Terrible battery drain and slight overheating...

[zcherub]

So for the last few days, my battery has been decent (not great) from 5:30 AM to about noon. After that, it absolutely tanks (lost about 50% of my battery life over twp hours while driving for work - so it was NOT in use). When it does this, it gets hot in my pocket to the point that it's noticable (not dangerously hot, but I'm aware of it).

Android OS seems to be consuming more battery than it did. I haven't installed any new apps lately either... I cleared the cache in the app menu, & that seemed to help a bit, but the difference was so small it may have been placebo...

Here's a screen cap of the battery usage to illustrate.

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

I'm on ATT, Android 6.0.1.

Any idea how to fix this, or am I making a trip to the ATT store? Thanks!

 

[B. Diddy]

It'd help to see more stats. Charge up to 100%, then let it drain to 20-30% with normal usage, without charging in between. Then show us:

1. The main Settings>Battery screen.
2. The fullscreen battery graph screen (which shows Awake time and Cell Signal Strength).
3. The Screen category (to see total Screen On time).
4. The Cell Standby category, if present (to see Time Without Signal).


http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...ide-how-post-screenshots-android-central.html


You might have to install a 3rd party battery monitor, like GSam Battery Monitor, to get the Cell Signal Strength graph.

 

[zcherub]

It'd help to see more stats. Charge up to 100%, then let it drain to 20-30% with normal usage, without charging in between. Then show us:

1. The main Settings>Battery screen.
2. The fullscreen battery graph screen (which shows Awake time and Cell Signal Strength).
3. The Screen category (to see total Screen On time).
4. The Cell Standby category, if present (to see Time Without Signal).


http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...ide-how-post-screenshots-android-central.html


You might have to install a 3rd party battery monitor, like GSam Battery Monitor, to get the Cell Signal Strength graph.

Thanks. Followed that advice after another terrible day of battery drain, & here's what I was able to track:

https://imgur.com/a/UbAp9

This was with moderate to heavy usage for about an hour, and the screen was off for most of the rest of the time. No streaming, etc. My battery would be totally dead in about 4-4.5 hours under these conditions.

Any other input?

Thanks!

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[Delirious D]

So i been watching my phone for the past 8 min. And it went from 56% to 18% WHILE it was plugged in. I literally saw it ticking down like a timer. Wth? Anyone else

 

[zcherub]

Anyone else

Yeah, me obviously, lol

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Delirious D]

Yeah, me obviously, lol

Posted via the Android Central App

Haha sry just read your post. Thought this was this other thread from a few days ago. I just find it so weird it depleting like that.
O well after tomorrow won't have to deal with it. (Just hate not knowing. Lol)

 

[B. Diddy]

Any other input?

The fact that Mediaserver is the main battery consumer suggests that you have a corrupt media file somewhere. A corrupt file can cause the system's media scanner to get hung up while scanning it, which can cause increased CPU usage and battery drain. Try backing up and then clearing out all of your media files (i.e., photos, videos, and music).

 

[zcherub]

The fact that Mediaserver is the main battery consumer suggests that you have a corrupt media file somewhere. A corrupt file can cause the system's media scanner to get hung up while scanning it, which can cause increased CPU usage and battery drain. Try backing up and then clearing out all of your media files (i.e., photos, videos, and music).

This seems to have fixed it - thanks! I've used 30% of my battery over the last 4 hours with very light to moderate use, which seems closer to normal. The media server usage is down to .1% as well - a far cry from the ridiculous 30% it was!

For the other guy that was having an issue - I didn't delete/move ALL my media, I just deleted a lot of recent pictures/downloads/documents that I didn't need anymore (backed up the ones I wanted via Imgur upload).

With those items out of my file directory, battery life is much more palatable. Thanks again, Diddy!

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[zcherub]

...welp... I spoke too soon. After a good morning/early afternoon, I was hit with a 20% drop in battery life over 45 minutes thanks to the same system/bin/mediaserver.

http://imgur.com/2ILh4jR

Any idea how to track down a file that's causing a problem?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[B. Diddy]

I'd still backup all media files, then delete all of them from the phone. Either back the files up onto your computer hard drive, or use Google Photos to back up your photos and videos to the cloud. It'll otherwise be tough to pinpoint the exact file that might be corrupt.

 

[zcherub]

Thanks. I can do that, but I'd like my music on the phone again. I don't want to just put a corrupted file back on the phone. Any work around for that? Thx!

