Database Develop

Battery issue with Stock ICS/CM9 ?

So I've been testing CM9 for quite a while now and can't help notice the battery life has been reduced heavily compared to Honeycomb 3.x.
Now, I don't mind that my battery life gets a bit shorter as ICS brings more features and might be more power hungry. But I went from my tab being able to hold a charge in standby mode in 3 weeks to barely 3 days. And if I use it more heavily, it barely holds a day, which is worse than my Motorola Atrix and that's just not normal.
Now, I've been discussing this with pershoot and for him it must coming from something I do. Honestly I don't see what. In the Honeycomb days, I used to have so many apps installed (may 100-150) and battery life was fine. In CM9, I'm running 50 apps, the essential ones. All the apps that could be power hungry have those settings set to off. No push notifications, very large updates intervals (a day) or none when possible. Also, I run most on these apps on my Atrix (which has more apps installed) and my battery life is way better on the Atrix.
In usage itself, I don't see any change, it seems the tab consumes the same amount of battery than before. It's the sleeping battery life that is terrible. In my case, in sleep mode, wifi is off, brightness is set to Auto and data is off (not the signal itself but I tried to take off the SIM and the battery life is the same).
Honestly, not having to care about charging every day is a must feature for a tablet.
I'm running now RS125 ICS, based on stock and the issue is also there. So I wouldn't say it's something related to CM9 but more on how ICS behaves with our tab.
I've read report of other people complaining (with the 10.1 also) so I wonder if it's a general issue. Could you please fill the poll so we can see if there's an issue and if so, how could we identify it ?
Don't hesitate to describe your tab usage and battery life !
Thanks !

For me worsts battery life was with the official 3.0.1. 3.1 was big improvement. 3.2 and 4.x were a little bit better than 3.1.
Got gmail and exchange push notifications turned on, but most of the time the tab is connected to the wi-fi, not to the 3G network
Attached is my personal stand-by record on the 10.1v. I think it was with one of the first pershoot's CM9 roms

Hi Danny,
Same for me. Especially the standby mode I see a battery drain.
By the way, somehow my battery usage is not working since I moved to the official ICS ...
Cheers

No problem @all. Stock 4.0.4 with OC kernel.. Looks like this:
GT-P7500 [email protected]

Kernel info...
GT-P7500 [email protected]

Battery life stock / mods: what to expect?

Hi,
first, thanks to Maclaw & co for their s3 ports!
I've flashed CM11 on a new phone, and am very happy with it. The only straight up bug I found: reading contacts & SMS from the SIM card was impossible. Reverted to stock backup, pulled them down and backed up, then went back and imported them in CM11.
On battery drain - this is my first smartphone, and I ditched stock immediately. So I am missing some frame of reference here. Also I just got this two days ago, so I will need another week for some real-world statistics. But from what I've seen so far, I kind of doubt it will make it through a single day. Now I don't expect it to hold charge for a week like the old Nokia I am migrating from, but still...
What kind of battery life can I reasonably suspect? I understand "it depends", but let's say location turned off, mobile data only when needed (maybe an hour/day or so), dark themes, dim screen, etc.. Basically I am trying to figure out if this is an issue with the mod/build, or just how things are in android land.
Now I do have some suspicions that cpu load is a bit excessive. During "idle" (no apps running but htop, location&mobile data off, wifi on), both cores are at ~30% consistently. Attached is a screenshot after 1) bootup, 2) turn off screen 3) turn back on after 30min and start htop in terminal. The base system also seems to draw more power than the screen (set near minimum brightness). But again, maybe normal?
I went with CM11 because it looked like it was the most widely used / best supported one, but if it actually has some battery issues I would need to try out some alternatives. Would be happy to help in debugging if there is something I can do as well.

