Help WiFi Sharing & Battery Usage Issue

[Cooky]

Hi, this is a partial re-post from another thread as i didnt want to hijack the original thread....Any suggestions on this would be much appreciated.....

I recently exchanged my GS2 for another GS2 with my provider as my battery was lasting only around 7-8 hours, with virtually no usage and widgets etc turned off.

My repalcement hand set has been much better (approx 24 hours of light to moderate use) until yesterday. Now I seem to be getting power drain from WiFi sharing, even though i have WiFi turned off, and havent ever used WiFi sharing (I have used regular WiFi just for a connection - but not today).

Today my battery has gone from 100% to 20% in just over 5 hours. Ive hardly used it (one 2 min call, a twitter update & push mail on). Its lasted much longer than this before. My battery usage app (default one) says Wi Fi sharing is 26% but ive had Wi Fi off all day.... I dont understand why this has started happening and why its eating so much power.

Social Hub is also 26% which seems much higher than usual, I havent sent any email and have had only a few small message pushed to me.

Any thoughts on how any of this could happen?

Any suggestions from anyone would be much appreciated.

 

[Antakar]

Maybe malware took control over your WiFi?

Download some AV for android like beta of BitDefender mobile and scan all your apps etc.

 

[doonse11]

Hi there

I have had my GS2 since 19th May. Over the past few days my battery has been going down so fast, I thought there was an issue with my phone. However, it would appear the WiFi sharing was taking up most of the battery.

As you said, it would go from 100% to 50% within a couple of hours. I then read up, if you go into Battery usage and select WiFi sharing, Force Stop it. Also, go into settings, then Location and security, then select 'use wireless networks' ensure that there is no tick beside that also.

I have been using m y phone a bit today, 100% charged this morning, I am at 52% as I type. Makes a huge difference!!!

Let me know how you get on.

Cheers

Chris

 

[mwilson1987]

Anyone found a fix for this issue? Ever since getting the latest firmware wifi sharing has been in my running services and chewing battery, try to stop it but it just starts right back up again! Incredibly frustrating...

 

[bakili]

I having same issue.
in 7 hours my battery went from 100% to 33%
Turned wifi off, closed most widgets,
Android OS at 45% and Wifi sharing at 16% draining my battery. Looked everywhere for answers, but seems to be no fix available yet
Looks like i have to say goodbye to SGS2 and go back to HTC if issue will not resolved soon. Its no point to have this phone, if you have too keep everything off.

 

[danwms]

I am experiencing the same issue.

 

[leegriff1]

I've had the s2 for 4days now and have noticed that it also is not lasting that long. Full charge is lasting not a full day, with very little use. I have noticed that while conected to wi-fi, that it is continualy scanning for wi-fi, from past experence I have found that this is a major battery drain, but I can not find a way of turning wireless scanning of? surely there is a way of manually scanning for wi-fi or at least turning it off once you are connect?

for reference wi-fi sharing is showing 18%

 

[vengance007]

I having same issue.
in 7 hours my battery went from 100% to 33%
Turned wifi off, closed most widgets,
Android OS at 45% and Wifi sharing at 16% draining my battery. Looked everywhere for answers, but seems to be no fix available yet
Looks like i have to say goodbye to SGS2 and go back to HTC if issue will not resolved soon. Its no point to have this phone, if you have too keep everything off.

The only way the battery drain issue can be properly fixed is by google themselves. its not sammy's bad coding this time . until android 2.3.4 is pushed out you will have this battery drain issue . gingerbread isnt optimised for dual core phones whereas ice cream sandwich (2.3.4) will be .

 

[PeteRyde]

I also have the WiFi sharing battery drain. For example, it is 23% today. Since I upgraded to the WKE7 firmware the battery usage has been a little better but unfortunately it did nothing for the WiFi sharing usage.
Like Cooky, I have never turned WiFi sharing on.

