How to figure out what is causing heat and battery usage?

[RedOctobyr]

I know this should hopefully be easy. But I'm still not really figuring out what's going on.

My phone sometimes runs warm. And at the moment, despite rebooting 20 minutes ago, CPU-Z is showing that 4 cores are often running at 1.4 GHz, and sometimes the last 2 are jumping up to 1.8 GHz. Over the weekend I think they would often all sit at 384 MHz. Running faster will obviously drain the battery faster, and produce more heat.

But I can't figure out what's causing it. The built-in Battery tool doesn't show anything obvious. I have Zapper Task Killer, hoping it would show a "smoking gun" app with high CPU usage, but no. Watchdog Lite and OS Monitor (installed yesterday) also aren't really helping. I have Greenify, but haven't yet tried to figure out how to really put it to use. The only standalone apps that show high battery-use in the Battery tool are the ones you'd expect, like the navigation app, etc.

The phone has 4 and a half hours of use on the battery today, 1 hour 50 minutes of SOT, and is at 40%, for reference. If I kept up this usage pattern, it would be dead by about 1PM.

I noticed that Swiftkey would sometimes show ~5% CPU usage in OS Monitor, but I'm not even *using* Swiftkey at the moment, so I just uninstalled it. The Verizon Cloud app was also showing ~8% usage for a while, when it shouldn't be doing anything (WiFi is off, and it's only supposed to sync over WiFi).

I do realize it's possible that the monitoring-apps themselves are becoming part of the problem, rather than the solution. Try to monitor with 50 apps, and you'll kill the battery by simply trying to figure out what's going on. Maybe I should start by removing some of the monitoring apps I've added.

Am I using the wrong tools? Or just missing something obvious? Part of what I'd like to see is something like my S3 showed, a battery graph that also shows an "Awake" line, which at least helped reveal when something was unexpectedly keeping the phone active. I have not yet found a way to show that on my G4. Maybe that went away with Lollipop, or maybe that nice graph was a Samsung thing.

I just checked CPU-Z again, now it's calmed down somewhat, and all 6 cores sometimes actually show 384MHz. Then the first 4 will jump up to 1.2GHz, 0.9GHz, etc, then drop again.

Any input is appreciated. I apologize if this is a dumb question, but I feel like I'm missing something. I have disable Google syncing for Google products I don't use. Thanks.

 

[B. Diddy]

Do you have a microSD card? A corrupt media file on the card can cause increased CPU usage and battery drain, because the Media Scanner gets caught up on the file. Try unmounting the card (in Settings>Storage​) and removing it.

 

[RedOctobyr]

Thanks for the reply, I should have mentioned that. I do not have an SD card installed.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Javier P]

As you said, maybe you should stop using so many monitoring apps. It looks like some of them are apps killers and sometime they can give you problems. Try this. Stop or disable all of them and download Gsam to get better battery stats. Run a couple of full charges and post here a couple of screenshots once you have 20-30% left on your battery.

 

[RedOctobyr]

Thank you. I uninstalled a few. I left OS Monitor installed, but did Force Stop. I do have GSam already.

I had to put the phone on the charger this afternoon or it was going to die, so this isn't a good log of typical battery use. But it's the best I have at the moment, if it's of any value. I didn't get the charge all the way to 100%, either.

 

[kevinpb]

Very similar results and I disabled Verizon cloud!

Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk

 

[sswitzer]

There's another thread (started by Phil) about the newest Google Play Services app seems to want to run too strong.

http://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=541344

 

[rsbenedict]

I've noticed that periscope, tune-in radio, the phone itself, all seem to increase the temps by a lot. Although the battery is showing up hot in various apps, what's really hot is in the upper half of the phone behind the buttons and on the reverse side on the glass. When I remove the battery, it's warm, but not hot. I'm thinking the CPU is back there and it's getting very hot. Though I thought LG went with the 808 chip to avoid the heating issues with the 810 chip.

 

[RedOctobyr]

There's another thread (started by Phil) about the newest Google Play Services app seems to want to run too strong.

Google Play Services issue after the 10h update? - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com

I have not read that thread yet, but I should have mentioned that I have Verizon. I think the 10h update is a T-Mobile thing? No system updates yet on mine that I know of.

 

[tardus]

I've noticed that periscope, tune-in radio, the phone itself, all seem to increase the temps by a lot. Although the battery is showing up hot in various apps, what's really hot is in the upper half of the phone behind the buttons and on the reverse side on the glass. When I remove the battery, it's warm, but not hot. I'm thinking the CPU is back there and it's getting very hot. Though I thought LG went with the 808 chip to avoid the heating issues with the 810 chip.

Descriptions of heat are subjective. Use CPU-Z (or similar app) and let us know what the temperature is. A screenshot of the Thermal tab would be nice. Do it at idle and also when used with the app that heats it up.

Also include the ambient temperature where the phone is.

EDIT: When I just closed CPU-Z (didn't want it sucking up battery) - via three vertical dots upper right, it played an obnoxious audio ad. Uninstalled and will reinstall if and when I ever need it.

 

[rsbenedict]

There are two cpu z apps by two different developers.

 

[RedOctobyr]

The CPU-Z (not CPU Z) that I use is this one:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cpuid.cpu_z

No audio ads that I've noticed.

Note, however, that the Thermal tab in CPU-Z apparently has a unit-conversion error. Values in C are correct, I'm speculating. But if you change it to show in F, the values are wrong, and convert to be ~30F higher than the temps displayed in C.

 

[tardus]

The CPU-Z (not CPU Z) that I use is this one:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cpuid.cpu_z

No audio ads that I've noticed.

Note, however, that the Thermal tab in CPU-Z apparently has a unit-conversion error. Values in C are correct, I'm speculating. But if you change it to show in F, the values are wrong, and convert to be ~30F higher than the temps displayed in C.

That's the one I installed - CPU-Z and same link. Like I said it only had the ad (for some other app) when I closed the app. Android does clean uninstalls so not a big deal to install/deinstall as needed.

The Fahrenheit values are still wrong? That's not good.

 

[Mikey47]

I like what I see in CPU-Z, but I wish it did what CPU Spy does: show the time spent in each state) speed).

 

[RedOctobyr]

That sounds like a nice feature, letting you understand how often the CPU speeds are being cranked up.

I returned my G4 tonight, as I was near the end of my 14-day return period. And if I just exchanged it, the return period doesn't reset, so I'd only have 2 days to see how the replacement worked. I want more time to test a replacement, before deciding to keep it for 2 years.

This is my GSam log from today. I took it off the charger (100%) at 7:30 this morning. I had 1:54 of SOT, with 1:47 of WiFi. I was backing up some data over WiFi, prepping for returning the phone. By 4PM (8:30 later), I was down to 21%. I'm not impressed by that, getting that low makes me nervous, and that wasn't even at the end of the day.

The WiFi use did definitely warm up the phone, but I would offer that today's use seemed pretty moderate to me. The only possible exception would be the WiFi, but even that doesn't seem unreasonable. See attached screenshots for the main view, and the breakdown of app usage.