Help SHELL causing battery drain

annadean

Lurker
Hi i got the samsung galaxy 4 last week as did my partner. My partners phone hardly uses any battery but my uses it all up in 10 hours. See photo for what it is saying is running. The main issue seems to be SHELL which runs at about 36 % all the time. This doesnt run on my partners at all. I think this is the something to do with the operating system but cant find any information on it. Can any one help?
 

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Rukbat

Extreme Android User
1) You have your screen on a lot. Unless there's a reson for doing otherwise, 30 seconds after use is about as long a turnoff as you should run. Your pocket doesn't need to stare at the screen for 5 minutes.

2) Shell (unless it's an app with a different purpose) is part of the operating system, and uses so little battery that if that's all that were running on your phone, you'd probably get 2 weeks between charges. (Maybe even 2 months. Most shells run a few lines of code when you're not running anything in them - a script or typing something by hand - barely keeping the CPU from dying of boredom.)

3) Remember that the percentages aren't of total battery capacity, or of time, they're of used battery capacity. IOW, if the battery has 100 mA drawn out of it that time, and shell used 36%, shell would have used 3.6 ma, which is not much. Whether that's a 1,500 mA battery or a 10,000 mA battery.

4) Unless you got the phones with no warranty, bring that one back. What's happening and why it's happening are interesting intellectual exercises, but that's what warranties are for - replacing factory defective phones.

(BTW, you didn't root the phone and install a terminal, or any such fooling around, did you? That could cause the problem, and would void the warranty.)
 

annadean

Lurker
Thread starter
Thanks. I installed du battery last night and rebooted the phone about 3 times and it now seems to be using the battery at a more normal rate. Also the screen was set to go off after 30 seconds. So not sure if that was an issue. Thanks for your speedy reply. Anna
 

speedlever

Android Enthusiast
Also, it would help if you learn how to take a screen shot and post it here. It will be much clearer and easier to read.

just sayin'. ;)
 

tech_dude

Lurker
Regarding item #3 of Rukbat's post:

>> 3) Remember that the percentages aren't of total battery capacity, or of time, they're of used battery capacity. IOW, if the >> battery has 100 mA drawn out of it that time, and shell used 36%, shell would have used 3.6 ma, which is not much.
>> Whether that's a 1,500 mA battery or a 10,000 mA battery.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't 36% of 100mA be 36mA NOT 3.6mA?

So to keep the math simple, assume you have a device with a 3,600mAh battery (my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has a 3,100mAh battery), and assuming that was the only process on the phone drawing power from the battery, that would result in 3,600 mAh (capacity)/36ma (load) = 100 hours before the battery would be completely drained.
 

electricpete

Android Expert
Use the built in screenshot -your quality will be a lot better than a photo of the screen. For me, I press home and power buttons at same time to initiate screenshot.

In addition to reducing screen timeout, set screen brightness at auto

I see s health is (distant) third on list. Do you use that? If not, you can try disabling it.

I haven't seen shell. Android system is usually in that second position after screen, for me. I agree it could be another name for that, but it's kind of odd if it didn't show up on your partner's purchased at same time. Is it same Android version? Was phone new ore used when purchased? Did you do a factory reset if used?
 
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