Tracking Accelerated Battery Drain

stevekat

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Is there an app, or what is the best practice for simply and quickly tracking a recent sudden onset of accelerated battery drain? I had been fine, now I am going through three batteries a day. I do not have a unruly collection of apps. Not sure I can track the most recent from memory. I do have 4G LTE enabled, though see little coverage.
 

meyerweb#CB

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First, have you looked at the battery report in settings? If it's a normal app draining the battery, it may show you all you need to know. I just noticed something interesting about this app, too. When you tap the refresh button, the display momentarily shows the name of the actual app or service that's using the largest amount of battery for each entry. On mine, for example, the Android System entry momentarily flashes "qosmgr" in place of Android System, and "com.google.android.apps.ma....." in place of Maps.

Many people use GSAM. It's free, so worth a try. But if the battery report is showing "Android System" as the offender, I don't think GSAM will provide enough granularity to tell you anything useful. (Although maybe I'm missing something.)

The paid version of the app System Panel has a monitoring mode that will break out the cpu usage for the couple of dozen services that make up Android System and any other app. This could be very useful.

Finally, note that any of these monitoring apps can skew the results some because they're running in the background.
 

stevekat

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Thank you. I did not realize the batter settings had this feature and granularity.

Currently, with my display brightness set on automatic:

Screen 50%
Voice Calls 12%
Android OS 11%
Android System 10%
Maps 7%
Cell standby 3%
Device idle 3%
Media server 3%

Does this seem normal - I have no relative data because I had never seen this before.
 

tat21985

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I usually go from 6 A.M. to 12 midnight on one charge, this is my breakdown as of right now, 10 hours, 53 minutes into the charge, sitting at 68% battery remaining..

Screen 41%
Android System 11%
Android OS 11%
Device Idle 7%
Cell Standby 7%
GO SMS 5%
MAPServiceSamsung 5%
Tumblr 4%
Swiftkey 3 4%
Words With Friends 3%

You're stats seem about normal, compared to mine.. Are you using stock batteries, or some cheaply made Chinese throwaways?
 

meyerweb#CB

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Assuming you're actually using the device a lot, and have the screen on, yes, this seems pretty normal. These percentages, btw, are of the amount of battery used at the point in time. It doesn't mean your screen has used up half your battery, it means that of the battery capacity used, screen on used half of it. What this means is that when you don't use your phone very much, Android System will show a much higher percentage, simply because nothing else is using much battery. So don't panic if you see 50% or more for Android system some day.

What this doesn't explain is why you're gong to 3 batteries in a day, though, unless you're never letting the screen time out.
 

stevekat

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Thanks for the comparison. Perhaps I am using so much battery just based on heavy usage while traveling. I usually see more power consumption, but not nearly this much. But I agree the numbers look somwhat comparable.

And, yes, I was considering that the numbers (pecentages) were based on relative usage, and not on percentage used of batter capacity, but thank for you clarifying just in case.

I shall check battery data now that I know that is available, regularly for a few days, in case something unusual appears, but can see nothing is too far out of kilter in the couple of polls I saw.
 

ihbsbA

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Thank you. I did not realize the batter settings had this feature and granularity.

Currently, with my display brightness set on automatic:

Screen 50%
Voice Calls 12%
Android OS 11%
Android System 10%
Maps 7%
Cell standby 3%
Device idle 3%
Media server 3%

Does this seem normal - I have no relative data because I had never seen this before.

Check your recently updated apps for the reviews.. my husband is not a power user, yet updated a simple calendar app he uses and his battery was dead in two hours. I looked through all the apps he had updated and there were many complaints that the recent update of that calendar app had been causing major battery drain. I uninstalled it and, of course, it was fixed - since you've said it's "all of a sudden", that's what I'd recommend.


PS - cheap third party batteries only last about 60% of the time of OEM. That is another culprit!


>
 

meyerweb#CB

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Learned an interesting trick yesterday. Go to developer options (in settings), make sure it's turned on, then scroll down and check "Show CPU usage." This will put an overlay on the screen showing processes and apps using CPU. If the same app is always at or near the top, it's probably your battery hog.
 

Ntchwaidumela

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stevekat, all of the things mentioned above are valid and definitely deserve your attention. I also notice you stated you have 4G LTE turned on, but the coverage is pretty spotty. One of the things that uses up your battery is your phone searching for and trying to maintain a signal, when you're texting or checking emails, for instance. You may not have any problem with calls because that doesn't have anything to do with data service. But when you need to use data, and your phone is continually searching for the best data signal, it can use up your battery pretty quickly. If you can, try to wait until you can pick up a strong LTE signal or wifi. If you receive a strong 3G signal, you can go into Settings>More settings>Mobile networks>Network mode and check CDMA only. That will stop your phone from searching for the 4G LTE signal. If you spend a lot of time using the data capabilities of your phone, and these suggestions won't work for you, then you'll need to invest in an extended battery (but not one of the cheapies mentioned above). I use a Gorilla Gadget 4500 mAh battery (about $25) much of the time, especially when I'm going to be away from home most of the day, and I get about 36-46 hours (with pretty heavy data use).
 

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