Excessive intermittent battery drain

[pgoelz]

Lumia 950 (ATT), build 14955

I am noticing that intermittently, the battery drain is much higher than normal. When this occurs, the phone is anywhere from mildly to moderately warm even after returning to standby. Normal standby drain seems to be around 1%/hour. When the battery drain is "excessive, it can be 3% to 5% per hour or even higher. I have seen it lose 50% overnight at times.

Rebooting usually restores normal operation for a while.

I have been trying to figure out what triggers it and there seem to be indications it might have something to do with actively editing Google Calendar events or Google contacts. Not entirely sure yet. If I have the energy I may use the WDRT to revert to the release build and see if this persists. I used the phone for several days before switching to Windows Insider builds, and I do not recall this issue on the release software.

Anyone else?

Paul

 

[dicks-webos]

No info on what you have on your phone, so can't say anything.

I did a WDRT to get back from Fast Ring to Release Preview because of drain issues. Now on 14393.351 and battery drain is like around 3% per hour (flashed yesterday so maybe still settling in). Device is cool and I have not noticed it to get warm or hot yet. Pretty happy with this build.

Note: I also did not do a backup restore but setup the phone completely from scratch. Suggest you do that.

 

[pgoelz]

Sorry, I didn't mention the apps I have on my phone because I don't really have much in addition to the stock apps. And the ones I do have do not do anything in the background. I don't think this is a rogue app.... at least not anything I have installed. I can't uninstall the weather app and I don't see a way of disabling it, so it COULD be that but I doubt it. When it was discharging rapidly, the battery monitor said that START had the highest drain but due to the way Windows reports battery drain, I could not tell if maybe there was something unreported that was the real culprit. I assume that drain attributed to START includes any apps with live tiles on the start menu.... like weather?

Like you, I just last night used the WDRT to revert from the fast ring to 14393.351. However, I DID do a restore, which was partially successful. It restored my settings, some of my apps but did not restore my start menu layout. The phone is now running cold to the touch and battery drain is once again reasonable. I have not tried to calculate the %/hr yet since it was late last night when I got it set up and it was not fully charged. I'll let it run overnight tonight and calculate the %/hr but just by eye it looks a lot less than 3%/hr.

BTW, I have DTTW enabled but is "double tap the nav bar to sleep" not a feature in 14393..... or did I just forget where to enable it?

Paul

 

[dicks-webos]

"Double tap nav bar to lock" is in the lock screen settings afaik.

 

[pgoelz]

Nope, not on 14393. DTTW is there but not DTTNBTS At least not on my phone.

Paul

 

[pgoelz]

FOUND IT!

Double tap to sleep is in Settings > Personalization > Navigation Bar. Probably the same place it was in 14955.

Paul

 

[pgoelz]

OK, back to the original topic....

After reverting to 14393 and letting the phone settle, it seems to be running dead cold. I placed my Nexus 5X (powered down) next to the L950 (in standby with DTTW and DTTS enabled, connected to ATT) and checked their temperatures with a non-contact thermometer. At the beginning of the test, the L950 was about 5 degrees warmer than the (de-powered) N5X. After about 30 minutes of inactivity the L950 had dropped to about 1 degree F warmer than the N5X. The L950 may have still been cooling, but I didn't wait any longer. Regardless, it is running a lot cooler than on 14955 and does not get anywhere near as warm with the screen on either.

I'll let it sit in standby overnight and calculate %/hr in the morning as well as check the temperature rise over ambient.

Paul

 

[pgoelz]

OK, I'm back. After reverting from 14955 to 14393.100 the phone ran dead cold in standby. I did not actually measure standby drain but it was nowhere as excessive as it was on 14955.

But then MS released 14959 and I could not resist the temptation so I installed it

First impressions of 14959 are very favorable.... without actually measuring it, the standby drain seems very reasonable, with no unusual drain during the day. The phone would get warm during use but would cool down to ambient as soon as it was placed back in standby.

To measure standby drain, I let it run overnight on WiFi with a strong cell signal. BT was on but not connected. DTTW and DTTS were both enabled. NF was disabled. Google contacts and calendar were syncing every 2 hours but nothing else was set to run in the background. During the 6.5 hours it was in standby, the battery discharged 3%. That is a standby drain of 0.46%/hour. That's more like it!!!! That is by far the lowest standby drain I have ever seen on a Windows phone. Until now, the best I have ever seen on any of my three Windows phones (L820, L1020, L950) is about 1.2%/hour. My goal has always been one week of standby (similar to my old flip phones) and if this holds, 14959 can achieve that!

Paul

 

[realwarder]

OK, I'm back. After reverting from 14955 to 14393.100 the phone ran dead cold in standby. I did not actually measure standby drain but it was nowhere as excessive as it was on 14955.

But then MS released 14959 and I could not resist the temptation so I installed it

First impressions of 14959 are very favorable.... without actually measuring it, the standby drain seems very reasonable, with no unusual drain during the day. The phone would get warm during use but would cool down to ambient as soon as it was placed back in standby.

To measure standby drain, I let it run overnight on WiFi with a strong cell signal. BT was on but not connected. DTTW and DTTS were both enabled. NF was disabled. Google contacts and calendar were syncing every 2 hours but nothing else was set to run in the background. During the 6.5 hours it was in standby, the battery discharged 3%. That is a standby drain of 0.46%/hour. That's more like it!!!! That is by far the lowest standby drain I have ever seen on a Windows phone. Until now, the best I have ever seen on any of my three Windows phones (L820, L1020, L950) is about 1.2%/hour. My goal has always been one week of standby (similar to my old flip phones) and if this holds, 14959 can achieve that!

Paul

I have the cheap Amazon Blu phone as an Android tester and the battery in standby on that lasts about a week. Super impressive. So glad to hear the latest RS2 is moving in the right direction. 0.5% an hour would probably be about the same so looking forward to this upgrade!

 

[pgoelz]

Well, the very low standby drain seems to be holding when the phone is in my pocket. However, I was out and about and using the phone to read on the Kindle app plus checking a couple web sites. The drain still seems a bit excessive when the phone is actually in use. This part is subjective at present.... I'll try keeping closer tabs on it in the coming days and maybe compare it to the same app on my Nexus 5X on Android 7.1. But the phone does get warm pretty quickly when simply browsing the web. And of course, heat is wasted power The good part is that the drain does seem to drop back to the ~0.5%/hr level when the phone goes back to sleep. This was not the case with 14955.

Paul