[4.5.0.18] (still) battery drain on XA2

I am also using 2G network only. 4G drains battery 5 - 10% per hour with the phone just lying around without using it.

I made a custom script running every two minutes on my Xperia xa2, it switches to GSM/2G as soon as I am on my home network and activates 4G as soon as I leave the network.
Battery live improved a lot (still not great), but it is kind of sad one has to resort to this kind of workarounds. And there is little to no hope these kind of things get any attention as soon as it is no longer the latest supported phone.

1 Like

@number51 GPS stopped working - #425 by nekron should be helpful to make GPS usable again on the XA2.

Last night, I left my phone on the desk with 80% charge, 2G, Wifi, AlienDalvik active. This morning, 9h later it went down to 50%, without any interaction.
I think this is way too much, and used to be better in earlier versions of SFOS

@adekker: Yes, thank you. I am aware of that. But unfortunately it is not a solution for me, as privacy is an issue for me. I don´t want to make use of google services.

Yes, Google on an SFOF device can be disturbing.
Your antennae board springs might need to be tighten.
This finally helped much on several XA2 of mine:https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/how-to-hardware-fix-xa2-gnss-gps-lets-try-harder/11875/6

XA2 Dual with .18 flashed.
Concerning the battery drain, I installed SystemDataScope and made several screenshots, but here, all seems normal.
Indeed, lipstick seems to do go-and-returns in top at approx 15-17% but is not staying there all the time.

For me, it’s normal until I receive a call. Taking a screenshot makes it worse. sensorfwd seems to run into problems from time to time, but I haven’t found a trigger. Restarting the service helps, but it then takes quite a few seconds, perhaps due to the problem which is causing it.

And it might not be very obvious - it’s not as if the phone gets hot and drains the battery in a few hours. But those few percent constant extra CPU usage will take hours of runtime from a single charge.

Ok, I’ll keep an eye on SystemDataScope reports.

To maximize the chances of being helped and bug sorted out, you can fill the bug report in it’s complete form.
For this, you have the nice Bugger! app, which is very helpful, as it fills several fields by itself.

Once you are done with the app, it will open a draft here on the forum with your bug report filled.
Just copy and paste at the top of your first post here. (and then cancel the draft).

@Fuzzillogic Is there a reason why you created a new bug report? Even if your problem is already documented?

1 Like

The m.android.phone and system-server issues are new. The version is new. And I still wonder (and doubt) this is a specific XA2-issue. So, if I were to buy a new device and install SFOS on it, will I then be plagued by these same issues? They are really annoying. However, all these issues got either no response from Jolla, or the fix (if any) doesn’t work. At this point I would settle for “yeah known issues, sorry about that, but it is specific to XA2 and won’t be fixed”.

For the record, I just had to restart services again, because again lipstick and m.android.phone were consuming more than their fair share of CPU. This time, it was not triggered by a call. I was, however, switching from PIM-provider to my own nextcloud install, but I really can’t tell if that had anything to do with it.

Just a side remark, the output of top etc. on a mobile device can be misleading.
These CPUs are built to consume as little energy as possible, which - as far as my layman understanding goes - they achieve by switching off cores when not needed. The XA2, for example, has 8 cores.
Therefore you will very often see high CPU percentages because I think top measures a percentage of active cores, not ALL cores.
Well, I might be wrong in the details but the point stands: those values are confusing to a desktop user mindset.

I made a screenshot with my XA2 and lipstick went to ~50% for a while, then down to a few percent again.

If it stays high for you, you should investigate that. Tried to look at the journal in real time?

My house has very bad mobile network coverage and I notice some battery drain if I leave mobile broadband on.
I have it set to “prefer 4G”, I never even considered changing that - I just switch it off when I’m home.

That’s what the Situations app is made for!
Very powerful.

2 Likes

I am avoiding closed source software as much as possible, I can do without in this case.

I know the percentage CPU usage is kinda skewed by the actual frequency the core is running at. And I don’t come to conclusions based on just one moment looking at top. These numbers are consistent. I’ve looked at voicecall-ui with strace before, and the process is doing… stuff… which I can’t explain why it keeps doing that over and over. The relation between what I see it top and the battery drain I’m experiencing, especially when using 2G instead of 4G, is one-on-one. And so is the fix by restarting the services.

Are you saying Situations is closed source? :astonished:

I checked but could indeed not find its source code anywhere.

It is for the most part. Its companion daemon, sonar, is open source.

2 Likes

May I ask how you did that?

Considering it’s not FOSS, I think I’d like to avoid Situations, too.

I looked at sonar (which is FOSS) but there’s 0 (zero) documentation.

I can add something from myself. Don’t have any logs I did my homework different way.
Im in possesion of XA2 Plus that is affected with high battery drain. Device isn’t able to last a day only on standby. Im not sure about conclusion that I have but it seems to be problem within base system.
I reflashed this device several times with images 4.5.1.6, 4.5.1.8 and 4.5.1.9. Problem appears with freshly flashed system, no app support installed/enabled. Base system left alone isn’t lasting a day…

Device under usage seems to drain battery accordingly. On standby it is not…

I also flashed it back to android, no problem with high battery drain on usage/standby

In my case problem didn’t exist on SFOS 4.4. I think Jolla should take care of it so everybody get ready for your devices to be collecting dust for months only if jolla will not left this alone.

And there is possibility that they will. Sometime ago I called XA2’s to be best suitable for sailfish but it seems that jolla really doesnt give a “…” about older devices. This is really weak

Sadly my XA2+ is also unusable because of this. It’s sad because on X10-2 SFOS is a stuttering, aweful experience, not fluid, feels like 1/10 the speed of XA2+.