Cell signal search is killing my battery

[zhadj030]

Every one in the community know that I love complaining. Well today I am complaining about the cell coverage and how is it killing my battery. Any one can hell me out with that. ?

So I having been monitoring my battery and how is it getting drained like Niagara falls every day. 

After looking for culprits I seem to find that the radio search is mostly at fault. 

As you can see from the colors it is always on the orange and the red; and out of service for half of the time. 

I am going crazy as Greenify is bring some of my sanity back but I do appreciate of you guys had some tips on how to deal with this especially at home where I can only get a max of 2 bars of either LTE or WCMDA. (And that when I am near the window in the 2nd floor)

Also I did start restricting synchronization and  android system but it seems that a combination of both bad cell +WiFi brings it downhill quicker compared to when connected in the university per example (good cell coverage always on the green)

I am on Android 6 and I do appreciate any suggestions

Thanks 

[softech]

@Naughty 

you meant you cannot use Mobile Data? 

how about voice?

Did you login My Account (please use Incognito mode) and confirm if the account status is Active ?

Try reboot your phone first and give us more info, like what works, what not and what you have done so far

[Naughty]

My phone only works fine over wifi.

[pipahaha]

This is great!

[IssacBLawerence]

good post

[WilmaShaw]

Do not worry, we all love to complain. To be honest, I had the same problem bylo Toronto. I reset the settings to the factory settings. At university I always connect to a local wi-fi. Although usually, I do not use the Internet in lectures. The best service in Canada (view site) helps me with my studies, here  I buy research paper. By the way, can you use the Internet at a university or college?

[will13am]

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@zhadj030 wrote:

Thank you everyone for your intakes. I am not sure which one did the major job but they all worked. So now I am back on a good battery life again.

Special thanks to @will13am for mentioned the waklocks and exposed I was trying to avoid them since I didn't like to mess with them but now I had to deal with them. 

There were indeed some issues with the system and I worked around it by playing on other apps and the mail app came from GApps project had the little default so I switched it with Gmail and completely disabled it for some synch issues.

This is the latest battery life on the 7800 mah it's back to two full days usage.

Other apps 

Thanks everyone for the great help.

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@zhadj030, glad to help.  I have always had some level of range anxiety and I pay very close attention to battery usage.  These days, the cell chip is very energy efficient even at low signal strength.  Wakelock is the remaining battery hog outside of screen being on.  Rogue apps can cause huge wakelock problems.  Interestingly google play services can be a real bad actor as well.  I usually never reboot my phone, but do so religiously after a play services update.  If I don't, play services will chew up power big time.  

[zhadj030 · Accepted solution]

Thank you everyone for your intakes. I am not sure which one did the major job but they all worked. So now I am back on a good battery life again.

Special thanks to @will13am for mentioned the waklocks and exposed I was trying to avoid them since I didn't like to mess with them but now I had to deal with them. 

There were indeed some issues with the system and I worked around it by playing on other apps and the mail app came from GApps project had the little default so I switched it with Gmail and completely disabled it for some synch issues.

This is the latest battery life on the 7800 mah it's back to two full days usage.

Other apps 

Thanks everyone for the great help.

[s2scotty]

Hey @Shutdown,

FYI,,, cyanogenmod (CM) ceased to be in the custom ROM business (going forward), effective 2016-12-31. As of this posting (2017Q1), their store of custom ROMs for the full plethora of past-supported devices remains online and downloadable. However, CM's --private and commercial-- infrastructure (i.e. server farms and networks) that has underpinned the open custom ROM catalog may disappear at any time. Also, there is NO new or updated ROM builds forethcoming. It's now frozen in time at the builds made right before 2016-12-31.

Instead, LineageOS (lineageos.org) is CM's builder of open custom ROMs successor. At present, they are supporting/building the following:

• LineageOS (nee CM) 13.1, an android marshmellow 6.0.1 parallel, and
• LineageOS (nee CM) 14.1, an android nougat 7.1 and 7.1.1 parallel.

The present 13.1 and 14.1 only posture means that the supported devices count drops to release LOS 13 (native android 6.0.1) and LOS 14 (native android 7.1.1) capable devices only.

The supported device count should grow over time as more human resources (dev's) "show up" and contribute. Also, owing to fewer technical and human resources right now, LOS builds are  "weekly," not "nightly" as wasCM. CM ROM operations was principally funded by the commercial branch of CM. LOS will crowd source fund when they are ready.

I personally run Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 devices on LOS 14.1-20170131; they are current on google-issued montly security patch update 2017-01-05. Both devices are perfectly stable and both are faster than before on stock android.

Good luck with your ROMs.

/Scott

[Devil_tear]

Did you check your baseband? Is there an updated one you can flash?

[zhadj030]

I do indeed have tons of options I have tested 4 of then so far in the last 3 yrs, lately I wanted something new , I wanted more stability then really features. Plus this is the only ROM that actually fixed my GPS system.

[Devil_tear]

You should have tons of options on an S5 for ROMs... Try different ones... But most of all do some research on your baseband and check if you are on the latest version...

