ZTE Blade (Orange San Francisco) list of things that drain battery

[Guest snowbord]

Alright, having spent too log debugging my ZTE Blade, I have decided to draw up a list of things that drain the battery on these phones and indeed, probably all Android phones. People are claiming they get anything between 24 hours to 4-6 days out of these phones, whilst others are struggling to get through the day with them, or finding that the battery drops by 40% overnight. In my tests so far, a 5-6% drop overnight with everything but a mobile connection on is alright (data OFF!). I have woken up with 100% the next morning if I enable airplane mode.

I'll be posting links up to solutions as and when I get the time. For now, the known culprits are;

• Your phone not going to sleep. This is culprit number one, probably followed by data bleeds (which are linked to this). To check - take the charger out, press the power button to kill the screen, wait a minute or two (often 10-20 seconds is enough), then try pressing the home / menu / back buttons on your phone. It should NOT turn on. Only the power button should re-enable your phone. Usage of tools like Spare Parts and Power Tutor are essential here.
• FM Radio not turning off even when exited. It must be killed via a task manager. Plug your headphones in and listen for the sound going off as you kill the task.
• ZTE Smart dialer (part of Swedish Spring, amonst others) - mute on rotate. Not only does this cure the mysterious disappearance of your voice midway through a conversation as you bend down to tie your shoe-laces or lie on your bed to chat, but it also cures the mysterious 'Dialer' occupying your clock cycles in partial wake. Consider using an alternative dialer, like the original android dialer (AOSP).
  http://android.modac...e-dialer-issue/
• Google Maps 5.6.3 and earlier would not allow the phone to sleep fully. 5.7 seems alright so far. There are posts in the forums.
• GSM / CDMA auto-searching. I haven't had the time to confirm this but worth a crack. Others have had success. I quote - change the setting to "CDMA auto (PRL)" which will set the phone to CDMA only and it will STOP looking for GSM networks and to go sleep like it's suppose to. That's if you have nothing else installed keeping it from sleeping.
  http://androidforums...fe-finally.html
• gMail / gCal / Exchange sync getting stuck and failing. I'm not sure this is relevant today but it was a problem in the past. Posts available in the forums on how this was overcome (clearing settings?)
• Set Wifi sleep policy to "never" in Settings > Wireless > Wifi > Menu key > Advanced > Wifi sleep policy
• There IS A KNOWN GINGERBREAD BUG!! This only applies if you have signed into a Google account on your phone.
  You can identify this drain by checking the Battery Use in Settings : if Android OS is above 20%, often between 40 and 60% of the battery consumption while your phone has been idle most of the time, then that's it.
  http://www.darkyrom....tery-life.2551/
  and
  http://socialtimes.c...ta-usage_b48336
  
  My current workflow is as such. Feel free to join the fun and report back!
  
  
  1. Starting from a confirmed sleeping phone, make software changes.
  2. Put phone in sleep mode then start bashing home / back / menu. If a process wakes the phone, your key bashing will light the screen. If it does not, pressing the keys will have no effect.
  3. As soon as it wakes, go into PowerTutor to hunt down the process that woke the phone.

  Tweaks that can be applied to boost battery life;

  [*]Use 2G[*]Dim your screen. Use Len Ash's fixed auto screen dimming which is part of his rom[*]Disable data, hence disable syncing and other data related stuff. JuiceDefender or Tasker will help here, as will APNDroid (not tested yet). Supposedly JD can auto switch between 2G and 3G, but I have not got it to work yet.[*]I'm still tweaking sync settings to figure out when this can be disabled but basically, make your apps sync as infrequently as possible.[*]No need to disable GPS[*]I'm toying with Wifi being enabled constantly as I don't think this draws any significant power if it's not connected and not scanning constantly. Tips on optimal Wi-Fi settings welcome.

  In my opinion, this is the best distro of Swedish Spring, as it fixes R5's known bugs;

  Unfortunately, the lite (black) version has theme issues, but just get the phat version, delete the apps in the archive and copy only the lite apps, then flash..

  http://android.modac...g-rls5-remixed/

  and the phat one with a more thorough list of changes (Len Ash knows what he's doing and has taken care to rid the ROM of its issues, including replacing the dialer, removing the radio and fixing auto-dimming - see above for details)

  http://android.modac...emix2-phat-one/

  I did try FLB thinking I have found my rom, but to be honest (I don't want to start a flame war) - it's rubbish. Too many bugs, like wifi tethering not working, superuser issues and screen hangs to name but a few. Not the compilers' fault - it's based on a buggy Chinese rom to begin with so no amount of polishing will make this turd shine. ;)

  The above ROM is the one if you ask me - SS RLS5 but fixed. :)

  Tips on what does cane your battery courtesy of our man Len Ash;

  http://android.modac...52#entry1692952

Edited July 16, 2011 by snowbord

[Guest KACE_231]

Brilliant Idea,

I find that when signal strength is low, battery drains faster (2G/3G), alot faster infact.

