Database Develop

Unexplained battery drain- possible cause and solution

For those Of you who swear that you've done all you can to resolve the battery drain experienced while using your rom such as:
-re-flash
-hard reset
-task 29
-flash a new radio
-etc
one place you might want to look is your sd card. I was experiencing monster battery drain and tried all those remedies above but to no avail, my battery kept running low. A detailed inspection of my sd card revealed that I had a virus on it...My sd card is 8 gb but the corrupted folder showed it contained 300gb inside of it. Opening the folder I saw lots of folders with weird fonts and objects I'd never placed on my sd card...im certain that those objects were running in the background without me knowing...LONG STORY SHORT
I reformatted my sd card, task 29'ed then reflashed my ROM and voila...no more battery drain. I have used my phone extensively for the past 12 hrs and my battery percentage is at 51

thanks for the heads up. when i got this phone in jan. it would last all day with heavy use. now it lasts half a day, I will try this out.

chizzwhizz said:
For those Of you who swear that you've done all you can to resolve the battery drain experienced while using your rom such as:
-re-flash
-hard reset
-task 29
-flash a new radio
-etc
one place you might want to look is your sd card. I was experiencing monster battery drain and tried all those remedies above but to no avail, my battery kept running low. A detailed inspection of my sd card revealed that I had a virus on it...My sd card is 8 gb but the corrupted folder showed it contained 300gb inside of it. Opening the folder I saw lots of folders with weird fonts and objects I'd never placed on my sd card...im certain that those objects were running in the background without me knowing...LONG STORY SHORT
I reformatted my sd card, task 29'ed then reflashed my ROM and voila...no more battery drain. I have used my phone extensively for the past 12 hrs and my battery percentage is at 51
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
check out HD Tweak or Advanced Config. they have power saving settings. try those settings and see if it helps.

[Q] Gingerbread - Android OS taking up MASSIVE battery life, not USB bug-related

After updating to 2.3.3 using COS-DS, my phone seemed to work fine. I initially had a battery drain with nothing taking up large battery usage, so I reset the battery stats and all was well.
However, after unplugging my phone from charging all night (100% upon unplug), I checked my phone two hours later and saw that my charge was down to 22%. Upon checking Battery Usage, I found that Android OS is using 76%! The only thing I've done today was answer a couple SMS messages. I don't have Sync, GPS, or Wifi on, but I do have Mobiledata and 3G+2G on, as well as Background Data. The only widget I have is Google Voice, which I've removed to no avail. I've tried rebooting (twice), but it stays the same. I've turned off data, gone to 2G-only, and turned off background data, and it still continues. In Spare Parts, under Battery history it says that the only thing using up the battery is Suspend in CPU, and Battery Status says that the battery's health is good. Something really strange is that after the initial power-off upon the discovery of this issue, I immediately plugged it into the charger. After about 3 minutes I turned it back on, and found that it's already charged back up to 86%. WHAT.
Also, I haven't plugged it into the computer once in the last few days, so it's not USB-bug related. Any ideas on what's going on here?
EDIT: Ok, it's been a couple hours since this began, but just now I checked the phone (it was on the charger) and suddenly EVERYTHING is gone from the Battery Usage page, save for Display and Android OS, and Android OS is back down to 5% now. Really bloody weird, but the issue seems to have resolved itself.

I've had similar issues. When my battery runs flat, dead. I plug it up and switched it on, and it shown "Charging (32%)". I get different but similar results with different ROMs. It could simply mean the battery is wasted couldn't it?

Have you gone into the Recovery mode and wipe the Battery Status? I was having similiar issue (but not a fast drain), I did maybe about 5 wiped and reboot the phone. My problem seem to go away.
I went from 1 day or less from 100% to having to recharge, to 2 and 1/2 days then charge.

The issue came back later that night, and has been happening ever since.
I've done the bump charge + stats wipe, where I let it charge to 100%, shutdown until green LED, wipe stats, restart, let drain to 0, restart and use. I've tried this about 3 or 4 times, and the issue persists. I've removed my 2 widgets (two sound effects widgets), and it persists.
Also, I've downloaded OS Monitor, and it shows the CPU to be resting at its min, 246.
I'm hoping it's just the battery at this point, and have already ordered another one. I'll let you guys know if that fixes it.

In that case it might be your battery that need to be replace. How old is the battery?

