• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Root Battery Not Lasting

darkworld260

darkworld260

Well-Known Member
Hello Everyone
I have a question, i have done tests over the last week and for some reason my battery life is way worse then it was before i rooted.
i have tried multiple roms and their all the same.. yes i have tried setcpu i also have disabled everything but it is the same and im not on my phone 24/7 either.
My brother who has one of the first evo's that came out, it is completely unrooted (and has never been rooted) and gets way better battery life than me and i have done tests and havn't gotten a good result.
This kind of makes me wanna unroot cause of this issue before i rooted i would fully charge my phone that means turn it off charge if full and turn it on in the morning and it would be at 70-60. Now my phone gets as low as 10% left by the time i go to bed.
I could post screen shots but all it shows is that my phone is always in idle..
Please if you could help me i would greatly appreciate it!
Right now im running fresh rom with i guess stock kernal but like i said i have tried tons of different roms and they all are the same in terms of battery life...
 
hmm weird first of all, please include comma's and fullstops into what you're saying it makes your posts easier read and all the sentences done bleed into one another, as for your battery issue i doubt its the root thats causing the issue. All rooting does is allow access to your devices hidden and normally restricted features and settings.
 
darkworld260 said:
hello eveyone i have a question and i have done tests over the last week and for some reason my battery life is way worse then before i rooted i have tried multiple roms and their all the same.. yes i have tried setcpu i also have disabled everything but it is the same and im not on my phone 24/7 my brother who has one of the first evos that came out is completely unrooted (and has never been rooted) and gets way better battery life than me and i have done tests and got no good results any ideas? this kind of makes me wanna unroot cause of this issue before i rooted i would fully charge my phone that means turn it off charge if full and turn it on in the morning and it would be at 70-60 now my phone gets as low as 10% left i could post screen shots but all it shows is that my phone is always in idle.. Please if you could help me i would greatly appreciate it right now im running fresh rom with i guess stock kernal but like i said i have tried tons of different roms and they all are the same in terms of battery life...
Click to expand...

Have you tried flashing different kernels? A kernel w/ HAVS? Your battery life is going to rely more on the which kernel you're using, rather than the ROM. When you were using SetCPU, how were you using it? Were you underclocking/overclocking? Did you have profiles set with it? Can you give us a little more information?
 
Okay this is weird that your battery is not getting better after setcpu. You may want to try a custom kernal such as netarchy toastmod, it may help with the battery. Also are you using more widgets that require constant syncing, and are you running apps that you weren't running before you rooted? Also you may want to go see what all is syncing in the background, to do this go to menu> settings> accounts and syncing. If more is syncing now (or syncing more often) than it was before you were rooted then that can cause your battery to drain. One last thing you can check which I am sure you probably have already done is see what radios are on such as 4g if 4g is on that eats the battery faster than a kid with a twinkie.

EDIT: dang it Frenchy beat me to it
 
frenchy714 said:
Have you tried flashing different kernels? A kernel w/ HAVS? Your battery life is going to rely more on the which kernel you're using, rather than the ROM. When you were using SetCPU, how were you using it? Were you underclocking/overclocking? Did you have profiles set with it? Can you give us a little more information?
Click to expand...

i have not tried flashing any kernals cause i have read that some of them can damage your battery and for setcpu
snap20110201_171121.png

snap20110201_171129.png
 
Ok. Flash a custom kernel, I recommend netarchy found here. Try 4.3.2 cfs (CFS has been known to be more stable) more aggressive undervolting HAVS kernel. If your phone becomes unstable (ie: random reboots, screen tearing, etc.) flash the same kernel but the less aggressive undervolting version.

As for SetCPU, disable all the profiles (you won't need them while using a HAVS kernel and the smartass governor). Have your setup look like this:

snap20101212_074957.png


You don't have to be overclocked to 1152 btw, you can keep them at the default of the kernel which I believe is 245/998.....Oh yeah, and your battery will be fine.
 
Everything that has been said in this thread is true, but you shouldn't get getting worse battery life after you root, assuming all else is the same. Since you flashed a different ROM, something else must be going on. Have you verified that your phone is sleeping when idle? You can use spare parts to do so (plus look under about battery to verify that uptime doesn't equal awake time).

