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Help GS5 battery life

B

bkenobi69

Member
I have a Samsung GS5 on 4.4.4 and rooted. I don't run many apps currently as I'm trying to figure out my battery life issues. When I got the phone I could go all day and be at 60-70% after work. After root I regularly see 30%on my trip home.

I have tried disabling everything and still have around the same battery life.

I use wake luck detector and froze apps that chronically kept things awake but that made little difference. The primary user seems to consistently be the os (kernel=20-25%, android system=10-20%) for a total of ~50%.
 
Install GSam Battery Monitor from the Play Store and let it run. Should show what is actually using the most of your battery.
 
I've been using GSam for this and the last phone. The numbers I put in the OP were from GSam. I know that the biggest user is apps and, of them, kernel and OS are by far the highest. I'll post a screen shot later today after I've had it off the charger for a while.
 
I read about issues keeping root with 5.0. Also read that some of those that updated weren't happy and wanted to go back. I'd consider updating if that fixed things!

I took some screenshots today of GSam but my phone got so low on charge (5%) it went into some critical power saver mode which killed the SD card. I think the pictures went to internal storage, so I'll try to upload tomorrow.
 
Root should be persistent on 5.0
I don't have the 900v but I have used his methods to update several others. With my g870a, it was possible to downgrade because we kept a prior bootloader version. I haven't read the complete thread for the 900v so not sure if downgrade is possible after 5.0
Definitely something to consider before upgrading.
 
So is it fair to assume that 4.4.4 is the primary issue here and that 5.0+ would likely help? I have no reason to stay on 4.4.4 or update to 5.0 particularly, so fixing my battery life would certainly be a deciding factor.
 
Did you change anything after rooting, delete any system apps or add any apps that required root access?
You could always flash back to 4.4.4 stock.
Just thought that with 5.0, different system, different kernel, you would have more to compare.
 
Well my initial question would be how old is the phone been in use? More specifically the battery? Could simply be that the battery has been in use for 2yrs (the model is 2yrs old) and it's simply time for a replacement. Batteries are usually good for 500 charge cycles and thats about 18mos of use, before it charge capacity deteriorates.
 
The phone is only 3-4 months old. I don't know the mfg date nor whether having a battery sitting on the shelf would degrade things.

I froze apps that I read were hoofs when I saw battery problems start. The only system change I made was renaming the utility that checks for updates since it was downloading and trying to install 5.0 several times a day.

If I flash back to 4.4.4 stock, would I lose all data?
 
How was the battery charge when you got it out of the box?

AFAIK yes flashing would cause you to lose data. So I suggest you backup using SmartSwitch, Helium, and cloud for apps that support that.
 
Battery life was very good at stock 4.4.2 and 4.4.4. After flashing back to 4.4.2, root, update to 4.4.4, disable updates, the battery life is poor. I don't know if the kernel is the issue, or if it's the disable updates, the thing got messed up some other way, or if it's too be expected. I think I may try going back to Odin and reflashing.
 
I haven't performed the reinstall yet, as I wanted to do a bit more debugging prior to trashing the OS and starting fresh. I didn't do anything exotic, so I assume I will have the same issues again and be set back having to set up all my settings again.

I have WLD installed and have just found the kernel wakelock menu. Looking at a typical day, I'm seeing some task dominating every day. Primarily, I see:

  • event0-824
  • PowerManagerService.WakeLocks
  • bam_dmux_wakelock
I don't know what these are used by, but I found an XDA thread that discusses how to isolate the event0 item and determine what is causing it as well as how to stop that task.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-one/help/event0-wakelocks-t2957829

It appears that system_server is the culprit. Not knowing enough about this service, I'm nervous to start deleting files.
 
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