High battery drainage Xperia 10 III

I used my 10 III with the HUD app the other day, it took over a minute outside to get a lock. It’s not speedy, that’s for sure.

Can anyone who has tried mods to fix drainage (e.g. @direc85 , @JacekJagosz ), confirm what the idle (flight mode) drain is overnight, now?
(i.e change in reported battery capacity after 8 hours in flight mode)

This may be a bit off-topic but I have a similar problem in Xperia 10, SFOS 4.4.latest and several previous versions. Phone is not in use, no SIM card, Android not starting on boot, flight mode on and phone just laying in the drawer. Battery consumtion is about 10% / day. Full charge lasts about 9,5 days without any usage expect checking the battery every few days. The problem must be somewhere deep in the SFOS system itself.

One week passed, asking again, are there any updates?

Would be nice to know too. Mostly interesting would be Jolla’s progress on this…

My gut feeling is that the causes are buried so deep in the firmware binaries that there’s nothing Jolla can do. I read somewhere that another mobile OS on X10III based on AOSP and Sony firmware binaries has similar battery life, which seconds that guess.

I suggest asking the question in the IRC meeting to get an official word for it, but I’m afraid the answer won’t be a pleasant one…

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There was a test in a finnish PC magazine and Xperia 10 III with Android had a very good battery life in it. Are the AOSP binaries used by Jolla different from Sony’s own Android binaries?

Sony, at least, uses completely different firmware binaries for real Android than what’s available in the developer site. They are developed separately, possibly to counter some legal issues, which means the “open” team may not have access to same resources than the “Android” team.

Only Android is a first-class citizen, which is very unfortunate.

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I started with the Jolla 1, a major, if not the major selling point for me is the efficiency/battery life. A nonpleasant answer actually would render the whole system completely useless for me, I can get the same, if not a better level of privacy and system control with Android, and can choose from a much wider range of devices. Very unpleasant, indeed.

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“Completely useless”? If you actually use your smartphone (that means connect it to mobile and WiFi networks), the higher-than-expected battery drain in pure idle mode does not matter at all.
Three days of online standby time are not too bad.

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They were not bad for my Jolla 1, that is correct. My Compact X already went almost 5 days, therefore three days of standby time with a smaller chip structure and a much bigger battery for me is a, how do the business people call it, showstopper. Especially if the Java crap does better. Seriously.

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oh, that would be very sad, because my Xx has had about the same battery life. I have hoped that I would reach +2 days after the same updates instead of ~1 day. :frowning:

I think the only way to test it for sure is to install Android that uses Sony’s Open Devices binaries, and see how the drainage is there. Best if it could be compared to stock Android too.
If the drainage is the same for both Androids, then it is SFOS’ fault, if it is much worse on Open Android, it is not. Simple as that.
Also, my personal experience. I never understood why this topic is such a big deal. When idle it definitely drains battery faster than my older Sony with Android. But also 10 III is the best SFOS device in therms of battery I have used. The Jolla 1 could be drained fast when under used, the X10 was a joke, I could drain in 3 hours with just a hotspot and a screen off, and 2 hours with screen off. The idle usage was also inconsistent and often I would find my phone hot and with dead battery.
And 10 III is maybe not as good as it could be, but it is really consistent, and I can easily get 1 day of very heavy use, and 2 days of light use, which is fine for me.
Could it be better at idle? Sure! But for me it is already at least consistent, and great under load. Maybe I got a golden sample, IDK.

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There are still people out there who actually buy mobile phones for being useful means of communication/navigation, thats why I initially went for Sailfish, it was hands down the best tool on the market, because it offered the most efficient package overall. Efficient in terms of being reachable/able to reach out and having the possibility to navigate and consult the web/internet when needed.

I do get the point that people nowadays live in their phones, up to the point where they cannot even grasp that there are other concepts of wasting your life, like living in your desktop computer. But I do not get why you people need to get in every niche where I reside, what do you need Sailfish for, what is your benefit from the system? Why is it better for you than Android/Ios/other niche systems?

Because 73 full charge cycles already eaten since merely July 13th when I got the phone (i.e. in not even half a year) is quite horrifying.

In other words, while even with such disastrous power consumption the 10 III’s huuuuge 4500 mAh battery still manages to deliver satisfactory work times of up to 2 days, at the same time - invisibly - it also badly shortens the battery life, which may start screaming for replacement in as little as 2 years.

For comparison, as I already mentioned, properly optimized power consumption of my former daily driver - the BlackBerry Passport - made its (quite smaller, 3400 mAh battery) deliver 3 days of quite intense work and withstand SEVEN years of such service. In fact, it still lives and serves 30-40 hours on a charge.

