Optimizing G4 battery thread

[KPMcClave]

You will always be disappointed with battery life and SOT if you compare it to the G2. It had a smaller screen and was 1080p. The G4 has more real estate and many more pixels to push which is taxing on the battery.

That said, 4,5,6 hours of SOT is certainly achievable.

Yep. GSam is showing my Screen On per complete charge at 6 h 16 m since July 8th when I reset the data for the app.

I've mentioned this in passing, and alluded to it as well, but the SOT and overall life is wildly variable on the G4.

While camera use has always eaten more battery on cell phones, this particular phone seems to *really* chew up battery. I am conscious of the difference in battery drain if I use the camera a decent amount. The drain rate per hour can double, and even triple or quadruple, when using the camera. I'm talking about drain in use compared to drain with use of the camera. Not drain while sleeping vs. using the camera.

I suspect there may be something else doing similar things (maybe WiFi/LTE), but the camera is most obvious.

So, depending on use, your battery's stats can take huge swings from one day to another. I realize this seems obvious and as it's always been, but in my experience it's much more extreme on the G4. Given all it does and with what it does it, that isn't a shock.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[greydarrah]

I read in a thread over at xda where someone disabled VoLTE and is now getting much better battery life. I'm pretty sure, on a Verizon G4, that means turning off HD Voice under Advanced Calling. I'm trying it out today, but I was wondering, does anyone know what I'm actually giving up by turning that off?

 

[anon(782252)]

I read in a thread over at xda where someone disabled VoLTE and is now getting much better battery life. I'm pretty sure, on a Verizon G4, that means turning off HD Voice under Advanced Calling. I'm trying it out today, but I was wondering, does anyone know what I'm actually giving up by turning that off?

I'm not on Verizon but this might help with the features:

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...support/advanced-calling-faqs/&token=hMWJTMJa

 

[somedude1234]

Today I used the phone mostly for reading web pages and NY Times app, under an hour of streaming music (with screen off or while reading and headphones), a half dozen photos, a few short phone calls (not VoLTE). Total screen time used so far: 2 hours 3 minutes. Screen brightness: Auto 43%. Mostly LTE, a little WiFi use. Battery left: 23%. See screenshots. Thanks for any input you may have.

 

[somedude1234]

I did notice that today my phone is using GPS way more than it should, but I don't know what's triggering it.

Today I used the phone mostly for reading web pages and NY Times app, under an hour of streaming music (with screen off or while reading and headphones), a half dozen photos, a few short phone calls (not VoLTE). Total screen time used so far: 2 hours 3 minutes. Screen brightness: Auto 43%. Mostly LTE, a little WiFi use. Battery left: 23%. See screenshots. Thanks for any input you may have.
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[anon(782252)]

I did notice that today my phone is using GPS way more than it should, but I don't know what's triggering it.View attachment 190885

Something seems to have triggered it for sure. I just happened to the screenshots of my battery life yesterday and Android System didn't use GPS at all after about 15 hours up time.

Probably going to have a pretty negative effect on your battery life today.

 

[somedude1234]

So I did a factory data reset, for the 2nd or 3rd time, and I'm seeing improvement finally: android system, play services, and other OS resources are consuming less battery, leaving more for screen and other apps. The issue appears to have been the near constant GPS use by Android system with no indication of which App or process was requesting it. However, I'm now working on a bare phone with almost no apps or changes and I'm paranoid that something I do will re_trigger the problem but I won't be able to pinpoint the cause. I think it's too soon to declare victory, but perhaps I can be cautiously optimistic. If I reach or exceed 3 hours SOT tomorrow I'll be pretty happy.

Something seems to have triggered it for sure. I just happened to the screenshots of my battery life yesterday and Android System didn't use GPS at all after about 15 hours up time.

Probably going to have a pretty negative effect on your battery life today.

 

[Stryyker]

Hello.
I have greenify(with most apps), auto Brightness (at 50%) (kinda hate the auto on G4 comparing to Z3, most times is way to dark the screen and annoying to watch and need get the bright more high), with auto sync off, accounts all off, and manual sync, data/wifi only when need it, gps off. Most of standbytime seems good, overall sot seems low but im on my 2º charge today.

One thing i see on gsam app, is the G4 regarding have greenify or not, when he drops at 20% most of the times shows 1,2h (keep awake) which seems a lot, with greenify auto freeze (no root), comparing to my Z3 or Z3TC (with probably 10,15min awake)

Any idea what could be?

 

[greydarrah]

Hello.
I have greenify(with most apps), auto Brightness (at 50%) (kinda hate the auto on G4 comparing to Z3, most times is way to dark the screen and annoying to watch and need get the bright more high), with auto sync off, accounts all off, and manual sync, data/wifi only when need it, gps off. Most of standbytime seems good, overall sot seems low but im on my 2º charge today.

