'Phone Idle' Draining Battery Quickly

Paully D

Hi all,

I've had my second Huawei phone for a few months now and I'm very happy with it. However, over the past couple of nights I have noticed that the battery in my phone has drained overnight and is dead when I wake up.

Doing a bit of investigation, I see that the 'phone idle' section of the battery is taking up over 30% of the battery use. For example, I charged the battery to full and in the 2 hours and 22 minutes that the battery has been off charge it is down to 81% with the 'phone idle' accounting for 31% of that drain. Obviously this is the cause of the battery draining overnight.

I'm just wondering if you guys would have any idea of what's causing the idle phone to take so much of my battery and/or how to solve this issue?

I've gone through my applications, checked to see what's running in the background etc and can't seem to find the source of the problem there. I've done the usual recommended checks. One thing I did do on Thursday was began charging the phone, only to have to run out before it was finished and needed my phone I had to plug out the charger and bring the phone with me even though it was only around 60% charged. I plugged it back in when I got home and again had to plug it out before it had completed charging a few hours later that day, but I'm unsure if this would have essentially caused my battery to become virtually useless (that was the first time since I got the phone I had done it too)? At present, I think that's what may have happened though.

Any advice or thoughts would be much appreciated. Thanks

waynegalway

Paully D wrote: »

Hi all,

I've had my second Huawei phone for a few months now and I'm very happy with it. However, over the past couple of nights I have noticed that the battery in my phone has drained overnight and is dead when I wake up.

Doing a bit of investigation, I see that the 'phone idle' section of the battery is taking up over 30% of the battery use. For example, I charged the battery to full and in the 2 hours and 22 minutes that the battery has been off charge it is down to 81% with the 'phone idle' accounting for 31% of that drain. Obviously this is the cause of the battery draining overnight.

I'm just wondering if you guys would have any idea of what's causing the idle phone to take so much of my battery and/or how to solve this issue?

I've gone through my applications, checked to see what's running in the background etc and can't seem to find the source of the problem there. I've done the usual recommended checks. One thing I did do on Thursday was began charging the phone, only to have to run out before it was finished and needed my phone I had to plug out the charger and bring the phone with me even though it was only around 60% charged. I plugged it back in when I got home and again had to plug it out before it had completed charging a few hours later that day, but I'm unsure if this would have essentially caused my battery to become virtually useless (that was the first time since I got the phone I had done it too)? At present, I think that's what may have happened though.

Any advice or thoughts would be much appreciated. Thanks

Could be a coverage thing. If it's idle but looking for signal that'll chew the battery compared to if it's idle with a strong consistent signal.

Paully D

waynegalway wrote: »

Could be a coverage thing. If it's idle but looking for signal that'll chew the battery compared to if it's idle with a strong consistent signal.

Cheers.

Coverage is and has been perfect in this area though. Always strong and consistent.

Mr E

Install wakelock detector (free on Google play). Leave it running for an hour and check back. It'll tell you what is chewing your battery in the background.

waynegalway

Mr E wrote: »

Install wakelock detector (free on Google play). Leave it running for an hour and check back. It'll tell you what is chewing your battery in the background.

I think the phone has to be rooted for this to work. OP hasn't said if it is.

Paully D

I deleted my earlier post from hours ago as I posted what turned out to be incorrect information.

Further investigation from the GSAM Battery application shows that android.process.media is using over 50% of the battery and causing it drain significantly. From what I understand, it occurs when there's either a corrupted file(s) on the SD card (which I have ruled out by following numerous steps outlined on various forums) or if one has a large number of media files on their SD card. Every time the phone restarts it has to scan for all of the files all over again and if you have say a 32GB packed with files (as I do) then it can take a ridiculous amount of time, killing the battery in the process.

A member of the Google team on their code forums confirmed that it's a known issue on 4.1 Jelly Bean which was addressed in further updates, however, as I'm using a Huawei Y300 which the Huawei team have said they have no intention of upgrading to a newer at any stage, it looks like I'll just have to bare with it.

I'll backup the SD card over the weekend and see how things go with only a few files on it and report back, though I'm not too confident that this will work as I haven't really added anything to the card in recent times, certainly not since just before the problem occurred.

irishpancake

waynegalway wrote: »

I think the phone has to be rooted for this to work. OP hasn't said if it is.

There may be a way for unrooted devices to work with WLD, see below:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r3VlhZIZVSufZlAeICJet6QBtyAF7z06_ysl1kUKME4/edit#slide=id.p

irishpancake

Paully D wrote: »

I deleted my earlier post from hours ago as I posted what turned out to be incorrect information.

