(lg g2) I like the new lollipop update...

[soccerballtux]

The 2nd time I factory reset it, I was very careful in what I installed.
I using Apex launcher vs Go launcher on the G2(apex is lighter).
Theres a weather app I was using on the G2.
Viber which I use to talk to my wife while she's away.
Theres maybe 3-4 more apps on the S5 that I don't think is running at all.
This is VS 30-50 apps on my G2 running with location on(I'm sure I had location "ON" on my G2.
I'm not a novice user. I'm only comparing what I was using with my G2. The battery drain on the S5 is just crazy. Like I said earlier, I turned OFF location on the S5 and now its about the same as the G2.

you can have tons of apps installed, shouldn't matter, what matters is what they're doing...

maybe an s5 app is checking the location all the time. Like the weather app.
I removed that permission from HD Widgets-- I told you the zip, you don't need my location.

 

[Carl R]

Google play services is the culprit for the battery drain. There is nothing you can do about it unless you get rid of all google apps. This is an issue across all google devices that have the latest google play services installed (7.3)

Under kit-kat I usually got 3-4 days on a charge, and never paid it much attention, but under lollipop it dropped to 1-2 days. The culprit was Google Play, which was running 43% of battery drain, and Google + another 23%, plus another big chunk for the google updater, and my battery was running down quickly. Now, it happens that I use my phone for only a few things, phone calls, texting, email, calendar, and once in awhile I browse the web or take a photo, plus a few apps like flashlight and calculator. I don't do any social media things, so I really have no need for the Google Services, so I undertook to do exactly what you suggest, stopping the google stuff from whatever it was doing, and the difference, when I finally succeeded was huge.

So.... how could I stop the google stuff? Well, I went to Settings-Mobile Data and set it so that app updates, google play, etc, can only update via wifi... then I turned WiFi off. I will turn WiFi on while charging, and they can catch up at whatever they do, though I have no idea what that might be. Next I went to settings-aps, and uninstalled Google +, while reset it to factory state, then I made sure it was disabled. I also made sure that Email, Gmail, and my Calendar weren't trying to refresh unless I told them to, which is the way I normally use them anyway. Also, I have GPS off, as I always do, since I don't use it.

After these changes, my usage shows :24% screen, 21% phone idle, 18% cell standby, 12% android os, 5% Android System, 5% voice calls, 3% Smart Device Manager, 3% Google services, 2% Swype, 1% Phone, 1% Chrome. I currently have 103 hours on this charge, and am down to 12%. It estimates that I have 14 hours left. Because I don't use my phone in the evenings or overnight, it will last longer than that, probably 18 hours, for a total of 121 hours, just over 5 complete days. Note that this is a two year old G2, so it isn't like the battery is new.

Have I had any problems? Honestly, I haven't noticed any difference at all, other than extending my battery life from 1-2 days to 5 days. I have no idea what Google Play and Google + were doing with all the power they were using, but it doesn't seem to have been anything that was of any use to me.

Oh, and the other change I made was to get rid of those horrendous messages on the lock screen, describing all this "sensitive" stuff that was going on my phone, which made it look like I was up to something. Thankfully my LED notification still works, and that's really all I need.

 

[soccerballtux]

wow.

I've been getting better nexus 5 battery life with mobile data disabled/deactivated SIM. I wonder if this is related.

 

[soccerballtux]

Under kit-kat I usually got 3-4 days on a charge, and never paid it much attention, but under lollipop it dropped to 1-2 days. The culprit was Google Play, which was running 43% of battery drain, and Google + another 23%, plus another big chunk for the google updater, and my battery was running down quickly. Now, it happens that I use my phone for only a few things, phone calls, texting, email, calendar, and once in awhile I browse the web or take a photo, plus a few apps like flashlight and calculator. I don't do any social media things, so I really have no need for the Google Services, so I undertook to do exactly what you suggest, stopping the google stuff from whatever it was doing, and the difference, when I finally succeeded was huge.

So.... how could I stop the google stuff? Well, I went to Settings-Mobile Data and set it so that app updates, google play, etc, can only update via wifi... then I turned WiFi off. I will turn WiFi on while charging, and they can catch up at whatever they do, though I have no idea what that might be. Next I went to settings-aps, and uninstalled Google +, while reset it to factory state, then I made sure it was disabled. I also made sure that Email, Gmail, and my Calendar weren't trying to refresh unless I told them to, which is the way I normally use them anyway. Also, I have GPS off, as I always do, since I don't use it.