That being said, just one small point about your setcpu profiles implementation:

1) You've got your battery % priorities backwards. As the battery life gets lower, you want the priority to be higher so that it overrides the previous one. Right now, your < 30% battery profile will never activate. Ever.
2) You've got battery life < 80% so high on the priority list that none of your other profiles except the screen off and the high temp one will ever activate unless the battery power is over 80%. You should lower that priority a bit.
3) Your charging one is so low, that it's rarely going to activate, even if it should. You should at least put the high temp one the highest (as it is), then charging right below it, then screen off right below that.

Those are just a few good practices. They're not likely to help you get much better battery life. Just thought you'd like to know :).

EDIT: A quick note on what frenchy said - that is indeed a good combination, but I've finally decided to dump the smartass governor in favor of the conservative governor along with a couple setcpu profiles. Smartass just drains the battery with the screen on too much for me. Give btoh a shot - smartass withouth profiles, and conservative with profiles.

EDIT2: Oh, and if you keep your profiles, and you follow the guidelines from above, raise your <30% profile max frequency. 245/245 will be almost unusable. You'd have never noticed because, as I said, that profile can't ever activate in its current state.
 
in my experience, the kernel/rom combinations don't affect battery life THAT much. If you have faster drain than an unrooted setup, then there's probably something else causing it. These things can be really hard to diagnose, so the recommended procedure is the following:

back up your data and apps with MyBackup or Titanium.
do a factory reset on your existing rom
restore your apps and data but DON'T restore system settings.

See if battery life is good or not. Believe it or not, a factory reset solves most of the horrid battery life issues for rooted phones.

If not, the next thing to look for are apps that hog the radio. Check your sync list. Is there stuff in there you can disable? Personally, I only allow email to sync. FB, Qik, News, Stocks, etc are all disabled.

Is the Google Talk application signed on? If you don't use it, you should go into the settings and disable auto-log on. Then, explicitly sign out of it. This app is known to be a battery hog.

Do you have a ton of widgets pulling data real-time? That's causing the phone to use a ton of radio.

Assuming you've checked all this, the final thing you can do is to figure out whether your drain is caused by excessive radio use, or excessive CPU use. Quick way to test is to put your phone in Airplane mode. This turns off your phone's radio. If your battery life goes from terrible to awesome, then you know something is using too much of your radio. If there's no difference, then you have something hogging CPU. If this is the case, your phone should feel pretty warm to the touch as well.

CPU issues can be caused by crappy apps, or it can be caused by incorrect throttling, coupled with a kernel that doesn't play nice. If your drain is from CPU, I recommend flashing a rooted stock rom. After checking your syncs, Talk, etc, you should have pretty good battery life (10-15% drain overnight).

Next, flash a custom kernel (I'm a fan of the netarchy's). Keep it simple: no HAVS, universal is a good choice. Assuming things still look good, add in setCPU, but go easy on the profiles. I only have two: screen off, and temp threshold. See if battery is still good. As long as it is, start making changes (1 at a time, so you can pinpoint what/when causes bad battery life) until you've arrived at the setup you want.

This isn't something you can do in one sitting. It requires some patience and some observation. But in the end, you'll learn all about how to keep your battery life awesome and what to avoid in the future.
 
gonna piggy back on this thread. Same info as OP. I just installed the toastmod kernal with the agressive settings and am running setcpu as instructed.

I was planning to run juiceplotter to track battery usage. How badly will that skew my battery results since it's running the whole time tracking battery usage?

A shot of my current usage. Those flat spots are airplane mode while I'm inside working.
screenshot_1.png
 
m-unit said:
gonna piggy back on this thread. Same info as OP. I just installed the toastmod kernal with the agressive settings and am running setcpu as instructed.

I was planning to run juiceplotter to track battery usage. How badly will that skew my battery results since it's running the whole time tracking battery usage?
Click to expand...

It shouldn't skew your batterey any. I use juice plotter and never noticed a difference in my battery. You'll be fine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom