Help Battery draining. Lookout.

[DirgeOfTheRaven]

I've had great battery life on all previous android phones and even the S4 for the first few months I've had it.
Suddenly, it dies within hours of moderate use.
I figured there must be a rogue app running in the background.
I finally decided to download battery mix to see what I'm missing and apparently lookout is using 78.6%!
I've never had a problem with Lookout Mobile Security before.
I want to keep it because I really love the features, but that's insane.
Has anyone else had any issues with Lookout?

 

[wunay]

My Lookout is using about 1.4%

 

[DirgeOfTheRaven]

Yeah, now it's using 4.6%. I jumped the gun a bit on this post. Sorry! I'm beginning to think my battery may just be getting old. Thank you for the reply.

 

[Goodspike]

Had you tried rebooting? Almost any program can go rogue and require a reboot (or in the case of non-security programs, just termination). I really doubt any S4 has a battery getting old.

 

[wunay]

DirgeOfTheRaven

Was Lookout perhaps doing a scheduled scan when you noticed this?

 

[GrouchoM]

Today, my FIOS apps were acting like your Lookout...draining my battery like never before. I lost 40-50% in 1.5 hours while off and in Airplane mode.

 

[dpcole72]

I've had great battery life on all previous android phones and even the S4 for the first few months I've had it.
Suddenly, it dies within hours of moderate use.
I figured there must be a rogue app running in the background.
I finally decided to download battery mix to see what I'm missing and apparently lookout is using 78.6%!
I've never had a problem with Lookout Mobile Security before.
I want to keep it because I really love the features, but that's insane.
Has anyone else had any issues with Lookout?

Count me in. I recall Lookout starting late last night and the charger was in. This AM I unplugged, checked my phone 2 hours 48 minutes later, and battery life was down to 51%.

The main 3 culprits, in order, were:

Lookout (46%)
Accuweather (23%)
Screen (19%)
.
.
.
(the screen was off most of the time.)

The S4 gets nice and warm too, which I am hoping is just due to the battery and not the main unit merrily frying in the background. The battery never gets more than 40C (that I've ever seen by the battery monitor), but if an app is running constantly then it's going to keep drawing on the battery and it will get warm... I wonder if the phone's solder will melt at a certain temperature...

Rebooting resolves, but this is the third time I've seen such an anomaly and I am thinking Lookout is the cause. Unless a shared library used by multiple apps is causing Lookout to overload, with other apps appearing to be more hoggy than they are (false positives, et al...)

 

[timnz]

Another one to watch is google play services. That seems to be caused by location services being turned on, if you can manage with them turned off that reduces battery drain a lot. My S4 can last 2-3 days on one battery, with light use of WiFi and 4G. I keep the Wifi/4G/GPS/bluetooth radios turned off when I don't need them.

 

[speedlever]

There comes a point of diminishing return when you disable services in order to preserve battery life. I quit worrying about battery life and leave my services (location services, etc.) enabled so I maintain full usage of my GS4. I charge it in the morning before I leave for my daily activities and while I drive (I use Waze all the time). I never have any low battery issues.

 

[Jerbyjoober]

4 days ago, I went from having 8-10 hours battery life of heavy use down to less than 2 hours. I can have my screen turned off and after 3 hours, it will either be at 5% or dead. I completely disabled lookout, but it still shows up with anywhere from 67% - 89% battery usage. Their support is no help whatsoever. It looks like I will be rooting and if that don't work, I'll have to swith to HTC or LG! I finally found a phone I LOVE, Note 3, and this shitty software has ruined my phone experience.

 

[speedlever]

Yep. Better change to one of those phones without a user replaceable battery. That should do the trick.

If you're blowing out a GN3 battery in a 7 or 8 hours, I can't imagine what you're doing. Watching movies at full brightness? And now to blow it out in 2 or 3 hours?

Reboot into safe mode and see if your battery drain continues unabated.

 

[Jerbyjoober]

Yep. Better change to one of those phones without a user replaceable battery. That should do the trick.

If you're blowing out a GN3 battery in a 7 or 8 hours, I can't imagine what you're doing. Watching movies at full brightness? And now to blow it out in 2 or 3 hours?

It last up to 3 days using as a phone. 7-8 hours is what I consider HEAVY use. That's Netflix, online music, and yes movies at full brightness. I am disabled now so I am not that concerned about my battery dying at work. My concern is it dying in less than 3 hours without the screen being on!


Reboot into safe mode and see if your battery drain continues unabated.

I'm glad you mentioned safe mode. I'm going to do that now. I forgot all about it. Thank you.

 

[speedlever]

You definitely have some heavy use. I can't imagine why Lookout would drain your battery like that.

I used to use Lookout and changed to Cerberus (for reasons I can't remember). Sigh.

I'll be curious to learn what you find after restarting in safe mode.

 

[Jerbyjoober]

You definitely have some heavy use. I can't imagine why Lookout would drain your battery like that.

I used to use Lookout and changed to Cerberus (for reasons I can't remember). Sigh.

