Normally I charge my phone nightly right before I go to bed and don't plug it in at all during the day usually.
I have noticed that on days where I have to use my phone heavily and require a charge midway through the day for the next week my phones battery life is almost cut in half. If I charge it regularly at night for a week or so the battery life will go back to normal. Has anyone else noticed this behavior? I'm trying to figure out if this is an incredible issue or an android issue.
Another thing I noticed is that under the battery stats it lists that my awake time is 43 hours. Its just slightly less that the up time. This makes me think that my phone isn't going to sleep. Anyone know how to tell if my phone is sleeping or tell me which app is keeping my phone from sleeping?
Install this app
http://www.appbrain.com/app/spare-parts/com.androidapps.spare_parts
Go to partial wake. in one of the drop downs.
I checked the partial wake usage and I don't see anything out of the ordinary.
I actually have an update to the situation. As a last resort I wiped my phone and loaded Cyanogen 6.1. At first it was working awesome. Battery life was awesome but as time went on the battery life got worse and worse and now i'm back where I started.
It sure seems like there is software problem with the way the phone tracks the battery usage/charging information. As I said it seems like charging the phone midway through the day or charging the phone before the phone is dead seems to have a negative effect on the battery. I don't get it. Letting the phone completely die isn't realistic. Charging the phone when I go to bed without affecting how long the phone last after the next charge should be totally doable you would think.
Does anyone have any suggestions or insight that might help me out.
You don't say if you charge with the phone powered off or on. But sound like you're always charging with the phone turned on.
I don't think the phone charges fully while turned on (to prevent overheating maybe? ).
If you can, I'd suggest trying to charge with the phone off, at least during the nightly charge.
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Unrevoked forever
SkyRaider Sense 3.5
Radio 2.15.00.11.15
Yes I do charge my phone while its powered on (like the rest of the world). I don't know anyone that turns their phone off to charge.
My phone is paid for by my company so that they can get ahold of me in the event of a server failure or some other IT related disaster. If the phone was off I wouldn't be able to receive those important calls.
I can't believe no one else has witnessed this type of activity with the incredible. I have tried 2 phones (replaced for an unrelated reason) and 3 batteries. The behavior seems like a software glitch. I have noticed with with both AOSP and Sense Roms.
Does anyone have an in depth understanding of how the battery system works on this phone. I also have an Iphone and the battery life compared to my android phone is ridiculous. I would use the Iphone exclusively but it doesn't do everything my android phone can do. I'm hoping there is a way to fix this.
Well, now you do know someone who charges with their phone off. Me!
I'm in IT as well and on call one week per month. But we don't run a third shift, so late night calls are almost never, and they have my land line number.
Back on topic, I have experienced better battery life while charging with the phone off. Maybe you can get an external charger until a solution is found.
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Unrevoked forever
SkyRaider Sense 3.5
Radio 2.15.00.11.15
Well i'm on call 24/7 and I don't have a landline.
What do you mean by "get an external charger until a solution is found." Do you mean a second charger to charge during the day? I have plenty of chargers. Thats part of the problem. Charging in the middle of the day I believe is causing the problem. Until a solution is found? Are you saying there is in fact a problem?
Having to leave my phone plugged in all day kind of defeats the purpose of having a wireless phone don't you think?
Please...anyone have any knowledge of how the charging system works in android and specifically how it might work differently on the incredible?
trevoryour said:
What do you mean by "get an external charger until a solution is found." Do you mean a second charger to charge during the day?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should have said get an extra battery and a stand-alone charger that allows you to charge the extra battery while it's disconnected from the phone.
Have you read the thread in general titled 'your battery gauge is lying to you'. (or something like that). Good read. Also there's hundreds of other threads on the inc's battery issues. Well known problem.
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Unrevoked forever
SkyRaider Sense 3.5
Radio 2.15.00.11.15
If your up time and awake time are essentially the same, you definitely have something running in the background. Try menu/settings/applications/running services and see what program might be running that shouldn't be. You can also use an app called System Panel to do a comprehensive survey. I recently had an update that resulted in the program running continuously in the background, affecting my battery life.
