I was having a few battery drain and stability problems so I decided it was time to do a fresh install of Android. The main culprit was Play Services but it was always a different thread and I could never get the problem under control. I was barely getting through a 16 hour day on a single battery charge even with only an hour of screen on time which is insane for these droid maxx's.
I flashed stock Android 4.4 and accidentally unrooted myself in the process, but that means I am 100% stock kitkat with the late April mini update.
I still have the Play Services battery drain bug.
I killed half my battery yesterday in like a half hour of screen on time and 7 hours of idle. The phone won't sleep. Google Play Services still shows as the culprit in the battery settings.
I've disabled Now, location settings, sync (it literally doesn't sync anything), wi-fi, and interest-based ads. (All tips I've seen from people that have had the bug across XDA). I've let Play Services update from 4.8 to 5.0. And it still won't let the phone go to sleep.
Anyone have any other thoughts on the issue? I'm ready to pull my hair out! I have no idea what's causing this bug but it's driving me up the wall.
BTW I don't have any meaningful screenshots right now because I'm not rooted yet. I'm going to try jcase's pie method to get root back and post via BBS, but in the meantime I've heard this is a fairly common issue, so I threw the post up in case anyone else has encountered and solved the problem. What I'll share in the meantime is that my phone has been off the charger today for 1 hr 39 min. Play Services has kept it awake for 1 hr 38 min.
empoweredh22 said:
I was having a few battery drain and stability problems so I decided it was time to do a fresh install of Android. The main culprit was Play Services but it was always a different thread and I could never get the problem under control. I was barely getting through a 16 hour day on a single battery charge even with only an hour of screen on time which is insane for these droid maxx's.
I flashed stock Android 4.4 and accidentally unrooted myself in the process, but that means I am 100% stock kitkat with the late April mini update.
I still have the Play Services battery drain bug.
I killed half my battery yesterday in like a half hour of screen on time and 7 hours of idle. The phone won't sleep. Google Play Services still shows as the culprit in the battery settings.
I've disabled Now, location settings, sync (it literally doesn't sync anything), wi-fi, and interest-based ads. (All tips I've seen from people that have had the bug across XDA). I've let Play Services update from 4.8 to 5.0. And it still won't let the phone go to sleep.
Anyone have any other thoughts on the issue? I'm ready to pull my hair out! I have no idea what's causing this bug but it's driving me up the wall.
BTW I don't have any meaningful screenshots right now because I'm not rooted yet. I'm going to try jcase's pie method to get root back and post via BBS, but in the meantime I've heard this is a fairly common issue, so I threw the post up in case anyone else has encountered and solved the problem. What I'll share in the meantime is that my phone has been off the charger today for 1 hr 39 min. Play Services has kept it awake for 1 hr 38 min.
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Ive had this problem too... Only I am on 4.2.2. Only fix for me was either nandroid'ing back to a previous state [temporary fix] or using Xposed + WakeLock Terminator to prevent GPS from getting WakeLock [So far has been permanent for about 1 month]
There's a couple of ways to address this. As noted, this is an issue with the play services abusing the GPS. In addition, it's a problem with the stock firmware. As I am sure you want to continue using GPS, these options allow you to leave it on.
In the GPS configuration, it's possible to reduce or turn off access to GPS to individual apps.
There are apps that allow managing app permissions. You can use this to revoke access to various things. Use it to revoke play services access to GPS.
If memory serves me right, these don't require root.
I managed to get root back so what I'm experimenting with is the app ops settings. I'll report back with an update. Thanks for the ideas guys.
After my original phone went into bootloops after the marshmallow update, I got a replacement within 1 day (thanks, AT&T, they really surprised me with customer service on this one). Unfortunately, my replacement has been full of issues. For starters, I used to get maybe 1% per hour max battery drain with idle and screen off with location and sync on (would be 97-99% in the morning if it was 100% before sleep), but now it is 5+% per hour, same battery as before, even switching it with my spare, no difference. I have Greenify installed and have a decent number of things greenified, but I don't want to have to also turn off location and sync just to get still worse battery life than I had before. A factory reset did not fix the issue. Google Play Services seems to inexplicably be taking more battery than phone idle now but it is not enough to be explaining this battery issue fully.
