHazmat]

Mine just started last week. I haven't been able to keep the battery charged at all. I have a spare battery and charger and can't even charge the second battery fast enough before the one in the phone dies!! I took it to sprint today and had them run a test on my battery. it said it was poor. I then bought a bran new battery and put it in my phone it had 1/2 life when i put it in and within an hour it was dead. The phone had been running very hot for the last couple months and between changing batteries the temp gauge would come on and flash with a warining sign. I went back to sprint and told them about the phone running hot and they agreed it was hotter than normal so they agreed my phone had issues and ordered me a new one. After i got home i uninstalled weatherbug, a program i have used for the past 6 months with no problem but for a couple weeks or more has been having trouble configuring my current location and suddenly all good. I went for my night run and played my music and the battery was fine. Going to do some more test since it seems to have just changed. I am still taking the replacement phone when it gets here. I will repost any changes, it seems like samsung should be doing something if this many people are haveing the sample problem.