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How do Google's push notifications work?

This applies to:-
Gmail (new mail)
Market app updates
Google Intent (Chrome2Phone for example)
I have a Nexus One on a Vodafone contract. It doesn't have the Vanilla ROM but the Vodafone ROM. What I've noticed is that, with each of the 3 apps listed above, the information pushed to the phone is almost never instant. New email notification on Gmail, for instance, can take upto 40 (yes forty!) minutes to come on my phone. Although on certain occasions I get the notification within a second.
From reading experiences on forums, I think if your phone is unlocked then the push notifications are near instant. This makes me think that the Vodafone ROM might be interfering, but it shouldn't if I have 3G mobile internet access on all the time, which I do. Auto-sync is also, always, enabled.
So can Google's push notifications be interfered by mobile carrier networks in anyway? Thanks.

Hi,
having read about push notifications the behavior you described is exactly the one intended. If the phone is idle and locked the notifications are delayed (in fact by Google) to not drain the battery. Might look for the link later. Was in the development documentation of push notifications.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDAApp

slow23 said:
Hi,
having read about push notifications the behavior you described is exactly the one intended. If the phone is idle and locked the notifications are delayed (in fact by Google) to not drain the battery. Might look for the link later. Was in the development documentation of push notifications.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDAApp
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Hi,
Thanks for your reply. It is very interesting that Google withholds notifications intentionally. But I'm not sure it has been implemented correctly because, for example, one would assume that the intent delivered in case of Chrome2Phone should be near instant. In practice it's not always so.

On my Wildfire I still get new Gmail notifications instantly even if my phone screen is off. Same like if I'd receive a SMS message. I think that behavious is as designed by Google
However, when you setup your gmail account to receive emails from other accounts (via POP3) then this is incrementally delayed by Google depending on your email traffic.

Probably you have auto-sync unchecked? My gmail notifies me instantly if I turn on auto-sync.
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

Nexus S Gmail App Push Problem - WIND Mobile

Well the title says it. I have had my Nexus S for over a week now and I have yet to have consistent Gmail notifications being pushed to my phone. They are always delayed...sometimes by 2 minutes, sometimes by 20 minutes and sometimes by over an hour. All of this while being in a 3G zone and having my APN settings in order.
Has anyone else been experiencing these issues? I never had these issues with my Nexus One (Tmobile) which I had since it was available for shipping in Canada.
Something to note, when I'm on WIFI. I instantly get all my push notifications within 5 seconds.
So obviously my phone is turning its 3G radio off for some unknown period , how do I change this so it never turns off 3G band?
I went into *#*#info#*#*...but before I mess around with the settings there, I'll get some advice from you guys.
I'm guessing this is software related and not hardware?

factory format reset?
It works fine on mine, no problem
i did not do anything special
just plug in my the normal Wind Mobile APN
and everything else is just dandy
the only bug i found is with the notifications / alerts
because i check the email from at least 5 different sources
if the email gets moved to archive (All Mail)
then the SNS will not notify me that a new email has arrived, even though it is there
when i was using the SGS, it still alerted me even when another mail application already downloaded the mail and archived it

The mail that I want instantly pushed to my phone is all in my Inbox which is set to already set to sync.
I don't know why this is happening to my phone...let me show you something from Google's blog:
"Notification bar icons (Wi-Fi, network coverage bars, etc.): Turn green when you have an uninhibited connection to Google, white when you don't. Hint: if you're in a hotel or airport using Wi-Fi, the bars won't turn green until you launch the browser and get past the captive portal."
I want to know how stay in this captive portal...is there a file I can substitute that's found on the /system/ folders or something....maybe a sync file or whatever that can determine that this phone constantly syncs instead of having the 3g radio going off whenever it feels like.

there is a existing discussion about this here
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=56f54d35a6a0da29&hl=en
if we are able to google's attention, they might fix it.
mean time, you are not alone.

