Root help me fix this battery issue once and for all

[akazabam]

Let me know how it goes today. I'm in the SFV right now too, so hey...go us...

 

[jpkotor]

alright well I definitely gave it plenty of time. still haven't added any more apps...

I'm at 26% now with 11 hrs 45 min off the charger. cell standby is responsible for 26%, phone idle is 25% with 10 hrs 38 min idle. wifi is next at 15% with 6 hrs 25 min on (connected the whole time) , then system at 14%, calls at 13% (32 min), display 4% (1 h 7 min on), then dialer.

spare parts cpu goes android system, swype, dialer, messages, suspend, htc sense, mail... none of them more than a sliver.

network usage dialer, messages, 0, android system, 1010, mail, uid 10019, calendar.

partial wake android system , dialer, internet, messages, calendar.

usage today has been pretty light i think. only some texting here and there. you can see by the on screen time i've only accumulated 1 hour of on screen time all day.


over the weekend i had a 2-day span where i barely touched my phone and before i plugged in at around 5% i got like 50 hours out of it.. but the accumulated screen-on time was only an hour as well.

what confuses me about that is that with the screen on for an hour total over the course of 50 hours my battery lasted, but today with it being on for an hour total over the course of 11 hours now I"m down to 25%. when the screen is on any day it's usually for me to text or make a call, so it's not like today i was doing something radically different in that hour of actual usage that i didn't when the hour was spread out over 2 days...

 

[Ivansandroid]

Or, another option is a backup battery. I dont always need it. Actually, most times i dont. But when i do know ill be out for a while and want a backup, ill throw it in my car or pocket.. (its so small)

So you either have convenience and have it care free but make the phone fat, or you can keep the phone looking sexy, while having to switch out a battery 8-12 hours later. I found an OEM red htc battery on craigslist for a few bucks.

I do the same. I actually have 3 extra batteries (4 total). I was burning through all of them but since changing roms and kernels I use two batteries a day usually now. I was going to get an exteded but the phone is already big enough. I have two friends that are using the exteded and I cant get over how bulky it feels. Plus its hard to find cases for the back

 

[jpkotor]

so I concluded the battery is just back to horrible. 12-14 hours of lightly using the phone (just texts throughout the day) and it's done. surf for 2-3 minutes? kiss having a live phone by 9 pm goodbye.

I updated PRI to 1.90_003 last night. last time I was on this PRI i was using netarchy kernels, but I haven't tried it yet since I've wiped my phone and been running htc kernel #15. today doesn't look good already though. I unplugged my phone while I was in bed and slept another 2 hours and was down to 80% when I woke up. Can't get lighter use than sleeping with your phone on your nightstand.

 

[akazabam]

Is there any chance you could get your hands on another battery to test?

 

[jpkotor]

i could buy one I suppose... otherwise I don't know anyone with an Evo nearby that I can swap with for a couple days. the batteries on amazon that say OEM but only cost 12-13 bucks... reliable or not?

i.e. Amazon.com: Original OEM HTC Battery for EVO 4G (1300mAH) Red: Electronics

 

[jpkotor]

oh well my battery says 1500 mAh, so I guess that 1300 mAh definitely won't help much haha

 

[jpkotor]

hmm... this whole battery thing is pretty complicated as well. some people are saying amazon ships them OEM batteries, some people say no. there's things like the silver band some people are saying means it's fake... but mine has a silver band so I dont think that's necessarily correct... ah... any recommendations for if i were to buy another battery?

 

[akazabam]

Unfortunately, not at the moment. I haven't looked into it much. I can look into it, though, in a bit.

