[4.5.0.18] (still) battery drain on XA2

Bug Reports
#1

After receiving a call or sms, or when taking a screenshot, or just because of reasons, my XA2 still suffers increased battery drain due to some processes suddenly starting to us the CPU for no apparent reason. And from experience I can tell that even a few percent (according to top) CPU usage has noticeable impact on battery life. Some issues, regarding lipstick and voicecall-ui, have been reported before: Screenshot leads to lipstick high CPU and battery drain and [3.4.0.22] Voicecall-ui uses CPU on the background for example.

Here’s top after I received a call and took a screenshot:

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image1078Ă—435 35 KB

Things of note are lipstick, m.android.phone, voicecall-ui and system_server. The m.android.phone and systemserver-issues are new since 4.5; I haven’t seen them in 4.4. But, again from experience, ofono and sensorfwd have been known to cause issues as well.

In many cases, restarting the affected services brings things back to normal. Here’s after restarting Android container, restarting lipstick, and cycling between flight mode and back:

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image1078Ă—435 31.5 KB

(fingerterm and top are obviously in active use at the moment)

So, is this just on my phone an issue? I guess not, but I also guess not everyone affected is aware of this. “just restart the phone” will also temporarily fix it. But I find in rather annoying after all this time I still have to restart some things after simply receiving a call.

I’d reflash my phone if I know that that solves these issues, but I can’t be bothered to go through all the work just to try if it helps.

Anyone any ideas? Is this this specific for the 32-bit (ugh) XA2? Or even my device? Or more common?

3 Likes
XA2 Ultra high battery drainage
#2

Hi, i have the exact same issues with both of my XA2s.

After taking a screenshot the process “/usr/bin/lipstick -plugin evdevtouch …” is running wild and after making a call it is “/usr/bin/voicecall-ui -prestart”.

The draining of the battery is quite noticable and annoying and leads to strange habits:

1.) after every call → restart lipstick → wait → restart apps (that i always have running)

(sometimes android-app-support does not work after restart of lipstick → restart android-app-support → wait → …)

2.) after every screenshot → restart lipstick → wait → restart apps (that i always have running)

(sometimes android-app-support does not work after restart of lipstick → restart android-app-support → wait → …)

It´s frustrating!!!

Meanwhile i live in fear for getting calls and make screeshots with the camera of the other phone. That´s technical progress!

(Not to mention the fact, that GPS is unusable on both XA2s. So i have to carry another phone (Xperia X) for hiking. Or apps losing connection to network. Or connection to Wifi not possible unless toggling flightmode. Or …)

A reflash of the phone did not help. So, i am highly interested in a solution for these bugs.

2 Likes
#4

Battery lifetime on my XA2+ also got pretty bad, it doesn’t last for a whole working day, anymore. Actually I got my battery replaced because I thought it was warred out. Well, I spent 90€ and quite some time for the replacement, and the new battery has not improved the situation.

1 Like
#5

FWIW, and I don’t know if it’s related, but by forcing 2G instead of 4G network a single charge lasts at least twice as long on my device. I don’t know whether it’s my provider who did something to the 4G signal (to promote 5G?) or other causes, but it got worse and worse on 4G over time.

1 Like
#6

Until the recent update I used Situation to automatically switch to 2G if on Wifi and/or if screen is off and enable 4G if without wifi and when screen is on.
I disabled that, since 4.5.0.16 had its issues switching networks. Will check it again.

Thanks for the hint

#7

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

#8

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
#9

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

#10

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

#11

@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.

#12

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

#13

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.

#14

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.

#15

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).

#16

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

1 Like
#17

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.

#18

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?

#19

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
#20

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

#21

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.