Explanation of Nougat Battery Consumption and Workarounds for Better Battery Life

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furkey

Senior Member
Feb 7, 2011
287
63
Hello guys. This topic is pretty long and it is hard to read all of it but try to read all of it till end.

Well, let me begin. The main problem of the nougat update is the dramatic increase of battery consumption (for me at least) But why this is happening?

Actually this is a matter of battery managers. Huawei had created a great phone but obviously they messed things up in the software side. Google announced "Doze" feature with Marshmallow. If we could have a brief explanation of "what doze is" is it is basically a battery protection policy created by google. In Android, apps have the ability to use what’s called a “wakelock” to prevent your phone from going into a power-saving deep sleep mode. This deep sleep mode usually kicks in when your phone’s screen is off, but that can get in the way of how some apps work. For example, if you’re using a fitness tracker, you don’t want your phone turning off GPS or your accelerometer just because your phone is in your pocket with the screen turned off.
In principle, this is a good concept. Apps keep your phone awake and working when they need to, and let it sleep when they don’t. This is a problem, though, when every developer thinks their app is important enough to keep your phone on all the time. That’s why apps like Facebook kill your battery, even when you’re not using them.
Doze helps solve this problem by periodically blocking wakelocks and shutting off network access if your phone goes unused for a while. It will then periodically allow apps to check in during “maintenance windows” every so often (these windows occur less frequently the longer you don’t use your device). Here is a graphical explanation of how doze works versus time:

http://itresan.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/doze-header.jpg

Doze helps solve this problem by periodically blocking wakelocks and shutting off network access if your phone goes unused for a while. It will then periodically allow apps to check in during “maintenance windows” every so often (these windows occur less frequently the longer you don’t use your device)

If we turn back to the main topic, as I mentioned before, Huawei has some difficulties combining it's own features with google's. Huawei has its own battery manager. That's why you are not receiving some notifications from facebook or whatsapp. That is because that freaking battery manager shuts everything off but still, since it has a very poor approach, the system drains battery. It is basically a matter of doze does not kicking in. As you can see, the battery usage when the screen is turned on is about the same. However, the same thing cannot be seem when the screen is off.

So what to do in order to save some juice?

-There is some workarounds for doze kicking in like these ones:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yirgalab.dzzz
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.suyashsrijan.forcedoze

These two apps have different approaches. I prefer ForceDoze as it seems the google's intended way.

I want to highlight this item because this might be the most important thing in this topic. If you don’t do anything with your phone, Doze will still do its job. It runs almost invisibly in the background. Occasionally you’ll get a few messages at once, rather than spread over a few minutes, but for the most part there’s no noticeable change. In other words this is a bit different from the conventional full deep sleep and you do not have to afraid from doze as you do with the full deep sleep.

-DO NOT CLEAN YOUR RAM TOO OFTEN. This will cause closed apps re-open and hence, more cpu usage.

-No! Cleaners, Task managers and other stuff does not work! As I mention before, they even lead more battery consumptions.

-Huawei has poor google service implementations. Even one or two implementation has some bugs that causing battery drain(for example: google backup). Try to turn them off.

-Know when to reboot your phone. Too frequent reboots may do the same thing as you cleaning your ram. However, rebooting cleans app caches so the system will work smoother. Once a week or two weeks is fine I suppose.

Please hit the "Thanks" button if you like and please point out the missing things and if you see a mistake please warn me for correcting it. I hope you liked the topic.

Have a nice day!
 
Last edited:

darrr1

Senior Member
Mar 14, 2017
194
26
Problem starts when phone is not active longer than 2-3 hours. In root I removed phone manager and it did not help fix the push notification problem
 

furkey

Senior Member
Feb 7, 2011
287
63
Problem starts when phone is not active longer than 2-3 hours. In root I removed phone manager and it did not help fix the push notification problem

Assuming that you are on huawei release (not los releases), untick your app from close apps after screen lock. Then go to apps, settings, special access, and make the system ignore battery optimizations for the spesific app you want to get notification from.
 

xtcislove

Senior Member
Jan 17, 2010
1,616
431
Gummersbach
Nothing Phone 2
OnePlus 12
Assuming that you are on huawei release (not los releases), untick your app from close apps after screen lock. Then go to apps, settings, special access, and make the system ignore battery optimizations for the spesific app you want to get notification from.

first thanks for this tip. i hate it that i dont receive whatsapp messenges all the time, i hope it will work now.

BTP:
I assume huawei did not remove "doze" from our firmware, but maybe they replaced it with theire own battery manager?

Is there a complete source for doze, so we can check if everything is there? If yes it should not be that hard to activate doze and deactivate the huawei one.

But i guess we need at least the kernel sources to clear things up?
 

furkey

Senior Member
Feb 7, 2011
287
63
first thanks for this tip. i hate it that i dont receive whatsapp messenges all the time, i hope it will work now.

BTP:
I assume huawei did not remove "doze" from our firmware, but maybe they replaced it with theire own battery manager?

Is there a complete source for doze, so we can check if everything is there? If yes it should not be that hard to activate doze and deactivate the huawei one.

But i guess we need at least the kernel sources to clear things up?

Doze is not on kernel level but it is on software level. Programmatically we can activate what is left from doze or at least simulate it. However, if there is a certain need for doze we should cook a whole new rom and yes, it requires open source too.