Some other threads have discussed that after 40+ hours of up time, their phone goes into max CPU usage all the time. Again, using the app System Panel, I confirmed this for my own phone at 45 hours. My ROM is the stock Froyo 2.2 with a custom kernel. the simple solution is to power off/power on the phone which resets the uptime.
My routine is to charge the phone with power on over night so I can use the alarm. When I get up in the morning, I power off the phone and bump charge it for about 30 minutes until the light turns green again. Then I'm usually good for about 10 - 12 hours of uptime with 3-4 hours of awake time using a 1500 battery. That time can also be reduced considerably if I'm receiving a poor 3G signal.
I did originally have a problem with a program not allowing my phone to sleep but I have since uninstalled that program and now my wake time numbers are where they should be. I think the remaining battery issues are a result of me having to charge my phone in the middle of the day as a result of the misbehaving program prior to me uninstalling it.
It almost seems like the the battery in the incredible has a memory. On a hunch I have started completely discharging my phone completely everynight before I put it on the charger. As a result my battery life as almost doubled. When I get home at night I start playing angry birds with the brightness at full until the battery gets to about 3 percent left. This obviously isn't a permanent solution but It certainly sheds some light on the root of the problem.
Prior to doing the full discharge I did a bump charge and wiped my battery stats. The battery is working great now. I wish someone would create a kernal/rom that has this issue resolved. Since these new lithium batteries aren't supposed to have a memory anymore I'm thinking it has to be something that the OS is doing with the battery stats file.
According to this article you should fully charge and discharge once every 30 or so charging cycles to resync the battery meter with the actual battery voltage. So maybe the complete discharge fixed your problems.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
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Unrevoked forever
SkyRaider Sense 3.5
Radio 2.15.00.11.15
not sure if this will help or not, but i have been running advanced task killer ever since 2.1(haven't gotten around to uninstalling before now, ha ha) and recently uninstalled it and installed watchdog task manager and my battery has increased two fold!
just my two cents worth.
Related
ok my battery has good days and bad days. I have now tried something different and it seems to have worked for me. When I wake up in the middle of the night and the light is green i unplug my phone from charger. Then when i wake up four to five hours later it is usually around 95%. In the past I let it charge till I woke up then I would send a text or two a quick call or check email and it would drop to 88% or 90% in minutes. But now that I leave it unplugged for about five hours I get up and do what I usually do and battery doesn't seem to drain as quick. My question is why does this happen???? Strange that before it would go from 100 to 90ish real quick. now i start off at 95% and battery drains slower.
My battery is absolutely horrible. I unplugged it today n within minutes it was down to 93% n i didnt even use it at all. I have GPS turned off, wifi is off, 4G is off, friendstream is gone, i have everything set up to sync manually so idk wat the deal is.
If you are running a custom Rom you should do a search in the dev section for how to calibrate your battery.
it is stock rom. I have tried every battery trick. you could think of even the one someone posted from htc. none have work but for some reason this seems to be giving me better battery life. and i am just wondering why and sharing for other people to maybe try.
nothing new under the sun. a search would have revealed the following posts...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=701567
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=712990
it sounds like voodoo, but based on the battery graphs before and after...it worked for me. the upgrade to 1.47 and 2.5 baseband seemed to help quite a bit too.
Strange battery design
OK it seems odd that the EE's who designed the phone specified a 4.2 volt charging cut off to the battery, and a 3.5V battery. It was probably to limit the heat production by components regulating internal voltage.
SO we can either up the charging cut off by rewiring a charger to use the feed but not the sensor ( 4 tabs on a battery), or get a battery rated a a slightly higher voltage ( which would only be partially charged due to the HTC charging algorthym). It may be that the recycling on /off specified by HTC ignores the sensor reading.
So like everyone else my battery life sucks. No big deal. I bought the extended battery from Sprint, and I can see the battery diminish in front of my eyes. I mean dropping 1 percent per minute. Is there a way to test the phone to see if it is the culprit?
Sent from my PC36100
ther are lots of ways to check things. does it drop 1% a minute all the time meaning you only get 100 minutes? does it only do it when you take it off the charger at 100% where ti will drop to any where from 99-90% in a matter of minutes?
if the later then thats normal and is because the phone doesnt have a trickle charge. this means that the phone charges your battery to 100% then stops however the indicator on the phone will not change it will still show 100% once the acctual power reaches 90% the phone then charges again up to 100%. what this means is once you take your phone off the pwoer if it has been sitting there even if it says it is at 1005 it can be any where from 90-100% which the battery quickly changes to over first few minutes.
If it happens past 90% and all the time then something is wrong and you likely have at least 1 if not more apps running wild on you, you have things set to sync constantly, and you have everything under the sun turned on for your phone.
for apps the paid version of system panel is very nice for monitoring you can go to monitor top and top apps and see which apps are using the most battery/cpu.
witht he information you have given that is aobut the best i can tell you. I would not say everyone has crappy battery life with the evo as i have slowly gotten my phone set up and now with moderate usage i can get 14-15 hours and at least 8-10 with very heavy usage(stock battery) which i dont consider to be crappy battery life.
I appreciate the response, and I forgot to add that I'm running stock unrooted sense. This is not my first Android phone so I know about battery managing. I don't have everything sync every two minutes nor do I have everything turned on. It does drop rather quick even past 90 percent. I think it might be the phone it self. I doubt I got 2 bad batteries, one being extended. I'll see if I could get a device swapped out.
Sent from my PC36100
My first EVO was like that. It drained quickly shortly after charging. I could never figure it out. Till one night before going to bed, I noticed something weird about the bottom keys on the phone. They were " very dimmly " lit. The home, menu, return, search were all dimmly lit. It was I believe a defect in the phone. I got it swapped out. No problems like the 1% drain since then.
I have noticed that every time I load a new Rom on my phone (including a wipe) my battery life is awesome as long as I let the phone get down to about 2 percent before recharging. As soon as I charge the phone without the battery almost dead the battery life on the phone starts to suck. This leads me to believe that there is something written to flash memory when you plug the charger in. For a while I had noticed that if I plug the charger in in the middle of the day due to heavy usage that my battery life sucks for a week or so afterwards then slowly goes back to normal after regular charging before I go to bed. Under normal charging conditions (plug it in when I go to bed) I can get about a days worth of charge. This is a stark contrast to the 2 plus days I get out of the phone after a fresh ROM load is loaded and I let the battery almost die before charging it in.
Anyone else observe this or have any idea whats going on that can be causing this. Maybe its just a simple matter of finding the file and deleting it. And yes I have tried doing a jump charge and wiping the battery stats. It doesn't give the same results as a wipe of the phone with a new ROM.
My battery seems good if i do this...
Install new ROM or not, just charge phone while i sleep (usually from 12am-530am) up and at work, coverage sucks in the building so i constantly switch from 1x to 3g ... battery life drains and i will be dead by 12 - 1230pm If i leave it on charge from then until i hit 100% (usually 30 minutes after) i take it off and head out of work, ill last all day and end up at 12am again with at least 60%
This is all heavy usage. Pandora stays running, facebook and plenty of texts/emails. My phone will never sit still without any activity for 2 minutes.
Switching kernels is the thing that saved my battery with now my kernel is 2.6.32.32-ck2-BFS by ziggy
awesome battery life out of the stock HTC battery
It could be different phones handle the same rom/kernel differently too. I noticed this when i was running a blackberry storm 2. Both mine and my brothers, we would have the exact hybrid OS installed. let em sit idle after having done the exact thing....mine would drain a lot faster than his. could be phone vs phone in the same case as i mentioned, who knows? what rom / kernel you running?
Sorry man but I don't understand your post. The sentence where you explain what you do doesn't make any sense. Can you explain again.
I'm running Cyanogen 7 rc2 with the stock kernel that comes with it. I don't believe its possible to change the kernel on Cyanogen.
trevoryour said:
Sorry man but I don't understand your post. The sentence where you explain what you do doesn't make any sense. Can you explain again.
I'm running Cyanogen 7 rc2 with the stock kernel that comes with it. I don't believe its possible to change the kernel on Cyanogen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can use whatever AOSP/GB kernel you want.
So its been a while since my last update but I wanted to pass along some more observations in hopes that someone can tell me how the power system works on Android phone.
