Android :: How To Make A Widget That Doesn't Drain Battery?
Jun 5, 2010
I want to make (yet another) news widget. Initially I thought it was enough to: 1. Download all the news articles 2. Update the widget every 5 seconds to change the currently displayed article using Alarm Manager (Alarm Manager.RTC) 3. Update the widget every 30-60 minutes to get new articles. This worked great on the first try but battery was quickly drained. I checked the logs and it turned out that the widget did the 5 second updates even if the screen was off. This was a surprise to me since the docs states: "..set an alarm with an Intent that your AppWidgetProvider receives, using the Alarm Manager. Set the alarm type to either ELAPSED_REAL TIME or RTC, which will only deliver the alarm when the device is awake. " I guess the device is considered "awake" even if screen is off? I found the same issue here: http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/threa. I then checked the standard news widget and the other news widgets most popular on the Android Market and I see that they have services running all the time. Maybe because they want to handle the broadcast event when the screen is turned off? So is this really the best solution to have a service running in the background? So if someone downloads 10 different news widgets from different companies they end up with a list of 10 services in the "Running services" list?
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May 7, 2010
I have a Motorola Milestone with Android 2.1. I'd like an app which shows the battery level in the notification bar. Nothing fancy, no estimation of remaining battery life nor fancy eye candy. If it can show a more precise reading than the Milestone built-in one, which only decreases in 10% intervals, fine, but only if this isn't a drain on the battery. I know there are several such apps, but which do you think is the best for my needs? There are so many it's hard to try them all and choose. I just want something basic and simple which doesn't drain the battery. I tried "battery indicator" and "battery status pro"; they both do what I need, but I'm afraid they might be an additional drain on the battery.
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Aug 3, 2010
So I noticed that my battery icon is showing nearly a solid green battery, just slightly below it (a thin sliver of black). I've been on the phone for over an hour, played some games, got some e-mails etc and was wondering why it hasn't moved because before (had the phone since the beginning of May) it always seems to drop pretty accurately based on my usage (granted it's just observation, never studied it or anything). I went to settings - about phone - battery - and saw that I'm actually at 70%...but yet the icon hasn't moved down. Played a game for about 3 minutes and checked again, and the green icon now accurately shows what a 70% battery life should look like. Does anybody else know if their icon doesn't accurately represent their usage? Is this nothing to worry about? haha just concerned it will lag more and more with time or something...
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Sep 17, 2010
Even if you have things set not to sync automatically, does simply having a widget on one of your home screens drain the battery at all?
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Sep 3, 2010
I've had this phone since Tuesday and it's not made it from morning to night one time. I am using it, yes, but I thought that was the point. My usual routine is wake up, check the twitter/facebook feeds, log in and check email, browse a few web pages, and get moving. today, i did all of that and took a walk and listened to a cd for an hour on the doubletwist player. i took a single photo. and made one very short phone call. it is nearly dead. it's been off the hook since 830 and it's only 3. I could do all this minus the music playing part on my blackberry, which was ancient 8830 and i would still have juice by midnight tonight. and it should be noted, blackberry constantly pushed my email--i have k9 set to manual, as i do with the facebook and twitter/social media widget. so that instantaneous access that's supposed to be so useful and exciting--i don't have it.
i've done all the usuals, turned off the bluetooth, the wifi radio, the 4g radio (the whole point of the damn phone), lowered screen brightness to the very lowest number, making it totally useless in bright daylight and i mean completely useless-can't see to answer a damn call), i have the screen lock to 15 seconds. i have the autosyncing off, i have the whole phone crippled, and it's about to die. does anyone have any suggestions? i was using launcher pro, but want to go back to the standard touchwiz--only bummer is i can't swap out the messaging icon for handcent which i installed over the regular msging app--because ppl said it uses less battery drain-- but not sure how to disable the old one. i am using live wallpapers, but again, how much of a drain can they really be overall? i turned off the animations, is this a lemon? will rooting make it better? will the new upcoming os make it better? or is 6 hours of usage all i can expect? srsly, i would like to know, because if that's the case, i will go back to the blackberry. i don't care how fancy the phone is, if you can't use all the fun things without it dying, then what's the point?
