Tmo is killing my battery

[val88]

I was away in NYC for the past month. There I routinely got full bars of LTE even indoors. Overnight I lost about 10-15% of the battery with the exception once/week by google search's crazy battery consumption. But 10-15% is only a bit higher than my GN.

However, when I returned home to northern CA things changed. My signal outdoors remain good but not great. Indoors I only get 1 bar of LTE. I didn't think this would make a difference but it did.

In these examples my phone was idle for 9 hours. All examples have very little wake locks, screen never went on and barely any data was transferred over night. Most of the usage was by idle phone and cell standby.

Night #1: lost 60% of battery
- LTE on
- GSam battery monitor showed 1 bar of LTE 100% of the time so it didn't fluctuate

Night #2: lost 65% of battery
- LTE off, wifi on

Night #3: lost 5% of battery
- turned on airplane mode (effectively shutting phone radios)
- then turned on wifi to keep talkatone active.

So this is one of the reason why people are so confused by battery life. It has less to do with what you have turned on. I notice for example that keeping BT on didn't change these numbers at all. Ditto with location reporting. In fact, in one test turning off location reporting resulted in higher battery use. So for me at least it seems the worse culprit is the cell signal. This was never the case in the last 2 years with my GN on verizon.

 

[akmsr]

some of us are using a qualcom app called battery guru for snapdragon available on play store for free. its very efficient and its findings agree with your experience that having location reporting and BT on does not have much impact on battery life. it watches your uses habit for 4~5 days then starts managing apps and services for extending battery life.
you can give it a shot.

 

[Rxpert83]

Low signal will kill your battery. Thats just a fact, and the only practical way to get around it is to shut off that radio.

With that said, 60% overnight is a LOT, and I'm inclined to believe you could have much more going on under the surface

 

[gtbarry]

Get Wake Lock Detector in the Play Store. It will tell you what apps are waking things up and how often. Hnit: facebook is one huge battery suck and could/should be uninstalled.

 

[Rxpert83]

You can get Facebook under control just by opening up the settings and having it not sync. It doesn't even show up on my battery graph

 

[tsaunders]

I had Slacker radio installed and it killed my battery it was running in the background for 5 hours straight.

Take a look and see what apps are running and for how long.

I have to agree if you have a low signal it will kill the battery.

 

[val88]

Get Wake Lock Detector in the Play Store. It will tell you what apps are waking things up and how often. Hnit: facebook is one huge battery suck and could/should be uninstalled.

I thought of that but on all 3 tries I see very little wake locks on the phone.
The 6% lost per hour seem pretty consistent. Throughout the day I would check and since my post the drain has been consistent. It seems indoor signal is just too weak. That's one thing I do miss from vz but not enough to switch back.

For now my solution overnight is for tasker to shut off the radio at night and just rely on voip with wifi until the morning. It's a good enough solution.

 

[trophynuts]

this was one of my biggest complaints with Android. Inexcusable and unexplained variations in battery life. Location data usage always seemed to be the biggest issue. custom Kernels usually helped a good bit but it was still frustrating.

 

[Rxpert83]

The recent Google services update should have relieved the location based battery issues

 

[JSchu22]

Not sure what the big surprise is here- If your signal sucks, so will your battery life. Mobile phone 101 people (besides the one replier that said the same thing).

 

[val88]

I will add to the mystery.
First, I want to reply about the location comment. As I said none of this has to do with location data. The drain has always been cell standby and phone idle processes taking 60% of total battery use.

What is contradicting to weak cell signal is that this week my phone still has a weak signal but no longer drains at the rate of 6%/hour. I validated that data usage both in wifi and lte is barely significant while the percentage of weak radio remains at least 80%of the time. Yet now the drain is 1%/hour

I have always noticed that when I travel , that first week my phone always drains significantly overnight. It happens to my gn add well. So my theory is that it is location related but not google location but cell provider or maybe NSA.
I did have govt security clearance for many years.

 

[zipred]

In my experience, many who complain about battery life haven't taken the time to identify which apps are constantly or frequently refreshing. While signal strength certainly plays a part, it's about the overall setup. Android requires patience, diligence in learning the nuances, which in turn pays off handsomely.

No matter the brand or model, with some time well spent during setup, one will then enjoy the best battery life each model is capable of delivering.