Battery Draining at night

[crazyion]

Just got the Nexus Galaxy and I love the phone except for the battery problems I have experienced. I played around with the phone when I first received it and drained the battery down. Then I charged it back up to about 95% and unplugged it, set an alarm and went to bed. When I woke up about 9 hours later the alarm hadn't gone off due to my phone being completely dead. It drained a full charge overnight. I had turned wifi and bluetooth off before going to sleep and also had syncs set to off. Just wondering what other settings I can change to improve overnight battery life or what I can do to fix this issue. I'm thinking that it may be draining some due to a low connection in my area, but surely this alone wouldn't cause it to drain a full battery.

 

[Tim K]

DON'T turn off wifi. If your connecting isn't strong where you are, the phone will boost its signal and hunt for another tower all night long.... and as you saw, it will kill your battery. If you are in wifi range you should ALWAYS keep wifi on. Wifi uses the least power for data.... lower than 3G and way lower than 4G LTE. Also, leave your phone plugged in overnight. There is no reason not to. Today's electronics manage the battery charging process. Better to wake up with a full charge every morning, especially since this phone is not the best as far as battery life.

For more battery tips/help see below...

 

[jj14x]

That's a bummer. When you plugged the charger in, and got the phone to boot up, did you check battery usage to see what the offending app was? There is really no reason why the battery should drain like that overnight.

Maybe there was something causing your phone to stay awake the whole time. (battery usage screen should tell you awake time).Try rebooting your phone and see if the problem recurs.

 

[crazyion]

Is it really okay to leave a phone plugged in all night? I've read elsewhere that not fully charging the phone to 100% and not letting it drain to very low levels will prolong the batteries life. Also when looking at the battery page with the chart it shows my phone being awake many times throughout the night, often lining up with my network signal bar dropping into the red, but also just being awake many other times throughout the night at random points.

 

[Zeinzu]

Is it really okay to leave a phone plugged in all night? I've read elsewhere that not fully charging the phone to 100% and not letting it drain to very low levels will prolong the batteries life. Also when looking at the battery page with the chart it shows my phone being awake many times throughout the night, often lining up with my network signal bar dropping into the red, but also just being awake many other times throughout the night at random points.

It's perfectly safe to leave it plugged in overnight. If you have severely bad signal either leave WiFi on and sleep policy for it set to never, leave it plugged in, or use airplane mode overnight. In most cases you won't need to do anything to "prolong" your battery's life. As long as you don't insanely abuse it, or it isn't defective, in most cases it should outlive your contract no problem.

 

[Petrah]

Your best bet is to download and use Better Battery Stats. Be sure to read the first post completely and possibly even peruse the rest of the thread. When you figure out how to get a Better Battery Stats dumpfile posted, then you can post it there (or here) so that someone can help you figure out what's happening with your phone and if you have any partial wakelock issues.

[APP] [04 Aug - V1.9.2.1] BetterBatteryStats adds battery history back to Android - xda-developers

Note: The app download is in the second post (see the very very very bottom of the second post... it's an attachment!).

 

[Tim K]

Guys. He doesn't need to find a rogue app. He needs to leave wifi on and keep plugged in. He said himself his phone was awake when his signal dropped. And yes, a weak signal can kill a phone in 8 hours no problem.

As for battery life, the phone manages all of that. Your phone will never actually charge to 100% even if it says so. It will also never really run to zero either. The phone is setup to manage the battery to balance day to day battery capacity while maximizing the long term life of the battery.

 

[Petrah]

That's fine. Kinda what open forums are for... so everyone can chip in and offer different things for an OP to try. Doesn't matter who's wrong or right, only that the OP can figure things out by trying the different things offered.

 

[crazyion]

It's perfectly safe to leave it plugged in overnight. If you have severely bad signal either leave WiFi on and sleep policy for it set to never, leave it plugged in, or use airplane mode overnight. In most cases you won't need to do anything to "prolong" your battery's life. As long as you don't insanely abuse it, or it isn't defective, in most cases it should outlive your contract no problem.