I really have no idea. I bought this G1 used on eBay 9 months ago.
2 things to note:
1. It actually stopped booting last night even while on the charger: I restarted, and it kept getting stuck on the splash image. So I superwiped, reflashed, and the drain is still there even with no user-installed apps.
2. About a month ago, (when I was back on a stable Froyo, which I had been on since I got the phone 9 months ago) it started to randomly shut off. It seemed like if it got just a little too hot (battery got to maybe 30 C, never was able to check what the temp was when this happened), it would shut down and wouldn't get past the boot screen without a reset. I had to either charge it or wait an hour for it to successfully boot again.
In retrospect, this is sounding more and more like the battery. The only thing that's strange is that Android OS takes up such high percentage. Oh well, hopefully the new battery gets here today or tomorrow, hopefully that fixes everything.

Since you have brought the G1 9 months ago, more than likely it's had been over two year or more (about the same age as mine more or less). I doubt that the seller would be giving you a brand new battery.
I noticed the reboot on mine G1 too. Ever so often, my G1 will reboot on me. But I do not have the problem getting stuck at the splash or boot screen. But then I am using the SuperAosp ROM not Froyo.
Let me know how the new battery will work out, I might have to end up getting it myself. Eventhough my battery life got better after I did the wipe battery status, sometime it still drain depending on the day I guess.

I noticed the same result with COSDS.
I moved to Ginger Yoshi with much better results.
Better, but not as good as stock, obviously.
COSDS turned into a real hog on me by the time the second or third reboot happened.
Heeter

I'll stay with SuperAosp, I take the performance over the battery life any day. My battery status an't that bad. Once in the while I used it up in a day or less, other I can stick around for a few days.
The rebooting part was not too bad on my end. Just once in a while. Nothing I can't handle.
@ psychosonic - You might want to try that if you want, Gingerbread Yoshi was one of my first choice before I found what I had.

Alright, got my battery. After calibrating it for one day, then using it today post-calibration, it's functioning phenomenally. After using wifi + internet for a period of time, and sms throughout the day, it's still at 70% 6 hours after charge. Essentially, the only thing that drains the battery is heavy internet use, which seems to make it go down 1% per 2 or 3 minutes.

Internet usage seem to take a lot out of the battery for sure. I know mine take a lot more than 1% every 2 or 3 mins when I use my internet.
Let see how will the new battery pan out. See if it will last you 2 or more days. Keep using it as such, and see where it goes.

Android OS Battery bug
Hi!
1. Install SystemPanelLite Task Manager from the market.
2. Run SystemPanel and open settings and check the "System processes" option. Close settings.
3. Scroll down in the process list until you find the process "android.process.media". If you have a CPU usage of more then 10-30s and the process usage gauge to the left moves up and down you probably have the Android OS battery bug.
At this point you can try the following;
- Shut down your phone. (Not just turn it of. The complete shut-down-power-off-thingy)
- Remove your external SD card.
- Start up your phone again.
- When the scan media is complete, do step 3 above again. If you don't see the problem at step 3 your SD card has a corrupt filesystem. And needs to be reformated. Follow these steps;
- Backup your data first!!!
- Settings -> SD card & phone storage
- Unmount SD card
- Format SD card
- Restore files from your backup.
If the problem persists your internal SD card might have a corrupt filesystem and needs to be reformated. Follow these steps;
- Backup your data first!!!
- Settings -> SD card & phone storage
- Format internal storage
- Restore files from your backup.
More details; What happens when you have a corrupt filesystem is that android.process.media tries to read a file but fails over and over again. The filesystem might not look corrupt to you. And you can read and write files on the SD card without problems. But at some point the android.process.media failes to read the files and loops like crazy, draining your battery.
I had a corrupt filesystem (FAT32) on my external SD card. I also had Android OS battery usage of 60-70% and a fast draining battery. I hope this can help others.
Best regards,
/Pontus

cos & yoshi
cos dds sucks battery.... yoshi"s awesome..!! fr battery!!

if you applied a theme in theme chooser it could have affected it

V217 OTA - battery life / heat?

7 hours off fully charged battery since the upgrade completed, and down to 10%. Anyone else with battery life issues since receiving the OTA?
edit: phone temperature also runs very hot now since the update-- Gingerbread was quite a bit cooler to run.

