Battery drain with new update

[alfandroidcat]

After applying the change below, offered by Samsung support and posted by Tarnlight (from a post by dapheel), my battery run time on 2.3.6 now seems to be about what it was on 2.3.4.

1. Settings
2. Wireless and Network
3. Wifi Settings
4. Click Menu Button (next to Home Button) and Select Advanced
5. Select Wi-Fi sleep policy
6. Change it from "Never" to either "Never when plugged in" or "When Screen turns off".

I chose "When Screen Turns Off".

Since this worked, I decided to allow 2.3.6 to be pushed to my wife's identical phone, after which I applied the same work around to her phone. After several days of testing, both phones now seem to have normal run time (2-3 days when used only occasionally). Even with moderate use, well over a 24 hour day's operation is attainable.

I still don't like the blue fog added in 2.3.6, especially in the browser, that occurs at the screen edge limits. There is really no need for this, in spite of Samsung having to dump the Apple challenged bounce effect. It occurs even on the mobile versions of web sites where there is no data behond the edges anyway.

 

[Rytherix]

Just an update from before. I have disabled any wifi using applications, turned the sleep policy to "screen is off" and fully charged the device.
After 3 hours I am down to 86% which is a good 5% an hour with NO usage on airplane mode with just wifi on. The battery monitor shows that Android OS has taken up 80% of that battery usage, and the phone has been awake for very small intermittent periods.

This is with the same Unnamed running 2.3.4 as I posted earlier.
I am so sad, some please help me :'(
Any suggestions?

 

[Strawdawg]

I did not see much, if any, difference between 2.3.4 and 2.3.6.

My phone always dropped about 2.5% to 3.5% an hour when idle. After reading the explanations about wi-fi in the new release, it dawned on me that my phone was seeing my wifi network at least 12 hours a day most days. I charge every night.

I changed the settings to relfect those suggested by Samsung so that wifi was off when the screen was off. It lost 5% in the last four hours-screen was off the entire time. A bit more time will tell if this is the new norm, or not, but it would seem this is a big improvement.

My old 3GS was also on wifi most of the time and it used battery at a comparable rate-if not worse.

As suggested above, I would guess something else is going on with your phone other than what others have been seeing.

 

[Martavious]

My GSII just updated to 2.3.6 last night unfortunately. Battery drain this morning was horrible. I've just done the change to WiFi settings for screen off to see if it helps. I'm on WiFi 90% of the time minimum so it's crazy that this update can't handle that when 2.3.4 was fine. I don't have the energy to argue with AT&T reps about this update :'(

 

[Onanda]

My GSII just updated to 2.3.6 last night unfortunately. Battery drain this morning was horrible. I've just done the change to WiFi settings for screen off to see if it helps. I'm on WiFi 90% of the time minimum so it's crazy that this update can't handle that when 2.3.4 was fine. I don't have the energy to argue with AT&T reps about this update :'(

I was in the same situation. But my phone syncs with Exchange email/Outlook constantly and turning WiFi to sleep make it use the cell signal, using more battery. I used the 'unroot' instructions to get back to 2.3.4 and I'm back to 3-4 days between charging. I only use it for calls, email and occasional GPS/traffic. I have no other apps installed.

 

[Martavious]

Hard to tell if the "screen off" tweak works or not because it keeps reverting to Never. Very strange but I set it and then leave the phone for a bit .. Turn it on and it's off WiFi .. It reconnects to my WiFi and I go back into the setting and it's reverted back to Never ..

Guess I may look at the "unroot" to get to 2.3.4 ..

 

[tneil]

Hard to tell if the "screen off" tweak works or not because it keeps reverting to Never. Very strange but I set it and then leave the phone for a bit .. Turn it on and it's off WiFi .. It reconnects to my WiFi and I go back into the setting and it's reverted back to Never ..

Guess I may look at the "unroot" to get to 2.3.4 ..

I had the same problem as you after the OTA update to UCKK6 (2.3.6), so I used the step by step instructions found here to return my phone back to Stock UCKH7 (2.3.4), without incrementing the flash counter. NOTE: Use step 2c in the instructions

 

[silverbugeye]

Step 2c worked for me also

 

[kevinqian]

Hard to tell if the "screen off" tweak works or not because it keeps reverting to Never. Very strange but I set it and then leave the phone for a bit .. Turn it on and it's off WiFi .. It reconnects to my WiFi and I go back into the setting and it's reverted back to Never ..

Guess I may look at the "unroot" to get to 2.3.4 ..

You must have a rogue app that's changing the settings on that. It's usually a streaming or wifi syncing app that requires constant on wifi connection. For me, it was Doubletwist's Airsync that kept reverting it to Never. After I disabled the app, it never switched on me again.

