Internet Explorer 11: Battery Vampire

[Symthic]

So I upgraded to 8.1 last week, and I noticed that my battery life was sporadic. That is, sometimes it'd be very good, and other times it'd be gone within a few hours. Thankfully, the new Battery Saver now has the function to see what's draining what. What I found was a bit surprising...



What on Earth is that?

Internet Explorer takes up more battery life than both YouTube and music playback combined. How does that even work? I'd think that it'd be one of the less consuming apps available, but somehow it's the most gluttonous of everything by a large margin.

Just wondering if anyone else was aware of this.

 

[anon(7900571)]

do you use ie often ? if so battery sense will show this on top since you are using it mostly , and yes it does drain battery significantly (though this is still a preview of wp8.1)

 

[Symthic]

I use it as often as anything else, but I'd expect it to take less battery than YouTube, because that's a constant stream of data that also includes video and audio playback.

Hopefully Internet Explorer gets more optimized when the full release arrives...

 

[ale2999]

I also have this...

 

[Chris_Germany]

IE is the same battery hog on 8 and 8.1 ! I read somewhere its because of the cpu handling it not so good. Iphone for example is much better with browsing, because of its cpu. That's what I read.

 

[Ali Assaedi]

thats normal, rendering website takes lots of cpu power(some gpu too)

thats why when you compare speeds between one mobile and the other, the browser speed test is the main event

music player only calculates few cpu commands
video(youtube) player calculates lots of mini gpu commands.. plus downloading

but ie, has to do all that crap and lots more

 

[xconomicron]

Check how many tabs you have open. Apparently IE 11 creates new tabs each time you search....

 

[Chris_Germany]

Open tabs don't matter. They don't use cpu power!

 

[xconomicron]

Interesting...is this something new w/ IE 11?

 

[James8561]

try using UC Browser instead. it loads pages a lot faster.

 

[Chris_Germany]

try using UC Browser instead. it loads pages a lot faster.

Still has to do th same tasks as IE. Battery drain should be the same

 

[Bernard Ofori]

whatsapp drains my battery like water going down the drain. lord i hope we get an update soon

 

[LumiaNation]

Seems same to me, I like IE 11

 

[realwarder]

Sites are pretty heavy with JavaScript these days which uses a lot of CPU.

Make sure your IE settings are set to Mobile to use lighter sites when possible.

 

[Petr Zizka]

Hello all,
basically, I have very similar experience. Internet Explorer background task drains my battery in idle! No streaming, no HTML5, etc. After many tests, it seems it is somehow related to wifi.

If no wifi is in use then it is OK. Issue appear once I turn WIFI on, even for a couple of minutes. From that moment it is happening. Even if I turn wifi back off, still happening. Soft reset helps.

Running official WP8.1 version.