After these changes, my usage shows :24% screen, 21% phone idle, 18% cell standby, 12% android os, 5% Android System, 5% voice calls, 3% Smart Device Manager, 3% Google services, 2% Swype, 1% Phone, 1% Chrome. I currently have 103 hours on this charge, and am down to 12%. It estimates that I have 14 hours left. Because I don't use my phone in the evenings or overnight, it will last longer than that, probably 18 hours, for a total of 121 hours, just over 5 complete days. Note that this is a two year old G2, so it isn't like the battery is new.

Have I had any problems? Honestly, I haven't noticed any difference at all, other than extending my battery life from 1-2 days to 5 days. I have no idea what Google Play and Google + were doing with all the power they were using, but it doesn't seem to have been anything that was of any use to me.

Oh, and the other change I made was to get rid of those horrendous messages on the lock screen, describing all this "sensitive" stuff that was going on my phone, which made it look like I was up to something. Thankfully my LED notification still works, and that's really all I need.

thanks for the explanation btw/great first post

 

[tvdang7]

Sometimes do you guys ever wonder how 1 person's experience is completely different than another person's? Had the nexus 5 it was great except battery life the g2 was def. an upgrade in that department as long as camera. No problems per say and the s5 battery life is still great after lollipop. So i am left confused ...... currently on a z2 and have gone through like 3 lollipop updates and battery life is still the same and I did not have to do a reset.

 

[soccerballtux]

Sometimes do you guys ever wonder how 1 person's experience is completely different than another person's? Had the nexus 5 it was great except battery life the g2 was def. an upgrade in that department as long as camera. No problems per say and the s5 battery life is still great after lollipop. So i am left confused ...... currently on a z2 and have gone through like 3 lollipop updates and battery life is still the same and I did not have to do a reset.

I chalk it up to poorly written apps and the VM/fact of using non-deterministic software languages like objective-C.

 

[sbpromania]

if you haven't figured out by now, google is a bunch of idiots with regard to UX and UI design. material design language? more like messy desk language!

I have to disagree with you, the LG G2 lollipop design is made by LG. Each manufacturer has his own custom interface. So the design is not made by Google. If you want the pure Google design experience then I recommend you to install Google Now Launcher and you will have the same launcher as Nexus 5.

Regarding the battery life with the Lollipop update, I've also seen that the battery life dropped if you compare with Kit kat however I think I have changed the way I'm using my N5. More precisely I'm using Waze when I'm going/leaving work, about 2 hours per day. At work I'm using WIFI and Soundcloud for music almost all day... so at the end of the day I'm having 20% percents of battery left.
My girlfriend also received the Lollipop update on LG G2 mini and I have the feeling that the navigation is more fluid and smooth. Battery life seems to be the same.

If i'm using the device only for calls and sms and 10 minutes for internet browsing then I'm getting 2 days. Google announced that Google M will focus on battery life. Is funny that we want to have so much in a smartphone: quad core, qhd resolution, 2-3 ram, fingerprint scanner and others but we complain about battery life... This is the cost of having so much features in a small device.

 

[Carl R]

....If i'm using the device only for calls and sms and 10 minutes for internet browsing then I'm getting 2 days. Google announced that Google M will focus on battery life. Is funny that we want to have so much in a smartphone: quad core, qhd resolution, 2-3 ram, fingerprint scanner and others but we complain about battery life... This is the cost of having so much features in a small device.

I don't think that's it. I know that I've never complained before because in the past the power usage always seemed logically related to what I was using the phone for. My complaint existed because, after the upgrade from KitKat to Lollipop, my time on a charge dropped from ~4 days to 1-2 days, and I was using the phone less, not more. Now that I have solved the problem and I'm actually getting even longer battery life than under KitKat, I'm happy again.

That brings me to another question, however. Considering that I wasn't doing anything that required those Google services to do anything, why were they eating so much power? Perhaps they were checking gmail every 15 seconds, or something? OK, but I don't use gmail, so there was nothing there. Perhaps they were synching my calendar? But, to what, since I have nothing to sych it to. Perhaps they were synching my contacts? But to what? I haven't added any new contacts to my phone, and it's the only place I have contacts. And as for Google+, I've never even set it up, so what was it using power for?

I think that there are most likely some great inefficiencies in Google Play and Google +, and that in the future Google can tweak them to improve battery life substantially. If they were doing whatever it is they do, but doing it efficiently, they wouldn't eat 65% of the battery (43% for Play, 22% for Google +).

 

[Carl R]

OK, today another ap went rouge and started eating battery. "Smart Device Manager" suddenly began consuming 49% of my power. I did a web search, and "Smart Device Manager" is an app installed by Sprint that allows parents to control when a teen can use their phone. According to Sprint "Unless you sign up for Sprint Drive First or Sprint Mobile Controls, Smart Device Manager will not consume battery, memory, or any other phone resources."

