Battery life with WP 8.1

[Naren Parker]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

Mine had a serious battery drain on Day 1. Now its a bit alright. I don't have the exact stats though. I'm sure it will improve over the course of time. I don't have many hopes that Lumia Cyan would improve or alter the battery performance in any way. For me, Black actually caused more drain than Amber. I think that the 920 inherently has a internal design flaw in that it gets very hot and the battery drains like water sometimes even on WP8.0. Agreed this could be due to a rogue app but the OS could use some better optimized battery calibration metrics. Will have to see if 8.1 can mend itself over time. Even if its the stock OS, the drivers are not generic as most of the underlying architecture for all WPs is based on the same Qualcomm SoC (except when you are talking dual and quad cores themselves in the same breath). The drivers can scale according to the device just like how the same graphics driver powers the low to high end of the spectrum for desktop/notebook GPUs. But the OS could use (and I am sure we'll be getting some) updates to remove the lag in different areas. WP8.0 used to lag very very rarely and it was mostly due to some app rather than the actual OS. 8.1 however lags during menu transitions and IE browsing and not to mention, the Xbox Music app. Still, there's nothing that cant be fixed in a future update and there's a lot to like about the new OS for now.

 

[mary beth hale]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

Terrible battery drain for 2 days. This morning turned "battery saver" to off and have had absolutely normal drain since. Something wrong with battery saver app itself?

 

[MikeSuff]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

I'm jumping in with concern here as well, my battery drain has been incredibly bad, I'm charging constantly whereas before it was maybe once or twice a day with heavy usage. Under battery saver the biggest culprit for drain is, confusingly, the phone app which is not open or in use when i'm checking or even at all. And there is no way to suspend this app or change it's permissions.

Are others seeing this?

 

[darth_furious]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

My 1520 had much quicker drain at first. I suspected Cortana and the constant use of Location services. I turned off location services and battery life is back to normal. However, Cortana will not turn on unless I enable location services again. I think the geofencing is causing the drain, constantly checking where I am and powering on the GPS radio

 

[c0br4]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

same here massive battery drain since 8.1!!

edit:
btw. German region here without Cortana - but still location service running (same settings as on WP8)

 

[bijak_riyandi]

Guys, if you experience battery drain on you Lumias report it to Microsoft by posting Battery Saver screenshots using this thread

Battery draining faster after windowsphone 8.1 update

Here is a response from the Windows Phone Tech regarding the battery drain issue in WP 8.1

"Hello Everyone,
The first day after updating your device you can expect some battery consumption due to the reinstallation of all applications and normal restoration that may occur post update.

We ask that you watch your battery consumption on day 2 and 3 and do so through the Battery Saver application. If you can please open the Top 2-3 items in the battery saver application and look at each application you will see if the battery consumption is based on background task or if the application was active on the screen being used by you. If you see a large amount of consumption in the background compared to your own personal use as the application it would be helpful to watch those.

In addition, if you can please also go to Settings -> Email + Accounts and see if any accounts are stuck in sync mode. There could be an account sync issue that is occurring. You can stop the sync and re-add the account to see if it resolves your issue or if the primary account simply restart the phone.

If you continue to see the issue, please provide some screenshots of your battery saver application, and the second screen for the top 2-3 items so we can see consumption.

Thank you,
Eli A.

Windows Phone Support - Tech Lead"

just found that my Google account failed to sync
trying out this at the moment and we'll see tomorrow

 

[Ditronics]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

Yep, dran is faster.

I think the problem can be Cortana related, you must to have location on to use it and when you are not outside....

 

[serenityangel]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

I'm seeing the same drains on my Lumia 920. As I'm in the UK I don't have Cortana yet. I'm inclined to agree with the comments here regarding firmware optimization which should improve on release.

 

[Baker Faria1]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

I'm sorry for posting this here, but have no Idea how to create my own post. I'm having similar issues and among other things.

I'm running windows phone 8.1 developer preview. When I first installed the OS all my apps were working just fine, but over the past 10 hours or so I stopped getting notification for viber and whatsapp. So far I have reset the phone, uninstalled the apps and back on again, but no luck.

If I remember correctly whatsapp was on my action centre list when you go to settings and look at the apps which can notify you, but their no longer there. I could be wrong and perhaps they were never there.