 

[jpkotor]

so today i'm at 30% after 13 hrs 45 min but use again was very light. i was on wifi most of the day with good signal. as always, it's my screen-on usage that's killing me.

of the 13 hrs 45 min the phone's been unplugged it was idle for 13 hrs and 9 min. the screen-on time is only 36 minutes. phone idle is ranked second in my settings>about>battery>usage section with 27% usage. display is all the way down at 3% usage. this is weird because i notice most of the drop while i'm using my phone. if I leave it idling i'll come back to it after a couple hours and not have lost a percent.

right now, I turned on my phone at 40% battery, read a section on wikipedia about honeycomb, checked my battery stats and now I'm at 24%. less than 10 minutes on my phone.

One thing I hadn't paid any attention to since I wiped my phone was the display brightness setting. I assumed it just came on "automatic" after I wiped and reflashed Fresh 3.5.0.1 but when I decided to finally check it, it was at full brightness (not automatic). I know backlight can contribute a lot to battery drain, so I set it to automatic now. However, I'm not too convinced this has been a big problem because my battery has been a problem even on automatic and even when I had it set to stay at a pretty low brightness (which was annoying because I couldn't see my screen at all in daylight).

 

[jpkotor]

i'll see tomorrow I guess. it'll be pretty crappy if since the last time I wiped it I would have been getting good battery if it hadn't been on full brightness for weeks. I have been so obsessed about checking other stats since I wiped to figure out why my battery drains that I didn't even check to see what the default brightness setting was for Fresh.

 

[akazabam]

Hmm, good idea to check that. As I was reading your second to last response, I was starting to think of that. So, let's see how it does without brightness all the way up now. That will definitely kill the battery. If you want the best battery life out of it (in terms of brightness), set it at a static brightness level (rather than automatic), and keep it as low as you can stand. For example, I'm inside most of the day, so I keep brightness down pretty low (but not too low). If I happen to go outside, I have a toggle to go to automatic.

 

[BarkingSands]

Hmm, good idea to check that. As I was reading your second to last response, I was starting to think of that. So, let's see how it does without brightness all the way up now. That will definitely kill the battery. If you want the best battery life out of it (in terms of brightness), set it at a static brightness level (rather than automatic), and keep it as low as you can stand. For example, I'm inside most of the day, so I keep brightness down pretty low (but not too low). If I happen to go outside, I have a toggle to go to automatic.

What do you use to toggle brightness to automatic?

Thanks.

 

[akazabam]

I'm running Mikfroyo 4.4, which has the notification panel widgets from JsChiSurf's port to Sense ROMs from CM. You can configure it with several different widgets, including a brightness toggle.

 

[BarkingSands]

I'm running Mikfroyo 4.4, which has the notification panel widgets from JsChiSurf's port to Sense ROMs from CM. You can configure it with several different widgets, including a brightness toggle.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm running Koni's ESII and it's got that widget as well. Didn't even notice.

 

[jpkotor]

well the brightness being set to automatic may have made a little improvement. not a whole lot though. and there are fluctuations. today i'm at 7 hrs unplugged, wifi on the whole time and available the whole time. I've been doing a lot of texting and 1 1/2 hrs of voice calls. 23% remaining. For how much I was texting (long messages too) and 1 1/2 hours of voice I guess I can't be upset that it's down to 23% already?

I've pretty much ruled out any sinister interfering apps, I haven't installed a user app on my phone besides spare parts really since I wiped in mid-February. This is enough of a baseline for me I guess... I can usually rely on getting about 12 hours... some days I miraculously get over 20 hours feeling that I used it the same, averaging somewhere between 16-20 and there was that one time I got 50+ hours...

Even on days with light use I'm not hitting getting the great life I want but I guess the phone is just plain not capable. When people say "I used my phone lightly-moderate and get about 48 hours" I am no longer believing them, as over a month of using my phone with no apps, in all ranges of uses, and locations, only gave me that kind of life over a 2 day period where my accumulated screen-on time was about an hour, and it was just idling the other 49. I dont consider that anywhere near lightly moderate or moderate usage. that's barely touching the phone.

