Batter Life App - troubleshooting ideas?

[itchn2go]

I have searched and searched but I am unable to find anything. My battery life has gone to hell and I am wondering if anyone knows of an app that monitors the running programs, their activity level and battery usage. I really dont want to uninstall one program at a time and montior the effect. I have made major changes to the phone so removing 1 or 2 apps is not an option. If anyone has ideas I am open to hearing them.

Config
CM6.1.2 Stock Kernel - w/ milestone overclock app but set to 700MHz
Compcache active
ADW Launcher
Minimalist Widget running (over on XDA everyone says no battery drain w/ screen off)

What makes up "Android System" displayed on the battery usage screen?

Thanks in advance!
Ed

[cloudstrife05]

What I did instead what just buy another battery. I use my Droid how I want and just recharge at the end of the day.

People just get too stressed out on trying to "configure" their phone to get an extra hr or 2 out of it.

BUt to answer your question, there a couple of Battery applications in the Market that monitor whats being used/run that would give you a better idea of whats going on with your phone. Sorry I couldnt help you out more.

[Bear in NM]

Ed,

Have you performed the battery stats calibration? I think it was mentioned in the other thread in which we conversed. Charge phone fully, delete battery stats in CW recovery (or manually) then use the phone till complete drain. This process should be done periodically, regardless of the rom you are using.

The other thing that really helped me was finding the lowest voltage that will work for my slots, and enable a sleep/screen off profile in Setcpu where my low is 200 and high is 500, "ondemand governor".

You can use the phones settings menu to see what is running, and for how long, and spare parts will give you a lot of information on what is using what.

And as Cloud pointed out, it could just be your battery has lost some life. Not sure how old your battery is, but is important to think of the battery as a standalone device, subject to its own life span and potential breakdown. My process to isolate the battery is to perform the recalibration, enable as low of a sleep profile that you can, and once these are done, charge the phone and when going to bed one night, throw it in airplane mode and turn off the screen. In the morning you should see something like 90% left on the battery. Just a first start, then perhaps get creative with the apps.

Craig

[tjs]

Try Juice Defender

Sent from my Droid using DroidForums App

[cloudstrife05]

Actually, I have to rephrase what I said. I just bought an additional battery. I have 2 now plus a wall charger. Ive tried Juice Defender, Batery FU, and another I cant remember but just having another charged up battery in your pocket, (you can get one on eBay for $5 all day long) you wont have to worry about it.

As far as wiping Batt stats..I dont think that extends batery life, it just makes the reading correct, (like when it says 30% left its really 30%) could be wrong though.

[Bear in NM]

Cloud,

That is exactly what it does, sets the top and bottom voltages of the battery so the phone can accurately report. There have been enough threads with folks who know something about batteries that reflect that we should not be deep cycling these very often, that partial charges are best. The problem comes in with rom flashing, some level of wipes and just general futzing with the phone's operating system that it appears the calibration can get whacked.

But I am with you on the spare battery. My goal is to optimize my phone so that if I ever need to stretch things out I can, but in general I do not loose a bit of sleep over it during normal routines where I am never far from a power source. But I live semi-remotely, and play in even more remote locations, so options and optimizing are good.

Craig

[itchn2go]

battery is 6 months old and is the extended D2 battery. I did the calibration about a week ago. I have also ordered another battery but if i leave the phone at 90% over night i wake up at 10%. I just took a clock/weather widget off that was done using minimalist. I will see if that has an effect tonight. over on XDA everyone says minimalist does not drain the battery.

I also have to try to get the voltage down now that you guys got me going on comcache and the milestone app!

I was going to ask a question about lowering the voltage...maybe guys know...for any given CPU speed isn't the power drawn from the battery the same? So if we lower the voltage won't it just draw more current since P=V*I?

Thanks for responding.

[jerroedr]

kinda sounds like your phone isnt sleeping

[Bear in NM]

Ed,

Jerroedr sounds correct. It is the reason I mentioned using airplane mode overnight. Could be a rogue ap, or problems with your 3g/phone standby. If you phone is having difficulty keeping the radio and 3g connection, it will drain like crazy. same with gps running. The battery should be fine, but unless you have a second to confirm, then you could end up grasping at straws.

As to the voltage question, not sure on your formula, but I have tested the milestone ap and my custom slots extensively. In theory if you ask of your processor to do the same work with less voltage I would expect the net to be the same. But, this is where your sleep profile is critical (or just setcpu/kernel slots in general). With sleep, you want the lowest slot that will wake the phone. Then on the high end of the sleep profile you want just enough voltage and cpu slot to allow the phone to do background tasks while sleeping to keep the processor from getting back logged. and with Milestone or the manual slot settings, you play with the voltage for each slot to get by with the least amount of voltage (vsel setting). So back to the formula, with profiles you are actually not fixing voltage, but lowering the processor speed and optimizing the lowest vsel setting to reduce voltage requirement.

DF member Wingdo really helped me get my head around all of this with some of his posts in the long Compcache thread (near the end) and I think in the milestone tutorial thread. Might help for you to check his replies to me.

And all of this well and good in theory, but back to your applications, you should have better battery life overnight, but either something(s) are running amuck keeping your processor up all night. For me it was setting a low end sleep at 400, and not reducing the top end from 900. Toss in the weather widget, gmail and google voice polling all night (at 900) and I had poor battery performance.

Craig

[itchn2go]

I found spare parts will indicates sleep time. My phone clearly is not sleeping. Any suggestions on how to figure this out is welcomed.

Ed

kinda sounds like your phone isnt sleeping