Battery draining fast - started on 6/23/2016

[AC Question]

We have two Samsung Galaxy SII phones. We use Sprint. Both started having problems with the battery draining extremely fast at the same time. When I look under Settings: Applications: running: It shows Google play services, com.samsumg.internal, voicemail, and some other Sprint services gaining time at a high rate. The battery is draining so fast, it is getting hot.
Is there a way to reset or fix the phone?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Charge up to 100%, then let it drain to 20-30% with normal usage, without charging in between. Then show us:


1. The main Settings>Battery screen.
2. The fullscreen battery graph screen (which shows Awake time and Cell Signal Strength).
3. The Screen category (to see total Screen On time).
4. The Cell Standby category, if present (to see Time Without Signal).


http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...ide-how-post-screenshots-android-central.html

 

[Max2598]

Hi,
I'm not the original poster, but I had the same problem, starting a few days ago. The battery usually lasted a whole day without problems. Now, it barely last half a day.
I tried to uninstall or disable a bunch of apps, disable location services and I restricted background data. Nothing changes (or only get worse).
My device is a Samsung tablet GT-P6800.
Here are the screenshots:
The battery was at 100% when I unplugged the device, so 77% of the battery was used in 4 hours!

Any tips on how to fix this problem would be very welcomed.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! The Google Services drain issue can be difficult to troubleshoot, because other apps can utilize Google Services as well. So the drain might actually be due to some other app, not Google Services itself. Unfortunately, this may require you to uninstall apps one by one until the problem goes away.

 

[RobinC1]

I had the same issue recently! After completely shutting off my phone and letting it sit for a couple of hours it seems to have returned to its normal functionality. I hope this will work for everyone else.

 

[Mattsta1]

I've had a similar problem. For the last 5-7 days, Google services has been eating my battery life at a ridiculous rate. Sync is off, location off, nfc off. Battery life on my s7 was great until this week. I'm so sad

 

[robertrj]

I'm experiencing the same problem... Have even created a topic here. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy Ace 2, and no matter what I do Google Play Services is taking close to 85% of battery. I noticed also that checking the battery details, phone is almost all the time awake.

I believe there is no much that can be done, seems like a problem with te Google Play Services. But, the strange is that I observe this only on my phone (running an older Android version), I also have a Samsung tablet that is very recent, and even though the same Google Play Services version, battery consumption is insignificant.

 

[Max2598]

Thanks for your answers.
I tried Airplane mode. I activated the airplane mode just a couple of minutes after turning on the device (which was completely turned off while the battery was charging): the battery consumption rate was very low, back to normal (but of course, I couldn't do much with it). I disabled the airplane mode, and the battery usage rate went up again very quickly, AND stayed up even when I turned the airplane mode on again.

Following an advice found on another forum, I installed a wakelock detector to try and detect which app maintain a wakelock: it was first Google+, so I disabled it, then Chrome, so I uninstall it. It's now showing Gmail...
I won't have much of a phone or tablet left...

Considering this is happening to a number of us, and especially for older devices, and not new ones, I think it's more likely that the cause is not a specific app, but a bug in a recent update of google services, or a problem of retro-compatibility with older versions of Android.

 

[jsigmo]

I'm having the same problem on my Samsung Galaxy SII. It started a few days ago.

In one of the other threads on here about this issue, someone stated that Google Services, which Google auto-updates regardless of your update settings, has a bug in the newest version. I cannot verify this myself, but this seems to be happening to a lot of people all of a sudden, and people have tried everything up to and including doing a factory reset and NOT installing any of their apps. Still, Google Services is draining their batteries.

For me, Google services is causing almost all of the battery usage on my phone.

Google Services - 94%
Android OS - 2%
cell standby - 2%
screen - 2%.

In addition, I keep getting crashes of Google Services. I get messages saying that it's not responding, and wanting me to close or wait. Sometimes I get the option to report, etc.

I deleted Google Services and then reloaded it by trying G-Mail, which won't work without it, and then using the option it presented for "getting" it.

But I'm sure that just downloaded the latest version, which, according to some, has a bug causing this issue.

If this is the case, I sure hope Google rolls out a patched version soon! My phone's battery dies in a couple of hours from full charge now, and stays quite warm to the touch at all times.

Harrumph!

