S4 Battery drain by "Android OS" dropping 40% over night

[jtimcampy]

Hello. I'm new here and I'm also really new to Android and phones but I hope someone can help me out. I last phone I had was some really really old blackberry.

I got a S4 I9500 about 5 days ago and I have been having battery problems.

Last night, I left it at about 95% battery and I woke up to about 55% battery. On the battery usage screen, it shows that "Android OS" has used 67%
It does say it has been on battery for about 8 hours (time I am sleeping)


It also says: "Stay awake" for 7 hours (I'm not sure what that means) under "Android OS"


Dropping 40% of battery overnight is quite the problem.

Can someone help me and tell me what's wrong and what is the root of the problem? I have seen people talk about mounted SD cards, maps/location, Google Now, etc... draining the battery.
I had the "Google Service" battery drain problem before but I somehow managed to turn off Google Now, and turn off location/maps and the Google Service does not appear as much on the battery screen usage anymore.

Now I have "Android OS" draining my battery and I'm not sure what is causing this.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Golfdriver97]

Hello. I'm new here and I'm also really new to Android and phones but I hope someone can help me out. I last phone I had was some really really old blackberry.

I got a S4 I9500 about 5 days ago and I have been having battery problems.

Last night, I left it at about 95% battery and I woke up to about 55% battery. On the battery usage screen, it shows that "Android OS" has used 67%
It does say it has been on battery for about 8 hours (time I am sleeping)


It also says: "Stay awake" for 7 hours (I'm not sure what that means) under "Android OS"


Dropping 40% of battery overnight is quite the problem.

Can someone help me and tell me what's wrong and what is the root of the problem? I have seen people talk about mounted SD cards, maps/location, Google Now, etc... draining the battery.
I had the "Google Service" battery drain problem before but I somehow managed to turn off Google Now, and turn off location/maps and the Google Service does not appear as much on the battery screen usage anymore.

Now I have "Android OS" draining my battery and I'm not sure what is causing this.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the forums!
Thank you for the screen shots of your battery stats. Could you also include a screen shot of the graph? Click on it and take a screen shot of that, please.

 

[jtimcampy]

Ahh! I didn't know the graph was important sorry, I didn't get a screenshot of it before I charged the phone back up. But I think I remember some of it. The Wi-Fi blue bar at the bottom was full, GPS on was blue at around the time the device was idle (screen turned off, so about 7 hours, when I was sleeping) and Mobile network signal bar was full green. The graph was somewhat steep, I would say.

 

[Golfdriver97]

Ahh! I didn't know the graph was important sorry, I didn't get a screenshot of it before I charged the phone back up. But I think I remember some of it. The Wi-Fi blue bar at the bottom was full, GPS on was blue at around the time the device was idle (screen turned off, so about 7 hours, when I was sleeping) and Mobile network signal bar was full green. The graph was somewhat steep, I would say.

No sweat. The graph is as important as the other screen shots you provided.
GPS on does not help battery life. Other than that, the amount of times your device woke up can be a factor too.

Sent from a Slim S3

 

[thefiasco]

How do some people only get 6% of the screen running? I can never get that low

 

[jtimcampy]

I also had a lot of apps on in the background such as twitter, skype internet, I believe flipboard, google play store, and like maybe 4 other were also on during my sleep. Was this why the android os was using so much battery? I thought each app might use their own share of battery but since they are being ran in the background, it kind of make sense that the android os is taking everyone's share of battery usage.

 

[craig1555]

I'm new to the GS4 also and recently had the same issue. What I noticed was if I would "wake up" the screen to check the time and not swipe to unlock I was having the phone awake problem. The last couple of days I swipe to look at the home screen before turning the display off. When I do this I hear a ding notification, if I turn the display off from the lock screen no notification sound. Don't know if this means anything but it's the only thing I'm doing differently and with my phone usage I get just about two days between charges.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Hikmat abdoollayev]

When battery drains while phone is idle, then the phone is actually not having deep sleep.
Deep sleep is when phone consumes the least battery.
I think you'd better check who is using "wakelocks" (wakelock can be used to keep your phone awake)

There are already many apps available to detect it.
The one which is all about wakelock is "Wakelock detector" which is Free!