For me personally 3G is an extremely huge battery drainer, more so than leaving WiFi enabled (with a sleep lock, i.e. prevents phone from sleeping)

Also it worh noting, in my area 3G signal is usually only 2/3 bars, whilst 2G is always a constant 4 bars (max).

From looking at my battery usage history, the phone has a very intermittent sleep cycle, that is the phone constantly wakes itself every 5-10 min. I imagine this is due to various apps doing data syncs - this often leads to almost 40% battery drain overnight (12 hours)

I use the latest CM7 ROM

Edited July 12, 2011 by KACE_231

[Guest snowbord]

I find that when signal strength is low, battery drains faster (2G/3G), alot faster infact.

Yepp, a weak signal is well known to drain battery, on any phone. A 1 bar signal drained a usually charge-it-and-forget-it (5+ days) Nokia in 45 minutes. Never seen that phone do that! Additionally, hopping between 2G and 3G is said to drain battery also, as the phone struggles to find the best signal.

For me personally 3G is an extremely huge battery drainer, more so than leaving WiFi enabled (with a sleep lock, i.e. prevents phone from sleeping)

That's interesting... I keep reading that WiFi is less power consuming, but don't really have a network to hand to test this on atm.

From looking at my battery usage history, the phone has a very intermittent sleep cycle, that is the phone constantly wakes itself every 5-10 min. I imagine this is due to various apps doing data syncs - this often leads to almost 40% battery drain overnight (12 hours)

I'm up to the dreaded 'process 0 / radio subsystem' bug and am currently trying to figure out if Google's syncing or what app exactly keeps waking my phone via 'process 0'. I have thus far discovered that;

kernel is 0

system is 1000

radio subsystem is 1001

All 3 are linked, but basically from what I can gather is that some process is calling for data via a process call and not directly itself. Sync does not stop this from happening, however turning off DATA allows my phone to sleep. No net it seems, no worries. Will be back with more info but the problem is very serious - so serious infact, that a bounty has been offered lol;

http://forum.xda-dev...d.php?t=1081233

and

http://code.google.c...detail?id=15057

Supposedly;

"android os" bug is NOT:

Wifi bug (always on)

Maps bug

Any installed apps bug

Operator bug

Latitude bug

This one may be a tough one to crack.

Edited July 13, 2011 by snowbord

[Guest t0mm13b]

Perhaps this tip can apply for wifi -

use blade buddy and adjust the scan interval - currently set at 15 second - property called wifi.supplicant_scan_interval, increase that to 60 seconds and see if that improves the battery - top of my head :)

as for the process id's, they are merely identifiers to indicate the process (that's how task manager can kill it by looking up the process id or pid for short and issuing a kill value - usually 9 or a 1) so that would be a moot point....

Edited July 12, 2011 by t0mm13b

[Guest snowbord]

Thanks for the heads up, will give it a shot. I'm aware what pids etc but I thought I'd share as many people just see process '0' in Spare Parts without a clue about what it is. I did notice that this did not appear as I installed pretty much all my apps from backup. It started popping up once I finally signed into my Google account.

I just stumbled across this;

http://socialtimes.c...ta-usage_b48336

I tapped Menu, Settings, Privacy, cleared the Back Up My Data check box and restarted my phone for good measure. While the change has just been made on my phone for the last hour, Network Monitor is showing that only 180 KB of data has been uploaded since I made the change.

Also, this seems very promising and confirms the above diagnosis;

http://www.darkyrom....tery-life.2551/

You can identify this drain by checking the Battery Use in Settings : if Android OS is above 20%, often between 40 and 60% of the battery consumption while your phone has been idle most of the time, then that's it.

The good news is that there is a semi-fix found in XDA: 2 system apps are responsible for this leak, here's what to do using Titanium Backup :

Find Software Update & Samsung Account (n/a on our Blades), select them one by one and "Clear Data". Now you need to freeze Software Update (if you have the Pro version of Titanium Backup) or to backup the app and delete it. Since you don't delete the backup, it's like a freeze. (But keep the backup in case you want it back for some obscure reason)

Or simply use the default app manager to clear the data and Root Explorer to backup/delete Software Update.

