Google Play Services Draining Battery

daman123

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Hi. My nexus 5 is on Android 4.4.3. Today, Google play services is draining my battery and I only have 45 mins of screen time. What's the problem and how should I fix it?

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B. Diddy

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Welcome to Android Central! It's a little hard to interpret that 47 min of screen-on time, because that wasn't starting from a full charge.

I'm never quite sure why Google Play Services freaks out from time to time. I sometimes wonder if it has to do with upcoming updates to Google Play Services--it's probably my imagination, but when this happens to me, it always seems that an update comes through within the next couple of days.

A reboot usually clears the issue up, in any case. Has that worked for you?
 

belodion

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I had that happen once. Battery discharged from 87% to 67% overnight (normally lose about 4% overnight), in my case due to Android OS if I remember right. Couldn't work out why. Only time it's happened.

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daman123

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Welcome to Android Central! It's a little hard to interpret that 47 min of screen-on time, because that wasn't starting from a full charge.

I'm never quite sure why Google Play Services freaks out from time to time. I sometimes wonder if it has to do with upcoming updates to Google Play Services--it's probably my imagination, but when this happens to me, it always seems that an update comes through within the next couple of days.

A reboot usually clears the issue up, in any case. Has that worked for you?

I've rebooted my phone multiple times. My phone starts to get really warm then I'm forced to shut it down.

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Ted Turner1

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Google Play Services is temperamental at times. There will usually be days it hits the battery hard and days it doesn't. Bro signal quality is a big cause, IMO due to using cell towers for location. If you bounce towers a lot., more location data is added thinking you are moving.

Again, just my opinion.

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crxssi

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For me it is acting the exact same way in 4.4.4 as 4.4.3 and 4.4.2. I can go days or longer with 3-4% every 9 hours of idle. But then, like today, it was off the charger and idle for only 3.5 hours and it consumed 6% of the battery. And most of that was Google Services again (although sometimes it is just "Android System"). So I rebooted.... and it will be OK again for days until it happens again. Very annoying. My #1 issue with the Nexus 5.
 

crxssi

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Is it a Nexus 5 issue or an Android/NSA issue?!? :confused: :D

I am fairly sure this is an Android issue, since the big power drains are pointed to software services (Google Play Services and/or Android System). I also think everyone on the N5 experiences these issues intermittently like I do, but most don't know it because they don't have regular periods of inactivity like I do- I usually don't use the phone AT ALL at work, just carry it... so I will know immediately when I get home and turn up the ringer how JUST THE IDLE BATTERY TIME is most days. I have all other variables held constant... same location/building, same duration, same wifi network, same tower. It would be easy for others to notice these issues, even if they have no long-idle periods in the day, by examining the same periods at night... but most people CHARGE the phone overnight, so they won't see it then, either.

Could it be this affects non-Nexus-5 phones? Possibly. But the vendors make significant changes to Android, some of which might address or prevent this from happening. I just don't know. But I do know that prior to the N5, I carried EVO phones the exact same way and never had these drastic differences in battery usage from identical idle times. It might also be more than one issue.
 

N4Newbie

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Uggh...

You all need to stop thinking inside the box and step out a bit. Google Play Services and Android System are not simply parts of the operating system; both of these are used by nearly all apps to some degree or another. For example, any app that includes mapping or location functions almost certainly relies on the Google Play Services toolkit. As does YouTube. As another example, no "music player" app actually plays music; they just provide a pretty front-end user interface to the built-in operating system functions.

If Google Play Services is eating your battery, you can bet that it is caused by a hung or misbehaving app.

https://developer.android.com/google/play-services/index.html
 

crxssi

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Google Play Services and Android System are not simply parts of the operating system; both of these are used by nearly all apps to some degree or another. For example, any app that includes mapping or location functions almost certainly relies on the Google Play Services toolkit. As does YouTube. As another example, no "music player" app actually plays music; they just provide a pretty front-end user interface to the built-in operating system functions.

If Google Play Services is eating your battery, you can bet that it is caused by a hung or misbehaving app.

Very good observation. Of course, one could also argue that if the services are set up in such a way that we can't know what is using them to cause problems, and/or that the services can't self limit to prevent such problems, part of the blame is still Android, itself.

In my case, I don't have many apps installed on my phone (tablet- that is a different story), and the few I do use are pretty "normal"/simple/well-known and/or are Google (Maps, search, Chrome). I also have location tracking off, GPS on low power mode, Google Now off, etc, etc. I will try to discover a link between using ANY app and the drain starting again, but I don't think there is a strong link in my case, and it might be impossible to find such an association.
 

Bront

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I wish someone had an *easy* way to figure out which app is causing problems, for slackers/dummies like me.
check your past few apps, make sure they were shutdown properly. I always make sure I'm at the home screen before I shut off the phone for good, because occasionally otherwise the app will sometimes keep running in the background, and that can show up as google services. Media apps are particularly bad with that given they can play music with the screen off.
 

bulletmark

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Of course, one could also argue that if the services are set up in such a way that we can't know what is using them to cause problems, and/or that the services can't self limit to prevent such problems, part of the blame is still Android, itself.
Part of the blame? I'd say most of the blame. There will always be an almost infinite supply of poor and even rogue apps in the play store so Google clearly need to design Android to identify and resource limit such apps. The current situation is just crap design.