Possible battery life solution and new bug

[primortal]

Talderon,

There's been a longstanding bug in WP8 and now 8.1 which simply eats the battery in the background randomly. If you are internal to Microsoft it would be great if you can escalate this and get some diagnosis. Battery Saver (which is the closest look at the OS we get as users) shows nothing and yet the phones physically get warm and the battery discharges quickly.

I've tried all sorts including switching everything on and off and not found anything like BT/NFC to affect the situation. I am on a 920, and I've even pondered as to whether its a hardware errata that no one wants to admit. If it isn't, it has to be an OS service or core issue.

You only have to look at the number of complaints about battery life to know that something is going on. The question is where.

I've gotten the random phone runs hot and discharges the battery rapidly. This event happened with 8.0 as well. So I don't know if it's Nokia related or what.

 

[Srinidhi Hebbar m]

not working on my Lumia 520

 

[anon8773316]

Hi guys, I'm new on the forum.

For all who have issues with their battery life, did you enable the "design synchronzation" under settings? [settings] -> [synchronize settings]. I have(or maybe had) battery issues too. I tried to disable background tasks a.s.o., but that didn't work for me. Now I have disabled the design sync and voil?, after a restart and giving my phone a full charge, I have 100% of battery for at least one hour. Before disabling the sync it was a loss by ~10% per hour.

I hope this is the solution Maybe you should give it a try too.

Have a nice day!

 

[sgraphics]

I have HTC 8X - currently experiencing insane discharge rates. Insider battery app is reporting 7.7% loss per hour - with no navigation apps, video or anything crazy, just reading mail and messages as they come in. Nothing like this was happening before 8.1.

I have already disabled all background apps I dont need. Only some like skype, whatsapp etc remain - and all of them I have confirmed as OK in version 8.0.

After the next charge I will try to
1) disabling email sync
2) Disable Theme sync

Hi guys, I'm new on the forum.
"design synchronzation" under settings? [settings] -> [synchronize settings]. Now I have disabled the design sync and voil?, after a restart and giving my phone a full charge, I have 100% of battery for at least one hour. Before disabling the sync it was a loss by ~10% per hour.

Are you referring to turning off "SETTINGS" -> "sync my settings" -> "Theme" ?


*EDIT* Just would like to add that the battery saver is pretty useless in solving this problem. The usage reported there is pretty evenly distributed amongst many apps - so either every app uses battery now more OR it is a system process that is at fault. I'm leaning towards the latter, which is why I will try disabling "Theme sync" and "Google mail sync" (and "Battery saver" process itself!) after next full charge. I will update on my findings.

 

[anon8773316]

Sorry I had to change the language to english to confirm that. Yes it is "theme"

 

[KGun]

For what's it worth:
My battery life wasn't great since picking up a 920 last week but I was playing around with the phone a lot, downloading and installing apps so that should be understandable.
What seemed to add to the discharge rate was using the light background which I've read that it takes more energy to display white than black on a LCD screen. I've read both though, that it takes less???
I have been meticulous about turning off any apps running in the background that don't need to be.
Also, I have yet to turn on Cortana, so that is probably helping the most.

 

[drufranco]

Go into Battery Saver, Settings, set Battery Saver to Off.

 

[Karpito]

What exactly is "Advertising ID"?. I turned it of to see if it helps with the battery drain.

 

[Anastazja Michniewicz]

Talderon,

There's been a longstanding bug in WP8 and now 8.1 which simply eats the battery in the background randomly. If you are internal to Microsoft it would be great if you can escalate this and get some diagnosis. Battery Saver (which is the closest look at the OS we get as users) shows nothing and yet the phones physically get warm and the battery discharges quickly.

I've tried all sorts including switching everything on and off and not found anything like BT/NFC to affect the situation. I am on a 920, and I've even pondered as to whether its a hardware errata that no one wants to admit. If it isn't, it has to be an OS service or core issue.

You only have to look at the number of complaints about battery life to know that something is going on. The question is where.

I think you are right realwarder. I have read may forums and posts about the battery drain and I did EVERYTHING I could to fix it and it's still the same! I got L625 and before the update my battery life was over 2 days now on full charge it shows 1 day and 9 hours... This is unacceptable! It's definitely a bug in the OS, something is draining the battery but its not the apps or the WiFi! I hope Microsoft people read these because it MUST BE FIXED!

 

[RoAn82]

My YAHOO! Mail doesnt have the "as item arrives" option anymore, wich is a pain cause i need that account to show me mails as soon as it arrives.
Now I must choose between "based on usage" / "15 minutes" / "30 minutes" / "1 hour" / "2 hours" / "manually".
Can someone help me?

Note: Hotmail DOES have the "as item arrives" option. still.