If the Android OS battery drain comes back after freezing/deleting the 2 apps above then I suggest you read about the app below. You can back it up and delete it as well and see if it improves:

wssyncmlnps.apk (info) - make a backup in case.

But the AOS BUG will probably keep coming because there is no proper fix to it (Google bug fixed on 2.3.4).

Please share your findings posting in this thread so everybody can know.

however, it does appear to be a FroYo bug. :( Fixed in 2.3.4 though, apparently.. CM7 people need to confirm. Gingerbread users, please test and let me know if this resolves the 'process 0' and 'radio subsystem' bugs.

Edited July 13, 2011 by snowbord

[Guest t0mm13b]

Another thing - this is purely speculation on my part -

Install droidwall (iptables based firewall), it will block outgoing traffic and therefore possibly prevent kick-starting a app to use 3g (if outside of wifi vicinity) for to transmit data....

I really cannot confirm but, the benefit is droidwall will protect and stop any crappy app you download from market to trigger the opening up of 3g connection (that could suck up some juice maybe) and start transmitting like crazy so who knows.... :mellow:

[Guest snowbord]

Good idea. Will have that on there once I get to the root of the problem. I don't want to slap band aids over it when I am so close now.. :)

For future apps though, for sure.

[Guest flshg]

Another thing - this is purely speculation on my part -

Install droidwall (iptables based firewall), it will block outgoing traffic and therefore possibly prevent kick-starting a app to use 3g (if outside of wifi vicinity) for to transmit data....

I really cannot confirm but, the benefit is droidwall will protect and stop any crappy app you download from market to trigger the opening up of 3g connection (that could suck up some juice maybe) and start transmitting like crazy so who knows.... :mellow:

That is what I have currently happening - droidwall does a great job of stopping services (for me network location and google services framework) which seem to keep the phone awake a lot of the time, so I can confirm that this works nicely.

[Guest mc78torino]

Just to let you know: currently on Ginger Stir Fry Beta6, with circle battery mode, I put the Blade on GSM only before sleeping at 100% and I find it still at 100% in the morning after at least 7-8 hours, of course switching data, wifi and sync off.I'm on Tesco Mobile (o2) network.And I've got 65 apps on my Blade. 3G sucks battery for sure,especially when browsing,but the screen brightness counts equally, even if my Blade is a converted GEN2 old OLED.Using GO LAUNCHER EX,the best for me. Hopefully with the latest Beta13 things will go even better.Ginger Stir Fry Beta series is the best till now in terms of battery in my experience.

edit: my Blade over the night is not in airplane mode on, just on gsm-only, don't know if in the morning has still 100% of battery due to the OLED screen or whatever..and considering that the signal here sometimes drops,I really feel I'm lucky(my Blade is 8 months old now).I also set screen at 10% of brightness before going to sleep. probably the Ginger Stir Fry Beta13 will do miracle onto my Blade,when I'll install it.We'll see next.

Edited July 13, 2011 by mc78torino

[Guest snowbord]

Just to let you know: currently on Ginger Stir Fry Beta6, with circle battery mode, I put the Blade on GSM only before sleeping at 100% and I find it still at 100% in the morning after at least 7-8 hours, of course switching data, wifi and sync off.I'm on Tesco Mobile (o2) network.And I've got 65 apps on my Blade. 3G sucks battery for sure,especially when browsing,but the screen brightness counts equally, even if my Blade is a converted GEN2 old OLED.Using GO LAUNCHER EX,the best for me. Hopefully with the latest Beta13 things will go even better.Ginger Stir Fry Beta series is the best till now in terms of battery in my experience.

Thanks for the heads up buddy. Coincidentally, I just installed b13 earlier today and am crossing my fingers that the rom is as good as I hope it is! :) I saw a google Market update in there, which as stated goes some way to resolve the account backup issues which seem to be plaguing Froyo => no sleep (process 0 / radio subsystem bug).

My impression of wbaw's focus is that of battery / sleep performance.. he's done some great stuff for the community. Get it here;

http://android.modac...inger-stir-fry/

Edited July 14, 2011 by snowbord

[Guest 569]

This is what I experienced with the custom ROMs I tried:

Battery is charged (100%).

With airplane mode on over night (7-8h) I got the following battery level the next morning:

Flb Froyo: 99% - 100%

SS Froyo: 98%

GSF B9: 94% - 95%

[Guest Cyclothunder]

This is what I experienced with the custom ROMs I tried:

Battery is charged (100%).

