High battery drainage Xperia 10 III

Bug Reports
, ,
#300

… and after 25 hours of normal use I still have 70% left. Power consumption seems to be actually the same, so - as I wrote - the battery level control must have undergone some kind of recalibration. I don’t remember it lasting that long ever. Now even with WiFi and mobile data on, 1% lasts 1h:00 - 1h:05… Magic…

It looks that it is very useful to recharge the battery to 100% once in a while to calibrate it.

I had the following out of sync (much lower than actual power level):

/sys/class/power_supply/battery/charge_counter

and recharging to 100% fixed it.

This counter should reflect the level of charge (in mAh) left in the battery (in case of 10 III it should be eg. ~4500000 for full, ~2250000 for 50%, etc.). If it gets out of sync, I guess that the % indicator gets incorrect, too (decreases faster than the actual power draining).

#301

And meanwhile my old Nexus5 is lying with flightmode on and wifi enabled on my desk. 5 days since the last charge, 55% left, 6 days to go.

#302

Sadly, I was too optimistic. It took just one partial charging for the /sys/class/power_supply/battery/charge_counter to get out of sync again, and everything went back to what it was, e.g. my “bedtime” standby (everything off except cellular network) is again 1h:10m.

charge_counter is a popular counter in Android world, very often shown by diagnostic apps on Android and used to track battery capacity and its health. For instance, AIDA64 (Android version, unlike the SFOS one) shows it.

When the battery is full, its value should be the same as battery capacity. Then, as the battery discharches, its value should reflect the charge (the number of mAh) left in the battery, whereas the battery % level indicator should translate it into a % value.

Yesterday, thanks to charging to 100%, it got in sync (value of the charge_counter was right, and the battery % level was matching it) but today, after partial charging, it is again totally mixed up:

  • my current battery level shown is 75%
  • charge_counter is 3079720

It is wrong because 3079720 out of 4525000 (that’s the mAh value shown when full) = 68% not 75%… So, again, the displayed % value is “bigger” than the actual % of charge in the battery, hence the % level indicator decreases faster than it should, giving incorrect, too short times per each %.

In the evening I’ll recharge it again to 100% and see if it gets things in sync again. If it does, I’ll probably say goodbye to partial recharging.

#303

Just a guess, could it be that your battery doesn’t have its full capacity anymore?
On my linux laptop there are the values energy_full and energy_full_design. The first one shows the capacity of the battery when it leaves the factory, the other one the capacity of the last full chsrge, which gets lower when the battery gets older.
Maybe tge charge_counter value shows the real capacity of the battery?

Edit:

The values on a phone are charge_full and charge_full_design.

#304

Well, when fully charged it gets 4529000, which suggests that it still has its full capacity… Only if charged partially, this value gets out of sync - too low compared to the % value.

charge_full is 4529000
charge_full_design is 4529000
Looks OK. Assuming that it works. Maybe in AOSP they just put default values there…

How does it look on your 10 III? And is charge_counter in sync with %?

#305

In the Battery Buddy support thread, I suggested a wholly different approach to battery saving - the one that iOS phones use. They always charge up to 100% but modulate the charging current so that charging is complete shortly before user’s preferred time (e.g. when he wakes up). This way one starts the day with always 100% of charge (rather than some 5-10% already discharged when he was sleeping) and thus also ends the day with more charge left.

I would love some application on SFOS to make it possible to even just manually enter the destination time and then modulate the charging current so that 100% of charge is reached at that time.

On a different note, I’ve just noticed that battery % indicator in Android apps hasn’t been working correctly since 4.5.0.16. It is correct only when the Android Support is launched, but then does not get updated and keeps showing the value it had upon Android support launch.

Has anyone else noticed the same on his 10 III?

Zrzut_ekranu_20230323_001
Zrzut_ekranu_20230323_0011080×2520 158 KB

(the SFOS side says 46%, Android support stuck at 40%)

EDIT: It’s the same on both my 10 III and XA2U, so it’s a 4.5.x.x bug.

#306

charge_full: 0
charge_full_design: 4529000
charge_counter: 3532620
Homescreen shows 81% left of battery.

