Optimizing G4 battery thread

[RedOctobyr]

I've got no idea what else to try. I'm down to 30% battery left at 3PM, with 36 minutes screen time, 42% Android System usage and 4 hours 20 minutes Held Awake. I've hardly used the phone at all today. I've only got gmail and calendar syncing with GPS set to battery saver mode and wake permission turned off in every app that allows it. This is after a factory reset a couple of days ago. I love the phone, but something unknown is definitely eating up my battery. I'd post GSAM screen shots, but what's the point...outside of Android System, no other apps show any significant battery usage.

I had weird performance today, my battery got slaughtered for some reason that I can't really figure out. I only had 15%-left at about 6PM, with 33 minutes of SOT.

This is definitely not typical for me.

The only 2 "odd" things I can think of:
- I tried to send an MMS text this morning, which failed. I didn't notice until tonight.
- I turned on the WiFi for most of the day. But our WiFi system at work connects without a password, then requires you to log in when you try to go to a website. I think it logged me out at lunch, and was unable to connect properly for the afternoon. Maybe it kept trying to do something?

In GSam, Android System consumed 39.8%, the next item was Kernel, at 8.8%. Android System listed 2h41m of CPU usage.

In the built-in "Battery usage" portion of settings, the first listing was Cell Standby, at 16%, then Android System at 15%, then Android OS at 13%, then Phone at 11%. Screen was only 7%. Android System listed 2h7m of CPU total, 28sec of CPU Foreground, and 8m of Keep awake. Android OS was 38m of CPU total, 1h56m of Keep awake. Data sent/received were under 1MB.

Really weird, and not typical. But I can't think of anything weird that I did today. I'm pretty sure I even did a Clear All this morning when I felt that the phone was warm after I got to work. I don't get a great signal at work, but that is normal.

 

[anon(782252)]

I had weird performance today, my battery got slaughtered for some reason that I can't really figure out. I only had 15%-left at about 6PM, with 33 minutes of SOT.

This is definitely not typical for me.

The only 2 "odd" things I can think of:
- I tried to send an MMS text this morning, which failed. I didn't notice until tonight.
- I turned on the WiFi for most of the day. But our WiFi system at work connects without a password, then requires you to log in when you try to go to a website. I think it logged me out at lunch, and was unable to connect properly for the afternoon. Maybe it kept trying to do something?

In GSam, Android System consumed 39.8%, the next item was Kernel, at 8.8%. Android System listed 2h41m of CPU usage.

In the built-in "Battery usage" portion of settings, the first listing was Cell Standby, at 16%, then Android System at 15%, then Android OS at 13%, then Phone at 11%. Screen was only 7%. Android System listed 2h7m of CPU total, 28sec of CPU Foreground, and 8m of Keep awake. Android OS was 38m of CPU total, 1h56m of Keep awake. Data sent/received were under 1MB.

Really weird, and not typical. But I can't think of anything weird that I did today. I'm pretty sure I even did a Clear All this morning when I felt that the phone was warm after I got to work. I don't get a great signal at work, but that is normal.

I would say your issues today were mostly attributed to the Wi-Fi. You can even see it in the battery graph. As soon as Wi-Fi became active, the battery immediately started going downhill and didn't even attempt to try and flat line at any point.

A good test might be to leave Wi-Fi on for a few hours then turn it off for a little bit to see if the constant drain slows down.

 

[RedOctobyr]

That seems reasonable. I'll keep an eye on it.

But I've had WiFi enabled for at least part of the day (half, if not more) at work, without the battery just tanking, as I recall. But I admittedly haven't grabbed other screenshots at work of GSam, with the graph showing when WiFi is on, etc.

 

[oldschoolsig]

Following the info on this thread and the one on XDA, my battery life is now superb. For instance, on Sunday when I used the phone a lot I got nearly 6 hours SOT and was still at 20% at 6pm with over 20 hours on battery. Today I haven't used the phone as much but I've been on battery for just over 19 hours with a bit less than one hour SOT and I'm still at 80%.. Very happy with the results. Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas, especially Txsizzler and Tourbound129.

Those Texas boys are all right....

 

[anon(782252)]

That seems reasonable. I'll keep an eye on it.

But I've had WiFi enabled for at least part of the day (half, if not more) at work, without the battery just tanking, as I recall. But I admittedly haven't grabbed other screenshots at work of GSam, with the graph showing when WiFi is on, etc.

Not sure then lol.

The only other thing I see is the phone signal tanking about the same time as Wi-Fi turned on but then it at least recovered to about 50%. But you already said phone signal is so so everyday.