Have a look at Slimkat. Been using this for quite some time and I have no complaints about battery life. Obviously the battery life will depend on how and what you use your phone for.
Pacperformance is a system app in Slim so you can set your governed, CPU Max/main etc. Use wake lock detector too just so you can see if pacperform is showing your not getting deep sleep.
I have used many, many custom roms and CM11 has never really appealed.
Good luck in your quest!
Slim link
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2758098
Sent from my GT-I8190N running SlimKat

Thanks for the tips, I'll check them out. I was a bit wary with trying out other mods since I'd like to not spend too much time on it and just have it stable, but I think I will just give them a go - easy enough to revert from a backup. Regarding governors, I checked and mine is set to interavtice, there are a bunch of others available though:
Code:
$cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_governors
abyssplug pegasusq hotplug conservative ondemand userspace powersave interactive performance
Hmm, most of them I've never heard off - any preferences?
BTW, for whatever reason battery drains a lot slower now (maybe it just needed a few cycles to settle in?). I also verified via adb shell that it idles at around zero load when the screen is off.

Have a look here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2017715
And here!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2810435
Very informative
Sent from my GT-I8190N running SlimKat

Is battery drain possible due to hardware damage?

So over the course of time I have used many different ROMs and also have had 5 batteries for my Note so far.
All ROMs gave me terrible battery life, except the stock android for around the first year, eventually it started giving me terrible battery life too.
So that got me wondering, is it possible that some kind of faulty hardware on my Note's motherboard is causing those battery drains?

[email protected] said:
So over the course of time I have used many different ROMs and also have had 5 batteries for my Note so far.
All ROMs gave me terrible battery life, except the stock android for around the first year, eventually it started giving me terrible battery life too.
So that got me wondering, is it possible that some kind of faulty hardware on my Note's motherboard is causing those battery drains?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm pretty sure that would be possible, but I'd make sure to rule out any other cause you can rule out first.
First thing to do is check on who or what is consuming the battery, so installing something like CPU Spy will let you know if the phone just keeps running at top speeds.
Because there simply isn't enough juice in these batteries to allow all parts of the phone to run full throttle for hours.
Smart phones are really at their best, when their just sitting idle and then they really shouldn't consume any power. That's what you need to check: Does it really slow down and sleep, when you're not actively using it?
And CPU Spy (or similar tools) will give you that info by telling you how much time the CPU has spent at each speed setting. If it doesn't drop to deep sleep when the phone if off the charger, screen switched off at the home screen but stays running at 100-500MHz, then you have found the reason for the miserable battery life. Now you'd just have to find what's causing it.
And that could be a long story journey...
However you could start with an empty ROM fully wiped, nothing but the ROM and the minimum set of GAPPS installed (and CPU Spy or similar for checking) empty internal SDcard, expecially no media files. If you have an external SD card, best remove that initially so you don't have to delete any data you keep on there.
If then the Note isn't guzzling battery and sleeping deeply when not used, your hardware is fine.
Then it's just a matter of adding item after item, always checking of that is causing any change to CPU states and energy consumption.
You should also try to find out of any of your five batteries has issues and use a known good one for the testing.