Delayed Facebook notifications

I've just switched from Android (running MIUI Rom on my Galaxy S) to Windows Phone on a HTC Titan running 7740. One of the things that's bugging me (other than toasts disappearing and no central store of notifications) is that Facebook notifications for me always seem to be 5 minutes delayed. If someone sends me a Facebook message or posts on my wall, the notification always takes 5 minutes to come through to my phone. This happens whether i'm on Wifi or 3G. I've got notifications set to 'As they arrive' but the delay persists. This is especially annoying when someone sees my Facebook status as Online and tries chatting to me and all my replies are 5 minutes late.
Is this the same for everyone on Mango? My outlook/exchange notifications come through instantly so I wonder if this is a Facebook issue or if its the Windows Phone implementation of push notifications.
I also find the Facebook Live Tile is slow to update - it will show I have a notification, i'll read that notification but the Live Tile doesn't update for a while.
Replies are much appreciated!

Facebook notifications are slow as he'll. Just the way it is...
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk

In the Facebook app notifications are a little bit delayed, but when chatting its almost instant like texting. At least for me anyway.

Notifications barely work and when they do, they are atleast 10 mins delayed. I've noticed this for most of the apps including kik,Facebook,whatsapp,weather channel.
Most of the time I don't receive push and have togo into the app to see that I have messages
Sent from my T8788 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App

Some information that would be worth including with the posts from users experienceing problems.
Location and carrier. It's pretty easy to set up your profile to display these automatically.
Like the poster above from Chicago, chatting is nearly instantaneous for me in the Minneapolis area.
I did recieve a friend request notification about 30 seconds after I had received it on my iPhone.
Different Notification have different settable priorities by the developers.
So, recieving a Toast about a friend request could be considered by the develoeprs to be low priority, since it does not require an immediate response.

I moved from Louisiana to Pennsylvania. They're still slow as hell. Everywhere in between, there was no change. The Vibrant with the Official Facebook Apps has no issue anywhere, nor does the iTouch when used in various places on WiFi.
If it is high priority on every other platform, I don't see why it cannot be high priority here.
It's called a Social Network for a reason. Friend requires are high priority on this...
The issue just isn't about friend request. Chat, Messages, Posts, Picture Comments, Photo Tags, etc. are all more than considerably slower than on other platforms. EVERYTHING is slower.
Maybe Facebook is just low priority on this platform, period? I'm jumping the gun because you'll eventually get there, it seems...

Facebook app activity notifications are instant. Chat notifications are instant. Every other app that's supposed to be instant is. However, the "Me" tile is delayed, but we all know that.

N8ter said:
I moved from Louisiana to Pennsylvania. They're still slow as hell. Everywhere in between, there was no change. The Vibrant with the Official Facebook Apps has no issue anywhere, nor does the iTouch when used in various places on WiFi.
If it is high priority on every other platform, I don't see why it cannot be high priority here.
It's called a Social Network for a reason. Friend requires are high priority on this...
The issue just isn't about friend request. Chat, Messages, Posts, Picture Comments, Photo Tags, etc. are all more than considerably slower than on other platforms. EVERYTHING is slower.
Maybe Facebook is just low priority on this platform, period? I'm jumping the gun because you'll eventually get there, it seems...
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maybe if you'd just sign in at one location only it would work alot better because I'm having no issues at all.

prohibido_por_la_ley said:
maybe if you'd just sign in at one location only it would work alot better because I'm having no issues at all.
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Maybe they should fix it to work correctly. Everyone else's clients work. I'm not the issue
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk

N8ter said:
Maybe they should fix it to work correctly. Everyone else's clients work. I'm not the issue
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Click to collapse
Usually have Androids to test around the house and both WP7 and my current Android work fine for FB notifications.