With airplane mode on over night (7-8h) I got the following battery level the next morning:

Flb Froyo: 99% - 100%

SS Froyo: 98%

GSF B9: 94% - 95%

Nice testing but why didn't you tried with GSF B13 since it's the lastest version?

[Guest snowbord]

Well I just tested GSF overnight with data off, but radio on - got 97%.

SS Froyo gave me 94% in the same use case, that is, providing the radio subsystem bug had not kicked in.. GSF (b13 at the time of testing) appears to be behaving the best of the bunch here.

This is what I experienced with the custom ROMs I tried:

Battery is charged (100%).

With airplane mode on over night (7-8h) I got the following battery level the next morning:

Flb Froyo: 99% - 100%

SS Froyo: 98%

GSF B9: 94% - 95%

Edited July 14, 2011 by snowbord

[Guest h@mster81]

I'm on GSF B9 and have 99-100% in the morning (6-7 hrs) without airplane mode.

I have a 3UK sim so 3G is always enabled with data and sync turned off. FLB was quite similar but drained lot faster during the day. Also sometimes battery drain went to extremes without running any apps and only reboot helped. Had the same issue with SS3/4/5 and De-Crossed and MCR. I thought my phone was faulty but luckily it's all good with GSF. :)

[Guest 569]

Nice testing but why didn't you tried with GSF B13 since it's the lastest version?

Yeah, will try it this weekend.

Maybe there's something wrong with my current installation. When I turn on Watchdog and look at the CPU usage, there are two apps constantly using CPU: "Android System" (~7%) and "Status Bar" (~3%).

IIRC on the froyo roms all the loaded apps are showing 0% and only from time to time some shows some percent, but none of them are constantly using the cpu. I hope the battery drain will get fixed with a new installation.

[Guest snowbord]

I'm on GSF B9 and have 99-100% in the morning (6-7 hrs) without airplane mode.

I have a 3UK sim so 3G is always enabled with data and sync turned off. FLB was quite similar but drained lot faster during the day. Also sometimes battery drain went to extremes without running any apps and only reboot helped. Had the same issue with SS3/4/5 and De-Crossed and MCR. I thought my phone was faulty but luckily it's all good with GSF. :)

That's the dreaded process 0 (kernel, related to Android System) / radio subsystem bug that had me pulling my hair out for a week. It is mentioned in the first post. To report back, GSF is indeed proving excellent in regards to battery life. No random battery drains, consistently excellent battery life. Highly recommended.

Edited July 15, 2011 by snowbord

[Guest wbaw]

You should be using CM7 & finding out what drains battery on that, because it's a (mostly) open source rom, it can be fixed.

You're wasting your time with any other rom.

[Guest pa49]

wbaw

"You should be using CM7 & finding out what drains battery on that, because it's a (mostly) open source rom, it can be fixed.

You're wasting your time with any other rom."

Totally correct.

You cannot "boost battery life", it's finite.

And, everything drains the battery.

So called tweaks and power saving apps do nothing.

A well constructed and power efficient ROM is essential.

The turning off of any unused facility helps as well, but, defeats the reason for having a smartphone!!!!!!!!!!

Also use fastboot regularly (set it on your home screen) to hot restart the OS with only the essential apps running. This will also kill surious app usage of resorces.

Forget anything else.

[Guest yellowperil]

wbaw

"You should be using CM7 & finding out what drains battery on that, because it's a (mostly) open source rom, it can be fixed.

You're wasting your time with any other rom."

Totally correct.

You cannot "boost battery life", it's finite.

And, everything drains the battery.

So called tweaks and power saving apps do nothing.

A well constructed and power efficient ROM is essential.

The turning off of any unused facility helps as well, but, defeats the reason for having a smartphone!!!!!!!!!!

Also use fastboot regularly (set it on your home screen) to hot restart the OS with only the essential apps running. This will also kill surious app usage of resorces.

Forget anything else.

I would take your post with a pinch of salt, there are some tweaks that can be made to improve battery life, certain apps will improve battery life.

1 - setting polling values from every 15secs to 60secs is a good example of this.

2 - using apps that kill apps every so often, when sleeping the phone, etc.

Now extending polling settings to a point were the phone wont behave as you want quickly enough, more likely to timeout.

And an app that kills apps end up polling so often it uses the same power up as the apps that would have been running in memory.

