Decrease in battery life with ICS....am I doing something wrong?

**Smudgie** · 07-02-2012, 10:51 AM

I was pleased with my battery life prior to ICS, however it seems to have gotten worse after I downloaded ICS. After about 4 hours with my data turned off and practically doing nothing on the phone other than a few calls the battery dropped to 90%. The phone now lasts about 20 hours with moderate use, and I would get close to 40 hours prior to ICS. Prior to ICS I would last about 6 hours with data turned on and moderate. Therefore, I am obviously having a decrease in battery life. After 4 hours and 30 minutes here are my useage details:

90% battery
Screen 44%
Voice calls 31%
Android OS 12%
Phone Idle 8%
Cell Standby 5%

I am thinking that something is running that is causing the battery to drain. What steps should I take to troubleshoot this? Thanks

**eklisiewicz** · 07-02-2012, 11:05 AM

I am also seeing lower battery life after the ICS update. Just in the past few minutes, it dropped ten percent and all I did was check email once.

**Dubbayoo** · 07-02-2012, 11:06 AM

Originally Posted by Mojer

I was pleased with my battery life prior to ICS, however it seems to have gotten worse after I downloaded ICS. After about 4 hours with my data turned off and practically doing nothing on the phone other than a few calls the battery dropped to 90%. The phone now lasts about 20 hours with moderate use, and I would get close to 40 hours prior to ICS. Prior to ICS I would last about 6 hours with data turned on and moderate. Therefore, I am obviously having a decrease in battery life. After 4 hours and 30 minutes here are my useage details:

90% battery
Screen 44%
Voice calls 31%

I'm not sure i would call that doing nothing.

**althomas39** · 07-02-2012, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by Dubbayoo

I'm not sure i would call that doing nothing.

This.

On the other hand though, I've noticed a slight decrease in battery life as well. It's not much, but when dozens of other people are saying they've never had better battery life, it makes me scratch my head. I'm dreading the fix that seems to work for a number of people, the factory reset, so I've been toying with a number of other fixes, like turning off 4G, messing with my display settings, etc, but any improvement remains to be seen.

I love the features that ICS has brought, but a few kinks have made everything a bit muggier, namely the slight battery drop and a bit of overall lag. I'm wondering if the lag is in part due to Go Launcher though. Still not sure.

**clownin72** · 07-02-2012, 12:40 PM

nope same thing here as well. My battery was excellent on gb, now its pretty bad. Hopefully after a few cycles it will get back there. So far not impressed

Sent from my Xoom using Android Central Forums

**babygirl0419** · 07-02-2012, 12:57 PM

I did a factory reset and mine is just fine now.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Android Central Forums

**B. Diddy** · 07-02-2012, 01:38 PM

Please refer to my prior post:

Battery advice for new ICSers

I also ended up doing a factory reset just because some other functions still seemed a little sluggish. Now, battery life is completely back to normal, and everything else appears to work more smootly.

**rbess1965** · 07-02-2012, 01:41 PM

Were not the only ones. Since ICS upgrade, battery draining 3%/hr while idling

**amirh1** · 07-03-2012, 02:34 AM

@babygirl0419 and @B. Diddy - when you factory reset, can I backup and then restore settings and apps to be identical to what I'm running now? Does it restore automatically? Sorry but I've never factory reset. I'm also experiencing lag, battery drain, and sometimes warm screen but don't want to spend another day restoring everything to normal if I don't have to...
Thanks!

**B. Diddy** · 07-03-2012, 02:49 AM

Settings will be restored, including wifi passwords, as long as you have your phone set to backup to your Google account. When you reset the phone, it'll be just as if you took it out of the box, so during the setup, you will be able to sign back in with your Google account, which will then restore your settings.

The app question is a little trickier. I remember with prior factory resets on other devices (before ICS), some if not all of my Google Play apps would reinstall automatically. It didn't happen this time with my Maxx on ICS. You may just have to go to your app history on Google Play (under My Apps, then swipe to the right under "All") and start reinstalling. Your app history will also include stuff you uninstalled because you didn't want it.

I know for sure that Amazon Appstore apps won't automatically reinstall, but like Google Play, you can still access your app history and reinstall whichever ones you want.