 

[StoneRyno]

Well the last two days have been a loss for me to confirm any contribution YP had to my last remaining drainer track down. Yesturday I accidentally left location setting on power savings mode (which contrary to it's name uses more battery than GPS only setting for me). And today a game I have been playing for well over a year went nuts and kept my phone awake for over two hours and ate up my battery in hours with no time left in the day for a regular full cycle to get untainted data. Oddly this is the first time this happened with this game and there was no recent update vs yesturday or the last weeks. Hopefully tomorrow nothing nuts like this will happen.

I've got no idea what else to try. I'm down to 30% battery left at 3PM, with 36 minutes screen time, 42% Android System usage and 4 hours 20 minutes Held Awake. I've hardly used the phone at all today. I've only got gmail and calendar syncing with GPS set to battery saver mode and wake permission turned off in every app that allows it. This is after a factory reset a couple of days ago. I love the phone, but something unknown is definitely eating up my battery. I'd post GSAM screen shots, but what's the point...outside of Android System, no other apps show any significant battery usage.

Android system has several processes related to location services that wake and keep awake devices. On my G4 I found location services gone rogue due to other apps. Two of which I was able to identify and remove. Home depot and CVS apps. Not only were they showing up with several times more battery use indicated in Gsam and android's battery info but also the location services related wakes went down. I then proceeded to deny location service permissions to anything that had the permission that didn't need it. And wow there were a lot of apps with it that don't need it. That further reduced the location services wakes. But even after all that location services is still one of the biggest causes of wakes of my G4.

<<snip>> I average 3 hours SOT no matter what I do. <<snip>> The phone does last me all day, so it's fine. <<snip>>

Chances are there isn't much you can do. If you are getting a full day out of a full charge with 3 hours screen on time you aren't experiencing some of the problems others of us have which is why we see such drastic improvements. If you have followed the thread just look at what I had to go through to get from 9 hours out of a full charge to where I am at now with 18 hours out of a full charge. If you look closely at the uptime vs deep sleep you can see if your G4 is awake much beyond your screen on time. If so there is room to gain from eliminating consumption sources. But if you don't ever need to gain then it is only worth it if you like knowing that when you need it you will have the room for doing much more. The spare battery is a good comfort zone instead of having to tweak every last waste out. I personally am doing both.

The only 2 "odd" things I can think of:
- I tried to send an MMS text this morning, which failed. I didn't notice until tonight.
- I turned on the WiFi for most of the day. But our WiFi system at work connects without a password, then requires you to log in when you try to go to a website. I think it logged me out at lunch, and was unable to connect properly for the afternoon. Maybe it kept trying to do something?

I think you hit the nail on the head with the two out of the ordinary things being the cause of the keep awake. In all likelihood both contributed to that by the radios getting stuck and keeping awake. I had something similar happen to me on my previous smartphone where the carrier data radio glitched out and kept retrying to send/receive data and failed which put it in an infinite loop. It killed my battery in hours.

 

[greydarrah]

Well, yesterday, I did 4 things to my Verizon G4:

1. Uninstalled my favorite calendar app, CalenGoo and replaced it with the native calendar app.
2. Turned off location (follow me) in the Weather Channel app.
3. Uninstalled RunKeeper and replaced it with Strava (a different run tracking app).
4. Uninstalled updates to Google Play Services, rebooted and let it re-update.

I'm thrilled to report that after unplugging at 7:30AM, it's now 8:30PM and I have 65% battery left with Android Services usage down to 16% and 35 minutes screen time (a small amount, but that's because I've been scared to use it more, though truth be told, I'm no gamer, I prefer real people to social media, and I watch movies on my TV like a normal person, not on my tiny phone screen). I uninstalled RunKeeper, because I noticed that it was an app that ALWAYS showed up in my battery stats (using the native battery monitor) as an app that was still running (showing the "Stop" button enabled out to the side of it), long after my morning run was completed, even after hitting "clear all." This implied that it never shuts itself off. I doubt that the Google Play Services update uninstall had any real effect, because I'm coming from a fresh (2 day old) factory reset, but I could be wrong.

I still think that for those of us having battery issues, it's app related, likely apps that aren't yet playing well with 5.1.1, but that's a pretty difficult opinion to prove. I also think that some apps are overly aggressive with their location polls, which is why I turned off "follow me" in the Weather Channel app. For now, I'm going to leave everything as is and report back in a few days.