I've been running Fresh 3.5.0.1 with Netarchy #15
Baseband 2.15.00.11.19
PRI 1.90_003 (I was on 1.77_003 until about last week, upgraded with no noticeable effect on battery)
PRL 60676

1 gmail account
1 exchange activesync account

My user apps have been just spare parts, titanium, and osmonitor. The other day I threw on speedtest. Dont' think any of those have been contributing to the mediocre battery life.

My next step is to either take this application-naive phone in it's nice "just-finished-getting-a-baseline-of-what-this-thing-can-do-for-over-a-month" state, where apps have not had the chance to corrupt the life of it's ever so delicate battery and start messing around with custom kernels again (now that I can see the kernel's effects without any apps installed and see if i notice something) or to just buy a new battery and see if this whole time the reason i am psyched to get 16-20 hours of *lightly* using this thing is I got a crappy battery out of the box.

opinion?

 

[jpkotor]

i guess this thread lost some life but i'll use it to vent my frustration anyway.

decided to keep my phone in it's app-void state and flash netarchy 4.3.4 havs nosbc. the day after i flashed it my battery drained pretty fast down to 60%, i plugged it in, charged til 66% before I had to unplug it then got over 20 hours out of it before I had to plug in at 10% again (granted 9 hrs i was in bed because it was over the weekend). I was psyched. today I unplugged and I'm down to 19% after 12 hours of barely touching it (including a 2 hour nap I took after work). miserable. i lost like 11 percentage points checking my fb and reading one article on CNN.

i guess i'll give it a day or two and then get back to the htc kernel and see what I can get out of it. If i actually used my phone to any extent today I don't doubt it would have only lasted like 6 hours. it was dropping several percent just to get a text out. I'm becoming more and more unhappy with this little computer. I don't have unrealistic expectations for it and I know smart phones use battery, but if I hardly touch the thing all day I want more than 12 hours out of it.

 

[evomattnc]

You ever considered that maybe you just got a "lemon" and telling sprint and trying to get a new one? Or using the god awful ugly giant battery thats available after market? I understand that your battery life sucks but its possible maybe its just your one phone and a new one would be ok. You are spending sooo much time effing with this one, i would have tried for a new one or got a bigger battery months ago lol.

 

[jpkotor]

You ever considered that maybe you just got a "lemon" and telling sprint and trying to get a new one? Or using the god awful ugly giant battery thats available after market? I understand that your battery life sucks but its possible maybe its just your one phone and a new one would be ok. You are spending sooo much time effing with this one, i would have tried for a new one or got a bigger battery months ago lol.

I have considered it could be a lemon but I wanted to confirm it isn't one of the many other issues that plague people's batteries before going that route. The thing is I have yet to find that someone with crappy battery life who solved it by replacing theirs with the same battery--I don't want the bulky one. I'm not asserting it hasn't happened but I just haven't come across it in the forums. It seems like it's always some underlying issue. With me however, I think I've ruled out pretty much everything and maybe at this point I'm just being OCD about it and should just call Sprint.

Are you suggesting that the phone is a lemon or the battery is a lemon? One of the reasons I've been hesitant to call Sprint about it is having to unroot etc etc and then if they send me a new phone figure out how to root one with the new hardware (which may very well be much easier since the last time I even glanced at the topic).

With netarchy 4.3.4 havs/nosbc right now I'm down to 77% off the charger 1 hr 50 min and my "screen on" time has only been 6 minutes. The phone has literally been off on my desk or my pocket the rest of the time.... So yea I guess with no fancy apps, no rogue apps, no sleep problem, no "always on data", nothing syncing but my emails (both push)... so maybe it is hardware related.

 

[evomattnc]

I was suggesting hardware but batteries are chap I would try that first. I have heard rooting the new ones people have had to run unrevoked more than once but it still works. I have 004 and it worked the first time. Hboot hasn't changed so our current exploit its still good. It just sounded like you have tried everything and its time to consider hardware not software...akaza knows more about the battery stuff you have been working with him but I haven't seen him in a couple weeks....

