fun with battery life on stock Android (6)

[mikeymikec]

I've been noticing on my Nexus 5 lately (the install is only a few months old, Android 6, very few extra apps installed) that the battery life has been draining in a rather odd fashion: for example, I would normally expect from experience that say overnight (nothing running except standard mobile signal, no data, no wifi, no NFC, GPS, etc), the battery usage would level off, however lately I've been getting all manner of graph curves. It isn't being caused by lack of mobile signal either.

So to begin with I removed any unnecessary apps (things like BBC radio player), and swiping any recent apps off the 'recent' list. I followed that up with regular reboots (daily at one point), yet rebooting seemed to make little difference except one time after rebooting it for the third time in the same day.

After talking with my brother about his Android experiences lately, I tried something he had mentioned for a different problem and started force-stopping and disabling apps I don't use. Battery life has returned to normal (at least what I would consider to be normal / acceptable) for the time being (though I would be more sure if I manage to get through say a week without unexpected runaway battery usage).

I found it interesting that even when some apps have been disabled (Settings > Apps), they can still somehow start. Currently my two suspects are Hangouts (which I don't use, I use Messenger) and Google Fit. The reason I suspect Hangouts is that one time I did a slew of updates on the play store, Hangouts was one of them, then the next morning I found far more battery life drained than I have ever seen, and when I looked at the battery usage, Hangouts is sitting there with something like 90% of the usage. I have less reason to suspect Fit, though the fact that it seems to like to run even though I literally haven't run it since I last factory-resetted my phone, and (IIRC) it was one of the disabled apps that somehow managed to run again.

I've never quite fathomed battery usage on this phone (though this is the first smartphone I've owned that was worth using as a smartphone). It might go for a week with battery consumption stats that are within my expectations, and then all of a sudden start to chew through the battery for no apparent reason. Sometimes it's due to more obvious things like leaving Chrome running after looking at a website or two. Pretty much any automatic behaviour I'm aware of I've disabled (such as auto updating apps while on wifi, sync'ing, etc).

One other scenario I suspect of battery chewing is updating apps through the google play store, while I expect app updating in itself to use more resources due to say high CPU usage, surely such usage should cease once the updates are complete. Since encountering such behaviour I try to stick to rebooting the phone after updates.

 

[ControlD]

Have you tried using Greenify on those problem applications? I have some "trouble apps" like Words With Friends that use way more battery life than they should. Once they are Greenified the problem goes away. It is easier than having to actually close every app after using it.

 

[TeknoBug]

I typically never have trouble with battery life on Android, my original HTC Desire was the only one with poor battery life but otherwise most Android phones I"ve used in the past 6 years has been decent and at the end of the day often 40-50% battery life when plugging it in for the night. Granted they're not like Blackberries that can last 2 days.

I have encountered battery draining apps before, Skype being one of them a few times but I think it's decent now, so just keep an eye on the battery monitor that's built into Android and it'll show what's been using the battery often, "screen on" is often the highest but if there's an app that's up there then that may be the problem.

 

[mikeymikec]

Does Greenify force-close apps you've been using or what?

 

[Mopetar]

It's got an aggressive doze feature that prevents apps from doing things in the background that can drain power. It mostly just prevents apps from receiving notifications or doing other processing when they're not being actively used, even if the phone is otherwise in use.

 

[Sean Kyle]

Does it effect updates, notifications and stuff?

 

[ControlD]

Does it effect updates, notifications and stuff?

In general, yes. Some of this depends on whether you are running rooted or non-rooted I believe. You wouldn't want to use this on something like a weather app or any other app that you want to receive regular updates from.

If you use the "shallow hibernation" mode apps will be woken periodically to check for notifications. That is what I use for things like Words with Friends. I don't need it waking my phone every 15 seconds to check the status of my games, I only need to know once in a while.

 

[Sean Kyle]

In general, yes. Some of this depends on whether you are running rooted or non-rooted I believe. You wouldn't want to use this on something like a weather app or any other app that you want to receive regular updates from.

If you use the "shallow hibernation" mode apps will be woken periodically to check for notifications. That is what I use for things like Words with Friends. I don't need it waking my phone every 15 seconds to check the status of my games, I only need to know once in a while.

Sounds great! Considering we can control it, this thing can really help save battery a lot.

 

[lopri]

I am surprised that you just noticed this behavior after years of using the Nexus 5. It used to happen to my Nexus 4 and Nexus 5. I do not remember it happening on the 5X.

This kind of irregular battery drainage was mostly limited to the Nexus devices running Kitkat or Lollipop for me. I rarely encounter an unpredictable battery drainage on Samsung, Sony, or LG phones. Some phones use battery fast, yes, but in predictable manner.