A41 Android 12 battery drain

[Greg30]

Hi,

I upgraded my A41 from Android 11 to latest Android 12 and straight away saw double battery usage than before when I was on Android 11. Wiped system cache, etc., left it a few days to optimise itself, nothing worked, still the same battery drain.

Put the Android 11 firmware back on and everything is fine again with no battery drain issues.

Poor show from Samsung to release a buggy Android 12 with battery drain issues. There has been 3 Android 12 firmware releases so far for the A41 and I can't believe this hasn't been fixed. I see quite a few other posts here with similar complaints and the usual drone response: here is our handy link how to optimise your battery usage, and if that doesn't work factory reset. Yes, thanks for that. No help at all.

My suspicion is that the CPU is being used with no throttling nearly all the time and this is causing the battery drain.

What's the point of 4 years of upgrades Samsung if they don't test them and release them with battery drain bugs? The stupid small notification text on the Android 12 lock screen, which can only be read with a magnifying glass, I guess I could live with, but battery drain, no.

Greg

[at_theresonly1mac]

Not had a single issue with battery or any other function from android 12.

Not familiar with your phone, but I know SOMETIMES when you get a buggy firmware, it is worth doing a factory reset AFTER installing.

I'm gonna guess you checked settings for battery? Optimized Vs balanced Vs really fast (very hungry that one). Perhaps old settings and new firmware made the phone thristy, and needed to be changed???????

As I said, not familiar, but android 12 been around a while, and my S10+ (Mrs has it now, and I have S22U) run perfectly fine on it.

The Mrs isn't technical and doesn't change settings, but she only charges every other day on default settings.

[at_theresonly1mac]

Ps...
Found this.

https://www.verizon.com/support/knowledge-base-229817/

Hopefully it helps.

[Greg30]

A factory reset after installing every upgrade is not really an option. I am not going to waste a day reinstalling. The expectation is that Samsung tests its upgrades before releasing.

Greg

[Nightflame]

Check that you have not disabled the system app:

com.sec.android.diagmonagent

In Android 12 ActivityManager tries to fire up diagmonagent but if this has been disabled it will cause an exception, and repeatedly try to restart it. Check your ADB log. This will contribute to battery drain. This does not happen on Android 11 and diagmonagent  can be disabled.

https://yoodley.com/what-is-diagmonagent/

If you are worried about what information diagmonagent sends back to developers, might be best to firewall it with Karma Firewall:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.stargw.fok/

[Greg30]

Yes, that was it: com.sec.android.diagmonagent

I had disabled this apk as it was considered by many sources as Samsung bloat in Android 11. Disabling it in Android 11 caused no issues. However, it turns out, it seems to be required by Samsung in Android 12.

After enabling it again, battery usage, ADB logs, and CPU throttling all back to normal on Android 12.

Two key items to find the fix to this issue:

1. Always look in the ADB logs. It was producing 1,000s of error logs every minute with the same error and naming the disabled apk
2. Use the CPU Float app. This app showed the CPU usage spiking every second, rather than the CPU settling down in a thottled state

Hopefully someone finds this useful!

Thanks,

Greg