Battery drain with new update

[werds]

Ugh, I need to learn to avoid updating before seeing who has had what issues. I just bought this phone off contract a couple days ago so had no point of reference other than comparison to my iphone 4 that I just moved away from.

I have all of the various power saving settings turned on, I have been on wifi the past two days at home, I haven't had the screen any brighter than 20% and usually at 10% because I am indoors in low lighting for the most part, I have tried the pulling the battery and SD card, gone through at least 5 power cycles and each time after 5to 6 hours on battery it claims Android OS is eating up 75-80% of the battery charge... the only time it shows display as eating up the most is within the first hour of being off charge where it shows display as 60% and Android OS as 3%

I am off work until the new years so hoping to nail down a usage pattern that won't kill my phone before the end of a full workday but this is ridiculous,even when I leave it asleep it chews through battery. Hopefully there is some other update coming soon enough that fixes this... or maybe when I purchase some spare backup batteries the problem might correct itself - this just doesn't seem to make sense to me though

 

[MattMJB0188]

I thought I'd share my experience with 2.3.6. Today at 8am I pulled my phone off the charger. By 1 I was at 92% with zero use. I barely touched my phone today at work and right now at 6:30 I'm at 70% for the Android OS and 10% for the display. I pulled my battery this morning before I powered on. I'm not really willing to load a custom rom or anything so I guess I'll just deal with it. Hopefully it will go down in a week once its had time to settle.

 

[j-bo]

At 9hrs on battery..still at 68% ..wifi on all this time..drove hour and half with poweramp playing through car....and android os hasnt gone over 16%.

Hard to believe that trick is working so far. Will monitor for the next few days.

sent from my galaxy S2

 

[Baroka]

At 9hrs on battery..still at 68% ..wifi on all this time..drove hour and half with poweramp playing through car....and android os hasnt gone over 16%.

Hard to believe that trick is working so far. Will monitor for the next few days.

sent from my galaxy S2

can we swap phones??

 

[MattMJB0188]

At 9hrs on battery..still at 68% ..wifi on all this time..drove hour and half with poweramp playing through car....and android os hasnt gone over 16%.

Hard to believe that trick is working so far. Will monitor for the next few days.

sent from my galaxy S2

Whats the trick?

 

[werds]

Well... sorta solved my problem but introduced new ones lol, I downgraded to 2.3.4 and that worked for battery but caused my phone to be unable to connect to wifi... after futzing around and not finding a good and easy solution I moved over to 2.3.5 and that worked (forgot to root and backup so having to redownload and redo settings sucks) but now the battery usage looks correct with display atfter just one hour of usage at 54% and the next closest being Android System at 19% with Android OS (the previous culprit for battery drain) nowway down the list at 4%.

The downside to this solution other than redoing all settings and redownloading apps? The photo gallery app freezes anytime I open it... thankfully I just downloaded a QuickPic app and can use that for photo browsing I guess,and for some reason double tapping or long pressing the home button isn't bringing up my task manager shortcut either... hopefully I don't run into any other issues. If the battery drain comes back I will update but this is definitely pointing to it being an issue with the 2.3.6 update itself

Now I just need to root this damn thing so I can run me some backup apps... doing this once is enough for me to never want to do it a second time

 

[kevinqian]

Have had the update for about 2 weeks now and definitely not seeing the night and day difference in battery drain that you guys are seeing. Idle drain seems normal, overnight 8hrs, battery down 7%. Although any activity or usage drains the battery quite fast, but I think this is normal as before. I hope they release an update soon to fix your battery issues.

 

[runtohell121]

Over the past 3 hours.. I lost 15% battery.. 5% per hour... still don't know what's causing it.

 

[Trickology]

I can't seem to figure my battery out some days its amazing other days its horrible. The days its really bad I noticed my Android OS.over 90% and days its good like right now I'm at 15%.