For quite some time I have been able to use my phone for 2 full days before it required a recharge. This came about when I loaded Cyanogen 7 on my phone from scratch. As long as I charged it every 2 days the phone would have no problems lasting for two full days.
Two weeks ago I got stuck at a car dealership for about 8 hours. I passed the time by reading books, playing angry birds and surfing the net on my phone. About 7 hours in my phone was at 2 percent. I plugged the phone into someones charger and charged it for an hour or so so I would have a phone for the drive home. Ever since then my battery life has sucked. For a while I could barely get a full day out of my phone before it would die. I'm getting about a day out of it now which is acceptable I suppose but Its disappointing since I know the phone is capable of so much more.
So seriously what is the deal with the charging system on this phone? Why is it the phone has excellent battery life only after the phone is wiped and fully discharged before it is plugged in again? If a wipe of the phone fixes the battery what is it about the whip that does the fixing? Can it be reproduced without wiping the phone?
Come on guys. Someone out there is smart enough to figure this out. Hook us up.
It'll constantly recalibrate after you flash, so no real need to do the full discharge unless you really want to. If you don't do it then it'll get stable and better accuracy after a couple of weeks, but yes when you first flash a ROM it'll have sketchy battery life.
The battery is charging fine but your phone is still trying to determine how big your battery is, so it may not fully charge all the way. The quickest way for your phone to determine how big your battery is, is to drain it all the way down then charge it all the way back up. Some say this is potentially damaging to Li-Ion batteries. Personally I don't do it because of that, but if you chose to not do a full drain, your phone will figure out your battery size it'll just take a longer time for your phone to do it.
The actual battery life you get on your phone varies hugely on (in order):
1) amount of CPU you're using
2) data usage
3) reception strength
4) Screen brightness
So that in itself will cause some drastic day to day difference in battery life.
With all that being said, the battery life you're not getting during the inaccurate gauge period isn't that much. If you're someone who needs every last minute of battery that you need to have them right away, then personally I would suggest doing some other things such as under-volting your kernel and lowering your clock speeds.
Something I've discovered recently, and I am not sure I can explain it properly, but here goes...
I am running SRF 1.1.1, I don't believe this is the cause of the problem, but probably something that should be stated.
So running SRF1.1.1, I usually get wonderful battery life. I typically use an external charger and swap out batteries when they get to around 10-15%. This has worked well for me.. For the past few days I got lazy, and just plugged my phone in and left it on my desk to charge, no problem. When the battery is fully charged and I unplug it from the charger, I noticed it was rapidly draining.... I am aware that often when charging via the phone the battery immediately drops to 96% when removed from the charger. So this is normal, but I've noticed that after unplugging from the charger I lose about 10% per hour, when normally it may be 1-2% depending on usage.
To remedy this problem, rebooting seems to fix this issue. I have also had success with the airplane mode toogle. I don't see any odd usages showing up in spare parts, but is there any other way I can test this theory?
Thanks!!
Edit: Wanted to add, that this only seems to happen when using the charger cable with the phone. Swapping batteries does not seem to produce this issue. It is only when the phone is removed from the charger.
I haven't calibrated by battery lately and thats exactly what mine does too, I would stick to the external charger because our phones charge excruciatingly slow unless off. Try calibrating by charging to full while on then turn it off and let it charge more and repeat that a couple times then boot into cwm go to advanced and clear batt stats
Is there an advantage to calibrating a battery if it is not being charged in the phone?
This is the TWS bug mixed with no battery calibration.
socos25 said:
Something I've discovered recently, and I am not sure I can explain it properly, but here goes...
I am running SRF 1.1.1, I don't believe this is the cause of the problem, but probably something that should be stated.
So running SRF1.1.1, I usually get wonderful battery life. I typically use an external charger and swap out batteries when they get to around 10-15%. This has worked well for me.. For the past few days I got lazy, and just plugged my phone in and left it on my desk to charge, no problem. When the battery is fully charged and I unplug it from the charger, I noticed it was rapidly draining.... I am aware that often when charging via the phone the battery immediately drops to 96% when removed from the charger. So this is normal, but I've noticed that after unplugging from the charger I lose about 10% per hour, when normally it may be 1-2% depending on usage.
