So you've been using your phone for some time and have had no issues making it through a full day. Battery life is great and you have no complaints, until one day you notice that your phone has been draining the battery without even being in use. By noon you're at less than 50%...what gives? 
If the issue wasn't caused by poor cell service, it's likely that you have a wake lock. A wake lock is a method of power management in the Android OS. Most wake locks are partial, meaning that something is preventing the CPU from entering a "deep sleep." This makes it operate at a higher frequency, draining your battery faster than it should be. The other type of wake lock is far less common, and it keeps your screen on (full wake lock). Obviously with the screen on, your battery is going to deplete at a high rate.
[NOTE]While this app will work for most phones, due to permission changes to Android, your phone must be rooted for this app to work properly if you have updated to version 4.4 or later.[/NOTE]
So what can you do to fix the wake lock and get your battery back to normal? That's where Wake Lock detector comes in.
Link for the Play Store: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...=com.uzumapps.wakelockdetector&token=7xLFVVdB
As shown in the app description, "Wakelock Detector? helps you to detect battery draining apps in your Android phone by checking wakelock usage history. Now you can easily find out what keep your phone awake and drain your battery when it is idle!
[INFO] GSAM Battery Monitor will also report wakelocks, and shows a more in depth chart of battery stats than the one built into your phone. [/INFO]
In this guide, I will go over some of the more common Wakelocks that users seem to experience and what you can do to fix them.
This is a screenshot of my wakelock logs for the day. As you can see, my phone has been up for 7 hours today, and has been held awake for 6% of that time. This is a pretty normal percentage and my battery isn't taking a hit from the ones shown.
Here is a screenshot of a phone that has been held awake by the Google Maps application.
Likely causes: Due to the app being in use, meaning that the phone's GPS is on.
Possible solutions: Turning off your GPS after using the app, or turning off location services within your phone's settings. Navigate to settings > personal > location and turn off location reporting. If that doesn't work, you'll want to go into settings > device > apps > maps, and clear cache.
Shown below is a screenshot from the WLD Play Store images. As you can see the app Kakao Talk and Facebook have kept the phone awake for 13% of the time since boot. For this one, we'll focus on Facebook as it is far more commonly used.
Likely causes: The app is set to push notifications to you, meaning it is constantly checking for messages, replies, likes, etc. or the app is reporting your location
Possible solutions: Turning off push notifications/location reporting for the app. To do this open Facebook > app settings > and change your refresh interval to something longer than what it is currently set at or turn off the messenger location services. The latter can also apply to the "Facebook Messenger" app.
Below is the Google Services wakelock. While this shot only shows it draining 13% of the battery, a lot of users have much higher percentages from the same app/service.
Likely causes: Phone is failing to connect to Google Services, or is backing up data when it shouldn't be.
Possible solutions: Go into settings > wireless & networks > data usage > Google Play services and restrict background data. If that doesn't work, turn off syncing for your Google accounts.
Those are just some of the commonly seen wakelocks, most others should have similar fixes as the ones shown above. For these and for any Android system wakelocks (the ones that show the small Android robot icon), try a reboot of your phone first, as that will often fix these issues.
[INFO]For any rooted users, if you are still having trouble with battery drain, you may want to try the app "Greenify." It lets you put apps "to sleep" and will only wake them when opened. This will prevent any wakelocks, both partial and full.[/INFO]
Link to the play store: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ails?id=com.oasisfeng.greenify&token=lwM0Qcbs
Hope this helped some of you with that annoying battery drain, and getting back to what you were used to expecting from your phone
If the issue wasn't caused by poor cell service, it's likely that you have a wake lock. A wake lock is a method of power management in the Android OS. Most wake locks are partial, meaning that something is preventing the CPU from entering a "deep sleep." This makes it operate at a higher frequency, draining your battery faster than it should be. The other type of wake lock is far less common, and it keeps your screen on (full wake lock). Obviously with the screen on, your battery is going to deplete at a high rate.
[NOTE]While this app will work for most phones, due to permission changes to Android, your phone must be rooted for this app to work properly if you have updated to version 4.4 or later.[/NOTE]
So what can you do to fix the wake lock and get your battery back to normal? That's where Wake Lock detector comes in.
Link for the Play Store: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...=com.uzumapps.wakelockdetector&token=7xLFVVdB
As shown in the app description, "Wakelock Detector? helps you to detect battery draining apps in your Android phone by checking wakelock usage history. Now you can easily find out what keep your phone awake and drain your battery when it is idle!
[INFO] GSAM Battery Monitor will also report wakelocks, and shows a more in depth chart of battery stats than the one built into your phone. [/INFO]
In this guide, I will go over some of the more common Wakelocks that users seem to experience and what you can do to fix them.
This is a screenshot of my wakelock logs for the day. As you can see, my phone has been up for 7 hours today, and has been held awake for 6% of that time. This is a pretty normal percentage and my battery isn't taking a hit from the ones shown.
Here is a screenshot of a phone that has been held awake by the Google Maps application.
Likely causes: Due to the app being in use, meaning that the phone's GPS is on.
Possible solutions: Turning off your GPS after using the app, or turning off location services within your phone's settings. Navigate to settings > personal > location and turn off location reporting. If that doesn't work, you'll want to go into settings > device > apps > maps, and clear cache.
Shown below is a screenshot from the WLD Play Store images. As you can see the app Kakao Talk and Facebook have kept the phone awake for 13% of the time since boot. For this one, we'll focus on Facebook as it is far more commonly used.
Likely causes: The app is set to push notifications to you, meaning it is constantly checking for messages, replies, likes, etc. or the app is reporting your location
Possible solutions: Turning off push notifications/location reporting for the app. To do this open Facebook > app settings > and change your refresh interval to something longer than what it is currently set at or turn off the messenger location services. The latter can also apply to the "Facebook Messenger" app.
Below is the Google Services wakelock. While this shot only shows it draining 13% of the battery, a lot of users have much higher percentages from the same app/service.
Likely causes: Phone is failing to connect to Google Services, or is backing up data when it shouldn't be.
Possible solutions: Go into settings > wireless & networks > data usage > Google Play services and restrict background data. If that doesn't work, turn off syncing for your Google accounts.
Those are just some of the commonly seen wakelocks, most others should have similar fixes as the ones shown above. For these and for any Android system wakelocks (the ones that show the small Android robot icon), try a reboot of your phone first, as that will often fix these issues.
[INFO]For any rooted users, if you are still having trouble with battery drain, you may want to try the app "Greenify." It lets you put apps "to sleep" and will only wake them when opened. This will prevent any wakelocks, both partial and full.[/INFO]
Link to the play store: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ails?id=com.oasisfeng.greenify&token=lwM0Qcbs
Hope this helped some of you with that annoying battery drain, and getting back to what you were used to expecting from your phone
Last edited:
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