8.1 Massive Battery Problem

[Junior5f]

Hi everyone, I thought I should open this thread here since it's seems to be like a common 8.1 problem.

I have a 720 and with WP8 my battery easily lasted 2 days with normal usage and 3 days with light usage. I've just got the 8.1, and on it's first day, with almost light usage, it drained the battery from %100 to %4 in 24 hours. Today is the 2nd day, just 9 hours and %50 already gone. Location, NFC, Internet Sharing, Data Connection, everything is off and nothing running on the background except Whatsapp and yeah, I know it drains the battery pretty quickly but with WP8 I had Whatsapp & Battery running in the background as well. This is so ridiculous. I've defended and recommended WP since I've got my phone and now, in exchange for few good features (that it should have had in the beginning) and a nice make-up, we sacrifice more than half of our battery life.

Any suggestions?

 

[phonohead]

I suggest you adapt to the way of things. 24 hours is a good run, and you should be happy. 50% after 9 hours isn't bad either. You are not experiencing anything worth complaining about, imho.

 

[Junior5f]

Well I could have kept my old 1100, I was happy with it. I wanted more. And I was happy with my 720. Now I want what I had and what I had paid for. You could go to work with a car that has 60 HP and you could easily adapt to it, but if you wake up one morning and find out that more than half of the horses under the bonnet have disappeared, you would get pissed off and you would try to fix it, right?

 

[jollynk]

Hi,
I've got the same problem as yours.
I bought a Lumia 720 for its battery. After upgrading to 8.1 it lasts the half than it used to. :unhappy:

 

[jjmc2001]

I have a 920 and have experienced the same problem. I spoke with customer service at both NOkia and AT&T and they are both clueless. When first installed it drained my battery to 0% in less than 3 hours . After multiple soft resets it has improved to just being terrible. I have been a big Windows phone fan but if this doesn;t improve I am moving on.

 

[gwinegarden]

Have you checked to see what is allowed to run in the background?

After I upgraded, I noticed that everything was then allowed. I had to turn off a big bunch.

 

[sharmakartik93]

So I'm not the only one with 720 on cyan facing battery issues

 

[Ritesh Bhatia]

I am on 820 and facing the same issue. Battery is draining at much faster rate now.

 

[FAHMI BASSEM]

Even with cyan????

 

[FAHMI BASSEM]

It seems that our old devices aren't compatible with 8.1 :/

 

[JamesPTao]

I have a 920 and have the same if not better battery life. Have you checked under settings to see what is using the most battery? With 8.1 it will tell you what apps even how much the phone is using so you can see what is killing battery life.

 

[Junior5f]

Like I said in the original post, everything is off but Wi-Fi, and only Whatsapp allowed to run in the background. And I barely used the phone.

I just don't get Microsoft. Don't they test it before using it, and don't they put a Developer's Preview to find the problems? Can't they see the bloody difference? And why in the hell do they take away the option to disable wi-fi when the phone is locked? It was a super useful feature when you are not using it for a couple of hours, and they just took it away, WHY?!? I believe this is one of the reasons for the major battery drainage.

 

[Geddeeee]

Whatsapp is your problem. It's a known battery destroyer.

Wi-Fi always on uses minimal battery. Less than cellular data. Stop Whatsapp from running in the background, and watch your battery magically stop draining. Same with FB Messenger. Badly written apps cause problems. Learn what to use and what not to use.....

 

[Junior5f]

Whatsapp is your problem. It's a known battery destroyer.

Wi-Fi always on uses minimal battery. Less than cellular data. Stop Whatsapp from running in the background, and watch your battery magically stop draining. Same with FB Messenger. Badly written apps cause problems. Learn what to use and what not to use.....

I know, but as I said in the first post, I had WhatsApp running in WP8 too and I had twice the battery life that I have right now.

 

[Geddeeee]

I know, but as I said in the first post, I had WhatsApp running in WP8 too and I had twice the battery life that I have right now.

You are only on the 2nd day??
With WP you have to 'train' the battery. Give it about a week of normal use and charge, and you should see the battery come back to what it was. Should be even better with 8.1.

 

[s2mikey]

You are only on the 2nd day??
With WP you have to 'train' the battery. Give it about a week of normal use and charge, and you should see the battery come back to what it was. Should be even better with 8.1.

Agreed, it does seem that a few days are needed for the battery and charging system to get itself sorted out. Weird, but true.

 

[ShinraCorp]

Whatsapp is your problem. It's a known battery destroyer.

Wi-Fi always on uses minimal battery. Less than cellular data. Stop Whatsapp from running in the background, and watch your battery magically stop draining. Same with FB Messenger. Badly written apps cause problems. Learn what to use and what not to use.....

Do you know an alternative to it? I need some sort of messaging app to contact my international friends (btw they're all on Android and iPhone so cross-platform is a must )

 

[aikidaves]

So MANY battery threads, so little time. Sigh.

Things to try:

Soft reset.
Recalibrate battery - run it down until phone shuts off, wait a few, then charge to 100%.
Check the app usage in Battery Saver for runaway apps. Reinstall (or replace) any that use more than you think they should.
Open each app on your phone and make sure that it's set up properly.
Check the sync settings for each of you email accounts and make the time between syncs as long as is comfortable for you.
Make sure that the only apps running in the background are the ones you want to run there.
If you don't use the Cortana tile, unpin it from your Start screen.
If you don't run your battery below 20%, turn off Battery Saver - there's a usually small but sometimes noticeable impact to it checking your battery's charge at whatever interval it does it.

If all else fails, go drastic with a hard reset or even a reinstall using NSRT (or whatever the equivalent is for your brand of phone).

Note that updates can screw up a phone, just like they can screw up a PC. This is why re-installs and resets often help with performance and battery life.

 

[Junior5f]

So MANY battery threads, so little time. Sigh.

Things to try:

Soft reset.
Recalibrate battery - run it down until phone shuts off, wait a few, then charge to 100%.
Check the app usage in Battery Saver for runaway apps. Reinstall (or replace) any that use more than you think they should.
Open each app on your phone and make sure that it's set up properly.
Check the sync settings for each of you email accounts and make the time between syncs as long as is comfortable for you.
Make sure that the only apps running in the background are the ones you want to run there.
If you don't use the Cortana tile, unpin it from your Start screen.
If you don't run your battery below 20%, turn off Battery Saver - there's a usually small but sometimes noticeable impact to it checking your battery's charge at whatever interval it does it.

If all else fails, go drastic with a hard reset or even a reinstall using NSRT (or whatever the equivalent is for your brand of phone).

Note that updates can screw up a phone, just like they can screw up a PC. This is why re-installs and resets often help with performance and battery life.

Thanks aikidaves,

I've already done everything except the drastic measures that you stated in the end. I'm going to give it a few more days to see if it will adapt on it's own like geddeeee suggested, and then I'll try hard reset or NSRT.

 

[sharmakartik93]

I will try these steps