 

[RedOctobyr]

I think you hit the nail on the head with the two out of the ordinary things being the cause of the keep awake. In all likelihood both contributed to that by the radios getting stuck and keeping awake. I had something similar happen to me on my previous smartphone where the carrier data radio glitched out and kept retrying to send/receive data and failed which put it in an infinite loop. It killed my battery in hours.

A few other things occurred to me this morning:

- I had disabled/Debloated some apps the other day. I Disabled Google Hangouts on the phone, but I am periodically getting an "Unfortunately Hangouts has stopped" message. Which seems odd for an app that shouldn't be running.
- I had both "Show touch" options enabled in Developer Options. But it seems unlikely that this would do much.
- I had copied some MP3s onto the SD card, and I know a few of them were corrupted. So perhaps the phone was trying to index some damaged files.

I didn't really change anything today, but got better battery life (not stunning, but better). I'll keep exploring this.

 

[StoneRyno]

A few other things occurred to me this morning:

- I had disabled/Debloated some apps the other day. I Disabled Google Hangouts on the phone, but I am periodically getting an "Unfortunately Hangouts has stopped" message. Which seems odd for an app that shouldn't be running.
- I had both "Show touch" options enabled in Developer Options. But it seems unlikely that this would do much.
- I had copied some MP3s onto the SD card, and I know a few of them were corrupted. So perhaps the phone was trying to index some damaged files.

I didn't really change anything today, but got better battery life (not stunning, but better). I'll keep exploring this.

I was getting that hangouts stopped working message for awhile when I first got my G4 but that message stopped some time ago now not sure exactly when or why it stopped. Perhaps it is related to one of the other disabled apps if that app was some how related to hangouts. See my earlier posted list of disabled things and compare to what you have disabled to see if perhaps there is some relevance to this idea. I would tend to agree that show touch options shouldn't have any significant battery consumption. Without knowing more details of wakelocks and the items listed in the battery use info no conclusion can be drawn regarding the corrupt mp3s I think.

 

[wrich2005]

Everyone with their battery conservation apps/debloating.. it seems like a good idea on paper. I don't really have any issue with background apps killing battery I can get through the night using only about 2-3% and general standby during the day (when I get more notifications) is around 1 percent an hour. The real issue for most people is the screen, I can chew through 10% of battery with 20 minutes of screen on time. You cant fix that with all these tricks unfortunately...

 

[anon(782252)]

Everyone with their battery conservation apps/debloating.. it seems like a good idea on paper. I don't really have any issue with background apps killing battery I can get through the night using only about 2-3% and general standby during the day (when I get more notifications) is around 1 percent an hour. The real issue for most people is the screen, I can chew through 10% of battery with 20 minutes of screen on time. You cant fix that with all these tricks unfortunately...

Hmm, on paper huh? I'm not in some lab experimenting. These 'tricks' actually work as proven time and time again by screenshots of many people.

And yep, it is a power hungry screen, especially if it's run at full brightness. But what did you expect? It's a 5.5" QHD screen. It takes power to push all those pixels with the brightness turned up all the way.

 

[StoneRyno]

Nice. I've a hunch that YP might be one of your wake issues. Seems just like the type of app that would be looking for location all the time.

If you can live without it even for a day, I'd uninstall YP and see if your keep awake time drops noticeably. At least you'd know if it has an issue. You could then skip reinstall or install it again knowing it's a bit of a hog. Knowledge is power!

Posted via the Android Central App

Confirmed, YP was causing wakes in the hundreds. Given that in the last week I seem to keep having unknown cause random occurrences of gone awry something or other battery drains going on I can't say for sure how much gain there is from not having YP installed. The first day without it I got 20 hours on a full charge with 2 hours screen on time. I'm going to start stripping out apps I don't use hardly at all to narrow down potential sources of random rogue battery draining. Wake counts from "phone", "android system", and "google play services" are drastically lower from in the thousands to a few hundred give or take each. I'm going to do one more day with the last change of uninstalling YP to see if the first days results are duplicated. Before moving on to removing or changing anything else.

 

[wrich2005]

Hmm, on paper huh? I'm not in some lab experimenting. These 'tricks' actually work as proven time and time again by screenshots of many people.

And yep, it is a power hungry screen, especially if it's run at full brightness. But what did you expect? It's a 5.5" QHD screen. It takes power to push all those pixels with the brightness turned up all the way.

