Services that drain battery

[Kaushik Dash]

Anybody have fast battery drain when using WhatsApp or people's hub? My battery drains like 2-3% in 5 mins.

Nokia Lumia 620 running GDR2 Amber.

 

[N_LaRUE]

Are you in a bad connectivity area? That could be one cause. Also how old is your phone? Sometime it take some time to settle.

However, what's probably happened is that some program has got hung up in the background and it appears these two are the reasons.

You can try a soft reset - Volume down + power button until there's a vibration then the phone will reboot - you need to reset your date and time if it isn't done automatically
Or you can go for the hard reset option (I feel the better option personally as it does some house cleaning) - Settings - About - Reset phone

I just did a reset on my phone and it's improved performance all around.

Some people will tell you to uninstall this and reinstall that and check several other settings but typically this is the best way to deal with it.

 

[fieldbaker]

Yes, WhatsApp is a killer for the battery. Mine drains just as fast, battery life is awesome when not using WhatsApp.

When using it you can see how fast it drains and the drain instantly stops when quitting WhatsApp. I try to avoid using this app as much as possible.

Soft resetting will not help with this, this is a a problem with the app.

 

[Joene90]

This is why I have a love / hate relationship with Whatsapp. Free messaging, yay. For about an hour and then your battery is dead, nay.

 

[N_LaRUE]

They also mentioned People Hub, which makes no sense. Also, I have no issues with Whatsapp (but then I probably don't use it as much as other people). One hour usage on a messaging app would be pretty shameful. Also it's only free for the first year.

 

[Kaushik Dash]

Good connectivity actually as my cellular internet speed goes upto 1 megabytes per second easily (and that's rare in India). I use wifi when at home My phone is just a bit over a month old (bought it on Dec 6th, 2013).

I have tried soft reset and hard reset (Hard reset it the day before yesterday as I had the problem before I did that) but the problem still remained. However, I should mention that it solved the problem upto some extent (Now atleast people's hub doesn't eat as much as it did before the reset). Whatsapp still eats even after the reset. :|

And yes, while not using WhatsApp, even the 620's (small) battery lasts wonderfully.

 

[N_LaRUE]

Anything with connectivity will drain your battery with intensive use. I'm not entirely sure why that is but it seems to be the case with all Lumia devices. Not sure about other WP devices.

Glad to hear that the hard reset worked with People but it would appear some work is needed with Whatsapp. Though I'm not entirely sure what can be done.

I often wonder how many of these issues relate to the tight APIs that MS has on the OS. That and I believe that some of the earlier hardware in the Lumias was not that great. That's just opinion though. Not sure what iOS devices or Android is like in these situations.

 

[Jordan Mills]

I found that my battery would drain in a couple of hours when bing weather occasionally got stuck in a loop.

 

[Boris Lozac]

I found that my battery would drain in a couple of hours when bing weather occasionally got stuck in a loop.

Definatelly.. How pathethic eh, their own app is among those.

 

[ebin5]

Waze drains battery like hell.

 

[rockstarzzz]

Never had issues with People hub or Bing apps. Yes whatsapp smothers my battery. I have uninstalled it since 3 months and have sworn to never go back till they fix that damn audio api backdoor as well as vibration on two simultaneous messages - those are sucking out your battery!

Yes, they still are using the audio heck, only the streaming is less frequently displayed. How to verify this? Play songs through your headphones streaming preferably. Now start chatting with someone on whatsapp. Every time an incoming message hits your phone, you will hear a blip/pause in the song. Also when you turn off streaming - you will often see that old streaming icon with no songs listed! Rooms, Facebook chat and Messenger chat are 10 times better on battery and messaging reliability on 3G.

TLDR: Don't use whatsapp or other apps till Windows Phone 8.1 improve anything.

 

[borasar]

that is correct, it still has an audio hack, still clears the playlist from time to time and shows the streaming icon, but I found it to be a big improvement from what it was before, agreed though still heavy on battery, hopefully it will improve now that whatsapp is working with nokia?