 

[lchute1158]

what should I see under battery usage for android os? I had the os using 82% before I put unnamed rom on. It is now fluctuates between 25 and 50% still higher than display.

 

[Martavious]

You must have a rogue app that's changing the settings on that. It's usually a streaming or wifi syncing app that requires constant on wifi connection. For me, it was Doubletwist's Airsync that kept reverting it to Never. After I disabled the app, it never switched on me again.

That was apparently it. Thanks.

I'll see how it works now because I just churned through 85% of my battery in under 12 hours of almost no use (most of that overnight sitting on my desk) and connected to my wifi network. Was getting a day and a half or so on 2.3.4.

Nothing like quality control ..

 

[anon(522161)]

I use free Timeriffic to automatically turn Airplane mode on from midnight to 7am. I don't need wifi/cell at night, which also drains the battery. I don't charge it overnight so that extends my battery life quite a bit. HTH.

 

[tsj]

I highly recommend you Flash the Siyah Kernel if you're looking for a battery life fix. It's wonderful.

 

[Entropy]

what should I see under battery usage for android os? I had the os using 82% before I put unnamed rom on. It is now fluctuates between 25 and 50% still higher than display.

The nature of our devices is that it will always be a bit high, 20-40% is normal. I'm looking into trying and optimizing suspend/resume to improve this, but for the time being that's the way it is.

Custom kernels like SiyahKernel and my experimental series will hide Android OS usage but will NOT alter the actual battery usage in any way. (This is the main reason why I still consider it "experimental".)

I highly recommend you Flash the Siyah Kernel if you're looking for a battery life fix. It's wonderful.

SiyahKernel will not fix the UCKK6 BT-AMP regression that people are discussing here. It's a wifi chipset firmware or userspace configuration issue. Custom kernels will not fix it.

 

[rupst2]

Unnamed 2.2.1 based off 2.3.6 did the trick for me. It still uses some settings from 2.3.4 so no battery drain. I previously went back to 2.3.4 and that worked fine as well just like before the official 2.3.6 update with battery drain. Back to day and a half battery life instead of the 10 hours the 2.3.6 update did to my phone.

 

[lynn02]

I keep getting prompted that there is an update but haven't done it yet cause I'm worried it will drain my battery worse. I don't understand how some people are getting a day or two out of a charge. I'm not rooted. The only thing I have enabled is bluetooth. The only apps I'm using is Noled, BeWeather(it only refreshes when I unlock the phone), Battery widget(Probcomp), and Whatsapp. This is my first android. I have to charge the phone every night. I must be doing something wrong.

 

[Entropy]

I keep getting prompted that there is an update but haven't done it yet cause I'm worried it will drain my battery worse. I don't understand how some people are getting a day or two out of a charge. I'm not rooted. The only thing I have enabled is bluetooth. The only apps I'm using is Noled, BeWeather(it only refreshes when I unlock the phone), Battery widget(Probcomp), and Whatsapp. This is my first android. I have to charge the phone every night. I must be doing something wrong.

An active notification with noled is even worse than a BLN notification in terms of battery consumption (since it turns the screen on in addition to inhibiting deep sleep).

Idle drain of a properly functioning device in weak to moderate cell signal should be just over 1%/hour. Strong signal should be slightly less. On wifi without the UCKK6 drain bug and the right environment (this is hard - needs a clean network without broadcast traffic) can get as low as 0.5%/hour.

If something is holding a wake lock and inhibiting deep sleep, drain will be 4.5-5%/hour even with the screen off. An active BLN notification will do this.

NoLED will be even worse than BLN - an active notification will probably drain 5-6%/hour at least. It may also hurt battery life when no notification is active.

 

[rupst2]

Switched to Unnamed 1.3.2 purely based off 2.3.4

Unnamed 2.2.1 is definitely better than stock 2.3.6 battery drain but it's still not as good as the pure 2.3.4 experience.

Back to having to actually use my phone to get the battery to drain!

 

[birvini]

I just got done speaking to customer service at ATT again regarding this issue. The last time was 2 1/2 weeks ago when they urged me to wait on Samsung for a fix to this issue. They assured me that Samsung was aware of the issue. Well, I got tired of waiting and they are sending me a replacement phone. Hopefully I get lucky enough to get one that hasn't been updated to 2.3.6 yet. I figure if we can cost Samsung and ATT a few bucks to send a replacement they might get their software developer types to fix the bad code in the update a little faster.

 

[Entrical]

I was hoping I wasn't the only person with this problem. Before the update, when I go to bed at night my phone would be roughly at 30%-40%. Now I can't make it past 7pm without charging my phone. It's getting a little ridiculous. I've had my phone off my charger for only 2.5 hours now and I'm already down to 75%. Granted, I did play about 30min of Jelly Defense and browse the web for about an hour, but it's never gone down this fast. I hope it gets fixed with ICS.