Battery Drain suggestions

[Guest h3dshot]

Hi all

 

I've been using MIUI 5.7.9 Beta for a few months now and the ROM is perfect for me, very quick and stable, visually appealing and no bugs.

One thing that i've noticed across every ROM that i've used it that youtube, and facebook seem to be huge battery drainers, but they don't really show up on the battery use log.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve my battery life?

 

[Guest xeros2]

Well, generally MT6592 is power hungry SoC, but...

If you're interested mostly in YouTube then I would suggest to limit screen light and maybe use Tasker app (or sth similar) to disable 6 CPU cores & limit CPU+GPU frequency+voltage (to minimum required for fluent YouTube playback) when YouTube is started and return previous state when YouTube is stopped or other apps get started.

In my case I have noticed quite big battery drains even when phone was in sleep state (but with 3G or WIFI enabled) so I've set it using Tasker to do such tricks for display off/on events and hibernate most apps in sleep state and it has improved battery drains in sleep mode quite much.

I still have huge battery drains in high end gaming (around 3-3.5h SOT only in heavy games that take advantage of all 8 CPU & 4 GPU cores) so I should profile that better also, but at least phone waiting for IM messages, SMS, phone/video calls, e-mails... does not drain that much.

 

Edit:

I see also that you have much Cell standby and WLAN power usage - I could suggest to switch cellular connectivity to GSM (if you don't need 3G) - it should improve range & battery usage (it can be also profiled with Tasker to switch to 3G when you enable data connection) and increase WLAN scan intervals in build.prop.

Edited September 12, 2015 by xeros2

[Guest Destiny133]

Umm naybody know why when my battery gets to 4% phone just turns off. And on this guy's photo battery is on 1%. Also i have same problem with battery drain

[Guest dalyer]

Maybe veering off topic but mine (on A310 AOSP) usually has c. 30% wifi, 30% mobile standby and 30% phone idle as reported by System settings > Battery.

Which matches the stats above.

According to Gsam battery monitor I'm averaging 1d 7h (9h 18m active) and 3h 10m screen on per complete charge.

Not sure how this compares/stacks up against others but I haven't been able to improve the stats much.

I did use the Xposed (GravityBox?) smart radio feature to toggle to 2G on screen off etc. but it's too much of a pain then waiting for it to switch from 2G back to 3G on screen on usually when you want to check something quickly online (e.g. bus times, football scores etc.). And in any case not only was it not really saving much battery I think it may have been using MORE switching between the two modes regularly.

[Guest h3dshot]

Well, generally MT6592 is power hungry SoC, but...

If you're interested mostly in YouTube then I would suggest to limit screen light and maybe use Tasker app (or sth similar) to disable 6 CPU cores & limit CPU+GPU frequency+voltage (to minimum required for fluent YouTube playback) when YouTube is started and return previous state when YouTube is stopped or other apps get started.

In my case I have noticed quite big battery drains even when phone was in sleep state (but with 3G or WIFI enabled) so I've set it using Tasker to do such tricks for display off/on events and hibernate most apps in sleep state and it has improved battery drains in sleep mode quite much.

I still have huge battery drains in high end gaming (around 3-3.5h SOT only in heavy games that take advantage of all 8 CPU & 4 GPU cores) so I should profile that better also, but at least phone waiting for IM messages, SMS, phone/video calls, e-mails... does not drain that much.

 

Edit:

I see also that you have much Cell standby and WLAN power usage - I could suggest to switch cellular connectivity to GSM (if you don't need 3G) - it should improve range & battery usage (it can be also profiled with Tasker to switch to 3G when you enable data connection) and increase WLAN scan intervals in build.prop.

 

Maybe veering off topic but mine (on A310 AOSP) usually has c. 30% wifi, 30% mobile standby and 30% phone idle as reported by System settings > Battery.

Which matches the stats above.

According to Gsam battery monitor I'm averaging 1d 7h (9h 18m active) and 3h 10m screen on per complete charge.

Not sure how this compares/stacks up against others but I haven't been able to improve the stats much.

I did use the Xposed (GravityBox?) smart radio feature to toggle to 2G on screen off etc. but it's too much of a pain then waiting for it to switch from 2G back to 3G on screen on usually when you want to check something quickly online (e.g. bus times, football scores etc.). And in any case not only was it not really saving much battery I think it may have been using MORE switching between the two modes regularly.

Hmm I'll give that a try. I have no idea why its eating so much power just on standby, cell network and wifi. I'm connected to Wifi at home and also at work so I don't understand why cell use is so high. I'm not a heavy user either, the odd bit of facebook/youtube when I get home/before I go to work is all i use my phone for really..