Well, this is a business phone, I'm the President, and I control the Sprint account. I have not signed up for either service, so that's just false. Why, exactly, has it sent out 153kb of data, and received 483kb? I probably should call Sprint and ask them exactly that question.

In any case, I applied the same solution. I denied it access to mobile data, only allowing it WiFi, and then I went in and found it under Settings-Apps-All and disabled it. Since it supposedly doesn't do anything if you don't use those services, I shouldn't miss it, right?

 

[Carl R]

Today my battery usage suddenly jumped again, to 4-5 times the rate is was before. The culprits this time were apparently something called "Sprint Zone" and something called "Mobile Installer", which to be something from NNDMT, whoever they are. I have no clue what the NNDMT program even does, and it isn't something I installed. I have never used "SprintZone", so I did the same as before, allowing them to only access the web via WiFi, and my battery usage went back to normal. Neither can be disabled, though, unless, I guess, I root the phone.

Is this the norm? Ever day or two some new program goes crazy, and runs in some sort of infinite loop, making the phone eat the battery 5x as fast as normal? Or, is it a sign of a problem, such as malware, and maybe I need to backup and factory reset my phone?

 

[shabby]

Been here recently? http://nndmt.store.aptoide.com/
Anyway it seems like deleting all of the sprint apps will solve your issues.

 

[Carl R]

Been here recently? http://nndmt.store.aptoide.com/
Anyway it seems like deleting all of the sprint apps will solve your issues.

Nope, I've never been there, and I've never heard of them. Either the nndmt app was pre-installed by Sprint, or it's a virus. There is no option to uninstall it or disable it.

It's certainly looking like I'm going to end up needing to root this phone to get some of this stuff under control. Does anyone have any links to a good guide on rooting, and on what is safe to delete, and what should be left alone?

 

[Carl R]

I have conceded defeat, at least for now. Google Services is using about 65% of my battery, and followed by Phone Idle at 12%, Cell Standby at 9% Screen at 6%, Android OS at 4%, Chrome at 3%, and Voice Calls at 3%. I get about 2 days on a charge, unlike under Kit-Kat where I got about 5 days.

As an interesting piece of data, last week I got the message "Unfortunately Google Play has stopped working". Rather than rebooting, I left it in that condition for about 4 days. It happened on a Saturday afternoon, so I charged it up, and then and I didn't look at the phone again until Sunday afternoon. After 16 hours of use I was still at 100% power, though using the phone quickly caused it to drop to 99%. With Google Play shut down I did not notice any difference in the use of the phone, except that obviously I couldn't download Apps, and also, Google Chrome crashed once. which was no big deal.

Bottom line is that without Google Play my battery use was about the same as I used to see under Kit-Kat, and the phone would last 5 days or longer with my level of usage, which is low. Once I restarted Google Play by rebooting the phone, my battery life dropped to about 1/3 of that, with Google Play eating 2/3 of the battery usage for no apparent purpose.

 

[holden j caufield]

try uninstalling the the google services updates (or whatever is causing the battery drain) and reinstalling the updates something in the google play or services updates is causing a wakelock.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Well, I figured out the battery life issue. The cpu governor is responsible as the ondemand setting basically maxes out cpu clocks whenever touch input is given regardless of load. So I'd probably root it and switch out the governor. This does render battery-life benchmarks worthless though. This is also reflected in certain benchmarks and games as a great performance increase is noticed if I keep a finger on-screen vs without.

Maximum clocks are still determined by thermals however...

 

[lopri]

I thought that behavior is normal? At least one core will always respond to touch input to give user snappy experience.

 

[Zodiark1593]

I thought that behavior is normal? At least one core will always respond to touch input to give user snappy experience.

In this case, the cores that are awake go full bore 2.3 GHz regardless of whether you're gaming, or scrolling through a page. Yes, the user experience will be snappy, but you can nuke the battery in a hurry, and last I checked, scrolling smoothly works even underclocked to 1 GHz.

 

[holden j caufield]

Well, I figured out the battery life issue. The cpu governor is responsible as the ondemand setting basically maxes out cpu clocks whenever touch input is given regardless of load. So I'd probably root it and switch out the governor. This does render battery-life benchmarks worthless though. This is also reflected in certain benchmarks and games as a great performance increase is noticed if I keep a finger on-screen vs without.

Maximum clocks are still determined by thermals however...

Why don't you set max cpu to something like 960mhz. I only use it to browse, text, call, and sometimes gps. At 960mhz there is no difference in performance for those tasks, I also play the dots game once a month and it doesn't affect performance at that speed.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Why don't you set max cpu to something like 960mhz. I only use it to browse, text, call, and sometimes gps. At 960mhz there is no difference in performance for those tasks, I also play the dots game once a month and it doesn't affect performance at that speed.

Still haven't rooted yet. I'm a huge procrastinator.

