Anyone know why this is happening?

paintdrinkingpete

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Ya this is what I was thinking. I never noticed Google services this ugh before Guru. Gonna uninstall it and see what happens.

Using the Big Red Samsung Galaxy S4

As I mentioned above, you may want to try to get a larger sample size before making any permanent conclusions. Google Services being high doesn't *necessarily* mean that it's a problem.

Are you using it to control WiFi? My understanding is that it uses location services for that (which ironically works better with WiFi on) so if you don't have any other apps tracking your location it will be the only one and show up as "Google Services".

This is a good point as well.

Again, just because it's high doesn't mean its a bad thing, you need to a watch it over a few days to get a good idea of the actual rate of battery drain. As you can see in the screen shot I posted above, I was working on close 23 hours and still have ~60% battery remaining, so with results like that, I don't really care if Google Services is at the top of the list.
 

Exemplar4

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What was your screen on time though? That's what counts haha how long can you actually use your phone with the screen on. Without any battery saving apps, I get around 5 hours of screen time on an average without any charging rime between unplug and death. And that's with air view, sync, data and multiwindow enabled. Not even having the built in power saver mode turned on. Whenever I had the guru on it was down to about 3 hours so I just decided not to use anything. That's what worked for me.

I had wifi control in the Battery Guru set to off, but it still needs location services in learning mode. Because for some reason it still wants to build up that location profile of you even if you don't want to use it to control wifi. I've tried to turn off location reporting in my settings and then I got a notification from battery guru saying that it needs it. Perhaps if your battery saver app is still in learning mode the Google services drain might be high, so I'd suggest to wait it out until it's out of the learning phase and then see what happens over the course of a couple days.

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Exemplar4

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By the way here are a couple screenshots of my battery life that I just took 1375378103260.jpg

1375378123389.jpg

As you can see I'm on pace for around 5 hours of screen time
 

paintdrinkingpete

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Ya this is what I was thinking. I never noticed Google services this ugh before Guru. Gonna uninstall it and see what happens.

Using the Big Red Samsung Galaxy S4

Are you using it to control WiFi? My understanding is that it uses location services for that (which ironically works better with WiFi on) so if you don't have any other apps tracking your location it will be the only one and show up as "Google Services".

I've been doing some preliminary testing on how often the location on my phone is checked using the Google API and with Access Location, Location reporting and location history on it appears to check my location about once every 40-45 seconds. An interesting note is I have geofences set up in AutoLocation in Tasker (it uses the Google API to check to see if you're in a predefined area) and my location seems to be checked with about the same frequency whether I have that feature turned on or off.

What was your screen on time though? That's what counts haha how long can you actually use your phone with the screen on. Without any battery saving apps, I get around 5 hours of screen time on an average without any charging rime between unplug and death. And that's with air view, sync, data and multiwindow enabled. Not even having the built in power saver mode turned on. Whenever I had the guru on it was down to about 3 hours so I just decided not to use anything. That's what worked for me.

I had wifi control in the Battery Guru set to off, but it still needs location services in learning mode. Because for some reason it still wants to build up that location profile of you even if you don't want to use it to control wifi. I've tried to turn off location reporting in my settings and then I got a notification from battery guru saying that it needs it. Perhaps if your battery saver app is still in learning mode the Google services drain might be high, so I'd suggest to wait it out until it's out of the learning phase and then see what happens over the course of a couple days.

Posted via Android Central App

I admitted in that post that the screenshot was taken during at time when the phone had spent quite a bit of time in standby.

I realize that screen time is the ultimate factor of interpreting battery results, but that doesn't mean that battery performance during standby isn't important as well (it certainly is to me). The only point I was making is that you notice in that screen shot that Google Services is at the top of the list, yet it wasn't having a huge effect on my battery life. That's all, it was to point out that under some conditions it can be *normal* for Google Services to be high...In the OP, those screenshots were taken after very short amounts of time off the charger, so it's really hard to gauge if that was an actual issue or completely normal behavior.

Now, that is an interesting point you make about screen time though. Just through passive observation, I feel as though my battery has been lasting longer with Battery Guru, whether it be in standby or during heavy use with a lot of screen time...but given what you've noticed, I may have to take a look at my screen time and see if it being adversely affected by that app.
 

garublador

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My guess is that Battery Guru will work better the less you use your phone. It will prevent apps from updating while you aren't using them. If you use the apps a lot then BatteryGuru won't really do much.

It's also worth noting that the more you use your screen, the more screen time per battery charge you'll get. The more your phone does wile idle (e.g. checking location) the bigger the difference you'll see.