One thing i see on gsam app, is the G4 regarding have greenify or not, when he drops at 20% most of the times shows 1,2h (keep awake) which seems a lot, with greenify auto freeze (no root), comparing to my Z3 or Z3TC (with probably 10,15min awake)

Any idea what could be?

Man...you've got so much stuff turned off that it's hardly a smart phone anymore. Not trying to sound like a smarta$$, it just seems sad to turn all that off. I'd rather just run the phone, using everything, and plug it in if needed. If I remember a post from you earlier, your phone is new, and the battery does seem to get a good bit better after a few days of usage/charging.

As far as your wake time, I think Google stuff is overly aggressive in 5.1.1. You can try the instructions below to turn off location permission and wake permission in most of your apps, but unfortunately, you can't access those permissions for anything system or Google related:

To change permissions for apps (like wake locks):
Download Quick shortcut maker on the play store.
Open it, change 'incremental search' to ' normal search' and search for Access.
You should get a Settings option that you can expand. Look for one labeled Access Lock and click on it.
You can then make that a shortcut and put it on one of your home screens.

 

[Stryyker]

I know it sounds weird and wrong, but here with my Plan Vodafone i cant "stay" 24h with "all on".
That said, i always have gps off because i dont use it (turn on only when need it), wifi is off (on when need it, like outside house at bar or something), at home i have my pc. About 4G and data, i have only 500Mb per month that said is clearly smart i need careful with my data allways On 24h per day, because 500Mb is not that high for a plan on my country.

And most times i dont need this all stuff turn on because im not a "high" user, or a casual one to
That said, is really smart have most of the things off (and turn on when necessary only)

Btw i dont have root and not planing to put it either for now. I have Gsam on G4 to, but im going to wait few days and more charges and i will post the results here after. Because i dont understand much.

I only done a ex because i remember on my z3 with the same apps (stamina on ofc), greenify the same apps, and as clearly i got less wake time.

 

[greydarrah]

I know it sounds weird and wrong, but here with my Plan Vodafone i cant "stay" 24h with "all on".
That said, i always have gps off because i dont use it (turn on only when need it), wifi is off (on when need it, like outside house at bar or something), at home i have my pc. About 4G and data, i have only 500Mb per month that said is clearly smart i need careful with my data allways On 24h per day, because 500Mb is not that high for a plan on my country.

And most times i dont need this all stuff turn on because im not a "high" user, or a casual one to
That said, is really smart have most of the things off (and turn on when necessary only)

Btw i dont have root and not planing to put it either for now. I have Gsam on G4 to, but im going to wait few days and more charges and i will post the results here after. Because i dont understand much.

I only done a ex because i remember on my z3 with the same apps (stamina on ofc), greenify the same apps, and as clearly i got less wake time.

With only 500 MB of data, I guess it's smarter to leave everything turned off unless needed. You could still Quick Shortcut Maker and use Access Lock to turn off wake lock permissions on most apps. It should help. Another app that would probably be more simple to use for this is called LG Access Permission Control. It does the same thing, except you just have to download it and launch it. Another G4 user wrote the app.

 

[StoneRyno]

Update for my trek to nail down every battery waster on my G4. I uninstalled the walgreens app. It wasn't as big a waster as the previous apps but the reason I removed it is because despite turning off keep awake and locations permissions in access lock the app still was causing over 200 wake locks shown as walgreens in wakelock detector. That is twice as many wakelocks as facebook and a couple other of my frequently daily used apps and for an app that sits unused 99.9% of the time (aka used for a few minutes at most once per week). All these shopping apps I've gotten rid of for wasting battery I have gone back to using their websites to get the same info and services. I'm fairly happy with my results so far. I've not been so focused on tracking down the remaining drainers. I have a list of the top wakelocks left. Here they are if anyone has any info that may help identify their causes.

*alarm* (over 300 count)
RILJ (over 300 count)
IO_eventbus (over 200 count)
sync loop wakelock (over 100 count)
WiFi off decay is not used (low count but long wakelock duration of 2m39s) not sure if long duration is better or worse than wakelock counts
audio mix (over 100 count and long duration of 1m40s) long duration when compared to everything else that is only a few seconds
*net_schueduler* (over 100 count)
gcm_conn (over 100 count)

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.

If you took a lot of photos that will attribute quite a deal to battery drain. I went to the zoo with my family not too long ago. I had taken several dozen photos and from a full charge at 10am to 15% by 5pm. Twice as fast as normal for my typical daily use and status in tracking down battery wasters at the time of 13 hours on a full charge with 2-3 hours screen on time. Also carrier data, in my years of experience of testing battery drains, consumes more than using the same amount of data over wifi. And signal strength is a factor in that as well.

