Is Froyo or Facebook killing my battery (or something else)?

[WarER4X]

So, like many of you, I've been running Froyo for a few weeks now. For the most part, everything has been fine, but my battery life has been terrible. I know there have been pther threads exploring this topic, but mine is of a more specific nature.

Consistently, in the battery usage menu, "cell standby" and "phone idle" have been #2  (after "display", which is obviously #1). The trouble I have is that Android doesn't give any details on these processes, so I can't properly diagnose the source of the drain.

I update to the (at the time) latest Facebook revision on the same day as Froyo and I know that Facebook was later updated due to a battery drain problem, so I don't think Facebook is the issue, but I could be wrong. I have also been getting a high number of FCs from the latest version of Astrid when not running in the foreground, which seems to suggest it is doing some background work (and failing at it).

So, does anyone know what might be in the "cell standby" or "phone idle" processes that is draining my battery so much? Or, is there a way for me to find out without having to unistall all my apps, one-by-one, one day at a time? Or, is this just a result of Froyo?

The drain is bad enough that my phone will be at less than 50% by the evening with virtually no use and it will be nearly dead if I have just a few short phone calls throughout the day. Compare that to the way it used to be under the same conditions, which is almost no drain be the end of the day if I wasn't using the phone.

Help!

-SR-

 

[Argodabar]

My battery life horrible after updating to Froyo. Ever since I rooted and put Cyanogen 6 RC2 on my phone my battery life has almost doubled. I dont think it has anything to do with Facebook because I have the updated version now and its fine. My phone was saying the same thing yours is saying so I'm guessing it has something to do with Froyo.

 

[CharlieL3]

I have Froyo and have had no problems with battery life.

 

[theiphonewannabe]

I know this is crossposting, but I have the same issue on my EVO with Froyo. Nearly the same battery stats too. Anyone have a reliable answer on this?

 

[flegma3124]

I'm having the same problem as u. I don't think its froyo as I've had it for a long time, rooted simply stunning 4.6 ultra low voltage. Its been running great until about last week. Same as u I take it to work and barely use it and its drops like 10 percent every 45 min to an hour. My astrid has also been force closing and also updated facebook. The only weird thing is one day its normal, and the next it drains like crazy. But for the past two days its been fine. Dunno...

Sent from my droid using Tapatalk

 

[pstinger]

Phone Idle and Cell Standby don't have anything associated with them...

Phone Idle is the process that runs whenever the phone is, well, idle; it's the thing that lets it wake up (I believe) from the idle state.

Cell Standby is just the radio usage of the battery; getting signal, keeping it... all the things your radio does when not actively used.

 

[theiphonewannabe]

Based on standby time though, your phone shouldn't be eating away battery while idle. Imagine if it worked that way in weight loss. Sit your way to skinny.....

 

[sniffs]

It's all based on signal. This is why they say WIFI is better for data than 3G.

if you are getting low bars, your phone actually increases power to the 3G radio to try and get a better signal.. while it does this, obviously your battery drains quicker.

 

[pstinger]

What sniffs said.

 

[WarER4X]

I'm having the same problem as u. I don't think its froyo as I've had it for a long time, rooted simply stunning 4.6 ultra low voltage. Its been running great until about last week. Same as u I take it to work and barely use it and its drops like 10 percent every 45 min to an hour. My astrid has also been force closing and also updated facebook. The only weird thing is one day its normal, and the next it drains like crazy. But for the past two days its been fine. Dunno...

Sent from my droid using Tapatalk

Same here. The experience varies from day to day, even at the same location where I have plenty of signal (my house). I am really starting to suspect Astrid as it is a common thread between us. I don't have it set to sync with anything. Perhaps it has something to do with the auto backup feature? I sure hope the Astrid folks are paying attention to all of the problem reports I've been sending them.

-SR-

 

[WarER4X]

FYI, Astrid just got updated to 3.2.1. We'll see if that fixes the problem.