abufrejoval said:
I'm pretty sure that would be possible, but I'd make sure to rule out any other cause you can rule out first.
First thing to do is check on who or what is consuming the battery, so installing something like CPU Spy will let you know if the phone just keeps running at top speeds.
Because there simply isn't enough juice in these batteries to allow all parts of the phone to run full throttle for hours.
Smart phones are really at their best, when their just sitting idle and then they really shouldn't consume any power. That's what you need to check: Does it really slow down and sleep, when you're not actively using it?
And CPU Spy (or similar tools) will give you that info by telling you how much time the CPU has spent at each speed setting. If it doesn't drop to deep sleep when the phone if off the charger, screen switched off at the home screen but stays running at 100-500MHz, then you have found the reason for the miserable battery life. Now you'd just have to find what's causing it.
And that could be a long story journey...
However you could start with an empty ROM fully wiped, nothing but the ROM and the minimum set of GAPPS installed (and CPU Spy or similar for checking) empty internal SDcard, expecially no media files. If you have an external SD card, best remove that initially so you don't have to delete any data you keep on there.
If then the Note isn't guzzling battery and sleeping deeply when not used, your hardware is fine.
Then it's just a matter of adding item after item, always checking of that is causing any change to CPU states and energy consumption.
You should also try to find out of any of your five batteries has issues and use a known good one for the testing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay to begin, the phone never drains battery when idle, never. If I charge to 100% at night around 23:00 , in the morning it would be around 90%. So that seems fair enough. Because I keep my EDGE / 2G activated at all times.
The real problem is when the screen is turned on (doesn't matter what I do).
I tried to keep the screen on for one hour, idle, doing nothing. Battery drained by a whooping 25%. So basically it's my screen which is consuming my battery. I didn't try this when I made this thread, so there's no mention of this in the first post.
So I don't think any other apps are consuming anything. Besides I hardly have any apps installed.
I got the gapps from the following link and installed the 'mini' package.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/par...apps-official-to-date-pa-google-apps-t2943900
Apart from I only have WhatsApp, Notepad, Perfect AppLock, AdAway and Chrome installed. Only a few apps since I did a full wipe yesterday night. Even flashed a stock ROM first and began from scratch.
So I don't really think it's any apps consuming any CPU, only screen is eating a ****load. Could it be the damaged screen?
Holy ****! I just recalled while writing this post, I did get this screen of this phone replace once, like one and half year ago. Could that be it? I did get it replaced from a official Samsung store though.

[email protected] said:
Okay to begin, the phone never drains battery when idle, never. If I charge to 100% at night around 23:00 , in the morning it would be around 90%. So that seems fair enough. Because I keep my EDGE / 2G activated at all times.
The real problem is when the screen is turned on (doesn't matter what I do).
I tried to keep the screen on for one hour, idle, doing nothing. Battery drained by a whooping 25%. So basically it's my screen which is consuming my battery. I didn't try this when I made this thread, so there's no mention of this in the first post.
So I don't think any other apps are consuming anything. Besides I hardly have any apps installed.
I got the gapps from the following link and installed the 'mini' package.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/par...apps-official-to-date-pa-google-apps-t2943900
Apart from I only have WhatsApp, Notepad, Perfect AppLock, AdAway and Chrome installed. Only a few apps since I did a full wipe yesterday night. Even flashed a stock ROM first and began from scratch.
So I don't really think it's any apps consuming any CPU, only screen is eating a ****load. Could it be the damaged screen?
Holy ****! I just recalled while writing this post, I did get this screen of this phone replace once, like one and half year ago. Could that be it? I did get it replaced from a official Samsung store though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd consider playing with the brightness, just to see of something a little lower is good enough for daily use but I'd say that isn't impossible...
While Samsung liked to hype the fact that OLED would only use power on illuminated pixels, mine are mostly white because reading is what I do most on my Notes.
And then this screen on the Note 1 didn't use particularly less energy than a good LCD backlight screen according to the reviews I remember.
I also remember an article which said that the energy consumption on OLED wasn't linear and that the last 20% of brightness might cost 50% more power (the numbers are most likely bogus but the main point was that brightness/energy consumption wasn't linear).
And yes, there is most likely variation between individual screens on OLED and moreover OLED displays decay with use and over time. I haven't noticed it that much with my Note 1 yet, but my older Samsung Galaxy S I-9000 that I passed on to one of my sons developed a brightness issue: Everything below the first 100 lines or so is significantly darker than the top. I don't know wether that's a consequence of his usage pattern (Whatsapp) or some other reason, but I do know that he typically kept the display at top brightness and also kept it lit far longer than I ever did.
I've always been somewhat disappointed by the endurance of the Note 1 but I haven't really noticed any significant change with the different ROM versions. And since I was also somewhat disappointed by the performance of the device I couldn't resist replacing it with the Note 3 when that came out.
That device was better in pretty much every regard, except screen ratio: I really, really liked the 16:10 of the Note 1 a lot better than the 16:9 of the Note 3.

