How is your 950Xl battery doing?

[TennisGuy45]

Testing a hypothesis today.

Had been running both Windows Hello and Hey Cortana.

Turned off both, lets see how much battery life improves. My theory is it will improve significantly since both of these services run all the time even when the phone is not in use.

Ok so things were MUCH improved yesterday and my test worked wonderfully.

I only turned off Windows Hello and Hey Cortana, did not make any other changes so all other background operations, updates, photo sync, etc were operating as normal.

I took my phone off the charger at 7:30AM and 16.5 hours later at midnight when I put it on the charger it had 27% of the battery left.
During the day I actually used the phone quite a bit. I read a lot of news articles on it, posted a lot of things on facebook, watched a car video review for about 25 minutes, and used it in the mall for price and product lookups (inside the mall it was on 4g and not LTE).

So, for my phone, I have gotten the battery life to where I want it to be. A full days use without worry of the battery going critical. In fact I'd say at 16.5 hours that is more than a normal full days use cycle. Right now I am in east Texas where ATT and its LTE coverage are not the best so I am hoping once I get back home (DFW) where ATT coverage is spotless battery life will get even better.

What my next test will be is to go one day each with just WIndows Hello and then just Hey Cortana on to see which one is the bigger battery drain.
My guess is that Hey Cortana is the biggest culprit since it is processing every single sound it hears.

So everyone that is having terrible battery life turn WIndows Hello off and Hey Cortana, things improved a lot for me when I did.

 

[phelme]

Does anyone else's battery, once its reached 100% and then taken off the charger, appear to drop rapidly to the low 80's and then sit there for a while? Happened to me twice now.

 

[douggrif]

Recommend "Battery Status" app for some interesting statistics and "Settings" > "System" > "Battery Saver" > "Battery Use" for the best view of what the apps are consuming. Also try setting screen brightness to 25% from the default 50% as that makes a big difference. I had no trouble viewing the screen indoors on that level. When listening to podcasts, see if the apps will still play with the screen turned off as that greatly reduces battery use.

 

[Captpt]

My guess is that Hey Cortana is the biggest culprit since it is processing every single sound it hears.

So everyone that is having terrible battery life turn WIndows Hello off and Hey Cortana, things improved a lot for me when I did.

Great testing and diagnosing!
Did you do a restore when you setup your phone?? Seems those who didn't do a restore are having considerably less to no issues compared to those who did.

 

[Starwave]

I've had the Lumia 950 XL since Thursday, and here is my battery life summary so far:

Note: "Hey Cortana" has been disabled for the entire period, while Windows Hello has been enabled.

Day 1: I installed/updated about 40 applications, set up my start screen and lock screen, and changed a bunch of settings. Overnight I set it Spotify to download over 1600 songs. The battery life was at 100% when I went to bed, and when I woke up it was at 11%, just 5-6 hours later (I was up til 2 AM playing around with the phone).

Day 2: Had to charge it in the middle of the day for no apparent reason. Hadn't been using it much. Disabled a bunch of apps running in the background, as well as location. When I wen to bed later that day, it was at 48%, and when I woke up (8 hours later), it was dead.

Day 3: The battery lasted longer. From 8 AM to 6 PM before I had to charge, but with pretty mild usage. Charged it to around 80 %, and when I went to bed 11 PM it was at 52%. When I woke up at 8 AM it was dead.

So far the battery life has been really bad. Having to charge the phone twice a day (with little use) is a no go for me. I'll see how it plays out during next week. I really love the phone though, so I hope it gets better. Otherwise I'll have to see if I can return it and get a new one, as I heard there might be hardware issues?

 

[nkaufmann5]

I've had the Lumia 950 XL since Thursday, and here is my battery life summary so far:

Note: "Hey Cortana" has been disabled for the entire period, while Windows Hello has been enabled.

Day 1: I installed/updated about 40 applications, set up my start screen and lock screen, and changed a bunch of settings. Overnight I set it Spotify to download over 1600 songs. The battery life was at 100% when I went to bed, and when I woke up it was at 11%, just 5-6 hours later (I was up til 2 AM playing around with the phone).

Day 2: Had to charge it in the middle of the day for no apparent reason. Hadn't been using it much. Disabled a bunch of apps running in the background, as well as location. When I wen to bed later that day, it was at 48%, and when I woke up (8 hours later), it was dead.