 

[anon8773316]

Short update:

After 3 hours since disabling "theme sync" I have only lost 13% of battery life. This could even be better, because I restartet my phone twice to verify the english name of the "theme" setting, and set it back to german. One restart takes around 3% on my Lumia 925. So overall it might be 7% in 3 hours, what would be just great!

My usage in this time was a lot of messging(sms), some whatsapp, e-mails(as item arrives), WPcentral notifications.

"SETTINGS" -> "sync my settings" -> "Theme" disable.

Edit/Update: 5 hours and 75% left. On that time, my phone gave usually up since 8.1. Btw syncing the passwords was disabled too

I hope it stays like that

@ RoAn82: Sadly you can't do that with Yahoo Mail. I'm using Yahoo via outlook.com. On that way you can/will receive your mails directly.

 

[frankelweeze]

Try this for WIFI settings:

Settings >> Wi-Fi >> Wi-Fi Sense >>
switch OFF "Connect to Wi-Fi hotspots" and "Share Wi-Fi networks I select"

 

[mmcpher]

Good thread with a lot of suggestions. There are a lot of new settings to keep track of. Under Wifi Sense, I had it set to search. I almost never use a public hotspot, so I turned it off. But I also noticed I had certain of my saved networks set to "share with contacts"! I had no idea or intention to share this info with my contacts!

One additional oddity I noticed with my 1520 Battery Drain issues is that when I had it hooked to a wall-charger I was actually steadily losing power! On a number of different chargers. But when I used my Incipio PMA wireless charger case with a Duracell Powermat, I was at least able to charge the phone again. I have also had a problem with my battery charging Icon remaining always on even after I have stopped charging. I see it in the WP8.1 icon, and in the various 3rd Party Battery Apps. I can sometimes get it to shut off by rebooting or soft resetting, but not always and it returns and the lightning bolt stays permanently on thereafter.

I may have a defective handset on my hands, but it's hard to tell with the general battery life instability. Still loving 8.1 though!

 

[Miesjh]

Here's an official answer of the Windows Phone Support Team:

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.

This fixed it for me!

 

[anon(8547461)]

I think something is gimped with the new Podcast app. Previously I could play podcast after podcast under the default Music app and the battery would show little drain (maybe 5% after 4 hours or so of continuous play). However, the Podcast app seems to be a battery hog. Just one or two podcasts worth of play (2 hours) and the battery drains over 10%.


Yancy

 

[SwimSwim]

Going to try tips such as disabling theme syncing (doesn't mean anything to me) and disabling battery saver. That latter seems like it might work, because this whole problem is beyond explanation, and I'm left to conclude that a new service in 8.1 is going rouge in terms of battery consumption, and battery saver seems as good of a candidate as any.

I'm very desperate, because I used to easily get 18+ hours of battery. Average of 20+, minimum of 12 when I was really going at it with games and such, an a maximum of a fair 25 hours (once went 44 hours without charging when I was really frugal). But now, my phone is struggling to last 12 hours, even when it standby mostly! This is unacceptable, and I'm really desperate. I used to brag about how, because Windows Phone is such an optimized OS, it got such amazing battery life. Even used to poke fun at all my iPhone and Android friends for having to be wall huggers, as they were always desperate to charge their phones.

Well, looks like I'm going to have to join them unless I find a way to restore battery consumption to its old rate. Standby times are slightly worse, but not too bad. However, whenever the screen is on (doesn't matter what I'm doing) the battery gets SLAUGHTERED. Even just casual messaging really hits the battery hard.

I love 8.1 with all my heart and soul, but the significant reduction in battery life leaves me very sad...

 

[Jazmac]

I don't use google mail on my phone and maybe this is why I don't have this drain on my Lumia 920. I'll grab whatever google mail from my desktop. I don't need it or want it on my Lumia 920.

 

[SwimSwim]

I don't use google mail on my phone and maybe this is why I don't have this drain on my Lumia 920. I'll grab whatever google mail from my desktop. I don't need it or want it on my Lumia 920.

Sounds like a possibility. They did significantly change how Google syncs in 8.1, so this could also be the cause. I'll try other mentioned methods. If that doesn't work, I'll delete my Google account from my phone (not a big issue, as nothing sent to my Gmail is critical, because I've migrated most of my accounts to my Outlook address. I can just look at my Gmail on my Surface).

 

[peetypies]

Fantastic advice. Thank you.
I have 3 email accounts synchronising. Changed settings on all of them to either manual or check every 2 hours.
I'm sat here with 78% battery 13 hours after taking my Lumia 1020 off charge
Pete.

 

[sban85]

Yeah, i get the same ... fully charged on a lumia 1020 and if i leave it be it can go 7 hours without dropping from 100%...but the moment i start interacting with it, it can drop up to 10 - 15%/hour from basic messaging, IE, mail check and maybe a little reddit.