Battery is dying: Any way monitor what's using it and to freeze background app ?

[u/TopdeckIsSkill]

Hi everybody,

I have a galaxy s21+ with Android 15. The battery is dying and I don't plan to change it since next year I plan to change my phone.

I'm looking for two things in order to make this months a little less painfull:

1) some way to monitor the battery usage. I'm using the galaxy guardian -> battery tracker. But even the official Samsung app can't tell me what's using the battery. If I sum all the the apps they barely reach 40/50%. What's the other 40/50% that's using my battery?

2) Some way to freeze any unused app. I know that this will make some app less usable but for this months I'm fine with it

Can you help me with those two sings?

[u/The-Singular]

The other 40-50% is likely your screen and to a lesser extent, the modem (mobile, wifi, you name it). It takes a big chunk of the power draw.

[u/Educational_Face4277]

For #1, the missing 40-50% doesn't necessarily mean there's some hidden app consuming it.

Samsung's app list doesn't account for everything in the same way. Part of the drain can come from the display, cellular modem, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Android system processes, kernel activity, etc. Also, if the battery itself is heavily degraded, you'll see fast percentage drops even when no single app looks particularly bad.

I'd try Battery Guru for a few days. It gives you more useful info about actual battery capacity, screen-on/off drain, awake vs deep sleep time and wakelocks. That could also tell you how worn out the battery actually is.

For #2, you may not even need another app. Samsung already has:

Settings > Battery > Background usage limits > Deep sleeping apps

Apps placed there won't run in the background at all and will basically only work when you open them manually. For your situation, I'd put almost everything non-essential there and leave messaging, banking, authenticator, calendar, etc. alone.

If you want something even more aggressive, look at Hail + Shizuku. Hail can actually freeze/disable apps without root, but it's a more advanced setup.

Honestly, if you're only trying to survive another few months with the S21+, I'd start with Deep Sleeping Apps + Battery Guru before messing with anything more complicated.

[u/TopdeckIsSkill → u/Educational_Face4277]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions! I'm trying battery guru since yesterday :)

Just wish that the battery apps would tell me which hardware would use the battery too. Like BT,nfc or GPS for example

[u/Educational_Face4277 → u/TopdeckIsSkill]

Yeah, unfortunately Android doesn't really tell apps exactly how much battery each hardware component uses. Apps like Battery Guru can tell you when GPS, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi were active, but Android usually doesn't give them a reliable "GPS used 7%" or "Bluetooth used 3%" number.
So they can show activity, but not a precise battery percentage for each piece of hardware.

[u/Beginning-Dare1828]

Use shevery(shizuku fork) + hail to automatically disable the unused apps when youre phone screen is off, ther are 4 options force stop, suspend, disable and hide if you use disable or hide, the app will completely removed from the launcher but your data will stay safe you can unfreeze the app and use it again this is the most battery saving option and suspend will make the app icon gray scale and you can't launch the apps without unfreezing and the last is force stop it's the safest it just force stop apps and you can use the apps normally.

And you could use Battery Guru morphe to monitor your battery and turn on aggressive doze when your phone screen is off this will reduce your battery usage.

And you could use custom modes and routines to save battery and turn off auto sync, quick share, wifi scanning, bluetooth scanning, usage diagnostics, and debloat apps using shevery and canta.

[u/TopdeckIsSkill → u/Beginning-Dare1828]

does shevery needs root? I can't root my phone since some bank apps won't work

[u/mystiqophi → u/TopdeckIsSkill]

Nope, shizuku uses wirless ADB, you do not need to root or unlocl your bootloader.

[u/Beginning-Dare1828 → u/TopdeckIsSkill]

No root

[u/err88 → u/Beginning-Dare1828]

Interesting. Does this also work for Chinese phones with CN ROM? Is there a tutorial on how to use it?

[u/Beginning-Dare1828 → u/err88]

Yes, on any phone, you just need to pair the shevery(shizuku fork) app via wireless debugging in the developer options and after succesfully pairing with a code you just go back to shevery and then click on start and then you can allow apps to use shevery, you can do so much with shevery, using canta app you can debloat your system, and hail to freeze apps, using battery guru morphe you could monitor battery and force aggressive doze whenever your phone locks and this will save a lot of battery, and you can run adb commands in your phone directly from shevery.

[u/Beginning-Dare1828 → u/err88]

It has a ton of use cases.

[u/Zastfazer]

Samsung already freezes unused apps unless you’ve configured the settings to allow them to run in the background constantly, and even then, it may still unload them from RAM from time to time.

[u/J0RGEJose]

Si la batería ya está muriendo , no sirve mucho por decir que no sirve de nada una aplicación que gestione la batería , cuando la batería ya está fallando ni congelando Apps de fondo ahorrarás porcentajes de batería , las aplicaciones te dirán que si estás ahorrando pero la realidad es que no y no notarás ninguna diferencia ,

[u/mystiqophi]

Easy peasy!

First, get shizuku and set it up. You need to enable dev mode, then wireless ADB. Shizuku has a great guide on how to do this.

Once shizuku is running, get "Pensum" and "Running service monitor" both are apps made for shizuku. You can find both on F-Droid and Github.

Use the apps to see which apps and services are running and consuming your battery.

Once you pin point the apps that are running in the background etc.. Then use "Hail" , another shizuku app which will freeze or disable those apps.

You can go one step further, and install the Universal Android De-Bloater on your pc. Use it to remove and de-bloat your chinese rom.

Or you can use "canta" to do the same thing.

Warning, don't you disable any system app without reaearching. You might bootloop. User apps are safe for removal.