I briefly ran the 217 OTA build before installing safestrap and rolling to a Cyanogenmod image.
I noticed that my phone was MUCH hotter than it had been while running the older GB-based rom -- however, I can't comment on the battery life itself.

mattvirus said:
I briefly ran the 217 OTA build before installing safestrap and rolling to a Cyanogenmod image.
I noticed that my phone was MUCH hotter than it had been while running the older GB-based rom -- however, I can't comment on the battery life itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been running .217 leak for a few weeks, and found that if you have a lot of MP3s on an SDcard, the phone will run really hot while it builds the MP3 database.

mattvirus said:
I briefly ran the 217 OTA build before installing safestrap and rolling to a Cyanogenmod image.
I noticed that my phone was MUCH hotter than it had been while running the older GB-based rom -- however, I can't comment on the battery life itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does indeed run much hotter with the screen on. Are you experiencing heat issues with Cyanogenmod, or was it only under the 217 OTA?
edit: added quote for context

danifunker said:
I've been running .217 leak for a few weeks, and found that if you have a lot of MP3s on an SDcard, the phone will run really hot while it builds the MP3 database.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Was it a one-time or some-time thing, or was the phone constantly hot? Did you remove any of the files, or was there a workaround to prevent building the database?

It's been stated that initially expect very poor battery life immediately after upgrading to ICS and I would expect heat to be another factor as the CPU is in constant use updating all the new databases, sync'ing etc...that is going on.
(stated in the Motorola soak test forums to expect this).

tcrews said:
It's been stated that initially expect very poor battery life immediately after upgrading to ICS and I would expect heat to be another factor as the CPU is in constant use updating all the new databases, sync'ing etc...that is going on.
(stated in the Motorola soak test forums to expect this).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 its expected. I always try to give new roms/updates at least 3 or 4 days to smooth itself out. Especially when upgrading from cupcake to froyo to gingerbread to ics.......
Sent from my DROID4 using xda premium

vprasad1 said:
Was it a one-time or some-time thing, or was the phone constantly hot? Did you remove any of the files, or was there a workaround to prevent building the database?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine ran hot for a day. The next day I restarted it and haven't ran hot for a while.
Sent from my XT894 running ICS

Yeah it should be better after a couple of three days. I can get 14-16 hours on network and 25-30 hours when on steady wifi.

vprasad1 said:
It does indeed run much hotter with the screen on. Are you experiencing heat issues with Cyanogenmod, or was it only under the 217 OTA?
edit: added quote for context
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It ran quite hot in the 217 OTA itself. Once I flashed over to cyanogenmod, it got cooler and has been running at roughly the same temperature as when i ran the GB rom.
I have very few MP3's on the SD card. It's actually the card from my old D1 and mostly has nandroid and titanium backup data on it

Odd, I haven't noticed any increase in heat, battery life is still good for me.
Upgraded OTA on monday, so 2 days now. I have a 32gig sd card, and the internal sdcard and the 32gig are loaded full of mp3's, a few videos, and titanium backups.
I want to say battery life is better than normal. But I believe this is only due to fixing a few issues over the weekend with misbehaving apps.

tcrews said:
It's been stated that initially expect very poor battery life immediately after upgrading to ICS and I would expect heat to be another factor as the CPU is in constant use updating all the new databases, sync'ing etc...that is going on.
(stated in the Motorola soak test forums to expect this).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright, it's been four days and battery life still sucks-- the phone is now only charging to 60% capacity, and phone spontaneously reboots, runs hot and apps still crash... and then I read that V217 OTA is halted due to "software issues"-- what recourse do I have? I don't pay "insurance" (which works out to the price of a new phone in 2 years). Will VZW address or swap the phone given that this power issue and phone instability was due to software upgrade they prompted on the phone?

Strange... Powered off the Droid 4 before bed and plugged into charger. Woke up and it was at 100%. Powered on, rebooted into safestrap/cwm and wiped cache, Dalvik, and battery stats. Rebooted and left it on charger, in case of quick drain again.
Will see if wife still experiences issues during her day. If so then this is most likely software or OS issue and after I get home from work I'll have to try backup and FXZ to see if a clean OS and gradual install of apps / restore some old data resolves the issue.
Step 1 is hunting down D4 FXZ threads on XDA and checking what's involved.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2

I've been finding that the battery life and heat has improved for me since installing the OTA. I came from stock, rooted, Gingerbread 219. For the past month or so, I had been noticing that my phone was getting very hot just by charging it (could be due to some app that I couldn't narrow down), but that stopped after the ICS OTA.
Additionally, after the last GB OTA, I noticed that the keyboard lighting would shut off even in complete darkness. That also seems to be fixed with the ICS OTA.
Sent from my DROID4 using xda premium

I've had a couple of interesting issues since I updated this morning. First, my media files on my microSD card "disappeared" in that My Gallery no longer displayed pix and vids on the microSD card and Winamp couldn't find any of my MP3s. A reformat of the card seems to have fixed it, for now.
The other issue is that the battery seemed to drain much more quickly than it did when I had Gingerbread. I hope what was said here about that being the case for about the first day or so is true. I would hate to think that this is the nature of ICS.

