OS at over 88% and drains battery

[cheers007]

Let me start by saying I love my Droid phone by Motorola

The problem I've had happen to me twice is I feel the phone super hot in my pocket. I take it out and bring it out of standby. I see my battery almost depleted. I go into Settings, About Phone, Battery Use, and I notice the OS is at top with over than 88% useage.

Before anyone says Kill Apps please be aware that I'm in IT field and know more than basics for this phone. I have no widgets running nor apps at that time. I am just in the blind as to what happened.

1. Has this happened to others?

2. Is there a log somewhere storing what processes or apps were running?

3. Is there a fix for this?

I am on the latest update.

 

[MNTNBKR]

The only time I've had anything like that happen to me is when I had a weather widget trying to download data continuously. Sounds like that's not your problem though, so I can't really help...sorry.

 

[hookbill]

I hear what you're saying but for the phone to be hot like that something has got to be running. Or you've got a bad phone.

Did this just start happening? I see you're relatively new here (we all are) did you just get the phone or have you had it a while?

 

[Martin030908]

I've never had the battery get super hot, but I have seen on one occasion, my battery was abnormally low and when I checked to see what had been using it I had a similar find. The OS had used something like 70% of my battery....
.... haven't seen it since however. In my case I am almost 100% positive it was an app that had got stuck in a loop on my phone.

 

[cereal killer]

You definitely have an App that is running. Maybe an anti-virus? I don't know....but an application is definitely running.

I would go into the manage apps settings and filter everything that's running and check from there.

settings/applications/manage apps/menu/filter/running/ all apps that are running will be listed there.

 

[Martin030908]

... FYI... I don't know if you're using it by chance, but myLock was the app that got stuck in a loop for me. I was trying one of the beta releases per a suggestion from the developer and it interfered with Handcent's Pop-Up. Somehow the enable/disable of the lock screen wound up in a system loop and absolutely torched my battery.
It was a fluke it got stuck in the loop, but I'm positive it's what happened

 

[DROIDMASTER]

Very hot temperatures

Most likely you are running an app that stays on the OS and changes for weather updates and such. As I believe the weather updates that inform you directly off your OS or home screen will be accused of wasteing battery in the OS category.

This has nothing to do with the OS using but I think the reason for the battery of the droid getting super hot is salt. Most of the time washing machines and dryers use smells with chemicals in them. This however can prove harmful to some people. Now a days appliances are starting to use salt as an alternative to these chemicals. Since the droids usb port isnt covered everytime you expose the usb port to your jeans salt may transfer into the usb port. Likely this will happen if you have pushed salt through in to the main battery area. Salt makes Li-on Batteries go crazy not dangerously but high energy. This is why phones get very hot I believe. Feel free to try and prove me wrong but...

 

[ldimick]

Try leaving it on your desk and see what happens. I wonder if it's not a problem with not receiving a 3G signal and dropping back to Edge.

 

[cephas003]

I also had something similar to me happen last night/this morning. I took a nap yesterday and woke with my droid being really hot. I did a battery pull (Old Blackberry habits die hard) and didnt think much of it. This morning I go to work, and maybe an hour or so into the day my phone is really hot again and the battery was down to 60%. I went to Settings>About Phone>Applications> Running Services, and the only apps I saw where normal ones (Gtalk, Swype, Weather Channel Widget, eBuddy). The only apps I recently downloaded were the drinking games app and the (I believe) updated Facebook.

I know everyone swears that Task Killer doesnt work, but because I didn't know what else to do and didnt want my battery dying by lunch time, I restarted my phone and reinstalled Task Killer and since then my battery has been back to "normal", which still sucks because I barely use it all day and I'm still down to 30-40% by 8pm.

Is that normal for people? This is like my 2nd full week with the phone and I have seen posts of people going to bed with their battery @ 80% after a full day. Even before this abnormal occurrence, my battery would be at 90% within an hour of being unplugged (WiFi off, GPS off, bluetooth off). Coming from a Blackberry Storm, after the 5.0.0.328 update, my Storm lasted a day (7am-11pm) and a half before it needed to be charged again.

Do I just have to learn to charge my phone all the time? Is it a bad battery? Will the 2.1 update address battery life? I'm looking for some guidance on this issue. Thanks.

 

[Vulcan1600]

Most likely you are running an app that stays on the OS and changes for weather updates and such. As I believe the weather updates that inform you directly off your OS or home screen will be accused of wasteing battery in the OS category.

