Battery life, new low, 4.45h. Android System, Android OS, Google Play Services seem biggest factors.

[Shadowhawk]

Hi,

I was hoping to find get some thoughts for extending the battery life on my GS5 (Android v4.4.4, Verizon).

I switched from my about 3 year old iPhone 4S to an LG G3 about 8/26, then on to this GS5 about 9/2 for the promise of better battery life (over the G3).

I'd installed about 190-200 apps by installing all the Android versions of all the apps that I'd had on my iPhone. Today, I have about 225, most of which I haven't set up yet.

I haven't done much to manage my battery life, but it's gone from about 16 hours (with newbie factor of playing with the screen a *lot*) to about 11, to about 8 (a bunch of that loss seemed to correlate with when I updated from 4.4.3 to 4.4.4), and now, more like 6.

Yesterday, I seemed to be approaching a new low of about 4.45h (27% left at 3 hours 15 minutes).

So I'm going to need to do something...

The Battery app seems to generally indicate that the biggest culprits aren't apps, but Android System, Android OS, Google Play Services, even above Screen most of the time.

I do have GPS on high accuracy, so as to be able to get turn by turn directions quickly, and apps on auto-update on Wi-Fi only in the Google Play app (I've seen mention of folks setting it to Wi-Fi and charging only, but that doesn't seem to be an option in my app).

I'll definitely go through my apps to see if there are any that I can turn off, etc, but apps don't seem to be responsible for the bulk of my power usage.

I'll include screenshots from my journey with my GS5 to see if it might spark any ideas...

9/4/2014: 16.75h/98% = 17 h. Just a few days after my getting the GS5. A super long battery life, compared to my expectations. There should be lots of screen-on time here, but I didn't think to screen capture that drill-down screen:


9/10/2014: 11.33h/99% -= 11.75h. After some more ownership time, with battery life more what I was thinking I'd get, about 11 hours:


9/28/2014 8 hours/86%= 9.3 hours


10/7/2014: 2.5h / 40% = 6.25 h. Within a few days after doing my 4.4.4 update:


11/19/2014: 3.25h/73% = 4.45h. A new low. Probably due to incremental changes that I've made to apps and or sync settings...but those Android and Google Play elements seem to be big:





Does it seem reasonable that I'd want to concentrate on what might be going on with Android System, Android OS, and Google Play Services?

Any ideas as to what I can even do about those? What might be configurable within them?

Other ideas?

Thanks for any thoughts you can offer!

 

[Shadowhawk]

Here's the 11/19/2014 battery app summary screenshot that I couldn't upload into that first post:

 

[AZgl1500]

The newbie factor does come into play when we get new apps.....

I haven't changed much of anything on my phone for a few months, and I would get 2 days per charge, sometimes 3 days.
Please note my signature, I turn off the internet when the phone is idle, and that stops all of the background stuff from sucking the battery dry.

Now, yesterday I installed WAZE, a very neat Navigation moving map which "can keep" the display on all the time. Depends on how you set it up.

Well, as the program is new to me, "Newbie Factor" set in big time. I was driving around on my job and wanting to try out the new "Gee Whiz" features, like road hazards, finding friends who also have Waze installed.....

In about 3 hours of non-stop use my phones battery went from 65% down to 18%..... I can see that if I use this thing on trips, that a windshield mount with a power cord is in my future
I also noticed that the constant moving map display gobbles up a LOT of DATA..... this app is best used "silently" with the display turned off.

Now, back to your problem....

I suggest that you try turning off the internet when the phone is not in your hands and actually in use.

You can do that manually of course by pulling down the notification panel and toggling the icons for WiFi and DATA.

I chose to let MacroDroid handle it for me automatically so that I don't forget to turn it off.....

MD is easy to use, give it a try. You get 5 free macros in the free version which is enough to allow you to create 2 macros to turn off WiFi and Data. 2 more macros to turn ON WiFi and Data..... (the free version only allows for 1 activation feature per macro)

The paid version will allow you to activate lots of things in just one macro.

Download MD here => * MacroDroid - Device Automation - Android Apps on Google Play