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Jul 8, 2010
my eris wont charge. i click on the battery widget and it says charging but it doesnt
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Sep 24, 2010
Many of us have experienced some battery life fall out since the last update. I mentioned this in the battery life thread but I thought it deserved it own topic. I have an app that I downloaded called battery status. it has a battery history. and it says time without sleeping 7h 10m 25s ago. Thats exactally when I unplugged my phone. This explains why I am seeing 2-3% per hour loss while not using the phone and while in airplane mode. Before the update I could keep the phone in airplane mode, not usre it, and leave work with over 94% battery life. So this proves that somehow the phone is not going into sleep mode... I can guarantee that everyone else in that is experiencing battery drain since the sept 16th update is due to this reason. The question is... why the hell is this happening and why won't the phone go into sleep mode?
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Oct 14, 2010
Has anyone noticed an increase in battey drain while using the Lookout Mobile Security app? I noticed my battery drain was a little higher than usual today. I also have an app called battery indicator installed and was wondering if those apps cause higher battery drain also?
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Nov 13, 2010
Rooted Droid 1, running LFY 1.9 with it's 1ghz kernel, SPRecovery. Had a weird issue recently; the phone displayed that my battery life was at 40%, then probably ~30 minutes later it was down to 20%. I wasn't using it during that time, I just unlocked the screen to check something. Anyway, I opened my browser and within a minute or two I got the "15% battery life remaining" message, prompting me to connect my charger. I decided I would allow the phone to just die and shut itself down. So I waited ~45 minutes and it went down to 10%, then almost immediately to 5%. I turned on the GPS just to make it drain faster... I watched a one-hour television show and when it was over, I glanced over to the phone to see if it had died - nope, still on. I turned the LED light on, leaving the GPS running for ~25 minutes and it finally powered down. Then I plugged it in to charge and left the room. Came back in about 2.5 hours later and picked up the phone - it was very hot. Unlocked the screen and checked SetCPU and it was running ~135?F but it immediately started cooling down. It was fully charged, however so I unplugged it. I went to bed shortly thereafter and the battery life displayed 90% as I set the alarm to wake me up the next morning. I happened to wake up shortly before the alarm was set to go off and I picked up the phone to disable the alarm and noticed the red 'charge me' light blinking - unlocked the screen to see 5% and just then it powered itself down.
TL;DR -- Phone only got hot that one time, phone hasn't gone dead in stand-by mode again like it did that night. Battery drains at a seemingly normal rate based on my regular use from 100% down to 40%, then it rapidly drains after that, always skipping 30% and when it gets down to 5% it stays alive for quite a long time under heavy load. Is there a way to 'teach' the phone how to check and calculate actual and remaining battery % and to display it correctly? Is it kernel-related? I heard somewhere about doing a 'battery wipe' but I am unsure what that entails and searches are proving fruitless for me so far.
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Aug 12, 2010
does battery status pro drain your battery life?
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Jul 21, 2010
I've read conflicting reports on what eBuddy does to your battery. Some people say it has very minimal battery drain, and others say it's a battery hog.?
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Aug 27, 2010
after i applied the one click galaxy s lag fix on my phone it is much faster and i my quadrant score jumped from 800 to 2200 but now there is a noticeable battery drain on my captivate as it now doesnt make it through the day without dying after a full nights charge. does this happen to anyone else and is there anything i can do to prevent this?
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Aug 12, 2010
Ive currently installed 3g watchdog and droid stats. Im worried one of them is draining my battery but they are essential to me. Ive also seen there are a few more:
Stats
Tariff Watcher
Call Meter NG
What do you guys recommend out of the 5 i have mentioned? Are you using any and extremely happy? Has anyone else experienced battery drain with any of them
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Dec 13, 2013
My Nexus 5 crapped out on me today. I was using it when it suddenly restarted and began an infinite loop of load screen, saying its updating, than stating "Unfortunatly the process com.google.process.gapps has stopped."
I attempted a wipe/system reset several times but it shows the same "failed to mount" error each time.
Can I flash it via my pc?
