What a mysterious battery drain...

[klargh]

I've been plagued by what seems to be random battery drainage on my Lumia 920 (like others in this forum can attest). Normally I get about 0.5-1% per hour battery drain but then out of the blue it would drain 17+% per hour with no end in sight until the 920 croaks its dying breath.
Well, random might not be the correct term cause there seems to be a higher chance of it happening moments after I lose and reconnect the cellular on the 920 (I'm on AT&T). The college I attend to have buildings that are not GSM-friendly so my phone instantly loses cellular connection the moment I walk into any section of the campus buildings where there isn't a window nearby. Sometimes when I leave the building, the cellular signal indicator on the 920 will dance between E, LTE, and no bars. If I turn on and off airplane mode, it clears itself and stays static LTE.
Anyways, shortly after losing and reconnecting, the dreaded battery drain seem to begin and results in part of the phone getting a tad warmer. I threw it into airplane mode after losing about 50% (today was cold outside and I didn't look at my phone for three hours) and it still continued to drain (about a % per 4 minutes). Then out of curiosity I took it out of airplane mode and dialed ##3282# (hooray, field test returned after Amber!) and set the cellular to 3G only. And now after an hour, it hasn't dropped 1% of the battery... No restart or soft reset involved...

Soooooooooooooo..... Could it have something to do with either the 2G or 4G (LTE) on the 920? Or the 920 reconnecting on AT&T Network? Or just pure coincidence? But why would it then continue draining in Airplane mode?? What a mystery! Would be nice if this phone was more reliable battery-wise instead of having to be in a constant state of dread of finding myself with a dead phone when pulling it out of my pocket one of these days...

 

[jonathanrn]

Background tasks?

 

[klargh]

Background tasks?

Tried with everything on, battery drain, tried with everything off, battery drain on a separate occasion =/. Bing News, Bing Weather, Cook with YumvY, extras+info, and myTube in the list under Advanced.

 

[Kyle Holz]

I have the 8XT myself and constantly lose connection with Sprint's towers in my area.

I noticed that after I installed Bing Weather I had a massive battery drain. Normally I can squeeze a little over 2 days (Light user), and after installing bing weather it was a massive drain.

I barely had half of a day of battery life with the app set to run background tasks and having it as a live tile.

Take a look at that app and see if your milage improves.

 

[fwaits]

Next time it happens (Or when you notice the drain in progress that is), restart the phone and see if the drain then stops. I haven't had this happen in quite some time, but I did see it every now and then and a restart always halted the problem. Not sure what the exact cause was after repeated tries to pin it to something very specific.

 

[pankaj981]

Weird coz my battery life seems to have improved when using LTE on a Rogers 920 on T-Mobile

 

[klargh]

I have the 8XT myself and constantly lose connection with Sprint's towers in my area.

I noticed that after I installed Bing Weather I had a massive battery drain. Normally I can squeeze a little over 2 days (Light user), and after installing bing weather it was a massive drain.

I barely had half of a day of battery life with the app set to run background tasks and having it as a live tile.

Take a look at that app and see if your milage improves.

Well, I have bing weather only update on wifi currently with background set to on and I get less than 1% battery drain idling. I have had this phone for a year now and I have had the massive battery drain multiple times before having bing weather (since it's a new app), so I'm not sure if it's a cause. Might be contributing now in unique situations, but I'll uninstall it today and see if I can get the drainage to trigger tomorrow when I go to college again (with same scenario of not locking the phone on 3G).

 

[klargh]

Next time it happens (Or when you notice the drain in progress that is), restart the phone and see if the drain then stops. I haven't had this happen in quite some time, but I did see it every now and then and a restart always halted the problem. Not sure what the exact cause was after repeated tries to pin it to something very specific.

Yeah, I've had two lumia 920s over the last year and both have had the battery drainage at what seems like random times. My solution at the time (like what you suggest) has been to restart the phone to quit the drain. I was just super curious and wanted to know if anybody else on the forums tried messing with the cellular settings in field test because this time around I was able to stop the drain by locking the phone to 3G (without need of restarting).