I didn't say they didn't work. I said they were slow as hell. If I was so obviously wrong, this thread wouldn't exist. I am not the OP. People on other forums are having the same complaints about the PUSH Notification speed for third party apps on this platform.
Again: Issue is not the notifications "Not Working." Issue is that the Notifications are noticeably delayed compared to Android and iOS (and Blackberry and WebOS) handsets. Sometimes you get the Notifications 10 minutes to an hour after the Facebook applications on Android and iOS, which come in at virtually the same time. I notice this on a daily basis, because I always have my Vibrant, HD7, and iTouch 4 with me and I'm almost always on a WiFi connection.
Since I always have those devices with me, it's not necessarily a deal breaker, because I tend to just use those phones for everything except Sending/Recieving SMSes and making calls, anyways. However, if the HD7 was my only/lone device, it WOULD be a huge issue for me.
The whole concept of PUSH notifications is that they aren't delayed because the server PUSHes them to your phone the instant they come in. That is not happening for a lot of apps on WP7 right now. The Notifications are late 95% of the time, sometimes unacceptably so.
Everytime a Notification is late, it basically forces me to use another device to respond to that Notification. Do you see how that can frame someone's "perspective" of the user experience?

N8ter said:
I didn't say they didn't work. I said they were slow as hell. If I was so obviously wrong, this thread wouldn't exist. I am not the OP. People on other forums are having the same complaints about the PUSH Notification speed for third party apps on this platform.
Again: Issue is not the notifications "Not Working." Issue is that the Notifications are noticeably delayed compared to Android and iOS (and Blackberry and WebOS) handsets. Sometimes you get the Notifications 10 minutes to an hour after the Facebook applications on Android and iOS, which come in at virtually the same time. I notice this on a daily basis, because I always have my Vibrant, HD7, and iTouch 4 with me and I'm almost always on a WiFi connection.
Since I always have those devices with me, it's not necessarily a deal breaker, because I tend to just use those phones for everything except Sending/Recieving SMSes and making calls, anyways. However, if the HD7 was my only/lone device, it WOULD be a huge issue for me.
The whole concept of PUSH notifications is that they aren't delayed because the server PUSHes them to your phone the instant they come in. That is not happening for a lot of apps on WP7 right now. The Notifications are late 95% of the time, sometimes unacceptably so.
Everytime a Notification is late, it basically forces me to use another device to respond to that Notification. Do you see how that can frame someone's "perspective" of the user experience?
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Click to collapse
mine aren't late, usually a few seconds to a couple mins at the most. Not an issue at all and my HD7 is the only device I carry.

N8ter said:
I didn't say they didn't work. I said they were slow as hell. If I was so obviously wrong, this thread wouldn't exist. I am not the OP. People on other forums are having the same complaints about the PUSH Notification speed for third party apps on this platform.
Again: Issue is not the notifications "Not Working." Issue is that the Notifications are noticeably delayed compared to Android and iOS (and Blackberry and WebOS) handsets. Sometimes you get the Notifications 10 minutes to an hour after the Facebook applications on Android and iOS, which come in at virtually the same time. I notice this on a daily basis, because I always have my Vibrant, HD7, and iTouch 4 with me and I'm almost always on a WiFi connection.
Since I always have those devices with me, it's not necessarily a deal breaker, because I tend to just use those phones for everything except Sending/Recieving SMSes and making calls, anyways. However, if the HD7 was my only/lone device, it WOULD be a huge issue for me.
The whole concept of PUSH notifications is that they aren't delayed because the server PUSHes them to your phone the instant they come in. That is not happening for a lot of apps on WP7 right now. The Notifications are late 95% of the time, sometimes unacceptably so.
Everytime a Notification is late, it basically forces me to use another device to respond to that Notification. Do you see how that can frame someone's "perspective" of the user experience?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try keeping WiFi off on your Windows Phone 7 with a SIM in.
It looks like WiFi is shutting off when the phone screen shuts off. When I let my phone sit for a while, and then turn the screen back on, the WiFi icon is animated. Then it turns solid, which I am guessing means that is was connecting and is now connected.
Obviously, no push notification will come through if WiFi is not connected and no SIM is in the phone.
I have not noticed any delays when I don't have WiFi on. So, there might be some problem related to data, where WiFi does not transition to 3G.
I have also noticed that WiFi shuts off on the iPhone and reconnects when you turn the screen on.
I am starting to think that delays might be related to this.

