Battery Drain

[schiznatch]

Hello, I've had my Ativ S Neo for a few months now and am loving it so far. Of course there are a few quirks, but I can live with them.

One problem I've been noticing is that the battery life doesn't seem quite as good as when I first got it. I've been trying to utilize Battery Saver and just turning it off when I want to check emails, etc. This doesn't seem to make too much of a difference, so today I went another route. I woke up and charged my phone to about 65% and made sure Wifi, 4G, Bluetooth, GPS are all off and I have Battery Saver turned on all day. I have occasionally flipped on Wifi long enough to check a few things, then I turn it back off.

For the most part, the phone has hardly even had the screen on today, and it is already at 12%. This is in a 7 hour span and honestly seems about the same amount of time I get while leaving Wifi and 4G both on (I always leave Bluetooth and GPS off anyway) with Battery Saver off, which defeats the purpose of trying to flip things off to conserve battery. I figured I would get a couple of days out of it if I left Wifi and 4G off, since my old Motorola Photon with Gingerbread is able to do that. Is it just me or does a 5-10% battery drain per hour seem kind of ridiculous when all radios are turned off?

Things to note: I have recently done a factory reset on my phone and only reinstalled the apps I used the most. After I got all the apps/games I wanted back on it, I turned off all Background Tasks except for the ones I use the most, like Weather, Reminders, etc. I have a total of four apps with background tasks on. I have also followed battery saving tips from other posts which include turning off Xbox game/music connections, turned email sync time down, etc. If I need to send a list of apps/games installed, let me know.

 

[Laura Knotek]

How is your coverage where you are at? If you have poor coverage, and the device is looking for a signal where the signal is poor that will drain the battery.

 

[schiznatch]

The coverage where I live is pretty good, so I’m not too sure that would be the issue.

With that said, I went over some of the Battery Saving tips in other posts and realized I forgot to uncheck the “Notify me when new networks are found” option in advanced Wifi settings after I did a factory reset on my phone. I unchecked it again last night, so my phone should have all of the settings set correctly to maximize battery life.

I ran another test today after finding this out. I charged my phone as much as my time allowed and turned on Wifi and 4G and left GPS and Bluetooth off as well as turned on Battery Saver. Like yesterday, the phone has hardly had its screen on for more than a total of 30 minutes. In a period of 6.5 hours my battery dropped 25%, which is less than 5% per hour. That is pretty good compared to yesterday going almost 10% per hour and that is even with radios turned on. This isn't the best test because, unlike yesterday, I left Wifi and 4G on, so I’m going to do another test and leave everything off and see what I get.

It appears that forgetting to turn off the checking for open Wifi networks setting was the culprit. That is a pretty big battery drain just for one setting. I will let you guys know how the next test goes.

 

[schiznatch]

Ok, my final test was a little better. It dropped 20% in 7 hours. That's around 2.85% per hour; not as good as I had hoped considering all radios were off and Battery Saver was on and the phone hardly used, but definitely better than it was getting before I turned off the open Wifi check. So, turning off all radios will only get you an extra hour or two at most. Better than nothing I suppose. Hopefully Microsoft will be able to make it better with future updates as, like I noted in my first post, my old Android phone will go almost 3 days without charging with all radios off.

 

[AngrySprintUser]

Ever since the update, my battery has become terrible. I went to the Sprint store to have them look at it, and they just got me a replacement phone instead. So far it's been a little bit better I guess.

 

[schiznatch]

Ok, I've been experiencing horrible battery life again the last month or two. I'm starting to think that using the Developer Preview to get the latest updates without the manufacturer firmware is causing the battery drain. I'm on WP 8.1 Update 1 and have done the same tests noted in my first couple of posts and I'm back to about 10% battery drain per hour. I feel like I have to hit the charger several times a day just to keep it from dying. Hell, if I don't plug it in overnight, it will be dead by morning. Maybe I'm playing games on it while I'm sleeping? xD

That is just crazy to me, especially since I really don't use my phone that often. I could understand if I played games on it all day, but I spend maybe 30 minutes gaming per day, if that and don't do too much else. It's not like I'm surfing Facebook on it all day or anything either. Checking the usage in Battery Saver doesn't show anything out of the ordinary. I'm just going to hope that once Sprint pushes the official 8.1 update that they will be able to get the OS and hardware to run more efficient with each other and have better battery life.

Oh, and in my last post I put "It appears that forgetting to turn off the checking for open Wifi networks setting was the culprit." I checked to make sure some of these new updates didn't disable it or something and I can't even find that setting anymore. Anybody know anything about that?

 

[ali80]

Well, check the background usage. For me, one drive even blocked to work in background was using 100% process in battery saver usage info. I removed the tile. Check which app causes the drain if not the onedrive. My battery drain & heat stopped for now.

I hope the others try what I did to confirm. My phone is Lumia 930 with cyan and without DP updates.

 

[Selfie13]

I have a 920 with WP 8.1 Update 1 via DP and Black Firmware. Since recent update to update 1 my battery is draining on average of %26 per hour. On WP 8.0 my battery was fantastic, but declined somewhat with 8.1, but manageable. Now what's funny about the severe battery drain is it only happens if I start using my phone, as in reading WpCentral and occasional browsing on IE, no games whatsoever, no watching videos or streaming music. If the phone just sits idle, say overnight at around 8 hrs, the drain is so minimal from 100 to around 96%. I have 5 background task running in Battery Saver - WpCentral, Weather, Twitter Beta, cortana, and Battery Saver. But looking in Battery Saver nothing is showing a huge drain up until a few min ago and it was People with bar below it going from edge to edge. Facebook is always off, Email is set to daily in outlook, 2 hours in 2 others and manual for rest. What is going on in People Hub to cause this massive drain whenever I start to use my phone first thing in the morning, im not even opening the People Hub too. Oh, and the heat generated from just 10 min of use is almost to hot to hold in hand, and thus killing the battery even more.

 

[schiznatch]

Yea, that was one of the first things I checked. I just checked OneDrive specifically, since my work also blocks that type of stuff while on WiFi, but it didn't have anything under App In Use or App In Background. I haven't used it in a bit though, so that may be why.

Even the top 10 on my list show a decent amount under App In Use for the ones I use more often, but just a very small bar under App In Background, so unless Battery Saver isn't that accurate, I don't think it's a run-away app in the background.

 

[schiznatch]

Dang, 26% per hour. I thought mine was bad. xD

I just checked the People app under Battery Saver and mine doesn't have any bars for In Use or In Background.

I'm still leaning towards just needing the firmware. Sometimes the software (OS, Updates, etc.) plays differently with different hardware, so the manufacturers have to release firmware to tell the software how to play correctly with the hardware it is dealing with. Without that firmware, the OS or even apps could be doing who-knows-what and the hardware may not understand it correctly so it starts doing things that it is not supposed to which could lead to battery drain. Who knows if things like Battery Saver are even that accurate without having the correct firmware to make the communication clear between the hardware and software.

I am just speculating here, so take my word with a grain of salt, but after all of the troubleshooting and testing I have done, this seems like the most logical explanation.

EDIT: Also, I've read before that turning off vibration features help save battery life, but I had never actually tried it. Out of desperation, I disabled all vibrations and I'm getting about an average of 5% battery drain now. Wow, didn't think it would make that much of a difference. I would rather have vibration for notifications, but I miss them about half the time anyway, so I'll deal with it until battery life somehow improves.