Battery life with WP 8.1

[lunged]

Battery life is definitely worse for me. I got my Lumia 1520 last week, used it pretty heavily (because it's my new gadget) and was very impressed with the battery life. Yesterday, half a day of 'similar use' used about the same amount of battery as a full day last week. Hopefully this gets better with 8.1 updates and Nokia firmware updates.

 

[Ashish Sharma6610]

Windows phone 8.1 drains battery.. Its official

 

[Jowarman]

Mine has been a lot better with 8.1! Usually around 10% by the end of a regular work day before the update. So far I've noticed it around 30% by the end of the day. I use my phone around the same amount every day that I'm at work due to the work I do, so it's a good comparison. At least for me anyways. Still too early to tell as it's only been a day. (Lumina 925)

 

[pahutakz]

turn batrery saver when not used so that backround task will be disabled. hope they will fix this issue

 

[kobongkobong]

70% after 8 hours. Much worse comparing to wp8

 

[wuiyang]

battery life get worse, shortened the life about half, i used to have 1 day battery to about 4 days, now, only 1 day to 1.5 days
battery drainer - whatsapp (use about 20% i think) and phone about 7% to 10%
only open Wi-Fi

 

[Kaushik Poddar]

My L920 is draining faster and its taking ages to charge. It took nearly 4 hours to charge. Never happened before.

 

[thekeeblerelf]

I charged my L928 to 100% before I left for work, and the phone didn't leave my pocket for an hour. I just turned on the screen, and was surprised to see 89%.

After installing 8.1 yesterday, I did a hard reset to make sure the device was clean. I installed most of the apps that I use, and disabled the backgrounding for all of the apps that I had disabled in GDR3.

Is there a way to reset the battery usage stats in Battery Saver so I can see what really is the culprit? The usage stats seem to accumulate rather than reset, even after a charge.

 

[jmr60]

Lumia 1520: installed the update mid-day yesterday. Through the rest of the day, battery drain seemed quite normal, I still had plenty left at bed time when I put it on the charger. We'll see what a full day does today, but I'm not expecting anything bad. I typically can get almost two days of normal usage on a 1520 before the battery gets critically low, so if something is draining more I'll notice.

 

[Markham Ranja]

I had the luck to have a quiet night in work to charge and discharge the phone twice fully through heavy use. Then before bed I charged it to 100%. 5 hours later when I woke up it was at 87%. Previously it would still be at almost 100%. As I said earlier, I configured 8.1 to be as close as possible to my 8.0 settings. I gave GDR2 and 3 the same mercy and they responded well after a similar test pattern. I know this is a new OS entirely but 2 full charge cycles should be enough for any OS. My partner has their phone (also a 520) updated to 8.1 also. Before it would make it through the day with some ~20% left. Ill see when they come home if that is still the case?

Just FYI, discharging completely is pretty much the worst thing you can do for lithium batteries. Back in the days of NiMh or NiCd batteries, in approximately 1857, this was a good practice. Now, you're severely reducing your battery's useful lifetime. Most modern batteries have charge level monitoring circuits built in as well, so the concept of "calibrating" the battery is worthless as well.

For best results, always keep your battery between 40 and 80%. Since modern phones have overcharge protection built in, there's nothing wrong with leaving the phone plugged in overnight.

 

[jasqid]

My best assumption is that this is the trade off for early adoption. I bet the firmware updates would correct this issue.

 

[thekeeblerelf]

My best assumption is that this is the trade off for early adoption. I bet the firmware updates would correct this issue.

I hope so, but knowing Verizon and their negative affinity for WP, they'll drag out the update for months. Not that they handle Android updates any different, though...

 

[Shan Ali Khan]

yes its eating battery also while using cortana , the phone gets hot.
Lumia 520

 

[m_kock]

I was having some serious battery issues yesterday after updating my Lumia 925, however, after re-training the battery things seems to be a lot better!

After updating to 8.1, my battery stated it had 55% charge. I tried plugging it in and the phone started to charge rather slowly. I then rebooted the phone and it listed itself as having 38%; that's a huge difference and a loss of battery after charging it. I then recharged the phone to 100% from the 38%, but it discharged from 100% to 20% in like 3 hours. I let the phone die, plugged it back in, let it charge to 100% and then unplugged it. Since that charge last night at around midnight, my phone is currently sitting at 85% after some pretty heavy usage this morning; I get up around 6am.

I honestly thing that it needs to just be retrained after this update, and it's also probably syncing a lot of initial data after the update, which isn't good for battery life. :winktongue:

Hope this helps someone else!

 

[MrWhiteman]

I have found that you can now disable background running of all apps in Battery Saver settings, things that I has previously disabled were enabled again after installing 8.1! Gmail was the biggest hogger (Update: it looks like Gmail is stuck constantly syncing) of background battery even though it only updates once every 2 hours. You need to check your background apps again because they will all be Allowed including Here Drive.

 

[Dreamspell]

On my Lumia 720, I was chatting on Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger and other stuff inbetween with the screen on the whole time for 2 hours and my battery went down by 25%. Not bad.

 

[Luis Carlos Ruiz Paternina]

All signs point to it being worse even after a hard reset. I configured my WP 8.1 install as closely as I could have it to WP8. I disabled the same background tasks and any new features that could be toggled off that also ran in the background. A very rough estimate points to an extra 25% drain over the length of the charge. Edit: This is on a Lumia 520

Anybody with any good news?

I can't even find the background tasks in settings. :/ where is it, it's not on the same place it used to be before the update.

 

[thekeeblerelf]

I can't even find the background tasks in settings. :/ where is it, it's not on the same place it used to be before the update.

Settings -> Battery Saver -> Usage

Here, there is a list of apps, and you can see their background task status under the name. e.g. Allowed, etc.

 

[tk-093]

+1

I'm still surprised the number of people who don't plug their phones in overnight. You're not going to hurt the battery.

Just FYI, discharging completely is pretty much the worst thing you can do for lithium batteries. Back in the days of NiMh or NiCd batteries, in approximately 1857, this was a good practice. Now, you're severely reducing your battery's useful lifetime. Most modern batteries have charge level monitoring circuits built in as well, so the concept of "calibrating" the battery is worthless as well.

For best results, always keep your battery between 40 and 80%. Since modern phones have overcharge protection built in, there's nothing wrong with leaving the phone plugged in overnight.

 

[cannon#WP]

I can't even find the background tasks in settings. :/ where is it, it's not on the same place it used to be before the update.

Disabling background task is now under the Battery Saver app.

Guys, this was posted over at the MS WP blog:

After the update, all your apps are enabled by default to run in the background. So you may see the difference in your battery life. The option to disable the app to run in the background has moved. You can see them under BATTER SAVER. Disable the ones that you no longer want to run in the background.

Give Windows Phone 8.1 a try via Windows Phone Preview for Developers

After checking what apps were running in the background on my phone, I found that a crap ton of my apps and games were running. Hoping that disabling all of them except for apps that are essential to me fixes this.