Could I just turn my Mobile Usage off at night when going to sleep to help prevent the battery from draining during the night? I do not need any of the data dependent functions when asleep and can just sync the phone back up once I wake the next morning. If I'm not mistaken the phone seems to switch back and forth between 3 and 4g as well as occasionally lose the signal for 3g depending on the location inside my house. I believe this may be the cause of the quick drain over the span of a night. If I disable data overnight would you think this would help or would a somewhat low signal aside from the data functions of the phone still drain the battery? I usually have 2 bars in my bedroom.

 

[quickaudi]

Quickest way would be to tell us what the #1battery using app was.

 

[jdk2]

crazyion,

Do you have an aversion to using wi-fi as suggested above? It's the best way to keep everything syncing and uses the least amount of power.

 

[crazyion]

crazyion,

Do you have an aversion to using wi-fi as suggested above? It's the best way to keep everything syncing and uses the least amount of power.

I just want the least amount of drain possible and figured with everything off it would be less than with wifi on. I don't care about syncing or having data at night.

 

[Zeinzu]

Low signal will drain, WiFi or not, if your cell signal is so low that it's dropping out during the night. Stay on charger or use airplane mode.

 

[AlkiDweller]

Where I work my signal is horrible and the battery won't last an 8 hour work day, even if I don't us it.

After I installed a WiFi router, 8 hours uses 20% of the charge.

Go with the WiFi option.

 

[Ravenwjf]

Why do you not want to leave your phone on the charger overnight? Unless you have a limited data plan, leaving it on the charger over night will solve all your problems!!!! I have had this phone since the beginning of January and I charge it over night every night. My battery lasts anywhere from 11-17 hours depending on how much I have to use it during the day. I have had no battery loss from this. I don't use the wifi method because I have unlimited data, but as soon as I have to change to the Verizon shared data I will have my wifi on all the time.

Leaving it on will not hurt the battery....the new batteries have sensors that will prevent over charging......it will just maintain your full charge.

 

[vandyman]

Signal strength has nothing to do with the battery drain.
It is the apps that are probing. Change your settings and kill the apps that are doing this.

Apps that use GPS,facebook crap,etc... will kill the battery.

If your settings are set correctly, Your idle time should not drain more then 5% in an 8hr period.

 

[Zeinzu]

Signal strength has nothing to do with the battery drain.
It is the apps that are probing. Change your settings and kill the apps that are doing this.

Apps that use GPS,facebook crap,etc... will kill the battery.

If your settings are set correctly, Your idle time should not drain more then 5% in an 8hr period.

Signal strength has EVERYTHING to do with battery drain in his situation, as well is a major factor for battery life in general.

Killing apps doesn't save battery. Limiting the number of "running services" does. Remember, there's a difference between an app/data being cached and an app/service "actually running" in the background.

 

[vandyman]

View attachment 37132

Signal strength has EVERYTHING to do with battery drain in his situation, as well is a major factor for battery life in general.

Killing apps doesn't save battery. Limiting the number of "running services" does. Remember, there's a difference between an app/data being cached and an app/service "actually running" in the background.

I guess we are both on the right track.
I have a 100-120dbm signal and I only lose about 5% of my battery life over night when the phone is idle. <<< wifi is off, blue tooth off, and GPS off.

Look under settings---Location services. Turn this off and you will increase your battery life by 50+%.

 

[crazyion]

I shut off my data last night and went to bed with the wifi off as well. Woke up to a phone that had only drained about 7% so I was happy with that. Thanks for the help and in my case I guess the big killer when it drained in one night was my phone switching back and forth between 3 and 4g during the night and constantly looking for data signals.

 

[Demache]

Just leave the phone plugged in overnight. While its true that leaving Lithium Ion batteries at 100% all the time will destroy battery life, its not worth micro-managing for the risk of having the phone nearly dead by morning. Having your phone die within 8 hours in standby isn't normal though, which probably means you have signal or an app keeping the phone awake. Either way, for now, leave it plugged in.

