[Marconis4]

I've been getting horrendously bad idling battery drain on my HTC8X, so bad that I drop down to around 30% after charging only 5-6 hours ago and with barely any usage. I used to get over a days worth of a full charge with pretty decent usage. I have only Amazing Weather running in the background, and Gmail to sync every 30 minutes (I think). I say I think, because I can't even access my sync settings. Today I noticed that in Data Sense, Google is using a ton of data; further, I can't access my sync settings because it says that Google is constantly syncing! Have a look below, do you agree that this data usage is very excessive? What can I do to fix this since I can't even access my sync settings?

[neo158]

I've been getting horrendously bad idling battery drain on my HTC8X, so bad that I drop down to around 30% after charging only 5-6 hours ago and with barely any usage. I used to get over a days worth of a full charge with pretty decent usage. I have only Amazing Weather running in the background, and Gmail to sync every 30 minutes (I think). I say I think, because I can't even access my sync settings. Today I noticed that in Data Sense, Google is using a ton of data; further, I can't access my sync settings because it says that Google is constantly syncing! Have a look below, do you agree that this data usage is very excessive? What can I do to fix this since I can't even access my sync settings?

I don't use anything Google on my Windows Phone. However, that doesn't help you. Have you tried removing and adding the account again?

[Maaz Mansori]

I had a similar problem last week when updating the latest Facebook Beta; it suddenly started draining 15% per hour. In fact, the charging could barely keep up with the battery drain. I have a Google Mail configured to sync every hour but it's not my primary e-mail and gets very little e-mail; I only use it for some things I don't want to give my Microsoft Exchange e-mail address to, which is set to sync as items arrive.
Anyway, I have Amazing Weather HD installed as well, and I have live tiles for WPCentral , Engadget, and Battery Performance.
I don't think that syncing Google Mail every 30 minutes is the culprit, but would it be possible for you to remove the account and add it back again to see if it helps?
What I did to fix my problem is the following, I uninstalled Facebook Beta and Facebook (non-beta), in fact I'm thinking the clash between having both installed may have caused the problem but it's been that way for months and didn't have a problem before. I then installed Facebook Beta only. Then I did soft reset. This fixed the battery problem immediately but I noticed my live tiles were no longer updating. So I went into Settings and disabled all background tasks, marking the ones I need to run in the background again the next time I open the app. I unpinned all the live tiles too, power cycled the phone, repinned the tiles, and made sure all the proper background tasks are enabled, and they all started updating again. Now the battery life is even better than it was to begin with before the problem started!

[Marconis4]

I couldn't even uninstall and reinstall because it would start syncing right when the phone booted. Finally I was able to catch it; it was set to 15 minutes, but as shown, it is using a ton of data because it is seemingly always stuck syncing, more or less. I uninstalled it and set it to manually sync, so let's see if that does the trick.

[Maaz Mansori]

If it is stuck 'syncing' I would try going into your Gmail on a computer and taking a look to see if there is an e-mail of excessive size, then delete or move that e-mail to a different folder.

[Marconis4]

There isn't. We will see if this works.

[madyrocksin]

Try minimizing background apps...turning off location service will help a lot...more over if your signal is weak...that may be another reason for fast battery drain

[Marconis4]

Again, the only background app I have is Amazing Weather. My phone is in LTE quite often.

[Marconis4]

I can now confirm that this was indeed the issue. I've barely dropped at all from a full charge earlier today; let's hope it does the same tomorrow.

[Marconis4]

I'm back, baby!