JVH3 said:
Try keeping WiFi off on your Windows Phone 7 with a SIM in.
It looks like WiFi is shutting off when the phone screen shuts off. When I let my phone sit for a while, and then turn the screen back on, the WiFi icon is animated. Then it turns solid, which I am guessing means that is was connecting and is now connected.
Obviously, no push notification will come through if WiFi is not connected and no SIM is in the phone.
I have not noticed any delays when I don't have WiFi on. So, there might be some problem related to data, where WiFi does not transition to 3G.
I have also noticed that WiFi shuts off on the iPhone and reconnects when you turn the screen on.
I am starting to think that delays might be related to this.
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Click to collapse
It happens even when WiFi is off, plus, when the WiFi shuts off the phone falls back to 3G and I get a full 3G signal here.
You're not onto anything
The Vibrant is still way faster than the HD7 when I'm away from Home and Off of WiFi. Obviously the iTouch won't get anything off of WiFi.
Additionally, the device does not sleep WiFi when it's plugged into a charger and I use USB extenders and almost always have them on a charger when I'm at home or in the car. My phone charge cables are like 20 feet long, Lol.
---------- Post added at 09:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:27 PM ----------
prohibido_por_la_ley said:
mine aren't late, usually a few seconds to a couple mins at the most. Not an issue at all and my HD7 is the only device I carry.
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I'm changing carriers in two months and going down to one phone. I can assure you I will not have to worry about this when that happens. It's not something I should have to deal with, and it's not something you or anyone else should have to deal with either.

Are you just talking about the facebook app or people's hub integration?
People's hub is always up to date for me and messages through it are instant. I don't use the facebook app so not sure there. Neither do groups (like the dog park group i am part of) and bugs me the most. The app says it does but when you click on a notification it takes you to the facebook mobile and says not found. For groups i use IE9. Works great even as the desktop version. Why even use the app when you have that and the people's hub?

Oh my, N8ter saying that Android does something faster than Windows Phone and that Windows Phone is ruining a user experience model. And he's saying they need to make it work properly? What a surprise!
My notifications come in within 1-10 seconds, most of the time they'll come through on my phone before they come in on my girlfriend's Android in a picture we're both tagged in, the platform isn't the problem.

ROCOAFZ said:
Are you just talking about the facebook app or people's hub integration?
People's hub is always up to date for me and messages through it are instant. I don't use the facebook app so not sure there. Neither do groups (like the dog park group i am part of) and bugs me the most. The app says it does but when you click on a notification it takes you to the facebook mobile and says not found. For groups i use IE9. Works great even as the desktop version. Why even use the app when you have that and the people's hub?
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People polls when opened so of course its always up to date. I am talking about push notifications for the Facebook app and message hub Facebook chat. And various other third party apps. Something is wrong with the way Microsoft handles push notifications.
People hub social stuff does not update in the background. It clearly polls whenever you open it up, just like Samsung social hub in touchwiz 3.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk

N8ter said:
People polls when opened so of course its always up to date. I am talking about push notifications for the Facebook app and message hub Facebook chat. And various other third party apps. Something is wrong with the way Microsoft handles push notifications.
People hub social stuff does not update in the background. It clearly polls whenever you open it up, just like Samsung social hub in touchwiz 3.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk
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I second that. You need the facebook app to receive toast notifications when something happens in facebook. But this push notification for me is delayed and noticeably so compared to Android and iOS. This is the case when using wifi or 3g and is the case on my HTC Titan and HD7. This isn't a HUGE deal for wall posts (though it is annoying), but i've had to turn my facebook status through WP7 onto Appear Offline, because chat notifications are delayed and when you appear to people on facebook as Online they expect a faster response.

I get FB chat messages instantly on my Focus. Notifications from the FB application aren't as quick but never been delayed for more than a few minutes. Never been a problem. I also play scrabble a lot with friends and as soon as they make there move (there sitting across from me), I get a push notification a second later. So the push notifications are working great for me. Maybe a format of your HTC Titan will help?

N8ter said:
Facebook notifications are slow as he'll. Just the way it is...
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk
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I can only compare with windows7 and wp7 but I always get notifications faster on my phone then my pc (always)
pc on wifi and phone on 3g.

Notification delays, orange icons, and poor data connection

My apologies if this has been posted elsewhere. I found a loosely related thread on google's support forum, but nothing here.
Bought a Nexus 5 and I've been trying out Straight Talk ATT and I've been noticing these problems, most likely all related:
I've been getting notification delays for push data services. Namely, my work email(exchange) and gmail. Sometimes the notification won't even come through. I'm up to a half hour on my last one, still waiting on it. SMS works just fine. Haven't tested MMS, particularly because I don't get many of those. The data connections does work though. I can manually load pages just fine, if a bit slow at first like the ping is astronomical. Almost makes me think it's establishing a connection each time.
When I check the color of the wifi or cellular connection icon, it's frequently orange. Most of the time it will quickly resolve itself to white in the few seconds it takes to check it. From what I understand, orange means it's having trouble talking to google services? This shouldn't affect exchange notifications.
I'm getting poorer connections quality than I expected. I live in Ithaca and while my home has poor Verizon connection(so I expected similar from ATT), I've barely found any place at work or the mall that can hold ANY LTE signal or a decent HSPA signal. HSPA speed tests give me under 0.5mbps up/down, while the only LTE test I've been able to run gave me 2.5/1 up/down.
The aforementioned thread on google's forums mentioned flashing 4.4.0's radio apk, has anyone else tried this?
Which APN setting affects the data part of the connection? Is it just the APN type?

Bump.
I'm starting to wonder if my problem is exacerbated by my current postpaid VZW phone getting data notifications much quicker. I'm suspecting that Straight Talk has a lower priority on ATT towers, thus why my data notifications take up to minutes sometimes. Anyone know of a way to confirm this?

Always On Push Notifications android app
I am not sure if anyone is following this thread anymore, but I switched to StraightTalk about a month ago, and have been experiencing huge delays in my google voice notifications as well (among other things). I've tried several different apps to get this resolved, but none have worked for me... so I decided to write my own. It was published to the google play store this morning (Android 2.3+ currently). If anyone sees this, please try it out, and let me know what you think.
It's called "Always On Push Notifications". I can't post a link right now because this is my first post on these forums though.

maucer said:
I am not sure if anyone is following this thread anymore, but I switched to StraightTalk about a month ago, and have been experiencing huge delays in my google voice notifications as well (among other things). I've tried several different apps to get this resolved, but none have worked for me... so I decided to write my own. It was published to the google play store this morning (Android 2.3+ currently). If anyone sees this, please try it out, and let me know what you think.
It's called "Always On Push Notifications". I can't post a link right now because this is my first post on these forums though.
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What fixed it? I find I have to archive my old messages/call logs for it to not lag.

MrObvious said:
What fixed it? I find I have to archive my old messages/call logs for it to not lag.
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I am not sure what you mean, but I was noticing similar issues with my Nexus 5 on ST using ATT towers. While on LTE at the office, my connection was always great, but if I wasn't actively using my phone, my cell signal would go orange, and all of my notifications were significantly delayed. Furthermore, even trying to browse the internet with an orange signal would just idle and sometimes would not complete at all.
The app I wrote attempts to prevent this by simply keeping your connection active. It does this by manually sending out a heartbeat using the Google Cloud Messaging service approximately every interval that you define in the app. This helps keep your notifications flowing. On top of that, the application will also make a very small data request (~60 bytes), to help prevent the APN from timing out your connection.
I have found that those two things are enough to fix the issues I have had with StraightTalk.

maucer said:
I am not sure what you mean, but I was noticing similar issues with my Nexus 5 on ST using ATT towers. While on LTE at the office, my connection was always great, but if I wasn't actively using my phone, my cell signal would go orange, and all of my notifications were significantly delayed. Furthermore, even trying to browse the internet with an orange signal would just idle and sometimes would not complete at all.
The app I wrote attempts to prevent this by simply keeping your connection active. It does this by manually sending out a heartbeat using the Google Cloud Messaging service approximately every interval that you define in the app. This helps keep your notifications flowing. On top of that, the application will also make a very small data request (~60 bytes), to help prevent the APN from timing out your connection.
I have found that those two things are enough to fix the issues I have had with StraightTalk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That answered it. It must be a StraightTalk thing. Weird.

