Major Battery Issues with two 1020's

[rmmoore80]

Greetings,

My wife and I both have Nokia Lumia 1020's. We love the phones with one exception - the battery life is horrid. My wife is on her second 1020 as we had the original one replaced due to a seemingly defective battery (full discharge in 3-4 hours with no apps installed). My wife has done very little tweaks to hers and is running with mostly default options. I have optimized my phone heavily for battery performance. We both struggle to get even 12 hours out of our devices.

Today I woke up with a full charge and barely touched my phone. I checked Facebook for about 30 seconds in three hours as well as checked my battery level periodically. The rest of the time it sit mostly in my pocket. After three hours of hardly any use my phone had discharged over 25%. Another three hours went by of barely touching my phone and another 25% had discharged.

I have my screen brightness set to low. My email accounts are set to 1-2 hour intervals. I have blocked nearly every single application from running in the background. I have gone through every battery optimization tutorial I can find and tweaked my settings.

It frustrates me seeing people giving reviews of the 1020 saying they can go two days on a charge and I can barely make it through half of a day. Any advice here?

 

[Lendo]

I barely make it through the day with my Z10, but I'm a heavy user. It's really hard to diagnose why some people get bad battery life, especially when you lay out your days usage like that it would seem you should get better life. Does the Lumia have any apps to track battery usage?

 

[buxz777]

when the 920 was released some people swore by resetting it through the settings menu , have you tried that? on android some people calibrate the battery by charging to 100% then depleting till the phone turns off then charging to 100% but depleting your battery like that regularly isn't recommended

 

[Blacklac]

Signal strength plays a huge roll in battery life. Are you ever in areas with bad service or buildings that have bad service? Do you ever notice your connection bouncing between 4G and LTE or Edge or anything? Are you using Wifi?

 

[rmmoore80]

I am usually in a pretty well covered area. My signal is either solid 4G or solid LTE (LTE at work, 4G at home). I do have a battery tracking app. I will try resetting my phone tomorrow and not install any apps but the absolute minimum to function for work and see how that does. Perhaps one or more apps are killing the battery.

I do use Wifi at home exclusively for data.

 

[perspicuity]

My 1020 was having similar troubles but the culprit was Words With Friends. That app is basically a virus on Windows Phone. Such a disappointment.

 

[rmmoore80]

I am beginning to think my problem is a "bad" app. I have removed several and I will see how it does today.

 

[pavvento]

A few things: make sure you turn off connect with Xbox in the games. It is on by default and kills battery. Also, make sure Facebook messages is turned off in the message settings. I've also turned off double tap to wake which helped big time.

 

[rmmoore80]

I uninstalled Weather.com as well as a few other apps I don't use and turned off a few live tiles. So far after two hours I haven't even drained an entire percentage of battery. I still sit at 100% according to Battery+ (which I feel is a pretty solid app). I'll watch it for the next day or two and see how it does. I also have my wife doing a test. Since I have tweaked mine so much I had her make one single change - uninstall Weather.com. I'll update you guys what I find in case others experience this problem.

 

[tgr42]

Microsoft has wasted so much of our collective time by refusing to provide any sort of tool for figuring out what specifically is draining the battery. It's infuriating to have to work in the dark testing theories like this.

 

[perspicuity]

I uninstalled Weather.com as well as a few other apps I don't use and turned off a few live tiles. So far after two hours I haven't even drained an entire percentage of battery. I still sit at 100% according to Battery+ (which I feel is a pretty solid app). I'll watch it for the next day or two and see how it does. I also have my wife doing a test. Since I have tweaked mine so much I had her make one single change - uninstall Weather.com. I'll update you guys what I find in case others experience this problem.

This is just one person's opinion, but removing my battery monitor app seemed to extend my battery life. Also, I started using Bing for my weather app and it seems to be pretty power efficient.

I leave FB chat and XBOX games connected all day.

 

[rmmoore80]

Yesterday for the first 8 hours of the day I averaged approximately 2.6% drain per hour with moderate usage. The previous day with light usage (mostly in my pocket) I averaged about 7% per hour or higher at times while idle. I'll monitor and do some more testing and update the original post in case others encounter this problem.

 

[marratj]

For me it seems mostly to be connectivity... When I set my phone to 2G only, there almost no drain (still have 100% after 3,5hrs). But when I set it higher, it constantly switches between 2G and 3G at work (spotty reception at my desk) and also at home (too far away from next 3G cell tower)... and the it also drains over 20-30% in just a few hours sitting idle...

 

[icantthinkofanamethatsfree]

I found that switching off the "Double tap to wake up phone" option (Settings>touch) significantly improved battery life.

It was on by default, and I was wondering why my battery life was so bad, until I discovered this. I also set touch sensitivity to normal. My battery life is now really quite good. Hope this helps.

 

[tgr42]

Regarding the level staying at 100% for several hours... it's wrong to interpret that as "almost no drain". Unless you've observed steady change in reported level over several hours, you definitely don't have an accurate picture of true drain. And even then you can make a mistake. There is some weirdness when it comes to reported battery level on this phone.

Probably the only truly accurate way to evaluate the drain is to keep usage of the phone pretty much constant without changing any settings, and see how long the battery actually lasts. Then change a SINGLE thing and repeat this process. This is super tedious and error prone, but if you don't do it it's very easy to come to wrong conclusions.

Thanks Microsoft for keeping us guessing! So fun.

 

[jlynnm350z]

Batteries must Su k on all Windows phones. Microsoft needs to address this!!

 

[Jazmac]

Batteries must Su k on all Windows phones. Microsoft needs to address this!!

Its probably important to them but not a priority...yet.

 

[jeetu4444]

Wat I have seen in every new fone battery takes about few days to settle down...give it few cycles...and make sure the fone completely dies and u charge again...I have see many start charging their fone wen it reaches 60 or 50 %...

 

[Blacklac]

Batteries must Su k on all Windows phones. Microsoft needs to address this!!

Pick any mobile phone ever made and you will find a handful of people with strange battery issues. iPhone's and BlackBerry are known for pretty awesome battery life and sure enough, you'll find complaints of terrible battery life from a handful of people on forums. Alot of the time it's user error, but not always.

 

[Chinocop]

I turned off location services and changed the sync on my emails. I have had 3 days of light use, and I haven't charged my battery for 3+ days .... AMAZING!