better battery life -- turn off location services in 8.1

[darth_furious]

My 1520 had much quicker drain at first. I would be at 20% mid day when I usually end the day at 40%. I suspected Cortana and the constant use of Location services. I turned off location services and battery life is back to normal. However, Cortana will not turn on unless I enable location services again. I think the geofencing is causing the drain, constantly checking where I am and powering on the GPS radio

 

[liam-ward]

My 1520 had much quicker drain at first. I would be at 20% mid day when I usually end the day at 40%. I suspected Cortana and the constant use of Location services. I turned off location services and battery life is back to normal. However, Cortana will not turn on unless I enable location services again. I think the geofencing is causing the drain, constantly checking where I am and powering on the GPS radio

I was literally testing this today as I suspected it was a problem with the battery drain. I'm currently in 68% after 8 hours with 1 day and two hours left. Not ideal but better than usual.

 

[wphashan]

Cortana, she is a bad girl. sucks much juice from my battery :asleep:

 

[Gaurav Bhattacharjee]

MS better change Cortana to where she only needs location services for location-based searches and functions.

 

[Xsled]

I think the problem is, as OP said, she is constantly check locations for GeoFencing. i.e. - Remind me to pick up milk when I am at the store. She is constantly looking for where you are to ensure she can alert us of those items.

My 1520 seems ok, my 1020 has taken a huge hit. Off the charger this morning at 730 cst, down to 30% at 1pm cst. Granted I am playing with it a little more, but...wow. Wife says her 1020 seems about normal, so, I don't know what the heck...

 

[krayziehustler]

I wonder if doing a hard reset will make it better.

my 1520 used to last me 2 days and a half and I have now lost an entire day. Still great but definitely got used to it

 

[anon(5562316)]

I'm in the UK so don't have her but am still getting huge battery drain. I'll give it a try though thanks.

 

[Xsled]

I dont use my 1520 near as much as my 1020. So, I am still seeing about two days on that. (If trends from Monday to today hold). My 1020 used to last the day, getting less than half a day now. Again though, using Cortana and playing around a lot right now.


Hope it gets better, or adjust my usage I guess.

Edit: Hope to avoid a Hard Reset if at all possible

 

[liam-ward]

I'm in the UK so don't have her but am still getting huge battery drain. I'll give it a try though thanks.

I'm from the UK too and,as mentioned above, I have noticed a drop.

 

[Xpider_MX]

Remember, we don't have an specific firmware yet, for drivers and better battery managment.

 

[AndrewL920]

I have been hard resetting my phone and the culprit is cortana and location service. This technology is great. Location service has a lot of function. But unfortunately, Location service and cortana are for 3,000-4,000 mah battery only.

 

[adamfehres]

i have this problem with my 925.. im in uk but had done cortana work around and where battery life usto last a good day and a half its now down to about 16 hours..... have tunred cortana off and gone back to UK region and battery is still horrible. checked my battery saver app and it show internet explorer as a big drain but i hav ehardly looked up anything on internet explorer have turned nearly every app to off in background as well. what would be nice is a way to reset the info in battery saver to check drains with certain feat

 

[Derek De Souza]

Right UK user here I feel your pain.
My 920 went from 100% to 32% in 7 hours, I didn't use the phone in this period of time. A hard reset with the same conditions gave me an increase in performance, The battery went from 100% to 68% in 7 hours. I then tried a mixture of solutions from forums where people had the same issue. As for now the battery has stayed at 100% for an hour (phone was left idle) so I think things are improving. Here's what I did:
In email + accounts change the download new items period to an hour or later intervals. I only changed Google + Yahoo times and left my Live account to update as items arrived. Apparently Google is the issue according to most people.
I made sure things like NFC, bluetooth etc are switched off. My location was left ON.
Then I made sure no app is allowed to run in the background, this can be done in the battery saver settings, in settings.
There is a new option called "Sync my settings" turned everything off. It includes themes, internet explorer, passwords and settings(i think) but yeah turned all of those off. Most people said it was just the themes that caused the problem but I didn't want the other things to sync either.

All these changes are giving me an improved performance. I will let my battery drain today, then charge it up to the max and do the 7 hour test. Let's see how much of a difference it makes.
Please let me know if this works for you, other readers will find it useful.

 

[Derek De Souza]

Also, I'm a lot less scared of performing a hard reset now. The progress bar with the cogs helps a lot and the restore function is great! The only things you need to restore yourself are the Music and Photos, that is if you're not subscribed to Xbox Music and download your music to the phone. Same with the photos, if you don't upload them to Onedrive then you need to make sure you save them on your PC first. Messages, ringtones, files(you created on the phone or that are on the cloud), apps + games, settings and the start screen layout and are all safe. Only downside is the restore process can take a long time, especially if you've got a lot of apps like I do.

 

[krayziehustler]

After a hard reset Tap To Wake is turned on by default. that is a massive battery drainer.

 

[DavidinCT]

I did a hardreset last night on my ICON.... picked the phone up at 6am and it's 9:20 now and my battery is at 89%.... No question still getting drain (all background apps are disabled besides 3), hardrest did not help. I am not willing to disable Cortana, as isn't that one of the main features of having 8.1 ?

 

[thomasdtran]

I did a hard reset on my 822. I had horrible battery drain. I just let the battery drain until it died, the last percentages took forever, but it shut off. Then I just charged it a few hours and battery seems to be better. I turned everything off so I'm going to try it with some apps okay in the background. I read that locations may be to blame, I put that on my action center.

 

[anon(5348756)]

I also get worse battery life on my 920 but honestly it still gets me through a normal day. I might get to battery saver mode (%20) at around 7/8pm but it lasts until 11pm, seems like this battery saver mode is more aggressive than it was in WP8. I'd rather have the battery last longer so I could use the phone more heavily during the day, but on a normal use basis it still lasts the whole day so the damage isn't really that bad.

 

[TaichiSurface]

I don't think location service is the cultprit here. Try to turn off as many app running in the background as possible and see it improves. My 620 runs WP8.1 dev for 2.5 days with light use and location service turned on. 920 with moderate use last me 18 hours (used heavily nonstop at the last few hours)

 

[Riley2521]

I'm literally losing 6.9% of battery per hour according to my battery monitor. That's pretty abysmal. And I'm not playing on it a lot either. Guess I'll try turning off location and see if that helps.