 

EDIT: whats a free alternative to tasker so I can see how much of an effect it has?

Edited September 12, 2015 by h3dshot

[Guest dalyer]

Google it and there are loads of suggestions of free alternatives to Tasker.

[Guest Kurtinaitis]

Change your ROM. Battery Drain in standby is clearly high. I'm trying Philips AOSP by 77chedu, from Spanish forum,  since yesterday and i'm really impressed about its battery live. Even better than INew. 

No problem so far. It seems that everything works correctly. 

[Guest 77chedu]

Change your ROM. Battery Drain in standby is clearly high. I'm trying Philips AOSP by 77chedu, from Spanish forum,  since yesterday and i'm really impressed about its battery live. Even better than INew. 

No problem so far. It seems that everything works correctly. 

Well, thanks. It's Rufus rom actually, I just help him with a couple of things. Power menu is incomplete, but it was a pain trying to fix it, and we always add quickboot anyway

=========

HiveUI roms are pretty good with battery too. They're not the prettiest thing around and you can't run the new nova launcher with them -apex and others launchers work fine-

I don't use utube or facebook much on the phone, but have you tried with an alternative utube client like tubemate or something like that. I used a couple of those on a couple of emui roms where youtube didn't work and they seemed ok

[Guest dalyer]

Change your ROM. Battery Drain in standby is clearly high.

Are you sure?

I'm getting the same standby drain on A310 AOSP.

What sort of standby drain is reported by other ROMs?

What might be an average breakdown for the main drains (e.g. WLAN, Cell standby, Phone idle etc.) on other ROMs? (I know that usage patterns will have a big influence but I'm just curious what "core" functions should be taking if that's possible to estimate...).

[Guest dakok]

Nitro a310

[Guest mickiewicz]

it's a pitty thah nitro is not full multilag...

(it does not have polish laguage)

[Guest dalyer]

dakok - you're not getting 5+ days on a single charge are you?!?!? 

If so ---- HOW?!?!?!

Are you doing anything special - e.g. 2G only? Airplane mode or power off overnight? Other power saving methods?

I'm on A310 too and only get 1-1.5 days per charge and I don't think I'm that heavy a user - e.g. a mins calls and a few texts per day, a little browsing. some apps etc.

 

Edit: here are my screenshots. 

Maybe my wifi settings are not ideal from a battery saving point of view?

I do have scheduled power off/on enabled which should save a BIT of battery...

Any tips..?!

 

Edited September 14, 2015 by dalyer

[Guest dakok]

Brightness is about 30% all the time (almost)

I don't use 3G much since I'm always in between home, job or some cafe WiFi network.

I switch off WiFi ocassionally. (when I remember to)

My Advanced WiFi setting has: Network notification and WiFi optimizaton (wonder why yours says "optimisation" :) ) ticked, others are off.

Economical backlight is switched off (brightness)

No Xposed used.

No airplane mode or overnight switching off.

 

Right now I have 23% left, 3d 15h on battery and SoT is 3h 40 min.

Battery drains the funny way as you can see from images. It was at 45% for more than 2 days and it dropped to 0 in 10 minutes :)

I have this much capacity only if I charge it to 100% and it stays on the charger like that for an hour or so...

Otherwise it is 1.5-2 days cycle

 

 

[Guest dalyer]

Thanks a lot dakok.

So you are getting <= 2 days per charge? You had me worried (and excited! :D) for a while there!

Why does it say 5 days+ on your screenshot?

Maybe I'm misreading that screen or something...

I also limit screen brightness. I don't use auto as I found it annoying (maybe flakey). Ha - I thought I had it off but it was on!  But I do use GravityBox to put the screen brightness slider in the notification bar and I adjust on demand and then leave it back low when finished.

What's your Keep wifi on during sleep setting? Mine is always but I guess that this is what I want so as not to use data unnecessarily?

I guess 3G is a big drain as it was on G300 (and the same network). I must try 2G only for a few days to see if it makes much of a difference. But I don't think I could operate on 2G only in general. And I find the tools that switch between the two klunky, slow and maybe use more battery switching modes anyway. Do you actually switch to 2G only mode? How do you switch to 3G if/when you need it?

I only noticed now that my Language was set to English (India) so I guess it uses British English spelling (optimisation) rather than US English (optimization). There's no English (Ireland) or English (UK) so English (India) will do. :D

I remember you mentioned the odd "stepping" of the battery discharge graph but I don't get that and mine is fairly smoothish. That's odd on your side...

