Bad battery life no matter what ROM I use

[Dark Wizard Matoya]

Since rooting my Dinc last week I've tried three different ROMs, CM7 RC1, CM7 Nightly 11, and Ruby 2.0.2. I had some wifi issues with both CM7 ROMs, but that might be because I didn't know what settings I needed to change to turn off 3G and disable wifi sleep. The problem I had with all three ROMs is poor battery life. With all three ROMs the battery drains far faster then on the stock ROM, it takes hours (nearly all day in fact) to charge, and when I look to see what is using up my battery so fast "display" is taking up 78-98% of my battery usage. To compare on the stock ROM "display" takes up 20% of my battery usage at most. I tried changing the display settings to have the screen dim after only 15 seconds and put the brightness so low that I could barely see the screen but nothing helped. I thought an app might be misbehaving and causing the problem so last night I re flashed Ruby and the gapps package, and didn't download any apps but the problem persisted. I downloaded watchdog lite to see what the problem was but there didn't seem to be a problem, everything was normal. I also tried using another kernel, but it really didn't help all that much. Thankfully I had a nandroid backup I could go back to. I'm completely at a loss as to what the problem might be. At first I thought it was an issue with CM7, but when Ruby had the same issue it became obvious that that wasn't the case. I know the Dinc's battery life isn't all that great to begin with, but this is absurd. I thought custom ROM's were supposed to give you better battery life? Does anyone know what the problem might be and how I can fix it?

 

[BSG75]

Since rooting my Dinc last week I've tried three different ROMs, CM7 RC1, CM7 Nightly 11, and Ruby 2.0.2. I had some wifi issues with both CM7 ROMs, but that might be because I didn't know what settings I needed to change to turn off 3G and disable wifi sleep. The problem I had with all three ROMs is poor battery life. With all three ROMs the battery drains far faster then on the stock ROM, it takes hours (nearly all day in fact) to charge, and when I look to see what is using up my battery so fast "display" is taking up 78-98% of my battery usage. To compare on the stock ROM "display" takes up 20% of my battery usage at most. I tried changing the display settings to have the screen dim after only 15 seconds and put the brightness so low that I could barely see the screen but nothing helped. I thought an app might be misbehaving and causing the problem so last night I re flashed Ruby and the gapps package, and didn't download any apps but the problem persisted. I downloaded watchdog lite to see what the problem was but there didn't seem to be a problem, everything was normal. I also tried using another kernel, but it really didn't help all that much. Thankfully I had a nandroid backup I could go back to. I'm completely at a loss as to what the problem might be. At first I thought it was an issue with CM7, but when Ruby had the same issue it became obvious that that wasn't the case. I know the Dinc's battery life isn't all that great to begin with, but this is absurd. I thought custom ROM's were supposed to give you better battery life? Does anyone know what the problem might be and how I can fix it?

"Display" should be taking up all of the juice, IMO. It's bad when the phone is idle and yet the Android OS takes up 40% of the battery just sitting there. To me, it looks like CM7 is doing this right.

Do you have a stock battery? You say it takes all day to charge? 24 hours? Is the phone on or off when you charge? It charges much, much faster when turned off, in my experience. I have a 2250 battery and it can take 4 hours to go from 10% to full w/ 2 bumps.

What is your screen timeout? Do you have the phone on a lot, looking at the display, checking messages, etc? If it's on, the battery will drain. You don't have to be playing a game, as long as you have the screen on.

Considering it takes you nearly all day to charge, you may just have a bad battery.

 

[Dark Wizard Matoya]

"Display" should be taking up all of the juice, IMO. It's bad when the phone is idle and yet the Android OS takes up 40% of the battery just sitting there. To me, it looks like CM7 is doing this right.

Do you have a stock battery? You say it takes all day to charge? 24 hours? Is the phone on or off when you charge? It charges much, much faster when turned off, in my experience. I have a 2250 battery and it can take 4 hours to go from 10% to full w/ 2 bumps.

What is your screen timeout? Do you have the phone on a lot, looking at the display, checking messages, etc? If it's on, the battery will drain. You don't have to be playing a game, as long as you have the screen on.

Considering it takes you nearly all day to charge, you may just have a bad battery.

So it's normal for display to be taking up all that battery usage then? In that case I might give CM7 another shot, though I still don't get why it does that on a custom ROM and not on the stock ROM. With CM7 I had the screen on almost all the time at first to make sure wifi was on and to keep the phone from switching to 3G, but once I figured out how to turn off wifi sleep I turned the screen off and just let it charge. With Ruby I knew enough to turn off wifi sleep so I did that right away and then just let the phone charge.

It didn't take literally 24 hours to charge, however when it was charging it took noticeably longer then on the stock ROM, and when it wasn't charging I could literally watch my battery life draining away. I'm using the stock battery that came with the phone. From what I've seen most of the good batteries are kind of expensive, but I might have to invest in one when I get the money.

 

[ScottyDog]

That's been a question for me as well. My battery life is actually just as good or better with a rom but i still notice display is ~50% on a rom where on stock it only shows up at about 5%.

 

[BSG75]

So it's normal for display to be taking up all that battery usage then? In that case I might give CM7 another shot, though I still don't get why it does that on a custom ROM and not on the stock ROM. With CM7 I had the screen on almost all the time at first to make sure wifi was on and to keep the phone from switching to 3G, but once I figured out how to turn off wifi sleep I turned the screen off and just let it charge. With Ruby I knew enough to turn off wifi sleep so I did that right away and then just let the phone charge.

It didn't take literally 24 hours to charge, however when it was charging it took noticeably longer then on the stock ROM, and when it wasn't charging I could literally watch my battery life draining away. I'm using the stock battery that came with the phone. From what I've seen most of the good batteries are kind of expensive, but I might have to invest in one when I get the money.

The way I see it, CM7 is very efficient with the "cell standby" and "Android OS" resource management. They seem to be working efficiently on CM7 and the "Display" still uses a lot of juice when it's visible. That's just my perception.

In the end, the real question is how how is your battery life overall. I use a 2250 battery and I can go a 20 hours on, and 4 hours of charging with fairly heavy use. I recommend it if you have the means. I would say that CM7 seems to be much more efficient for me compared to Sense roms, but I still have to bump charge.

 

[Dark Wizard Matoya]

I've been doing more research and according to a thread I found on the XDA Developers forum the solution to my problem is to update my radio. Apparently 2.15.00.07.28, which is the radio I have, doesn't play well with AOSP ROM's and that 2.15.00.11.19 has much batter battery life. I don't know how the radio has any affect on the display, but that's the suggestion I've found. I don't know how to update my radio or if it will really have any effect, but that's the suggestion I've found.

[Q] Display taking up WAY too much battery life. - Page 2 - xda-developers

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

keep in mind those are %'s of what has been used, not total battery capacity.

Ideally a phone idle with the screen off would show 100% Android system, if only 10% of the battery or 90% of the battery has been used. Check out Spare Parts for a better breakdown of what's eating at your battery. (built into CM, available in the market or easily built from AOSP (no ads that way) for other ROMs)

 

[Lee_Bo]

I flashed my radio from 07.28 to 11.19 on Friday on rooted 2.2 and noticed much better battery life over the past two days from the same use.