Possible battery life solution and new bug

[realwarder]

We have a TON if talks going on about this, but it REALLY is a hard one to diagnose. We have an internal app that we use for logging and data collection off the devices we test, but it's not available outside the company. HOWEVER, I am working on an app that will do similar collections and hope to get it out soon. Please note though, I am not a Dev by trade, so it'll take some time, but I have help.

That is good hear. I appreciate given the size of the Windows code base it is tricky to track down but this is one of those 'critical' issues that impacts many users. I really hope Microsoft pulls together the right team to get to the bottom of this quickly.

 

[drufranco]

What do you mean with turning off Battery Saver? Turn off running the Battery Saver app in the background or in the Battery Saver settings turning of the Battery Saver mode when the battery is under 20%? What exactly you do?

I did both of those options and everything is working fine but as I noted later in this thread it could also be the fact that it has been a day or so and everything may have just settled as stated by Windows Support Team.

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..

 

[asfand247]

I turned the Location Services off and everything else is also off!
Strange that I still get the Location sign in the bar!!

 

[anon(8050146)]

I turned off 'Advertising id ' and I'm on 19% with roughly 13 hours of decent use. Maybe its a placebo, or something else but the first two days I was lucky to get around 8 hours of usage. People were shocked to see me hunting for an outlet for the first time during class. :wink:

I made some changes as some of you suggested here as well and disabled Sync Contacts on my GMail account. I remember that causing some issues back in the earlier days of 8.0 with battery drain.

I'll let it drain down to 5-10% and fully charge it overnight and see what tomorrow brings. HTC 8X.

It is placebo, sorry. The advertising id it's just a unique identifier for advertising tracking from Microsoft so you can see relevant ads to you just like Google does. It does not affect your battery life at all.

 

[zany1]

high battery drain after updating to WP 8.1 is not an isolated problem its all over the fourums

im pretty sure this is the problem with geofencing.

geofencing is a new feature in windows phone 8.1 the phone keeps on checking your location continuously even though the app doesn't require it example IE , whats app etc pretty much any app. this is just like using nokia drive for 4 hours and your battery dies. constant use of gps reduces battery life and heats up the phone for no reason.

when ever this feature is accessed the phone does this in the background( the location icon on the top bar is not displayed how i know this is because it says so in settings-location )

How do i know its the problem with geofencing

heres a little experiment you guys can try out ( please don't mock this post if you haven't tried this out)

turn off location and use your phone normally for a day and you'll notice the battery performance is like pre update. and phone doesnt heat too.

 

[dgg4]

I had high battery drain and phone getting hot right after installing the 8.1 developer preview. I turned off GPS - which also turns off Cortana - and the issue went away.

I'm often in locations where there's little or no GPS service - my office building. That's how I figured out what was causing the batt drain/over-heating -- because it only happened when I was in those areas - and it was so severe.

My phone would be so hot it could burn your hand and the battery would fully discharge in an hour. In other locations with better GPS service - no real issue. Slightly higher battery drain than before 8.1, but not enough to bother me.

I'd like to use Cortana, but it needs to become a lot smarter about what to do when GPS signals are intermittent or fully blocked by surrounding structures.

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Post Edit: After reading this thread I realized I should point out I had Gmail installed when I was having these problems. I've uninstalled Gmail. I'll see if that allows the system to work better - both GPS on and GPS off.

More to come...

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PPS: It's definitely something to do with GPS. Went to the part of my building where GPS is spotty and often non-existent. Battery usage spiked to nearly -40%/hr (as reported by Battery Sense) and phone got way hot in less than 5 min. This was with Cortana/GPS on, but no Gmail installed. With Cortana/GPS off, this doesn't happen.

I'm still experimenting with the combination of Cortana/GPS and "sync my settings". More on that later...but for now, I believe the battery drain/overheating issue is GPS driven.

--------------------

PPPS: So turning off GPS (which turns off Cortana), removing Gmail, and turning off "sync my settings", but leaving backup, auto photo upload on, and 3 Exchange email accounts that get sync'ed every 15 min., my battery drain while not using the phone is down to less than 1% per hour....possibly even less. Wow! Streaming HQ music thru Beats Music, batt drain is about 5%/hr...which is not bad...certainly no worse than pre-WP8.1, possibly a tad better.

