Dramatic Change in Battery Usage

[healimonster]

I have had my Nexus S for about a month now and the first few weeks of use I wouldn't say I was impressed with the battery life but I was very tolerant of it. With heavy use (brand new user- fooling with the phone nearly all day) that phone would last the entire day and I would only have to charge it at the end of the day before I would go to bed. The largest user of battery life was always "Display" and it was always around 20%.
Fast forward to this past week or so and now I am getting the "please plug in your phone into a charger" message at 11am instead of 8pm. A difference greater than 8 hours for the readers out there that failed math class, and a difference that is in the ball park of being 50% worse battery performance than I intially experianced. A dramatic shift.
I would say that my general usage of the phone has dropped since I am no longer playing with it all day. Now the greatest use of battery life is consistently "Android OS" at 40%+.

I did install a few aps this past week that I since uninstalled (like the Fios remote) but "Android OS" continues to eat away at my battery life.

What are the most common reasons for heavy "Android OS" battery life consumption?

If I wanted to do a hard set to my phone what would I lose?

I come from palm and if you do a hard reset or restore after your phone syncs it is basically in the exact same state as before (all your contacts, aps, I think even book marks are restored and I think your media is not effected in the phone reset)

 

[font1975]

Healimonster:

I just recently had this happen to me, too. There's a "bug" or something that seems to be floating around in Android since 2.2. Before we go down the road of hard resetting, let's take a look at something. Do this:

1. Download "OS Monitor" from the Market and launch it.
2. I bet you will see the process "INIT" using over 90% CPU.

The bad news: I haven't a clue what kicks this issue off. I've tried recreating it and can't do it. It just sort happens when it wants to. Not all phones are affected. However, it's NOT a Nexus S issue [so haters, don't be hatin'! ]. It can happen across all phones running 2.2 or higher

The good news: The fix is really simple. Navigate to Settings/Applications/Development and turn on "USB Debugging". However, do this after you run OS Monitor, because I'm personally curious if it is the INIT process. If it is the INIT process, once you turn on USB Debugging, you might feel the phone do a couple of short vibrate pulses, and then you'll see (in OS Monitor) that INIT is back to 0%.

The INIT process is the root process in the UNIX/LINUX world; it's the process that start all others. This is why it's lumped into "Android OS" in the battery screen. You might find, too, that your phone is a little faster.

Let me know what ya find.

 

[healimonster]

...

The INIT process is the root process in the UNIX/LINUX world; it's the process that start all others. This is why it's lumped into "Android OS" in the battery screen. You might find, too, that your phone is a little faster.

Let me know what ya find.

Font1975
Thanks for the response. I will try that after I try one other thing. I have also noticed that the phone is often warm to the touch when in the past it was never warm at all. To me that usually signals heavy data downloads or search for a signal over 2g and 3g, at least it did on my last phone. Every since Feb 1 (the day Call of Duty Black ops First Strike launched) I have had my phones wi-fi turned off for the most part. I will give it another day of normal use with the wifi on and see if that has any affect.

 

[font1975]

OK. I'd still recommend using OS Monitor just to have a peek at what's using the CPU. If you're familiar with Linux/UNIX, it's similar to the "top" command.

Good luck!