GNEX -- Unacceptable Battery Life

[dannye123]

Hey guys. Really need your help with something. I am a 15 year old guy who knows a little about android (a lot for my age). Not even close to the amount of information some (most) of you guys know. Anyways, I am a 9th grade student which means I have my phone in my pocket pretty much all day. I check the time every now and then, maybe 5 times a day. I am running CM 9 which is based off of 4.0.3. I always leave 3G on. If it's 3:30 and I have 21% decreasing at a ridiculously high rate, there has to be a major problem. Please reply to this thread with some information about what is causing this and any possible solutions. Much appreciated!

 

[reg1233]

More than likely, you've got to have an app or something that's running in the background causing your battery drain. If all you're doing is checking the time 5 times a day, it shouldn't be draining that fast.

 

[pauldroidr2d2]

You might want to see what apps are running in the background and then either disable them, or restrict them from running in the background.

 

[Weirdo0815]

You may also be getting terrible reception in your school which would likely cause considerable battery drain. Maybe try turning off Data Sync for a day and see how well your battery life is. My father does that and sees 2-3 times the battery life, you just wont see any notifications for emails, facebook, etc.

 

[davidsnoodles]

i highly recommend getting franco's kernel. it's a dollar something on the market, but it VASTLY improved my battery life.

without really using my phone, i got 12 hours and it only discharged to about 50%. today, i used it constantly like an hour of bluetooth on my commute to and from school, about 3 hours of pandora music streaming, texting friend, and not to mention logged onto skype all day long. got home and at about 13 hours i was down to 4%.

oh btw, i'm running francos.kernel 16.2 and bugless beast rom 2/7. I get really good performance considering the battery life i get. i think when i ran quadrant last i got somewhere in the 2600 range? and like 7000 for antutu benchmark

the first picture is from using my phone all day and the second is when i wasn't using it that much.

i also undervolted my phone (not quite sure how to do that, just copied some numbers from other people lol). the good thing about francos.kernel that i think really improves battery life is the hotplug mod which disables one of the cores of the processor when the screen turns off.

 

[Halo]

You may also be getting terrible reception in your school which would likely cause considerable battery drain. Maybe try turning off Data Sync for a day and see how well your battery life is. My father does that and sees 2-3 times the battery life, you just wont see any notifications for emails, facebook, etc.

This. I have terrible reception in the building I work in. It's in a very strong 4G area, but once inside I can barely keep a signal. That being said, during the work while I'm at work, I keep it on 3G only and my battery still gets sucked down. On the weekends, when I'm at home or out and about, I keep 4G on and get great battery life.

 

[beargold23]

i highly recommend getting franco's kernel. it's a dollar something on the market, but it VASTLY improved my battery life.

without really using my phone, i got 12 hours and it only discharged to about 50%. today, i used it constantly like an hour of bluetooth on my commute to and from school, about 3 hours of pandora music streaming, texting friend, and not to mention logged onto skype all day long. got home and at about 13 hours i was down to 4%.

oh btw, i'm running francos.kernel 16.2 and bugless beast rom 2/7. I get really good performance considering the battery life i get. i think when i ran quadrant last i got somewhere in the 2600 range? and like 7000 for antutu benchmark

the first picture is from using my phone all day and the second is when i wasn't using it that much.

i also undervolted my phone (not quite sure how to do that, just copied some numbers from other people lol). the good thing about francos.kernel that i think really improves battery life is the hotplug mod which disables one of the cores of the processor when the screen turns off.

Hey what undervolted numbers are you using?

 

[anon(596177)]

Hey guys. Really need your help with something. I am a 15 year old guy who knows a little about android (a lot for my age). Not even close to the amount of information some (most) of you guys know. Anyways, I am a 9th grade student which means I have my phone in my pocket pretty much all day. I check the time every now and then, maybe 5 times a day. I am running CM 9 which is based off of 4.0.3. I always leave 3G on. If it's 3:30 and I have 21% decreasing at a ridiculously high rate, there has to be a major problem. Please reply to this thread with some information about what is causing this and any possible solutions. Much appreciated!

