Ironically, the WPCentral app may be part of the battery drain problems

Frantics

New member
Nov 13, 2012
28
0
0
Visit site
After doing a few non-scientific tests, I suspect that one of the best apps for WP8, the WPCentral app, may be contributing to the background battery drain on my Lumia 920.
Nothing conclusive here, so it may not be the same for everyone, but I'm going to share what I gathered.

And I find this too funny if confirmed, because everyone here is probably using the app to post and research about their battery drain woes.

Be forewarned, this post may get too long. I will actually try to chronicle my battery struggles with my 920, my replacement process and how I came to this interesting conclusion.

Nov. 9, release day, I got a red Lumia 920 from an AT&T store and like anyone with a brand new phone and especially switching to a new OS, I set it up, played around with it nonstop and downloaded a ton of apps. Knowing the battery life ramifications, I still had all the bells and whistles running... Live Tiles, push email, notifications... so of course, my battery took massive hits. The next day, I started turning off features I don't need and held back on all the persistent connections. At the same time, I started reading the WPCentral forums searching for tips about the 920's battery life, so I bought the WPCentral Pro app, created an account here and started lurking.

About my 6th day with the 920, with all the battery saving tips in place (no background tasks, no NFC, etc), I still found startling amounts of drain on standby. At one point, it was draining about 1% every 5 minutes. I suspected it may be one of the apps so I uninstalled the one I suspected to be the culprit: the Whatsapp app. Instant improvement: from 1% percent every 5 minutes to 1% percent every 10 minutes! Yeah, that doubled it but still not acceptable to me.

So that night, instead of uninstalling apps one by one, I decided to just factory reset it and start fresh. So I went to Settings> About> Reset Your Phone. This bricked my phone. Oh swell. (My first post in these forums is actually about bricking my 920.)

The next day, thankfully, I got an exact replacement, and this time, since it's fresh and clean, I decided not to restore from my cloud backup and started fresh by not installing apps on the get-go. Also, I uninstalled all the AT&T apps but I left all the Nokia stock apps ( yes, including Nokia Drive but blocked it from Background Tasks). I just installed two 3rd party apps that I needed on a daily basis, Rdio (for music) and Twitter and I planned on installing just one app a day and uninstall if any problems arise.

First day with the new phone was fantastic! Without a ton of apps, battery life was stellar. With a fair amount of use, including more than an hour of LTE music streaming, my battery held up like a champ! Unplugged it 7 AM and by 10 PM, I still had 35% with my normal usage patterns. And also, there was virtually no Standby drain.

Yesterday, since I like it a lot, I picked the WPCentral app as my next app to install. So I started using it in the morning while I was out. As usual, I blocked it from Background Tasks and disabled its Live Tile. I had a a bit of drain from 100% to 80% in about an hour, which I didn't find surprising since I was on LTE and I was reading and posting the whole time.

Next we caught a movie, so I had to put my phone on standby. Had a bit of drain, about 15% within the two hour movie. I wasn't alarmed yet at this point since I figured the LTE radios may be sucking a bit of juice.

So when we got home, on Wi-Fi this time, I started browsing the WPCentral forums again but at some point, I forgot to close out of the app completely (by pressing the back button) and just instinctively pressed the lock button to put it in standby. About an hour, I noticed that my 920, which was right beside me on my bed, was getting seriously hot! This, I believe, equated to massive battery drain. And it was supposedly in standby!

So upon unlocking it, it was at this time I realized that I didn't close out of the WPCentral app tab. In a span of about an hour, my battery life depleted from 60% to 30% while on "standby"! Let me remind you, that I had the same exact setup from the day before (fantastic battery life day) with just Rdio and Twitter, the only addition at this point is the WPCentral app (blocked from Background Tasks and Live Tile disabled).

A liitle bit disheartened, I charged it back to 100%, but this time I'll test how much standby drain will occur. So I unplugged my 920, went to sleep, 5 hours later (I'm an early riser), with my phone just completely on standby, my battery stood at 93%. Something drained it at the rate of almost 2% per hour.

So, I uninstalled WPCentral for the time being, charged it back to 100% and voila, 4 hours later, with mostly standby times and a few minutes of checking the Settings, my 920 still has 99% left, same battery drain rate as my initial setup.

So to summarize, fresh system with just the Nokia apps, Rdio and Twitter = great battery life.
Introduction of just one app, WPCentral = standby battery drain plus a period of heat issues.
Hmmm.

Like I said, this may not be the same case for everyone, I'm just drawing logical conclusions from my experiences.

I don't really know what to make of this. But I'm really convinced now that some apps, which don't show up on the blockable background tasks list, may still run invisibly, draining battery life even on standby. Maybe it's just a matter of optimizing all apps for WP8?

This talk of the battery issues of the Lumia 920 may not be a hardware issue, after all.
 
Last edited:

gsquared

New member
Jun 26, 2011
1,365
0
0
Visit site
WP Central does run a background task that you cannot turn off. Learn to summarize. Nobody going to read that wall of txt. Go to advanced portion of background tasks to see which apps you cannot turn off. remove app for those you do not need / use.
 