abufrejoval said:
I'd consider playing with the brightness, just to see of something a little lower is good enough for daily use but I'd say that isn't impossible...
While Samsung liked to hype the fact that OLED would only use power on illuminated pixels, mine are mostly white because reading is what I do most on my Notes.
And then this screen on the Note 1 didn't use particularly less energy than a good LCD backlight screen according to the reviews I remember.
I also remember an article which said that the energy consumption on OLED wasn't linear and that the last 20% of brightness might cost 50% more power (the numbers are most likely bogus but the main point was that brightness/energy consumption wasn't linear).
And yes, there is most likely variation between individual screens on OLED and moreover OLED displays decay with use and over time. I haven't noticed it that much with my Note 1 yet, but my older Samsung Galaxy S I-9000 that I passed on to one of my sons developed a brightness issue: Everything below the first 100 lines or so is significantly darker than the top. I don't know wether that's a consequence of his usage pattern (Whatsapp) or some other reason, but I do know that he typically kept the display at top brightness and also kept it lit far longer than I ever did.
I've always been somewhat disappointed by the endurance of the Note 1 but I haven't really noticed any significant change with the different ROM versions. And since I was also somewhat disappointed by the performance of the device I couldn't resist replacing it with the Note 3 when that came out.
That device was better in pretty much every regard, except screen ratio: I really, really liked the 16:10 of the Note 1 a lot better than the 16:9 of the Note 3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see. Thank you for the time you took to write this reply.
I always have my brightness to the lowest possible and yet I am facing battery drains.
Anyways, it seems this problem is beyond repair. I have literally tried every solution possible and nothing seems to have worked. So I guess it's time to move on.
Thank you for your time and information.
It's probably my screen that's consuming the battery. It can easily last up to 20 hours with 2G turned on the entire day. But as soon as I turn the screen on and start doing something, battery drains at like 1% every 60 seconds.

How old is your battery?.. I´d say get a new one if it´s older than 1 year..

Is the fingerprint scanner enabled while the screen is off on stock rom?

After unboxing and charging my new Note 9 I immediately rooted the device and flashed a custom FW.
Can a person on stock ROM please clarify these questions for me:
1) Is it stock behaviour that the fingerprint scanner on the back is always on while the screen is off?
2) Does this feature impact battery life?
3) If it's stock behaviour how do I disable this? I tried changing the secure setting "biometrics_auto_wakeup_enabled" from 1 to 0 without any effect. But maybe there is another switch? I don't know.
Thanks for any help!

1) If I remember right, I have not changed any settings related to the scanner being enabled/disabled while screen is off, i.e. it would be at "default". I haven't even looked for such. For me, it does unlock directly even when display is off. (Edit: fingerprint seems to unlock from any state before homescreen, except in the lockscreen note writing mode.)
2) I haven't measured battery life yet, let alone looked for changing the feature's behavior for another measurement, so I can not really tell. However, standby battery life seems to be ok. I'm using the phone with very varying levels still, so hard to estimate well, but I'd estimate from the early daily %-drops that standby time is at least 4-5 days. So, I guess the feature doesn't drain the battery that much.