See error messages:
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Jul 9, 2010
Has anyone installed/used "Tweetcaster"? Does it seem to drain the battery faster than normal? I had a blackberry and found that ubertwitter just killed the battery life, i was wondering if tweetcaster did the same. i loaded it this morning and it appears to be a battery drain, just curious
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Jun 9, 2010
What apps actually drain battery life?Im curious about the gmail and regular mail, and ECOBUZZ app?What's the best app I can download that will tell how much power an app is using?
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Nov 8, 2010
I just purchased an HTC Desire Z a few days ago and one of the first apps that I have downloaded is MSNTalk since I do a lot of messaging on MSN Messenger. I leave this app on all the time and I feel that it drains my battery considerably.
I've gone through the basic "conserve your battery" steps that many people have mentioned (i.e. no wi-fi, low backlight, increase email sync time, download only headers, kill running apps that are doing nothing, etc, etc.). However, my battery does not last more than 22-23 hours.
This 22-23 hours is with extreme minimal usage since I wanted to test the idle life on the phone. 22-23 hours of battery life without much use is quite bad imo, especially with the steps taken above to try and conserve more battery. The only thing I haven't tried yet is completely turning off MSNTalk and then testing how long the battery lasts. As we speak, my phone is charging and when it is at full battery life I will see if MSNTalk was indeed the culprit here.
Also, with MSNTalk on during the 22-23 hours the amount of data usage was around 8-9 MB/day. I think this is fairly high as well. This means the 3G was being used constantly.
I'd just like to know if anyone else has used MSNTalk and found the same issues with the battery life.
If it is indeed MSNTalk, does anyone have any suggestions on a good MSN IM app that is very good on the battery (i.e. BeeJive, EBuddy, etc)? For example, my friend uses BeeJive on his iPhone and it doesn't have the same battery issues as I do (he can easily go over a day).
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Jan 12, 2013
does Android Firewall [URL] .....
has any battery drain ? I would like to block access to internet to some of my apps, but i read somewhere that LBE and other firewall like that is draining battery ..
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Jan 5, 2010
I will create a service to do something when some hot situation occurs.
By hot situation I mean:
the GPS/cell coordinates are in known zone;
known Bluetooth device detected;
known Wi-Fi network detected;
weather info has change;
considerable movement speed change detected: eg. from walking to travel by car.
As you see these tasks are heavy, and will be run frequently. 15 mins, but sometimes even more, when I have to detect the movement speed of the device.
The question I have, will this drain the battery heavily?
If so, what recommendations do you have to minimize battery drain with the above tasks?
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Jan 17, 2014
Battery is draining quickly on galaxy s4 when idle. On battery usage it shows android os using 33%. I don't know how to show a pic on my phone so I cant show the graph.
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May 10, 2013
Does having sync on for calender drain a lot of battery android ?
GT-I9505
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Jul 26, 2013
For the last 5 days I am experiencing extreme battery drainage(Android OS nearly 100% Battery Usage ). Back when it began I did not install anything suspicious or battery consuming software. I never go full screen brightness, and all unnecessary apps are either deleted or disabled. I have tried Factory Resetting, Wiping all possible caches, systems, internal/external SD cards. I even tried manually deleting all folders from my PC. I have tried installing custom kernels, roots and even stock ROM. Right now I'm with stock ROM with CF root.
Phone state: Model number- GT-i9100; Android 4.0.3; Baseband v. i9100XXLPS, Kernel v. 3.0.15-i9100XXLPQ-CL223505 se,infra@SEP-94 #3; Built number IML74K.XWLP7. And here is what I get from the battery report :
i41.tinypic(dot)com/1j9nae.png
I have tried full discharge and charge to 100% and calibration. Even cleared the battery stats It just doesn't work. I am using Nova Launcher. Even after going back to TwLauncher I am still getting 98% Android OS usage. I don't use Data Mode and Wi-Fi isn't always on. When charged and calibrated at 100% at 21:00pm, in the morning at 9:00am phone battery is completely empty and shut down.
I'd like to use the stock ROM, with a nice battery stable kernel & still with Nova Launcher. NOTE: This is still happening with a NEW battery.
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Jan 11, 2013
I'm having problem with my Nexus 7. I have Android 4.2.1 on it. I've been using it for about a week now and every night i would turn it off, but in the last few nights, i decided to leave it on sleep mode to see how the battery life was.