Also, I get lag in various applications, including pre-installed system applications. Most noticeably, Chrome and Chrome Beta have the same issue of freezing 3-10 seconds before the page is completely loaded which is an extreme nuisance. Reinstalling the apps and clearing the cache/data did not help. Various system applications run with lag too. I moved some applications to the SD card and the settings app was lagging so terribly it crashed a few times.
Any ideas to my phone woes?
OTA update to 9.0 available a couple of days ago so I let it install. Since then, I've seen considerably quicker draining of the battery, with my usage of the phone being much the same as before. For example, when I went to sleep last night the battery was at 64%, and there were no apps running according to a swipe up from Home, but when I woke this morning, battery was down to 2%. I normally charge once a day, and previously the battery was hardly ever below 50% after 24 hours - I'm a pretty light user.
As an aside, with 9.0 there no longer appears to be possible under battery usage information in Settings to see the percentage of battery that has been used by the various apps and processes.
NickJHP said:
OTA update to 9.0 available a couple of days ago so I let it install. Since then, I've seen considerably quicker draining of the battery, with my usage of the phone being much the same as before. For example, when I went to sleep last night the battery was at 64%, and there were no apps running according to a swipe up from Home, but when I woke this morning, battery was down to 2%. I normally charge once a day, and previously the battery was hardly ever below 50% after 24 hours - I'm a pretty light user.
As an aside, with 9.0 there no longer appears to be possible under battery usage information in Settings to see the percentage of battery that has been used by the various apps and processes.
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Click the three dots in the top right and choose battery usage.
As for battery life, mine has improved greatly on Android P
NickJHP said:
OTA update to 9.0 available a couple of days ago so I let it install. Since then, I've seen considerably quicker draining of the battery, with my usage of the phone being much the same as before. For example, when I went to sleep last night the battery was at 64%, and there were no apps running according to a swipe up from Home, but when I woke this morning, battery was down to 2%. I normally charge once a day, and previously the battery was hardly ever below 50% after 24 hours - I'm a pretty light user.
As an aside, with 9.0 there no longer appears to be possible under battery usage information in Settings to see the percentage of battery that has been used by the various apps and processes.
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Ok here. 62% drop over night doing nothing suggests you have a rogue app in there. I'm assuming you have ok cellular coverage and nothing has changed there by coincidence. I would reboot and force close every app you have that's not essential overnight and try again. Swipe up from home and clearing those apps doesn't force close the apps. Greenify is an app that (in manual mode) will make it easy to select as many apps as you want and force close the lot of them. If that improves the situation you can then begin to work out which app(s) might be doing bad stuff whilst you sleep...
Battery on my P2 has significantly improved with Pie even if I didn't have any major problem with 8.1 either. Overnight drain 3-4%. After regular use after a full day I easily exceed 5h SOT. Everything stock with just Greenify in non root mode. I couldn't be happier, best Android release so far for me.
NickJHP said:
OTA update to 9.0 available a couple of days ago so I let it install. Since then, I've seen considerably quicker draining of the battery, with my usage of the phone being much the same as before. For example, when I went to sleep last night the battery was at 64%, and there were no apps running according to a swipe up from Home, but when I woke this morning, battery was down to 2%. I normally charge once a day, and previously the battery was hardly ever below 50% after 24 hours - I'm a pretty light user.
As an aside, with 9.0 there no longer appears to be possible under battery usage information in Settings to see the percentage of battery that has been used by the various apps and processes.
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Click to collapse
I've had my p2 installed with PIE for about 2 days now. I suggest giving it a week (which is what I'm doing) and then getting a full overview of how my battery is performing. Usually, after any major OS updates, being that apps are trying to utilize your resources and a new version of Android would try to allocate and learn your usage (in this case battery), you'd get a much better definitive idea of your overall performance.
I also think that since its now available, turn on Adaptive Battery mode. After a day of upgrading the OS, Adaptive battery at my 26 hr mark of upgrade said that one of my apps was taking in a lot of resources to be used in the background (ES File Explorer). I made AB to stop ES from taking battery resources.
So in conclusion, if it a week and then you'll be able to get a better overall understanding of whether your battery REALLY has gotten worse or better.
Hope this helps!
Interestingly, my battery was dropping really quickly too after the update to DP3, I switched off Adaptive Battery and it fixed the issue completely.
I tried it again with Android Pie and the issue resumed, so I turned it back off. Maybe try this too?
