New Here. Galaxy S4 Battery Drain since 4.4.2 Update KitKat GlanceViewMK

[Michael Weatherall]

Hello, I am new here and registered because of the current problem I'm having as its driving me insane.

2 Days ago I received the update to KitKat 4.4.2 on my S4 (Carrier 3 in the UK), and have noticed my battery is being drained much quicker than when on 4.3, I did do a factory reset after installing kitkat, I dont really want to do another one if necessary.

So today I decided to monitor the battery usage using the Gsam Battery Monitor app and discovered that in a total of 11 hours usage the phone was kept awake for 9 of those hours, as in not being able to go into a deep sleep...this resulted in 52% of the battery used in that time..and while that doesn't seem much..I only used the phone to send about 10 text messages and about 15 minutes of web browsing. (in comparison my GFs S5 used about 20% total battery in the same amount of time with moderate-heavy use).

Unfortunately due to the permissions of KitKat I cant see exactly what was causing the phone to stay almost constantly active, however upon checking the wakelocks on Gsam it showed "Combined app WakeLocks, non-kernal" was awake for 11h3m in an 11h13m total use time, but I have no idea what combined wakelocks are .
Looking in the app usage section of Gsam showed the usual "Android System" at the top 17.4%..followed by System 10.2% (which has a GPS icon and when opened shows a service relating to my S-View cover?) then Kernal Android OS 6.9%..now while this doesn't explain much, I decided to check the built in battery monitor and it showed that the biggest use of battery was a process called GlanceViewMK at 23%, (above the screen at 21%), and when clicked on..shows 10hr53m stay awake with 43m of CPU usage.

Surely this isn't right? for a process which I presume, is the one activated when you wave your hand over the sensor to show "information preview", would this really keep the phone awake for almost 11 hours?.

Now as I have only just noticed this about 45 minutes ago I haven't managed a test with the "info preview" setting turned off in the phone settings, but I just wanted to post my findings/information in case it was useful to any others with problems relating to this and the constant wave of bugs that seem to plague the 4.4.2 update.

Or if I am completely wrong and someone with a lot more knowledge on the matter (im fairly a noob when it comes to mobile OS's) can shed some light or even just a thought of how to solve this problem.

I will disable the option and report back after a day of use tomorrow with my findings..I will attach some screenshots to help explain, if I haven't explained clearly enough

Any help/advice is greatly appreciated

 

[Golfdriver97]

I would recommend rebooting into recovery and clearing cache. This will do 2 things. 1. Clear any cached data conflicts that may be present, 2. Reboots the device in case it is an app that is stuck.
This method should work for the S4: http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...ing-into-recovery-mode-galaxy-s2-s3-tab2.html
Follow instructions for the S3.

 

[UJ95x]

I agree with Golfdriver. If that doesn't do it, and GlanceViewMK is still keeping the phone awake, force stop it

Sent from my Galaxy S4 running SlimKat 4.4.2

 

[dpham00]

Glance view I believe is for quick glance. Try disabling it in settings to see if it helps.


In gsam can you post the screens "view number of times waking device" and "view time held awake"?
dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3

 

[Michael Weatherall]

Thank you guys for your replies.

I havent tried the recovery and clear cache method as after disabling the quick glance in settings last night, seems to have stopped the drain and the GlanceViewMK keeping the phone awake...to a point, as in, its back to similar results experienced on 4.3.

Currently in 14.5hrs usage the phone has only been held awake for 1hr27mins. Which is a huge improvement over yesterdays 11hrs and 9hr awake.

I presume this is a new bug in the 4.4.2 software with glance view as I haven't seen any other posts with similar problems, presumably just my luck to get it. Im happy to leave it switched off for now though as I hardly use it..however it is strange that I could leave it switched on in 4.3 and experience no problems at all.

Luckily that is the only problem I have had with the KitKat update, as I have seen many listed, I do still however, as a number of people i've seen on forums and the internet, have my Android System process at the top of my battery usage stats (higher than the screen), seems this is a kitkat wide problem with a number of devices and no specific fix?

I will attach some new screenshots of today's testing, unfortunately dpham00 I cannot attach screenshots of "view number of times waking device" and "view time held awake", as I am not rooted to access those features on 4.4.2..which is something I miss from 4.3 as I could of identified the problem much easier.