 

[robertrj]

I tried the airplane mode too. Observed the same issue... Recently got some of those crashes too. :-

I don't know, isn't there any way w can contact Google about it? I'm noticing more and more people facing this too, recently talked to my mother and she said her phone is also draining battery so fast, possibly because of the same Google Play Services update. By this time, I would expect that Google could at least let people know if they are working on that.

Personally, I still think that is some sort of idea to make older phones running older Android versions obsolete and impossible to use. I know there are many new phones now, and new Android versions have neat features... But some of us don't want (or can't) afford to buy a new phone every year. I know this is how most people like, but there are still users that take care of their phones and make them last. My phone has more than 3 years, has been working perfectly fine until this update. This was one of the reasons I have chosen an Android phone instead of a iPhone, because I know how that thing gets obsolete so fast...

 

[B. Diddy]

I don't know, isn't there any way w can contact Google about it?

Go to Settings>About Phone and see if there is a "Send feedback about this device" option. Or go to Settings>Apps​, tap Menu>Help & Feedback, then tap Send Feedback.

 

[jsigmo]

I tried the airplane mode too. Observed the same issue... Recently got some of those crashes too. :-

I don't know, isn't there any way w can contact Google about it? I'm noticing more and more people facing this too, recently talked to my mother and she said her phone is also draining battery so fast, possibly because of the same Google Play Services update. By this time, I would expect that Google could at least let people know if they are working on that.

Personally, I still think that is some sort of idea to make older phones running older Android versions obsolete and impossible to use. I know there are many new phones now, and new Android versions have neat features... But some of us don't want (or can't) afford to buy a new phone every year. I know this is how most people like, but there are still users that take care of their phones and make them last. My phone has more than 3 years, has been working perfectly fine until this update. This was one of the reasons I have chosen an Android phone instead of a iPhone, because I know how that thing gets obsolete so fast...

I agree. My wife and I have had these phones for a long time, and have kept them in good shape. They're now "off contract" and we've been eligible for the "free" upgrade to new phones for a couple of years. "Free", my behind!

Off contract, we're paying more than $100 less per month than when the phones were new and under contract. The phones (Galaxy Skyrocket S2) do everything I need a phone to do.

If Google obsoletes these phones on purpose, that will be a good reason to switch back to a dumb phone for me. I don't need to have a phone that surfs the net, texts, etc. It's nice, but not necessary. But one thing that is necessary is that the phone's battery last at least 24 hours when "idle". Preferably more like 48.

We both have several tablet devices, and are almost always within WiFi range when we want to surf, update email, etc. So these inexpensive tablets have somewhat obsoleted the web functions of our phones.

I can't see signing up to pay $2400 over the next couple of years to pay for two new phones. Especially if it's made necessary on purpose.

I suspect it's just a bug, though. I don't think Google would "crap in their own mess kit" like this on purpose.

Time will tell. Meanwhile, the fix needs to happen fast. This really is very annoying to say the least. Assuming it IS a bug in Google Play Services (or Google Services), they've killed millions of phones right as we're having a long holiday weekend here in the US, when people are traveling and can least afford to have their phone batteries being drained rapidly.

 

[jsigmo]

Go to Settings>About Phone and see if there is a "Send feedback about this device" option. Or go to Settings>Apps​, tap Menu>Help & Feedback, then tap Send Feedback.

None of those options appear on my phone.

Further, I find no way to rate the app or leave feedback, either, since it doesn't seem to appear in the Play Store!

However, browsing on my PC, I DO find it at:

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...d=com.google.android.gms&hl=en&token=V8fvIDg5

But you can't rate it unless you download it, etc.

But an interesting tidbit on the site there is this:

"Updated
June 30, 2016"

So that corresponds precisely with when my phone started having this issue. Something of a smoking gun, it seems.

Edit to add:

I logged into my google account, and it knows all of the apps I have, including this one. So I should be able to "write a review" for it. However, as I'm trying to do this, the page locks up. Maybe they've disabled this for now because they are already aware that there's a bug.

That would be fine. That would mean that they're aware of the problem and are working on it.

We can only hope!

Edit once again....

It appears that to leave a review, I must sign up for Google + whatever that is! No Thanks!

