FireFox on Droid X consumes 43% of the battery in one hour
I installed Firefox on Droid X using latest software OS update and Google Play to install. Browsed to a story on m.fanfiction.net and read 5 chapters. According to the OS monitor, the app used 43% of the full battery charge in this time. Using the standard browser provided on the phone, I use about 15% of the battery in the same time. What exactly is Fire fox doing while I am scrolling through a mostly text page?
All Replies (20)
Do you have any add-ons installed? Also, I know this the question you asked but is it possible that you know what may be causing this?
I did not add anything to the base install as I wanted to get a feel for the app before making changes. The only add-on I use on my desktop install is AdBlock.
Hello bcrumby, Try powersaving mode as you read. You can also save the pages to your reading list to have them cached. I have not tried this offline yet, but the reading mode has saved battery on the note. I will ask more about analyzing performance of Android this afternoon.
Hello,
I have this problem too (on 29) which is very annoying :-( It is very simple to compare because I have the same number of tabs which targets the same sites (about 40) and I haven't this issue on 28 at all. My Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (Android 4.3) can be used almost 3 full days and now with 29 it can be used only one day :-(
Previously, the battery consumption is mainly due to the display and now FF 29 is on the top of the list for battery consumption. FYI: I have disabled the telemetry report but the health and crash report are still enabled.
Do I have to disable all the report options in order to see if the issue comes from that configuration ?
Anyway, Mozilla has to take this issue seriously !!!
@guigs2: Of course what you propose could be a workaound but I haven't this issue yet since 29 !
@Andew: no add on, plugin installed
Best Regards
Modified
Hello,
I have updated my Firefox for Android to the latest version (eg 29.0.1). Is this version supposed to fix the battery leak ?
I might say that with this version, the battery leakage is less important but far from ideal compared to the 28 version.
Best Regards.
Hi bcrumbly I found the testing for performance, https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/d.../Firefox_for_Android. The information needed for a performance bug would be a test on Reporting a Performance Problem.
To answer your question about the battery performance, there are other tips and tricks that can preserve battery life. You can set the Display Brightness, the power saving mode mentioned above.
This one is also nice [www.techrepublic.com/article/10-tips-for-improving-android-battery-life/ 10 tips to improve battery life]
Hello,
Thanks for providing some links.
But the "Reporting a Performance Problem" link deals with Gecko profiler extension which is only available for Firefox desktop: right ? So it won't be usefull for the Android version. The testing for performance link could be usefull but I am not part of the Firefox for android team and don't have enough time to do that. My contribution could be: I provide you all the URLs that are opened and the team will analyze what's going wrong.
Regarding the battery performance advices/tips you mentioned. The question is not there at all. The basic facts are:
- With Firefox for Android 28 I open X URLs and let my handset like this. The battery, in such case, lasts 3 days . - With Firefox for Android 29: same scenario (eg same URLs are opened). Then battery lasts this time less than one day and a half. - More if you open the battery monitoring at OS level you will see that Firefox is above the display: first time I see that ever !
Is there any tools for firefox android to monitor the CPU consumption or the bandwith usage ? Because this is the only explanation I have right now. Over CPU usage and/or network usage between FF 28 and FF29 for android.
I am a little bit worried about that situation. I was quite happy with FF but this version is crappy regarding the battery consumption.
@bcrumby: have you solved your issue or do you have still ?
Best Regards.
If you are interested in providing a website example this could help create a bug. With the websites, there are have these tools to test the performance of the profile as well: This will test the javascript engine on desktop: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/d.../Reporting_a_Performance_Problem and for android local host builds these test can be reproduced here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/d.../Profiling_with_the_Built-in_Profiler#Profiling_Firefox_mobile
EDIT Profiling With the Built In Profiler and Preforming a Performance Problem
Modified
Hello,
@guigs2: The 2 links you provided return 404 :-( Anyway, I think a have found something. I will let you know if my findings will illustrate the issue.
Best Regards.
Franos13, I edited the post with the proper links sorry about that, not sure why they were shortened.