 

[klargh]

Weird coz my battery life seems to have improved when using LTE on a Rogers 920 on T-Mobile

Out of curiosity, does your cellular stick (stay constant) when it reconnects on T-Mobile after losing your cellular connection by going into a building that is not GSM-friendly? Like where it can't stay connected to 2G, 3G/4G, LTE and keeps disconnected every other second? Mine on AT&T does this for a while when I leave a building maybe half the time (other times the connection sticks).

 

[metalchick719]

To the OP - how do you get 0.5-1% discharge of your battery per hour normally? Mine is normally 3-4% per hour. :-/

 

[Jas00555]

To the OP - how do you get 0.5-1% discharge of your battery per hour normally? Mine is normally 3-4% per hour. :-/

+920. I was wondering the same thing. I would love to have 1% per hour and have my phone last for 10 days XD

 

[SBaljeet]

+920. So would I! Evn i have 3-4% battery drain on my phone. Weird thing is if i charge my phone to full before sleep i see the battery at somewhere around 73-77% after my 7 hours sleep.. roughly 3-4% drainage when phone is completely idle! Well the battery was much better when the GDR2 was just released..but with time it has started getting worse..

 

[klargh]

To the OP - how do you get 0.5-1% discharge of your battery per hour normally? Mine is normally 3-4% per hour. :-/

+920. I was wondering the same thing. I would love to have 1% per hour and have my phone last for 10 days XD

+920. So would I! Evn i have 3-4% battery drain on my phone. Weird thing is if i charge my phone to full before sleep i see the battery at somewhere around 73-77% after my 7 hours sleep.. roughly 3-4% drainage when phone is completely idle! Well the battery was much better when the GDR2 was just released..but with time it has started getting worse..

The 0.5-1% discharge is when it's idling and not being used, like overnight. I'm not sure what's different between my 920 and yours, but I really don't have many background tasks and I close out most of my programs by mashing on the back button a ton before I turn off the screen of the phone (and close IE tabs...). I also turn off location and NFC cause I don't use them often. I normally charge the phone during the night and then unplug it before I fall asleep. After 7 or 8 hours of sleep, my phone is still at 100% when I check (my phone hovers at around 100% for 6-8 hours before it starts losing a % per hour. I wonder if Nokia made the 100% threshold large then devide the rest of the battery amongst the remaining 99%...

So, a follow up. I uninstalled all applications that had background tasks (the ones mentioned above). I only have Extras + Info under Advanced for background task. I also turned off Location just to make sure. I then went to my classes inside the not GSM friendly campus buildings to see if my phone will begin the battery drain. When I left the building, my phone was at 95% battery. Sure enough, the phone began to drain again after the phone reconnected to the cellular network. In four hours with the phone idling in my pocket, the phone has dropped down to 58%. I then opened up Field Test and changed the setting to 3G. After three hours, I checked the phone and it was at 55%... I'm going to see if switching it back to Automatic starts the battery drain or not in a little while.

So... uhhhh... yeah. I guess I'll see if I can continue to get the same results or not over the next few days with my no background tasks, no location, no nfc enabled device. I'll try to set the mail to daily instead of As Items Arrive to see if that might be contributing to the battery drain (read it in one of the other forum threads) before trying the next round of testing...

Maybe I'll keep it in 3G one of these days to see if it's any cellular settings or if the drain only happens when set to automatic...

I feel like I'm on a wild goose chase sometimes... lol

 

[boshkop]

Before GDR3 I too had 2-3% battery drain. Now with GDR3 it's 0.5-1%.

 

[jonathanrn]

I take my 920 off the charger at 6am and by the time I go to sleep at 10pm, I'm usually between 50-60% remaining. Needless to say, I'm happy. At work, everyone always has their iPhones charging periodically throughout the day.

 

[realwarder]

It may be Internet Explorer. Go to it, close all tabs and then use the back button to close out of it.

 

[ttsoldier]

 

[rockstarzzz]

http://forums.windowscentral.com/nokia-lumia-920/215695-lumia-920-battery-your-opinions.html - Lumia 920 battery is a yoyo!