 

[quakelife911]

Same problem. Did a factory reset and only installed Google Play Services and it still turns my phone into trash. So we know it is NOT because of low memory or because of another application or because of my battery or sim card because it only starts happening when Google Play Services is installed. I also tryed reinstalling and that didn't do anything. I can uninstall it but without it some stuff does not work like the market. What I have gotten so far is with Google Play Services installed my phone gets way too hot and runs really slow but I have to have it on my phone for some stuff to work so only thing left to do is just keep emailing google until they fix it. I also tryed turning phone on and off changing battery modes and changing everything on the phone as in turning off location services etc

 

[jsigmo]

If we could revert to a previous version of google play services, then things would be OK. But it auto updates itself to this new, buggy version.

Meanwhile, my phone is pretty useless.

Tabbed in.

 

[robertrj]

Just a funny thing I observed now. Starting today I noticed at the battery screen that the Android System is using a lot too. It used to stay with very low usage (close to 2%), but now it is like it is sharing the usage with Google Play Services.



Not sure if it means something...

 

[Max2598]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I was about to do a factory reset, but seeing how it didn't work for you, I won't.
I just hope they will fix this issue really soon.
I had already made a review on Google Play services in the app store mentioning the problem.

 

[jsigmo]

Now here's a strange twist:

My wife has the identical phone to mine. We got them at the same time, same day, same store, etc. They're both Samsung Galaxy Skyrocket S2s.

Mine started this problem a few days ago. Hers has not had the problem at all.

I checked on her phone, and she had a newer version of the operating system. Mine was Android 4.0.4, and hers was 4.1.2. Hers had been acting really slow a while back, and we did a factory reset, removed a lot of wasteful apps, and ended up updating hers to the latest OS.

That fixed her problems.

That newer OS is a bit different in look and feel than the one I've been running. I never updated mine because I was having no problems. Was having no problems.

Her phone also had a different version of Google Play Services. From the revision number, it seemed like it was older than what I had (seemingly lower revision number).

So I decided to update my phone to the latest OS that is available. I did it just an hour ago or so using Samsung Keis. First I backed everything up with Kies, and then let it do the firmware update. So now my phone has Android 4.1.2 just like her phone has for a while. It'll take a while for me to get things set back up the way I want, but everything seems to still be there.

Anyhow, now mine came with what may be the same (seemingly lower numbered) version of Google Play Services as hers has. I can't be sure until I can look at her phone again, but it looks familiar. So I figured everything might be OK.

But alas. Right away, it started crashing ("Google Play Services has stopped responding, wait, stop?"). And it seemed to be sucking down the battery again. Oh Joy!

Also, on my phone, with the older OS and with this newer OS, when you look at Google Play Services in what is NOW called "Application Manager" in this version of the OS, it perpetually shows that it's "updating" the various details about memory usage, etc., and the buttons to clear the cache or clear data are perpetually greyed-out.

So I clicked the only button available which was to "Uninstall Updates". I figured that might roll it back to a previous version. But what it actually did was to completely uninstall it!

So now I have no Google Play Services installed, and that won't allow any of the Google apps to run, of course, but my battery is a lot happier, and maybe I can at least use the thing as a phone for a while.

Also, it's clear that Google Play Services must be over 400 Megabytes in size, because I've got a LOT more free device memory now, without that installed.

I can't use GMail or the like on my phone, but that's not the end of the world. I just use that as my junk mail service, anyhow.

I will probably reload Google Play Services and see if the version matches what my wife's phone has. If it does, then clearly there's more to this than the version of Google Play Services. Identical hardware and firmware should behave the same with identical software. If it doesn't, then there's something else I have running on my phone that's interacting with Google Play Services to cause the problems.

But since other people have reported that doing a factory reset and NOT installing ANY of their apps again still results in Google Play Services sucking down their batteries, that seems unlikely.

I will check her phone against mine and see if there are any differences in the version of Google Play Services. If there is, then maybe we can get a copy of the version she's got, and maybe, for some reason, it doesn't automatically update. Hers is working at this time. Then again, maybe her phone just hasn't gotten around to updating that giant bunch of code. It's a mystery, that's for sure!

 

[robertrj]

Interesting finding, jsigmo. Would be nice to check which is the version of Google Play Services running in your wife's phone.

What really bugs me is that I'm here with an older Android version (Gingerbread). Would be really surprising if her phone, with a newer system, has been using an older app version than mine, for example.

