Poor battery life because of background tasks?

[baba.bhagat]

My battery life improved a lot after uninstalling all applications which were listed under settings -> background tasks.

Those were in my case:
- Nextgen Reader
- WeatherLive
- Live Tile Countdown

After uninstalling them I rebooted the phone and noticed the current in my Nokia Diagnostics app was much lower than before. I then also uninstalled the Nokia Diagnostics app (just in case this one also runs some undercover background agent...) and my battery has been phenomenal so far.

If you are trying this on your phone please post all the background task applications you had installed before and also let us know if it helped in your case too!

 

[baba.bhagat]

Day before change: ~15 hours
First day after change: ~34 hours

... I think one of those background tasks has some sort of bug in it, maybe even only in connection with the Lumia 800.

Can other people with battery problems comment if they use any of the background tasks I had installed?

By the way I have EVERYTHING enabled (3G, Wifi, ...) and I use my phone for Whatsapp, Facebook and reading news regularly. I just uninstalled these 4 apps:
- Nextgen Reader
- WeatherLive
- Live Tile Countdown
- Nokia Diagnostics

 

[RustyU]

You don't need to uninstall apps like that, you can just stop them running in the background instead (notice the on or off in the background settings?).

 

[baba.bhagat]

This setting is not available for all applications. When you click "advanced" you will see all background tasks including the ones you can't disable.

 

[kinslayer]

Let me explain how background tasks work in wp7. They are not running all the time. Every task gets run approx every 30mins and is allowed to run for 20-25 seconds max. So a buggy task can't drain your battery like in Android for instance where they run all the time. Disabling them will give you more battery life of course since no work is better than any work for the battery.

I have around 4 tasks running with bt and WiFi on all the time and I get around a day. Mileage varies.

The stuff in the advanced section shows the apps that can have tasks. Those are not running though. Only the ones in the first screen are running. You can disable them from there.

One more thing. Background tasks turn off by default if their app has not been run by you for two weeks. This prevents having stuff you don't care about running.

Hope that helps explain how things work in WP7 as opposed to Android.

Sent from my Lumia 800 using Board Express

 

[JedH]

Let me explain how background tasks work in wp7. They are not running all the time. Every task gets run approx every 30mins and is allowed to run for 20-25 seconds max. So a buggy task can't drain your battery like in Android for instance where they run all the time. Disabling them will give you more battery life of course since no work is better than any work for the battery.

I have around 4 tasks running with bt and WiFi on all the time and I get around a day. Mileage varies.

The stuff in the advanced section shows the apps that can have tasks. Those are not running though. Only the ones in the first screen are running. You can disable them from there.

One more thing. Background tasks turn off by default if their app has not been run by you for two weeks. This prevents having stuff you don't care about running.

Hope that helps explain how things work in WP7 as opposed to Android.

Sent from my Lumia 800 using Board Express

I will agree somewhat, it's also worth noting that the OS batches the background tasks together. However, you can still thread some pretty crazy things, and you are allowed up to 5mb of data transmission per background task, so it can definitely eat some juice.

 

[baba.bhagat]

I am aware that background tasks should normally not drain the battery because of the way they work. This is why I said that I think there might be some sort of bug with background tasks on the Lumia 800. I didn't have any issues on my HTC Trophy regarding battery life and I had similar background tasks running.

Also it is not the case that only background tasks listed in the first screen are running. I had background tasks update my live tiles and they were only listed in the advanced section.

The Advanced menu even explicitly says: "This list contains all of the apps on your phone that can run in the background, including ones that you can't turn off manually."

 

[based_graham]

All I have to say is if your getting bad battery life just hard reset your phone and try running your phone with the stock apps and add one app at a time after

 

[baba.bhagat]

It is completely impossible that an application with no background task causes worse battery life as long as you aren't currently running it. I don't see how hard resetting your phone would help if the problem is an installed application. If the problem is not an app and is indeed fixed by hard resetting the phone this won't help since I will not hard reset my phone every week anyway. But I doubt hard resetting really helps, I did it once.

It is very difficult to judge whether the battery really lasts longer or if you only used your phone far less that day. This is why I asked on the forum to see if others get a similar impression from uninstalling all background tasks. Unfortunately nobody seems to be interested.

 

[welsbloke]

The only App I have that corresponds is the Diag app. I have suffered terrible battery life the only thing that has helped is turning off 3G which is now getting me very good battery life but at what cost.

My complaint is that I never had to turn off the 3G element with my Omnia 7 and I still achieved great battery life despite my office being in a poor signal area and it is not unusual for me to switch between no 3G/3G on T mobile\3G on Orange.