I don't use a lock screen but I presume that this shouldn't have an impact on battery usage? E.g. it's not like in lock screen mode it goes into some lower power state...?

Edited September 14, 2015 by dalyer

[Guest rista1]

look your screen on and awake they have to be at the same or similar.Something consumes battery

[Guest dalyer]

Not sure what you mean?

Are you saying that with or without lock screen makes no difference to battery usage? That's what I would expect.

In terms of specific apps nothing seems to be using that much at least according to Gsam Battery Monitor.

On the other hand I can't reconcile Gsam's summary with the System settings > Battery summary - e.g. does Phone Radio (55%) in Gsam mean the same as Mobile standby (30%) and Phone idle (27%) in the System settings > Battery?

 

 

Edited September 14, 2015 by dalyer

[Guest rista1]

Try this https://www.dropbox.com/s/i4p4ax05bhdxpjy/BetterBatteryStats-1.16.0.0%20Final_apktops.ir.apk?dl=0

[Guest dalyer]

Thanks - I'll try BBS again but haven't found it great in the past for identifying battery drains.

I'll try the latest 2.1 version unless there's a specific reason that you suggest 1.16?

And in any case based on the screenshots that I have posted my battery drain seems to more due to the "system" than individual apps as far as I can see?

Does anybody disagree?

[Guest Kurtinaitis]

Well, thanks. It's Rufus rom actually, I just help him with a couple of things. Power menu is incomplete, but it was a pain trying to fix it, and we always add quickboot anyway

Thanks, 77chedu. As you say Power menu is incomplete. No reboot function.

 

Dalyer.

Well. The battery usage graphic is not very reliable but I think Awake and Screen On lines are very representative. There is a difference in some cases in the capture of h3dshot but looking at your capture I would say that his wakelocks are very soft compared to yours. As Rista1 says, and we can see in screenshots Dakok posted, Awake and Screen On lines tend to be fairly similar (at least, in my case, but i think it depends on user profile). In your case, the differences are considerable.  

Switching off "Scanning always available" could help to decrease your wakelocks

 

Edited September 14, 2015 by Kurtinaitis

[Guest dalyer]

Thanks Kurtinaitis - I have indeed disabled "Scanning always available". 

I actually didn't realise that it was on.

Anyway - I'll need to look at this a bit more systematically using BBS, Gsam Battery Monitor, WakeLockDetector etc. and see if I can understand better what's using the battery.

Ultimately I'm not sure that I'm ever going to get better than 1-2 days?

[Guest dalyer]

OK - I tweaked things a bit but my battery usage is still more or less the same.

Every time I check System settings > Battery the usage is more or less as per the earlier screenshot - e.g.

• Mobile standby 30%
• Wifi 30%
• Phone idle < 30%
• Android system 6%
• Screen 5%
• Google Play services 2%

Is this anomalous or do others get something similar?

Is there any way to improve matters without any drastic settings (e.g. I don't want to switch 3G off and use 2G only)?

[Guest dalyer]

Actually since switching off Location services my battery does seem to be lasting longer.

However I'm still curious as to why Mobile standby, Wifi and Phone idle feature so prominently in the battery usage stats above - and still do.

Also glancing at Gsam Battery Monitor, Better Battery Stats and Wakelock Detector I can't see any obviously significant app based cause of battery drain or wakelocks.

[Guest mixanikosgr]

All RF services are consuming a lot of energy .GPS (first by far), 3G, cell standby (if you have 2 sim cards, it is more consuming), WiFi (not that much). Since cell standby can't be disabled (because we won't have a phone then), it is advisable to use them when they are needed. Then we have the screen brightness (here in Greece, with lots of sunlight, i have it at 100% during the day), and the background apps that stay on all the time. When i see that an app is consuming a lot, i try to find an alternative. Other thing is to disable automatic sync (but not so practical)

[Guest dakok]

Modem is a big consumer if your 2G/3G signal is weak (large distance from the antenna)

[Guest dalyer]

Thanks for the comments guys.

The odd thing is that I am in an area of good/strong coverage and Gsam and other tools report that my 2G/3G signal is generally strong and not patchy.

And as far as I can see it's generally on 3G and not having to switch between 3G/2G which would be another cause of drain.

I have a single SIM.

And yet the Cell standby, Phone standby and Wifi are by far the biggest battery drains as far as I can tell. c. 30% each... 

I still don't understand it.

I still get c. 1.5 days from a charge and my earlier hope that I was getting better due to switching off location services seems to have been unfounded.