-SR-

 

[jdwx]

Did Astrid fix that FC issue? I pulled it off my A855/2.2 till I knew. Thanx!!

 

[WarER4X]

No, it didn't seem to help. Though, the FCs for Astrid do seem to have been fixed with the latest versio. Now, I'm focusing on Facebook. I set Facebook syncing to "never" and removed the widget from my homescreen (which is useless if syncing is turned off anyway). We'll see what happens. If that doesn't help, I may uninstall astrid all together for a little bit and see how it goes.

All I know is that when I left the office yesterday my battery was at 50% and 2.5 hours later it was at 15% with no use. During that time, the "phone idle" process had become the #1 battery user. #2 was the display and #3 was cell standby. Phone Idle is using way more power than I think it should be. At the rate phone idle is draining my battery, I probably wouldn't get more than a day and a half off the charger, in airplane mode, with no use at all!

-SR-

 

[pstinger]

Not to minimize your problem, War, but my 'normal' use from 0800-1200 gets me down to 60% battery. If I didn't charge my Droid several times a day, I'd have a dead device before I got off work in the afternoon.

Now. If you're not using the device, of course those three processes are going to be the top users; those are percentage numbers, so if nothing else is using the battery (i.e. the device is not being used) then those three are going to rack up probably around 30-40% each. That said, I'm not sure what could be causing the poor battery life, honestly. I still haven't figured out mine, but I stopped trying.

 

[Nechasin]

I justed to put my two sense in. I have several weather programs that I like for different reasons. I found that by default they are set to auto refresh every 30 minutes. I turned that off along with other programs that I found running and didn't need to sync. This is only my first day, but I'm typically at around 40% at this time of day and I'm at 70%. I would suggest going into settings> applications>manager applications and click running to see what is currently running. Also check settings> applications>Running Services.

 

[WarER4X]

Well, after having the Facebook auto updates turned off for the last couple days, I thinkn there is a marked improvement in my battery life. I've had facebook set to auto update every hour since the day I bought the phone and have had no issues with battery life until about the time the latest facebook update came out. I'm not 100% what the connection is or how it could make phone idle drain battery so much faster than before, but for now, the battery life is doing much better.

@philip: I know that phone idle will be the highest battery drain if I'm not actually using the phone at all, but for that to be able to draw the total battery power so quickly (which has not historically been a problem for me with this phone) doesn't make any sense and is new behavior.

-SR-

 

[pstinger]

Precisely. I've just accepted that this thing drinks battery like it's Gatorade after a marathon.

 

[WarER4X]

On second thought, it's still draining pretty fast without activity. Hmmm...

-SR-

 

[WarER4X]

Update: having run out of other things to try, I decided to reinstall the 2.2 update (since I did it manually in the first place). So far, I've got over 50 minutes of up-time, 40 minutes of that with the display on, and have only burned ~10% battery. So, the phone has spent 10 minutes in idle mode and that hasn't been enough for it to show on the battery usage list. Before the reinstall, I think 10 minutes was enough for phone idle to show up, even though it wasn't near the top yet.

One wild card is that I've mostly been on wifi since the reinstall, but I don't know if that would have any impact on the phone idle battery drain rate.

We'll see what happens over the next day or so.

-SR-

PS: I turned auto-update for Facebook back on and reinstated the widget on my homescreen since turning it off didn't really fix anything.

 

[anthonyzul]

I have been trying to diagnose my battery problem for the last 2 weeks. Ever since the Froyo update I've been getting TERRIBLE battery usage. For instance today..

I woke up, checked my email and facebook then turned off the display while I got ready for my day. I grabbed my phone on the way out and made a quick call while walking to the train. While on the train I was texting 2 people for about 20 minutes. I got to work and checked 2 websites out. At this point it has been about 3 hours since I pulled the phone off the charger and with doing no more then what I've typed... the battery indicator was red. My phone died about 3.5 hours after being taken off the charger with minimal usage. I typically use my phone WAY more then that, and the battery has never been this much of an issue. I can't for the life of me figure out what is causing this battery drain.