I know nowadays app developers don't care much about compatibility with older versions. I have been experiencing this with my iPod touch: there were some games and apps that always demanded the newest version running. Ok, but if they want us to have the newest version installed, they should be careful about making it compatible with older systems, that were running when their apps were launched. I don't know, just my opinion...

Other thing that I noticed is that, in some random moments I notice the sync symbol (those 2 arrows rotating) showing up and then disappearing. This never happened, because I always kept my auto updates completely off, only noticed it when I manually sync something, like Gmail or Calendar. I know it doesn't add much, but shows how this stupid new update keeps the phone awake and also access my data service without my permission...

How I miss old times... My old Nokia didn't had those updates, battery lasting for a week...

 

[jsigmo]

Well now, this just gets stranger, but maybe I've at least come up with some resolution, even though it's not entirely satisfying or satisfactory.

Recall that I used Samsung Keis to back up the phone, then update it to what they had as the latest operating system version last night.

This morning, I turn the phone on, and AT&T has an update for me! I'd checked them for updates yesterday, prior to doing the Keis update, and they (AT&T) had none. Their system said I had the latest from them.

But after updating using Kies, now AT&T did have an update for me. So I let it update over the network to whatever it is that AT&T considers their latest version.

Keep in mind that AT&T (and perhaps other providers) seem to make their own versions of any release of the Android system. This is so that they can force their (AT&T's) proprietary software down your throat (you can't disable or uninstall a lot of it) and it usually has some way of getting more money from you. An example is their navigation program, which, if you elect to use it, suddenly adds about $10 per month to your phone bill. They also disable the ability to use your phone as a WiFi hotspot, even though the Android system has that feature. If you want to use that, you have to pay AT&T even more. And I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceburg.

So anyhow, AT&T doesn't want us to have the Samsung version of any OS. They want us to have the AT&T modified version. Well, I went ahead and let it update because I hoped maybe their version fixed some bug that interacts with the Google Play Services to cause the problem.

After updating, though, the phone still had crashes of Google Play Services, and when I removed it again, then I started having a LOT of battery drain from something called "media". Further, whatever was going on filled all of my phone's memory. I had 30 bytes left very soon.

So nothing would run, and there didn't seem to be any way to remedy this.

So I did a factory reset on the phone. I figured I had nothing to lose, especially since I'd backed everything up just last night.

AT&T then wanted to do yet another update of the OS! So I just let it do it to me.

Now things seem to be working fine. No crashes of Google Play Services. No excessive battery drain. Of course I'll need to set things back up the way I want, but that's not a huge deal.

But I'm finding that now, I must use "Synch" to let any of my email work. I'd studiously avoided that up until now. I do NOT want or need my phone to be "synched" with anything but itself. It's its own device. And I don't need my various email accounts merged and scrutinized by Google. I don't need my photos from one device or computer synced with anything else. I don't need texts merged with emails or phone contacts, etc. I can handle any syncing myself.

Maybe it's just a terminology thing, using this word "sync" but it is, quite frankly, ominous and frightening to me.

Big Brother is forcing us to merge things that we want to keep separate. I'm sure they want to mine all of our connections and contacts and use this for advertising and social engineering (or worse).

Anyhow, I, too, find it annoying how Google has forced this on me, and presumably billions of other people.

But the darned phone seems to be working now. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd think... Never mind.

Anyhow, my phone now has the following:

Model number: Samsung-SGH-1727
Android version: 4.1.2
Baseband version: 1727UCNJ3
Kernel Version: 3.0.31-844945
Build Number: JZO54K.1727UCNJ3

And my Google Play Services is:
Version: 9.2.56

And lo and behold, the App Info now shows the storage space, etc., and is not endlessly "updating". The sucker is 107 Megabytes.

And as for permissions, well, there's not much it doesn't have access to.

I took some photos of the various versions on my wife's phone, but the factory reset of my phone wiped those photos, I'm afraid. So I'll have to get it and look again later. But it may be that I now have exactly what she has.

Oh, and another interesting thing. She said that today, she picked up her phone, and found that it was in the middle of updating all sorts of Google apps, and she had NOT asked it to do so. It was just doing it on its own. She stopped it from doing it.

I don't know what to make of it all. But for now, my phone seems to be behaving nicely. But Google got what they wanted, and now I have their latest versions of everything for good or for ill!