 

[anon(522161)]

Have had the update for about 2 weeks now and definitely not seeing the night and day difference in battery drain that you guys are seeing. Idle drain seems normal, overnight 8hrs, battery down 7%.

It used to drain about 1-2% overnight for me before the update. It would last roughly day and a half for me between charges. After installing 2.3.6 I started charging it every night. It was also draining at the rate of 7-10% overnight. So, I can't say it was terrible after the update but battery life had definitely took a hit.

So, I used unroot instructions last night (my phone is not rooted) and restored it to 2.3.4 w/o losing any settings or data in about 10 mins time. Was real easy and straight forward. Overnight battery drain is back to 1-2% so far.

Something is definitely screwed up with 2.3.6.

 

[Wookiee]

EDIT: The results did not ultimately stick and the battery drain eventually started again. We've since reverted back to UCKH7 / 2.3.4. See Entropy512's post below for details.

I found something that worked for myself and my partner. We each own this phone and we're both running 2.3.6. Android OS was causing major battery drain.

After reading through this thread, I tried removing the battery in both phones. Amazingly, it worked for mine, but not my partner's phone. We tried everything - killing apps and widgets, restoring, etc. - but nothing seemed to stop the Android OS battery consumption on his device.

Then, I had a thought. I tried swapping batteries - mine in his phone, his in mine. Sure enough, it fixed the problem. I even swapped the batteries back to their original devices and it's still working.

Android OS went from ~50-70% drain to ~10-11%.

 

[BugDad25]

removing and reinstalling battery did wonders for me also. Definitely give it a try

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Tapatalk

 

[Strawdawg]

Mine is showing higher OS use, but, the battery consumption appears about the same

 

[Entropy]

removing and reinstalling battery did wonders for me also. Definitely give it a try

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Tapatalk

Temporary fix - the drain will come back.

Replacement batteries will NOT fix the problem. It's a problem with the wifi firmware or something else in /system.

The wifi chipset is made by Broadcom and has a special feature called "Bluetooth Alternate MAC and PHY" (BT-AMP) - it apparently allows tunneling of Bluetooth over WiFi. In I777 UCKK6 and also recent Infuse Gingerbread leaks (UCKJ2 and later at a minimum), this feature randomly goes bonkers and starts waking up the phone once a second. This kills battery.

For more details:
Horrible battery life after 2.3.6 - Page 4 - xda-developers

And general info on drain hunting (including how to confirm the problem with a Wireshark capture if oyu are rooted):
[REF] Known identified battery drainers - xda-developers

Also, please stop referring to it as 2.3.6 and by its proper Samsung build number, UCKK6. This allows the exact build to be identified, especially since this problem has nothing to do with Android 2.3.6 in general.

Right now the best fix is a revert to UCKH7. There is documentation over on XDA. I strongly recommend not going to galaxys2root.com - it's intended to be an advertising clickfarm and the guy that set it up hasn't touched an I777 in months.

 

[MattMJB0188]

Anyone who is not pleased with this update should consider flashing to Unnamed Rom which is just like STOCK but so much better.

Just go with the 2.3.4 firmware though I'm sure his 2.3.6 firmware is very stable.

[ROM][2.3.6] UnNamed v2.2.1 - (12/22/2011) - Improved battery life and performance - xda-developers

 

[Wookiee]

Temporary fix - the drain will come back.

Replacement batteries will NOT fix the problem. It's a problem with the wifi firmware or something else in /system.

The wifi chipset is made by Broadcom and has a special feature called "Bluetooth Alternate MAC and PHY" (BT-AMP) - it apparently allows tunneling of Bluetooth over WiFi. In I777 UCKK6 and also recent Infuse Gingerbread leaks (UCKJ2 and later at a minimum), this feature randomly goes bonkers and starts waking up the phone once a second. This kills battery.

