950 Extreme Battery Drain

[Travis Flenker]

I've seen a couple other threads on this but haven't seen much resolution.

My battery will last maximum about 16 hours on a full charge with light use (a couple dozen text messages and maybe 15-30 minutes of browsing with Edge).

I've disabled Hello, turned off Hey Cortana, and turned off Edge prefetching. I've also disabled almost all background apps, and have done two factory resets on the phone. None of this seems to have any impact at all - I unplugged at 7AM this morning, and 3.5 hours later I'm down to 71%. The only thing I've used it for today is reading/responding to fewer than 10 text messages.

I have contacted AT&T 6 times in total about getting a replacement as this seems like a hardware issue to me. I've been told that the local store is out of stock, that I would need to go to a different city for a replacement, that it's a software issue, and other nonsense.

I contacted Microsoft today and they told me I would need to send my phone in for "evaluation".

I'm extremely frustrated with all of this - the phone itself is great, I have very few minor complaints but overall love it. Does anyone have any idea on anything else that could be causing this, or any advice on how to actually get a replacement?

I purchased the phone on the 18th so I'm 1 day past my return window, but was told by the local AT&T that they would honor an exchange when they had them back in stock (which is... who knows when or if they will actually do that).

 

[gpobernardo]

The most common cause of battery drain is wireless antenna activity - especially the 3G/4G antenna. Try limiting your speed to 3G in the phone SIM settings (Settings > Cellular > SIM Settings) and see if that helps.

Other battery-extending "tricks" include lowering the screen brightness, connecting to Wi-Fi whenever you can... but these tend to cripple what the phone can do. At least switching to just 3G as the maximum won't really have a significant effect on browsing speed (unless you absolutely need 4G speeds).

 

[dfaris]

I posted this in a different thread but here is what I found. I would go stop any app that does not need to run in the background from running in the background. I also turned off hey cortana and the lock screen option for cortana. I also stopped edge from running in the background. I would also turn off the advertising id who the heck knows what that thing is doing in the background.

I did this and went to sleep. My battery only drained about 4% over 9 hours. Also make sure you actually close apps. The back arrow does not close apps anymore so you have to hold the back arrow untill the app cards show up and close them that way.

 

[elindalyne]

That does feel excessive... What does your battery saver say is actually eating the battery? I've heard some mention they get exceptionally bad battery when they're in places that muck with wifi signals such as locker rooms and things like that. Have you tried disabling WiFi for a bit and see if that helps at all?

 

[Travis Flenker]

The most common cause of battery drain is wireless antenna activity - especially the 3G/4G antenna. Try limiting your speed to 3G in the phone SIM settings (Settings > Cellular > SIM Settings) and see if that helps.

Other battery-extending "tricks" include lowering the screen brightness, connecting to Wi-Fi whenever you can... but these tend to cripple what the phone can do. At least switching to just 3G as the maximum won't really have a significant effect on browsing speed (unless you absolutely need 4G speeds).

I don't see this option anywhere the SIM settings; the only thing I see is a toggle for "Enhanced 4G LTE Services". I just turned that off, we'll see if that helps.

 

[Travis Flenker]

That does feel excessive... What does your battery saver say is actually eating the battery?

75-80% display. I have my settings at 1 minute for glance, 1 minute for screen off. The screen is off at least 80% of the time.

 

[RTGent]

dfaris has it covered very well. I also made most of these adaptations, along with a bunch of app deletions, starting with all ATT apps, and Facebook which I never use. gpobernardo is also dead on with the primacy of antenna activity, and this is one reason that comparing battery life across users may be entertaining, but is so unproductive. I live where there are ATT antennas everywhere, strong Wi-Fi everywhere, and am hardly ever in a structure or vehicle that challenges my phone. All our "mileage" absolutely Varies!

My battery life is very satisfactory; and, BTW, as soon as cheap after-markets are available, I will return to my pre-1020/Focus days, NEVER worrying about battery life, especially while traveling, and on heavy calling and photo days. Along with expandability, battery replaceability is why I had to have the 950 ON DAY ONE.

Best learning about battery conservation to all.

 

[Travis Flenker]

I appreciate the response RTGent, but I'm convinced this has got to be a defective unit.

