Phone running a little hot and battery drains quickly

[gaknigge]

this happened to me too. I don't think it is the GDR2 update from Microsoft, but the Amber update from Nokia. I have a Lumia 521. This worked for me.

• Hard reset
• Toward the end of the install you are prompted to automatically install system updates. Say no to that. This is in the custom options I believe. Walk through thte post-install steps carefully to find it
• This prevents the Amber part of the Amber update installing.
• I installed then from the store the offered HERE apps from Nokia, but none of the others.

This worked for me. Battery life is back to where it was. I can get two and a half days when I don't do much calling or game playing.
Best of luck.

 

[Nicholas Tedesco]

Good to know.
This is really frustrating though. Started happening to my phone on Thursday (9/5/2013). I used to get two days + of life, now it is going down in 7 hours, and the phone runs warm to the touch (near the camera).

When you say "towards the end of the install" do you mean towards the end of the hard reset process?
Also, how do you do a hard reset?

 

[illyc]

this happened to me too. I don't think it is the GDR2 update from Microsoft, but the Amber update from Nokia. I have a Lumia 521. This worked for me.

• Hard reset
• Toward the end of the install you are prompted to automatically install system updates. Say no to that. This is in the custom options I believe. Walk through thte post-install steps carefully to find it
• This prevents the Amber part of the Amber update installing.
• I installed then from the store the offered HERE apps from Nokia, but none of the others.

This worked for me. Battery life is back to where it was. I can get two and a half days when I don't do much calling or game playing.
Best of luck.

hahaa....wish you'd posted this before today! good to know for future reference though, thanks.

 

[molimelight]

this happened to me too. I don't think it is the GDR2 update from Microsoft, but the Amber update from Nokia. I have a Lumia 521. This worked for me.

• Hard reset
• Toward the end of the install you are prompted to automatically install system updates. Say no to that. This is in the custom options I believe. Walk through thte post-install steps carefully to find it
• This prevents the Amber part of the Amber update installing.
• I installed then from the store the offered HERE apps from Nokia, but none of the others.

This worked for me. Battery life is back to where it was. I can get two and a half days when I don't do much calling or game playing.
Best of luck.

Please let us know if it stays that way over the next few days.. I tried removing a bunch of apps that I rarely used just to see if it changed things. Suddenly it was back to normal, no battery drain other than normal, around 2% per hour. (I wish I knew how to get screen shots to show the graph in my Battery App. It's a pretty dramatic difference in battery use.) I thought I was home free, then two days later it was back and hasn't left since. Draining at 20% per hour! This is getting pretty discouraging. If the reset to pre-Amber works, great. I just wonder if Nokia will track it and fix it. I don't know that there was anything in Amber that was so dramatic that I have to have it. I'm just concerned about future updates.

Would anyone be interested in a thread that listed all non-Nokia apps on our phones? Maybe there's a common app that is running away on a regular basis.

Phones are pretty frustrating. There's so much that's locked down on them, it's hard to trouble shoot and find the process that's causing the battery drain. A common element that I am hearing and have experienced with mine is that it's warm. That's tells me something is hammering the processor. There are many of the Nokia apps that you can't keep from running in the background, so it will be up to Nokia to find that and fix it.

 

[gaknigge]

To do a hard reset go to Settings > About Windows Phone. Toward the bottom of that screen is the reset. It will cause you to lose all data so backup first. You can visit the app store afterward to see what you had previously purchased and downloaded. Go slow with that though. In case your phone goes hinky again you can tell what it was.

Yes, toward the end of the hard reset is the opportunity to choose a custom sestup which in turn leads to the screen where you can choose not to automatically download system updates (read Amber update). In a day or so you will see these udpates in the App store. This is where you have to resist the urge to update everything - because that will just bring back the battery drain.

Gary

Good to know.
This is really frustrating though. Started happening to my phone on Thursday (9/5/2013). I used to get two days + of life, now it is going down in 7 hours, and the phone runs warm to the touch (near the camera).

When you say "towards the end of the install" do you mean towards the end of the hard reset process?
Also, how do you do a hard reset?

 

[gaknigge]

I have already been running more than a week without the battery problem returning.

 

[illyc]

what a joke.

i sent in my phone (WITH battery, because, you know, THE BATTERY was draining at like 15%/hour) to have "serviced", and the dumb **** didn't send my battery back. now i have my original phone with no battery and the other one i bought at WM (with battery) that has to be returned in like 3 days. they're getting my battery back to me in 5-7 days. good stuff.