 

[bakili]

As you said, it would go from 100% to 50% within a couple of hours. I then read up, if you go into Battery usage and select WiFi sharing, Force Stop it. Also, go into settings, then Location and security, then select 'use wireless networks' ensure that there is no tick beside that also.


I followed this instruction, seems to be helped in wifi sharing issue draining battery. But as soon i turn wifi on, wifi sharing comes back on, which i need to force close.
Android Os still using 45% of battery, worste its uses it when phone in screen locked position.
I lost 10% of charge in 1 hour.
Edit: Also phone runs at 1.2 GHz most time.

 

[garment69]

This is totally bizzare. I updated to K07 yesterday and wifi sharing wasnt in my battery usage at all. This morning, I noticed it was there and was consuming 26% of my battery life. I forced closed it and shut down wifi. Where did it come from? I cant find an app or setting that even mentions wifi sharing.

 

[mwilson1987]

I know, I cannot understand what is using it. Doesn't matter how often I force close it or stop it, if I have wifi on it just comes back on again. Fingers crosses samsung will fix this with the next update...it is incredibly annoying because without this my battery life would be immense!!!

 

[stammers]

I know, I cannot understand what is using it. Doesn't matter how often I force close it or stop it, if I have wifi on it just comes back on again. Fingers crosses samsung will fix this with the next update...it is incredibly annoying because without this my battery life would be immense!!!

I'm experiencing the same issues as everyone else

 

[CdTDroiD]

I renamed the FTS.apk to FTS.apk.bak (just so the system wont be able to use it) essentially disabling it, made a huge difference, and doesn't matter if you dont use mobile hot spot (wifi tethering)

 

[1ds]

Do a factory reset with both Internal and External SD(if you have one) wipe them both along with factory reset don't install any app after that just use as a normal phone( with NO packet data,GPS WIFI,HSPA,and other power guzzling stuff "OFF") and keep a eye on battery level, i know its hard to keep hand away from S2 but to see how phone sucks battery when nothing is done this procedure has to be followed if your phone still drains battery at alarming level then this has to be battery or the phone itself

When i use my galaxy S as a normal phone my daily drain rate is "15 %" and i yield 5 days of backup, but when i mash the throttle it hardly last 24 hrs!!

 

[stammers]

Another forum has recommended rooting the phone, then installing Titanium Backup to freeze Wifi sharing.
If I do this I assume that I won't be able to enable Wifi Sharing on demand anymore unless I defreeze?

I use my phone to get my iPad2 online so this wouldn't be a viable workaround.

Thanks

 

[CdTDroiD]

You can use other apps on the market to wifi teather. No need to reinable. An easy way is to just add .bak on to the end of the .apk file also

 

[stammers]

You can use other apps on the market to wifi teather. No need to reinable. An easy way is to just add .bak on to the end of the .apk file also

Thanks mate... I take it you need root to be able to rename? I'm using Astro and it tells me insufficient permission

PS any recommendations for 3rd party wifi sharing apps?

 

[CdTDroiD]

Yea you do. No big deal its so easy

 

[stammers]

Yea you do. No big deal its so easy

Well I rooted my phone and still couldn't rename the file in ASTRO...
I'm too cheap to shelve out

 

[Darkflame]

And it's really irritating!

I've installed every free app i can get my hands in regards to monitoring and controlling my system (Elixir, Watchdog, Autorun etc) and this has helped me save a lot of trouble and battery life.

However, this system app 'Wi-fi sharing' seems to continually come back and drain up to 26% of my battery life and won't go away permanently no matter how many times i force kill it.

Does anyone know what is the point of this app exactly?

Does anyone know how it affects wi-fi on general (as my phone keeps disconnecting from my wi-fi and i'm not sure if its because i keep killing this app).

I've been adamant so far to not root my phone (in fear of bricking it) but at this point i feel i have no option if i am to defeat this monster of a app.

Google should be ashamed of them selves for being so lazy and sloppy on the software control side of things.

