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!

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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/be0wulf8860 Oct 15 '14

Thanks for the post. However, what I can never grasp is how exactly you pinpoint which app is sucking all the battery? These apps always point to general processes, such as Android System or Google Play Services. How do you narrow it down from there?

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

Well to use my example, BetterBatteryStats was listing Google Play Services as the top process (i.e. location was being frequently checked by an app) and Weather Timeline as the most used in network, even though I hadn't opened the app once and had no dedicated widget, so I was able to ascertain from that that it was likely due to me selecting Weather Timeline as a Dashclock node. It's not always simple to tell and you do sometimes have to do a bit of digging. I tried everything before it finally clicked, including clearing cache, data, uninstalling and reinstalling the app, etc.

P.S. I feel bad focussing on just one app. I don't want to sound like Weather Timeline isn't a great app, because it is and you should get it. I emailed the dev about the bug and I'm sure he'll iron out the drain before long - and I get NO drain since removing it from Dashclock - but it was single-handedly using a fair amount of my battery, say 1-2% per hour, so as an example, it serves well.

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