But, let's clear a thing here: Huawei did not completely removed doze. Actually, I think they can't do that if they wish to use Android. Just some settings of Huawei conflicts with doze and prevent its functioning.
 

antimatter.web

Senior Member
Jan 27, 2014
180
32
I'm using the honor 9 with emui 5.1 (android 7.0) and screebl (app used to control how and when screen locks/times out) is constantly getting killed. I have added it to ignore(=allow to run) in battery optimization and it's activated as a device administrator. It is not selected to close (power intensive app prompt) or instructed to close when screen goes off. Yet it repeatedly is getting killed - is there something else I need to do? I can't seem to find anything else I can do to stop it from being killed and it's a major nuisance.
 

mikicl

Member
May 25, 2015
24
5
Honor 6, Honor 6 Plus
Honor 9
I'm using the honor 9 with emui 5.1 (android 7.0) and screebl (app used to control how and when screen locks/times out) is constantly getting killed. I have added it to ignore(=allow to run) in battery optimization and it's activated as a device administrator. It is not selected to close (power intensive app prompt) or instructed to close when screen goes off. Yet it repeatedly is getting killed - is there something else I need to do? I can't seem to find anything else I can do to stop it from being killed and it's a major nuisance.

Could you finally solve this?

I also have and Honor 9, and have the same problem with aplicacition radardroid. Is getting killed, and also have all configured to prevent this... :(
 

jcalderonv74

Senior Member
May 3, 2015
130
19
Thank szgfg,

Both are already well configured, but still closing the app.
Check also is not being closed by the automatic cleanup (so add it to clean whitelisted apps) and that is not being closed due to high consumption...disable that on battery settings... Let the advertisement but do not let phone administrator close that apps automatically

Enviado desde mi EVA-L09 mediante Tapatalk
 

mikicl

Member
May 25, 2015
24
5
Honor 6, Honor 6 Plus
Honor 9
Hi jcalderonv74,

Thanks for your answer. I didn't know about the clean whitelisted apps, was a surprise to find it. But unfortunetly, everything was well configured.

Option to avoid being closed due to high consumption was already OK.

So nothing to change, everything was as it has to be. Seems more a software problem in EMUI 5.0 :(
 

mikicl

Member
May 25, 2015
24
5
Honor 6, Honor 6 Plus
Honor 9
After some days without touching anything in the phone's configuration, finally observed that everything is working fine. All aplications configured keep opened, and it's only Radardroid aplication that sometimes closes alone (only sporadically after a recent update)

Seems more an error in Radardroid aplication that in telephone's software. So I'm not worring more about that.
 
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    Hello guys. This topic is pretty long and it is hard to read all of it but try to read all of it till end.

    Well, let me begin. The main problem of the nougat update is the dramatic increase of battery consumption (for me at least) But why this is happening?

    Actually this is a matter of battery managers. Huawei had created a great phone but obviously they messed things up in the software side. Google announced "Doze" feature with Marshmallow. If we could have a brief explanation of "what doze is" is it is basically a battery protection policy created by google. In Android, apps have the ability to use what’s called a “wakelock” to prevent your phone from going into a power-saving deep sleep mode. This deep sleep mode usually kicks in when your phone’s screen is off, but that can get in the way of how some apps work. For example, if you’re using a fitness tracker, you don’t want your phone turning off GPS or your accelerometer just because your phone is in your pocket with the screen turned off.
    In principle, this is a good concept. Apps keep your phone awake and working when they need to, and let it sleep when they don’t. This is a problem, though, when every developer thinks their app is important enough to keep your phone on all the time. That’s why apps like Facebook kill your battery, even when you’re not using them.
    Doze helps solve this problem by periodically blocking wakelocks and shutting off network access if your phone goes unused for a while. It will then periodically allow apps to check in during “maintenance windows” every so often (these windows occur less frequently the longer you don’t use your device). Here is a graphical explanation of how doze works versus time:

    http://itresan.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/doze-header.jpg

    Doze helps solve this problem by periodically blocking wakelocks and shutting off network access if your phone goes unused for a while. It will then periodically allow apps to check in during “maintenance windows” every so often (these windows occur less frequently the longer you don’t use your device)

    If we turn back to the main topic, as I mentioned before, Huawei has some difficulties combining it's own features with google's. Huawei has its own battery manager. That's why you are not receiving some notifications from facebook or whatsapp. That is because that freaking battery manager shuts everything off but still, since it has a very poor approach, the system drains battery. It is basically a matter of doze does not kicking in. As you can see, the battery usage when the screen is turned on is about the same. However, the same thing cannot be seem when the screen is off.

    So what to do in order to save some juice?

    -There is some workarounds for doze kicking in like these ones:
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yirgalab.dzzz
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.suyashsrijan.forcedoze

    These two apps have different approaches. I prefer ForceDoze as it seems the google's intended way.

    I want to highlight this item because this might be the most important thing in this topic. If you don’t do anything with your phone, Doze will still do its job. It runs almost invisibly in the background. Occasionally you’ll get a few messages at once, rather than spread over a few minutes, but for the most part there’s no noticeable change. In other words this is a bit different from the conventional full deep sleep and you do not have to afraid from doze as you do with the full deep sleep.

    -DO NOT CLEAN YOUR RAM TOO OFTEN. This will cause closed apps re-open and hence, more cpu usage.

    -No! Cleaners, Task managers and other stuff does not work! As I mention before, they even lead more battery consumptions.

    -Huawei has poor google service implementations. Even one or two implementation has some bugs that causing battery drain(for example: google backup). Try to turn them off.

    -Know when to reboot your phone. Too frequent reboots may do the same thing as you cleaning your ram. However, rebooting cleans app caches so the system will work smoother. Once a week or two weeks is fine I suppose.

    Please hit the "Thanks" button if you like and please point out the missing things and if you see a mistake please warn me for correcting it. I hope you liked the topic.

    Have a nice day!
    1
    After some days without touching anything in the phone's configuration, finally observed that everything is working fine. All aplications configured keep opened, and it's only Radardroid aplication that sometimes closes alone (only sporadically after a recent update)

    Seems more an error in Radardroid aplication that in telephone's software. So I'm not worring more about that.