Just a small follow-up, as I finally got a decently "normal" (for me) day and a half with the phone, only one short call, text message, maybe 10 gmails received (but mostly read on PC), a bit of "usage" with screen on time probably less than 15 minutes in total.
Seems I could get about 7.5 days of standby time.
Screen settings don't matter much in this scenario (as the display is off most of the time). Other significant settings are: wifi off, BT off, 4G LTE always there, GPS always available, NFC always ready, fingerprint sensor always waiting for finger, the only extra apps that could be battery hogs are Flowdock and Steam apps (both seem to behave nicely, Flowdock was nasty on my previous phone). Using the LED cover. (Quite the "default" setup with a relatively small number of installed apps or changed settings.)
In a way, that result is good. But on the other hand, with similar setup (minus Flowdock and LED cover, fingerprint sensor only works when display on, but add an extra email account on samsung email app with polling checks), my Galaxy S5 was getting about 6-7 days standby time, too, and that with its original battery (and the phone was bought pretty much the day when it came available here). Note 9 having much larger battery, and presumably better SoC (at least they always claim lower battery drain in idle from each CPU after CPU generation), better Android version... kind of "meh" result from Note 9. However, I did tighten some settings on that S5, like reduced email check frequency and such, which I have not looked for on Note 9 yet. And possibly will not look for, that 7+ days is good enough for me.

2 days absolute max battery life with 'normal' use?

Morning all.
Something that has been slightly bothering me since I got this phone....it has a massive battery, it can be heavily customised with roms, xposed modules, magisk modules and all manner of tweaks. Probably one of the most open and dev-friendly devices I've ever had.
Yet, no matter what I do the only way I have ever been able to get more than 2 days out of a battery is to literally not use the phone.
I have had devices in the past such as Xperia Z3 Compact, S7 Active and others with smaller battery that were easily able to push 3 days with regular use. Hell, the Z3C was able to get up to 5 days with a little bit of trickery turning off radios when not in use etc.
Is the extra diagonal inch of screen realestate really enough to destroy the battery longevity? Typically with normal usage I am seeing 2 days with about 4.5 hours of screen-on time.
I've experimented with just about everything to push this out including no official facebook apps, decreased resolution, medium power-saving mode, kernel tweaks (currently using TGP rom and kernel), auto-sync turned off. Going beyond this I feel like you may as well just use a push-button device.
Any devs care to comment? What is the main factor that eats the battery on the Note 9? Is the exynos processor just not that power-efficient? Am I missing some hidden gem?
I guess the next step would be to transition to an AOSP based rom where the customisation is not constrained by baked-in samsung features but again, this is giving up a lot including proper s-pen functionality.
I recently kitted out an LG V30+ for my wife and it is just insane to me that a phone which only has a 3300mah battery can get the same life as the Note9 or better.
Is there some strategy I have missed or is this really the best we can hope for? Seems like an extremely inefficient use of 4000mah to me.

bandario said:
Morning all.
Something that has been slightly bothering me since I got this phone....it has a massive battery, it can be heavily customised with roms, xposed modules, magisk modules and all manner of tweaks. Probably one of the most open and dev-friendly devices I've ever had.
Yet, no matter what I do the only way I have ever been able to get more than 2 days out of a battery is to literally not use the phone.
I have had devices in the past such as Xperia Z3 Compact, S7 Active and others with smaller battery that were easily able to push 3 days with regular use. Hell, the Z3C was able to get up to 5 days with a little bit of trickery turning off radios when not in use etc.
Is the extra diagonal inch of screen realestate really enough to destroy the battery longevity? Typically with normal usage I am seeing 2 days with about 4.5 hours of screen-on time.
I've experimented with just about everything to push this out including no official facebook apps, decreased resolution, medium power-saving mode, kernel tweaks (currently using TGP rom and kernel), auto-sync turned off. Going beyond this I feel like you may as well just use a push-button device.
Any devs care to comment? What is the main factor that eats the battery on the Note 9? Is the exynos processor just not that power-efficient? Am I missing some hidden gem?
I guess the next step would be to transition to an AOSP based rom where the customisation is not constrained by baked-in samsung features but again, this is giving up a lot including proper s-pen functionality.
I recently kitted out an LG V30+ for my wife and it is just insane to me that a phone which only has a 3300mah battery can get the same life as the Note9 or better.
Is there some strategy I have missed or is this really the best we can hope for? Seems like an extremely inefficient use of 4000mah to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is what you get when you use a high performance chip.
If it was like cars.. just because the gas tank is big (battery) doesn't mean that the engine won't consume the fuel faster than a more Efficient engine (cpu) with less power.
Other phones might be able to last 3 days, but they also dont have the performance capabilities. Turn on extreme power saving and see how long the phone lasts ...