Guys, I really need some HELP!

I have 50% battery left with 2h 26 minutes of SoT, and usage on battery is 16h 34 minutes. This may sound normal to you, but the brightness I used in this time period is 0%! Yes, with zero brightness, I won't even reach 5 hours of SoT.

I don't have any games installed, every possible bloatwares are disabled/uninstalled, no auto-sync, no nfc-data-bluetooth,location! I only had wifi on, usually. Only when needed. Do you think this might be a bad battery?

Every answer is welcomed.

It isn't a bad battery. There is most likely some work needed to track down battery wasters. If you have been following the thread I'll use myself as an example for tracking them down. First things first looking into wakelocks will point out the biggest of them. Many of those have been pointed out in the thread. Depending on how much each waster is wasting you could gain anywhere from 1 to 3 or more hours of time on a full charge with keeping the same screen on time. Resulting in more battery available for more screen on time.

I was sitting in the car on 4G when the screenshot was taken. The previous hours were on WiFi.

What I'm saying is: use the G4 on 4G with the screen at any level of reasonable brightness and it sucks the battery in well under 3 hours screen time.

To get decent battery life I have to use WiFi and keep the screen at close to zero brightness, as demonstrated by the screenshots.

Posted via the Android Central App

Unfortunately carrier data consumes more battery for the same amount of data vs wifi in my experience. My advice to ShadYaqz above I recommend to you as well. There probably are some battery wasters to track down and deal with accordingly. Every change I have made to rid myself of the wasters hasn't impacted what I do.

I did notice that today my phone is using GPS way more than it should, but I don't know what's triggering it.

I used access lock and turned off permissions to location in every app that wanted it except for one app that I use that needs it in order for the app to do what I use it for. Also I recommend changing location services to mode GPS only. Using either of the other two options consumed significantly more battery. Which is odd when you consider power savings option is supposed to use the least. The problem was that it and high accuracy were causing hundreds of more wakelock compared to GPS only. Also I found google location history and my place turned on both were significant drainers as well that weren't really benefiting me so I turned them off. They would be using GPS et al hardware used by the mode set.

 

[anon(9582230)]

Update for my trek to nail down every battery waster on my G4. I uninstalled the walgreens app. It wasn't as big a waster as the previous apps but the reason I removed it is because despite turning off keep awake and locations permissions in access lock the app still was causing over 200 wake locks shown as walgreens in wakelock detector. That is twice as many wakelocks as facebook and a couple other of my frequently daily used apps and for an app that sits unused 99.9% of the time (aka used for a few minutes at most once per week). All these shopping apps I've gotten rid of for wasting battery I have gone back to using their websites to get the same info and services. I'm fairly happy with my results so far. I've not been so focused on tracking down the remaining drainers. I have a list of the top wakelocks left. Here they are if anyone has any info that may help identify their causes.

*alarm* (over 300 count)
RILJ (over 300 count)
IO_eventbus (over 200 count)
sync loop wakelock (over 100 count)
WiFi off decay is not used (low count but long wakelock duration of 2m39s) not sure if long duration is better or worse than wakelock counts
audio mix (over 100 count and long duration of 1m40s) long duration when compared to everything else that is only a few seconds
*net_schueduler* (over 100 count)
gcm_conn (over 100 count)



If you took a lot of photos that will attribute quite a deal to battery drain. I went to the zoo with my family not too long ago. I had taken several dozen photos and from a full charge at 10am to 15% by 5pm. Twice as fast as normal for my typical daily use and status in tracking down battery wasters at the time of 13 hours on a full charge with 2-3 hours screen on time. Also carrier data, in my years of experience of testing battery drains, consumes more than using the same amount of data over wifi. And signal strength is a factor in that as well.



It isn't a bad battery. There is most likely some work needed to track down battery wasters. If you have been following the thread I'll use myself as an example for tracking them down. First things first looking into wakelocks will point out the biggest of them. Many of those have been pointed out in the thread. Depending on how much each waster is wasting you could gain anywhere from 1 to 3 or more hours of time on a full charge with keeping the same screen on time. Resulting in more battery available for more screen on time.



Unfortunately carrier data consumes more battery for the same amount of data vs wifi in my experience. My advice to ShadYaqz above I recommend to you as well. There probably are some battery wasters to track down and deal with accordingly. Every change I have made to rid myself of the wasters hasn't impacted what I do.