Frantics

New member
Nov 13, 2012
28
0
0
Visit site
WP Central does run a background task that you cannot turn off. Learn to summarize. Nobody going to read that wall of txt. Go to advanced portion of background tasks to see which apps you cannot turn off. remove app for those you do not need / use.

Yeah, sorry man, I got carried away. I included a summary towards the end though.
 

rockstarzzz

New member
Apr 3, 2012
4,887
1
0
Visit site
Yep, WPCentral was blocked, you probably missed that part.

I don't have any Background Tasks running. Eveything blockable is blocked. (Nokia Drive and WPCentral.)

Neither of them are blockable as you can see from "Advanced" option. So still two words: Background tasks ;)
 

vdubskey

New member
Aug 31, 2011
63
0
0
Visit site
I use the WPCentral app all day with live tile and toasts active. Also have Nokia Drive, Weather, Metrotube, and PrimeTV in background tasks. And a slew of other apps and friends/families pinned with live tiles and my 920 gets a full day easy. I haven't had less than 30% left at the end of night with regular use and all settings turned on. Quite impressive really for an LTE device.

Now if only my ringtones didn't sound terrible I would be a happy camper.
 

Frantics

New member
Nov 13, 2012
28
0
0
Visit site
I use the WPCentral app all day with live tile and toasts active. Also have Nokia Drive, Weather, Metrotube, and PrimeTV in background tasks. And a slew of other apps and friends/families pinned with live tiles and my 920 gets a full day easy. I haven't had less than 30% left at the end of night with regular use and all settings turned on. Quite impressive really for an LTE device.

Now if only my ringtones didn't sound terrible I would be a happy camper.

Great! I'll most probably reinstall WPCentral then re-evaluate since it's a must have app. Yep, I'm installing apps one at a time and monitoring their potential for standby drain. And of course, the overall picture still depends on individual usage patterns.
 

Ali Babba

New member
Nov 9, 2012
162
0
0
Visit site
At this point, I dont think it's tied to a particular app. I think it's either the battery measurement gauge is completely out of whack and incorrectly shuts down phones thinking there's no juice left. There was one person posted on the big battery thread that said he was still able to get a few hrs of life even after his battery supposedly had 0 % left. I've also seen my battery percentage remaining jump around - ie: 99% for 4 hrs (yeah, right), then drop to 90%, then back up to 92%, then down to 85, then 80, then back up to 84, etc. Or it might be a background task by the OS/firmware that's causing erratic battery use. I had normal battery life for 4 days, then one day it went nuts and was draining fast. So I did a factory reset on my phone, uninstalled all the apps that might cause battery drain, and disabled everything (wifi, BT, nfc, and data so I basically had a dumb phone), and I still had 1% drain every few min and the battery gauge said I had 5 hrs left on 90% charge (!). Then, an hour later it said I had 2 days, then it stablized. Since then I've re-installed everything and it's back to normal.

If only Nokia/MS had left the diagnostic tools code the same we could see the mAh draw and know for sure...
 

Coreldan

New member
Oct 2, 2012
2,514
0
0
Visit site
I'm sure it's handy, but since the hardware is so capable, I rather just use the forum on the browser. Even my Omnia 7 which is a first gen WP7 runs the website no problem.

I just havnt learned into this app thing, when I can do most of the same stuff or more on the browser :D
 

Frantics

New member
Nov 13, 2012
28
0
0
Visit site
At this point, I dont think it's tied to a particular app. I think it's either the battery measurement gauge is completely out of whack and incorrectly shuts down phones thinking there's no juice left. There was one person posted on the big battery thread that said he was still able to get a few hrs of life even after his battery supposedly had 0 % left. I've also seen my battery percentage remaining jump around - ie: 99% for 4 hrs (yeah, right), then drop to 90%, then back up to 92%, then down to 85, then 80, then back up to 84, etc. Or it might be a background task by the OS/firmware that's causing erratic battery use. I had normal battery life for 4 days, then one day it went nuts and was draining fast. So I did a factory reset on my phone, uninstalled all the apps that might cause battery drain, and disabled everything (wifi, BT, nfc, and data so I basically had a dumb phone), and I still had 1% drain every few min and the battery gauge said I had 5 hrs left on 90% charge (!). Then, an hour later it said I had 2 days, then it stablized. Since then I've re-installed everything and it's back to normal.

If only Nokia/MS had left the diagnostic tools code the same we could see the mAh draw and know for sure...

I had that weirdness happen to my first 920. It shut down with 0% left but I restarted it. With still 0% left, it was on for an at least an hour and I was able to stream music for 20 minutes until it drained again.

Yeah, I wish the diagnostic tool is still there. I'm still thinking the battery drain is a combination of a lot of factors and not just one. Unoptimized apps, wonky battery gauge, OS mismanaging resources, etc.
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
322,916
Messages
2,242,890
Members
428,005
Latest member
rogertewarte