Android Assistance
8My phone is old and battery life stinks because of this. I’ve noticed it dying a lot faster than normal lately. I’ve been looking at phones so it will eventually be replaced, but I need some help now if possible.
I put my phone into extreme power saving mode, and it gave me a warning that my microphone was recording. The last time it did this, it was because OK Google was enabled. Ok Google drained my battery crazy fast so I turned it off.
Now I can’t figure out what app is causing my microphone to stay on constantly. I’ve gone into settings for all the running apps, and killed off everything to see if it goes away. It doesn’t. Some apps do restart instantly. I have a bunch of Google things running, and when I look at the battery manager, it’s mostly used up by Google or cell standby.
Without completely wiping the phone, how can I figure this out? I’m usually fairly savvy with this stuff, but my brain is fried lately and I can’t figure it out. It’s draining so bad that even on a battery pack, sometimes the battery is still draining.
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I’m not sure how old, but a lot of phones have built in tools to show you battery consumption that breaks it down by app/% of battery used in the last x amount of time. Maybe that will give you a starting point.
The most common offender I’ve run into is just having my location (gps) turned on.
Have you restarted your phone lately? There are also some third party apps available that help you track usage.
Haven’t used it, but this seems pretty handy:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gsamlabs.bbm&hl=en
Maybe tinfoil hattish of me, but I believe facebook is always listening. I could be having a casual conversation about something I have never heard of, or looked up, then 15 minutes later see an ad for it on facebook. It happens regularly.
@lichme my phone does break it down into which apps, but it’s usually Google services which is the main offender. Unfortunately from what I understand, other apps start up Google services, but then it doesn’t show that actual app as being the offender.
I keep GPS off unless I’m using maps.
Restart the phone almost every day at this point.
My phone has been on battery for just over two hours and is already at 64%, with the regular power saver on.
I don’t have the Facebook app because it took up too much space.
@RiotDemon Any chance you are using Google Fit?
Here is some info for Google Services battery issues:
https://www.howtogeek.com/193982/why-is-google-services-draining-so-much-battery-on-android/
@lichme nope.
I’ll check out the link, thanks.
@lichme Oh geez, the suspiciously timed and ridiculously targeted Facebook ad thing has been happening to us, too. I haven’t granted the Facebook app microphone permission, so I know it’s not that at least.
If you turn your phone off when you’re not using it, it doesn’t drain the battery. /sarcasm
I have issues every once in a while with my phone consuming huge amounts of battery. My phone is just over a year old so this shouldn’t be an issue. It turns out that if you travel somewhere that your phone doesn’t receive a signal or receives a diminished signal, it goes into standby mode. Standby can sometimes stay on, even after having a strong signal again. This will drain your battery. The only way to disable it, or so it seems, is to shut the phone completely down and leave it off for a few minutes.
I agree with @lichme – look at the amount of data and battery consumption each app has claimed and you’ll know which app is eating up the battery. If your phone doesn’t have that option, download a power management app from the Play store and see if you can pin point it that way.
@capguncowboy It’s hard to receive calls and texts that way. My friend keeps her phone off except when she’s using it. So she’s unreachable whenever she’s not at home. We got by for a couple thousand years that way as a species, but we’re structured around mechanical telepathy now.
@moondrake Yep, I’m a cave woman. I keep my phone off, too. If someone really wants me, they can write me a letter. I also accept email, so I guess I have advanced to the Dark Ages.
@capguncowboy the offender is Google services, which doesn’t actually tell me which app it is.
I’ll look into the power management apps, thanks.
@RiotDemon If you’re phone isn’t using Android 7.0 (Nougat) and later, I recommend SystemPanel from NextApp in the Play Store.You will be able to see in real time what apps are sucking up resources and then you can force stop them from there.
@Barney I don’t turn mine off, I just don’t pay attention to it unless I need it.
@Barney
If I had to hand crank my phone every day to charge it, I’d turn mine off also.
Can’t you get some kinda prairie dog power charging thing going on KS?
@Cerridwyn I tend to forget to charge my phone, so keeping it off keeps my battery charged longer.
Safe mode is another option that will disable all non-critical apps. I would try that first and see if your battery life improves – at least you can rule out the battery as the problem.
I struggled with battery drain for months then determined (almost by accident) that it was a game that was stuck in a sync mode and even between restarts it would constantly try to sync game progress to it’s server. I only got about 4 hours on a charge, until I identified it. Uninstalling and reinstalling it fixed it completely, now I go all day (hubba, hubba) on a charge.
The battery meter stuff never really helped me – the big stuff was always classified as “Android System” or “Services” or something.
If safe-mode helps, go back and disable (or uninstall) all your apps and add them back slowly. It will help you determine which are the offenders.
@ACraigL yep, Google services is the biggest culprit. It doesn’t say which app started which service of course.
I was afraid I’d have to disable everything to figure it out.
I’ll try safe mode later. Thanks.
