Help How to diagnose what is killing my battery?

[agent0014]

My phone has been off the charger for about 19 hours now and is showing 70-ish percent battery. Clearly, some app (or combination of apps) was destroying the battery. I'm most suspicious of PandaHome and K9 Mail.

For the record, I'm suspicious of all home replacements. Doesn't mean I won't use them... but it seems to me, given what they do, that they'd be a major culprit for any lessened battery life. I just accept that though and try to plug in my phone whenever it's convenient... I wouldn't be very happy with the stock three-screen home.

I'd love for someone who really understands memory and power management in linux/android to tell me I'm wrong though. That'd be awesome to hear

 

[cre8ivenail]

#1 I'm new so I'm sorry for the double post. I can't figure out how to delete one of them.
The thing is, I don't have a home app yet. I tried panda and my battery drainage increased. But I desire more than 3 screens also.

 

[flu13]

For anyone who is interested in my little research crusade here....

My phone went between 58 and 64 hours on a single charge (the range is because it died sometime while I was asleep). I'm going to try installing both PandaHome and K9 Mail once I get fully charged again and see how battery life is effected.

 

[cre8ivenail]

I am very interested in your scientific investigation. I installed panda home & set it to 5 lovely screens and employed 3 widgets (I'm not a big widget user, I love apps). I filled 3 screens w\apps +1 widgets.

My cell lagged, fc'd and caused me 1/2 hour worth of frustration during a very important tiime of my day. As soon as I found a free minute, I unistalled everything.

I also looked at some other common battery drainers that are stock and used daily for our convenience and the main reason I purchased my cell. Most used by Display. I stripped my display usage to bare bones (unhappily) and my battery gained more time but not enough to impress me, just enough to make me notice.

I don't want to live without my basic creature comforts nor do I think I shouldn't be able to dl & use apps just to save battery life.

What good is battery life if I can't use my cell? It basically becomes a cell that I only use for emergencies or neccessity, which means ii could have purchased a $20 cell & saved a lot of cash.

At this point I'm hoping I did ruin my battery because if that isn't the case then I purchased the wrong cell and may be with the wrong provider.

 

[flu13]

I installed PandaHome and K9 which I set up to check my Hotmail every 15 minutes. I have 5 screens on Panda, haven't added any extra widgets except for a few different battery widgets. I got to 100% charge on the PC again and it's been off the charger for 5 hours and 13 minutes, and....wait for this....is still showing 100% charge. Normally, it drops to 90% in about 5 minutes or less, but amazingly enough, still 100%.

 

[cre8ivenail]

I was using a battery wigdet by mippin but discovered it was one of my energy killers so now I'm I'm shopping for a new battery widget. I don't use k-9 mail. I just added a weather widget but I can see it is draing me faster than normal also. I WANT CUTE THINGS & CONVENIENCE ON MY SCREENS TOO!

But I'm happy you're still @ 100%.

 

[flu13]

48 hours after installing PandaHome and K9 mail, I was at 15%. I finally realized that I had apparently not configured K9 correctly and that it wasn't checking my mail periodically. I went in to make that change and got the "under 15%" notification. I figure that 48 hours+ of life is great, so I went ahead and plugged it back in. I want to see how much the periodic K9 checking drains the battery.

 

[Th3sandm4n]

After reading this article I ran down my battery to see how much time I actually got out of the battery, because I too was getting weird readings. So, after I ran it all the way down, then full charge I put it through a day of use.

I surfed the web, streamed pandora/lastfm, sent texts, browsed market, played around with new apps I downloaded.

I got about 19:40 from the battery uptime from Spare Parts>Battery Info. And this was because I wanted to go to sleep so I started intentionally doing stuff on my phone.

This made me breathe easier, that is waaaay more than enough time I need the phone. Granted, I didn't have wifi or gps on (but I will RARELY use that stuff).