#307

4529000 / 3532620 = 78% so there’s a discrepancy vs. 81%. Check again around 60%, probably it’ll be even bigger.

#308

charge_counter: 2853270
Homescreen shows 67% left of battery.

#309

45290000 / 2853270 = 63% so the discrepancy (4%) got slightly bigger. But I guess it’s typical as on my 10 III it is right now 76% vs 73%, i.e. 3%.

The most strange thing is that my XA2 Ultra’s charge_counter when fully charged is 5688458 (i.e. more than 5600 mAh) :open_mouth:

#310

Maybe due heat losses during charging.

#311

Funny thing, thanks to this charge_counter I’ve discovered that I most probably have some Chinese battery inside my XA2 Ultra, probably one of those “5600 mAh” one can find on Aliexpress, be it a true capacity or the battery electronics just reporting it so. I bought the XA2U second hand and the seller was mentioning that battery was replaced by the service but I had no idea that he meant a third party battery and a “service” that uses such strange batteries… The funniest part is that it works OK, gives me very good working time, and the charge_counter decreases in a correct pace as the battery discharges, so it might mean that this 5600 mAh capacity is actually (close to?) real…

#312

I have created a topic specifically for the [standby current drain] only(Standby Battery high drain on Xperia 10 III).

Please do, and update the new topic. I have added it to the 30th March community meeting, so if you feel like doing it soon…

#313

I have same problem with battery on Xperia 10 III.
First of all it was because of ofonod, but it makes better after OS update (to 4.5.xx).
The second I found new problem with connected CardDav account. The process “/usr/libexec/buteo-oopp-runner carddav” consumes a lot of battery: a current obtained with Battery Buddy shows 500-600 mA. If I disable CardDav accound and kill the process after this, the current makes 100-200 mA.
The consuming process was found via PowerTop.

#314

Consumption of 100-200 mA is still a CRIME. The XA2 Ultra, with its older SoC and huge screen, in the same conditions consumes 50-60 mA.

#315

You cant compare IPS LCD (xa2 ultra) Smartphone vs OLED (10iii) Smartphones in terms of Energy-Consumption and expect it must be consume less Power.

My experiences starting with Windows Phone and later on some Sony Smartphones show me the opposide: OLED Smartphones consume more Power than IPS LCD Smartphones.

It depends of course on the content and brightness what OLED consumes. In my cases i use the same Backgrounds, colors…etc and OLED loose in that consumption game.

#316

The XA2 Ultra consumes much less power than the 10 III in all conditions, also when the screen is off. Regardless of whether the display is on or off, the XA2 Ultra still uses at least twice less power than the 10 III.

#317

I do have an idea for the cause of the high drain. I’ve seen it on my Fairphone2 running SFOS and my Sony Xperia 10iii, I’m curious to see if others see the same.

My FP2 could run about 4 days on a full battery, it was connected to 4G. At about the time my provided switched off 3G it could only run for about a day on a full battery. Since this was a community port i did some extensive troubleshooting with the developer and we couldn’t find anything in SFOS. Changing the mobile network to 2G only gets me back to 4 days on a full battery.
With my X10iii the situation is similar (although i didn’t have it when 3G was still available): When connected to 4G (no active data connection, just idle/standby) it’s 2 or 3 days, when set to 2G only it’s 4 or 5 days.

So the if 4G is available and 3G isn’t that seems to trigger high battery use when connected to 4G. Does anyone else have the same situation?
My idea why this could be the case is because calls on 4G are special and one method to create a call is CSFB which falls back to 3G. So there might be some process in the baseband/modem constantly scanning for 3G while connected to 4G so it can change quickly when a call has to be made, since no network is found it keeps scanning and draining the battery.

Standby Battery high drain on Xperia 10 III
#318

The topic here is specifically the standby current drain - when the phone has it’s radios turned off. You want this thread high-battery-drainage-xperia-10-iii
However as an aside, I have not noticed that disabling 4G affects the online power drain.

#319

I’m sorry, you are right.
The correct topic seems to be High battery drainage Xperia 10 III
Maybe a moderator can move my message there?