The fact that you have your phone unlocked and ROMed shows you already know more about android than many

But anyway, from your usage pic I would say one of your problems is your facebook app. Your facebook usage shouldnt be that high if you arent using it as well. I'd check to see what the update interval on that is and turn it to either 1hr or longer. Main reason I say that is because the facebook app is a battery hog.

Also, if you can deal with being on a stock ROM for a little while, the 4.0.4 update greatly improves standby battery life. The "Android OS" process at the top of your battery usage is a bug thats causing battery drain as well, which is fixed in 4.0.4. I'll bet youd see a great increase with that too.

 

[greydarrah]

I'd suggest trying out something like Juice Defender or Easy Battery Saver. Their basic function is to better regulate data exchange on your phone to save battery.

You didn't say, but has the phone always been this way or is it a recent development? If it's just the last day or two, you've probably got some runaway app causing trouble. A battery pull would fix that, but I'm guessing you already know this.

A number of people have traced some significant battery drain to the Facebook app. Might try deleting it and bookmarking a page in the browser as a temporary replacement. I'm not saying that you'll be stuck like that forever, but you could try a for a few days just to see how relevant the drain from the app might be. You have to actually delete (uninstall) the app to try this. Just not using it for a day wont have any effect.

If you've got a lot of widgets on your home screens, get rid of most of them (leave beautiful widgets and any others that you have to have). They are a constant source of data connectivity and can really pull a battery down. I've had a couple of calendar widgets that were terrible. Again, this is just something you could try for a couple of days to see if it helps. You don't need to uninstall them from your phone, just delete them from your home screens.

Try the Juice Defender. I think it will have a big impact.

 

[Run L1ke H3LL]

I had a similar problem. There are either of two causes of your battery woes.
1. You have poor service in your school which is causing your phone to drain battery looking for service.
-->The only way to remedy this is to run the 4.0.4 radios like a previous poster suggested.
2. You have an app that is waking your phone.
-->I believe that this is most likely the source of your problems. Based on your battery chart it looks like you have something waking your phone while it is off. Like I said, I had a similar problem. Diagnosing this problem and fixing it can be difficult since it may just be one or a number of apps waking your phone. First you need to start by stopping all data syncing. Next you need to remove all widgets from your homescreen. Disable anything that could drain your battery. Then, over the course of the next few days you need to add the widgets and data syncing back one by one until you find what is draining your battery.

Following these steps I found three apps draining my battery. Google+ Facebook and Prey Tracker.
I went from ~8hrs to ~14hrs of battery a day after disabling them; Moderate - Heavy usage.

 

[iviustang50h]

If it isn't a reception issue or an app eating battery life, try resetting your battery stats. I know Google said it supposedly doesn't make a difference, but from my experience (and many others) that's not true. Every time I've flash a new rom (with any of my Android phones) I've had to reset the stats else my phone would die rather quickly. YMMV and to each their own, but I highly recommend it.

 

[willlayb]

try letting the phone lock itself instead of hitting the lock button. i know that has helped my Android OS wake times that used to eat my battery.

 

[davidsnoodles]

Hey what undervolted numbers are you using?

well with francos new kernel 17.1 i think, the processor can be overclocked to 1500mhz, but when i tried that out my gnex was being buggy so i set max back to 1350. anyways here are the numbers i'm running

1500 mhz - 1400 mv (but my phone is set at a maximum of 1350)
1350 mhz - 1250 mv
1200 mhz - 1175 mv
1000 mhz - 1050 mv
700 mhz - 975 mv
350 mhz - 850 mv (but my phone is set at a minimum of 700, so this doesn't really apply)

 

[davidsnoodles]

I'd suggest trying out something like Juice Defender or Easy Battery Saver. Their basic function is to better regulate data exchange on your phone to save battery.

in my own honest opinion, i don't think that juice defender does that good of a job. what it's supposed to do it turn off your radios when your screen is off, and turn off wifi when you're out of a zone that it's set to have wifi, and allow certain applications to turn the radios on and off and stuff, but the difference in battery life was not noticeable to me. i've also read a lot of people saying that these applications do a lot more harm than help.

 

[dubge]

can you use franco's kernel with 4.04?

I just got 54.5 hours on 4.04 and the extended verizon battery (light use)