Battery-Lifetime is reduced after update to Cherry 1.6

Hi,

I’ve updated my Fairphone to Cherry 1.6, 4 days ago. At the time of the update my Phone was fully charged and connected to a power supply.
Now, after the update, the battery-lifetime has significantly decreased. Before it last’s 2-3 Days till the 14% Warning was displayed. With this warning it needs one or two days since it was fully discharged. In total the battery last between 3 and 5 Days.
With the new update my Fairphone just is discharged in 1-2 days, what is really disappointing.
Has somebody an idea to fix this behavior.

Greetings
Olli

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Maybe you can give it a try by waiting one discharge/charge cycle longer.
In Cherry 1.6 there was a change in the calibration table of the battery (e.g. to avoid the 14%-sticking and more).
Maybe Android has now to recalibrate its interior battery stats to estimate the correct percentage of the battery by the measured voltage.

Anybody nows, if here a manual recalibration of the android battery stats could solve the problem?

That’s just a guess - so report back later after 1-2 loading cylces more, if anything changed!
Cheers, Robert

Could it be that this also depends on the phone version?
I have an fairphone of the first, my wife has on from the second batch. We both now have Cherry 1.6 and nearly all settings are the same (WLAN, GPS etc.). However I am really satisfied with battery lifetime, but my wife has really problems with it. With 50 % of battery the phone does not get through the night…
Of course it would be great if this just has something to do with calibration, however this problem exists since she got the phone (30.07.).

Do you have the same Apps installed? I don’t have the Google Apps currently, but i had for a while and noticed a they cosume a noticeble amount of battery.

Theoretically it could be related to the FP1U (second batch) because it as a slighlty more powerful GPU (graphics processor), however this should only be noticable when playing games etc and definitly not in idle – so there is a small chance that this is bug but i doubt that.

Another possibility is the battery which could theoretically be of lower quality. I did not notice less battery lifetime since the upgrade (FP1, first batch).

i experienced the opposite behaviour than the old “14%-Stick” now the battery falls from 14 to 0% within Seconds… I think too that the battery Life before 1.6 was better…

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Thanks Robert for your reply. Maybe you are right and it is just a matter of time.
I’m waiting a few more days and give response.

Best Regards
Olli

Note:
Because I read about First and Second Batch: My Fairphone is from the first batch.

5 days on a single charge? Wow, did you even use the phone during that time?

I also can easily manage 3-5 days with my FP1 without charging, just sending maybe 10-20 SMS + 30-60min talking + 1h surfing…so not so much usage, but normal for me!
I am satisfied with the battery duration for sure!

For clearity I recommend to use the advanced app “BetterBatteryStats” which you can find in the XDA-Forums as apk. Here you can also find possible troubles with “wage locks” which keeps your CPU/GPU running although in Standby.
0.4-1% per hour should be normal in Standby (and not 50% in one night!!) - at least for my first Batch FP1.

Furthermore I underclocked my CPU with “SetCPU” to only 754MHz, which is quite enough for daily use!

Cheers, Robert

In fact we have the basic apps installed on both mobiles. This holds true especially for the google apps. Only on my phone (the first batch with 1.6 and very good battery lifetime aprox. 2 days) there are several apps I am using in addition. So this unfortunately cant be the reason.
In addition especially my wife is not very frequently using apps (so the second batch phone with 1.6 and max. 1 day lifetime). So GPU also cant be the reason.
I am more afraid that this is some kind of manufacturing problem. The best would be an battery of lower quality I would suppose.

Thanks, Malte

thanks for the tip with the wage locks. I will try to have a look on this.

@maltebz
Ok, sad to hear. Maybe you can contact Fairphone Support if they are able to replace the battery.

Some more things to consider: Are you on the same network operator? Do you both use mobile data? Some Google Apps like Hangout can easily drain the battery when buggy ( there were some reports on all kind of phones some weeks ago). I pretty sure you tried already, but have you tried turning of google sync and see if that improves?

On last idea: Have you tried swapping the batteries for some days and checked if that helps? If it is a faulty battery, im sure Fairphone will replace it.

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as said, especially the google apps we use parallel, however I will try what turning google sync off will do.
Especially your last hint is a good one. I am kind of ashamed that I did not think of. To find out if the battery is the reason this is great.
Thanks alot.

But be aware if you swap the batteries, that android will probably note it (serial number?) and make new statistical/reference data. So again here I would recommend to test it for at least 3 load/unload cylces.

Before the cherry update I was getting to around 40% on a typical day and by the time I go to bed it would be stuck on the 14%.

After the cherry update I am roughly getting to around 60% by this time of day and by the time I go to bed I’m down to around 25%

So for me this is working as expected - I use a fair bit of data, wifi, sms and calls throughout with heavier data loads during the evening as one would expect.

Last night I did manage to get my FP down to 1%. Wow! I’d never seen that one before :wink: but it was on a lot of long calls and used a lot of data last night

One thing to add to our problem. Again this morning battery was at 5% after leaving it at eleven pm with 65%. So now in the morning I took a screenshot of the battery status. very linear decrease of battery load. However what I never saw on my Fairphone is the complete homogeneuos colouring of the mobile signal (the only event seen at the i of signal was a deaktivation of the sim for 2 seconds to see something). Could this give a hint to the underlying problem?
This is the phone with very low battery lifetime:

To compare, this is mine:

This might indeed be helpful! It indicates a problem with software or mobile modem and power, not battery. Could you show us the list with the apps with largest battery usage?

You mean the short list on the overview page of the battery stats? there are only four entries: mobile-standby (around 50%), standby (approx. 20%), display and last but not least WLAN. Or is there somewhere a more detailed list?

  1. Again I recommend to use “Better Battery Stats”. It uses the Android log-data but displays it in more detail!
    http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

Post a screenshot of the “partial Wakelock” summary and of the “CPU States” after such a night!

  1. Already tried to disalbe WLAN during night?
  2. Already tried to disable the SIM during night?
  3. From your screenshot it looks that you have a bad provider coverage at your place where the FP is stored at night…That will influence the discharge rate - BUT: not that much like in your case.

Please try first 1)! Cheers, Robert

I will check the app you mentioned, yesterday i did not find it. Thanks for the link. I will try to disable SIM over night. WLAN does not seem to be a problem. As well as the coverage: Both phones have the same provider (although mine has two sims from the same provider) and both phones stay at the same place over night.

No, that is exactly the list i am talking of.
I currently have Screen 53%, Cell 25%, Phone idle 14%, Wifi 8%, System 2%.
I was interested in the percentage for cell (mobile) standby.

Did swapping the battery have any effect?