[L920] Battery doesn't even make it through a work day now?

[dj9928]

So on Friday I installed 8.1, then I installed update 1, knowIing people have had issues I did a hard reset and started a fresh, I did notice over the weekend battery life wasn't great but put it down to me playing with the new features etc,

Noticed yesterday battery draining very quick, it died about 6pm so that was 12 hours on battery, Now on WP8 at that stage my battery on my L920 would be about 50-60% easily, today it died at 4.30pm. Now the way I use my phone is I have data off, I turn it on a couple of mins at lunch time to check emails etc then its off again, I am in a good signal area so can't blame searching for signal, I listen to radio and podcasts all day at work but previously on WP8 this wasn't an issue and I had well over half battery life left by the time I got home from work. The only thing I can blame is 8.1.

Anyone any ideas? I think my only option is to go back to W8

 

[dfaris]

Did you check to see what was running in the back ground? Some apps may not be updated yet and can be draining the battery because they don't stop running on 8.1 like they did on 8.0?. Just a thought.

 

[decaf19]

With the fresh install should come a full depletion of the battery to where the phone powers off then fully charge over night.
Also like dfaris said check the running apps and if not using GPS disable location Cortana will occasionally update in the background tho I dont think it would be that heavy of use.

And also thot you don't have service when ita off doesn't mean your emails aren't still trying to sync. Make sure they are set to manual or whatever time you have lunch so they aren't trying to sync without service.

Hope this helps! Btw 8.1 dp or cyan?

 

[belodion]

I've also noticed what seems to be reduced battery life since the OTA WP8.1 Cyan update a few days ago. I don't think I'm imagining it. So far as I know I'm on the same settings and experimenting with e.g. turning off Location doesn't seem to make a difference. Phone is a 1020.

Posted via Windows Phone Central App

 

[jojoe42]

I've also noticed what seems to be reduced battery life since the OTA WP8.1 Cyan update a few days ago. I don't think I'm imagining it. So far as I know I'm on the same settings and experimenting with e.g. turning off Location doesn't seem to make a difference. Phone is a 1020.

Posted via Windows Phone Central App

Had a similar thing with updating my 1020 to Update 1 on the dev preview. Just wait a few days, my battery life is progressively getting better each day

 

[decaf19]

I've also noticed what seems to be reduced battery life since the OTA WP8.1 Cyan update a few days ago. I don't think I'm imagining it. So far as I know I'm on the same settings and experimenting with e.g. turning off Location doesn't seem to make a difference. Phone is a 1020.

Posted via Windows Phone Central App

There's a whole heap of things you can do.
1. Disable location services when not in use
2. Using battery saver only allow important apps to run in the background disable ALL others even if it says the drain in the background is miniscule
3. Screen brightness is the biggest battery hog so enable auto brightness with glance-outdoor visibility enabled or disabled up to you
4. Make emails sync manually
5. Use cell data if decent reception otherwise find the lowest band and use the slowest connection along side Wi-Fi. For me I use field test (##3282#) and enable only 2g because I get one bar of 4g at my house and this overall seemed to help my battery the most in my opinion.
6. For the apps allowed to run in background set the longest sync duration you can. For example I use blue skies and have the duration to be 3 hours.
7. Obviously ensure all apps are up to date and disable auto update of apps over Wi-Fi. Make it manual and check every few days for updates so less background tasks occurring.
8. Close apps obviously which ever way you choose but make sure to close them when not in use.
9. I did a full discharge then full charge over night and that seemed to help my 920 get about 12hours+

 

[belodion]

Thank you for going to the trouble of such a full reply.
Most of the things you mention I've already tried or have always done anyway and trying this and that doesn't seem to make much if any difference. The annoying thing is that on 8.0 I had good battery life, then after the 8.1 update, and with the same phone settings, noticeably worse unless I am seriously imagining things. I've been turning things off that never caused trouble before, eg Location, and even reducing the number of tiles on the Start screen, but with no apparent improvement. One thing you've said that did interest me when you mentioned it in an earlier post, and now in your reply here, is recommending a discharge and full charge of the battery and that's what I'll be trying next.
Thanks for your advice which will also be useful to others. ☺

Posted via Windows Phone Central App

 

[decaf19]

Hope it helps and good luck! I wouldn't just recommend out either it did boost my battery after doing it word of caution tho. They are Li ion batteries so don't continue to do it just try it once and after that don't fully deplete it continuously doing that will damage the batter however once in a while like a months span of time you can.