Hello again,
Basically I have performed the following tests with only FF 29 opened (I have also performed some tests with FF30 with the same behavior):
- Duration 19h for each test - Open 10 tab on the site http://www.developpez.com/ Results by opening the Battery system application: Network: 31%, Display: 16%, OS:10%, FF:8%, Battery decrease: 19% - Open 10 tab on the site http://mobile.clubic.com/ Results by opening the Battery system application: Network: 21%, Display: 15%, OS:13%, FF:13%, Battery decrease: 58% :-( - Open 10 tab on the site http://www.lesnumeriques.com/ Results by opening the Battery system application: Network: 28%, Display: 21%, OS: 9%, FF:5%, Battery decrease: 19%
So it seems that there is an issue with the site mobile.clubic.com at least :-(
If you are interested I can upload the battery screenshots I have made. If I have time I will perform the same tests with the embedded Android browser on those sites ...
Again I haven't see this battery usage with the same sites I regurarly consult with FF 28 and prior versions !!!
Best Regards.
Modified
Hey I filed the bug to get it started, thank you for your time to the experiments. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1026669 Health reports are how they measure performance other than https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/d.../Profiling_with_the_Built-in_Profiler#Profiling_Firefox_mobile
May need to cc a performance developer too.
Modified
Do you have Sync set up?
Is your screen on while testing?
Hello,
@rnewman:
Sync not set up screen off most of the time when testing. 3G not Wifi (minimum 3 bars reception)
With these conditions, just open 10 tabs on mobile.clubic. com during 19h and profile the CPU, the network and the battery.
Best regards.
Modified
For reference, we're tracking this as Bug 1026669.
If you visit about:crashes on the device, approximately how many recent reports do you see?
Do you ever have wifi turned on, even if you're not connected to a network? Are you ever connected to a wifi network?
Hello,
about:crashes bp-a2819772-ffbc-480b-b2b2-d98ba2140617 06/17/14 22:28 bp-5f0efc15-6500-4496-a709-c6de42140605 06/05/14 07:35 bp-e9c9a02b-3622-46d2-9070-c46cb2140604 06/04/14 22:43 bp-0cce4ed6-b610-406d-8947-3c1602140402 04/02/14 08:01 bp-aa3128bc-9c53-4612-8af0-8bf0f2140330 03/30/14 22:03 bp-c1f9d595-aaa2-43df-af75-b4c742140302 03/02/14 19:12
Wifi never turned on.
Best regards.
OK, so I think we can rule out frequent background crashing as a cause for power drain. And we can also rule out streaming scans.
Hello,
I have looked at the bug 1026669. Just want to mention that I get the issue on a Galaxy Note 2 on my side. I have also seen that the battery leak could be triggered by SSDP (only used in wifi or ethernet). But when I get the issue I am on 3G. More I have checked the browser.casting.enable property value that is set to false on my device. So do you have other ideas for this memory leak ?
Best regards.
Modified
Franos:
Just to clarify: this isn't a memory leak, it's power consumption.
If you still don't have Sync enabled, then I'm confident in pointing the finger at foreground page usage.
The amount of battery used by network access seems to indicate that this power consumption is largely due to page content loading/refreshing/doing work. Most likely this is happening at enough of an interval that your cell radio is awake the whole time, which will kill your battery.
What you can do:
- On the phone: Settings > Developer tools > Remote debugging.
- Connect phone to desktop via USB.
- Open one of the pages in question in Firefox on your phone.
- `adb forward tcp:6000 tcp:6000` in a shell on your computer.
- On your computer: Tools > Web Developer > Connect…
- Connect, and accept the prompt on your phone.
- Pick the page you want to profile.
To get a CPU profile:
- Click the "Profiler" tab.
- Press the speedo button on the left side. Wait for however long you consider necessary.
- Press the button again. Wait for capture to finish. Save and send to me.
You might also find it interesting to get a network capture or to watch the logs — if you see lots of HTTP traffic, that'll be the culprit.
I tried this and couldn't reproduce your results, so I'm interested to see your findings.
Thanks!
Hello,
I have updated my previous answer. If I have to follow your advice, I have to install Android sdk on my PC in order to get adb: right ?
I can ensure you that I still have issue: 4 tabs on clubic site yesterday and then idle, after 3 hours almost 30% 35% battery consumed. As I have already saïd I haven't the same battery consumption opening the same pages with previous FF versions (less or equal to 28).
Is it possible to get FF 28 in order to perform a comparison ?
Best regards.