 

[molimelight]

Do they sell batteries at Wally World? Or buy one at TMO. then when they send yours back you can return one of them and say it's draining quickly! :winktongue:

 

[molimelight]

By the way. Mine has stopped the wild battery drain for now. It's just been three days, but I'm hopeful that it will hold. Although I have no reason to believe it won't come back because it's done this before. I.m resisting going to pre-Amber to get rid of it. But if it crops up again, I may have to try that. Finally figured out how to do screen shots so here's a comparison of what it graphs like when it's normal and when it's dropping like the blood pressure of the doomed...



Now I don't know how Nokia can look at that and say nothing is wrong. (Although they have "paused" the Amber update, so maybe they have figured out that something is wrong.) It's the same phone, the same apps, etc. I can't figure out what sets it off but it's not anything I can control.

 

[Nicholas Tedesco]

Just wanted to give an update.
On 9/7/2013 I turned off cellular data for a day, and that slowed the battery drain.
When I turned it back on the following day (9/8/2013), extra heat and excessive battery drain were gone.
I have been back up to two + days of use without recharge.
I guess the update just took a few days to "set" ?

 

[illyc]

oh hey i got my battery back today. that was a cool event. took an hour to return the other phone to WM because nobody understood what the IMEI was. now let's see if my phone lasts more than 7 hours!

 

[illyc]

all good so far using the custom settings upon reinstall

 

[WeAreNotAlone]

Just wanted to offer some info that might help:

If the phone is warm, that is a indicator CPU usage is high -most likely cause a Rogue app, the phone is hardware defective, OR you are in a area with low signal strength.

If after a flash /update of the OS if phone isn't warm and you're seeing battery running down faster than normal the cause "may" be due to the phone having to rebuild the battery charge profile / the "data" the phone uses to determine battery run time.
EG: After a OS flash /update it may take several charge/discharge cycle to rebuild (calibrate) the battery status data.
(To paint a picture it's sort of like you being in car wreck /you've hit your head and it takes a while for you learn to walk/talk again.)

 

[molimelight]

@WeAreNotAlone - I appreciate your input but what we who have experienced this are experiencing is not a rogue app or hardware failure. If that was the case, it would occur both before and after the update. This is something caused by the Amber update as it can be tied directly to it in terms of the time of onset. It's happening regardless of what apps we have if any and what we have running in the background. And it is definitely not the battery calibrating. Look at my screenshots above. It also appears it can be stopped by resetting the phone and not putting the Amber update on.

A side note. Mine came back as I feared it would so I'm doing the reset tonight with the custom settings. I'll update if successful or not.

 

[WeAreNotAlone]

@WeAreNotAlone - I appreciate your input but what we who have experienced this are experiencing is not a rogue app or hardware failure. If that was the case, it would occur both before and after the update. This is something caused by the Amber update as it can be tied directly to it in terms of the time of onset. It's happening regardless of what apps we have if any and what we have running in the background. And it is definitely not the battery calibrating. Look at my screenshots above. It also appears it can be stopped by resetting the phone and not putting the Amber update on.

A side note. Mine came back as I feared it would so I'm doing the reset tonight with the custom settings. I'll update if successful or not.

Understand what you are saying (Problem occurring after Amber update applied.) I saw your screenshots.

Guess I should have clarified that. My post was geared towards a comment that implied it took a couple of days for things to settle down after a flash, which can and does happen after such OR if a battery replacement is done.

BTW:
What is version of the OS build that is causing the problem? (I'm picking up "Amber" is the slang name)
What version can you flash/update to that is not problematic?
In WP8 are there any monitoring apps for monitoring CPU usage, etc?
Last Windows phone I had was 6.5.3 IIRC, Samsung S3's after that /currently.

PS: I am interested in this issue, have a 521 coming from HSN in a day or two.

 

[x0zerocool0x]

Hi, both my wife and I also have a Lumia 920 and we have both been experiencing horrible battery draining issues as well as a hot phone. I did not have these issues in the beginning but then it started and became more frequent. I finally connected some dots and realized that the times my phone would do that would be when I am checking my email more frequently. So I started using the back button to close out of my email accounts after checking them and boom, problem gone. I firmly believe that this issue or at least part of it can be blamed on the email app.