Battery life with WP 8.1

[SwimSwim]

I keep seeing people mention turning Battery Saver off... Do they mean background tasks or actually turning off Battery Saver completely under the Settings pane?

Basically, I'm asking if people are disabling the Live Tile, or they're completely disabling their phones from entering "Battery Saver" mode.

Thanks.

 

[Gematrin]

At first I could barely get a day out of a charge and I had overheating problems on my Lumia 920. Battery saver didn't show anything that could drain the battery. Then I turned Wi-Fi Sense off and it resolved the issues. Now the battery is doing even better than before the update, even though I keep location service always on, and I hardly ever used it with 8.0.

 

[PieterJan]

In the beginning it was worser, but later, after i changes the e-mail setting to get it every hour instead of the default settings it is back to normal. Got back to 8.0 becouse of the screen rotation who is nog working. Also notes that automatic screen brithnis does not function. But function are stil broken. Have to repair the phone.

 

[alaz76]

after upgrading to wp 8.1 my battery drains so fast even when i dont use my phone at all

 

[Loco5150]

Check your backround tasks. You can also try a hard reset. WP8.1 in itself is not a battery hogg

 

[freestaterocker]

I keep seeing people mention turning Battery Saver off... Do they mean background tasks or actually turning off Battery Saver completely under the Settings pane?

Basically, I'm asking if people are disabling the Live Tile, or they're completely disabling their phones from entering "Battery Saver" mode.

Thanks.

Turn off the background tasks is what we're referring to. This will not prevent your device from entering battery saver mode when your power gets low enough AFAIK. (I actually haven't gotten lower than 25% since I installed the preview, so my juice hasn't been low enough to trigger it)

 

[reded23]

At first I could barely get a day out of a charge and I had overheating problems on my Lumia 920. Battery saver didn't show anything that could drain the battery. Then I turned Wi-Fi Sense off and it resolved the issues. Now the battery is doing even better than before the update, even though I keep location service always on, and I hardly ever used it with 8.0.

Yes after days of turning this and that app/setting off and trying different combinations it seems that WiFi Sense was the culprit for the massive (less 1hr) battery drain issue on my phone. Everything else is turned back on now and (battery) life is back to normal ;-)

 

[MadSci2]

Ive done a few tests and here's what I can see:
1) usage by App all seems normal for me, the ones I use most, get the most power.
2) Cortana isn't drawing an excessive amount of power
3) In Airplane mode, usage with the screen off is ~ 1.5%/hr, very respectable
4) During quiet hours, this only bumps up to about 1.8%, so Fortuna and a small number of notifications (#3 & #4 were tested at night)
5) Upon waking, my usual morning routine of checking work email and news Apps pulls the battery down from 100% to 50-60% in one hour! I am not playing games or watching videos and the screen brightness is on automatic. This is WAY higher than it was before the update, which would only use about 10% of the battery in this morning routine
6) Once the battery gets down to 50-60% it seems to 'hang' there, barely changing for hours at a time, despite frequent checking of emails and news Apps

From what I can read on the web, the battery control is carried out via firmware provided by the device manufacturer, NOT the OS. Can someone who know s a lot more about the structure of WP hardware/firmware confirmed this?

If this is true, I think the issue so many of us are seeing, but not all of us, is related to the need for the device manufacturers to update their Firmware to play well with WP8.1. Right now I think that the battery control system is not being properly and accurately understood by the OS, resulting in some inaccurate reporting about actual battery levels. Making it look like it is diving down real fast sometimes, and then 'sticking' at others. I bet my socks this gets 'fixed' when the official update arrives, along with the requisite firmware.

In the meantime, despite the weird fast dive and then 'sticking' of the reported battery level, my overall battery life seems to be the same on my L1020.

Anyone know whether I'm correct about the manufacturer firmware being involved in battery management? There's a ton of stuff on the web about Nokia uploading Firmware patches to fix battery issues on their WP7 handsets.

One last thing to remember, the behavior of the left button has changed. Pressing it doesn't necessarily kill an App if it has permission to run in the background. To totally kill an App you need to go into the long press and then kill it by swiping down or hitting the 'x' in the top right corner of the App.

 

[goshi_UA]

I have done hard reset and turn off Facebook/Twitter background task. Now power drain drops from 17% per hour to 7% per hour (which i think normal for standart business use)

 

[paulm187]

My battery life has been abysmal. Hope they fix it.

