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This morning, when I woke up my phone was out of battery power. So when I checked the battery usage I see the message Display had been used 90%.

This kind of situation had never happened to me before. I was surprised as I always turn off my mobile screen by clicking the power button.

  1. Why has this happened even though I turn off my screen?

  2. How can I avoid that kind of situation from happening?

Android Version: 4.0.3

Mobile: HTC One X

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The screen is the biggest user of power. Even when you turn it off. – Ryan Conrad Jul 20 '12 at 1:30
@RyanConrad are you implying the screen uses power when off? – ND Geek Jul 20 '12 at 2:10
no, i am saying that the screen will use more power than anything. – Ryan Conrad Jul 20 '12 at 3:40
@Ryan But, it doesn't consume high amount of power when it is off. – Sachin Shekhar Aug 19 '12 at 18:25
@SachinShekhar What I meant by that is even if you turn the screen off, it will probably still be a bigger user of power then anything else when the screen is on. My screen turns off automatically after 10 seconds, but it is still the biggest user of battery from when it is actually on. – Ryan Conrad Aug 19 '12 at 21:54

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

Keep in mind that on the Battery Usage screen even though per-app breakdown always adds up to 100%, it does not represent the full capacity of your battery, but rather only the used portion. In other words, if your phone is reporting current battery level of 65%, the breakdown is for the other 35%.

Since nothing really happens overnight, it's not unusual for the "Screen" to be shown as taking 90% (again, that's 90% of the used up 35%). That just means you've used the screen for a little bit, and then nothing else consumed too much battery.

It's possible that you had too little charge left over from the day before and not having the phone plugged in overnight pushed it over the edge.

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You've cleared the common mis-conceptions, but still Cell Stand-by etc should beat turned off screen in power consumption... – Sachin Shekhar Aug 19 '12 at 18:28
I guess that depends on how long the screen was used after the phone was taken off the battery. – Chahk Aug 20 '12 at 12:42
up vote 0 down vote

While it's hard to say why that happened last night beyond some guessing, it's possible to track down any future issues. Install BetterBatteryStats (it's open source, and it's available for free outside of the market if you're comfortable installing APKs from "unknown sources") and let it track your usage. It will give you more detailed information on what exactly is using your battery by way of CPU time. My guess is you had an application that kept waking the screen.

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hi could you kindly share me a link that I can download for free? – kitokid Jul 20 '12 at 2:41
Check out the thread on XDA Developers. Note that the version currently on there is a release candidate/beta, so it may not be as reliable as the market version. That said, it's probably fine. – ND Geek Jul 20 '12 at 2:52

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