 

[Tsepz_GP]

Excellent, I'm glad you found the culprit that kept your S4 up, as I was afraid when you mentioned S View Cover that it was a hardware fault that I once experienced which kept the phone up and flashing the S View Cover UI frequently, that required a visit to Samsung Smart Care.

Okay, so Android System, yep, seems to be a major Android KitKat problem, the best way I've been able to keep it down is turn Off Location altogether, as I type this, Android System sitting well below Screen:

 

[Michael Weatherall]

The sview thing is still there in gsam battery but i honestly don't think its causing much of a problem as today, granted I haven't used my phone THAT much, but even for idle my stats today are pretty good, with around 8hrs5mins of on battery time, I still have 85% battery remaining, with the screen sitting at the top of the battery list once again..doing the occasional text, facebook, photo upload to dropbox, low signal areas, wifi on etc...

I went through all settings last night, turned off some Google syncing (ones I dont need), in the samsung apps i disabled auto updating, push notifications and check for updates, disabled some apps which I thought were hogging usage,, disabled google voice recognition for "Ok google" as i never use it and completely disabled the Samsung account sync as I really dont use it at all..

So now I am fairly impressed with the battery life I am getting as at one point using Gsam..reported I had around 212hrs of use remaining..This shocked me..however before I could get a screenshot it went down to around 158 hours.
Will post some screenshots below

 

[Breezybroker]

My battery is draining terribly all of a sudden also. I followed all the advice and turned off all the apps I don't use, turned of whats running in the background, turned off location and most syncing, turned my screen down all the way to the e in brightness etc and nothing has changed. I put in fully charged battery to see. I have used 7% of my battery in 25 minutes. It says my screen brightness is using 52%! I have always had it high and my battery used to last 12 hours. I am getting half of that! Baffled! No it's not a bad battery as I get the same results with both batteries I have.

 

[Jeff Bloom1]

I've been having a similar problem. I really hadn't changed anything other than the Verizon updates. Typically, my phone would have 50-70% left at the end of the day. Now, it doesn't last 10 hours. And, that's after I've killed apps several times during the day and have taken numerous other steps to reduce usage. I've also replaced the battery with a new one. Something other than the typical responses I've seen to such issues has to be going on. Does anyone have a clue? It's really getting to be beyond annoying.

 

[Tsepz_GP]

KitKat has really caused havoc with a whole lot of Androids, seems 4.4.2 was not a good release at all, reminds me a bit of Android4.1.1 which also had battery drain issues.

 

[Aidan64]

I would charge my battery overnight to 100%. 4 hours later the battery would be at 10%. This has only happened in the last 2 weeks. My phone would also be red hot after charging After reading other forums I have done the following

1. Turned off motions and gestures and Air View from the Settings. I didnt really use these anyway
2. Turned of Use GPS Satellite from the Location in Settings
3. Clicked Power Saving Mode from the drag down menu
4. Disabled sync in the Settings - Accounts for all the accounts
5. Downloaded Battery Booster Lite
6. Deleted the last 3-4 apps I downloaded - could have been a rogue app
7. Turned off Wi-Fi when I was not in a Wi-Fi area.
8. Deleted cleaner apps. Manually deleted cache etc from the Settings-More-Applications Manager

Nothing worked. I still had the same problems as before up until yesterday. I read on another forum that the sd card drains the battery on the S4. I took out my sd card. Simple as that. It worked. I have taken my phone off charge 3 1/2 hours ago. Battery is at 80%. Would have been down to 30% or less when I had the issues.

 

[mikegonzalez2k]

Lots of what runs down the battery quickly are apps or system tasks which constantly monitor your movement.
GlanceViewMK is one such monitor which has an Air Gesture QuickGlance.
You can find it by swiping from the top and going into your quickbar and long pressing on AirGestures.
This will bring up a list of Air Gestures on your phone. Note the top one called "Quick Glance"
Disable this or it will constantly ping the system to see if you are facing towards your screen (glancing at it).
It consumes lots of battery. In general turn Air Gestures off, as they are more gimmicky and harmful than useful.

To conserve power I recommend disabling the following
- Air Gestures
- Air View
- Smart Stay
- Smart Pause
- Smart Scroll

Additionally, you should minimize the use of
- Bluetooth
- Wifi
- NFC
- SBeam

To review, features which require a sensor consume much more battery because they loop and check for your motion. They are a constant drain, and thus are not advantageous to use. Air Gestures, and Smart Functions both do this. If they are not absolutely necessary they should be turned off. PERIOD.

