Help Android OS running 78-81%

[Doc_Palin21]

Hello all,

I'm new to this forum and would like to say hello to whoever reads this (will be making and intro post a little later).

I just got this phone (SGH-I777) from someone on Thursday, ever since i have been running it my battery life is terrible. I can go to sleep with 77% and wake up 7 hours later and have it down to 19%. I looked at the battery usage and it shows that my android OS is running 78-81 percent of my battery. I don't know how i can fix this, any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I did however find a post on the xda developers site that pertained to this issue but do not know how to follow the guidelines he suggests.

But am un familiar with the whole flashing business, now i would rather not root the phone and i was trying to figure out if this is though rooting or if this is just a "downgrade". I'm very inexperienced in this situation and like I said any idea or help would be greatly appreciated. thank you all for your help

 

[Doc_Palin21]

Also I would like to add that I have tried all the basic resetting procedures. I even factory reset the phone as well.

 

[Dieben]

Since none of the experts have responded yet, I have some suggestions on how to look for what is using all that battery power.

I haven't seen an app or terminal emulator command that shows power usage broken down by system process, but something like that may exist.

From what you've found it may be a system process gone wild. Your favorite CPU usage app, or an app like "System Tuner" will show how hard individual system processes are working. In System Tuner go to the Task Manager and turn on "System" and "Kernel" at the bottom of the screen.

Battery Usage blames Android OS, but it could actually be *data* usage that is draining the battery, like frequent syncs or an email repeately failing and retrying. In your Settings does "Data Usage" show anything unusual? Does the problem stop if you disable data?

 

[lunatic59]

Hello and welcome to Android Forums, Doc.

Let me ask a few questions first. Is the phone running stock or did the previous owner flash custom firmware? Do you know what version of Android is on it? And, when you got the phone did you or the previous owner perform a factory reset to wipe his old data off of it?

There can be many reasons for this type of battery drain to happen, but I've found that with this phone it's from weak signals for either Wifi or 3G/4G or both. If you've got a weak wifi signal where you are, turn off wifi when you're not using it. If you've got a strong wifi signal and a weak 3G/4G signal then keep wifi on all the time (don't let wifi turn off when it sleeps ... that setting will depend on the Android Version). If you've got both weak or both strong WiFi and 3G/4G, and you leave both on all the time then the radios can be jumping back and forth between networks.

You may have to try a few experiments to see which settings give you the best performance for your situation.

 

[Doc_Palin21]

Hello and welcome to Android Forums, Doc.

Let me ask a few questions first. Is the phone running stock or did the previous owner flash custom firmware? Do you know what version of Android is on it? And, when you got the phone did you or the previous owner perform a factory reset to wipe his old data off of it?

There can be many reasons for this type of battery drain to happen, but I've found that with this phone it's from weak signals for either Wifi or 3G/4G or both. If you've got a weak wifi signal where you are, turn off wifi when you're not using it. If you've got a strong wifi signal and a weak 3G/4G signal then keep wifi on all the time (don't let wifi turn off when it sleeps ... that setting will depend on the Android Version). If you've got both weak or both strong WiFi and 3G/4G, and you leave both on all the time then the radios can be jumping back and forth between networks.

You may have to try a few experiments to see which settings give you the best performance for your situation.

I don't think the individual who had it before me had tried to root it, i say this because installed Term Emulator on my phone. The source i found online stated to check to see if your phone is rooted or not was to download a terminal client, and check to see if there was a $ sight or a # sign. It said if there is a pound sign then it was rooted and it sowed a dollar sign. So i believe it was not rooted or attempted to be rooted.

And yes the previous owner did a factory reset when i picked it up.

I have my wifi on all the time (as i am always around a strong signal). I also have a decent network signal, but i thought that when you turn on wifi that the network data turns off.

Update: I had essentially put it in battery saver mode permanently (have all the setting set to the equivalent) and it now is fluctuating from 18-81 for the android OS

 

[Dieben]

What processes are using the most CPU? In your terminal emulator type
"top -m 4 -n 3"
without the quotes to show the top 4 processes 3 times. You can change the numbers to whatever you want. Or leave off the -n parameter to run continuously.

"top -m 1"
would be a way to watch for a high usage process.

You may have to run the command multiple times to catch a process using high cpu. If your keyboard has arrow keys you may be able to use the up and down arrows to replay previous commands. Or put the command on the clipboard and paste it into the terminal emulator.

You can use the AirTerm emulator to float an emulator in a window on top of other apps that you are running.

 

[Doc_Palin21]

is the terminal emulator for a rooted phone?

 

[Dieben]

No, any user can do many things with terminal emulators. Without root access ($ prompt) the user is limited to fairly safe operations. With root access (# prompt) the user can do many more things and can be destructive if the rooted user is not careful.

 

[Dieben]

l wrote a little "top" application using Tasker and Tasker App Factory. At any time I can tap the "top" icon on my Notifications list and a few seconds later I have a full screen scrollable "top" listing of the 150 or so processes that are running on my phone. The listing is also stored in a file on my SD card.

 

[Dieben]

. . . The source i found online stated to check to see if your phone is rooted or not was to download a terminal client, and check to see if there was a $ sign or a # sign. It said if there is a pound sign then it was rooted . . .

There are "Root Checker" applications on the Google Play Store that are more reliable checks for whether or not a phone is rooted. These apps do not require root access for them to operate.

And sometimes there are ways to detect whether a phone was rooted in the past but is no longer rooted.

A # prompt indicates root access.

A $ prompt does not necessarily mean that the phone is not currently rooted or may have been rooted in the past. A rooted phone may display the ordinary $ terminal emulator prompt, then in response to the "su" (superuser) command may respond by asking for the superuser password. If you provide the password you switch to superuser root access with a # prompt (there are other ways of accessing superuser, including logging in as superuser by default).

So at the $ prompt in the terminal emulator type "su" without the quotes and if it asks for a password the phone *may* currently be rooted or may have been rooted in the past. If the phone responds to the su command with something like "su: not found" the phone is probably not currently rooted.

An exception may come if your terminal emulator has "busybox". Then it may respond with something like "su: must be suid to work properly" if the phone is not rooted.

 

[Dieben]

What processes did "top -m 1" show as having the highest CPU usage?

 

[mvi57]

You might try getting the "CPU Spy" and "Better Battery Stats" apps, and see if they help you figure out where the problem is. CPU Spy will show you whether you're getting any deep sleep time, and Better Battery Stats will show lots of information on wakelocks, processes that are getting cpu time, etc.

 

[Dieben]

. . ."Better Battery Stats" apps . . .

Note: "BetterBatteryStats" is all one word, no spaces.

 

[Doc_Palin21]

I updated my phone to 4.0.3 and the battery life seems to have improved but it still has android OS running at 39 % so i think i will check out some of these other options posted here in this forum. thank you all for everything you have done and the info you have provided

 

[Dieben]

Android OS is made up of dozens of separate processes. Which process(es) have high usage? If you don't want to run a command in the terminal emulator you can go to the Task Manager screen in the "System Tuner" app and turn on "System" and "Kernel" on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Or look at the "Running/Top" screen in the "Elixir 2" app.