Fully charged this morning, after 4hrs on battery (purely on standby sitting in my drawer) I'm down to less than 25%... checking the battery usage in 'applications' it's showing Android OS as using 87%? What's it doing to use so much battery? What can I do to stop it mauling my battery life so badly? And why isn't it doing it all the time? 5hrs battery life is pants... 😥 🙁
What phone? 3G kills the battery (I find), if you have that + WiFi on at the same time, then I'd expect poor battery life. There are some apps you can get to help with battery life, but I've not bothered TBH
What phone is this on. Have you installed any new apps recently. Never had this issue on any of my the droid phones.
Samsung SII. Some days it's fine, get to the end of the day with plenty in the tank, other days (like today) it just fades away. Always switch wifi off when I leave the house (it's easy to do with Samsungs OS), but 3G is on always. Would 3G useage fall under the banner of 'Android OS' do you think?
Do you use a task killer?
Nope... But according to the 'Battery Usage' thing in 'Applications' all that's running is - Android OS (86%), Display (7%), Android System (4%), Cell Standby (2%) and Phone Idle (2%)?
Well known bug with the SGS2.
You on the latest firmware?
I don't have the issue on mine, but I know of others that do. It's fixed in newer versions but it may not be available on your carrier yet.
You on the latest firmware?
As far as I know I am... no option to update in the 'about phone' section, so guess I am?
I assume you know how to go into task manager and kill apps or clear the RAM?
I asked about task killers because they can dramatically reduce battery life. You don't need to (and shouldn't) use a task killer on Android.
Well known bug with the SGS2.
There you go then.
Had a similar situation with my 4 month old HTC Desire S in the last few days. Spoke to Orange who are going to send a replacement battery FOC. The guy at Orange suggested that charging the battery for too long can damage the capacity of the battery - he said charge it for 1-2 hours rather than overnight which is what I was doing.
If you are on a contract including the phone you should contact your provider to replace the battery.
I asked about task killers because they can dramatically reduce battery life. You don't need to (and shouldn't) use a task killer on Android.
But there's one built in to Android. Even if you go into it and there are no apps open, it can still be using a lot of RAM and clearing that can free up a couple of hundred meg that's been used unnecessarily for something and will be impacting battery life.
The guy at Orange suggested that charging the battery for too long can damage the capacity of the battery - he said charge it for 1-2 hours rather than overnight which is what I was doing.
I'd suggest you stop taking technical advice from salesmen. If it doesn't stop charging when it's full, it's broken.
it can still be using a lot of RAM and clearing that can free up a couple of hundred meg that's been used unnecessarily for something and will be impacting battery life.
That's not how memory management works on Android, and not how running applications are structured.
The task manager is there because it may be necessary, rarely, to manually kill an errant app; but generally speaking stuff that's "in memory" uses almost no resources at all (well, to all practical purposes anyway).
Reboot it (turn it off/on).
My Galaxy S does this sometimes, a restart sorts it.
Phone now completely flat... 🙁
Something is mauling my battery lately, how can I figure out what it is if it's falling under a generic 'Android OS' heading?
Try [url= https://market.android.com/details?id=nextapp.systempanel&hl=en ]system panel[/url]?
You've looked at the battery stats under Settings / About yes? (Can't remember offhand how much detail that gives).
Back up your data, and try a factory reset?
Is [i]Background Data[/i] enabled?? That kills my battery..
I'm posting this on my S2. There is a known bug with Android 2.3.3 I found that sometimes it was fine others awful. When it was chewing through battery I did notice the back getting very hot. In the end I rooted and installed Darky ROM which gave me Android 2.3.4 and got rid of lots of vodafone carp.
Forgot to say that fixed the problem and it now lasts between one and two days.
My Hero had an issue with the messaging staying on while the phone should have been sleeping. The advice at the time was to download an alternative message app and turn the stock one off.
Have a look on http://androidforums.com/ for your phone and see what the peeps there say.
Arrrrrrg.
Ignore me all, would you.
Known bug - search the XDA forums or google "SGS2 android OS battery drain" or "SGS2 wifi battery drain".
The phone won't update itself for some of the updates, you need to plug it into a PC, use Kies and check it like that.
What network you on?
Latest on O2 is: 2.3.3 XWKF3, KE7 baseband.
