810 poor battery life after Portico

[xtsubarublazin]

After the Portico update my battery life is noticeably worse. I just charged it to 100% about 30 minutes ago and it's down to 93% as I type this. WTF? I know it could be due to some background apps but I don't believe MS gave us a way to check/manage that. Go figure. I've soft reset it, I've drained the battery to 0% and recharged, all with no results.

 

[Mystictrust]

You know what helped kick my battery into gear? I drained to zero, and every time I turned the phone back on it would have some ridiculous 16% charge left. So I did the back and forth of letting it die, turning it back on about three times and then I did a full charge. I also turned off that option in the advanced wifi settings to "send information about Wi-Fi connections to help discover nearby Wi-Fi".

I also try and do a healthy mix of both wireless charging and USB charging to get the battery used to the mix. I noticed my battery life doesn't last as long on a wireless charge so that's when I started mixing it up... it seems better so far.

Install a good battery app such as battery sense (Battery Sense | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)). That app monitors your battery history and records it, such as longest battery life, current % of battery drain, time to charge, etc. The app is also completely free with no ads... with an option to pay if you want to donate to the developer. My phone was consistently draining at over 6-8% an hour ON IDLE (i.e. Just sitting at my bedside for hours not being touched), and yes sometimes I would have it bad such as a 40% drain within 30 minutes (i.e. battery at 45%, suddenly I'm at a critical 5% and it needs to shut off soon).

The last several days I've been getting 24hour+ battery life so I must have done something right. My battery drain is now usually at anywhere between 0.6% to 1.9% now.. unless I've been heavily using the phone. All I did was do the "let it die and turn it on" cycle three times one time, let it die normally three separate times and charged to 100% using USB twice, wireless once, and I try to take my phone off the charger as soon as I notice it's at 100%. I usually charge via USB a few hours before bed, so I won't let it overcharge. Sometimes I've had to charge on wireless overnight, but if I happen to wake up for whatever reason and notice the charging light on my stand is off, I remove the phone.

Also, email syncing... I have two exchange accounts set to "sync items as they arrive" - my outlook.com email, and my school email. I heard that saves battery. My google mail is set to sync every 2 hours since it's not exchange. I suppose I could always forward google to outlook and could save some battery maybe, but I don't want the garbage from my gmail in my outlook inbox.

 

[xtsubarublazin]

Thanks for the in-depth response. I was going to try each of your suggestions one by one so I could identify which was the cause.

It appears that turning off "send information about Wi-Fi connections to help discover nearby Wi-Fi" was at least a partial solution. A whole hour and only 2% loss.

 

[dainla]

My battery life is definitely worse after Portico

 

[xtsubarublazin]

I can also confirm that charging via USB lasts longer than charging with wireless charging shell. What gives?

 

[jodahav]

I have noticed that some days the battery drains much faster than others. I think some app or another gets stuck and causes the drain. Mine is typically fixed by a soft reset (which you mentioned you tried).
Are you in an area where you could be constantly switching from 2G/3G/4G, or losing coverage completely. This can cause battery drain in any device.

 

[Mystictrust]

I can also confirm that charging via USB lasts longer than charging with wireless charging shell. What gives?

My completely uneducated guess is that the battery holds charges differently depending on how it gets the charge. The wireless charge seems to go through a metal contact on inside of the shell that then goes... well I don't know where it goes, but maybe it doesn't go to the same spot on the battery that a USB connection would.

My fully wireless charge last night has my battery idling at a constant loss of 3% per hour (vs 0.6% to 1.9% after USB charge) so there's an obvious difference there.

 

[bsipe216]

Install a good battery app such as battery sense (Battery Sense | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)). The app is also completely free with no ads... with an option to pay if you want to donate to the developer.

Unfortunately not the case anymore. It's a pay app and the trial is severely crippled so I can't even test it really.

 

[Mystictrust]

Unfortunately not the case anymore. It's a pay app and the trial is severely crippled so I can't even test it really.

Oh wow. It was free when I posted it.

 

[metalchick719]

I read through this thread yesterday but had nothing to report until oddly, today. I awoke to a dead phone this morning! My battery was around 60% last night when I put it down for the night and I don't keep Wi-Fi active when the phone is idle. I woke up and reached for my phone to check the time, but it was unresponsive when I pressed the sleep/wake button. Tried again. No response. I connected my regular charger and saw a red/dead battery/charging icon appear. How bizarre. I wasn't totally surprised, though, because my iPhone has had two incidents like that not too long ago, where the battery was around 50% and went dead by the time I got to my boyfriend's house (about an hour later).

 

[Angry_Mushroom]

Remember that Portico has the option to keep wi-fi always on. Make sure that is turned off.

 

[mky4b11]

Just keep power cycling the phone. I had bad battery life after the update too for a few days, and the. It slowly got back to normal which was on average of 25 hours. But this is last day I broke my own record with 34 hours uptime

 

[Guzzler3]

I've had varying battery times after Portico. Some days it was spectacular, others not so good. I finally broke down and downloaded a battery discharge app Battery Discharger | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States) and ran it before going to bed. I would wait for the phone to shutdown, and try powering it up. I kept trying to power it up till absolutely nothing would happen when pressing the power button (it only took two or three tries).

Then I put on the USB charger, the screen showed a nice big and basic battery icon with a power plug on top graphic, then I went to bed. In the morning the phone was powered up. Since then, I've gotten some really nice battery life out of my 810.

Remember, these Lithium batteries really don't have any "memory" issues, but the charging/power code needs to be re-calibrated on a semi regular basis.

Now you don't need to completely discharge every time, just when you notice that you really aren't getting the battery life you're accustomed to. Maybe once a month, or every 2 months. Heavy users might do it more frequently. :wink: