Gingerbread Draining Battery

[dfarro]

Anyone else experiencing major battery drain after installing the Gingerbread Firmware update? Anyone have any solutions?

 

[monil]

Not encountered battery draining since GingerBread. If something has happened is that the phone has become more responsive with better battery.

Is there some stray app on your phone causing the battery drain. is the GPS / WiFI on all times? Emails being pushed frequently?

 

[Relgoshan]

Definitely better battery here.

 

[Castorshells]

Totally better battery and performance!

Xoom+Root = Perfect Match

 

[Dre89]

I'm getting unholy battery life now, like 12-14 hours of moderate-heavy use before it's drained, 7-9 with both screens

 

[Relgoshan]

I am nearly 100% certain the update now controls CPU clock and power consumption. Phone runs cooler, runs longer. Probably doesn't "cook" the battery as much either, so there will be less accumulation of heat damage.

dfarro, for argument's sake have you been swapping the battery? If not please try the second battery and inform whether it performs BETTER, or the SAME. I did notice the battery gauge is calibrated differently, it will now turn red long before showing the "15% Warning". That messed me up a little but it made sense after thinking things through.

 

[dfarro]

Thank you everyone for your input. If it's an app, I don't know which one. I have not added any apps in awhile, certainly not since I installed the new gingerbread update. I haven't tried the extra battery, though I have tried taking the battery out and putting it back in. I also tried draining the battery and recharging it to 100%. Today it lost about 20% in less than 20 minutes.

 

[Castorshells]

Is the phone on standby for these 20 min? What are you doing on the phone?

Xoom+Root = Perfect Match

 

[Relgoshan]

Yeah, that sounds remarkable. Like some broken app is pegging the CPU at 100%.

Switching batteries will confirm whether you just have a defective battery.

 

[Brain_ReCall]

I've seen a recharging issue twice since the update. I'm going to attempt to replicate it to see if its real or just a fluke.
Both times I've woken up to a phone that had about 30% battery left, even though it was on the charger all night. I have a custom Tasker profile that turns on the Clock application when the display turns off and its on the charger (replicates the Pre clock functionality when on the Touchstone). I suspect that a notification was received (new email), that somehow caused the Echo to stop charging but Android thought it still was. The display stayed on (per my Tasker profile), and drained the battery over a few hours before I got up.
The Battery app shows no significant app usage (Google Maps is oddly enough the heaviest hitter, but even then only minor compared to the Display and Cell Standby). The power graph shows the screen on and charging during the drain.

 

[Relgoshan]

Hm. Pre-update, I had a couple incidents waking up to a phone with very low battery. This involved:
1) "Do not turn display off when charging"
2) tTorrent continually active on 3G with low signal strength
3) Someone tried to call me in the middle of the night, activating the screen
4) Foolishly leaving phone open so both screens would activate

It appears there was a window of possibility wherein the supplied charger's internal safety interrupted the power supply due to excessive drain. The battery was then left to handle everything. AC adapter will not reset unless you unplug and replug, in my experience.

With update this hasn't happened again, but I intend to experiment with Eco as a possible safeguard against the issue.

 

[Jamin13]

I'm curious, does anyone else boot up the phone from a fully charged battery and instantly(or quickly) drops by 2-3 percent?

 

[Castorshells]

Fully charged for me has always been 96%. It doesn't stay at 100% for but a few minutes.

Xoom+Root = Perfect Match

 

[Jamin13]

Ah, alright. That's good know.

 

[Brain_ReCall]

It appears there was a window of possibility wherein the supplied charger's internal safety interrupted the power supply due to excessive drain. The battery was then left to handle everything. AC adapter will not reset unless you unplug and replug, in my experience.

I didn't consider the charger. That could explain some of what I saw: charger was still present but perhaps only trickle charging. It would still register as charging on the phone, but certainly not enough to compensate for driving the screen.

Are you using the provided charger?

Edit: Kyocera charger is rated for 800mA. I'm going to switch over to my old Palm charger that's rated at 1A and see how that goes.

 

[Relgoshan]

Yes; I'm using the provided charger. I have run into similar issues previously, two examples:

1) First-gen ASUS 1005HA AC adapter could trip if you pushed the system hard while charging a depleted battery. It took three hours for the sealed internal breaker to cool down, and it only reset if unplugged and replugged. A BIOS update curbed the system appetite for power, lowering the estimated charge time by more than 1/2hr while running, and increasing battery life by 20%. Charging while shut down was unaffected.

2) DFI LANParty NF4 was one of the first "ATX 2.01" motherboards. When powered on, high-quality ATX 2.0 power supplies would detect that the five-volt standby line was exceeding 2 amps, and instantly cut power to minimize short-circuit damage. You would have built a dead computer. The fix was swapping in a 2.01-compliant supply like the 600W Enermax Noisetaker, after which the system would run perfectly. A .01 difference in hardware spec, HALF AN AMP ON ONE WIRE. Version conflicts are not limited to software, always check for known issues when building a PC.