Now having read a little on how apps function most apps take power when loading and closing from the memory, having an app sat in memory will not actually decrease the battery, what it does in memory will. So if you have an app that say polls the weather, etc then of course that will have a detrimental effect on the battery, now increasing the poll time from 15mins to 1 hour will decrease its battery usage by 4 times, now I think the point here is not nessecarilty closing apps that are loaded into memory but making sure polling within the apps is changed to reduce calls on battery usage.

There are apps out there that will do this for you.

but from experience the main culprits are this.

3G

Wifi

GPS

[Guest insurgente]

good thread...i intend to have a proper read as I find the battery life on my phone to be terrible, and I don't understand other people claiming to get 2 or 3 days off it

Are there any widgets that quickly switch 3G on off? I'm on Ginger Stir Fry 12 and the widget features an option to turn Data on/off, which is good, but sometimes 2G data is enough anyway.

I'm sure the auto-brightness screen uses a fair bit of power, but why turn it down to the lowest setting if you then can't see the thing :(

[Guest jufo]

since i am on CM7 nightlies 105 (06172011) i have got 5-7days charging period. I disabled data, using just wifi 5-10 minutes a day just chcecking emails, up to 10 min a day calls, couple of sms a day. highly recommend this build.

[Guest domerator]

since i am on CM7 nightlies 105 (06172011) i have got 5-7days charging period. I disabled data, using just wifi 5-10 minutes a day just chcecking emails, up to 10 min a day calls, couple of sms a day. highly recommend this build.

Far from offense but you could almost this happy with a normal phone based on this usage :) Battery related topics are about normal "smartphone" usage of Blade.

Good battery performance anyway :)

[Guest tonydl]

since i am on CM7 nightlies 105 (06172011) i have got 5-7days charging period. I disabled data, using just wifi 5-10 minutes a day just chcecking emails, up to 10 min a day calls, couple of sms a day. highly recommend this build.

Uh and N105 is known to have broken the battery usage somehow.

But maybe not with your low usage style.

http://wiki.modaco.com/index.php/ZTE_Blade_CyanogenMod

[Guest snowbord]

I beg to differ and quite frankly can state that you are being incredibly ignorant. There ARE buggy apps that drain battery - these should be identified as regardless of ROM, they WILL drain battery.

Swedish Spring is a very popular rom and if people did not try and get to the bottom of battery drain, noone will know that 2.2 has the radio subsystem bug and will accept it as fact that Android 2.2 phones, the most widespread derivative of Android, have a battery life of 12 hours, or less if for example they choose to listen to the radio on their way to work, only for it to not shut down properly.

I also fail to see how tweaks and power saving apps do nothing when it is fact that they save battery. wbaw himself has tweaked his excellent Stir Fry rom for battery life. Yes, a smartphone is a smartphone but to be honest, in order to maintain my own productivity and minimise distractions, I choose not to be harassed by every mundane email as soon as it arrives. It is down to the individual to choose how they make use of their 'smartphone' in order to better their own productivity, not end up wasting most of their day sucked into the time wasting email vortex courtesy of the gimmick and kudos factor that is push email.

My phone is there to serve me, as I choose, for as long a time as possible seeing as it is a MOBILE DEVICE and battery life is paramount - I have no intention of it distracting me constantly by its 'smartness' which will expire withing 12 hours of being disconnected from the mains. That's hardly being smart now is it?

I need to have working phones for people who I've recommended Android to, not use them as beta testers as they are simply not interested, as are the vast majority of people out there who buy a phone and expect it to work - not debug battery, crash, GPS or whatever problems.

Thankfully wbaw's Stir Fry rom seems good for the job. Swedish Spring although stable, has the Android OS bug (as do ALL 2.2 devices, hence the public misconception that 12-24 hour battery is somehow good, regardless of usage).

wbaw

"You should be using CM7 & finding out what drains battery on that, because it's a (mostly) open source rom, it can be fixed.

You're wasting your time with any other rom."

Totally correct.

You cannot "boost battery life", it's finite.

And, everything drains the battery.

So called tweaks and power saving apps do nothing.

A well constructed and power efficient ROM is essential.

The turning off of any unused facility helps as well, but, defeats the reason for having a smartphone!!!!!!!!!!

Also use fastboot regularly (set it on your home screen) to hot restart the OS with only the essential apps running. This will also kill surious app usage of resorces.

Forget anything else.

Edited July 15, 2011 by snowbord

[Guest ThermalDroid]

TBH Ginger stir fry is the best balance of speed, battery life and looks.