/giphy throw it on the ground
@medz
/youtube threw it on the ground
Investigate anything that syncs. Perhaps set most Apps to sync only on wifi or manually or something.
Turn wifi off when you leave the house. When wifi is on and not connected it can be searching for connections. Uses battery to do those.
Also turn off the mic in any app that might concievably use it.
Safe mode testing is a good idea.
Instead of wiping the phone (highly inconvenient) you might try uninstalling 1 app at a time or 5 apps at a time or something.
Be suspicious of any app that runs all the time.
Make a list and leave those apps of the phone for a day or two as a test.
See if battery life improves.
If you find some change then see if you can narrow it down.
Is your battery user replaceable? Cheap decent batteries can be had in eBay and Amazon.
Old batteries overheat the phone and can run down really fast.
Batteries run down much faster in hot weather unless your are mostly inside. If the phone gets hot your battery will die fast.
Check to see if the phone is getting hot. If an app makes the phone hot then the battery will run down
If charging the battery makes the phone hot then the battery has had it.
Sometimes those battery stores can do a battery replacement pretty cheap if that is all that is wrong.
Hey android people:. Which android phones have the rep of getting good battery life?
Consider which apps you are OK running all the time. Weather and basics phone functions sure. Question everything else.
Apps want to run all the time in part so they can collect data.
@f00l Not the Nexus 6P. I think there will be a class action lawsuit over how bad the battery life is.
@fibrs86
Kinda not great on the nexus 6 also.
@f00l When my SO upgraded to a Moto G4 Play we were astounded by the battery life, consistently going two straight days between charges with moderate usage.
Seems pretty remarkable by modern standards for a phone that’s somehow still very light in the hand and performs admirably.
Also the damn thing cost only like $90 last year.
In later versions of Android you can go to Settings > Apps, then look at the permissions for each app. You can even disable individual permissions for most installed apps (though you might break them doing this).
what carrier are you on? if your phone doesnt have space for facebook it would be time for an upgrade. you can get really nice phones for less than $100 now a days
We use a ton of different models at work. Generally what the rep will give a deal on at the point they need replacing. At one point, when the Samsung Galaxy 5 was brand new and hot, we upgraded the entire fleet to Galaxy 4’s for like 5 bucks a piece or some seriously ridiculous price. They were new, not refurbs. Over the past 3 years, we noticed a somewhat odd pattern - they never die alone. we had a bunch a couple of months ago with battery meltdown, literally - hot swollen. had never happened before, hasn’t happened since. before that we had a pod of them that all had batteries that quit charging, or holding a charge for more than an hour or two. it was’t the battery, we replaced a few, new batteries acted exactly the same. so we replaced the phones.
What i’m kinda saying is phone life is a bell curve. some die young, some live an average life and some seem almost immortal (even though by then they don’t do much but text or call).
If your phone is over 2 years old, your in the main curve. 18-36 months seems to be when most develop problems. If it’s that old, I’d just do it and get another. You’ll be happier in thee short run.
I don’t have time to respond to everyone right now, but I want to thank everyone for their suggestions.
After starting to disable multiple apps, I would test by putting it into the extreme power saver and sure enough, kept saying that my microphone was recording.
Eventually I got tired of that and decided to go into Google settings. Somehow the ok Google detection turned itself back on. Wtf. Little sneaky turd.
Hopefully that will take care of most of the problem for now.
@RiotDemon Tricky. Might want to double check that after updates in the future then.
@RiotDemon “okay, google. are you listening?”
@medz the funny thing is, I actually said “ok Google” several times trying to wake it just in case, and it never woke up. So the little jerk was listening but ignoring me.
@RiotDemon the good news is when you upgrade, most of the modern devices have the “ok google” in hardware, so you don’t have the mega battery drain.
Li-On batteries DO need replacement after awhile. I know a lot about this because not only do I use them in my phone, but they are also used in laptops and vaping devices. I have all three! Look into getting a replacement battery- and if your phone is more that a couple years old, it’s likely you can get a better battery now.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cell+phone+battery+replacement&atb=v46-3__&ia=products
Things that also affect battery life is heat. And, of course, too much heat will cause a thermal runaway event. (!!!) People seem to forget about heat- they leave a device in a car, charge near a heat source (like a laptop vent!) or keep in a pocket next to their body.
Best practice is to turn off a device before plugging it into the charger.
See: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
Buying replacement batteries has extended the usefulness of my past mobile phones.
@kathologist unfortunately it’s a non replaceable battery. It is over four years old now.
@RiotDemon Yeah that’s really the tail end of most battery lifespans.
“Non-replaceable” doesn’t always mean it can’t be done, though - did a battery swap on my 2013 Moto X when I popped it open to replace a cracked screen. Only needed a couple of guitar picks to get at the battery in that case.
If you’re running an Android release before 6.0, you won’t benefit from recent aggressive power optimisations for background apps introduced in later versions. You may see a large improvement using something like Greenify to automatically suspend background apps.