My Nokia issues definately seem to stem from 3G thats all I know. It is actually not a big deal during the week as I would go between the Office WiFi and Home WiFi it is just gauling that with an all you can eat data plan I have to turn it off because of battery drain.

 

[weezywally]

What is a hard reset? Is that completely restarting everything fresh? What is the point of that? Who would even want to go through that effort? If you need to do that to get better battery life then there is something seriously wrong with the OS or phone...

 

[anon(5335877)]

What is a hard reset? Is that completely restarting everything fresh? What is the point of that? Who would even want to go through that effort? If you need to do that to get better battery life then there is something seriously wrong with the OS or phone...

Yeah it's a factory reset.

 

[weezywally]

Yeah it's a factory reset.

It has to be all in the mind people saying that you need to factory reset your phone to get better battery life. After all these years surely MS and Nokia would have learned by now.

I'm never going to factory reset my phone unless I need to sell it.

 

[anon(5335877)]

It has to be all in the mind people saying that you need to factory reset your phone to get better battery life. After all these years surely MS and Nokia would have learned by now.

I'm never going to factory reset my phone unless I need to sell it.

Well sometimes a factory reset can fix software problems. Like for example, I heard some people who got the update that was supposed to fix battery life did not see any improvement until after they did a hard reset.

But the idea that you need to hard reset your phone often in order to get battery life? That's just wrong. If one hard reset didn't do the trick, another won't help.

 

[dannejanne]

It has to be all in the mind people saying that you need to factory reset your phone to get better battery life. After all these years surely MS and Nokia would have learned by now.

I'm never going to factory reset my phone unless I need to sell it.

My 800 came preloaded with 11501 firmware when purchased. Even so, every second charge my battery would drain very very quickly. Like from 100% till 80% in an hour barly doing anything.

So I did a facory reset and ever since the draining has not come back yet. Though I have started to make a habit of rebooting my phone every time it is fully charged and pulling the charger when it is fully booted again. Nevertheless my battery is normal now again *knock on wood*.

I did the reset on a charge that had drain. After the reset the drain was gone. And I hadn't really installed any apps or anyting that could mess upp the phone. Sync/location etc off...

 

[conorn]

My battery life improved a lot after uninstalling all applications which were listed under settings -> background tasks.

Those were in my case:
- Nextgen Reader
- WeatherLive
- Live Tile Countdown

After uninstalling them I rebooted the phone and noticed the current in my Nokia Diagnostics app was much lower than before. I then also uninstalled the Nokia Diagnostics app (just in case this one also runs some undercover background agent...) and my battery has been phenomenal so far.

If you are trying this on your phone please post all the background task applications you had installed before and also let us know if it helped in your case too!

Maybe coincidence, but the only backgrounder I had left was WeatherLive. I disabled it today and my battery life at least doubled. Further testing required. According to the app it should consume ~144kB/day with hourly updates. Not a huge amount, maybe it is not performing correctly?

Anyway, just reporting.

 

[jimski]

A couple months ago I ran nightly tests with different scenarios for an article I was preparing. Each test started with the phone at 99% charge (would wait for it to drop from 100%) and last 7.5 hours with the phone unplugged, screen off and untouched. With data on, and my background tasks (7) turned on/off, the difference in battery was only 2%. So maybe 4% (7.5 hrs x 2=15 hours) in a typical day. 3G drew 7% in the 7.5 hour test. And WiFi drew 2%. I repeated each test 2-3 time to validate. Background tasks included; Fox News, WeatherChannel, USA Today, Mehdoh, CleverToDo, Network Dashboard and the homebrew Battery Meter app, set to update every 10 minutes. Unless a rouge app is somehow keeping a background task running longer than it should, they really bur very little battery, as does WiFi. My conclusion was that 3G drains the most. Recently, probably in preparation for AT&Ts LTE rollout, I lost my 3G connection completely, but when when it came back the next morning the signal was stronger. Also noticed a stronger signal at work around the same time. Now I am getting home at night with 60-70%, where I used to be closer to 30%. Nothing else has changed.

Sent from my HTC Surround using Board Express

 

[baba.bhagat]

jimski: I assume you did not do these tests on the Lumia 800. So it is still possible that the Lumia 800 for some reason handles background tasks wrong. In addition to that you didn't have the same background tasks. Maybe one of these applications exposes a very specific bug.

My phone battery is still far better than before I uninstalled all background applications and the diagnostic app.

 

[Mio_Ray]

How about location. Will that only draw battery when using an app utilizing it or will there be some usage in standby as well?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[JedH]

How about location. Will that only draw battery when using an app utilizing it or will there be some usage in standby as well?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I'm pretty sure it's always on. From a developer perspective, the only way to update gps is based on how much distance you have travelled rather than by time, so my assumption is GPS is always polling in the background of the phone.