Battery consumption analysis

[Grobbendonk]

Hi all, got a question that I'm sure has been answered here already, but I'm not having any luck finding it.

My question is basically "can anyone recommend an application that will tell me which applications are draining my battery".

I've read about task killers and usage and turning stuff on and off, I'm not worried about that, and I don't need to know why (i.e Google Earth uses X units per hour.

 

[kofuukali]

Try Spare parts, that should do the trick.

It also allows you to fine tune some of the ways your phone behaves (you can put your font to tiny little writing, and show off to iphone users what a proper resolution is for )

Unfortunately, I have just experienced a problem that I had really hoped I had left behind with my samsung galaxy....
My battery went flat in just a few hours as spare parts reports that my phone was running 100% of the time (and this was overnight, on airplane mode...)

Android system seems to be the culprit... but that doesn't help much does it
one detail is taht when I did put it in airplane mode, the synchronisation circle icon was up in the taskbar, and was still there in the morning...
So maybe cutting off data connectivity (airplane mode) whilst synchronising makes it go all weird and continue trying all night stupidly?)

Not sure though cause it's the second time I get this in two days, and the first time did not match this situation I believe.

 

[hapy]

Get Power Manager (not PowerManager). The latest version is 1.6.2. It helps control screen brightness, wifi, etc. depending on whether or not your phone's plugged in, running on USB or running on battery.

I'm also using Advanced Task Killer. After using some apps I'll fire it up and kill all but what I really want running (like the aforementioned Power Manager).

Startup Auditor is another app I use to keep apps from starting -- and to auto-kill them if they try to start on their own.

I've not found an app yet for monitoring individual app power consumption but I did find this: PowerTutor

 

[Deleted User]

Does it show you what is killing your battery?

Try Spare parts, that should do the trick.

It also allows you to fine tune some of the ways your phone behaves (you can put your font to tiny little writing, and show off to iphone users what a proper resolution is for )

Unfortunately, I have just experienced a problem that I had really hoped I had left behind with my samsung galaxy....
My battery went flat in just a few hours as spare parts reports that my phone was running 100% of the time (and this was overnight, on airplane mode...)

Android system seems to be the culprit... but that doesn't help much does it
one detail is taht when I did put it in airplane mode, the synchronisation circle icon was up in the taskbar, and was still there in the morning...
So maybe cutting off data connectivity (airplane mode) whilst synchronising makes it go all weird and continue trying all night stupidly?)

Not sure though cause it's the second time I get this in two days, and the first time did not match this situation I believe.

 

[Jayziac]

Likely a misbehaving app. Go into Settings > Applications > Running Services. Services are what keeps running in the background. Apps go into suspend mode in the background.

 

[KlaymenDK]

What device do you have? With Android OS v1.5 and 1.6, there's rather poor per-application consumption info, but with 2.0+ you can go into "Settings->About->Battery->Battery use" and see a lot of info.

 

[tdieckman]

Likely a misbehaving app. Go into Settings > Applications > Running Services. Services are what keeps running in the background. Apps go into suspend mode in the background.

Services also don't consume battery/cpu even though they are in memory, just like an app. It really depends on how the dev writes the code and how often a service has scheduled itself to "come awake" to do something and what it actually is doing.

 

[CXXV]

The number one thing that eats your battery is the data (3G) on all the time.

I only turn on Mobile when I need it. Now my battery lasts a couple of days.

 

[Roze]

Services also don't consume battery/cpu even though they are in memory, just like an app. It really depends on how the dev writes the code and how often a service has scheduled itself to "come awake" to do something and what it actually is doing.

I was wondering what's the difference between a service and an application? I thought they were the same thing...I mean a service is an app...but an app might not be a service

 

[jev]

I was wondering what's the difference between a service and an application?

A service doesn't implement any user interaction. It just sits in the background, waiting for external actions to wake it up, perform a task and than go back to sleep again. In addition, they are not shut down and stopped by the OS as can happen with a normal app.

Examples include the polling for e-mail at timed intervals, update a system clock, handle incoming SMS's etc.

In more widespread unix-speek: services = deamons.

 

[Roze]

@ Jev, Thanks for the clarification So if I kill services...they'd just start up again then.

 

[jev]

No, if you kill them (using a taskkiller of some sort), chances are they won't be restarted automatically unless there's an application running that requires the service to be operational. For example, if you have a TV-guide application that automatically retrieves TV schedules once per day through a service, that service will be restarted as soon as you start the TV guide application (and stay in memory even if you stop the app).

I should correct myself though. It seems services actually can be stopped by the OS, provided that there are no more clients that connect to it and only if (memory) resources are really scarce and all normal background processes are killed already. But hey, that's just the technical mumbo-jumbo, for all practical purposes you can still safely assume services won't be shot down by the OS.