Here's a Google Support article about backing up settings and factory reset:

From what you're describing, it sounds like a factory reset would help your phone's performance.

**mgindi26** · 07-03-2012, 10:08 AM

OK i've ben reading forums about all kinds of deficiencies in performance (battery and Signal) i just did a Factory data reset and my phone is loading my apps. I'lllet you know how it goes. So far it doesn't seem like any improvement but it did do a lot of downloading amd installing of all my apps so we'll see......

**escott63** · 07-03-2012, 12:21 PM

Originally Posted by Mojer

I was pleased with my battery life prior to ICS, however it seems to have gotten worse after I downloaded ICS. After about 4 hours with my data turned off and practically doing nothing on the phone other than a few calls the battery dropped to 90%. The phone now lasts about 20 hours with moderate use, and I would get close to 40 hours prior to ICS. Prior to ICS I would last about 6 hours with data turned on and moderate. Therefore, I am obviously having a decrease in battery life. After 4 hours and 30 minutes here are my useage details:

90% battery
Screen 44%
Voice calls 31%
Android OS 12%
Phone Idle 8%
Cell Standby 5%

I am thinking that something is running that is causing the battery to drain. What steps should I take to troubleshoot this? Thanks

I had the same issue and did a factory reset and everything seems to be much better. i did a hard rest before as well and it did not improve. Try the factory reset , even though its a lot of work to restore the device to the way you had it before the reset.

**Smudgie** · 07-03-2012, 12:45 PM

Actually after the third charge I am seeing what seems to be normal (if not better) battery life. Therefore, as of now, I am not going to do the factory reset.

**techgeek32#WN** · 07-03-2012, 01:17 PM

It is funny that users with all of these problems are being told to hard reset their devices but don't and continue to ask why they are still having problems in the forums. Nobody likes to have to wipe their device and start over but these phones and operating systems are not designed to just combine files and apps between different OS's and come out working perfectly.

Please take the advice of experienced Android users in these forums and hard reset your devices before asking why things aren't working after the ICS update. If after the hard reset you still have problems that others don't it might be a hardware issue and can only be resolved by getting a different phone. Also, it allows the rest of us to provide more help in tracking down true bugs with the new software instead of dealing with problems that a hard reset will fix.

If you read through most of the posts users having problems are the ones that didn't hard reset and after doing so most if not all of their issues are fixed. Please help us to help you. Thanks.

**mgindi26** · 07-03-2012, 03:47 PM

First report since Factory reset
IN 6 hours since I've done my factory reset I've gone down 30% in Battery life. The biggest user is the screen @ 70% in 1h 13 minutes. This doesn't seem to be Maxx like battery life.
what do you guys think?

**rbess1965** · 07-03-2012, 03:51 PM

Originally Posted by B. Diddy

Settings will be restored, including wifi passwords, as long as you have your phone set to backup to your Google account. When you reset the phone, it'll be just as if you took it out of the box, so during the setup, you will be able to sign back in with your Google account, which will then restore your settings.

The app question is a little trickier. I remember with prior factory resets on other devices (before ICS), some if not all of my Google Play apps would reinstall automatically. It didn't happen this time with my Maxx on ICS. You may just have to go to your app history on Google Play (under My Apps, then swipe to the right under "All") and start reinstalling. Your app history will also include stuff you uninstalled because you didn't want it.

I know for sure that Amazon Appstore apps won't automatically reinstall, but like Google Play, you can still access your app history and reinstall whichever ones you want.

Here's a Google Support article about backing up settings and factory reset:

From what you're describing, it sounds like a factory reset would help your phone's performance.

Factory reset mine last night. It's going to take awhile before I will be able to gage wether or not my battery life is back to normal. Probably report on that next week. I had checked the Data Back up in the Privacy section when I set up the device so luckily most all of the apps I had reloaded automatically but some did not and I lost data from some of them that did back up. Like Notes Lite. I had data that was lost on the device. I have it backed up seperately on a PC so I'll survive. Point is when you do it, just be prepaired that it won't go perfectly. But hopefully our phones will run better. We'll see.

