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Help OS Draining Battery - MyT 4G

M

markasherman

Newbie
I just did the old batter check, as I have been very disappointed with my battery. You see, I will have to plug the phone in before the end of the day (about 10 hours), after having it at a full charge in the morning. Throughout the day, it receives little, to moderate use for texting and calls or the occasional email. I will use it for little bit to surf the web when I have down time and the like. But really, I don't use it as heavily as I would like because I can sit and watch the battery level go down.

Regardless, I just checked my battery usage, and the OS is eating it, more than the display. Just sitting on the counter, the OS is consuming over 50% battery use, the display, 21%. I constantly back out of apps after using them, or exit if there is an option. I had a task killer on my original MyT, but have been told not to use one on this phone; however, if the OS is what is eating my battery, I fear I may have no other option.

Any suggestions out there? What can I do to get at least a day's use out of the phone without having to charge it.

My thanks for your insights and thoughts.
 
You need to give us some more info on what you are running on the phone. Widgets? Live wallpaper? Background apps? How often are the programs you have that require sync actually syncing?

My battery life is fantastic. Unplug at 6am daily, plug back in at around 10pm and I still have around 30-35% battery. That's with mixed use of text, calls, data usage etc.

I don't use live wallpapers. The only widget I use that syncs at all is Fancy Widget and I'm set at the medium brightness setting with a 15 second screen timeout.
 
I thought it may have been synching issue, so I shut them all off the other day. No live wall paper, just a picture of my wife; no weather app or any updating app accept for a couple of news apps on the desktop (could that be it?); I don't use it for any social networking or anything else along those lines. My GPS and wifi are always shut off unless I need them.

I mean, I could go to a quick time out, but I usually shut it off immediately when done using it. I figure I could dim the screen, but that is what really turned me on about the phone, well one thing, is the beautiful display.

Ok, so turn off any synching that happens, easy enough and dim the display a bit. But, doesn't all that sort of defeat the purpose of the phone? Regardless, will give it a whirl.

Thanks for your ideas.
 
I would check the frequency at which the news widgets/apps update. I used the sportstap widget for a while and let it give me constant updates but found it to be a pretty decent drain on the battery. I switched it's settings to give me only updates on my team and it cut down the drain significantly.

Another thought, are you in a good coverage area when you are out and about during the day? If you happen to be in a dicey coverage area nothing can kill your phone faster than constantly searching for signal.
 
tweak89 said:
Just a thought, are you in a good coverage area when you are out and about during the day? If you happen to be in a dicey coverage area nothing can kill your phone faster than constantly searching for signal.
Click to expand...

I live in the Denver area and get solid coverage wherever I go. Drat, wish it were that.

I will check on those update rates. Right now, the only news apps are the Denver Post and NPR.
 
All right, so here is the plan, now that my battery is fully charged:

Sync turned off
Screen brightness at 50%

OS currently using 34% battery
Display using 19%

Will report how this does. Is there anything else I should pay attention to?
 
I've had this same problem since I bought my mytouch 4g. I found that the only way to correct it is immediately after I disconnect the phone from the charger in the morning, I do a reset. After that, the Android system and Android OS stay in the 2-3% range like they should be. If I forget, Android OS starts creeping up to 50+%.

To me, it seems as if the software that manages the battery charging has a bug in that disconnecting the battery somehow triggers some process in the phone that starts running out of control. I've heard of the same problem with my friend's EVO. Not sure if it's HTC specific or android specific.

Anyway, I'm positive you'll have good results with a quick restart after charging everyday. My wife has the same phone and she had the problem until doing the restart as well.
 
Sounds like a hanging process. I was having this issue as well. Turning on usb debugging fixed it. I get 14-16 hours with moderate use now.
 
I've been thinking a lot about this, because I've been having the same "issue" and I've come up with a theory.

There isn't anything wrong. Nothings running in the background or hanging. I realized this when I noticed that the only time the Android OS % was high was when I was using the phone the least.

It's because you aren't really using any power. When you're using your phone a lot, the display percentage is usually pretty high, like 70%. When the displays percentage is high, the Android OS percentage is usually low (like, 4%).

BUT, when that display hasn't been on much, it's not taking much power. Which means percentage-wise, the Android OS is going to take more (it's a phone, it's always going to be running).

Think of it this way. Let's say your battery is at 80% charge, and your Android OS is using 20%, and your display is using 5%. Start using your phone more, and your display is going to be using more like 70%, then your Android OS goes down to 3%. The Android OS isn't using any more power, it's just COMPARATIVELY less than the display.

