Observations on battery life - please share your experiences
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"I've replicated what follows from the Telegram Supergroup, as that's no place to collect observations from people using a variety of phones. Hopefully some patterns will emerge that inspire improvements."
The above is a quote from @alan_g who started this thread. Please keep this in mind when makeing posts or observations. I've reposted it as this thread is getting quite long and may be missed by people new to the thread.
This thread is I believe to help find solutions to battery issues across all UBports Ubuntu Touch devices by finding common issues.
Repeating comments or issues already clearly known or stated is not going to help anybody. Comparing to Android will not help move this issue on . Old devices of whatever make and OS do not compare with what is available now or maybe coming shortly.
So let's be positive and move forward and find those common issues that can be rectified. Thank you for your understanding. -
@lakotaubp said in Observations on battery life - please share your experiences:
Repeating comments or issues already clearly known or stated is not going to help anybody.
There's a fine line here: Adding more information (even a few "me too"s - to indicates it is common) doesn't count as repeating. Seeing an issue on different devices, or software versions doesn't count as repeating.
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@alan_g Agree totally. ''Me to'' is fine and so is ''same as so and so but on another device'' is also good and helpful.
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@chdslv said in Observations on battery life - please share your experiences:
@wgarcia The question is, why the battery drains much faster in UT than in Android in the same N5 phone in idle state.
In my case, as in @alan_g case, it does not drain always, just when something happens that starts to heat up the phone. Let's see if we catch what that is.
And, if we are talking about a "faulty" phone, even for Android, why not go for a newer phone? (Of course, the 2nd question is not liked. )
What do you mean? Do you think that no other phones are ported because we don't want to do so or we are married with the Nexus 5 and the few other phones ported right now? No more phones are ported because we don't know how to port them, if we knew of course they would be ported. And don't be mistaken, a lot of people is trying, but no success so far.
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@lakotaubp Comparing to Android will not help move this issue on .
There are no dedicated phones for UT, only those that had come with Android, meaning were manufactured to work on Android, other than the few that once had UT. At the moment, the flagship devices are more or less N4 and N5, so the only way to test them on UT is by comparing how they worked, or the battery worked while on the OS they was designed for. For example, if the battery drains much faster in idle state in UT than in Android, then there is a problem with UT, but not with N5.
(I don't have any other devices that would boot UT, other than N5, and I bought it just for that. Searched for quite a while to find a decent N5 with a good battery.)
UT is an after market rom for older phones that don't get any Android updates. But, it is eating the battery.
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@chdslv BQ E4.5, E5, and Meizu Pro 5 have (had) a Ubuntu Edition from factory.
We the community are trying to port UT to some devices running Android currently, but we're trying to port it to Pine64 devkit, Raspberry Pi, and some other devices as well, including Librem5 devkit (soon).
On the other hand, UT is not a ROM.
Fairphone 2 and Oneplus Ones are more "flagship devices" than the Nexus models nowadays.
Finally, I'm pretty happy with how long lasts the battery in my N5. The combo new battery + xenial are doing wonders for a device that even when running Android doesn't have the best battery life in the world
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@advocatux said in Observations on battery life - please share your experiences:
Fairphone 2 and Oneplus Ones are more "flagship devices" than the Nexus models nowadays.
Are you saying in these old phones the batteries don't drain in idle state in UT as in N5?
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@chdslv No my OPO lasts at lot longer than N5. Nearly 30 hrs the other day 4g location and wifi.
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@lakotaubp Do you have a N5 to compare with OPO? There are few OPO's out there to buy, but not really sure.
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@chdslv I have two in fact. Which I mess about with now occasionally. Last time I tried one with 3g sim wifi and location got just over 24hrs in stand by 16.04 dev.
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@chdslv Please stop aggressively hijacking threads and being confrontational about battery performance issues on the N5 with UT. There are open issues in GitHub about the problem already, and ranting about how you think Android is better, while you are doing nothing to help debug where the problems are, does absolutely nothing to move the issue along toward a fixed state. That is what @Lakotaubp meant with the comment.
If you have the skills and time to help debug and solve the issues, then please do. If not, please stop berating the community over your one pet issue. It's rude and does not help. If you feel UT is not usable for you yet, due to this issue on the Nexus 5, and you must use Android instead, then please do, and leave the issue to people who do have the skills and time to work on and solve it.
But please stop being aggressively confrontational in our community.
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@dobey Explaining this matter, the last time.
I bought this N5 after reading this https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io and whole lot of forum posts here. N4 and N5 were supposed to be ones that would work fully with UT. Bought the phone only for testing UT. (I have no interest in buying an older phone to use with Android, mind you.) When I noticed the battery drain, I had to choose; either change the battery or check how it works in its original state. So, I chose check the N5 in its original state. I posted the results, thinking it would help the community, rather than antagonizing it. I am new here, by the way.I agree as it is my phone, it is my problem.
