Battery issues and questions

[Citizen Coyote]

OK, took fully charged phone off at 10:12 am. It's 11:16 am now and after 64 minutes, battery is at 76%

* Wifi and Bluetooth - 100% of the time
* Awake 21m - Ratio 31.3%
* Screen On - 13m 45s - Ratio 20.3% (I haven't been using it that long! Perhaps less than 2 minutes total.)

Assuming you have the thing sitting next to you on the desk, do you notice the screen turning on? Or is it still dark? Also, have you tried turning off the wi-fi and bluetooth and only running the cell radio (the phone, not the 3G mobile data)? I assume you run wi-fi for your data connection, but we're trying to eliminate variables here.

 

[DirkBelig]

No, the screen isn't turning on. As for turning off WiFi/GPS/BT/disco ball, I wasn't experiencing this power drain before with those things on. SOMETHING has changed within the past week that's killing the battery. I've had my EVO since launch day, almost 15 months, and this is the worst the battery has ever been, including the first week when it was almost dead within 5-6 hours before the battery got broken in.

My suspicion is that a buggy update of an app is causing this. I had my Palm Pre go crazy after installing a couple of apps, neither of which should've had any effect, but the drain stopped after they were uninstalled. The problem is determining which app is the culprit.

 

[DirkBelig]

Battery is down to 50% after 2:15. Battery Indicator reports 72% of that is from the Display and it's been on 19 minutes. It has NOT been on that much. Even when I actually was using it to read stuff or even play games for 30-45 minutes, it didn't drain like this. This is madness, not Sparta!

 

[lswartz33]

Very strange. There has to be something eating up the battery in the background. For comparison, here is my phone since I posted this morning. Display is always high % as it uses more of the battery that has been consumed than other component/apps. My phone is almost always awake only when the screen is on.

 

[Citizen Coyote]

Battery is down to 50% after 2:15. Battery Indicator reports 72% of that is from the Display and it's been on 19 minutes. It has NOT been on that much. Even when I actually was using it to read stuff or even play games for 30-45 minutes, it didn't drain like this. This is madness, not Sparta!

I agree with Iswartzevo, this is very strange. Why would the display be draining so much battery if it's not even coming on?

I don't remember, did you say you had done a factory reset? Another option would be to start rolling back app updates where you can and see if the problem stops. At least on my Evo, the most recently updated apps tend to float to the top of the list when I look at my download list in the Market. Some of them offer the option to uninstall updates (mainly Google apps).

 

[DirkBelig]

Ugh. After 4:16 it was at 3% and I had to stick it on the USB cable to a PC to get some juice back into it. Display is 73% and says it was on for 43:29 which I assure you it wasn't.

Wakelocks Since Unplugged:

* DownloadManager 17m 4s - I was trying to update a single app and my work site's data speeds are so crippled that this makes sense.

* *sync* (Gmail) - 11m 29s

* PollService wakeLockAcquire (K-9 Mail) - 8m 15s

* Craigslist Notifier - 5m 35s

* *sync* Calendar - 5m 7s

* *sync* (Google Reader) - 4m 32s

* AlarmManager (system) - 1m 53s

* com.htc.sync.provider.weather.POWER_LOCK - 1m 30s

Is there anything else I should be looking at?

 

[DirkBelig]

Well, this is strange. I went home last night and after fully charging the phone, I took it off and let it sit. Other than a 20 minute phone call and a few quick uses, it was mostly on standby, connected to home WiFi (with everything else also on). I wake up this morning and after almost 12 hours, the battery was down to 66%. Huh? It would've died three times over in the past few days and now it's OK?

I'm at work now with the crap coverage in my pseudo-Faraday cage building, so stay tuned.

 

[DirkBelig]

Well, back to the suckage: Took fully charged battery off and ran around to different work sites spread over several miles and after 4h 22m, battery is at 16%.

Checked wakelocks when I realized it had bled 30% in less than an hour and found that StartingPopupItilsService for com.handcent.nextsms.Handcent SMS had been running 26m 38s of that less-than-hour period. As I noted above, I'd disabled the popup Quick Message boxes in Handcent. I've frozen the app entirely in Titanium Backup Pro for now.

Oh, get this...in the few minutes it's taken me to type this post, it's bled down to 10%. FFS!

 

[saleen2002]

ok so i found out what is keepin my evo awake is aim....is this normal ? and is there a fix ?? thanks

 

[DirkBelig]

The underlying issue appears to be data connectivity or rather not having a good data link. I'm about to put my phone on the charger; it's at 12% left; and it's been unplugged for 21 HOURS!!! Other than a 35 minute walk, during which I was using My Tracks (thus firing up Maps and constant GPS polling) and Pocket Casts (to listen to a podcast), I've been at home and on my WiFi. Looking at the Battery Monitor graph, the biggest dive occurred when I used it for about 45 minutes to read email and the web in bed this morning.

I know my work has gawdawful data performance inside, but the movie theater incidents imply something else at play. As far as I can tell, my radio baseband version is up-to-date, so could there be an issue of a dodgy receiver chip for OTA data? How does this stuff work? I just want a usable phone.