Edit: The phone throttles to roughly 1 GHz after a lengthy gaming session which is how I know where performance is when clocked low.

I do wonder if I can overclock the gpu on the rooted stock rom though and bring it to 550 MHz, same as the Snapdragon 801. In certain games though, it seems I'm bottlenecked more so by the cpu when throttled than the gpu though.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Rooted, set the governor to Interactive, and set the max clock speed at 1.2 GHz for browsing. Still quite smoooth and battery life seems to have improved. In gaming (with the cpu cap removed) game performance is improved.

 

[Carl R]

try uninstalling the the google services updates (or whatever is causing the battery drain) and reinstalling the updates something in the google play or services updates is causing a wakelock.

I tried to reset Google Play to factory, and then let it re-update, but it would not let me, saying that it was a system administrator. Being too busy to mess with it, I ended up not doing anything. After a week or so Google must have fixed it, and pushed out an update because battery usage suddenly went back to about what it was under Kit-Kat, and Google Play/Google Services, etc, is back under 10%, rather than 70%. In fact today it's at 4%.

 

[soccerballtux]

I don't think that's it. I know that I've never complained before because in the past the power usage always seemed logically related to what I was using the phone for. My complaint existed because, after the upgrade from KitKat to Lollipop, my time on a charge dropped from ~4 days to 1-2 days, and I was using the phone less, not more. Now that I have solved the problem and I'm actually getting even longer battery life than under KitKat, I'm happy again.

That brings me to another question, however. Considering that I wasn't doing anything that required those Google services to do anything, why were they eating so much power? Perhaps they were checking gmail every 15 seconds, or something? OK, but I don't use gmail, so there was nothing there. Perhaps they were synching my calendar? But, to what, since I have nothing to sych it to. Perhaps they were synching my contacts? But to what? I haven't added any new contacts to my phone, and it's the only place I have contacts. And as for Google+, I've never even set it up, so what was it using power for?

I think that there are most likely some great inefficiencies in Google Play and Google +, and that in the future Google can tweak them to improve battery life substantially. If they were doing whatever it is they do, but doing it efficiently, they wouldn't eat 65% of the battery (43% for Play, 22% for Google +).

what was the problem? what was solution?

I really don't like google. I hate them with a passion. I don't see why they don't have regression and unit testing in place for things like what's sucking all the CPU cycles.

google has actually been slowly packaging in the inefficiency ahead of time of Android M, so that when M drops they can remove all the purposefully-added inefficiency and people will go "wow! it's so much better!"

I / you can use AppQuarantine to make widgets out of most apps. Amazon, FB, FB Messenger, Skype, G+, etc. all these apps that want to run in the background syncing all the time, I keep locked down. Having root on android really is mandatory...

 

[soccerballtux]

I have conceded defeat, at least for now. Google Services is using about 65% of my battery, and followed by Phone Idle at 12%, Cell Standby at 9% Screen at 6%, Android OS at 4%, Chrome at 3%, and Voice Calls at 3%. I get about 2 days on a charge, unlike under Kit-Kat where I got about 5 days.

As an interesting piece of data, last week I got the message "Unfortunately Google Play has stopped working". Rather than rebooting, I left it in that condition for about 4 days. It happened on a Saturday afternoon, so I charged it up, and then and I didn't look at the phone again until Sunday afternoon. After 16 hours of use I was still at 100% power, though using the phone quickly caused it to drop to 99%. With Google Play shut down I did not notice any difference in the use of the phone, except that obviously I couldn't download Apps, and also, Google Chrome crashed once. which was no big deal.

Bottom line is that without Google Play my battery use was about the same as I used to see under Kit-Kat, and the phone would last 5 days or longer with my level of usage, which is low. Once I restarted Google Play by rebooting the phone, my battery life dropped to about 1/3 of that, with Google Play eating 2/3 of the battery usage for no apparent purpose.

LOL

 

[soccerballtux]

Well, I figured out the battery life issue. The cpu governor is responsible as the ondemand setting basically maxes out cpu clocks whenever touch input is given regardless of load. So I'd probably root it and switch out the governor. This does render battery-life benchmarks worthless though. This is also reflected in certain benchmarks and games as a great performance increase is noticed if I keep a finger on-screen vs without.

Maximum clocks are still determined by thermals however...

you can thank google's Project Butter for that one.

WHAT'S THAT? ANDROID IS SLOW? SURE WE PROMISE AS GOOD AS IPHONE

hay guyz just peg the CPU to full throttle on touch events. we don't want to pay you guyz to actually c0d3 t3h 1337zors

 

[Zodiark1593]

you can thank google's Project Butter for that one.

I thought Project Butter was all about pushing UI rendering onto the GPU?