@Lakotaubp says OPO's battery is doing well. There are few OPOs out here to buy, for more less the same price as the N5. The idea is to test UT with a phone. If I buy it, it is my problem then, so won't post on the battery status, or on any other matter.
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@chdslv We are always here to help and assist where we can. However we will not allow the issues you have been made well aware of.
If you have another issue or problem regaurding Ubuntu Touch you will be welcome to post it on the forum. The Community is here to help. -
@chdslv Working fully and has no bugs are not the same thing. Yes, the N5 is one of the best supported phones at the moment. No, it is not free of issues. The battery performance is one issue. Whether battery performance is an issue on other devices or not, or under other operating systems or not, is mostly useless information. There's no need to keep repeating it in multiple threads. The situation is known, and you've been made aware that it is known.
There are many things to test on UT, which are not battery related. If the device is for testing UT, then please move on to test other things. A daily report that the latest devel image still hasn't fixed the battery consumption problems, is not helpful. The issue is open on GitHub. When that issue is marked fixed, then it would be appropriate to note (on that issue), if the issue has not been resolved in some situations.
I don't know what your testing consists of which leads you to see such poor performance. My N5 battery lasts well over a day, though WiFi and Bluetooth module is damaged, so I am unable to use either one at all. That is undoubtedly to the benefit of battery consumption, as one noted workaround is to kill a bluetooth management process (which makes bluetooth unusable until a reboot). Have you even tried this workaround?
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@lakotaubp said in Observations on battery life - please share your experiences:
@chdslv We are always here to help and assist where we can. However we will not allow the issues you have been made well aware of.
If you have another issue or problem regaurding Ubuntu Touch you will be welcome to post it on the forum. The Community is here to help.Thank you for the help offer, that is, if I buy the OPO. N5 will be sold, so the problem is over.
Only, please understand, the OP is "Observations on battery life - please share your experiences" and I was writing about my observations and experiences on the phone that I own, not on other phones. I wrote about my "observations" before this thread.
Anyway, the N5 battery problems are over, at least for me. If I buy the OPO, and if I find any problems other than the battery, I'll ask. There's no need to antagonize anyone on something that can't be solved.
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LEG Nexus 5 (LG D 821) let battery discharge so phone won't start. Charged to 100% ( battery symbol white). Phone on 16.04 dev (updated to 722 and apps updated) 3g sim, location and wifi on. No calls made, one sms received phone left in stand by, downloaded dev 725 but did not install. Battery after forty four and a half hours 15%. Posting now as will probably miss when battery run out.
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@lakotaubp I've been doing some research on the life of lithium based batteries for last few days.
They don't have any memory like effect as in the older Ni-Cad batteries. What might damage the lithium battery is dropping the battery charge to 0% and leaving it for long time. Charging it to 100% all the time only makes the charging cycles less. It is better to charge up to 80% to get more charging cycles from the battery. Short charging the battery also helps it.
When the mobile phone goes to sleep, some apps are still working depleting energy. If the phone is completely off, no apps are working, you'd get practically the same battery level the next day, when you boot it up, but that's not what a mobile phone is for. It should be on all night, all day.
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@chdslv no, sorry, that makes no sense. This is a good article about that topic: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a15731/best-way-to-keep-li-ion-batteries-charged/
And the real enemy of lithium-ion batteries is heat btw
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@advocatux From the article you linked.
"That old saw about how you always need to charge you battery all the way up, and use it until it's dead? Memory effect, as it's called, affects NiMH batteries but it doesn't apply to your phone. In fact, you're phone's battery hates when you do that. Similarly, lithium-ion batteries don't need to be "calibrated" with a full charge and a full discharge when they're new."
"A lithium-ion battery typically charges in two stages. First comes the process called constant current charging."
"When the battery is 70 percent recharged, the procedure changes and flips over to constant voltage charging. During this second stage, the charger makes sure that the voltage—that is, the difference in current between the battery and the charger—stays the same rather than keeping the current constant. Practically, this means that as the battery gets closer to full, the current the charger sends into it decreases. As the battery gets full, the rate at which it charges slows down. Once you reach 100 percent, the charge simply trickles in, just enough to account for the tiny, tiny bit of charge your battery loses naturally over time."
Anyway, the 100% charge the battery until the icon becomes white is not exactly correct. Usage of the energy depends on how much the apps use them, over time. Apps use the energy they need, disregarding the level of energy in the phone battery. And a mobile phone sleeps most of the time.
Finding a fresh, new OEM Li-Ion battery for our few years old phone is pretty hard -- out of production for a year or two.
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@advocatux Charge cycle management is how to extend battery life. Discharging down to 10-20% and only charging to 80-90%, depending on the specific battery specs, will optimize battery life span.
But that is completely unrelated to whether the hardware (and any software running on it), is using the battery optimally, or wasting it.
I don't think we need to discuss overall lifespan problems of Li-Ion batteries in this thread. It's pretty unrelated to whether UT has bugs affecting daily discharge rates.