 

[ShreyansShah]

yup. i felt that battery life is definitely disturbed in 8.1
i stopped background work of almost all apps except 3-4.
now, it is acceptable. but my 720 definitely lost its original backup time.
further, i noted that, when i use 3g for continuous 2 hours (generally every night), battery drown by 40% per hour, which was 30% per hour prior to 8.1

 

[msirapian]

I've been invited by Nokia France to a private event "WP8.1 presentation - VIP" hosted by Microsoft France last week. We have discussed this and that and about battery life, Microsoft team have acknolewdged the problem. They're even pissed internally when running the preview. According to them, WP8 team are working hard to correct this for RTM. Wait & see.

 

[thefanfx]

I'm using Lumia 1520 with 8.1 since the second day i have it , so i can't say if there is difference between 8 and 8.1 battery usage.
But since i played with some settings like disable all background tasks except battery saver and bing weather app which are grounded inside the OS , my battery life on moderate usage is 3 whole days and i can see if i'm using the phone only for calls and to check my mails etc i can go up to 4 even 5 days with single charge , on stand by for 24h my batter was drained only 4% so for 1 day (24h) from 100% it was down to 94% which is absolutely impressive of course with minimum usage but still impressive.

So i'm sure there are no battery issues with 8.1 but issues with some background working apps which are not part from the OS core. And honestly you don't need more than 1-2 apps to be able to work in background the rest can be killed without any difference for your daily usage.

In general do not leave any app to use background activity if you are not 100% sure you need it.

 

[jomarr]

At first, yes. But now it's fine.

 

[EwingMCSE]

I've been having no problems for several days now until I tweaked a not-obvious setting this morning and my phone went into battery sucking fireball mode.

I simply changed the screen brightness (Lumia Icon) from "Low" to "Automatically Adjust". Then went into my daily scrum meeting and my phone was functioning as a leg warmer. I turned the setting back to "Medium" and it's been fine since. I also verified that there were no pending app updates or other activity that would be causing a problem.

This might be one of the settings that is causing a problem and not obvious.

I've been really happy with the update, but I can see how non-die hard users would find this frustrating. Hopefully the official release and accompanying firmware updates will knock out the major issues.

I really feel like the 8.1 version of the OS is a true competitor with iOS and Android.

 

[Ashish Saraf1]

On my 520 battery is worst whereas on 820 its working as it was !!

 

[Will6371]

On my 520 battery is worst whereas on 820 its working as it was !!

Do they have the same settings?

 

[Paolo Cardelli]

After two full discharge and recharge, my Battery lasts even LONGER than 8.0 (Nokia Lumia 920 here).
What I also tweaked was:

1) Turned OFF: Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi Sense, Data Sense, Touch High Sensitivity, Find my Phone (save position), Announce ID, Microsoft Feedback Reporting (on IE, Keyboard, Wi-Fi and Bing) AND Battery Saver (both the main switch AND Background Setting);
2) Background Tasks: Disabled most of them, and kept only the essential ones (Whatsapp, Facebook, Store, Skype etc);
3) Mail Sync: every 1 Hour;
4) Settings Sync: all Disabled;
5) Lockscreen image: Static, from Photo;
6) IE: set Webpage compression to Standard, Find location Disabled;
7) Bing: find location Disabled;
8) Integration Hub: only 1 Microsoft Account (Outlook mail check included inside this) + Twitter Account + LinkedIn Account.

My phone last all day under heavy usage, and drops 1% every 2-3 Hours.
Very satisfied, and I already know that after Cyan it will be even better

 

[buxz777]

I have two 1020s one running black one running the preview , the one with the preview drains battery much much faster in idle and in useage , so much so that I am now flashing the preview model back to 8.0(black)

it was fun testing the preview and I appreciate Microsoft giving access so easy , I will look forwards to the update but the 1020 battery life isn't the best anyways and running 8.1 preview just hasn't done the battery any good at all and with my useage it wont make it through the day compared to the 8.0 which will

ps
with the preview one I reset it , formatted it , set up my apps and accounts from fresh , went through all battery saving methods , battery was still really bad even with battery saver running and no background apps or live tiles

 

[EwingMCSE]

Battery saver was one of the worst offenders for me. I had to completely disable it.

If you run with Battery Saver ON (at least from my experience on a Lumia Icon) you will have major battery issues.