[zhadj030]

Thank you all for tour suggestions, I am now going full guns blazing to see what's going to happen + amplify . l Good thing I have rooted the phone. I will update this post once I have enough data

[Shutdown]

The problem is probably with your custom ROM the only ROM I found stable and somewhat good was cyanogenmod but that was way back, and even that had minor issues.

[zhadj030]

I am Running TipsyOS 4.7, based on Android 6.0.1 on a Galaxy S5 with an extended battery of 7800 mAh

Started using Xposed + greenefy combo since the weekend but before that I was only on greenefy aggressive dose.

The only thing that I am not optimizing is the alarm app 

[will13am]

OP, please indicate hardware and rom you are using.  This is important for shaping feedback.  For me android OS battery drain is caused by Google play service which is not part of battery optimization.  I have found deleting all data in play services and letting the app reconstruct it resolves the wakelock issue.  

I run omni rom 6.0.1 on an Oppo find 7 with greenify/xposed framework.  The phone is usually awake less than 10% of the time and correlates to time when the screen is on and when sync operations are being done.

[zhadj030]

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@thudoan63

Thank you for taking the time to write this. 🙂

I already performed a factory reset (twice) one of them was to resolve LTE issues and it did fix it , the second for the battery . I do clean both types of cache, and yes most of the time I do wait for all the apps to optimize. (at least it went from 450 app  in old ROMs to juste 250 app in the new ROM) 

If you have other suggestions please let me know, I would like to leave the new ROM since it took me about 4 other ROMs to find a good stable version.

Thanks

[zhadj030]

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@Korth wrote:

It could be time for a new battery.

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XD, indeed, it is new... in fact it is a new Extended Battery

Spoiler

[7800mAh]

So it is a lot of juice that do not hold for the day

@NDesai , yes it is a Custom  ROM this tme I went for something really light, no more of that Touchwiz Ultra personalisation, I am on a pure Android now, it is a lot quicker and stable , it is based on CM , So I would imagine that it is good (at least frm my previous experiences with that) ,

Thanks, I will keep that on the last resort 

[zhadj030]

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@Shutdown wrote:

Try setting your preferred network to 3g instead of LTE. I find their 3g signal is a lot better and 3g may use less power then LTE too.

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Unfortunatly, at home it is no difference. But I do that in other areas and it works 

[zhadj030]

Yes I am running Android 6, and adding Greenify also with xposed framework going for aggressive dose and I cant deny that it is indeed making some difference. 

I did install gsam battery monitor and now I am trying to understand how to work with it, thanks for the suggestions. 

[NDesai]

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@thudoan63 wrote:

The standby time looks perfectly normal when signal is red, then all of a sudden after a gap in the graph (which indicates you restarted your phone), the battery started going down drastically.

It shows from the list that Android System is the biggest user of battery during that period by far. This indicates that the cellular signal is NOT the cause of your battery drain, but something that has gone wrong in the OS. Seeing as you are using a custom/modified ROM, it could be practically anything. Android System battery drain in even stock ROMs, never mind custom/modified ones, are more often than not impossible to track down the exact cause of, as the battery stats screen is very unspecific in telling you what it is being caused by.

In most cases however, this issue can be solved by doing a factory reset. If you don't want to do that, you can try going into your recovery and clearing cache first. Keep in mind that once you leave your recovery after clearing cache, you will be greeted with the "Android is starting... Optimizing app X of X" screen, so if you have a lot of apps installed be prepared to wait a while.

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Exactly my thought, it could be anything when you use custom rom. I switched multiple ROMs and Kernals to find better ones that suits me. 

Try the best kernals like Franco or ElementalX. Before trying, always backup.

[thudoan63]

The standby time looks perfectly normal when signal is red, then all of a sudden after a gap in the graph (which indicates you restarted your phone), the battery started going down drastically.

It shows from the list that Android System is the biggest user of battery during that period by far. This indicates that the cellular signal is NOT the cause of your battery drain, but something that has gone wrong in the OS. Seeing as you are using a custom/modified ROM, it could be practically anything. Android System battery drain in even stock ROMs, never mind custom/modified ones, are more often than not impossible to track down the exact cause of, as the battery stats screen is very unspecific in telling you what it is being caused by.

In most cases however, this issue can be solved by doing a factory reset. If you don't want to do that, you can try going into your recovery and clearing cache first. Keep in mind that once you leave your recovery after clearing cache, you will be greeted with the "Android is starting... Optimizing app X of X" screen, so if you have a lot of apps installed be prepared to wait a while.

[NDesai]

Are you on Custom Rom? 

[Korth]

It could be time for a new battery.

[Shutdown]

Try setting your preferred network to 3g instead of LTE. I find their 3g signal is a lot better and 3g may use less power then LTE too.

[will13am]

What phone are you running?  Android 6 is pretty good on battery usage.  At home and in my office, I get between two and three bars in LTE and my battery consumption in standby is excellent.  The battery drains at a rate of about 1% every 3 hours.  I run greenify also with xposed framework to enhance deep sleep mode.  

Apart from the unusual cellular disconnects, android system power usage is very high.  That's an indication that there are too many wakelocks preventing the phone from entering deep sleep mode.  If your phone is rooted, run a wakelock detector to see which apps are keeping the phone awake.  Otherwise, run gsam battery monitor to see which apps are power hungry.