Help Quickly draining battery... out of the blue!

[MightyFurcules]

Hey, guys... I've been having a recent battery problem with my MAXX. I've had the phone since April, and never had any battery issues. I upgraded to ICS when it was released, and it seemed to be even better. (I'm still on version 4.0.4, and my phone doesn't report any update currently available.)

About two weeks ago, I started noticing that my battery was draining... fast! I haven't installed anything that seems to have been the catalyst for this. When I check my running apps, there's nothing that I haven't been running for a very long time, nor anything that seems to be a particular resource hog. My daily usage of the phone hasn't changed at all either. But all of a sudden, terrible battery life. I can be on full charge, and then after a little browsing and a bit of texting, my battery will go down 30 - 40%. If I use the phone any more, it continues to drain quickly.

Any ideas? I would really appreciate any help. (And I didn't see any existing threads that seemed to address this specific version of a battery problem, but if I did miss any, I apologize!)

Thank you!

 

[Podivin]

Two toughts;

1) an app that you've been using for a long time updated and is now causing a battery drain. If you can think of any apps that updated around the time the problem started, try deleting them one by one to see if it fixes the problem.

2) Verizon (or whomever your carrier is) is having a signal problem in your area and the weak signal is causing the phone to drain faster while trying to maintain a signal.

 

[gloriousnumber1]

I had this problem after the ICS OTA, and a factory reset fixed it. Just an idea.

 

[Jon Davis]

Two toughts;

1) an app that you've been using for a long time updated and is now causing a battery drain. If you can think of any apps that updated around the time the problem started, try deleting them one by one to see if it fixes the problem.

2) Verizon (or whomever your carrier is) is having a signal problem in your area and the weak signal is causing the phone to drain faster while trying to maintain a signal.

I'm having the same problem and suspect number 2 is the cause. I play a version of solitaire that has ads. When the signal is poor it goes nuts trying to download ads. I am wondering if it keeps trying even if I'm not using it currently. (in the background) I have started killing it when not using it.
Do some apps remain active when not being used?

 

[MightyFurcules]

Hey, guys... thanks for the suggestions!

Mhotovec, I'm going to go over all of my apps and try to eliminate just as you suggested. I use GoSMS and GoLauncher, which update themselves all the time (SMS literally had an update as I was typing this!). When looking at my running apps they're of course always running. I did notice that a theme pack for GoSMS that I downloaded recently is always changing how much RAM it's using. One minute it's 8MB, next it's 9.2MB and so on. Is that normal for something like a theme for a messaging app to keep varying like that? (I do realize that may be too app-specific to answer... I just thought I'd ask.)

Gloriousnumber1, I did a reset after I updated to ICS a while back. Would another one now have any effect?

Mhotovec and Jon, I didn't realize that weak signal could cause this sort of issue. I live in a pretty well-covered area (in NJ, about 20 minutes from NYC), and have never had any major signal problems. But perhaps if they're working on the network or something, it could be causing signal issues that I of course don't know about.

Just FYI... when I look at my battery usage meter (right through the OS), the greatest power hog is my screen. I have it very bright. But it's always been that way, ever since I got the phone. Not sure why that would suddenly cause more of a drain than it previously did.

Again, thank you for all the help! I'm hoping I can get this sorted out, and I really appreciate all the assistance and info!

 

[Mike20878]

This happened to me yesterday, but I think it was I left a Twitter app open that was probably trying to connect to the network. My office has a terrible Verizon signal and I think I had wifi off. Plugging in to charge didn't do much at all so I powered it off to get some movement on the battery percentage.

 

[Podivin]

MightyF, I'm assuming that the theme pack you mentioned is something like a live wallpaper for you sms - judging by the fact that it's changing ram usage. Try killing that by going to the stock boring GoSMS default theme and see if that helps any.
Live wallpapers, btw, are really hard on a battery. They're cool, but you pay the price.

Yep, a weak signal will kill the battery because phone is working too hard to maintain a connection. More accurately, it keeps having to reconnect the lost signal. This is true of 3g, 4g and plain ole cell signal. My wife's mother lives WAY out in the country where there is no cell service of any sort. Our phones will drain the battery by mid afternoon trying to find a signal, whereas at home they easily last all day with juice to spare when we plug them in at night. We've learned to go to airplane mode when we're there to save the battery (or just turn the phone off - it's not like we can use it).
Which actually brings up another thing to try, if you can (I don't know how necessary your phone is to you) try putting it in airplane mode for a day to see how that affects the battery life.

 

[Podivin]

...Plugging in to charge didn't do much at all so I powered it off to get some movement on the battery percentage.