You can post some screenshots from it, if you find difficult to understand it

 

[Martin Paeste]

I have the same problem!
My Android version is 4.2.2 and the phone is a GT-i9505.
It occasionally drops 60% overnight (normally it is a few percent). I haven't managed to get any wakelock data when this happens as the app does not show anything after the phone turns off.

Has anyone discovered a cure for this?

Notice the last part of the graph.

 

[TechAddict]

Hi. Thought I'd post on this thread instead of starting another. Overall I'm most impressed with my newly acquired S4 that has now pushed the iPhone 4S I have into use as a secondary phone for when I travel. Just lately though I see to be getting terrible battery life overnight on idle.

As an example, I charged both devices before sleeping last night. Location services, GPS, history, reporting etc are all turned off, as are most TW gimmicks and email syncs etc are every 4 hours or so with most other notifications etc. turned off. Google Now and such like are also turned off. The only thing I leave on is wifi in case I get messages via apps like Whats App and Line. Anyways, when I woke up the S4 had used 26% of battery with Device Idle accounting for 39% of that and Android OS 23%. I appreciate that if the phone is charged and never used that they will likely account for almost 100% until it dies but 26% battery drain overnight seems excessive. By contrast, the $s dropped just 5% overnight with wifi on and, at least in terms of installed apps, the same notifications active. I compare to the 4S as it's the only other device I have.

I've installed Wakelock Detector and Better Battery Stats and, along with the screenshots from the phone's battery, and the graph, I've attached a few images. As far as I can see there's nothing causing dramatic CPU wake or even triggers but my battery still dropped 26% over about 9.5 hours. There was an issue with an app called WeChat but I uninstalled that and since doing so, if anything, the battery is worse. The night before, Location Services was on and the device dropped less battery than when it was off last night. I'm starting to think I have a rogue app in there somewhere and am tempted to do a factory reset and gradually re-install apps, say 4-5 at a time and give each new batch 24 hours before installing more, and let the phone run without any third party apps with all the Google apps updated to current versions. Although most of my data is cloud based so a factory reset is not a big deal, it's a bit tiresome to have to do it. But, at the moment I can't think of what else to try. Any help appreciated. Not sure if any of the other screens from BBS or WLD would useful.

Not sure I'm uploading images right, I seem to get large boxes around them instead of just the screen shot that others seem to get. Finding difficulty locating the AC 'How to upload images' guidance. I'm never sure an image has gone. I add them to the list, hit upload, seemingly nothing happens, they don't get added to the list at the bottom, I press save edit and the images are there??? Odd.

 

[trd 4rnr]

Just a thought: try turning off "Samsung Push Service" my phone is using a lot less juice since I turned it off. And I haven't noticed any ill effects so far.
-mk

 

[anon(819941)]

That's not normal... I used to have the battery drain on me overnight, but it was the alarm app which would not allow the phone to go into deep sleep. In your case, it does not look like that at all...

I'd say your battery is not all that healthy, to be honest. I just can't see what would cause such a huge drop.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk

 

[STSVA]

Hi. Thought I'd post on this thread instead of starting another. Overall I'm most impressed with my newly acquired S4 that has now pushed the iPhone 4S I have into use as a secondary phone for when I travel. Just lately though I see to be getting terrible battery life overnight on idle.

As an example, I charged both devices before sleeping last night. Location services, GPS, history, reporting etc are all turned off, as are most TW gimmicks and email syncs etc are every 4 hours or so with most other notifications etc. turned off. Google Now and such like are also turned off. The only thing I leave on is wifi in case I get messages via apps like Whats App and Line. Anyways, when I woke up the S4 had used 26% of battery with Device Idle accounting for 39% of that and Android OS 23%. I appreciate that if the phone is charged and never used that they will likely account for almost 100% until it dies but 26% battery drain overnight seems excessive. By contrast, the $s dropped just 5% overnight with wifi on and, at least in terms of installed apps, the same notifications active. I compare to the 4S as it's the only other device I have.