I used access lock and turned off permissions to location in every app that wanted it except for one app that I use that needs it in order for the app to do what I use it for. Also I recommend changing location services to mode GPS only. Using either of the other two options consumed significantly more battery. Which is odd when you consider power savings option is supposed to use the least. The problem was that it and high accuracy were causing hundreds of more wakelock compared to GPS only. Also I found google location history and my place turned on both were significant drainers as well that weren't really benefiting me so I turned them off. They would be using GPS et al hardware used by the mode set.

Hi, thank you for your answer. I think I did all possible tweaks to get more juice. I mean, almost everything is disabled. I also restricted location/keep awake for every app from Access Lock. What can I do, no root.

 

[StoneRyno]

Hi, thank you for your answer. I think I did all possible tweaks to get more juice. I mean, almost everything is disabled. I also restricted location/keep awake for every app from Access Lock. What can I do, no root.

I just looked back through your posts. The screenshots where it looks like you have over 20 hours on battery with almost 5 hours of screen on time. If you are getting that much out of a full charge daily there isn't much left if anything to eliminate. In fact you would have room to do some stuff you have sacrificed for getting more out of your battery. My current results on my G4 is 21+ hours out of a full charge with 3 hours screen on time. I have only 45 minutes of wake time that is attributed to activity that is not me actively using it. I posted a list of the wakelocks that are left that are causing a significant portion of that. Unfortunately I don't know what is triggering them. I'm not too worried about it since the likelihood I have to swap to the spare battery is slim. But it would still be nice to know. Extrapolating from my usage I could likely get 10 hours of screen on time. But then I would need to swap to the spare battery or charge up at that time. I can't even imagine using it that much even with worse case scenario of day on the town with friends or family where I would be using it frequently for photo taking, searching for stuff, etc.

 

[KPMcClave]

I agree with StoneRyno. At 20 hours per full charge, with 5 hours of SoT, you're above what a good number of folks have reported for one category, the other, or both.

Some of us are getting a bit more, enough that it would be nice for you to tack on battery life to reach that level, but not so high that it might not just be a usage or coverage difference, I'd guess.

GSam this morning shows my averages at 20 h 18 m and 6 h 16 m SoT from 7/8 onward. My Droid Turbo wound up with 1 d battery life and 8+ hours SoT. I knew I'd be taking a step down from those numbers, but I'm happy with my G4 Battery life, by and large. It just took longer than usual to wrangle it to that level (about 3 weeks of tweaks, trial and error) .

On days when I use the camera for more than a shot or two, my average life drops radically fromm the averages I posted above.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Stryyker]

Hello all again. This is my 3º charge.
What you guys think? Since i dont know nothing about this stats
Ps: 3h sot atm at 10-15% batt left.

 

[StoneRyno]

I think I found one thing still wasting battery on my G4 but I'm not sure what can be done to correct it. I have sprint connection optimizer disabled in settings yet it still runs in the background as one process and one service as shows uptime as the whole uptime of the G4. I other words I rebooted this morning just before taking it off the charger and it has been 14 hour since then. In running info it shows SCO with the same exact duration. How can I stop this. I turned it off so it should not be running a process and service in the background.

Other things of note in background stuff I want to see if they are wasting battery: Music is running a music widget updater services. I don't use that. Can it be disabled somehow? Smart contacts is running one process and two services in the background. I don't use this feature can it be disabled somehow?

 

[beagle82]

So i have been following this thread for a while, and am really enjoying it. Has anybody tried enabling or disabling fast dormancy in the hidden service menu. I understand that in some cases having it either on or off could be beneficial to battery life. I think by default it is set to 'unknown'. I suppose it all comes down to whether or not your network supports it properly. But i don't think it would hurt to experiment a little.

 

[anon(782252)]

Hello all again. This is my 3º charge.
What you guys think? Since i dont know nothing about this stats
Ps: 3h sot atm at 10-15% batt left.

55 hours up with 3 hours SOT is quite impressive! Well done!

 

[anon(782252)]

I think I found one thing still wasting battery on my G4 but I'm not sure what can be done to correct it. I have sprint connection optimizer disabled in settings yet it still runs in the background as one process and one service as shows uptime as the whole uptime of the G4. I other words I rebooted this morning just before taking it off the charger and it has been 14 hour since then. In running info it shows SCO with the same exact duration. How can I stop this. I turned it off so it should not be running a process and service in the background.

Other things of note in background stuff I want to see if they are wasting battery: Music is running a music widget updater services. I don't use that. Can it be disabled somehow? Smart contacts is running one process and two services in the background. I don't use this feature can it be disabled somehow?

My SCO app/service are running as well. It should be able to be debloated permanently of you have root. I ran a completely debloated ROM on my G3 that didn't have it. I have root but without an unlocked boot loader (or a bypass like the G3 had) I'm a little more hesitant to play around with removing things.

However I will say that my phone is amazing even with SCO sitting there.