Poor battery life - Kernel os sucking battery

[Syed Minhal Sherazi]

My HTC One M8 dies in just about 12h-15h with screen on time of 3h-4h. It is connected to Wi-Fi network 90% of the time and I don't use a cellular data connection. Auto-Sync is on. Screen brightness is either 25% or 50% in direct sunlight. I am on stock 4.4.4 Rom software number 3.28.401.9
I haven't came across any other M8s so I don't know if the issue is just with my phone. But my roommate has a Xperia Z1 and a friend has SGS4 both get around 30h of battery life with moderate to high use. The standby time is also not so good because I lose about 15%-25% battery in about 3h-4h everyday when I wake up in the morning. I've tried factory resetting my phone thrice but to no avail. I've installed GSAM and included the screenshots. I want to know if its normal and if not what can I do? Would re-flashing the firmware help? If yes how can I flash stock firmware?

 

[Rukbat]

The amount of power the kernel will draw is mainly dependent on the CPU clock speed. Are you running it overclocked?

Comparing the amount of time a battery lasts between 2 totally different phones is like comparing the gas mileage between a Chevy SUV and a Porsche.

If the phone isn't being overclocked, I'd see if they'd exchange it. 28% isn't outrageous, but it sounds a bit higher than "just a bit high".

 

[Syed Minhal Sherazi]

No I don't know how to overclock the CPU clock speed and it's running the stock un-rooted official firmware.

It's just that I've read in the reviews that the battery life of HTC One M8 is good and is better than almost all of the 2013 flagships. I'm a bit unsatisfied with the performance.

Of all the phones I've kept the line's share of the battery was consumed by the screen let alone the kernel and variations of screen brightness had a lot of effect on battery life but that is not the case here.

 

[whitelunchbag]

I would try wiping the cache from recovery

My M8 posted this

 

[neo905]

I noticed you don't have power saving on. Have you tried that?

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[Syed Minhal Sherazi]

I wiped the cache partition by going in to the recovery it made no difference. I checked the battery saver and things improved but just only a little. No noticeable change.

 

[stefanwi1987]

Same problem to me. I also tried wiping the cache partition, even a factory reset didn't help. Android kernel and system are still the top 2 batterie suckers...



I don't know what else to try...

 

[neo905]

What version of Google play services do you have?

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[ramy12]

I just had to have Verizon replace my phone for the same issue. I monitored w/ GSAM, turned off everything unnecessary to no avail. I'm hoping when the replacement gets here it will be better but I don't know. I admittedly don't know much about all this but curious if maybe it has something to do with the 4.4.3 or 4.4.4 updates which Verizon got notoriously late and seemed to correlate for my issues (Kernel and Android here too).

 

[stefanwi1987]

Play Services are version 6.5.87

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[sitlet]

Same problem here since the 4.4.4 update. With 4.4.3, I was getting horrible battery life, but I never really checked to see what was causing it. When the 4.4.4 update came out, I immediately noticed an increase in battery so I didn't think about it. But after a couple of weeks, I've noticed the same problem. 9/10 days my phone will last less than 12 hours with moderate use. When I first got the phone, it would last almost twice that long with the same usage. The screen was the biggest killer back then, now it's the kernal and OS.

 

[mulder5000]

I've had the same kernel/android-system issue since the 4.4.4 update on Sprint. Before the update, I would typically have 50% battery remaining after a 16 hour day with 2-3 hours of screen on time. Now, I'm around 10-15% remaining at the 12 hour mark. Switching runtimes (suggested in another thread), clearing the cache, and factory resetting the phone haven't helped.

 

[stefanwi1987]

Yesterday I figured out that the Google Search app was running the whole time (concerning process stats in developer menu). I've deactivated it and look there: Kernel and system are still the top apps in GSam, but my device only used 6% of battery in 10hours (yeah with a very small usage) but that wasn't possible before. The normal consumption was around 1.5-2.0% of battery per hour with the same usage. Maybe you want to give it a try. But be aware: With deactivating the app you won't be possible to use Google Now anymore. Also the Google search bar will disappear and the shortcut (slide up from the home button to open Google Search) will not work.

I'll continue monitoring it and will give you a feedback.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[stefanwi1987]

Yesterday I figured out that she Google Search app was running the whole time (concerning process stats in developer menu). I've deactivated it and look there: Kernel and system are still the top apps in GSam, but my device only used 6% of battery in 10hours (yeah with a very small usage) but that wasn't possible before. The normal consumption was around 1.5-2.0% of battery per hour with the same usage. Maybe you want to give it a try. But be aware: With deactivating the app you won't be possible to use Google Now anymore. Also the Google search bar will disappear and the shortcut (slide up from the home button to open Google Search) will not work.

I'll continue monitoring it and will give you a feedback.

Posted via the Android Central App

What I've forgotten to mention: Google Now, hotword detection and so on was deactivated in my configuration before I deactivated the Search app...

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[sitlet]

Anyone have any luck with anything on this? The kernel and Android OS on my phone are using nearly 50% of my battery. When I first got the phone, the two combined would be less than 10%. I used to be able to get through a full day with heavy usage, and now I can barely make it to 6 o'clock without charging.

 

[mulder5000]

My battery issue seemed to randomly clear up on it's own but came back again a few days later. In the past two weeks, it's been very inconsistent. Two days ago, I had 58% battery remaining after a 16 hour day. Yesterday, I had 12% with similar usage.

 

[stefanwi1987]

The things I've mentioned before also just helped temporarily, but battery life was still very inconsistent. I've shipped my device to HTC to let them fix the issue or to swap the phone. That was 1 week ago. Unfortunately I haven't heard anything from them till now. I hope that I will have my device back before Christmas.

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[TarekElsakka]

I have always had a terrible battery life running Sense (stock, custom, etc.) on this phone, and I must say that it all changed when I converted to GPE (5.0.1) with Elemental X kernel. Now my phone drops to 50% after very heavy usage and about 11 - 12 hours (with 2 hours and 33 minutes of screen on time), so I must say I am impressed with GPE and Elemental X - it's a pretty awesome combination.

 

[sitlet]

The things I've mentioned before also just helped temporarily, but battery life was still very inconsistent. I've shipped my device to HTC to let them fix the issue or to swap the phone. That was 1 week ago. Unfortunately I haven't heard anything from them till now. I hope that I will have my device back before Christmas.

Let us know if you have any luck. I am about to take my phone to Verizon and have them swap it out if this doesn't get any better. Yesterday I had to charge my phone THREE times. It was down to 50% by noon, charged it up, then back to about 40% by 9pm. Now, I did download the new SimCity game, and was playing that throughout the day. But, I only played it for maybe 2-3 mins every half hour. When I first got the phone, I played a racing game for 3 hours straight and only lost 25% battery. The kernel and System combined used about 60% of the battery yesterday, while the SimCity game only used about 9%.

EDIT: Has anyone had any luck fixing this with a factory reset? I've seen s few people say it didn't help, but not sure if it HAS helped anyone. I would try one, but I don't want to spend a whole day putting my phone back to normal if I don't have to.

 

[stefanwi1987]

I did a factory reset for three times. After the last one I didn't install any third party apps except of Gsam to determine if there is an app which kills the battery. That also didn't work... That was the final factor to send the phone back to HTC and let them fix the issue.

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