To remedy this problem, rebooting seems to fix this issue. I have also had success with the airplane mode toogle. I don't see any odd usages showing up in spare parts, but is there any other way I can test this theory?
Thanks!!
Edit: Wanted to add, that this only seems to happen when using the charger cable with the phone. Swapping batteries does not seem to produce this issue. It is only when the phone is removed from the charger.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
similar to what i have been experiencing. i enjoyed great battery life with srf 1.1.0. have a 3500mAh battery that i used to get about 48 hours out of, but now it is averaging around 25-30. i do not have anything but the stock battery to swap with, so i do put it on the charger nightly now. i was planning to recalibrate the battery tonight to see if that cleared things up.
what would be a way to fix the tws bug?
I have noticed this too. It seems to srf seems to not like my extended battery. I am lucky I get a day out of it. I some times will plug it into one of my work computers just to bring the charge up a little and it starts flashing red and discharging this is only on my extended battery not the 2 stock ones I have. I have even tried different kernals to see if that was issue it isn't.
Sent from my lean mean drunken machine useing XDA Premium and a 12 pack of Sam Lager
in looking at battery usage in >settings>about phone>battery use>cell standby i see usually 0-5% tws.
one thing i have noticed, though have not tested is that the screen appears brighter, even at the minimum setting than what i remember from srf 1.1.0
My G2 gets ghastly battery life. I've tried Juice Defender and I've recalibrated more times than I can remember. Most notifications are turned off and I'm conservative about powering off the various radios when I'm not using them. It wasn't always like that. I felt like I was getting most of a full day on one charge and loving it for many months, but something happened last summer I think. Maybe dust or moisture affected the phone. I've got a total of six batteries and three external battery chargers. No battery whether it's the OEM original, 1500mah spares that were amazing before, or the new 1800mah evo shift 4g batteries I tried out, will last more than about four hours from full charge to the 15% warning sound.
I've tried only charging in the phone. I've tried rotating batteries charged in the external chargers. Like I said, I've tried calibration scenarios of various kinds.
Last night, I took a fully charged 1800mah battery and put it in my phone and then charged the battery in the phone. The orange led never turns green when the phone is off. When the phone is on, I can just barely get the led to turn green at about 91% (starting from what should be a full charge that is reported as 80% by the phone). This takes a good 10 hours of charging. As soon as I woke the phone this morning, the battery meter started dropping while the phone was still plugged in. After unplugging, the meter drops to 80% in a matter of a few minutes.
Like I said, I tried juice defender. It only helps a little but the cost is waiting for the data radio to reconnect every time I wake the phone. I thought BT was the culprit for a while, but now it really doesn't matter if I leave it on or turn it off.
At the other end of the charge, the phone can run for several hours when the battery is supposedly between 1 and 3%. I know we are told to start charging again at 15% but my phone drops to that level in 3-4 hours of regular use. I haven't seen the phone report 100% charge on any battery in six months time, but it runs and runs at 1%. This is what bugs me. Is the phone just mis-reading how many milivolts are coming out of the battery? Why can't I complete the first step of calibration (charge overnight to the 100% mark)? Is there a hardware component that can be causing this or should it be entirely fixable in software?
Thanks for any ideas or tips
Did you wipe battery stats?
Sent from your phone
waxinpoetic said:
Did you wipe battery stats?
Sent from your phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I have many times but thanks for the suggestion.
Figured so.. Too bad, would have been too easy. I'm starting to see some batttery drain on my desire z now too. Im wondering if mine is a radio issue.
Sent from your phone
waxinpoetic said:
Figured so.. Too bad, would have been too easy. I'm starting to see some batttery drain on my desire z now too. Im wondering if mine is a radio issue.
Sent from your phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I changed radios and did RIL matching last fall based on other's comments about better battery life, 4G and GPS. While I've had faster GPS locks and maybe better 4G performance, my battery life did not improve. It may have even gotten worse.