Just like a Windows PC, the system is too open for manufacturer pre-installed software and other installed software a like to just refuse to close and sit in the background eating away at the resources and battery life with no built in safe guards or software to combat this.

You'd think a company with all the money and resources they have at their disposal, could make a decent piece of easy to use, easy to maintain software, but nope, always half finished products with them.

Thankfully the system is open enough (for the most part) to take control if you know what you are doing , i just wish i didn't have to considering the product costs so much.

 

[stammers]

Does anyone know what is the point of this app exactly?

AFAIK wifi sharing = wifi tethering eg using your phone's 3G connection to get your laptop online. So obviously unless you explicitly enabled it there shouldnt be any battery drain and the process shouldn't be active.

 

[Darkflame]

AFAIK wifi sharing = wifi tethering eg using your phone's 3G connection to get your laptop online. So obviously unless you explicitly enabled it there shouldnt be any battery drain and the process shouldn't be active.

Fair enough, i've never enabled this option and checking through my settings, i can't see any proof it is enabled either.

I only want to use my phone to connect to wi-fi at work and at home (i even disable it during traveling to save on power).

I'm looking at Watchdog Lites CPU usage list and it's there again, been running for 17 minutes taking up between 25.6-27.9% CPU and my wi-fi is completely disabled.

A complete waste of my resources and battery O_O

I'm probably going to root my phone and buy an app to freeze it, a waste of money to be honest as this shouldn't be a problem in the first place.

 

[Baines93]

It really is no big deal... rooting is risk-free so long as you have battery in your phone, and battery in your laptop. It takes seconds. Just follow the instructions right.

Titanium Backup is incredibly useful... Can back everything up to the SD card if you ever need to have a warranty replacement or anything, and then just re-root the new phone/updated phone, re-download titanium backup pro, and restore everything to how it was. You can even schedule routine backups. It's brilliant, and well worth the money..

When you have it, freeze wi-fi sharing, and wi-fi sharing manager. I have also frozen all of the hubs, and I simply use the official apps from the marketplace, which in my opinion are much better anyway.

I have also frozen voice search, and voice commands, so that pesky vlingo thing no longer comes up when I hit the wrong key on the keyboard.

I have installed GoSMS Pro, a much better SMS app, that unlike Handcent, looks stock with the SimplePaper theme on the marketplace. Recommended! Stops that annoying conversion of long SMS's to MMS's. I then used TB (AGAIN!) to freeze the stock messaging app.

I have also frozen GMail, since I think the stock Samsung email app is much better.

I used TB again when I debranded the phone. I backed everything up to the card with TB, and then flashed the Samsung firmware, and changed the product code to a sim free one... now I don't have to wait for O2 to release updates, and am finally on KE7! Then re-rooted, installed TB, and used it (AGAIN!) to restore everything, and put the phone back to how I had it before.

It's easily worth the

 

[Darkflame]

I'm still having difficulties with keeping wireless sharing closed so i think i will bite the bullet and root my phone, i just think it's absurd i have to do it just to gain complete control on my experience and get the most out of my device.

I hardly use any of the pre-installed apps, i found superior replacements on the Market Place without much problem (with 95% of them being completely free).

That's one of the best reasons to have an Android phone in my opinion, the app developers are not as greedy as they are on the IPhone App place (where is hear nearly everything has a price tag).

So much closer to my usual PC freeware experience, this is as close to a mobile version of a Windows PC experience as i've achieved so far (which is my ultimate goal).

I would of preferred that Microsoft would of made their Windows OS for their version of the mobile smart phone but instead they have taken a giant step backwards by producing an OS that is just too dumbed down to have the some functionality which also looks awful to boot (sigh).

Hell they didn't even have the basic copy and paste functions on their phones until recently, what is this world coming to when a search engine company can beat Microsoft at its own game (lol).

Anyhoo, i'll post back once my phone is rooted and i have successfully frozen this evil app!