The logic behind it is the os doesn't actually give the correct percentage which is why it drains so seemingly fast this should help recalibrate the system to detect the correct Percent and was told to do this with my HTC many months ago when I had an 8x

 

[belodion]

I charged the old girl from 24% to 100% last night and twelve hours later, without hardly having used the phone, I'm at 94%, which is pretty much back to normal BUT may be because I've switched off Location and a few other things that I normally had on when running 8.0. The battery usage graph shows a smooth declining slope rather than a lot of little steps so it looks like there's something not happening that was before....Location, Syncing, who knows? The stock Weather app may come into it, since it tops the list in Battery Saver.

This is not really the battery discharge/charge you suggested so I'm going to try that by letting her go as low as I dare, then charging fully. I'll let you know how I get on. Don't worry, if I get problems, I shan't hold you responsible...thanks once again for your help.

Posted via Windows Phone Central App

 

[belodion]

...I forgot say, I don't normally drop as low as 24% before recharging, so that may just have made some difference already...a partial calibrate.

Posted via Windows Phone Central App

 

[bsayegh]

I know there are several things you can do to improve you battery life, but why should you have to? Turning off data? Having emails sync manually? Disable gps? I mean, don't get me wrong, I can totally see where these types of things would drain battery. Certainly having the screen brightness up would. But my WP7 Htc Titan II was 2 and a half years old and could last a full day with all of my services on, Bluetooth, and syncing 4 email accounts every 15 minutes. While I know there is a lot more going on after the 8.1 update, I think it is a little overboard. It makes me afraid to imagine what my battery life will be like after WP 9.

 

[decaf19]

I know there are several things you can do to improve you battery life, but why should you have to? Turning off data? Having emails sync manually? Disable gps? I mean, don't get me wrong, I can totally see where these types of things would drain battery. Certainly having the screen brightness up would. But my WP7 Htc Titan II was 2 and a half years old and could last a full day with all of my services on, Bluetooth, and syncing 4 email accounts every 15 minutes. While I know there is a lot more going on after the 8.1 update, I think it is a little overboard. It makes me afraid to imagine what my battery life will be like after WP 9.

Well general rule of thumb more features means more processes mean more energy needed. I'm personally not upset with having to disable a few things to keep me at 12 hours. The important thing is I get my emails for college as they come in. My weather shown to me. And texts and calls come in normally with notifications from facebook and twitter enabled.

Every modern phone you use, you must make adjustments and tweaks to optimize it. The list I provided is things you CAN do not that you have to do all of them or must do them. Each one helps the battery last longer.

Your way of looking at it is, well I have a computer and since I paid for the operating system it shouldn't ever need to be cleaned or optimized. Any tech savvy person knows you need to clean your PC to keep it fast

 

[decaf19]

Also those old Nokia phones that could make calls and text and used one cell band would last me 4 days on a charge. Considering everything your smart phone can and does do I'd still be happy with 6 hours

 

[bsayegh]

Well general rule of thumb more features means more processes mean more energy needed. I'm personally not upset with having to disable a few things to keep me at 12 hours. The important thing is I get my emails for college as they come in. My weather shown to me. And texts and calls come in normally with notifications from facebook and twitter enabled.

Every modern phone you use, you must make adjustments and tweaks to optimize it. The list I provided is things you CAN do not that you have to do all of them or must do them. Each one helps the battery last longer.

