Occasional "hot flash"

[David Pool]

I have an LG Lucid (had it for about a year) that's been upgraded to Android 4. Occasionally, while on the charger, the back of the phone will get much warmer than usual. The battery condition app will still describe it as "healthy" and, from what I've read about the range of normal operating temps for a smartphone battery, it's probably not excessive. However, at the same time this is happening, the phone's operations of apps and display speed also slows down. The icons on each page of the home screen take awhile to "fill in"...apps take a long time to load, etc. So far, all I've done is just shut the phone down (not restart), wait a few minutes and then power it back up. And things are always normal after that. But I'm wondering if what I'm experiencing is commonplace and something to just roll with when it happens...or is it a sign of something else?

 

[B. Diddy]

It's a pretty common symptom, and usually suggests that there is some process that is working at an excessive level. It might be a rogue app with a runaway process, or perhaps frequent syncing. Things you can do to troubleshoot:

1. Check the Settings/Battery screen, and look at the breakdown of apps or processes that are using battery. The majority of battery use is usually from the screen, with Android OS second.

2. Install Wake Lock Detector and let it run for about a day. This app will tell you what apps are running wake locks, which essentially wakes up the phone to perform some sort of task. Some apps might be waking the phone up hundreds of times a day, and this might contribute to battery drain as well as increased CPU use (and therefore heat generation).

 

[David Pool]

Thanks for those tips...I installed WLD and by the end of the day yesterday I could tell that the main culprit was K-9 Mail. However, that's not a new app for me. I've had that installed since Day 1 even on my *previous* phone. So I would think its behavior would have been apparent by now. I've always had both it and, more recently, the Outlook.com email app set for "Push" because a) those apps provide that choice and b) the accounts on them are business related.

Still, thinking that maybe K-9 was a hog -- and capitalizing on the fact that my key employer (with the email account that was on K-9) recently moved their mail to Gmail -- I uninstalled K-9 and added that business account to my Gmail app. Looks like I might have been onto something because, so far at least, Gmail hasn't sent as many wakeups as K-9.

I see that the Facebook app is a bit of a hog in this regard but I knew that and, as above, I've had it on my phone a long time and I tend to use it (in the evenings). Now, the one hog that stands out to me is Google+, which I do NOT use at all. However, *did* recently take advantage of the ability to back up my phone's photo album to their cloud. When I checked out the app's settings, I saw that just about every Notification had been checked...and, even though no one is sending me anything, I'm sure it was out there looking. So I disabled all of those notifications and I'm anxious to see if the next 24 show Google+ dropping down the WLD's list.

Here's another thought: at the time that happened, I was in a mountain resort village where both cell signal and data network were present, but not terribly strong, Would that heat have come from the phone working hard to latch on to those signals, hold them, and allow an app like K-9 to make its polls?

 

[B. Diddy]

Apps that try to automatically refresh like Facebook can certainly contribute to battery drain. I always set these apps to manual refresh if possible, or the least frequent interval that is allowed. For Google+, you can go to Settings/Accounts/Google, and selectively turn off sync for it.

Poor signal can definitely lead to drain as well. The Verizon signal is terrible where I work, so I often turn on Airplane Mode there.

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