I'm curious is this because whatsapp and viber haven't been updated to meet the latest API to work perfectly with windows phone 8.1 or is it a bug? Or perhaps I can enable them on settings or something? And yes I have gone into the apps to look at their settings also.

Suggestions and tips would be much appreciated.

 

[cannon#WP]

I can report that my battery usage has come close to being back to what it was pre-8.1. With only my essential apps allowed in the background, I think I can agree with all of you guys in saying Cortana is the reason for the extra bit of battery drain.

 

[DennisvdG]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

I'm sorry for posting this here, but have no Idea how to create my own post. I'm having similar issues and among other things.

I'm running windows phone 8.1 developer preview. When I first installed the OS all my apps were working just fine, but over the past 10 hours or so I stopped getting notification for viber and whatsapp. So far I have reset the phone, uninstalled the apps and back on again, but no luck.

If I remember correctly whatsapp was on my action centre list when you go to settings and look at the apps which can notify you, but their no longer there. I could be wrong and perhaps they were never there.

I'm curious is this because whatsapp and viber haven't been updated to meet the latest API to work perfectly with windows phone 8.1 or is it a bug? Or perhaps I can enable them on settings or something? And yes I have gone into the apps to look at their settings also.

Suggestions and tips would be much appreciated.

Are the background tasks for these apps enabled?

 

[Immortal Lobster]

Update glance! Went to change my glance screen on my L920, it requested a restart. I did. Before this reboot I was burning 18%/hr., since the reboot I've gone 2 hours, and lost 1%! Back to normal! We'll see if I spoke to soon, but looks promising!

Also of note, when I rebooted it showed at 93%, after the reboot, it showed 53%, something fishy there as well!

Hope this helps!

 

[thekeeblerelf]

It looks like my battery life leveled out, finally. It has been off the charger for 2 hours, and it's currently at 94% (20 hours remaining) after fiddling with it every few minutes to text or message people through Facebook Messenger, and listening to music through Xbox Music.

Yesterday, I noticed that some albums I chose to download were hung in a perpetual "Downloading...", "Paused", or some other random error state. After canceling them, my battery life seemed to level out.

 

[Dex Da Rex]

Even with slightly playing around on phone, it took me around 3-4 hours to charge it from 10% to 90% on the first day...

 

[Baker Faria1]

Re: windows 8.1 drain more battery

Background, notification settings. Went through everything that I can think of that could affect the notification but got nothing so far.

 

[TechFreak1]

I concur with most here with higher battery drain, abit perplexed as on 8.0 the major hog for me on my 920 was the games hub sync and the other being on 3g / 3.5g. However on wp 8.1 it doesn't look like the games hub syncs in the background as the damn thing has to update when its opened or resumed. I have turned off all the apps that don't need to run in the background.only have 13 apps allowed to run in the background - the most recent additions being Cortana and FB Messenger (the dedicated messenger app). However the majority of the apps don't even show any usage nor can I turn off run in the background.I might do a test run in a few days with Cortana disabled and FB Messenger uninstalled as I am still playing around with my start screen lol.

 

[ibbyj]

Mine is better than yesterday's without a doubt. But still not very good. My 925 seems to get VERY hot now.

I did a hard reset after installing 8.1, and thought all of my settings had been backed up and restored. They hadn't. Sensitivity was set to high, double tap to wake was on, email was set to something strange sync-wise, and brightness was at medium rather than low.

I adjusted all of these things, so hopefully its just some bad battery reporting at this point.

Also, I've got location turned off for now.

 

[uberlaff]

I'm having the same issue. Lumia 920 and Battery Saver is telling me its all Internet Explorer. I disabled it from running in the background and will check to see if that fixes things.

Having said that, I'm not going back to 8!
​8.1 i just too good...

 

[oakworth]

reset my location to UK which has removed CORTANA, found a facebook account that need attention so sorted that out but like i said before PROJECT MY SCREEN is still searching and cant find a way to sort this

 

[oakworth]

I'm having the same issue. Lumia 920 and Battery Saver is telling me its all Internet Explorer. I disabled it from running in the background and will check to see if that fixes things.

Having said that, I'm not going back to 8!
​8.1 i just too good...

yep still worth the update