This has nothing to do with the OS using but I think the reason for the battery of the droid getting super hot is salt. Most of the time washing machines and dryers use smells with chemicals in them. This however can prove harmful to some people. Now a days appliances are starting to use salt as an alternative to these chemicals. Since the droids usb port isnt covered everytime you expose the usb port to your jeans salt may transfer into the usb port. Likely this will happen if you have pushed salt through in to the main battery area. Salt makes Li-on Batteries go crazy not dangerously but high energy. This is why phones get very hot I believe. Feel free to try and prove me wrong but...

That's quite an interesting theory, since I usually have my Droid in my shirt pocket, maybe this is wny I don't get the battery too hot. I don't know how much tit salt could penetrate into the USB or battery charging areas.

 

[stuhasdroid]

Apps running vs. services running

I had never changed the filter to 'running' for Settings / Manage Applications. I was surprised to see some of the items running. I had reviewed Settings / Running Services and expected that was the process listing or equivalent.

Interesting, thanks.

I'll have to investigate some of these items.

You definitely have an App that is running. Maybe an anti-virus? I don't know....but an application is definitely running.

I would go into the manage apps settings and filter everything that's running and check from there.

settings/applications/manage apps/menu/filter/running/ all apps that are running will be listed there.

 

[evan1005]

I also had something similar to me happen last night/this morning. I took a nap yesterday and woke with my droid being really hot. I did a battery pull (Old Blackberry habits die hard) and didnt think much of it. This morning I go to work, and maybe an hour or so into the day my phone is really hot again and the battery was down to 60%. I went to Settings>About Phone>Applications> Running Services, and the only apps I saw where normal ones (Gtalk, Swype, Weather Channel Widget, eBuddy). The only apps I recently downloaded were the drinking games app and the (I believe) updated Facebook.

I know everyone swears that Task Killer doesnt work, but because I didn't know what else to do and didnt want my battery dying by lunch time, I restarted my phone and reinstalled Task Killer and since then my battery has been back to "normal", which still sucks because I barely use it all day and I'm still down to 30-40% by 8pm.

Is that normal for people? This is like my 2nd full week with the phone and I have seen posts of people going to bed with their battery @ 80% after a full day. Even before this abnormal occurrence, my battery would be at 90% within an hour of being unplugged (WiFi off, GPS off, bluetooth off). Coming from a Blackberry Storm, after the 5.0.0.328 update, my Storm lasted a day (7am-11pm) and a half before it needed to be charged again.

Do I just have to learn to charge my phone all the time? Is it a bad battery? Will the 2.1 update address battery life? I'm looking for some guidance on this issue. Thanks.

Personally, I can get about 2 days of use on a full charge. I don't use it terribly much during work hours, but I probably play on it at least 30 - 60 minutes at work and about the same amount of time in the evening, depending on my mood. Typically, if I will go to bed on a full charge, by noon the next day it's at 80% and then 60% by bed time. The 2nd day, it will be at 40% for most of the day and by the time I'm home from work, it's usually down to 20%, at which point, I plug it in

What do you have your screen brightness set to?
I always have my brightness turned all the way down, and not on auto (it's still the #1 battery user at ~40% or so). I have sync enabled at all times, and run weatherbug.

 

[BigRussDaGOD]

get advanced app killer. use it. GPS, WIFI, using browser for long periods, using gmob [chat app] for long periods will make your droid/battery hot. your better off turning off WIFI and GPS unless you really intend to use them. they will suck your battery dry in mere hours. after your done with the browser [or whatever your doing] use app killer.

 

[DROIDMASTER]

Some people tell you not to use app killer I explained why you should use it in an earlier thread which was deleted because of my tone. Use app killers no matter what others say.

 

[cheers007]

You definitely have an App that is running. Maybe an anti-virus? I don't know....but an application is definitely running.

I would go into the manage apps settings and filter everything that's running and check from there.

settings/applications/manage apps/menu/filter/running/ all apps that are running will be listed there.

Thanks Cereal! I see what is running now, but all of this seems to be the basic built-in stuff like Pico TTS, com.android.whatevers (3 of em), etc.

Weather Channel might be the culprit however, I do not have the widget on my desktop. I simply have the icon and I make it a point to open the app and back out of it the entire way when I'm done in hopes that it will kill the app. That doesn't appear to be so.

As many of you said, the problem is an app running in an infinite loop causing the CPU to run at 100%, which is where the heat is probably originating, not the battery. I"m just surprised that the OS will allow that kind of CPU usage in standby mode.

Is there a trick to not allow that level of CPU activity when in standby?