Never had issues with People hub or Bing apps. Yes whatsapp smothers my battery. I have uninstalled it since 3 months and have sworn to never go back till they fix that damn audio api backdoor as well as vibration on two simultaneous messages - those are sucking out your battery!

Yes, they still are using the audio heck, only the streaming is less frequently displayed. How to verify this? Play songs through your headphones streaming preferably. Now start chatting with someone on whatsapp. Every time an incoming message hits your phone, you will hear a blip/pause in the song. Also when you turn off streaming - you will often see that old streaming icon with no songs listed! Rooms, Facebook chat and Messenger chat are 10 times better on battery and messaging reliability on 3G.

TLDR: Don't use whatsapp or other apps till Windows Phone 8.1 improve anything.

 

[Mr Lebowski]

Ironically battery meter apps drain the battery and the more features they have the more they drain it, go figure...

 

[manicottiK]

Ironically battery meter apps drain the battery and the more features they have the more they drain it, go figure...

The sample below is incredibly simplistic, but it's all that battery apps have to do during their periodic run. They just need to get info about the battery and show it on a tile -- it's not enough to be a substantial draw on the actual power. Here's some real code to do this:

// Get info about the battery.
Battery MainBatteryInfo = Battery.GetDefault();

// Setup a new tile that shows the percent charged and the estimates runtime.
IconicTileData NewTileInfo = newIconicTileData();
NewTileInfo.Count = MainBatteryInfo.RemainingChargePercent;
NewTileInfo.WideContent1 = MainBatteryInfo.RemainingDischargeTime.ToString("hh:mm:ss") + " remaining";

// Find the tile on the Start screen and update it with the new info.
ShellTile ExistingTile = ShellTile.ActiveTiles.First();
ExistingTile.Update(NewTileInfo);

The better ones will also store the battery data in a file for later use (i.e., to draw charts of consumption). Still, that's just two pieces of data: the date/time that the update ran and the percent remaining. The actual analysis of the data can be done when the main app itself if running.

Moral: if the app is really just a battery level checking app and it doesn't do any other things, it isn't using much power and you shouldn't worry about it. At worst, if could be using your data plan at full speed and computing intensely for about 1 minute every hour -- Windows Phone itself won't let the app do more than that.

It is widely believed that there is an issue that occasionally causes batteries to drain quickly. At this point in time, no one here knows if this defect is in the Windows Phone OS as shipped by Microsoft or in firmware provided by Nokia. There might be multiple causes; the trigger might be multiple steps. The point is, no one yet knows "the" cause and everything you read on WP Central is a guess that worked for one person one time. Your mileage may vary.

 

[realwarder]

It is widely believed that there is an issue that occasionally causes batteries to drain quickly. At this point in time, no one here knows if this defect is in the Windows Phone OS as shipped by Microsoft or in firmware provided by Nokia. There might be multiple causes; the trigger might be multiple steps. The point is, no one yet knows "the" cause and everything you read on WP Central is a guess that worked for one person one time. Your mileage may vary.

Yep. If my phone starts to drain heavily and closing apps doesn't help then a reboot normally fixes it until the next time.

The problem has gotten better with each OS update, but there are still battery issues.

For instance it is trivial to see one bug: Run the game Hill Climb Racing (many do this, not just that one). Power off your phone without exiting, for instance end a level and hit the power button. Battery will continue to discharge as if you are still playing the game. This is bad - the app should be tombstoned and use no power until you power the phone back on.

 

[peachy001]

I have whined about this before, but solitaire is a killer. I am normally a guy that carefully backs out of apps properly, ensuring they are closed. Now, the other evening I left Solitaire, but only got as far as the title screen and then I locked my phone. I went to bed with 85% battery. Woke up with virtually nothing. I swear that game is some SETI project in disguise.