Sitting at work, I have 5 bars of 4G reception. I have closed out of all apps; there is nothing running in the background. I have Hello and Hey Cortana disabled. I have disabled everything that has been suggested. I have my screen set to be off nearly as much as possible.

Even with all of this, I'm now down to 55% charge after being off the charger for less than 6 hours. This rate of discharge has been the same regardless of whether I'm at home, work, or a different city. The only thing that changes it is if I use the phone heavily, then I see anywhere from 20-30% discharge per hour.

If this unit is not defective and I have to do more than this to conserve my battery, I see no point in having this phone.

My previous phone was a 1020 - the battery life on that was satisfactory, even without doing any of the changes that I've tried on my 950.

 

[treeflip7]

I created another thread on this but I'll move over here as this has more responses. I'm going to do some further investigation of this. The main thing I want to know is if I charge up to 100% and then let the phone sit for 12 hours (overnight), what does the battery saver breakdown look like. I'm expecting a drain of about 30% on the battery (based on prior monitoring) and I want to see what the culprit is.

 

[Letros]

I noticed improved battery life by disabling glance, disabling Store running in background (it showed high usage), and set my screen brightness to 35% (the auto brightness is buggy atm). Not sure which one actually did it, or if it was a combination of the three.

 

[uselessrobot]

First question is, how long have you had your phone? Second is, what apps are being listed as highest consumption?

It seems to me like you might have a bad battery.

 

[Travis Flenker]

I went in for my third in-store visit and finally got some help. The rep agreed that the phone should not be discharging so quickly and replaced the unit.

I went with a fresh install and am currently loading everything back up/getting it set up how I want it. I'm going to leave most things enabled for now and see how it does for the evening. I'll report back with what I find tomorrow.

Thanks for all the suggestions and help so far!

 

[Travis Flenker]

First question is, how long have you had your phone? Second is, what apps are being listed as highest consumption?

It seems to me like you might have a bad battery.

I had the phone for 13 days. The messaging app was usually the highest usage, but the display was always using 75%+ of the battery. Not sure if this is to be expected or not, but it seemed odd as the display was usually off.

 

[abivaanenopi]

What do you think, will there be an update for batterylife issues?

 

[Muessig]

What do you think, will there be an update for batterylife issues?

Without a doubt.

 

[Travis Flenker]

Battery life on the new phone seems way better! Lost about 5% overnight and 20% over 6 hours of moderate usage. This is with only Edge prefetch disabled; everything else is on.

I'll keep an eye on it and post an update later.

 

[msirapian]

So far, my first battery drainer is... messages+Skype. Only a few messages have been restored, and in Battery Usage, 50% is due to that app. Thay may explain why most of use see the situation getting better after a few days

 

[MP3Mike]

I have an unlocked 950 and have been having similar problems. Here are my stats from yesterday: ~24 hours: 127% of battery used with only ~45 minutes of screen-on use. (86.1% in-use, 13.9% background) So excluding background time I used 109% in 45 minutes or 2.4%/minute. (My phone was very warm, but not hot, all day.)

Store and Search were the top two items listed. Mostly display (~60% if I recall).

Obviously whatever is using the battery, and making the phone warm isn't being logged by battery saver.

Today is much better I have made it 9 hours with only 38% used. I haven't changed any settings, other than I unpaired my Fitbit because it wasn't syncing anyhow. (Fitbit and Microsoft are researching the wide-spread issue.)

I re-paired my Fitbit and will see how it goes the rest of the day.

 

[MP3Mike]

OK, 4 hours later, after re-pairing my Fitbit my battery went from 64% to 31%. So 33% in 4 hours, with minimal use, and the phone was very warm again. (Which is wasn't for most of today.)

So how many of you have a Fitbit you are using with your phone, since that seems to be what is causing my problem. (And the build we will get next week, 10586.29, is supposed to have Bluetooth stability fixes, but who knows if that is Classic Bluetooth or BTLE like the Fitbit uses.

 

[MP3Mike]

Well I unpaired my Fitbit again and after that it went from 24% to 16% in an hour. So unpairing the Fitbit doesn't totally fix it. I can only hope that 10586.29 will when we get it early next week.