Hope this clears everything up, nothing is wrong with your phone :)

EDIT: Also, can anyone post their up-time for their display and android os? This will help confirm my theory. Thanks :)
 
Tslide, I wish it were just the relative percent of the os vs other processes being used. However, when the android os jumps up to 50, 60, or 70%, there is VERY noticeable and very fast drain on the battery.
This morning I forgot to restart my phone after unplugging, and I was down to 50% battery before lunch (and android os was at 70%). I restarted it, and the battery held strong the rest of the day, not losing more than 10% of the remaining charge.

A restart right after unplugging is the only sure method I've found to keep a full charge all day.
 
I also have this issue. The only remedy is to do a restart or else the OS will run away and eat up battery life. This is very frustrating. I have everything turned off and i turn off data as well but if I forget to restart my phone the OS kills the battery. I hope we can remedy this.
 
My phone does this SOMETIMES. When it does, the battery lasts noticablely shorter. My wife's phone NEVER does this (Both MT4G). So, it's either an app I have that she doesn't, or some phones are physically faulty.
Sucky problem for sure. When I notice it, I reboot. Probably once or twice a week for me. Not happy, bu don't know what to do.
 
The reboot on unplug is a great alternative, but hopefully this issue is brought to T-Mobile as well as HTC and possibly, if applicable, we can get a patch to solve this issues. I have had mine for half a day and even with plenty camera shots, gaming, audio fresh out the box it took quite some time to die. Reboot upon unplug it is! +1 thanks team.
 
Update :

I rooted and froze most of the bloatware finally. setup setcpu and now the phone is running beastly! From 7am to 5pm with light use it used 7% battery with wifi on.
 
jhj said:
Update :

I rooted and froze most of the bloatware finally. setup setcpu and now the phone is running beastly! From 7am to 5pm with light use it used 7% battery with wifi on.
Click to expand...

I'm a newbie and am wondering if you can point me to which sources you used to root and freeze your bloatware....
 
So here goes... I tried all the suggestions and what has worked the best is the usb debugging and restarting it after a charge. If you're having battery issues and don't have the nerve to root your phone as I don't, then do this, it should work.

Here is to set the USB debugging as it is not terribly intuitive for a non-computer human such as myself: Settings, Applications, Development, then make sure your "USB debugging" is on.

Right now, the OS is only using 2%, right were it should be. Now, I might be able to use this phone as it was intended without having to charge it in the middle of the day. Bright screen and live news apps, here I come!

Thanks for all the suggestions, I really appreciate it.
 
I disabled always-on mobile data on my slide and my battery got a heck of a lot better! Try it on your 4G! It basically turns off 3G-4G when ur not using the phone to conserve battery.
 
When your battery is draining fast look at the cpu util using an app from the market and you will see init running away causing 100 cpu utilization. Why this occasionally happens is anyone's guess - I'm not a developer. However, as a few folks have noted, turning on USB debugging eliminates the problem.
 
I have the same thing. and its on random days too. like today all day everything was good and the as soon as it turns on my battery from half way went to ZERO in 2 hours.

once I charged it in the day and when i went to sleep it was fully charged and all the apps were taskilled. so i unplugged it and by morning it was dead. i didn't even touch it, in about 8 hours of being off it died!! i was so pissed cuz people were trying to reach me.

I think is has something to do with the system updating itself randomly.. because i dont do any restart things and have the phone running great with 50% brightness and wifi on and on the phone all day and it still has about 10% battery at the end of the day. but some days, when the OS crap turns on it goes form 70% to 0% in 2 hours.

THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED!!! please. or show make it do the Android OS when the phone is plugged in ONLY!!! this screwed me over so many times!!!
 
I've had the same problem on my MT4G and it's been driving me crazy, i barely use the phone and it dies in the afternoon regularly after a full nights charge.

It's intermittent and I've been suspecting a hardware problem /OS bug, because I've tried every imaginable configuration of turning off syncing and background processes. The tell tale sign for me is when the the little double arrow recycling icon shows up on the notification bar, that's when it goes into battery burn mode. It's like something in the OS is attempting to update itself and keeps failing and keeps trying, maybe the micro USB connection has some faulty logic looking for a computer connection when disconnected from charger?

Enabling the USB debug mode must force it down a different code path, because as soon as I turned that on, the little reload arrows went away. Hopefully that means the battery will chill out now too.

Note to Android Team/AT&T-Mobile: how about a detailed battery usage display that shows actual power consumed instead of just relative percentages? Would be much more useful in situations like this.

Thanks to everyone who posted info on this I've been searching for a while for answers beyond the obvious "disable background syncing" (as someone else said, what's the point of a phone like this if it can't do bg downloads as well as say, an iphone?)
 
I have this same problem. It is not intermittent. My battery drains fast EVERY time I unplug the phone, with Android OS using up 50-60%. I tried both restarting after unplugging and enabling USB debug, but neither helped. For testing purposes I've literally not even used the phone and I keep the screen off. Anyone else have this issue? Any other suggestions? I've only had the phone for a week and everything else works great.

Thanks in advance.
 
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