Battery drains very fast! :(

[Gowtham Doraiswamy]

Bought a brand new Lumia 920. The battery drains too fast. It lasts only for 4 hours even with 2G data connection. The discharge rate is > 20%/hr. Battery is getting heated up while charging and even more worse when data is on. I m scared that I bought a defective one. The seller provides me with 15 days replacement warranty. Please help me. Is this a common problem at initial stage?

 

[PB_H]

Fully charge it, turn off all but only the essential background apps/ Bluetooth etc leave it on standby overnight and see what the discharge % is in the am.
it should be from 1.5%-3.2% +/-

 

[iamtim]

There are hundreds of threads on this topic, do a couple of searches and you should have all your answers. But yeah, PB_H is right: turn off all non-essential services (Bluetooth, GPS, etc.) and shut down all non-essential background tasks (tap Settings, swipe left, tap Background Tasks). Restart. That should get most of your problem under control.

You'll also find when you search a number of problem apps: some weather apps, early Nokia Drive betas, etc. Uninstall them.

 

[realwarder]

Restart it and the battery discharge rate should be 0-5% unless you are using it in any way.

If that is the case then the unit itself is fine.

Sometimes background tasks (especially Internet Explorer/those using the GPS) can kill the battery. With IE, close all tabs and back out of the app (press Back button several times) to fully close it.

Oh yeah, also go into the settings and check for a Phone Update as those often fix issues.

 

[MattLFC]

There are hundreds of threads on this topic, do a couple of searches and you should have all your answers. But yeah, PB_H is right: turn off all non-essential services (Bluetooth, GPS, etc.) and shut down all non-essential background tasks (tap Settings, swipe left, tap Background Tasks). Restart. That should get most of your problem under control.

You'll also find when you search a number of problem apps: some weather apps, early Nokia Drive betas, etc. Uninstall them.

This is what I don't like about this phone, and peoples attitude towards maintaining battery life on it; either the hardware, or the software, or both, clearly have an inherent fault, and people are prepared to pay their hard-earned money for the phone, and then work around the fact it is faulty, to try and mask the faults.

On my 710 and 620, I install what I want, when I want, I run the services I want, when I want, in the 22 months since I got the 710 and the 7 months since I got the 620, I've never once had to think about "closing this service off" or "not running that live tile" in an effort to conserve battery life.

Any Blackberry, Symbian, Android or Apple converts (remember, 99% of users, maybe more, just want a phone that works, and has decent battery life to get them through the day) will be getting a 920 (and it seems the 925 suffers the same issues), and won't have a clue how to resolve these issues, and if they do, they won't be able to use Windows Phone to its full potential, and get the best experience possible from the OS. They will additionally, be ditching the phones, if they can only provide 3 - 5 hours battery life, at best!

You might all be prepared to use phones that you have to molly coddle, and phones that are severely restricted in what you can do with them, but seriously, go and pick up a 520 or 620 (or 625 for that matter) for cheap, or even a WP7 device, and see how much better the experience is, you don't even have to think about what you're installing and what services you have running etc... One word, freedom!

 

[iamtim]

You might all be prepared to use phones that you have to molly coddle

Have you ever owned another phone? You pretty much have to shut off unnecessary services on every phone to keep a good battery life. If I leave my iPhone with Bluetooth and location services running, I get about 2/3s of a day's worth of charge. When I ran Android, if I left a live background running I'd get about 1/2 a day's worth of charge.

It's not coddling a phone, it's being smart and logical. Those services and apps use battery. If you want the most battery life, you shut down the things which use battery that you don't need.

 

[MattLFC]

Have you ever owned another phone? You pretty much have to shut off unnecessary services on every phone to keep a good battery life. If I leave my iPhone with Bluetooth and location services running, I get about 2/3s of a day's worth of charge. When I ran Android, if I left a live background running I'd get about 1/2 a day's worth of charge.

It's not coddling a phone, it's being smart and logical. Those services and apps use battery. If you want the most battery life, you shut down the things which use battery that you don't need.

Are you just playing at being a troll, or did you genuinely not see that I also own a 710 and 620... of which NEITHER have any of these issues, they get right the way through the day, with all the services I want on (Bluetooth, location, tonnes of live tiles etc) without any molly coddling by me... in fact, on both, I've never turned anything off to "help it get through the day", this rule only seems to apply to the 920. I also had these services running on my 7Pro although there wasn't so many live tiles around in them days.

Being smart is probably buying a phone on the basis of battery life, if that's important to you, actually. Which would probably mean the LG G2 at present. But... there's nothing remotely appealing about buying a phone with iOS/Windows Phone on, something we consumers should just be able to pick up and use, and struggling to get 6 hours battery life (ie. not even a working day) without having to turn a tonne of services off to do so.

As I say, most consumers are not smart - they pick up a phone and expect it to use. It is certainly not smart to then require them to do hard resets, and go messing around within the settings to try and alleviate battery problems - that's the one argument we WP fans level at Android, the need to mess with settings all the time to get a good experience, to make things work as they should, buggy OS releases etc, and yet it appears some WP handsets are in the very same boat.