 

[Xtremedays]

Rooting the current hboot is likely much easier than when you did your's the first time. My Evo is on hboot .93 and it was more involved doing mine than my wife's version 2.10 few weeks back. Have you thought about unrooting it and running it for a few days with just the stock rom and kernel to see if it is still terrible? If it is, I would take it to sprint and show them how it drops and tell them you want it fixed or replaced.

 

[jpkotor]

thanks guys. ok I'm gonna pursue the hardware route I guess and solve this once and for all (hopefully). a couple weeks ago I was considering buying a replacement battery to try out (of the same size not the bulky ones) but the reviews on the cheaper, non-oem batteries are so mixed I was afraid to invest even a little in them and get a dud (not that my current battery is any better). And I'm not ready to cough up 30-40 bucks for an oem battery.

I guess I will go the unrooting route first because it's the easiest, so tonight... goodbye root since I won't be rooted, what's the best way to monitor battery life without adversely affecting it? Battery monitor widget?

If I'm still getting 3 point drops every time I text, I'll bring it up with Sprint and see what can happen.

 

[Xtremedays]

thanks guys. ok I'm gonna pursue the hardware route I guess and solve this once and for all (hopefully). a couple weeks ago I was considering buying a replacement battery to try out (of the same size not the bulky ones) but the reviews on the cheaper, non-oem batteries are so mixed I was afraid to invest even a little in them and get a dud (not that my current battery is any better). And I'm not ready to cough up 30-40 bucks for an oem battery.

I guess I will go the unrooting route first because it's the easiest, so tonight... goodbye root since I won't be rooted, what's the best way to monitor battery life without adversely affecting it? Battery monitor widget?

If I'm still getting 3 point drops every time I text, I'll bring it up with Sprint and see what can happen.

Battery Monitor widget works good for me.

 

[jpkotor]

this is probably something worth asking while I'm at it as well. Battery monitor widget shows me a history of mA usage ... what's supposed to be normal? because when the phone has been idling for a bit and i look at the history, the numbers are around -100 mA every time it's logged. At that rate, my 1500 mAh battery would only last 15 hours. When I'm using the phone, the numbers jump to around -200 or sometimes even above -400 mA. If this is abnormal, this is a good indicator that the phone is drawing abnormal amounts of power even without power-hungry user apps. I just think -100 mA is excessive for the idling phone because I know these phones are supposed to idle longer than 15 hours, and people routinely get more than that while using their phone throughout the day.


edit: maybe I'm jumping the gun... i turned it on after a few min and the current was -56mA... but the history still showed the last few loggings to be 80-100 mA... i guess I need to be patient and give it a good 20 min or so idle before I check out the history log. for the records I found this though http://home.comcast.net/~evoreviews/compiled.html in case anyone is interested in an in depth kernel comparison.

 

[Xtremedays]

this is probably something worth asking while I'm at it as well. Battery monitor widget shows me a history of mA usage ... what's supposed to be normal? because when the phone has been idling for a bit and i look at the history, the numbers are around -100 mA every time it's logged. At that rate, my 1500 mAh battery would only last 15 hours. When I'm using the phone, the numbers jump to around -200 or sometimes even above -400 mA. If this is abnormal, this is a good indicator that the phone is drawing abnormal amounts of power even without power-hungry user apps. I just think -100 mA is excessive for the idling phone because I know these phones are supposed to idle longer than 15 hours, and people routinely get more than that while using their phone throughout the day.


edit: maybe I'm jumping the gun... i turned it on after a few min and the current was -56mA... but the history still showed the last few loggings to be 80-100 mA... i guess I need to be patient and give it a good 20 min or so idle before I check out the history log. for the records I found this though http://home.comcast.net/~evoreviews/compiled.html in case anyone is interested in an in depth kernel comparison.

I just looked at mine for most of the day....not sure when it was used and when not exactly but it varied between 85 and 300 throught most of the day. This is the kernel that comes with CM7 nightly#32