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Help Battery usage - 'Android OS' - what does it entail?

J

Jersey Tom

Android Enthusiast
I had an interesting observation this morning. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I got 16, 11, and 12 hours on a charge. I took screenshots each day to see what the main power users were...

Friday (at work): Used 70% of battery in 11h 36m (16h 34m projected for 100%)
Screen: 33%
Android OS: 27%
(etc)

Saturday: Used 85% of battery in 9h 49m (11h 33m projected for 100%)
Screen: 37%
Android OS: 36%

Sunday: Used 85% of battery in 10h 23m (12h 13m projected for 100%)
Screen: 44%
Android OS: 32%

That all seems normal that the screen takes up the most juice. Was the case on my DX. This morning at work however, I noticed I had gone through about a third of the battery in 1.5 hours. Looking at the battery usage

Monday morning (at work): Used 31% of battery in 1h 36m (5h 10m projected for 100%)
Android OS: 57%
Screen: 14%

That's a bit surprising. Even when not actively using the phone, something in the OS was burning through battery very quickly. I haven't installed anything new since yesterday, nor changed anything around as far as widgets, etc.

Any ideas of what all gets lumped into "Android OS" as a usage stat, and what might have been going on? Since then my battery usage seems to have stabilized at its normal rate but I intend on keeping an eye on it.
 
I'll ask the question here.. (if you don't mind.. as I'm having severe Android OS as well). Should I restart the phone? Would that make things worse or better?
 
No answers, but the same question. Android OS is taking up almost twice the amount of the battery as the screen.
 
If you don't use your screen, Android OS is what will use the battery. Just because it's a high percentage doesn't mean you used up a lot of battery, it just simply means that it's used the most. If you can tell us how much battery was down, and that be like 20% remaining, I would be concerned.

Example. My phone has been off the charger for 45 minutes, and Android OS has used 45% of the battery my phone has used. Sounds bad, eh? Not really, as I have only used 4%. Android OS has used slightly less than 2% of my battery in 45 minutes.
 
ttaylor0024 said:
If you don't use your screen, Android OS is what will use the battery. Just because it's a high percentage doesn't mean you used up a lot of battery, it just simply means that it's used the most
Click to expand...

Oh I realize. Check my revised post. As I said, I effectively went through a third of the battery in an hour and a half in the office - mainly sitting in a meeting with my phone on my desk, screen off, seemingly doing nothing.

My "routine" in the office today should be about the same as from Friday - light to moderate use. Despite this, I am at 3x the power usage rate this morning having barely touched it.
 
I noticed this all weekend on my phone. My battery drained each day down to 20-30% over 8-10 hours with light use on a wifi signal for most of the day. When checking the battery usage stats the OS was always by far the biggest culprit, usually at around 60%.

Reading other posts on here in other threads it sounds like that's a common theme. Presumably there's something in the OS that's draining the battery...but that should be fixable via an OTA.
 
Jersey Tom said:
Oh I realize. Check my revised post. As I said, I effectively went through a third of the battery in an hour and a half in the office - mainly sitting in a meeting with my phone on my desk, screen off, seemingly doing nothing.

My "routine" in the office today should be about the same as from Friday - light to moderate use. Despite this, I am at 3x the power usage rate this morning having barely touched it.
Click to expand...

To my understanding, Android OS is full off all the processes to keep the phone running at all times, so this would include your 4g/3g/data. If your connection is weak, then Android OS will use more battery on the radios to keep the signal/try to increase the signal.
 
ttaylor0024 said:
If your connection is weak, then Android OS will use more battery on the radios to keep the signal/try to increase the signal.
Click to expand...

I see. Would be nice if there was a more detailed breakdown of these things in the battery usage app. Still surprises me as I'm in the same physical location as I was on Friday, here in the office, and am getting 3-4 bars 3G coverage.

There is a Wifi network available here, and I have my Wifi "on" but not connected to any network. Wonder if that's doing anything. I think I would have had that "on" during the day Friday, but I could be wrong. Going to turn it off, plug in and charge up to 100%, then see how we go the rest of the day.
 
Theres some talkin going around that its a bug. If you click the android OS, the wake time is usually something absurd and it shouldn't be. So your phone actually isnt sleeping.
 
Checking now (its been plugged in charging for about an hour now)

Time on battery: 2h 58m

Android OS:
CPU total: 46m
Keep awake: 1h 16m

Screen:
Time on: 16m
 
bigeric828 said:
Theres some talkin going around that its a bug. If you click the android OS, the wake time is usually something absurd and it shouldn't be. So your phone actually isnt sleeping.
Click to expand...

I would agree with this.

My phone has been unplugged for 7hrs total.
Battery @ 47% (with 4G OFF, only 3g, which is terrible IMO)

Screen 27% for 22min
Android OS 30% - CPU Total 39m, Keep Awake 2h 1m 57s

There is NO reason that the OS should have been awake for 2 hours when my screen was only on for 22 min. This seems to be accounting for 15% of unwarranted battery drain, which would normally put me at ~65% battery left, which would be about normal for me on my Droid 2.

This seems like it is a software issue related to time-out states or something. Perhaps a Dev will be able to fix it...
 
today is the opposite for me. Now 8h 57m 43s on the battery with 83% remaining (that's insane) with the screen accounting for 29% of the drain and the OS 22%.

Haven't done anything different, no app/settings change. Today I'm at work, though, but still on wifi the entire day. I suppose it could be the phone signal for me, though should that be cell standby and not OS?
 
I'm jealous of you guys who don't have this problem. My battery drained about 20% last night for the six hours I was asleep. I tried a few things people said helped like turning off some of the sound options, I had it on 3G, deleted my widgets, all apps are updated....none of it helped at all. "keep awake" was on for like an hour and a half, and my screen was only on 20 minutes
 
Just wait a little while, battery life will get better as it calibrates.

Also, a couple more things to add to "Android OS"- Wifi/data while screen is off, you can change wifi to only be on when the screen is on. One I never really thought about before was hardware acceleration, and the fact that most of us have never had a GPU in our phones along with a CPU, dual core, etc.
 
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