---------- Post added at 02:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:53 PM ----------
Interestingly, my battery was dropping really quickly too after the update to DP3, I switched off Adaptive Battery and it fixed the issue completely.
I tried it again with Android Pie and the issue resumed, so I turned it back off. Maybe try this too?
Exact same problem here after updating. Even tried a factory reset in case it was an updating issue. Same problem. My battery is currently at 43% 4 hours after a full charge. And I've barely used it. This is really poor.
No new apps installed.
My Oreo battery life was great. I'll try shutting off adaptive battery as suggested - but seems a real shame if one of the flagship battery saving features is doing the total opposite on Google's current flagship phone!
Doesn't seem to be a massively common issue so not sure if a likelihood of a patch either
Just a quick update - Google play services has now become the biggest drain on my battery, just as it was before I factory reset after the first install...
Anyone else had the same?
gbmasterdoctor said:
Interestingly, my battery was dropping really quickly too after the update to DP3, I switched off Adaptive Battery and it fixed the issue completely.
I tried it again with Android Pie and the issue resumed, so I turned it back off. Maybe try this too?
---------- Post added at 02:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:53 PM ----------
Interestingly, my battery was dropping really quickly too after the update to DP3, I switched off Adaptive Battery and it fixed the issue completely.
I tried it again with Android Pie and the issue resumed, so I turned it back off. Maybe try this too?
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I had the same issue and did the same thing... until dp3 and my battery usage was terrible again even with adaptive battery turned off. I ended up turning it on again and after about a week my battery usage was back where it was before. So there doesn't seem to be a magic bullet here. FWIW app usage offered no insight as to what was causing the drain in the first place.
MaxNXS said:
Battery on my P2 has significantly improved with Pie
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THIS.
I got like 8+ hours of SOT.... no mobile network though, all day wifi use only.
I have this issue. Dropped about 40% over night. I found that turning wifi off stopped the drain completely. I did not have this problem with Oreo at all so it's not the networks im connecting to. Weird thing is this did not happen when I first installed Pie. This started happening about 3 days into installing. Also, I put it in safe mode and saw the same drain with wifi on vs off.
Hi guys,
I seem to have fixed my terrible battery life!
The below might be worth a try if you're still suffering from it.
I noticed in GSAM that RCSphone was the front runner in battery drain so did a little research and found this site.
SOLUTION: Turn off app preview messages (settings / google / app preview messages). Apparently its only function is to allow Allo messages to be received without the app. To me, totally pointless as i don't know - nor have ever met - a single person who uses it.
I've gone from draining 8-10% an hour (screen off) to around 2.5%/hour and from 1hr 35 total SOT to 3hrs 39 minutes with 32% left (and an hour of that was Google maps navigating, so a proper work out for the phone).
Do give it a try and let me know if it works for you.
Although there's room for improvement (idle 2.5%/h seems high to me!) and it's ludicrous that I should have spent several hours finding a fix for this on 100% stock android, I'm very happy to have a usable battery life back again...
Adam.
UPDATE: Seems like in the night I lost 40% again. Idle drain climbed it's way up to 5.6% in the night. Still an improvement from where it was before, but not quite as good as it first appeared...
WibblyW said:
Ok here. 62% drop over night doing nothing suggests you have a rogue app in there. I'm assuming you have ok cellular coverage and nothing has changed there by coincidence. I would reboot and force close every app you have that's not essential overnight and try again. Swipe up from home and clearing those apps doesn't force close the apps. Greenify is an app that (in manual mode) will make it easy to select as many apps as you want and force close the lot of them. If that improves the situation you can then begin to work out which app(s) might be doing bad stuff whilst you sleep...
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@Burkules I drop 0.4 - 0.7%/hr over night with Bluetooth off/Wifi on/strong cellular signal. Much the same as it was with Oreo. Not quite sure why's there's such a big range (almost 2x) but either way it's ok for me. Did you try the technique above?
WibblyW said:
@Burkules I drop 0.4 - 0.7%/hr over night with Bluetooth off/Wifi on/strong cellular signal. Much the same as it was with Oreo. Not quite sure why's there's such a big range (almost 2x) but either way it's ok for me. Did you try the technique above?
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Cheers for getting back on this.
I left it on safe mode the other night and it still drained absurdly fast, which suggests to me it's a google system drain rather than rogue app, but will try again with app preview now switched off. Likewise will try greenify again and report back.