It’s not that I’d expect my 10 III’s battery to last forever. But it will be a pity to have to dismantle the phone (and lose its water and dust sealing) in probably less than two years due to such high power consumption. Or alternatively let Sony service center do it for the price of 60% of a brand new 10 III’s successor.

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You can, but guess what, it’s completely unrealistic to expect a phone that basically runs two Operating Systems simultaneously (Android and Sailfish) to do do better then a phone that runs one.
My x10 III last two days(with Situations app configured screen off is wifi off, and microG cloud messaging enabled ) with moderate use. That is absolutely fine in the end of the day, and not a single other Sailfish device has done better in my case.

Edit:
Having said that. I change my phone every day from ~45+% up to about 87% using direct85’s battery buddy. It should be fine for years like this.

I IS draining a bit more then it could be. But on the grand scale of things of problems in the world, complaining the problem of battery drain in the x10 III seems like a waste of time really.

The SFOS 10 III has a (ridiculously) large standing power drain when it is in flight mode.
It should be drawing nothing except the ram retention current, and the fingerprint sensor current. (because cron type processes should have set up the hardware RTC, and not be requiring cpu operation)

Multiple OS is nothing to do with it (even if it were true)

It is speculated that this is caused by the AOSP base, but I have not seen where someone has actually tested the Sony AOSP to see if that is true or not.

Yes, but still it lasts two days. And while it will never win the spectacular ‘longest battery life in airplane mode with everything disabled’ competition, it perfectly acceptable for a phone in 2022 or even 2023.

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It feels to me that 10 iii consumes so much battery in idle mode, that moderate use of the phone seems to have no impact, or very little. I think the problem is with the aosp binaries and that will be difficult to trace or fix.

This is completely unrelated to 10 III’s enormous power consumption. You can have Android support completely turned off, or even not installed at all (as in free unlicensed OS version) and you won’t see much improvement, if any at all.

If what you’re saying had any real impact on battery life, the XA2 Ultra with its 25% smaller battery capacity (3580 mAh) should be delivering 25% shorter battery life. Which ISN’T the case. On the contrary, despite such smaller battery and huge, more power hungry display, my XA2 Ultra actually lasts the same, if not even a bit longer, than my 10 III.

Why? Because of PROPER configuration of the CPU on the XA2. The right governors being setup on the XA2 (rather than Performance governor being set on the 10 III for the big cores making them run at max clock all the time), all cores being allowed to go down to minimum frequency when there is no load (whereas on the 10 III the little cores never go below 1.2 GHz and - as I already mentioned - the big cores always run at their max 2073 MHz clock), the XA2 switching unused cores to offline (i.e. simply turning them off) when they aren’t needed (whereas the 10 III does not do it at all), and so on.

And, actually, it is NOT the in-use power consumption that’s so problematic on the 10 III, it is its idle / sleep power consumption, i.e. when it does almost nothing. While the XA2 Ultra goes as low as 11-12 mA when sleeping, on the 10 III the lowest it reaches is some 35-40 mA. To make things even worse, while the XA2 Ultra manages to stay at such low power consumption levels much longer (much less ‘awakenings’, much lower spikes, most of them below 100 mA), the 10 III wakes up from sleep every now and then with spikes in 200-300 mA range and quite often even 500-600 mA or more.

Which all sumed up is simply horrible per se, or even worse if compared to XA2 Ultra.

No single Sailfish OS device has ever had a battery of this capacity.

And if the XA2 Ultra with its 25% smaller battery also lasts two days, does it really take a better proof that the 10 III’s power efficiency is - lets call it nicely - suboptimal?

But of course, everyone is entirely free to be satisfied with two days instead of 3-4 as it should have been with this battery capacity, 8 nm SoC and OLED display, and everyone can accept that because of having to recharge it twice more often the battery will wear out twice sooner. It’s everyone’s right and I do not intend to question it.

Call me boring but I’ll repeat it one more time: two days is the same what I get from the XA2 Ultra (with exact same SFOS on it) with its almost 25% smaller battery, less energy efficient (14 nm vs 8 nm) SoC technology and giant, more power hungry IPS LCD screen. Oh, a ~4 years old XA2 Ultra and therefore with partly worn out (albeit in perfect condition) battery, I need to add.

So I’d say that praising the 10 III for providing the same battery life as the 4 years old XA2 Ultra, while having 25% bigger battery, more power efficient SoC and display is - hmmmmm - overly optimistic.

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