New observation on this problem:
- GMail notifications not arriving
- When I check I see that the WiFi icon is orange
- Phone is still connected to the internet, I can browse, but icon remains orange and no notifications arrive
- Only when I disconnect/reconnect Wifi does it recover
I also discovered that the WiFi icon actually turns orange at the moment that Google tries to send me a notification. It can be fine for hours before that.
It turned out that this only happens when I have the cellular radio turned off, by turning on Airplane Mode and then turning WiFi back on. With the cellular radio on and connected to the network, even with Mobile Data turned off, everything is fine with WiFi.
I think it's an authentication bug with Google Services. Somewhere in the message notification sequence it tries to either authenticate your phone or perhaps locate it via the cellular network, and if it fails then the connection to Google Services is flagged as faulty. The failure could be caused by having the cellular radio off, or perhaps by being in a bad reception area.

Verizon Galaxy S6 on marshmellow

Ever since I upgraded OTA for marshmallow (i'm bone stock) I've had "connection" issues with multiple apps, regardless if i'm on wifi or 3g/4g.
The google sound search app (whats this song) says "you seem to be offline. Retry?
Google Voice when used pops up the screen saying "offline. check your connection" it does this too when I say "call x cell phone" unless i say "make a call first".
gmail app push notifications are non-existent. I don't email 80%+ of the time unless I manually sync.
Facebook app will constantly think I have no internet connectivity. I have to force updates which rarely works, or quit out of the app and reload.
Playstore does the same from time to time, giving messages about have no connection and to check it.
Voicemail will constantly give me errors: an error occurred, unable to connect to voicemail/visual voicemail. Paraphrasing here.
4 days ago I backed up everything over sftp to my computer and did a factory reset. This seemed to help for a little bit. The apps i've described above acted more normal, but since yesterday I'm having all the same issues again. I've never had any issue like this prior to the marshmallow update. Prior this i went into the settings and did a full reset of all network settings under ireless Controls or Wireless & Networks. that didn't help either
android 6.0.1, baseband G920vvru4cpc2, baseband 3.10.61 [email protected] #1, build number mmb29k.G920vvru4cpc2
no system updates available. What gives, and what else can I provide? Should I report these as bugs to google/verizon?

I also have issues with apps like i heart radio, pandora, after my upgrade, it'll play 1 song or not at all and then after one song it closes out. I tried uninstalling, restarting the phone and then reinstalling but the same issues, and tis with all my audio streaming,.. help!?!?

I've been having the same issues as OP, as well as with Facebook. I'll have to close it out 5 or 6 times before it'll give me the latest posts. It keeps reverting back to May 6 and when opening comments get a message that i'm not connected even though i'm web browsing just fine. Seems to be an issue with the OS and apps.

The Facebook app is junk and notoriously buggy so that maybe your Facebook issue. On top of that its a huge memory hog and might as well be classified as spyware with it's endless permissions (and yes they do monitor you and EVERYTHING you do via the app for "advertising and product placement" purposes). I suggest ditching the app and just access Facebook via web browser. That alone has solved alot of issues for alot of people I know, even issues that seem unrelated to Facebook. Its supprising how miserably coded the Facebook app is and how many problems it is the source of, especially given it's such a large corporation. As for the other issues listed, I personally experience none of them on my Verizon S6. I stream music and video just fine on youtube, pandora and spotify. No connectivity issues... ever. Not with voicemail, google sound search, gmail, play store or any other apps. Do you have a task killer or other "battery optimizing" app that is turning off your wifi and/or mobile data without your knowledge. Thats my only thought.

Settings > Battery > More > Optimize Battery Usage.
Uncheck any apps that are having the problem and see if that helps