Today I'm trying out some different CPU governor settings. The CM 7.2 RC1 default is 'interactive' and I wouldn't normally touch those settings. I think the powersave governor helped a lot, but the phone became almost unresponsive. Trying 'conservative' now. I should have read This long ago, but just got around to it today. I might invest in the SetCPU app as well.
OK, I can count on a good six hours of normal use if setCPU is holding down the max cpu frequency at night or when the screen is off. I'm still tweaking. Today, the phone crashed while playing music over A2DP and tracking a run with runkeeper. I think it needs to tick faster than 368Mhz when the screen is off.
Are you seeing improvement? I changed radios and like you havent seen much improvement. But I am a little better off than you are. My battery drain is terrible (1-3%per minute) only when connected to the internet (4g or wifi) or using navigation. If the screen is off, or if Im using non-internet apps I seem to get regular battery use. Good luck with your cpu settings.. I have ordered a new battery, but I doubt it will solve my issue. I may try tweaking my settings too soon, but Id better research more.
Just wondering do you have SuperCharger V6 installed? On my Desire Z I had some serious battery problems just as you mentioned. After I would flash my ROM (wiping the caches + reinstalling) my battery life would return to normal. But whenever I would flash SuperCharger v6 my battery life would spiral out of control. My suggestion for a ROM that handles battery life fairly well is Andromadus Audacity B2, just make sure you download and flash GAPPs (google apps). For example running that rom I have been getting very good battery life, approx. 16-20 hours of battery life with moderate use) with default CPU settings and data always turned on. I'm sure if you use Juice Defender to control your data you'll get above average battery life.
Note: Andromadus is an ICS (android 4.0) ROM
Qwerty_Uieo said:
Just wondering do you have SuperCharger V6 installed? On my Desire Z I had some serious battery problems just as you mentioned. After I would flash my ROM (wiping the caches + reinstalling) my battery life would return to normal. But whenever I would flash SuperCharger v6 my battery life would spiral out of control. My suggestion for a ROM that handles battery life fairly well is Andromadus Audacity B2, just make sure you download and flash GAPPs (google apps). For example running that rom I have been getting very good battery life, approx. 16-20 hours of battery life with moderate use) with default CPU settings and data always turned on. I'm sure if you use Juice Defender to control your data you'll get above average battery life.
Note: Andromadus is an ICS (android 4.0) ROM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks (and thanked) Ive been waiting till ICS roms are bug free and having working cameras, but I think I may just jump on it now. My battery issues are untenable at the moment on a CM7 based rom. Thanks for the advice.
I was seeing some improvement due to SetCPU profiles. However, now if I have GPS and Bluetooth on so that I can listen to music and track my run in runkeeper, the phone seems to 'crash' after about 35 minutes or so. The battery meter shows that the battery takes a nose dive and I think the phone shuts down at 1%. If I restart the phone, it might say I have 30 or 40% charge left but then it drops rapidly again. It seems like it hates the warmth of my pocket. If I let the phone out in the cool air like on my desk, I can reboot at get back to 60 or 70% even though it was just saying 3%. I'm not running SuperCharger.
I'm trying to find cheap G2s for parts on ebay now. Maybe I can at least test out my six batteries in a different phone to see if any of them are shot. They all seem to have the same problems in my phone.
This will be my final update. I bought a used G2 off ebay. The same batteries I used before now show as fully charged when I expect them to be fully charged. I will be getting a feel for general battery life over the next few days, but I expect battery life to be roughly the same. I just won't have to guess at what the current battery level really is.
I'm seeing now that the new phone will show a 60% charge when the old phone shows 15% for the same battery at about the same time.
The new phone shows 100% when topped off but if I put the topped off battery in my old phone, I see 75-80% charge.
I may try sending the old phone to HTC depending on what they offer for repair services.
revwillie said:
I bought a used G2 off ebay. ... the new phone will show a 60% charge when the old phone shows 15% for the same battery at about the same time
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think what's happened to your old phone (and mine!) is that the onboard voltmeter chip is reading low. I've compared the on-board mV reading to a multimeter-measured battery voltage and what the phone reads as 3.9V the multimeter gets 4.2V (a fully charged Li-Ion battery).
Who knows what's behind it, but it seems like a hardware problem to me.