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[Trees]

Similar problem happened twice this past week. We've had poor weather (heavy rain) all week and combined with the relatively OK, but not good signal inside my workplace, thought that could have been a contributor. Cell Standby due to more than normal poor signal, and Mediaserver were one of the higher consumers, but I expected that as I do listen to music at work when not on calls or in meetings. Cleared cache several times, to no effect.

Wednesday night I just let the phone run down to zero% battery. Charged it up overnight, and since then battery life has been normal for my usage patterns.

The other thing I've experienced is what attribute to drain from one of the Google Services.
http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-note-5/674839-google-services-stay-awake-time.html

 

[B. Diddy]

Thanks. I can do that, but I'd like my music on the phone again. I don't want to just put a corrupted file back on the phone. Any work around for that? Thx!

Posted via the Android Central App

I'm not sure if this would work, but you could consider copying all of the music files to an SD card, then scan the SD card using chkdsk: http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...guide-using-chkdsk-fix-corrupted-sd-card.html. But the problem here is that chkdsk wouldn't tell you which specific file is corrupt--it looks for bad sectors on the card or drive.

You could also try AFV File Verifier (although I've never tested it out myself).

 

[dllrogers55]

I have never seen Media Server show up in the battery usage before. I have had overheating and battery drain for several days. I searched and found several suggestions and many others with the same problem. I tried one that was mentioned in threads:

"Clear media storage data

The simplest solution is to clear media storage database and let it restart the process from scratch. Chances are this will fix most of the issues with Mediascanner/Mediaserver. Do the following, and it should help ease-out the pain:

Settings > applications > Media Storage > clear data, force stop and reboot"

It screwed up several things on the phone!
1. The customized notifications / ringtones for certain contacts reverted to others.
2. Alarm tune reverted to something unknown that didn't even play and wake me this morning!
3. The notifications / ringtones previously added to the phone are no longer in the list BUT they show up in "My Files".

There might be more but that's enough to screw things up for quite a while!

 

[B. Diddy]

It screwed up several things on the phone!
1. The customized notifications / ringtones for certain contacts reverted to others.
2. Alarm tune reverted to something unknown that didn't even play and wake me this morning!
3. The notifications / ringtones previously added to the phone are no longer in the list BUT they show up in "My Files".

In this case, I suggest using My Files or some other file manager app to go to the Ringtones, Alarms, or Notifications directory (in the main user directory) and look for your custom tones. If the files are still there, move them to some other directory first (like the Music directory), then move them back to the Ringtones, Alarms, or Notifications directory. Now go back to whichever app you use those tones with, and reselect the tone. Do the custom tones show up now?

Another thing you could try is to run the media.Re.Scan app, to force the system to rescan all directories for media files to place in their proper databases.

 

[dllrogers55]

In this case, I suggest using My Files or some other file manager app to go to the Ringtones, Alarms, or Notifications directory (in the main user directory) and look for your custom tones. If the files are still there, move them to some other directory first (like the Music directory), then move them back to the Ringtones, Alarms, or Notifications directory. Now go back to whichever app you use those tones with, and reselect the tone. Do the custom tones show up now?

Another thing you could try is to run the media.Re.Scan app, to force the system to rescan all directories for media files to place in their proper databases.

Thank you so much! This worked!! Notifications and Ringtones all back in proper place. The move and move back fixed it. I'll keep the app info too for future.

Now to solve the mediaserver issue ;-) I've heard others say it's Chrome. Still researching.

 

[nutt_case]

I can confirm that, for me at least the problem was Chrome. I've been testing a few different settings over the last couple weeks with no success. Some days the mediaserver process would run 2 hours at a time keeping the cpu throttled up to 40 or 50 percent. Phone got laggy then from thermal throttling. If you killed the mediaserver it would generally restart after some minutes or when you opened Chrome again, but if you killed Chrome the mediaserver immediately dropped and would stay off until you used Chrome again. I finally just disabled Chrome and have been using the Samsung browser for a few days now and haven't had anymore issues. There's a bug in there somewhere causing the mediaserver to hang.

 

[B. Diddy]

When this happens, open Chrome and check to see if there are any embedded videos or video ads in any of the open tabs.

 

[nutt_case]

I tried running Chrome for a while with just one tab open and it didn't seem to make a difference, but I wasn't paying attention to what was in each tab so couldn't say for sure.

I'll re-enable Chrome and do some experimenting.

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

My phone was overheating which was killing the battery. My battery life was as bad as only getting 45 minutes to an hour of SoT. I did a factory data reset and it has been fine ever since.