I was going to say it matters not what phone company you are on the firmware update is through Samsung Kies (its a shite bit of software TBH)
You might have to turn off your AV to updated the Kies software (known issue)
We have 2 SG II phones in the house & both last fine
Under Kies
Latest Firmware version PDA:KI4/PHONE:K11/CSC:KH1(CPW)
Reboot it (turn it off/on).My Galaxy S does this sometimes, a restart sorts it.
And indeed it did, thanks for the tip. 8hrs on battery so far today and still 82% remaining, muuuuch better 😀
Shall have to remember to turn the phone off occasionally, I generally just leave it on all the time, even on charge overnight etc...
As mentioned above, all modern phones charge the battery with a smart charging system that over-sees the whole process - it should be plug-and-forget, even if you left it plugged in for months on end. /using/ batteries kills them, but the management circuitry should stop over charging and over-discharging damage, so ultimately battery damage should only occur from normal use.
Cougar - Member
I asked about task killers because they can dramatically reduce battery life. You don't need to (and shouldn't) use a task killer on Android.
Have to say that as a Galaxy s2 user, without Advanced task killer (other task killing apps are available!), my phone only just gets through the day. I've seen you post similar statements in the past, so thought I'd do an entirely unscientific test over 10 work days, 5 with and 5 without task killer to convince myself that it helps.
For info. I'm running a rooted phone with Android 2.3.4 and the KG1 radio. Advanced task killer set to "agressivly" auto kill every time the screen goes off any apps it deems to be low security.
"Normal" usage is 30 minutes of music (spotify app) and internet (dolphin mini) use on the train in the morning, calendar and email usage (via exchange), pdf reading, note taking, the odd photo, occasional calls/texts during the day, and I'm in and out of reception as I work in a basement for some of the day. Then 30 minutes of train music/internet on the way home. No wifi, just whatever phone signal it can get (2g, 3g, and hspda)
With advanced task killer, my phone will have 60-70% battery at the end of the day. Without, it'll have less than 20% at best.
I'd say for my usage (everyone's is different obviously) running a task killing app is a massive benefit.
As others have mentioned it's a known SGS2 bug (in the hardware drivers related to the phone going in and out of deep sleep).
It's generally worse if wifi is left on, and seems improved in newer firmware versions.
dan 1980 - I suspect the reason a task killer works for you is that it is killing tasks that would otherwise be waking the phone from deep sleep periodically.
On most android phones this isn't worth it as the power used to kill and restart apps is just as much if not more than the occasional 'wake lock' uses.
However, on the SGS2 (because of the hardware/driver bug) those processes waking the phone use a lot of power.
As far as I'm aware, the AOS battery bug was "fixed" in 2.3.4 (The ROM I'm using) so that isn't applicable in terms of my battery usage. (It may be in the OP)
A trick to see if the phone has the AOS bug is to put it in airplane mode and leave it be for a few hours. There should be minimal battery drain, unless the phone is subject to the bug. Upgrading the ROM to 2.3.4 should solve the problem.
As my phones normal usage drains the battery significantly over the course of a day, and running with a task killer saves this, the point I was trying to make is that I'm not sure the sweeping statement that Android doesn't need a task killing app is accurate. In some situations it will be of benefit, and it's up to the user to see if it will help.
I'd say for my usage (everyone's is different obviously) running a task killing app is a massive benefit.
In the interests of research, try getting rid of the task killer and have a go with JuiceDefender?
I've seen you post similar statements in the past,
The pros and cons of task killers are well documented, I'm not just making it up. There's a nice write-up [url= http://lifehacker.com/5650894/android-task-killers-explained-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them ]here[/url] that doesn't get overly technical, for instance.
I'm happy that it works for you. However, I suspect that finding the root cause of the problem would yield still better results. If it's not the aforementioned bug, maybe it's another errant app that needs standing on.
Leaving a mobile phone in the drawer doesn't help things as mobiles vary their transmit power based on signal strength, so if the cell site is getting a weak signal the phone can up it's transmit power to compensate at the expense of battery charge life.
There is a free download on the Market "OS Monitor" it will run in the background as a little gauge in the status bar so you can see if a process is taking lots of CPU time (blank OK, varying levels of green for more n more CPU) If you see the gauge is high then you can open it and it will list all the processes and it will sort them based on CPU usage. This means at least you can narrow it down to a program/process that is being a bit naughty.