Day 3: The battery lasted longer. From 8 AM to 6 PM before I had to charge, but with pretty mild usage. Charged it to around 80 %, and when I went to bed 11 PM it was at 52%. When I woke up at 8 AM it was dead.

So far the battery life has been really bad. Having to charge the phone twice a day (with little use) is a no go for me. I'll see how it plays out during next week. I really love the phone though, so I hope it gets better. Otherwise I'll have to see if I can return it and get a new one, as I heard there might be hardware issues?

I have heard very few hardware problems, and even the battery problem sounds more like a software problem. I think Msoft did a great job, hardware wise, rolling this phone out. Have yet to hear about dead pixels, light bleed, or buttons not working. The only hardware problem I have heard about (debatable if it is even a problem and more so just design which I am okay with for removable battery) is the body creaking. Have you tried hard resetting your phone?

 

[Starwave]

I have heard very few hardware problems, and even the battery problem sounds more like a software problem. I think Msoft did a great job, hardware wise, rolling this phone out. Have yet to hear about dead pixels, light bleed, or buttons not working. The only hardware problem I have heard about (debatable if it is even a problem and more so just design which I am okay with for removable battery) is the body creaking. Have you tried hard resetting your phone?

My phone is creaking as well, but it's pretty mild, so I'm not too worried about that.

I haven't tried hard resetting the phone just yet. I charged it to 100% now (10:30 AM), and I'll see how it goes throughout the day. If it still drops quickly then I will try a hard reset.

Update 1: 1 hour and 10 minutes later, and the battery is down to 87% (from 100%). During this duration, all I did was send one message via Messenger.

Update 2: 1 hour later after the first update. The battery is down to 78% (from 87%) with no use. Seems to be a pattern here? 10% every hour, even with no use? I'll put the phone in airplane mode, and report back in an hour.

Update 3: Something very interesting here.. Just over 1 hour since last update. It was at 77% when I put the phone in airplane mode, and it is still at 77% now. This is with no use at all (not even unlocking the phone).

So, let's try something else. I'm going to remove Windows Hello, and report back in one hour. I will now turn off airplane mode as well.

Update 4: One hour has passed since the latest update, and the battery is now at 67% (from 77%), proving that Windows Hello did not have anything to do with the battery drain.

New test: I've disabled the following of the Microsoft background apps, i.e.: Mail and calendar, Messaging + Skype, Microsoft People, Microsoft Phone, Windows Alarms & lock, Windows Camera, Windows Maps, Windows Voice Recorder. Previously I had the following apps disabled: Groove Music, Lumia Creative Studio, Microsoft Health, Microsoft Photos, OneDrive, Store, Xbox.

As usual, I'll be back in an hour with the results. Everything else stays the same. Battery is currently at 64%.

Update 5: We are now sitting at 56% one hour later. Did it help? Well, by 1-3 percent perhaps, but no success in my opinion.

I've now disabled all of the background applications. Let's see how this pans out. Battery is currently at 55%.

Update 6: Another hour has passed, and the battery has decreased from 55% to 47%. Seems like it didn't help at all.

At this point I'm not sure what to do next. I've enabled some of the essential background apps, but this time disabled WiFi. Let's see what happens.

Update 7: 47% to 39% with WiFi disabled and no phone usage.

Update 8: In 8 hours it went from 100% to 25% (keep in mind that Airplane Mode was active for one hour, so ideally it would be at 15% at this time). This was with no use at all. All I've done during this period was sending a few messages via Messenger and changing some settings. Not acceptable. :/

 

[ferretzombie]

Huh. I installed an app that graphs the battery loss over time. Found a bit of weird behavior. The phone actually uses more battery in sleep mode than it does when reading a book on Kindle.

 

[DenniSundaY]

Mine doesn't last long either. My 930 does better with latest insider build. But I always think that the phone needs a little bit time to understand how u use it (and will adjust to it battery life wise) and because it is new u use it a bit more as usual. Don't know if it is true but it also felt this way with my other phones. I also have glance running but don't know of that would really make the difference. Even my 920 wasn't empty that much faster with glance and that hasn't even an OLED but just regular LCD/LED screen.