I'm using stock unbranded ROM. I also adp uninstalled all the Facebook system apps (devil-ware). With Pie + OneUI + Night mode + Dark UI apps, it's the first time I love stock. I bet your non-stock ROM + TGP is the culprit.
I charge nightly on a wireless charge pad; easy on the battery. In Device Care, I run the default "Optimized" setting. I use it moderately for the first 12 hours of my working day (meetings phone calls), and I often have 85-90% charge left at that point. I then use the phone HEAVILY for the next 4 hours (watching video, reading, etc.), and at that point I am never below 50% (often 60-70) when I put it back on the charge pad, go to sleep, and start the whole thing over again. I have the US version (Snapdragon), darkmode and auto brightness is always on, and I use Automate to toggle my wifi off when not home and back on when home. Other than that, I have gps, bluetooth, and phone data always on. Bluetooth pairs with my watch and car, and gps auto-toggles by the kernel whenever I load maps or whenever my Life360 app updates my location (every few minutes).
That's all fairly normal use with a bit of power-savings thought into it. If you cannot get similar performance without your screen brightness jacked way up and wifi always on (that eats battery as you move around), then maybe you have a power-hungry app. Check your Device Care section of Settings, and start watching your "Usage by apps".
Also, it's better to slow-charge than fast-charge (wears it out more quickly). And you are better off charging nightly than waiting two days until it's very low.

gruuvin said:
I charge nightly on a wireless charge pad; easy on the battery. In Device Care, I run the default "Optimized" setting. I use it moderately for the first 12 hours of my working day (meetings phone calls), and I often have 85-90% charge left at that point. I then use the phone HEAVILY for the next 4 hours (watching video, reading, etc.), and at that point I am never below 50% (often 60-70) when I put it back on the charge pad, go to sleep, and start the whole thing over again. I have the US version (Snapdragon), darkmode and auto brightness is always on, and I use Automate to toggle my wifi off when not home and back on when home. Other than that, I have gps, bluetooth, and phone data always on. Bluetooth pairs with my watch and car, and gps auto-toggles by the kernel whenever I load maps or whenever my Life360 app updates my location (every few minutes).
That's all fairly normal use with a bit of power-savings thought into it. If you cannot get similar performance without your screen brightness jacked way up and wifi always on (that eats battery as you move around), then maybe you have a power-hungry app. Check your Device Care section of Settings, and start watching your "Usage by apps".
Also, it's better to slow-charge than fast-charge (wears it out more quickly). And you are better off charging nightly than waiting two days until it's very low.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A lot of people don't realize the huge difference that your cellular connection strength makes a difference on your battery.
Try working in a all brick/stone bank building, where 250kb/s is a good 4g download speed... Then see what your battery looks like after a few hours.

Bober_is_a_troll said:
A lot of people don't realize the huge difference that your cellular connection strength makes a difference on your battery.
Try working in a all brick/stone bank building, where 250kb/s is a good 4g download speed... Then see what your battery looks like after a few hours.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
YEP!
And same goes for wifi.....
wifi and cell radios can really eat up battery if they are trying to maintain a connection in areas where wifi/phone signal is weak. And app like Tasker or Automate can toggle these on and off, depending on your location, and really save battery.

Well, that probably explains a few things. I moved in to a SOLID brick building recently with double glazing everywhere and multiple solid brick internal walls. First time I've ever battled for cell and wifi signal...that does explain a lot. I guess 2 days is still pretty good. Might end up with one of those 10,000mah Chinafones eventually ;p