If you're getting 1% an hour loss on standby and you're chasing rogue apps its stupid and pointless when the screen on time is the real problem

And I never use it on full brightness to see it go down 5% in 20 minutes or less BTW.. Auto only

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Kr0m]

I've had the phone for about a month now. I'm still glad I switched from the m8 and overall pleased with it.
I'm generally satisfied with the battery life and have both quick charge in the car and home along with a spare battery if needed.
Latest info from gsm:

Sent from my LG-H812 using Tapatalk

 

[StoneRyno]

I confirmed the results of my first day without YP app. So nearly all the battery wasters have been identified. The G4 is only awake for 45 minutes longer than my screen on time.

And reduced SOT is basically either screen brightness turned up which consumes significant battery or its an app or service running rogue eating battery. The point of this thread is to minimize rogue apps and reduce background and idle battery consumption in the effort to maximize battery life. All while using the phone how each person chooses.

I think it will help a lot of people. We have found quite a number of things that cause drain issues for people to look into. The less stuff that wastes the battery the more we can actively use our G4. Most indoor lighting 20% or lower brightness should be sufficient. I have designed a profile for tasker than adjusts the brightness when my screen turns on to levels I carefully tuned for varied levels of interior ambient light levels to maximize power savings from the screen without being uncomfortable while looking at the screen. Unfortunately due to a bug I'm not able to solve yet I have not shared it on here. If I have time this week I'll test and see exactly how much screen on time is possible by leaving the screen on until the battery gets down to maybe 20% or lower.

 

[Wullie32]

I'm astonished (and fairly worried) by some of the SOTs in this thread. I get nowhere near most of them, usually 2-3 hours max. I was at a wedding yesterday and used my phone mainly for checking football scores (Chrome, on data, not Wi-Fi) and taking pictures. I had screen on of no more than a couple of hours, was down to 15% by the time I got home, and this was with a 25% boost from my portable charger in the middle of the day. I'm also finding the phone getting very hot when using it for 10-15 minutes at a time.

I've installed Lux and I'm going to try some of the other tweaks in this thread to see what I can do to stop this excessive drain.

 

[anon(782252)]

I'm astonished (and fairly worried) by some of the SOTs in this thread. I get nowhere near most of them, usually 2-3 hours max. I was at a wedding yesterday and used my phone mainly for checking football scores (Chrome, on data, not Wi-Fi) and taking pictures. I had screen on of no more than a couple of hours, was down to 15% by the time I got home, and this was with a 25% boost from my portable charger in the middle of the day. I'm also finding the phone getting very hot when using it for 10-15 minutes at a time.

I've installed Lux and I'm going to try some of the other tweaks in this thread to see what I can do to stop this excessive drain.

Do you have any screenshots of battery use that you can post?

Also, Chrome ( public release version) can be a huge battery hog. I'd suggest chrome beta, Chrome Dev, or my personal favorite right now, #NOChromo ( its chrome but with built in ad blocker that doesn't require root). I'll try to circle back and post a link.

Screenshots of battery life would me great so we can see what you are dealing with.

 

[KPMcClave]

I'm astonished (and fairly worried) by some of the SOTs in this thread. I get nowhere near most of them, usually 2-3 hours max. I was at a wedding yesterday and used my phone mainly for checking football scores (Chrome, on data, not Wi-Fi) and taking pictures. I had screen on of no more than a couple of hours, was down to 15% by the time I got home, and this was with a 25% boost from my portable charger in the middle of the day. I'm also finding the phone getting very hot when using it for 10-15 minutes at a time.

I've installed Lux and I'm going to try some of the other tweaks in this thread to see what I can do to stop this excessive drain.

The camera chews through battery very quickly (even given that's always been the case with cell phones). If you used it for any video at all, even more so. Chrome also uses more resources than most other apps in most of our experiences.

So, given your description of your usage over the weekend, I'm not shocked your SoT wasn't great.

Are you saying you always get only 2-3 hours during whatever a normal day of use is for you?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[KPMcClave]

Also, Chrome ( public release version) can be a huge battery hog. I'd suggest chrome beta, Chrome Dev, or my personal favorite right now, #NOChromo ( its chrome but with built in ad blocker that doesn't require root). I'll try to circle back and post a link.

I used #NoChromo for a while, but kept getting occasional pages that simply wouldn't load. Now I'm back to Chrome Dev (which also hogs it's share of battery).

Have you had that issue with some pages, tourbound?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[anon(782252)]

I used #NoChromo for a while, but kept getting occasional pages that simply wouldn't load. Now I'm back to Chrome Dev (which also hogs it's share of battery).

Have you had that issue with some pages, tourbound?

Posted via the Android Central App

I haven't seen that happen at all unless it's an ad supported link that I click on. If I do that then I get the screenshot below.

Are you getting it randomly?