Burkules said:
Cheers for getting back on this.
I left it on safe mode the other night and it still drained absurdly fast, which suggests to me it's a google system drain rather than rogue app, but will try again with app preview now switched off. Likewise will try greenify again and report back.
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Likewise maybe app preview set to off will help me even more. If I recall correctly rogue apps can cause some google system apps to wake up, but perhaps not in safe mode...
WibblyW said:
Likewise maybe app preview set to off will help me even more. If I recall correctly rogue apps can cause some google system apps to wake up, but perhaps not in safe mode...
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So, switched off adaptive battery again (i'd enabled it after my short-lived miracle recovery the other day) and now I'm down to 4%/hour. Which is better but still really high for idling! Cleared cache and data in Google play services for good measure too as it still comes up super high on the list of battery drainers.
Booting into safe mode now to check the drain without adaptive there and will report back...
UPDATE: Exactly the same drain in safe mode. This is a straight up google problem....
Burkules said:
So, switched off adaptive battery again (i'd enabled it after my short-lived miracle recovery the other day) and now I'm down to 4%/hour. Which is better but still really high for idling! Cleared cache and data in Google play services for good measure too as it still comes up super high on the list of battery drainers.
Booting into safe mode now to check the drain without adaptive there and will report back...
UPDATE: Exactly the same drain in safe mode. This is a straight up google problem....
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Have you tried to force close every app you've downloaded too?
WibblyW said:
Have you tried to force close every app you've downloaded too?
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Haven't tried this - but if the battery drain is the same in safe mode (with only google/system apps running) I can't see how it will make a difference. Ill be in rehearsal for several hours today so will force close everything and will then be leaving my phone idling for a few hours anyway.
I signup up to the google play services beta yesterday, and google play services no longer appears as one of the top battery users... but the battery drain is the same and the numbers given in *all* battery apps (Gsam/accubattery/system) don't add up to anything close to the actual % drain. System battery displays 15% of usage (with 'full device usage' on show) when the battery is quite evidently at 48% from full charge. Total cluster****. So pissed off I updated.
Have you seen any improvement in yours with any of these workarounds?
Burkules said:
Haven't tried this - but if the battery drain is the same in safe mode (with only google/system apps running) I can't see how it will make a difference. Ill be in rehearsal for several hours today so will force close everything and will then be leaving my phone idling for a few hours anyway.
I signup up to the google play services beta yesterday, and google play services no longer appears as one of the top battery users... but the battery drain is the same and the numbers given in *all* battery apps (Gsam/accubattery/system) don't add up to anything close to the actual % drain. System battery displays 15% of usage (with 'full device usage' on show) when the battery is quite evidently at 48% from full charge. Total cluster****. So pissed off I updated.
Have you seen any improvement in yours with any of these workarounds?
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Nothing to lose by trying. And as I said, Greenify makes it easy/quick to do. Force closing is almost as good as uninstalling those apps as the vast majority of installed apps won't restart or run in background until you use them for the first time again. In my experience, quiescent battery consumption (e.g. noticed over night):
Is vastly affected negatively by poor cellular signal strength. Marginal coverage can really drain the battery fast.
Gradually gets worse between reboots
Can be improved (once it degrades) if you force close all the apps you've installed, and swipe away the background apps just before you go to bed!
If quiescent consumption suddenly rises I can normally fix it by force closing all the apps (not being sure which was the one gone rogue/suddenly misbehaving)
At night I generally have excellent cellular coverage, good WiFi, and Bluetooth is off. NFC is always off
I don't enable sync on 2 of the 3 Gmail accounts I have configured
I disable notifications from any apps I don't actually need them from
Quiescent battery consumption is between, say, 0.4% and, 0.7%/hr at home, around 2 to 3%/hr when out and about which I put down to all background data being driven over 4G instead of Wifi, and variable cellular coverage
I've not noticed quiescent battery consumption change between Oreo and Pie, but this may be because I keep force closing apps at night and not giving adaptive battery (which I have on) a chance to have the same effect intelligently
Turning off app preview messages has made no practical different for me
I'm completely stock (stock launcher, not rooted, etc.)