I've installed Wakelock Detector and Better Battery Stats and, along with the screenshots from the phone's battery, and the graph, I've attached a few images. As far as I can see there's nothing causing dramatic CPU wake or even triggers but my battery still dropped 26% over about 9.5 hours. There was an issue with an app called WeChat but I uninstalled that and since doing so, if anything, the battery is worse. The night before, Location Services was on and the device dropped less battery than when it was off last night. I'm starting to think I have a rogue app in there somewhere and am tempted to do a factory reset and gradually re-install apps, say 4-5 at a time and give each new batch 24 hours before installing more, and let the phone run without any third party apps with all the Google apps updated to current versions. Although most of my data is cloud based so a factory reset is not a big deal, it's a bit tiresome to have to do it. But, at the moment I can't think of what else to try. Any help appreciated. Not sure if any of the other screens from BBS or WLD would useful.

Not sure I'm uploading images right, I seem to get large boxes around them instead of just the screen shot that others seem to get. Finding difficulty locating the AC 'How to upload images' guidance. I'm never sure an image has gone. I add them to the list, hit upload, seemingly nothing happens, they don't get added to the list at the bottom, I press save edit and the images are there??? Odd.

Try Snapdragon's Battery Guru; it controls app syncing behavior. If you look at your battery drain graph it drops whenever wifi is active, which could indicate you have apps running to sync or whatever when your wifi is connected. A sync control app might help.

 

[TechAddict]

Hi. Ah. Thanks for that. Will give it ac try.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[TechAddict]

Try Snapdragon's Battery Guru; it controls app syncing behavior. If you look at your battery drain graph it drops whenever wifi is active, which could indicate you have apps running to sync or whatever when your wifi is connected. A sync control app might help.

See what you mean about the wifi on the graph. I'm still getting my head around these stats and the graph to be honest LOL. I've had SBG installed just a few days now and it seems to be learning still. Will see how it affects things.

 

[garublador]

My theory is that there's some sort of Google thing that's getting started automatically but not stopping correctly. If you look at different forum you see this same problem on different phones and different OS's. I've seen it in the past few weeks, but not since the latest Google Search update (or Verizon firmware update, but my guess is that it didn't matter). Restarting the phone seems to fix it for a while.

 

[trd 4rnr]

The night before last my phone dropped 60% overnight (from 80% to 20%)
The only thing that I noticed that was different - was that my phone's cell signal was only 1 bar.
Not sure what to make of it but I hope it doesn't happen again.

 

[Shon123]

Whenever this happens with my phone, (Android OS using up most of my battery), I just restart my phone and thankfully it corrects the issue. I think samsung has a software bug they've yet to address on these phones. I had this problem with my s2 as well and it was never fixed, I had to charge that phone 3 times a day. Seems as if battery life will get worse after each firmware update that's why I'm always hesitant to update my phone. My s4 is running 4.3 now and so far I've only had the Android OS issue once since updating and a restart has solved it for me. Hope this helps!

 

[TechAddict]

Thanks folks. I'll try a couple of restarts and see how it goes. Will post back once it's been a few days.

Not sure what to make of Battery Guru. It just seems to control most things I have disabled anyway. The downside was that it created more work for me. It never seemed to remember my wifi in terms of location or time so I was constantly having to turn it on manually. Appreciate that feature can be disabled but for now I uninstalled it. Might try it again in the future, not sure. But battery life seems fine without it. Or at least no different. Maybe the reboots have killed the offending processes.


Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[garublador]

My theory is that there's some sort of Google thing that's getting started automatically but not stopping correctly. If you look at different forum you see this same problem on different phones and different OS's. I've seen it in the past few weeks, but not since the latest Google Search update (or Verizon firmware update, but my guess is that it didn't matter). Restarting the phone seems to fix it for a while.

FWIW, I've had it happen again since the updates. Android really needs a better way of displaying battery usage information.