I'm currently getting fairly bad battery life, but I want to do my experiments with location reporting to figure out exactly what's checking my location so often. I want to keep my geofence monitor going, and it doesn't seem to use any battery, but that could just be because it's piggy-backing off whatever it is that's checking my location every 40 seconds. After I'm happy with how much data I've collected (about one day so far) I can start turning things off to see how it affects my location checks per minute. If I can get to 4 hours of screen time per day I'll be happy. Hopefully that means I can have some location reporting on, but I had that in the past when my location history was horribly inaccurate so I think I can get there.
 

torgotorgo

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I have the same issue with my S4. Eventually found on the web that the play store app version 4.1.6 has a bug and seems to affect some phones. If the new version 4.1.10 has not being pushed to your phone go and search for the play store app .apk version 4.1.10
 

fofjjsr

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I removed battery Guru and been watching the screen just suddenly jump over Google services in consumption percentage. Also note I posted 2 screen shots in my OP. The first was fresh of the charger this morning the other half way through the day yesterday. I will post more usage shots tonight and tomorrow morning.

Using the Big Red Samsung Galaxy S4
 

garublador

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I removed battery Guru and been watching the screen just suddenly jump over Google services in consumption percentage. Also note I posted 2 screen shots in my OP. The first was fresh of the charger this morning the other half way through the day yesterday. I will post more usage shots tonight and tomorrow morning.

Using the Big Red Samsung Galaxy S4
Well, if the screen is on it will take up a larger portion of the battery. The second screen shot in the OP is after the phone has been on for 6 minutes at 8:52AM. It would be interesting to see one later in the day with some indication of how much screen on time you had.

Was Battery Guru still learning when you removed it or had it finished with that? I'm not trying to defend Battery Guru, I'm actually interested to hear what's really going on.
 

paintdrinkingpete

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I removed battery Guru and been watching the screen just suddenly jump over Google services in consumption percentage. Also note I posted 2 screen shots in my OP. The first was fresh of the charger this morning the other half way through the day yesterday. I will post more usage shots tonight and tomorrow morning.

Using the Big Red Samsung Galaxy S4

I know not everyone's "day" starts the same time, but I based my comment off of the fact that it says 8:52AM and 5 minutes off the charger in that second screenshot.
 

bills742

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I've found Google services to recently take up most of my battery too. And it started recently. I haven't changed any location settings or downloaded any new apps since this happened. Maybe something changed on Google's end? And my play store is the newest version (4.2.9).

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
 

fofjjsr

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So Google services is still using the most battery. However, since removing Battery Guru my battery is lasting longer. At this time yesterday I was at 67% battery life. Today look at it. Basically the same amount of usage.

Using the Big Red Samsung Galaxy S4
 

garublador

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Using the Big Red Samsung Galaxy S4
What are your "Google Location Settings" in Maps? What Google Now cards do you have enabled? Again I'm just curious. The battery usage seems to rely heavily on what location services are enabled and how they're working. I've been hunting this down since the phone came out and it's been difficult with both firmware and Maps updates.

FWIW, I had all that stuff enabled, BatteryGuru going and geofences set up in Tasker and just stopping Location History didn't seem to do anything. I'm still having my location checked every ~42 seconds.
 

fofjjsr

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What are your "Google Location Settings" in Maps? What Google Now cards do you have enabled? Again I'm just curious. The battery usage seems to rely heavily on what location services are enabled and how they're working. I've been hunting this down since the phone came out and it's been difficult with both firmware and Maps updates.

FWIW, I had all that stuff enabled, BatteryGuru going and geofences set up in Tasker and just stopping Location History didn't seem to do anything. I'm still having my location checked every ~42 seconds.

No cards enabled atm. Maps location settings below.

Using the Big Red Samsung Galaxy S4
 

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star444

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Check out this app on Google Play: Wakelock Detector. It allows you to drill-down and see what features are being included in "Google Services" along with their individual usage. I find this incredibly useful!

In the screenshots below, I have it set to display "CPU wakelock". If I want to drill-down into any of the items on the list, all I have to do is click on it for details.





 

vferrari

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This thread has some great information. I've been holding off on installing Sprint's MF9 update for the S4 because of similarly reported degraded battery behavior. Gotten some good insights and tools to use if I decide to take the plunge and experience the problem.

On a separate but related note, can anyone here recommend the best app for monitoring charge current on Samsung devices. I own a Samsung multimedia dock and get widely varying charge times on my S4 and my Note 8 when I use the dock charger vs. The Samsung 2A wall charger. I know the dock can charge at 2A max but it doesn't seem to be consistently appkying max charge current like the wall charger does. Thanks.



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