If you can't fix it, at least a factory reset as the next experiment has the option to restore *most* of what was there before (so long as you have had the backup setting enabled). But because not everything is restored it's still a pain. And if that doesn't work it's another factory reset and test and then restore everything manually and gradually :-S. But I think you already tried that?
Burkules said:
Hi guys,
I seem to have fixed my terrible battery life!
The below might be worth a try if you're still suffering from it.
I noticed in GSAM that RCSphone was the front runner in battery drain so did a little research and found this site.
SOLUTION: Turn off app preview messages (settings / google / app preview messages). Apparently its only function is to allow Allo messages to be received without the app. To me, totally pointless as i don't know - nor have ever met - a single person who uses it.
Thanks, just tried that as well and my battery has stayed resolutely at 68% on idle beside me for the last few hours, previously it had gone from 100% down to 69% in about 4 hours whilst similarly doing nothing.
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Hi
I've got a brand new PH-1 and haven't yet had time to set it up properly, only started it up, let it update software and used for an hour or so before testing the idle battery drain.
I haven't installed any apps or changed any settings other than to disable the google app (to prevent it listening for or responding to "ok google"). I tried out the 360 camera, signed in to gmail and browsed a few websites, before charging back to full and restarting the phone before this test anyway.
But leaving it idle with the screen off and with phone network disabled (there's not even a SIM inserted), only wifi on with good signal, it lost 65% battery in under 22 hours. Screen on time was less than five minutes.
Is this a hardware issue I should RMA, or is it considered normal? If this is normal and there's no easy fix, I'll probably end up having to return the phone anyway for a refund, because if it can't even last a day and half in idle there's no way it would last a reasonable amount of time with normal usage.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Since there isn't a sim card installed, try going to airplane mode and then turning WIFI on.
I am getting about 1.2% drain with cell network and wifi enabled along with all my standard apps installed.
On a typical day with 1-2h SOT, I usually have 60-70% battery left at midnight. I'd try to reset the phone, and then testing again - occasionally a system update will end up doing something funny
I left it overnight with airplane mode on, so even wifi was off, and it's a little better but not by much. Screen on time was one minute.
With airplane mode on, screen off, no dodgy apps, the phone really shouldn't be doing anything to drain battery.
I'll try a full factory reset and see what happens.
Just to follow up, a full factory reset seems to have fixed the issue. Even after doing the same things I had done before (connected to wifi, updated, logged in to gmail, etc) the battery now drains at a much more sensible rate.
Very strange that a factory reset made a difference since it was new from the factory when I had the issue, but I guess something strange happened in the update like dsip suggested.
Thanks for the help!
nickwp said:
Just to follow up, a full factory reset seems to have fixed the issue. Even after doing the same things I had done before (connected to wifi, updated, logged in to gmail, etc) the battery now drains at a much more sensible rate.
Very strange that a factory reset made a difference since it was new from the factory when I had the issue, but I guess something strange happened in the update like dsip suggested.
Thanks for the help!
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That's ? percent normal behavior. Anytime you flash a ROM (new phone =new ROM) you need to wait a bare minimum of a charge cycle (more like three in my experience) before you get the slightest idea what your actual battery drain is going to look like. think of it like breaking in the engine on a new car.
Sent from my mata using XDA Labs
(Apologies if there's a better location for this issue)
Wondering if anyone else is having this issue or can at least confirm what their Google app is showing in terms of length of time in active use. I've been having unusual battery drain lately, without any noteworthy changes to my settings or apps. The Google app (version 10.82.8.21.arm64) is showing up as the #1 battery user, and details show time in active use as the entire duration of time my phone is off it's charger. Logically that makes me believe that it's constantly running, and doing so in a way that's draining my battery more than any other time over 2 years of ownership. I realize this one app is responsible for a LOT of the core Android/Pixel functionality, so it's hard to dial in very precisely what might be causing this.
Asking for fellow members to confirm what proportion of their "up time" the Google app is shown as in active use? Am I the only one at 100% on this?
Thanks!
My phone has been off charge for 17hrs 2mins and Google usage is the exact same time. It's only took 2% of the 40% that's been used but still very annoying. Also I don't think the is any way of stop it, I noticed this ages ago now and tried everything I could to stop it but nothing worked, I decided to reset my phone 2 days ago and it's still doing the same. I guess if it only taking up a small percentage of battery then it's not that bad but still really annoying that it's active for so long without any reason.