On the google site, it says that the Nexus 7 should have 300 hours of standby. Is that the same as 300 hours of sleep? Because when I left my Nexus 7 on overnight, it drained from 55% to 33% in about 8 hours. That doesnt seem like 300 hours to me.
Also, I've tested it again, started at 100%, no wifi, no gps, no apps running in background, no syncing, in sleep mode, and it's draining at about 2% and hour. I've read on this forum that people have been getting like 2% every 8 hours on sleep, or even overnight. I've never used 4.1.1 so I dont have anything to compare it too. Does the 300 hour standby time mean powered off Nexus?
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Sep 27, 2013
There is a known issue on Android 4.2.2 with excessive battery drain with Google Services when Wi-Fi & mobile network location is enabled. Does Android 4.3 resolves this? I can't believe that Google will not use Standalone GPS services if Wi-Fi & mobile network location is disabled. So, the only way to use Maps is to put the phone in excessive battery drain mode.
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Oct 18, 2013
on my Nexus 4, it seems like the location is checked quite frequently by the phone, even if I'm not using an app that needs location, and even if the screen is off.
I don't want to turn off the Location Services, I just want my location to be obtained when I use Maps.
Anyway I can do that? I have already turned off location for Facebook and other annoying apps using App Ops. I basically don't want my location to be obtained when the screen is off.
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Feb 13, 2014
Ok so for some reason my battery just started going dead faster than normal. This is a slow days use but look at the attached pic
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Dec 15, 2012
I had a Samsung Nexus S which started to have this strange Android OS battery drain some weeks before the OTA ICS came in. I read thousands of forum posts to try tons of stuff to solve the problem without any success.
I then decided three weeks ago that it's obviously time to get a new phone so that I bought the Galaxy SIII (int). Strangely I still have great problems with my battery life which brought me here to ask some pros now.
Phone: Samsung Galaxy SIII (int)
ROM: StockROM (4.1.1) and CM10 Nightly
Carrier: German E-Plus
What is the most noticeable about the battery drain is, that it appears in standby (over night) in both ROMs, Stock and CM10 likewise with some minor differences. In 10h standby (Wifi on, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC all off, only few widgets, AquaMail on push) battery goes down from 100% to 70%.
After all, I tested both ROMs in the same situation over night and the bettery drain is pretty comparable (see the screenshots).
What I already tried (in both ROMs):
- disable all Google Maps autostarts and disable all location services
- disable apps like Gtalk, G+ etc.
- uninstall AquaMail
without any effect on the standby battery drain...
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Jul 16, 2010
On a road trip rght now from buffalo to dc will using a car charger with my evo ruin my battery life I know my old phone did
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Jun 14, 2010
I installed the Missed Reminder app on my phone this weekend but I've read around here that this is a big battery drain program. By navigating to the Battery usage section within the Android settings, the Missed Reminder app doesn't even show up. Does this mean the app is NOT draining, or am I looking in the wrong area?
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Jul 23, 2010
Well, its been about 32 hours with my EVO...and im loving it.
I admit, the battery worries me a bit. However, some commonsense things (and not so common sense, like the GSM/CDMA battery life change) have really helped. Task Manager seems to be the best overall task killer app, and keeping background data on but auto sync off seems to be a nice happy medium for syncing.
The major, MAJOR battery drainer? Google Maps/Navigation. The perfect argument for a car charger that can EVER be made. Ye gods.
So I unplugged it from my charger at 11 this morning. As of right now at 6:43 pm i have 41% battery left, have been fiddling with it for about half of that time, and turned disabled the data connection while i was in low signal areas during a short road trip.
Moderate use of Yahoo Messenger, texting, a few 5 minute phone calls, the occasional manual update of the Seesmic twitter client and a few other things have drained it a little bit...but a 5 minute stretch of Google Navigation? Did the most damage to the battery, knocked it down by 7 percent. Again...car charger. Need this soon. Anyone know of any reliable ones?
Other than that, great phone. Versatile, and I'm looking forward to the day that Android 2.2 comes to us for even more battery efficiency. Please feel free to ask me anything about how I have things set up, constantly trying new things out on this!
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