 

[crazyion]

I plan on just leaving data off all the time as I'm around a wifi signal about 99% of the time, and flipping it on when I'm on the road and need it isn't really what I would call a "micro-managing" hassle. Wifi can be flipped on or off with the touch of a button on the home screen so that's no big deal either. I realize I could just leave the phone plugged in overnight now with these current lithium batteries but prefer not to as I like having the phone physically in my bed as the vibrate on the mattress wakes me up in the morning better than on my nightstand. But regardless I figured out what was wrong, so thanks for the help and all the suggestions everyone.

 

[Cromagnon]

DON'T turn off wifi. If your connecting isn't strong where you are, the phone will boost its signal and hunt for another tower all night long.... and as you saw, it will kill your battery. If you are in wifi range you should ALWAYS keep wifi on. Wifi uses the least power for data.... lower than 3G and way lower than 4G LTE. Also, leave your phone plugged in overnight. There is no reason not to. Today's electronics manage the battery charging process. Better to wake up with a full charge every morning, especially since this phone is not the best as far as battery life.

For more battery tips/help see below...

This is strange. When reading articles about battery saving tips. I saw often the advice of turning WiFi OFF. Here are the two first hits I got by Google search results:

How To Increase Your Smartphone Battery Life? | The Big Fat Reality
10 Ways to Boost Your Smartphone's Battery Life | PCWorld Business Center

Can you and other users please confirm that turning WiFi ON is better for battery life?

 

[Zeinzu]

This is strange. When reading articles about battery saving tips. I saw often the advice of turning WiFi OFF. Here are the two first hits I got by Google search results:

How To Increase Your Smartphone Battery Life? | The Big Fat Reality
10 Ways to Boost Your Smartphone's Battery Life | PCWorld Business Center

Can you and other users please confirm that turning WiFi ON is better for battery life?

I can confirm that WiFi on is always better than 3G or 4G for battery and always has been. The issue is that most phones were set to have WiFi sleep with screen off by default, and users were unaware, so they assumed WiFi was giving them crappy battery.

 

[Tim K]

Absolutely. Wifi uses much less energy. Not even close with 3G and 4G.

The reason people tell you to turn off wifi is because it may use a tiny amount of energy if you are somewhere that DOESN'T have wifi. Both articles posted say "when not in use" implying that either there is no Wifi or you aren't using it. But the point is that your phone is going to use a data connection whether you are using the phone or not.....and its better to use Wifi than 3G/4G. So if you are out at work with no wifi, your phone will use 3G/4G....so having wifi ON will waste a little battery. If you are at home with Wifi, having Wifi ON will save your battery compared to leaving the phone on 3G/4G only.

 

[Cromagnon]

Absolutely. Wifi uses much less energy. Not even close with 3G and 4G.

The reason people tell you to turn off wifi is because it may use a tiny amount of energy if you are somewhere that DOESN'T have wifi. Both articles posted say "when not in use" implying that either there is no Wifi or you aren't using it. But the point is that your phone is going to use a data connection whether you are using the phone or not.....and its better to use Wifi than 3G/4G. So if you are out at work with no wifi, your phone will use 3G/4G....so having wifi ON will waste a little battery. If you are at home with Wifi, having Wifi ON will save your battery compared to leaving the phone on 3G/4G only.

Oh wow, thank you for the explanation. Can you please clarify for the following scenarios:

1- Outside of home. There are free WiFi available, example close to coffee shops. But I decide not to connect to these networks and use 3G instead. Should the "WiFi ON" still consume some energy? I suppose yes as you explained above.

2- Inside home, but in a corner where WiFi reception is weak. The icon shows 1 or even zero bar. Is it still economic to leave WiFI on? BTW, I continue to receive data pretty OK. How do I know if the data came from WiFi or the phone network?