 

[Bay 13]

I've had the Lumia 950 XL since Thursday, and here is my battery life summary so far:

Note: "Hey Cortana" has been disabled for the entire period, while Windows Hello has been enabled.

Day 1: I installed/updated about 40 applications, set up my start screen and lock screen, and changed a bunch of settings. Overnight I set it Spotify to download over 1600 songs. The battery life was at 100% when I went to bed, and when I woke up it was at 11%, just 5-6 hours later (I was up til 2 AM playing around with the phone).

Day 2: Had to charge it in the middle of the day for no apparent reason. Hadn't been using it much. Disabled a bunch of apps running in the background, as well as location. When I wen to bed later that day, it was at 48%, and when I woke up (8 hours later), it was dead.

Day 3: The battery lasted longer. From 8 AM to 6 PM before I had to charge, but with pretty mild usage. Charged it to around 80 %, and when I went to bed 11 PM it was at 52%. When I woke up at 8 AM it was dead.

So far the battery life has been really bad. Having to charge the phone twice a day (with little use) is a no go for me. I'll see how it plays out during next week. I really love the phone though, so I hope it gets better. Otherwise I'll have to see if I can return it and get a new one, as I heard there might be hardware issues?

Thanks for sharing...I will hold off right now on buying until bugs are worked out. My Blackberry Z30 battery life is real good and I would hate to take a hit in that area. We will see...

 

[TennisGuy45]

Great testing and diagnosing!
Did you do a restore when you setup your phone?? Seems those who didn't do a restore are having considerably less to no issues compared to those who did.

No I did not do a restore on my phone. I thought that with a new phone and new OS it would be best to start from scratch.

I would not recommend doing a restore on initial setup of this device. Once this device is setup from scratch and you do backups of it then in the future I think a restore would be ok.

Also today the phone has been off charger for 9 hours already sitting pretty at 73% battery.

I am standing behind the disabling of Windows Hello and Hey Cortana.

BTW my screen is set for auto brightness and 50%.

 

[hacer619]

Try disabling twitter and edge browser background agents from the battery settings. This should improve the battery.

 

[realwarder]

Don't forget that you can use the Web Interface under the Developer tools section in the Settings to look inside the phone and see if any processes are using a lot of power.

Not much you can do if they are, but it's easy to see if the phone is really idling or some process is burning through the battery.

 

[Marcello Donato]

Battery life seems slightly worse than 1520, but the phone is much more powerful and charges much faster. I'll take it.

 

[jamielife]

Mine is doing terrible. I got it wednesday and let it restore all my settings, messages, etc. Charged it overnight to 100%. Unplugged it at about 9 am Yesterday and by noon I was critical. Even tried enabling Battery Saver at around 50%. Considering doing a hard reset as 4-5 hours of battery life with very little usage seems wrong even for a new phone.

Just an update. I performed a hard reset shortly after writing this. I also made sure to perform a clean install and not port over any of my apps. Since then my battery life has significantly improved. I was then able to use the Backup + Restore app to carry over my messages and my sd card/onedrive for everything but apps. Though still not as good as my 1520, my phone was at about 60% after 6 hours of moderate usage. That's a whole lot better than being dead after 4 hours of next to no use on Thursday.

I do think that after doing the original setup and restore, some thing (or things) came over that ran wild on my phone. This seems to be fixed after the hard reset without using restore.

 

[MambaDave]

Check the data usage and see if there is an excessive amount of being used on cellular and WiFi.

 

[CrownSeven]

I'm getting just over 48 hours right now with moderate use. Considering the screen on this thing, I consider that to be pretty darn good.

 

[phelme]

Check the data usage and see if there is an excessive amount of being used on cellular and WiFi.

Also if your cell signal isn't great this will hurt the battery as the radio searches to improve it. (Android finally started tracking this with history graphs in their Power settings. It's handy. Wish WM would do this too.)

If you put it in airplane mode do you lose juice at the same rate?

 

[Captpt]

I'm getting just over 48 hours right now with moderate use. Considering the screen on this thing, I consider that to be pretty darn good.

Wow, that's the best I've seen posted by a looong shot, better then my 640XL and its the best Smartphone I've ever had battery wise!!

 

[asteng88]

End of day 4 and the battery is getting remarkably better on the XL
Just switched from the iPhone 6 plus and I would say that at this point its about equivalent. Still expecting some improvements over the next few charging cycles.