So that says - except for those services just listed - WP8.1 is really very efficient.

But something is wrong with the way Gmail, "sync my settings", and GPS/Cortana are implemented.

 

[sgraphics]

Graph shows the crazy drain after 8.1. Green line after disabling "Theme sync". Btw, I think I used the phone more today - opened HERE maps a few times and listened for audiobook for few hours.

All things considered, it seems better without Theme sync (1 hour more until Battery saver kicks in at 20%), but still very bad.

Tomorrow will test with Gmail sync set to "once every 30 mins". On Sunday will test with "Battery saver" turned off. Any more tests? Btw I have noticed the "location service" icon ON very often (when just unlocking phone)... so I'm guessing location service does a lot more than it used to in 8.0.

Few more things: Cortana is not at fault, because my phone does not have it (European HTC 8X). Also battery drain is not the problem with "installing apps after update" as the same problem still persists after a week.

 

[SwimSwim]

Ok, I now strongly believe that the changes to how WP8.1 syncs with Gmail is a bit culprit in why battery life is so poor. I changed Gmail to only sync manually, and while my battery still isn't as good as it was on WP8, it's still improved significantly. Back up from 12 hours of battery to 18 hours of battery. Still trying to change things to get back to my usual 22hours, but I can live (somewhat begrudgingly) with 18.

 

[tany3450]

I've made the gmail sycn 2 hours and will test it tomorrow. Lets hope this is the solution because I can't even complete a day with this battery performance :unhappysweat:

EDIT : yeah, it worked. Its quite good now also with Location turned off.

 

[DavidinCT]

Thanks for this thread... Verizon Nokia ICON here...

Yesterday, I did a hard reset, wiped back to factory, restored backup (for apps and accounts), let all the apps come down over battery and Wi-Fi. I let the battery die till I could not turn it on AT ALL. Then I did a full charge (newer phone, 2nd time full charge).

Following the Ideas in this thread...
-I have disabled Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Sense
-Bluetooth off
-NFC off
-Disabled Battery Saver
-Disabled everything in "Sync my settings"
-Set Hotmail to sync every 30 min (from As I use my device)
- leave Exchange as is (as things arrive).
- Set IE not to send information back to Microsoft on usage

Every app is disabled from background accept for Twitter, Facebook and Weave.

It is a little better but, It still seems like there is a drain. If I sit there and use it, I will check it when I start using it (nothing heavy, text or emails or checking settings), then when I am done (maybe 1-2 min tops) the battery goes down 3-5% or so. This should not happen with the minor use like that.

Any other ideas to try ? (disabling exchange cant do and wont disable Cortana or location, as what would be the point of having 8.1 ?)

Edit: Last night, played Real Racing 2 for about a 1/2 hour, talked on the phone for 2 hours and 47min, besides everything else during the day, when I was went to bed at 2am, there was still 18% on the battery. It seem better but, Just using the phone for 2-3 min (check text/email quick), I pretty much watched the battery go down 5-7% and playing a game ? In about 5-7min, I watched the battery drop by about 10%....

No question drain but, dam with all these disabled, I was able to use the phone for the entire day and still had a little to spare at the end of the day. It didn't fix it but, it sure helped.

No its not the beta phase. This is the final build. Cyan is just a firmware which will allow support for bluetooth and usb connections etc. and few minor tweeks and fixes.

If this is beta it would be released much much earlier.

Not sure this is the final build, even though it was claimed RTM, I think they will pull it back to resolve these issues. If they sell a 8.1 device that gets bad battery life and buggy apps (Cortana and other "bugs"), Windows Phone will fail. It would not be a good idea.

It is placebo, sorry. The advertising id it's just a unique identifier for advertising tracking from Microsoft so you can see relevant ads to you just like Google does. It does not affect your battery life at all.

He has a point, if you open a app, it will search for GPS, if it's opening a new Location setting, it could have an effect on battery. At least one would think ? THoughts ?

 

[prem_choudhary48]

I am very disappointed about bettery performance after preivew....earliar bettery consumption of whle night on bettery saver was 2% but now it gone 20%...., irritating...,,as well taking more time to chrge even.....

 

[sgraphics]

Ok, I can confirm Google sync "as they arrive" seems to be a battery hog.