Your way of looking at it is, well I have a computer and since I paid for the operating system it shouldn't ever need to be cleaned or optimized. Any tech savvy person knows you need to clean your PC to keep it fast

My way of looking at it is that when you improve the OS, you should account for things like this. Either future devices need bigger batteries, or the OS should be as optimized as possible. If there are some features that aren't commonly used but drain a lot of battery, they shouldn't be on by default. Most users aren't going to go in and turn of location services and data, or turn down the screen brightness. They wont know. The average user wont even know there are options to do that.

They could add some pretty simple modes. For instance, they could make it so that Bluetooth turns off after it disconnects from a device. Then you have to manually turn it back on when you want to reconnect. If you are someone that uses Bluetooth to talk to people, you would probably have that feature turned off. For me, I only use it in the car, and im only in the car like twice a day, so it would be nice for it to be off unless I need it without me having to turn it on and off manually.

Automatic screen brightness shouldn't even be a setting if it drains battery more than just having it set to one of the options.

The OS should, or at least the hardware, should be optimized. The 920 is old so I don't expect them to send us all new batteries. But its not like the features they added to 8.1 are entirely new. We have more settings to control them, but a lot of these features already existed, you just couldn't shut them off. If anything, I would think battery life would be improved since you have more control over them.

 

[decaf19]

My way of looking at it is that when you improve the OS, you should account for things like this. Either future devices need bigger batteries, or the OS should be as optimized as possible. If there are some features that aren't commonly used but drain a lot of battery, they shouldn't be on by default. Most users aren't going to go in and turn of location services and data, or turn down the screen brightness. They wont know. The average user wont even know there are options to do that.

They could add some pretty simple modes. For instance, they could make it so that Bluetooth turns off after it disconnects from a device. Then you have to manually turn it back on when you want to reconnect. If you are someone that uses Bluetooth to talk to people, you would probably have that feature turned off. For me, I only use it in the car, and im only in the car like twice a day, so it would be nice for it to be off unless I need it without me having to turn it on and off manually.

Automatic screen brightness shouldn't even be a setting if it drains battery more than just having it set to one of the options.

The OS should, or at least the hardware, should be optimized. The 920 is old so I don't expect them to send us all new batteries. But its not like the features they added to 8.1 are entirely new. We have more settings to control them, but a lot of these features already existed, you just couldn't shut them off. If anything, I would think battery life would be improved since you have more control over them.

The very last sentence you said is what I've been saying. Since you have more control of them you can improve battery life. I think your issue is with microkia's assumption you will use every feature thus they enable them all by default.

But think about it you buy a new PC from lets say HP and you turn it on for the first time. You bet there's unneeded startup programs and everything in the visual aspect is set to the highest your gpu can run. Its a default for mostly all electronics. If you don't need startup items you disable them. If you dont need all the visual effects you disable some to improve speed and save laptop battery.

I agree with you there shouldn't be these settings set by default. And you shouldn't have to be tech savvy to get the best performance out of your phone but that's how it is. All I can do is recommend things that helped my battery I dont work for Microsoft thus have no say in how they make devices

 

[Rodrigo Mendes]

Maybe poor battery performance it's related to how 8.1 deals with WiFi. Tthe "always ON" option is gone, same for "looking for new networks" too.

On monday, during all day my WiFi was OFF. Since I don't use it on work, only LTE, i decided to do this test. I had a VERY good battery performance. Just like before. 8:20AM to 10:40PM = 72% usage. A lot of browsing at work and college (6:30~8:00PM), Whatsapp, music and social networks. I'm a moderato to heavy user. I always - maybe 3 or 4 times by hour - turn my phone on to see Instagram or Twitter.

Yesterday I try to let WiFi always ON. 8:20AM~5:20PM = 70% battery. Pretty much the same usage, but without the college (of course).

HUGE difference, like you can see. Maybe WiFi ON is the battery killing of WP8.1 GDR1. Lumia 925 here.