Lumia 950 mobile hotspot and potential battery issue solution

[enahs555]

So those of us with the Lumia 950 (and XL?) have had times where the battery seems to just go fast, for no apparent reason.
Now, I have my mobile hotspot turned off. I am on ATT and do not pay for tethering, so it serves me no purpose.

So my action center always shows it as off, and the settings has it in the off position.
However, over the past few days I have noticed periodically on my laptop a Wifi network called Lumia 950. I just assumed it was someone around me at work who also has a Lumia 950, as it was only up transiently and randomly.

But today, it was being much more persistent. But my action center shows the hotpot is turned off.
I go to the hotpot settings and it says turned off, but down at the bottom there is an option to allow another device to turn on hotpot, and this was turned on.
Turning this off made the Lumia 950 Wifi network vanish, turning this feature on made it come back. This hotpot is coming from my phone, even though everything says the hotpot is off!!!!!

Hopefully this is the issue causing the random battery draining, and this solution will fix it for everyone. Go turn that feature off if you are not using hotspots! Do not believe the action center when it comes to hotspots!

 

[robert peake]

turned mine off as you mentioned, i'll try anything at the moment lol

 

[InsGadget]

This is actually a feature that allows your computer to tell your phone (over Bluetooth, I believe) to turn on the WiFi hotspot. It shouldn't use THAT much battery, but certainly some.

 

[astondg]

Hopefully this is the issue causing the random battery draining, and this solution will fix it for everyone. Go turn that feature off if you are not using hotspots! Do not believe the action center when it comes to hotspots!

Turning that feature on does not turn the hotspot on. It only makes your 950 visible, via Bluetooth, to Windows 8.1 & 10 PCs. The 950 does show up in the WiFi list but at that point the hotspot is not on. The hotspot only turns on if you try to connect from the Windows PC.

The feature might still use a small amount of battery for the Bluetooth connection though.

 

[enahs555]

It is not turning on actual sharing of data, correct. But it is turning on the wifi aspect of it, using power setting up the wifi broadcasting; which is very battery intensive.

Having that off and leaving my phone unplugged all night (11 hours) by battery only dropped 8 % this time!! Never have I had it so good.
It is only one data point, but incredibly promising.

 

[SL2]

Having that off and leaving my phone unplugged all night (11 hours) by battery only dropped 8 % this time!! Never have I had it so good.

How much did it drop before you changed the setting, roughly/guessing?

If you don't mind, turn it on for another night and check, you might be on to something here.

 

[astondg]

It is not turning on actual sharing of data, correct. But it is turning on the wifi aspect of it, using power setting up the wifi broadcasting; which is very battery intensive.

From what I know it is not using WiFi broadcasting at that point. It's a Bluetooth connection only and probably Bluetooth LE or at least not a continuous connection.

The WiFi broadcasting only happens once you connect on the laptop. That's kind of the whole point of this feature. I'll see if I can find some official info from Microsoft.

I'm not disputing that turning it off helped your battery life, I'm a little skeptical & I'd be testing it on & off a few times before I was convinced, but it could be true. If it is true though I'd say it's because of a bug and not because the feature itself is intentionally doing anything like WiFi broadcasting.

 

[Dietrich Cleijne]

The Mobile Hotspot on my L1520 on W10M is always of, but my wife can see my Lumia and turn it on because she has the password to it, we use that a lot when we're on vacation.
When i look at the surrounding WIFI devices on my pc i can also see my phone listed, and it's listed as turned of.

 

[habanero61]

Let's see if you're on to something. Just found that turned on! L1520 with latest build was battery hog. Thanks for the tip.

 

[rhapdog]

Indeed, if this is an issue with battery drain, then it is indeed a bug. Let's get more people reporting back here after testing the issue to see if it helps. The more reports we get, the more we can give Microsoft a "confirmation" of whether or not this is the culprit or at least ONE of the culprits.

I can't really test it myself, because I'm using the Wi-Fi hotspot for my sole source of data for roughly 8 to 10 hours per day, so I get the battery drain from that, as I always got that battery drain while in 8.1 as well. The more you download, the faster you drain that battery. I'd estimate that the mobile hotspot is the heaviest battery drain on the device, or at least very close to the heaviest.

 

[IanD413]

I've had the same issue... Battery draining fast and the phone becoming a pocket heater...
So far the only fix that's worked for me is to turn off the Glance feature. Strangely after, my phone has powered itself down and back up. But my battery life is back to normal and I don't need a hot-glove to handle my phone.

 

[kiwidoc67]

Finally found how to switch on the Lumia hotspot from my surface by reading this thread. Now to see if battery suffers....