Today, I think I used the phone the most, yet got the longest run-time with Google sync (calendar + email + contacts) set to 30 mins. Still, 12,5 hours to reach 20% is a long way off previous, wp8.0 time, when I averaged around 40% remaining late at night. Unfortunately don't have any graphs for that.

Gonna try turning battery saver off tomorrow, although I dont think it will change too much.

Overall it seems there are two culprits: Google sync is broken and background scheduling is unoptimized. What I mean by the latter is that it seems that instead scheduling actions for the same time, I think a lot of services schedule their own actions and access network and location randomly. So instead of doing 1 big computation seldomly, lot of smaller ones are done all the time. This results in a major battery draw (because antennas and sensors need to be turned on and off all the time and are not used 100%), especially on an older, unoptimized chipset as I have, HTC 8X.

It looks to me as if a lot of new features were added but too little time or attention was attributed integrating all this functionality to work together. I suggest the WP team to focus on this more.

 

[asfand247]

After all methods I have restored back to Windows Phone 8.0 using Nokia's Software Recovery Tool. Seems like you can downgrade while its a developer preview! Cheers!

 

[hardlyworkinggg]

I suspect the camera drivers could be at fault too. My phone was really hot and discharging quickly this morning and I couldn't figure out what was the cause. However, my camera app kept launching by itself without me pressing any buttons. Could it be that the camera is on in the background just that its not displaying anything? I read if some who can't even start their camera apps.

 

[Anojan Sivam]

I've done all of the tips !!!!!!!!
But if I use any app the battery is draining quickly !!!!!!!!!
What to do ????

 

[Anojan Sivam]

How didu do that ???

 

[SwimSwim]

After all methods I have restored back to Windows Phone 8.0 using Nokia's Software Recovery Tool. Seems like you can downgrade while its a developer preview! Cheers!

Has nothing to do with this being a Developer Preview, it has to do with the fact that Nokia Software Recovery Tool completely flashes the device and does a fresh install of the OS. Translation: Even when the official update comes out, you'll always be able to flash older versions of WP (assuming you're using a Lumia device. Other OEM's are out of luck on the downgrade front, in most circumstances).

 

[SwimSwim]

I'm becoming increasingly suspicious of Battery Saver somehow having a bug, causing the battery to drain MORE.

I'm still investigating, but it does seem that Battery Saver (as in the actual feature that makes a shield appear over the battery icon, not as in Batter Saver's background tasks) seems to somehow increase battery drain. Unfortunately, my analysis has thus far not been very scientific, as I've had too many variables by means such as varied usage patterns, different locations, using different services at different times, etc. I'll continue looking into it, but don't quote me on it. I simply recommend trying it out for yourself and seeing where you get. Mileage may vary.

EDIT: Possible explanation: It's trying hard to conserve battery by turning things off (such as radios), so when you pick it up, it needs energy to turn said radios back on. So maybe Battery Saver has better standby times, but if you're life me: you're constantly picking up your device, using it for aprox. 5minutes, then setting it back down, pick it back up after 3-7minutes, repeat.

Not conclusive yet, but a very promising lead and explanation.

 

[benyunusum]

Dear all;
After setting gmail sync to half an hour and disabling theme sync from system sync setting, my battery consumption rate has dropped from %10 to %4. By the way I also disabled location services.
Thanks again for your suggestions.

 

[novaprime9]

Here's something else I'm putting more weight in, now... when I'm in my office, my phone has no signal at all. I'm lucky if I get one bar of 1X.

My phone absolutely kills itself looking for a signal. KILLS itself. When I get here, I'm at about 96%. As of this writing, 8 hours after arriving, it's down to 35%.

This past weekend I was in DC. Walked around all day, took LOTS of pictures, texted a bit, used FaceBook... all that stuff. By the time I got back to where we were staying in the evening, I was down to 65%.

I think that there's some horrible algorithm running that is trying too hard to find a better signal. My phone always suffered when I was at work back in the wp7, 7.5, 7.8 and 8.0 days. But 8.1 makes me worry if I'll get home before it dies.

And being on Verizon, I can't tell it to stop looking for anything other than 1X- that's locked out.

Thoughts? Anyone else seeing something similar?