Didn't do the FXZ / destructive reinstall yet; was doing some more investigation last night-- phone was draining about battery 10% every 10 minutes. The only two things showing under Settings-->Battery were Screen at 60% and Media com.motorola.android.omadrm at 40%. Rebooted, set to charge before bed and now this morning I see other items listed under battery: Android System, Android OS, Mail. Phone is now at 80% battery running on battery for the last 30 minutes. When the screen goes off and I turn it back on, I sometimes see "Battery Extender" flash in the status bar.
Did an
Code:
adb reboot bootloader
to get to the bootloader. Then did a
Code:
fastboot devices
and saw that the phone was listed. Launched RSDLite and flashed the fxz xml.zip file and all seemed well...
phone started up, there was a little android icon with gears spinning inside of it and a progress bar crossing. phone rebooted again, "optimized" android applications, and finally came back to the same system as before-- nothing got wiped. I guess I'll have to do a Settings/Privacy/Factory Reset to get an actual wipe.
Rather than doing a wipe, debating setting up safestrap, going to the safe partition and installing an alternate ICS ROM.
Before going that route at all, there are 27GB of about 7000 mp3 files on the external SD. I'm going to pull the external SD and see how battery life is first.

No battery benefit after pulling out the external SD card; still about 10% battery drain every 10-15 mins.
Did the Settings/Privacy/Factory reset-- currently at 30% drain in 120 minutes. Seems improved, but this is also without the external SD in the device.
Saw a few different things in forums, including searching through some of the alternate ROMs for D4 and looking at some of the Razr ICS upgrade battery issue complaints:
--some said they were having battery issues until doing factory wipe and then reinstalling apps from Play Store without restoring old data
--some said there was something stuck on their external sd that required a full re-format and then restoring data back to the external sd which returned battery life to "normal"
--others said that media indexing is taking place and to give it a few days (seriously? is there no way to disable this or uninstall whichever application is doing this??? the wife said she wouldn't mind scrolling through folders rather than having fully indexed media by artist/album/genre)-- And she raises the valid point, "It used to work fine before!" What changed between Ginger Bread and Ice Cream Sandwich to require this much indexing and what's the fix for it given that people can't return back to GB? Which QA engineer at Verizon/GoogleRola thought it would be a good idea to release an update with this massive issue? Is the intent to discourage people from listening to their locally stored music and to have them rely on data plan intensive "cloud services"? Is there some application that can do the indexing on a more powerful machine like a PC and then upload the indices / export databases to the phone?

140 minutes at 60%-- still at full factory resetted stock from this morning, no external SD card in phone, no media on internal SD card.
I suppose Plan B is to call Verizon and tell them that the battery life is complete crap since their update and to request a CLN-- hoping that it's not running ICS.
to clarify: no apps have been restored / reinstalled-- what on earth could possibly be digesting battery like this?
edit: saw someone's post suggesting settings/more.../mobile networks/network mode - preferred network = LTE/CDMA instead of Global. Giving that a shot.

Not sure what did the trick, but after observing 4 hours at 60%, and Disabling a bunch of the bloatware, re-added the external memory card (with all gazillion mp3s on it) and began installing previously used software. A charge later and a few reboots after, was getting 4 more hours with battery at 90%. No idea what did the trick as I ran through too many variables and never reset them to be able to isolate one specific one.
Good luck to anybody else that may experience this issue in the future.

Thanks for the report. I too did the factory reset and reformatted my card. I think I've had a tiny bit of improvement, but still go down to about 60% capacity after two hours away from the charger with moderate use (Facebook, Twitter, Tapatalk, etc., no streaming or media play). I have my display set to auto, have changed the radio to CDMA/LTE only and have disabled as much bloatware as I can. I'm now trying the battery training FoxKat recommends to see if that will help.

[Q] Sudden decrease in battery life without software change

Hello!
Please allow me to introduce myself - I am a long-time xda forum lurker, who has not had the chance to post due to the fact that I am neither an expert, nor have had any questions that weren't covered by a simple search.
However, the day before an interesting thing happened to my P880. Without updating the software, due to the fact that my operator does not support it, battery life suddenly plunged significantly. In fact currently when charging, it discharges faster than it charges. So the only way to use it is to turn it off, charge it and then use it for a couple of hours.
As I said my software is stock and I haven't changed it for almost a year since I got the phone. It's version is "LG-P880-V10h-NOV-19-2012" with 2.6.39.4 Kernel.
That is what makes this issue even more interesting in my opinion, I cannot find a cause for it.
I note that the phone is warm to touch, so something is wake-locking it. However I am not an expert, but I will do my best to provide additional information if I can.
Thank you very much!

