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Help Another battery drain thread

exninja

exninja

Android Enthusiast
I know these "Help!!! Battery!!!" threads are a dime a dozen, but I'm just puzzled. My battery was at 50% when I went to bed last night, so I didn't plug it in to charge. I shut off data. That's the first red line in the chart screenshot. The battery usage leveled off nicely, so my phone went to sleep just like me. Then, it seems that 3-4 hours in there's a little blip and the phone wakes up momentarily. That's when the battery takes a nosedive. I'm puzzled because the phone wasn't awake at all during that time. Data was off. I don't remember if I turned off auto-sync or not...maybe there's a buggy sorta thing that if you turn data off but keep auto-sync on then it freaks out and starts doing a loop? I also attached the app battery usage. To give some perspective, the screen-on time was only an hour so nothing really stands out as using a ton of juice. I find it odd that the battery drops while the phone is "asleep" and there's no smoking gun in the list. I'm not rooted and don't plan to be till at least the OTA's quit from Google. I know it's a different philosophy than most, but I got a Nexus so that I wouldn't have to root;) Thanks!
 

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The stock battery statistics aren't really all that useful unfortunately. :o Like you mentioned, there really isnt anything there that stands out.

I'd really suggest downloading an app like betterbatterystats (paid but IMO better) or GSAM battery monitor (free)

They will give you a more detailed breakdown - and many times will help give us the information we need.

PS - rooting doesn't void our warranty ;)
 
I had GSam but I didn't see that it gave me anything so I got rid of it. I'll download it again and see if a similar random drop happens again. If so, I'll post again. Thanks
 
I had a similar issue recently - only phone idle and android OS were showing up in the overnight battery usage.

I always charge to 100% right before I sleep, and then, reboot and leave it off the charger (after disabling Wifi and mobile data). Normally, in the morning, I would drop to about 97%. A few weeks ago, for 3-4 consecutive days, it would drain to 50% or lower (with no active usage). No clue what caused that, but it definitely had to do with the carrier's signal (even though it didn't show weak signal). Switched to airplane mode, and no abnormal battery drain overnight.

Sprint pushed out a profile update after about 4 days or so of this happening, and phone restarted in the middle of the day. After that, no problem at all.

@exninja - is this a one time thing? If so, just reboot and hopefully the problem won't happen again. If it does happen every night now, try airplane mode to see if that solves the issue. If it does, it has to be something your carrier is doing in your neighboring cell towers.

P.S. Is your carrier Sprint? If so, my condolences.

exninja said:
I'm not rooted and don't plan to be till at least the OTA's quit from Google.
Click to expand...
Eh? Why would you want OTAs to quit? lol! Flashing an OTA in recovery is really not that hard - and you can get it on day 1, instead of waiting. But I get it - some folks don't want to root - no worries :) As you said, on a Nexus, it isn't really "needed". I do it primarily for blocking ads. Using a device without having to worry about ads sprinkled all over the browser pages is worth it. And since I rooted for adaway anyway, mods like Gravitybox/XPrivacy just make it even better :)
 
jj14x said:
I had a similar issue recently - only phone idle and android OS were showing up in the overnight battery usage.

I always charge to 100% right before I sleep, and then, reboot and leave it off the charger (after disabling Wifi and mobile data). Normally, in the morning, I would drop to about 97%. A few weeks ago, for 3-4 consecutive days, it would drain to 50% or lower (with no active usage). No clue what caused that, but it definitely had to do with the carrier's signal (even though it didn't show weak signal). Switched to airplane mode, and no abnormal battery drain overnight.

Sprint pushed out a profile update after about 4 days or so of this happening, and phone restarted in the middle of the day. After that, no problem at all.

@exninja - is this a one time thing? If so, just reboot and hopefully the problem won't happen again. If it does happen every night now, try airplane mode to see if that solves the issue. If it does, it has to be something your carrier is doing in your neighboring cell towers.

P.S. Is your carrier Sprint? If so, my condolences.


Eh? Why would you want OTAs to quit? lol! Flashing an OTA in recovery is really not that hard - and you can get it on day 1, instead of waiting. But I get it - some folks don't want to root - no worries :) As you said, on a Nexus, it isn't really "needed". I do it primarily for blocking ads. Using a device without having to worry about ads sprinkled all over the browser pages is worth it. And since I rooted for adaway anyway, mods like Gravitybox/XPrivacy just make it even better :)
Click to expand...


Thanks for the reply.

Normally I just stick it on the charger overnight. Within the last week or two I've been doing some minor experimentation to maximize battery life. I've only not charged it overnight like 3 times now. I did have a bad drain the first night. It started the night at about 30% and barely made it through the night. I attributed that to leaving wifi on, but with this latest drain that might not be it at all. I'll charge it before bed and see if it happens again, repeating like last night. That way I'll only have whatever potentially drained the battery in the list rather than a day's worth of use mucking it up. I'd rather not leave it in airplane mode since it ceases being a phone...but that has some positives at night;)

I'm on T-Mobile. I used to be on Sprint via Boost Mobile, but gave that up for the same reason that you gave me condolences;) TMo's signal isn't spectacular at my house either, but I don't have any noticeable issues. Something to look for I guess.

I don't want OTA's to quit! But it's inevitable!

My first Android was a Samsung Galaxy Prevail. Once they updated with Gingerbread I had enough space for a handful of apps, and forget about decent games. I rooted that to free up some space and get rid of ads and that worked nicely. Then it started becoming an obsession. I experimented. It was a dark time in my life and I swore never to go back.

I exaggerate a bit for dramatic license, but really I just don't want to invest the time and create another obsession:)
 
It's entirely possible it was an issue with a version of play services or google search that was installed, and google fixed the issue and pushed a new update. Google search you probably would have noticed since you have to approve those updates. Play services update silently so if this in fact was the issue, it might have been that.
 
My battery life was Horrid since I got my Nexus 5 a few months back, and I did everything to make sure it was sipping as little power as possible. Still, to no avail. I just switched from Dalvik to Android RunTime (ART) in the developer options, and Wow! For the first time ever, two days in a row, with Heavy use, my battery has lasted me All Day (at least 14-16hrs on a full charge!) I checked my battery history, and everything seems to be using less power from the battery than before! I also installed Qualcomm's Battery Guru app, which learns your habits of usage, and that has been making even more of a difference now! My battery problem is solved! Anyone who hasn't switched to ART, believe me, once you do, your battery life will increase exponentially! And having the Qualcomm Snapdragon app also helps immensely. Just thought I'd share my great experience, and hopefully help some people who haven't already done these things. The huge difference is like night and day. I almost feel like I have a different phone now! Hope this helps!!
 
I haven't done the overnight experiment since. I'm blaming my original problem on a rogue service. I'm hoping that the next iteration of Android either directly or indirectly solves this issue.

I've had BatteryGuru for quite a while. I didn't really keep track of my battery usage before the app so it's hard for me to say how much battery it saves. I keep it because it most likely is helping. Most of my battery drainage is Google services and searching for a cell signal in my Faraday cage of an office. I turn off data for much of my work day to calm down the power consumption.

I also made the switch to ART last night. I did notice that my battery drain was 1% less on my way to work than a normal day, but I also wiped my cache partition so that could also be the cause...or 1% could also be within the data sample error.
 
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