r/Android • u/AutoModerator • Oct 15 '14

How to find the root cause of your Android battery problems.

Hey, we get it. Your phone gets awesome battery life and here's some screenshots to prove it. But not everybody does, and not everybody may be willing to compromise certain features. Or they may not understand just what is it that causes all their battery woes. As Android devices become more sophisticated and feature packed, it seems like it's more difficult to have excellent battery life.

In this thread, share your best tips and tricks on how to solve any battery problem. Any apps you use? Things to disable? How to diagnose problems? List it all.

Please note that this thread will be archived in the wiki and linked in the sidebar. Any off-topic or unhelpful comment will be removed.

Suggestions and comments on how to improve this thread are always welcome!

Join our IRC channel #android on irc.snoonet.org for anything-goes discussion on Android! Click here to chat!

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u/boneykingoflimbs Oct 15 '14 edited Oct 15 '14

I have a Nexus 5 with decent battery life. I didn't have to change my location settings, disable Google Now, or anything like that (although I do use Greenify). The best way to ensure this is to investigate high battery drain yourself by using BetterBatteryStats or Wakelock Detector.

Recently I had high wi-fi and Google Play Services usage, and Googling for recent cases of the same problem came up with nothing. I installed BetterBatteryStats, left it running for a few hours, and checked out the Network stats - it was telling me that Weather Timeline was keeping my wi-fi awake due to me using it on my Dashclock widget. I removed it and the issue was solved.

However, the issue is that since KitKat, you need root to use BetterBatteryStats. The one thing I wish Android would open back up for non-root users is the ability to check your battery stats in third party apps because it sadly is sometimes essential. Hopefully Project Volta has made some movements in that regard.

edit- added links

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u/mohattar Oct 15 '14

If you want your phone to charge a little more quickly or if you are in a hurry then just put your phone in Airplane Mode and then let it charge.

It will charge substantially faster because all the radios will be switched off.

Helped me a lot.

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u/thestevoexpress Oct 15 '14

I downloaded Snapdragon battery guru. It manages when my phone syncs and turns off wifi when it can't detect my home wifi. I get a solid day of battery with medium to heavy use on my HTC one m8. It takes around 5 days to learn your usage and charging patterns. Very happy with it.

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u/Kampfbiene Oct 15 '14

One of the worst battery drains on my N4 is plain and simple: mobile signal quality.

I have very weak 3G coverage at home, but of course the phone always favors 3G as long as it is available. Switching my phone to 2G only can nearly double my battery life.

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u/ncook06 Oct 15 '14 edited Oct 15 '14

Remove Facebook for a day or two and see what happens. Even though I rarely used Facebook as it was, when I removed the Facebook and Messenger apps, I went from ending my days at 10% to ending my days at 30-50%.

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u/ianandomylous Oct 15 '14

First of all, post your screen on time. NO ONE cares if you got 4 days of battery life without turning on your screen on airplane mode.

Install xposed and unbounce modules. Use greenify too. Install wakelock detector to find out specific wakelocks without using battery (BBS is a battery hog in my experience).

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u/ICThat Oct 15 '14

Recently I have been experimenting with the Unbounce xposed module, so far its own stats claim it has blocked a fair few hours of wakelocks and quite a few alarms.

Whether or not my battery life has actually improved is hard to say, I guess time will tell.

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u/RMAmyAss Oct 15 '14

Anyone have suggestions on how to decide on getting a replacement battery?

My Nexus 4 has been running very hot (for 19 months now), with the occasional overheating (mostly in the summer). RMA is not an option, sadly.

I've been thinking about getting a replacement battery, to help ensure I'm not constantly tethered to a charger, but I have no idea if a replacement battery would help. Only indication I've got is crappy battery life, and the fact that it has been exposed to high temperatures daily for the past 19 months.

I've previously burned my fingers on a replacement battery on eBay, so possibly also hints to verifying that the delivered replacement battery is as described?

Any hints or tips, would be greatly appreciated.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '14 edited Oct 15 '14

Every time that I've had a battery draining bug over the past 4 years it's been caused by Google Play Services (on my Nexus S, Nexus 5, and Nexus 7).

A week ago I was experiencing yet another Google Play Services drain that was eating up 50% of my battery. After some investigation with the "Wakelock Detector" app (requires root), I determined that the "CastSocketMultiplexer" wakelock was the culprit. I've been watching a lot of Netflix with my Chromecast recently, so I assumed that either chromecast or the Netflix app were the culprit. I noticed that exiting the Netflix app after queuing up a movie solves the problem, though it's somewhat of a hacky workaround.

It would be really nice if Google would solve all the Google Play Service battery drains once and for all. Google is always telling developers how to reduce battery usage, but from my experience Google themselves are the worst offender.

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