I'll be curious to learn what you find after restarting in safe mode.

I'm trying safe mode right now. I'll post back tomorrow after I see how it does. I never had a problem until just recently. I didn't originally have it on my phone but once I installed it from the play store it now will not let me remove it. Apparently Samsung has made a deal with them. What blows my mind I can disable it and it shows to not be running and it's still draining my battery. There is something wrong somewhere for it to be doing this. I've been using it for over 3 months with not one problem. Their tech support is telling me the same crap that I can get from a simple Google search. They still haven't said anything about safe mode though.......This is why I hate tech support. They just follow the flow chart and I have already done most of that. If all else fails I'll just root my phone and be done with it.

 

[itsallgood]

Every now and then, I have had the same problem with Lookout using a lot of battery on my S4. I think it was doing one of those heavy scans from a OTA update. (Not the scheduled one I set up.) Now, I'm having the Directv app using a lot of battery whenever I go into the app the set up a DVR recording. When I leave the app, its still running heavy in the background as if I was streaming a movie. Most times I have to forcestop it. (If the task manager and clearing memory doesn't stop it.)

 

[speedlever]

I'm trying safe mode right now. I'll post back tomorrow after I see how it does. I never had a problem until just recently. I didn't originally have it on my phone but once I installed it from the play store it now will not let me remove it. Apparently Samsung has made a deal with them. What blows my mind I can disable it and it shows to not be running and it's still draining my battery. There is something wrong somewhere for it to be doing this. I've been using it for over 3 months with not one problem. Their tech support is telling me the same crap that I can get from a simple Google search. They still haven't said anything about safe mode though.......This is why I hate tech support. They just follow the flow chart and I have already done most of that. If all else fails I'll just root my phone and be done with it.

I'm thinking that because of the security aspect of Lookout (and similar apps), you can't simply remove it. It probably has administrator level privileges that prevent a casual uninstall (for understandable reasons). I think you'll have to dig deeper if you want to uninstall it.

Wish I could remember what I did on mine to remove it. Sorry, not much help there.

 

[Jerbyjoober]

Thanks Speedlover for the Safe Mode suggestion. It took 3 100% charges and fiddling to finally get rid of it. 17 hours and 28 minutes and still have 13% battery left. After it was fully disabled, I was spiking up to 89% battery drain. There was a major flaw somewhere with their software. There were times last night that I was losing 1% battery every 1 minute and with it plugged in, I was losing 1% battery every 2 minutes. Their support staff was telling me to do stuff word for word what a simple Google search showed me and I had already done those steps several times before I contacted them.

This was the most ridiculous behavior I have ever seen on a phone. The only way I was able to fully charge my battery was to charge it with the phone turned off. I'm so glad it's fixed and I will never enable this app again. I will most likely root and load a custom ROM to avoid this ever from happening again. I know there are a lot of people who complain about Samsung and the GN3, but this has been my only issue. I love my phone but I was ready to trade it out for a HTC or LG... UGGH!

 

[sonickev]

I have exactly the same symptoms.

Lookout was disabled yesterday and I got through 2 fully charged batteries in 1 day (I swapped the battery midday)

Standard battery statistics in settings says outlook is main battery user, even with it disabled.

There doesn't seem to be any support or explanation for this problem, so I will reluctantly have to remove lookout that I have paid for and find alternative. Can anyone recommend a location finder?

 

[Jerbyjoober]

Can anyone recommend a location finder?

Google Device Manager

I think this is better and easier to use.

 

[pcaker]

I've had great battery life on all previous android phones and even the S4 for the first few months I've had it.
Suddenly, it dies within hours of moderate use.
I figured there must be a rogue app running in the background.
I finally decided to download battery mix to see what I'm missing and apparently lookout is using 78.6%!
I've never had a problem with Lookout Mobile Security before.
I want to keep it because I really love the features, but that's insane.
Has anyone else had any issues with Lookout?

I have same problem, only Lookout has used even more power, and my Galaxy Note 4 phone gets really hot. I put aside a fully charged phone, take it out out 2 hours later, phone is hot and battery life well below 50%, checking power use - its Lookout at 84%. Without Lookout scanning, my battery life has been excellent, and phone never gets hot. I want to schedule Lookout scans for only when phone is plugged in to a power source, but Settings does not give you this option. Next best is to schedule scans for middle of night, but this means I have to leave phone plugged in all night when it probably needs normally max 2 hours to recharge. I do not like leaving fully charged devices plugged in to rechargers, in case they fail to disconnect when charging complete, and blow my battery.

 

[Benrx]

This might only be coincidence, but I fixed my battery issue by mistake.

Since the upgrade, my phone has drained fast, and I was very unhappy with Lollipop. (I still am not a fan, but that is a different issue.)

By chance yesterday I wasn't going to have time to charge my phone, so I popped in a different battery. The one in it was not a Samsung brand battery. The one I put in was Samsung. Immediately my phone went back to its normal rate of discharge from before Lillipop.

Again, it might only be a coincidence, but if it helps some of you with your battery issue, it's worth posting.