For more details:
Horrible battery life after 2.3.6 - Page 4 - xda-developers

And general info on drain hunting (including how to confirm the problem with a Wireshark capture if oyu are rooted):
[REF] Known identified battery drainers - xda-developers

Also, please stop referring to it as 2.3.6 and by its proper Samsung build number, UCKK6. This allows the exact build to be identified, especially since this problem has nothing to do with Android 2.3.6 in general.

Right now the best fix is a revert to UCKH7. There is documentation over on XDA. I strongly recommend not going to galaxys2root.com - it's intended to be an advertising clickfarm and the guy that set it up hasn't touched an I777 in months.

While the information is appreciated, generally speaking, this forum is much more layman than xda. Some, like you and I, might know how to "talk shop", it would likely confuse people to use "proper" terminology around these parts and we'd spend more time trying to explain what a build number is, how to find it, etc. than actually solving the problem. It's safe to assume that the vast majority (if not all) of people in this thread who are experiencing problems are using UCKK6.

But, back on topic, yeah, rolling back is probably the best solution.

 

[chaplain]

While the information is appreciated, generally speaking, this forum is much more layman than xda. Some, like you and I, might know how to "talk shop", it would likely confuse people to use "proper" terminology around these parts and we'd spend more time trying to explain what a build number is, how to find it, etc. than actually solving the problem. It's safe to assume that the vast majority (if not all) of people in this thread who are experiencing problems are using UCKK6.

Eh - that's how I learned about Android. Someone said something that I did not quite understand, I googled it, read a bit, and then understood. For my part, I am just glad Entropy joined AC, and is willing to post over here. He is on the cutting edge of development for the i-777, and I always pay attention to what he says. I think that the AC community is broad enough that, if a post is too technical for a user, someone will be available to translate or help to make the info more practical. And, we don't flame noobs over here as bad as they do on some forums, so I hope that users will feel free to say that they don't understand an answer. Just my 2 cents.

 

[ttlphotography]

cliff note version of my experience is i "rolled back" to 2.3.4(UCKH7 ) by having ATT replace my phone. the update sent my phone into a very dark and nasty place, operationally speaking. They were very hesistant to replace the phone, but finally did so after several software repair attempts and reflashing the update rom onto the original problem phone with no success. They replaced it under the manufacturers 1 year warranty.

 

[Tarnlight]

I am also having this battery drain problem- which I believe is wifi related.
You should be aware that there is an interesting mindset at both AT&T, and Samsung customer support. When you call to report this- or any other- issue, they will say that they don't have any record in their data base of this problem. "How is this possible?" I ask them. "There are whole threads refering to people who have contacted you on this subject," I inform them. They claim no knowledge of this.
Turns out, what is happening is that when you tell them about the problem, they say that they will note it to YOUR account. I suggest to them that if 1000 people are calling with an issue, and all they ever do is to note it to each individual's account, of course they will never have a data base which indicates a common problem which must be addressed. At that point they usually just say "Is there anything else I can help you with," or words to that effect.
Oh well!

 

[Wookiee]

Eh - that's how I learned about Android. Someone said something that I did not quite understand, I googled it, read a bit, and then understood. For my part, I am just glad Entropy joined AC, and is willing to post over here. He is on the cutting edge of development for the i-777, and I always pay attention to what he says. I think that the AC community is broad enough that, if a post is too technical for a user, someone will be available to translate or help to make the info more practical. And, we don't flame noobs over here as bad as they do on some forums, so I hope that users will feel free to say that they don't understand an answer. Just my 2 cents.

I agree with you and I'm happy for all of it. All I was trying to say is, many of the people here are first-time Android uses (or even first-time smartphone users) who have no interest in learning proper technical jargon; they just want to get basic information. In my own ideal world, everybody would be as familiar with their technology as Entropy is, but since that is unfortunately not the reality, it should be expected that the vernacular will be less technical and somewhat imprecise.

But again, back on track... please continue to tell Samsung about the battery drain issue using the bug report form: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...mkey=dGpvcjVmcTd4Y2ZuZFgtcV9WM3lvZ2c6MQ#gid=0