As an experiment, keep them disabled for a day and see how much better your battery life is.

Then download Juice Defender and watch the battery life double.
https://forums.androidcentral.com/e....latedroid.juicedefender&hl=en&token=2ba3IA5z

 

[Michael Weatherall1]

So after a good 2 months here I am again with more problems relating to battery life. I havent changed a single setting on my phone since I sorted it earlier on in this post back in April, in fact I've probably turned more things off, yet once again during the last few days I have experienced fairly crappy battery life..at least compared to what I was getting.

My phone is largely once again staying awake, and even if it is not, my battery is still being drained more rapidly than usual and I am at a complete loss as to what it is this time..Unless of course i'm being irrational and this is completely normal but I would of thought that 20% loss of battery with only 29mins of on screen time is fairly bad? compared to when I Could go 14 hours or more and only use roughly another 20% of battery..But i know that it is being drained a lot quicker than usual..
With WIFI on i know there are problems with that but if i take wifi off then i get the fast dormancy wake lock, that keeps my phone awake for just as long..im starting to think Android is just plagued with bugs and wishing the 4.4.3 update would hurry the f**k up..
Here are some screenshots...whether this is normal or not I dont know, but compared to my normal stats..it isnt

 

[madmaxII]

I was having the same issue with the battery after the upgrade. I found a suggestion by Sony while they are fixing their software that disabling and uninstalling updates for Google Play Services would help, so I did but my phone didn't allow me just disabling and the next step was to downgrade it so I did. It was disabled and downgraded to the original version when I got my phone.

I had to charge my battery at least twice a day, but I tested this solution and with the phone fully charged at midnight I turned it on and left it running, the battery with no so heavy load, just checking emails, facebook crap and some tweeter lasted almost 24 hours, I charged it again around midnight when it was 8-7%.

The only issue I found is that by downgrading Google Play Services some google applications need the latest version, so it keeps showing notifications and for example youtube doesn't allow you to use it if Google Play Services is not enabled, so I did today, but didn't upgrade it and I am just monitoring how long the battery lasts this time with that google crap enabled. Also the network seems to respond slower and who knows what else is affected, but at least the battery doesn't drain that fast.

Here is the link I found: http://www.androidpit.com/android-4-4-2-battery-drain-fix-for-sony-xperia-z

Hope this helps.

 

[xyf80]

Tried many other option, I am trying fall back to default google play to see if this will help. Will report back

 

[xyf80]

Fall back to factory default playstore, no difference.

Install patched, works great after the install! (previously turned off the auto update) Now I am on latest version 3 hour used only 1.5% battery

 

[Carol Angelo]

Where did you find a patch for this? My Android sytstem is at 34% and Android OS is at 33%. At 86% battery life, it says I only have 3 hours left on battery. I have disabled and uninstalled everything I could and nothing has helped. This phone worked great until the update it did.

 

[Mike Smith36]

hello i tried wiping the cache i did it twice and didn't work also disable syncing and location all of that but when i was preparing the phone to flash a rom to try to fix it i got everything needed but it was late and i left everything ready for the next day and i left it in the morning 100 charged when i got home at 10 in the night it was 90 it lost only 10% this was after i rooted it and intalled super user and safestrap it was fixed after 2 days still holding its charge good like before updated i think the root did it i hope it works for you guys like i did for me :-$

 

[Chandy Retz]

hellow i was always charging my cellphone may be it is grounded cause it will be drain when i pull it out the charger....i replace another brand new battery but it will happen again.

 

[Johnny Kross]

GlanceViewMK - i find it on my phone now
I have Lolipop version on my S4 and i dissable this because Glance View Mk can acces my application (mail,messinger,facebook,messages,call list)and i dissable him..Does not consume my battery in my case...I saw that some of you have problem with charging !!
we have 2 options:
1- if battery do not stay charge and it finish fast can be from board or battery.
In case is grom bord you need to change 1 component for this
2-if battery do not stay charge cand be from your aplication because you have a lot of them running in background and they must be stop.Keep your application on SD CARD and do not use more then 16GB SD CARD because if you use bigger SD card phone will work harder and processor will be force !
Do not keep the phone in charging mode more than 3hour ! You will distroy battery.