Were you plugged in to a wall charger, or USB? USB charging on this phone takes a LONG time, it's much slower than the wall charger, especially if the phone is working.

 

[Mike20878]

Were you plugged in to a wall charger, or USB? USB charging on this phone takes a LONG time, it's much slower than the wall charger, especially if the phone is working.

Wall charger. For whatever reason it was stuck on 15% until I shut it off. I didn't pay attention to how long I had it plugged in, though.

Haven't had a problem today.

 

[MightyFurcules]

Quick update on this, guys... I tried stopping any apps that seemed to be hogging RAM, and I saw no discernable difference. I used it heavily the other day (lots of picture taking and lots of videoing), and it drained quickly. (Again, significantly more quickly than it had in the past.) If I hadn't put the screen brightness down to almost the minimum to help slow it down, it would have completely died for sure.

Could it be that the battery has just "gone bad" (for lack of more technically accurate term)? Do you think I should try to get the phone replaced?

As always-- many thanks for the ideas and opinions!

 

[CharlieD]

One thing that might be happening (I've had this happen to me) is that some app is preventing the phone from sleeping. The only app I've ever purchased is called BetterBatterStats. It can show you the time the phone is spent in various cpu states including deep sleep time. It can also show you the amount of time it's been dealing with something partial wakelocks and what app or apps have been causing these the most, which will prevent the phone from sleeping. A similar and free app, but one that does not have as many features as the other one I mentioned is GSam Battery Monitor. If I find a runaway app, I just do a force stop on it. That usually seems to do the trick.

I've also run into the problem where the 4G signal at work is very week and the phone drains the battery trying to keep a connection. I have another app called LTE OnOFF I use to switch to 3G at work. If you try this one, don't worry if it says it is for a different phone. Works just fine on my MAXX.

Hope this helps

Charlie

 

[MightyFurcules]

Thanks for the info, Charlie!

I tried your suggestions, and nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Nothing is preventing my phone from sleeping, and no "rogue" apps seem to be taking up any appreciable battery power. My signal strength seems loom in the 60% - 70% range. That's a bit lower than I'd like, but is that enough to really drain my battery so quickly?

Again, thanks for the help and suggestions!

 

[Methos1979]

If you are streaming music off the cloud that will drain your battery faster as well, although unless this is something new you are doing it should be any different than what you saw before. If you do stream music make sure you click on any option to 'play offline' if possible. That saved me a ton of battery life on 4G.

Every once in a while (a couple times a week at least) my phone gets hot and the battery drains like crazy. I still haven't found what does it but I so many apps on my phone that tracing it down would be difficult at best. I just reboot when I notice it happening and it solves the issue for a couple days.

This is why I want to root my phone so I can have the phone automatically reboot itself once a day to help ward this off.

 

[Methos1979]

Another issue I noted today - The Weather Channel app. My phone seemed to be running hot and battery draining fast despite a couple reboots so I went in to see what usage percentages was and was shocked to see The Weather Channel sucking down a ton of power consumption - this despite it NOT being my primary weather program and not having been used in days. Probably all the ads. Needless to say, I uninstalled it and another weather app that was using a smaller amount of resources and the phone cooled down and stopped draining the battery.

 

[Mike20878]

Another issue I noted today - The Weather Channel app. My phone seemed to be running hot and battery draining fast despite a couple reboots so I went in to see what usage percentages was and was shocked to see The Weather Channel sucking down a ton of power consumption - this despite it NOT being my primary weather program and not having been used in days. Probably all the ads. Needless to say, I uninstalled it and another weather app that was using a smaller amount of resources and the phone cooled down and stopped draining the battery.

Have you tried WeatherBug? I don't know how it is with power consumption, but it does give you more localized weather utilizing weather stations at schools in your area.

 

[MightyFurcules]

Thanks again for the continued help!

@Methos: I never really stream any music, so I know that isn't the culprit.

As the quick battery drain was now added to by a very long charge time (several hours to charge to full) I ended up calling Verizon, and they were going to send me a replacement. I asked if I could upgrade even though it wasn't my time yet, and they allowed me, so I'm now the owner of a Razr MAXX HD. (This was of course after they sent me the non-MAXX version, which I just received today-- after the MAXX-- and now have to return. Ah, Verizon.) But after credits I had and the fact that I can turn in my old Razr to Verizon for some money back, it really didn't cost me that much at all. So not just a new phone, but a new model for me! (Well, an upgraded model, at least.)

Completely separate from that, I did notice that weather apps tend to take up a lot of resources. I've been using AccuWeather, and it's a RAM and sometimes data hog! So you might be onto something there, Methos.