INP said:
Hello!
Please allow me to introduce myself - I am a long-time xda forum lurker, who has not had the chance to post due to the fact that I am neither an expert, nor have had any questions that weren't covered by a simple search.
However, the day before an interesting thing happened to my P880. Without updating the software, due to the fact that my operator does not support it, battery life suddenly plunged significantly. In fact currently when charging, it discharges faster than it charges. So the only way to use it is to turn it off, charge it and then use it for a couple of hours.
As I said my software is stock and I haven't changed it for almost a year since I got the phone. It's version is "LG-P880-V10h-NOV-19-2012" with 2.6.39.4 Kernel.
That is what makes this issue even more interesting in my opinion, I cannot find a cause for it.
I note that the phone is warm to touch, so something is wake-locking it. However I am not an expert, but I will do my best to provide additional information if I can.
Thank you very much!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all download BBS and see what is keeping your phone awake. If you say that the phone is always warm than that wakelock seems as logical culprit. Something is keeping your phone stuck on high frequency and keeping it from deep sleep. Use BBS, you will know more after that..

brunek said:
First of all download BBS and see what is keeping your phone awake. If you say that the phone is always warm than that wakelock seems as logical culprit. Something is keeping your phone stuck on high frequency and keeping it from deep sleep. Use BBS, you will know more after that..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The awake time is 9%, similar to what it was before, however the prone has been woken 872 times by System(radio). At the moment the phone lasts for 3 hours at most, while being charged at the same time.

Check your radio settings,maybe it is connecting to network all the time. Also you can freeze it..
Sent from my LG-P880 using Tapatalk

brunek said:
Check your radio settings,maybe it is connecting to network all the time. Also you can freeze it..
Sent from my LG-P880 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your quick response,
I force stopped the radio from the applications, and I had tried that before as well, however there is no noticeable difference, I can still see % drop by the minute.

Maybe it is battery malfunction..
Can you provide a dump from BBS?
Sent from my LG-P880 using Tapatalk

radio isn't fm radio. it's needed for signal, dont freeze it

Issue is resolved by removing the external microSD card.
Now that was unexpected...
I haven't tested it with another SD card if the problem was in the card or in the phone itself.

INP said:
Issue is resolved by removing the external microSD card.
Now that was unexpected...
I haven't tested it with another SD card if the problem was in the card or in the phone itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is there any songs/videos in the SD card? i think the problem is with android's mediascannerservice. happened a lot. try checking the micro sd card for errors using windows.

gingerboy92 said:
is there any songs/videos in the SD card? i think the problem is with android's mediascannerservice. happened a lot. try checking the micro sd card for errors using windows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It can't open the micro sd card from Windows. It simply isn't there.
Yes there were videos on it.

INP said:
It can't open the micro sd card from Windows. It simply isn't there.
Yes there were videos on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, there's your problem. it was the mediascannerservice on android. the thing that scans the storage for media files for your music player, video player etc. it will go insane when your memory card is corrupted or damaged, which looks like what has happened to your memory card.

gingerboy92 said:
well, there's your problem. it was the mediascannerservice on android. the thing that scans the storage for media files for your music player, video player etc. it will go insane when your memory card is corrupted or damaged, which looks like what has happened to your memory card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed! Thank you for the information.
Please lock / delete the thread,

Poor battery life, SDcard?

I've just run into something interesting...last few weeks, my Note (4.1.2 stock, Philz kernal, rooted) has been having some issues
with battery life.
It hasn't been lasting the day, even with a new battery, battery stats didn't show anything unusual. At times, the back would get
hot and I'd pull the battery, reboot and it might be ok the rest of the day, or it might do it again.
This weekend I started to notice that if I accessed a couple specific programs, that I have moved to the EXTERNAL SD card, that
is when it would act up. Moved those programs back to the internal SD, problem disappeared.
I took the microSD card out, put it in an SD adapter, plugged into my computer and it was having a very hard time reading it.
I bought a new microSD, same size (16gb), copied everything from my backup of the card, over to the new one and installed it
in the Note, and I've not had one issue and the battery appears to be holding up A LOT better.
Now, this card originally came from my Dell Streak when I used it, so it is going on 4-5 years old, has had a lot of stuff copied
and removed.
To the microSD or NAND experts, could it be a failing card even this early? Things act up, but I would think the card would last
a bit longer than 4-5 years?