For those without 8.1 battery issues

[spicypadthai]

Well played :wink: Do you have Cortana pinned to the start screen and do you have Battery Saver turned on? After a couple weeks I started getting the rapid battery drain (40% in less than an hour) usually accompanied by the start screen hanging or stuck on "resuming" for upwards of a minute. I did a hard reset and was fine for a few days but it happened again so I reverted to 8 last weekend. In other posts this week I've seen several people say unpinning Cortana and turning off Battery Saver help a lot. I didn't try either before reverting and I'm curious.

 

[alodar101]

Well played :wink: Do you have Cortana pinned to the start screen and do you have Battery Saver turned on? After a couple weeks I started getting the rapid battery drain (40% in less than an hour) usually accompanied by the start screen hanging or stuck on "resuming" for upwards of a minute. I did a hard reset and was fine for a few days but it happened again so I reverted to 8 last weekend. In other posts this week I've seen several people say unpinning Cortana and turning off Battery Saver help a lot. I didn't try either before reverting and I'm curious.

I have a 1520. I did not have any major issues but did see some battery drain. In battery saver, clicking on more apps I found tons of apps set for background. Turned them off and battery life is almost normal now. Cortana is on and so are every thing else I use daily. Rarely used stuff is off. Also consider when using Cortana a lot, the battery will wear faster. When used normally, it should wear normally. Theoretically speaking of course.

 

[AccentAE86]

I don't have Cortana pinned, but I use her somewhat regularly. I don't turn on battery saver either. What I did do was go to Battery Saver and block background processing for ALL apps except the ones that I actually WANT updates from, like WPCentral, Whatsapp, WeekView8, Twitter, Facebook, 6Tag, Skype, and everything else is turned off. It has helped my battery life immensely, almost as good as 8.0.

 

[anon(7901790)]

Same here. I just have Cortana and the apps I want to get notifications from. Everything else (including battery) is turned off. I'm getting pretty decent battery life.

 

[gapost]

I don't have Cortana pinned, but I use her somewhat regularly. I don't turn on battery saver either. What I did do was go to Battery Saver and block background processing for ALL apps except the ones that I actually WANT updates from, like WPCentral, Whatsapp, WeekView8, Twitter, Facebook, 6Tag, Skype, and everything else is turned off. It has helped my battery life immensely, almost as good as 8.0.

About the same thing I did on my Icon and battery life is great. Never really had battery issues though.

 

[savagelizards]

Battery life out of the box with 8.0 was sketchy, but not unexpected as the Icon's battery is undersized for the pixel-dense screen and quad core processor. That said, it is no worse for me on 8.1 than 8.0. I took an update last week that was supposed to solve battery issues, but nothing changed for me, so the fix was probably for a problem i wasn't experiencing...

 

[drufranco]

I did do the DP upgrade when it was first available, eventually I reset my phone (I had random heating / battery drain) without a recovery from a backup, reinstalled all apps. (note in the original update and reset I never used Cortana or battery saver because of drain and heating issues). After the reset I had many lockups and heating battery drain when unlocking the phone much worse than with just the DP upgrade probably because Cortana was pinned at this time.
When the latest OS update came I ran that.

Now my phone never hangs anymore on unlocking and doesn't overheat with rapid battery drain and I have these settings / changes:

• I don't have Cortana pinned now.
• She is activated and is also allowed to run in background
• Obviously location is turned on for Cortana use.
• Removed all battery saver apps (battery performance) and am just using the built in Battery Saver which is set to run in background as well.

 

[spicypadthai]

Thanks to everyone who replied. I upgraded to 8.1 again last Friday and I left everything "as is" from pre upgrade, which was a revert done a week earlier. I only have a couple apps running in the background, didn't pin Cortana or anything new to the start screen, and I turned off Battery Saver. I haven't even opened Cortana yet and I disallowed her from running in the background. So far, so good. My battery has been great, 1% - 2% hourly discharge with light usage, and no sudden battery drains or start screen lockups/slow resumes.

 

[spicypadthai]

How did you revert back to WP 8 from 8.1,I think I'll go back to that until official 8.1 is released

I used the Nokia Software Updater for Retail but the Software Recovery Tool should work, too. It's newer so I'd try that first. It took a couple tries and if the download fails you need to delete contents of a subfolder in the C:\ProgramData folder before retrying. I selected the option "my phone won't power on" or whatever it says. If you're having battery issues, especially the rapid loss with the hanging start screen, try unpinning Cortana. That and turning off Battery Saver are the 2 things I've done since trying 8.1 again and it's been OK for almost a week. Battery life is pretty much the same as pre 8.1.

 

[roni09riku]

I'm using Lumia 1520 and I don't any battery issues even with Cortana on my start screen and battery saver turned off. I don't turn battery saver off unless I'm not home and I'm at about 20% battery. After the update I felt an increased drain in battery but not too much. I think it's just normal because of the added features of WP8.1. Before a full charge and not too much heavy use (texting, internet and Cortana once in a while) can go up to 2 days. Now it's just a day and a half. The severe battery drain only happened to me right after I installed 8.1, probably because the system was still configuring itself to my phone. After that it's all fine.