Think I found the cause of severe battery drain - and it's the Facebook app

superkrad

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I got my Lumia 900 the day it came out, and battery life was great. A few days later I noticed that sometimes when I'd check it, the device would be really hot and my battery would spike. I turned off all my background tasks and deleted the last few apps I had installed (one of them being Facebook). I also searched these forums and downloaded the Nokia Diagnostics app, which shows the exact amount of battery discharge occurring at any given time.

Since then, my battery has been great, lasting all day. My average battery drain hovers around 100mv and will sometimes spike to 200 or 300 if there is a big task going on.

Last week I got tempted by the Facebook 2.5 update and re-installed the app. All was fine, and then two or three days later I noticed the device would come up warm and my battery would be shot. Opening the Diagnostics app showed my battery discharge at 800mv with nothing opened and all background tasks turned off!

Yesterday, on a hunch, I un-installed the Facebook app and since then Im back to 100mv average. My hunch is that the Facebook app gets special privileges and is allowed to do some core tasks in the background, much like the Me hub. Every once in a while something gets stuck and caught in a loop, draining battery until a hard reset.

Anecdotal evidence to be sure but I am wondering if people could leave a note here saying if they have experienced the drain (or not) and if they have the Facebook app installed. Maybe collectively we can determine the source of the problem!
 

ninjaap

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I have FB installed and have great battery life (1.5 days). But I don't have it pinned and barely use it. So that might make a difference, since I know some apps/Live Tiles will not update if you don't use them for a while
 

superkrad

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My hunch is that you have to open Facebook once on a fresh boot for the issue to occur. So if you have it installed, reboot but dont open it, you wouldnt be affected.
Justin, even though this runs counter to my theory, would you mind trying to completely uninstall the app for a couple days and see if your battery drain goes away?
 

justin071894

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My hunch is that you have to open Facebook once on a fresh boot for the issue to occur. So if you have it installed, reboot but dont open it, you wouldnt be affected.
Justin, even though this runs counter to my theory, would you mind trying to completely uninstall the app for a couple days and see if your battery drain goes away?
I haven't installed it yet on my phone. I'm going to try out the battery for a couple of days, then I'll install the app and test it out. I'll have it pinned to my start screen and then without it. Too see if that makes a difference.
 

gtbuzz

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I experience this same heating / battery usage issue and I don't have the FB app installed. It happened a lot during the first two weeks but then seemingly went away for maybe 6 weeks or so. Been happening pretty much daily the past 2 weeks.

I notice when it happens, if I do a long press to view the recent apps, the thumbnails take very long to render so I suspect something is hogging CPU cycles. Haven't installed the new update yet, so don't know if that fixes it.
 

hasasimo

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I have Facebook and no battery drain issue. It's also pinned to the start screen. I don't have toast or push notifications enabled though, so the live tile is essentially just a shortcut to the app for me.
 

justin071894

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I experience this same heating / battery usage issue and I don't have the FB app installed. It happened a lot during the first two weeks but then seemingly went away for maybe 6 weeks or so. Been happening pretty much daily the past 2 weeks.

I notice when it happens, if I do a long press to view the recent apps, the thumbnails take very long to render so I suspect something is hogging CPU cycles. Haven't installed the new update yet, so don't know if that fixes it.
I took a video of what the phone does when the battery is hot. I'm going to try and upload it too YouTube.
 

sdreamer

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I've commented on other threads regarding battery drain, and from my experience it's from data being on. Tonight I went to my aunt's house which is notorious within our family to having no signal in her living room (on all carriers), but to my suprised I had 1 bar. When my Lumia was pocketed, it apparently went to 0 bars, and by the time I noticed, the chrome around the camera was at that point where it it feels like it might be too hot to touch (still tangible once you realize it isn't that hot though). Battery diagnostics were in the 500-600 mA drain. I turned off cellular data (not airplane mode, but the cellular>data off), and it cooled down in a couple minutes and idle returned back to 90-110 mA drain. Took me a couple hours to realize this, and in 2.5 hours with no use, I went from 72% to 33%, which usually takes me the entire day to reach with light to light-moderate use. I didn't have the Facebook installed at this point, nor did I have any tasks running. Seeing how Nokia had memory management problems with data before I wouldn't be suprised if there was still something wrong in that area. There were a couple of accounts when this happened, data would not connect, and I'd have to power cycle to get it working again.
 

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