Google Play Services Draining Battery

[Felix Cooke]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 which normally has about 10-14 hours battery life. Today I checked my phone and saw it was off. I plugged it into my charger and turned it back on assuming I had done it accidentally only to find it was on 4% charge. I was then greeted by an error message I have never seen before telling me charging was suspended due to battery being too cold or too hot. At this point it brought up the prompt to view battery use. It showed that I was on battery for 3 1/2 hours from full and the battery consumption was 2% Android OS 2% display and 96% Google play services. Nothing like this has happened to me before and my phone is still less than 1 year old. I removed the back from my phone to feel if the battery was indeed of an abnormal temperature but it felt only very slightly warm to touch. Can anyone tell me what caused either of these event and/or how I can prevent them happening in future.
Thanks

 

[belodion]

Welcome to the forums.

It may be worth entering Safe Mode so that you can find out whether a bad third-party app is responsible. It wouldn't do any harm to clear the app Cached Data and to wipe the Cache Partition first, but I think the Safe Mode remedy is your best option.
You sound technically savvy but if you need further guidance, say.

Technically speaking we shouldn't be doing this in the N5 forum but as you're new I'm sure allowance will be made☺.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[mclasser]

Try switching to the ART runtime and see what happens. Doing this improved battery life for me, particularly in standby.

Sent from my Nexus 5 via the Android Central App

 

[bulletmark]

Try switching to the ART runtime and see what happens. Doing this improved battery life for me, particularly in standby.

Any disadvantages of switching to ART?

 

[surrealjam]

Any disadvantages of switching to ART?

I think the vast majority of ART related issues will now have disappeared. Bear in mind that Android L will only use ART - all the major app developers will have been testing their apps with ART as much, if not more, than Dalvik.

ART does use a little more storage space for applications themselves - say an extra 10% or so. This might be of concern if you are already low on storage and have lots of apps.

The only known limitation is that the Xposed framework is not compatible with ART... so unless you use that I say give it a try.

 

[T-Prime]

I had the same problem. I turned off auto sync and that saved my battery but I really wanted to keep my gmail inbox synced. After some playing around I found that I could control what services of my google account synced individually.

First ensure auto sync is turned on
Then go to Apps->Settings
Under the Accouts tab tap Google
Under this Accounts section your gmail address is listed, tapping it will bring up a list of services. All are synced by default. Just deselect any that you don't need. I disabled everything except Gmail.

This should cut back a bit on your power drainage without reducing your functionality too much.

 

[Bertil Johan Nilssen]

I deleted the uppgrade Google Play Services (4.4.52), and my battery capacity is back to normal with 4.4.2.

 

[somnambulator]

I deleted the uppgrade Google Play Services (4.4.52), and my battery capacity is back to normal with 4.4.2.

How did u do that?

 

[Bertil Johan Nilssen]

Go to: Settings, apps, all apps, Google Play Services, Uninstall updates.
After i updatet to Google Play services version 6.1.05, and the battery time is back to normal like before I updated to 4.4.2.
You can download the APK-file v. 6.1.05 from Internet (mediafire). Not from Google Play, yet.

 

[Bertil Johan Nilssen]

Later I uppgraded to version 182.46.15.XT926 and the battery drain started again. I checked the version of Google Play Services, and I had received version 6.1.09. I degraded that version, and installed v.6.1.05.
Now my battery is ok again.

 

[JasonB312]

Daman123 I had the same issues with Google Play Services on my HTC One and high battery drain as well as the phone getting warm. I traced it back to Settings, Location which was set to High Accuracy and under the Recent Location Requests, Google App was showing Low Battery Use but for Google Play Services was showing High Battery Use!!! I resolved the battery drain by switching the mode to Battery Saving in Location Services. Now the battery drain is okay and the phone doesn't get warm at all. I also installed GSam Battery Monitor Pro which helps with keeping the battery lasting longer and monitors the battery and applications as well. I hope this information helps.

 

[Kenneth Qvarfordt]

I have the same problem and I've got google play services 6.5. I've already lowered the battery setting for location but no change.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk Pro