**rbess1965** · 07-03-2012, 03:56 PM

Originally Posted by mgindi26

First report since Factory reset
IN 6 hours since I've done my factory reset I've gone down 30% in Battery life. The biggest user is the screen @ 70% in 1h 13 minutes. This doesn't seem to be Maxx like battery life.
what do you guys think?

Doesn't sound right to me. This whole thing is just ticking me off. Before ICS my life was easier and now we have to go through all of this. I got away from a Samsung Charge because of these kinds of issues.

**hazelgreen** · 07-03-2012, 04:22 PM

My battery life has decreased slightly since installing ICS. Usually this time I'm still around 80% after about 9 hours (with only 1 hr or so of screen time). Now I'm at 73%. Still going to wait and see how it goes before I do a factory reset though.

**1fastmr2** · 07-03-2012, 07:57 PM

My battery life is terrible. I could go 2 days and not need a charge on GB

**gwainsco** · 07-04-2012, 07:01 PM

I had the same issue did the reset after a two days still getting the same horrible battery life...I went hiking used y phone for pics thats all and gps no wifi battery was at 20% after 3.5 hrs.... took me longer than that to reinstall the apps lol

**B. Diddy** · 07-04-2012, 07:15 PM

Originally Posted by gwainsco

I had the same issue did the reset after a two days still getting the same horrible battery life...I went hiking used y phone for pics thats all and gps no wifi battery was at 20% after 3.5 hrs.... took me longer than that to reinstall the apps lol

How's the phone signal in your area? If you're in an area with poor or marginal signal, the phone will expend more energy searching for or maintaining the signal, which may have been the case if you were hiking in an area without much coverage. Similarly, if you're in an area with poor or marginal 4G signal but ok 3G signal, and if your phone is set for LTE/CDMA, then it still might expend more energy searching for that 4G signal. In this situation, you may want to use the trick found in other threads to force the phone to use only 3G.

**Rareplaces** · 07-04-2012, 09:26 PM

Is this acceptable?

**BBGregBB** · 07-04-2012, 09:45 PM

I just followed the steps to clear the cache and once I had my phone rebooted I checked the battery status and it was showing almost 11 hours left on 50% charge. I'll know more over the next few days but so far this looks like it did the trick.

**Masheen** · 07-04-2012, 10:19 PM

Lmao. What a mess. There was such anticipation for this update. I've had friends rage at me the last couple of days that their Maxx, which normally lasted two days now only lasts one. Poor them..

But on the real though. I have years of experience with Android, Motorola in particular and their new updates. I've been through Eclair to Froyo to Gingerbread and the magic fix which worked for me was: Going into Backup & Reset > Unchecking Automatic Restore, I even uncheck Back up my data because it really doesn't backup your wi-fi passwords like it says. Then do a factory reset. When your phone reboots don't log directly in to your Google account. Skip everything. Go back to the Backup & Restore menu and make sure everything is unchecked. Then go to accounts and add your Google Account.

The reason for this, as one smart individual previously stated, is that different OS versions are not meant to be installed on top of each other because there are incompatible files. So during every major OS update, you should factory reset your phone. The unchecking the automatic backup feature is an old trick from fixing problems on the Droid X with the Gingerbread update.

To assist you with Factory Resetting your phones, there are certain apps which make the transition easier.

1)

Appbrain backs up all of your apps to your Appbrain account so that you can re-install Appbrain on a factory reset and easily re-install all of your apps.

2) ..

Sms backup & restore backs up all of your text messages to your SD card which allows you to restore them after a reset.

3) ..

Call Log restore, by the same developer as the SMS app.

Unfortunately, most saved app data will be erased, unless there is a backup feature in the particular app. Advanced users can try to backup application data using Titanium Backup and restore the data after a reset, but you must be rooted to do this.

A lot of people dread factory resetting their devices, but if your phone is experiencing bugs and sluggishness with ICS, I as well as other users, strongly recommend doing one.

Hope this helps if you are struggling with the decision.

Sent from my banned Galaxy Nexus.

**afranko22** · 07-04-2012, 10:37 PM

The first couple days with ICS were a little sluggish and battery drained rather quick but now it seems to be working a lot better. Was 12 hours on a charge around 80%. No, i didn't factory reset and no i won't. Took a few app updates and the sluggishness worked itself out

Sent from my Verizon Droid Razr Maxx