Further investigation from the GSAM Battery application shows that android.process.media is using over 50% of the battery and causing it drain significantly. From what I understand, it occurs when there's either a corrupted file(s) on the SD card (which I have ruled out by following numerous steps outlined on various forums) or if one has a large number of media files on their SD card. Every time the phone restarts it has to scan for all of the files all over again and if you have say a 32GB packed with files (as I do) then it can take a ridiculous amount of time, killing the battery in the process.

A member of the Google team on their code forums confirmed that it's a known issue on 4.1 Jelly Bean which was addressed in further updates, however, as I'm using a Huawei Y300 which the Huawei team have said they have no intention of upgrading to a newer at any stage, it looks like I'll just have to bare with it.

I'll backup the SD card over the weekend and see how things go with only a few files on it and report back, though I'm not too confident that this will work as I haven't really added anything to the card in recent times, certainly not since just before the problem occurred.

You should perhaps have a look here:

All custom roms for Huawei Ascend Y300/G510


There are custom ROM's for your device, I think even Kitkat....

pickarooney

Paully D wrote: »

I deleted my earlier post from hours ago as I posted what turned out to be incorrect information.

Further investigation from the GSAM Battery application shows that android.process.media is using over 50% of the battery and causing it drain significantly. From what I understand, it occurs when there's either a corrupted file(s) on the SD card (which I have ruled out by following numerous steps outlined on various forums) or if one has a large number of media files on their SD card. Every time the phone restarts it has to scan for all of the files all over again and if you have say a 32GB packed with files (as I do) then it can take a ridiculous amount of time, killing the battery in the process.

A member of the Google team on their code forums confirmed that it's a known issue on 4.1 Jelly Bean which was addressed in further updates, however, as I'm using a Huawei Y300 which the Huawei team have said they have no intention of upgrading to a newer at any stage, it looks like I'll just have to bare with it.

I'll backup the SD card over the weekend and see how things go with only a few files on it and report back, though I'm not too confident that this will work as I haven't really added anything to the card in recent times, certainly not since just before the problem occurred.

I have a G300 with Jelly Bean and a 32GB SD card full of music and I have no such issues. There's no scans run every time I turn it on and it doesn't go scanning in the middle of the night either.

Maximus Alexander

There is also the possibility that the battery is shagged. If you haven't yet, you could try to recalibrate the battery by fully discharging it, followed by a full recharge. Most Lithium ion batteries contain a Battery Management System which can become misaligned with the actual chemical processes in the battery cells, recalibrating from time to time can help a lot.

irishpancake

pickarooney wrote: »

I have a G300 with Jelly Bean and a 32GB SD card full of music and I have no such issues. There's no scans run every time I turn it on and it doesn't go scanning in the middle of the night either.

Ahh, you so lucky

There is a known problem with Media Scanner in Android, sometimes scanning is endless, due to dodgy media files, perhaps corrupt mp3's, etc, etc.

If you have Custom Recovery, try Fix Permissions, some say it fixes media files with wrong permissions.

Also, you can stop scanning in folders containing suspect media, or in all folders with media if you want, by creating an empty text file, and calling it:


.nomedia


which tells the system there are no media files present in the folder, so media scanner will ignore it.

You could then systematically delete or disable that in each folder, to try to identify where the dodgy media file(s) lives.

Best of luck....

there are other things, but that will keep you busy for a while

Just one thing, this is also reported for 4.1, supposedly fixed in 4.2, but you could try.....

"If you have a directory with many files that contain SQL wildcards such as "_", get rid of those files."


Does Media Scanner show up at all in the list of what is using Battery??

Because it usually does, hope you are not on a wild goose chase??

Anyway, more info here:

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/indexing-of-pictures-making-your-gallery-slow-heres-a-fix/

and here:

http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/how-to-prevent-a-directory-from-being-scanned-by-android-gallery/

http://lifehacker.com/5793803/disable-media-scanning-in-specific-android-directories-by-creating-a-nomedia-file

Paully D

Thanks for all the help guys, it is appreciated.

Yesterday evening I wiped everything off the SD card (25 GB's worth of music plus pictures and videos), saved it to my computer, formatted the SD card, charged the phone fully after it had drained out and gave things another go.

So far, things have been good. I'm on 30% of battery with 16 hours having progressed and it obviously made it through the night without going dead. I also spent a bit of time re-downloading apps that I had on the SD card which I had deleted and messing around on other apps due to same which would have caused the battery to die in about 6 hours pre-format.

I'll put the music and pictures back on the card gradually over the next week or two but in honesty there was a lot of rubbish on it so it's no harm to have a fresh start.

Thanks again!