In conclusion, to boost battery from 6 -12 hours (usage dependent) to "upto" 20 hours by turning off a few services, is a good idea. But to start with 6 hours with all default services on (with light usage) is not a good thing.

 

[iamtim]

Are you just playing at being a troll, or did you genuinely not see that I also own a 710 and 620

Since you were so quick to level the "troll" card, are YOU just playing at being a troll or did you genuinely not understand that by "other phone" I mean non-WP?

of which NEITHER have any of these issues

Then your phones are the magical exception to the rule; congratulations for landing such extraordinary devices. For everyone else, it's elementary that if you want to increase your battery life, you shut down services that you don't need. Even the battery on my 520 lasted significantly longer when I didn't have everything running all the time.

this rule only seems to apply to the 920

Or the 820. Or the 520. From what I've heard, the 1020 as well. Or the iPhone. Or almost any Android. If you read the forums, you'll find that it really seems to only apply to your specific 620 and 720. Again, congratulations on your super, never-need-to-shut-down-unneeded-services-to-conserve-battery phones. I'm jealous.

But to start with 6 hours with all default services on (with light usage) is not a good thing.

On this, I'll agree with you. Phones should have more efficient battery use.

 

[StLouis1]

When I use Gas Buddy and forget to stop the background task when done, my battery dies in less than two hours. Otherwise it lasts all day with 40% remaining at bedtime.

 

[jonathanrn]

StLouis. The background tasks are only really for apps that you want the app data to be current while the app is closed. For me, its only the apps that I have live tiles that I want to utilize. If you don't use the live tile for gas buddy, just turn off the background task permanently.

 

[aftershockEWS]

After the AMBER update, I found that having WiFi turned on was causing the battery to drain within 4 hours. I have since left WiFi off and have had no issues since.

 

[Bull1shbuy3r]

bull****! matt is right, I have a 520 with background tasks on, location on, live tiles on, gmail update every 15 minutes, AND I use it as my wifi hotspot, the battery is better than my 920. Asking people to reset/edit settings/reflash/block apps/ etc. is NOT acceptale, my jailbroken iphone 4 beats the 920 any day

 

[fdalbor]

It is a total waste of time to debate the issues with cell phones and battery life. Every phone is different, every phone has different apps on it, every phone is used in a different way, and different time scales are never the same between different users and different phones. I get over two days use out of my 820 with its puny 1650 battery. But I can't tell you how many times I have had my battery usage go sky high until I found out what the problem was. It was never the phone. It was a app I put on the phone or something I did wrong to cause the phone to react in a way that hurt battery drain. Once I get things back in line its back to my 2 day plus. As my phones, tablets and computers always say " Stupid Human why don't you learn how to use me the right way". If a Stupid human like myself can get good battery life out of a 820, anyone can do it. Good luck guys with your phones and getting what you want from them.But lets not argue about something that is as trivial as a cell phone is in the BIG GAME of LIFE. Peace Brother

 

[PB_H]

Battery meters are one of the biggest culprits when it comes to draining the battery -they will only update when the saver is OFF or when you set to "conserve battery when low" but until that time (@ approx. 25%) they cause more drain on the battery that Pandora, Nokia Music, Bing Weather, MSN News and My Stock Portfolio (live during trading hours) combined. Battery apps are your hidden sneaky draining apps. Finally there are shortcuts to the battery saver and yes they aren't a live tile so you don't see the % on the start screen ( which is only correct every 30+ min and only if the saver is off with a meter ) but it only takes a tap for you to find out what the current % is and it's accurate and it's "free" in that it doesn't suck your battery dry like battery meters do.
Battery meters are one of the biggest wastes of energy that you can have on phone, developers won't tell you that but they are.
Get a shortcut app to the battery saver they aren't.

 

[Darren Walsh]

Battery meters are one of the biggest culprits when it comes to draining the battery -they will only update when the saver is OFF or when you set to "conserve battery when low" but until that time (@ approx. 25%) they cause more drain on the battery that Pandora, Nokia Music, Bing Weather, MSN News and My Stock Portfolio (live during trading hours) combined. Battery apps are your hidden sneaky draining apps. Finally there are shortcuts to the battery saver and yes they aren't a live tile so you don't see the % on the start screen ( which is only correct every 30+ min and only if the saver is off with a meter ) but it only takes a tap for you to find out what the current % is and it's accurate and it's "free" in that it doesn't suck your battery dry like battery meters do.
Battery meters are one of the biggest wastes of energy that you can have on phone, developers won't tell you that but they are.
Get a shortcut app to the battery saver they aren't.

how do I get the shortcut to battery saver??

 

[taymur]

would love to get the shortcut too, but yes, I got a 920 too, battery drains very very fast that its not even logical.

my Lumia 720
2000mah + 1Ghz x 2 + 430P res. = apx. 30 hours of battery life
my Lumia 920
2000mah + 1.5Ghz x 2 + 730p res = apx. 10 hours of battery life

I cant really tell how a 30% upgrade performance, while almost same size of screen could effect a 20 hours drop in battery life :S :S im not that happy with my upgrade.

I guess it should be around 20 hours don't you think? how much different the GPU is?

 

[rockstarzzz]

http://forums.windowscentral.com/nokia-lumia-920/215695-lumia-920-battery-your-opinions.html