Why has my battery suddenly started draining fast?

[Melissa Stigers]

Battery Suddenly Draining

I've had the Droid Turbo for a few months now, and the battery life has been great. It was the biggest reason I bought this phone in the first place. Over the past two days, however, the battery life has DRAMATICALLY downgraded. At 11 p.m. last night, I had 58% battery life with no apps running. The phone was in sleep mode. That much battery should have been able to get me through last night and ALL of TODAY. This morning, I check my phone, and I'm at 22% with the phone not in use for 8 hours.

All of the bells and whistles on this device are turned off. I don't have the reach out display thing turned on where it recognizes your movement. The screen is only taking up 30% of the battery draw. I have the bare minimum notifications turned on - the rest are off. My system did NOT update within the last two days. The battery simply seems to be freaking out.

Has anyone else had this? Suggestions?

 

[doogald]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

Do not install an app like that.

Open up settings / battery usage and take a screenshot (hold power and volume down at the same time until the screenshot happens.) On that page is a graph at the top showing battery left by time. Tap that graph and a new page will open. Grab a screenshot of that and post the screen shots here.

It's likely that you have an app that is keeping the phone awake when it shouldn't and it may be an easy fix.

 

[Melissa Stigers]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining




Is it the WIFI? Because the settings for that have been the same for the entire time I've had my phone.

 

[Melissa Stigers]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

I also found this:

"First things I did is go to Settings, more, change mobile networks to LTE/CDMA rather than Global. Put location setting on battery saving. Screen on auto brightness and make sure social and email apps aren't syncing more than 1x per hour under Accounts settings. Also, for WiFi advanced settings, I change always on to only when plugged in and then uncheck the box for always scanning even when WiFi is turned off. That should help.

PS. Since you are in a bunker, you could either turn off mobile data to get a better CDMA only signal or just go to airplane mode and use Wi-Fi at work (no phone or data). There are apps like Tasker that can automate this kind of stuff too. Best of luck!

Sent Turbo fast from my 64GB Droid Turbo"

I've done some of these things, but not all.

 

[doogald]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

The cell standby number is high. It does look like the signal was weak at times, but it is possible that switching away from global will help - this will prevent the phone from flopping to the GSM radio when it loses CDMA.

WiFi also looks high. For WiFi, you can go into settings / wifi, tap the menu control bottom right, tap "Advanced", and turn off "scanning always available." You can also try turning on "Wi-Fi optimization" to see if that helps. I leave WiFi always on because if you switch it off with the phone powered off, the phone will use mobile data instead, and that draws more power than WiFi and uses mobile data, which at least for me is capped.

However, 21% battery left after 28 hours is ok if you use the phone a lot. Screen is the highest number - either you are using the phone a lot (though the second graph seems to suggest not) or the brightness is set too high. You can try either turning off auto-brightness and setting the brightness low, or turning auto-brightness on to see if that helps. I've also used an app called Lux to manage autobrightness. As you use the phone you can use the Lux app to set the brightness to what you want if it seems too bright and then set the app to remember that brightness for that level of outside light.

 

[Melissa Stigers]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

Ok thanks. I've done some of these changes. The main battery drain seems to happen at night when I'm not using the phone at all. I'm not overly concerned that it is around 20% right now - my main concern is that it dropped 30% when the phone wasn't in use.

I will see if these suggestions help! Thanks again!

 

[doogald]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

Ok thanks. I've done some of these changes. The main battery drain seems to happen at night when I'm not using the phone at all. I'm not overly concerned that it is around 20% right now - my main concern is that it dropped 30% when the phone wasn't in use.

You can think about putting the phone in airplane model overnight (if you don't expect any calls or messages that are worth interrupting you while you sleep) or just charge it every night while you sleep. That's what I do. Lithium ion batteries in phones and tablets last longer when they have ore frequent smaller charges than infrequent large charges. Letting it discharge down to where you get a warning once a month or two should be fine. If you charge while you sleep you'll always wake up with a fully charged phone. Just one more thing to think about...

 

[MA2GA28]

I noticed FB messenger is your top app usage. It could possibly be the battery drain bug many of us were seeing a couple weeks ago. Try uninstalling it and see if that helps.

http://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=491375

 

[doogald]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

I noticed FB messenger is your top app usage. It could possibly be the battery drain bug many of us were seeing a couple weeks ago. Try uninstalling it and see if that helps.

I thought about that, too, but if you look at the graph where she has no screen on time, which I assume is when she was sleeping and the phone dropped 30%, there is very little awake time in the graph, too. Screen, phone idle, and WiFi are much higher usage in the chart, so I assume that the drain is coming from one of those. Since the screen is off during that time, it's probably WiFi or cellular radio.

Also, one other question: have you ever used a wireless charger with the phone, or have you just used the turbo charger to charge it? I know that some people have issues with the battery meter being off after using wireless chargers on the Turbo (though not everybody, and since we haven't heard much about it lately, I actually thought that maybe this problem was solved with one of the advanced calling OTA updates...)

 

[Melissa Stigers]

Thank you!

Standard, I have a wireless cradle that came with the phone to charge. I haven't had any problems at all when charging it. I was only charging every other night, though, because the battery was way over 50% when I was ready to sleep. I was apparently under the mistaken idea that you were supposed to let your battery drain down pretty far before charging it and that charging it every night would weaken your battery life rather than strengthen it (over the long-term).

 

[MA2GA28]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

How low were you typically letting it drain? If you rarely went below 10%, that's still OK.

It could be the wireless charger messing things up. Try using the Turbo charger exclusively for a week or so, see if that helps.

 

[Murph5150]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

With good signal (at work and home) using Wi-Fi, and just a handful of emails and text messages my battery is drained before I go to bed. So I get 13-14 hours on a full charge. No apps in the background sucking in mAh, just inexplicable drain...

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[djousma]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

Melissa, I had my wireless charger mess up the battery level indicator. Seems all the partial charging can cause it to become inaccurate. Says 100% but in reality the battery is much lower than that. As others have said, use the wired charger for awhile, and let it continue to charge even after it says it is at 100%.

 

[doogald]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

With good signal (at work and home) using Wi-Fi, and just a handful of emails and text messages my battery is drained before I go to bed. So I get 13-14 hours on a full charge. No apps in the background sucking in mAh, just inexplicable drain...

Posted via the Android Central App

Look at the directions I posted above and post those screenshots, best when the battery has been used for a while.

Also, tap the screen setting and post the screen on time...

 

[Murph5150]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

Look at the directions I posted above and post those screenshots, best when the battery has been used for a while.

Also, tap the screen setting and post the screen on time...

Screen shots.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[doogald]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

McAfee. Why do you have that installed?

Screen is very high. What was the screen time for those 2.5 hours?

 

[88horizon5speed]

From the pictures above in the op (second op lol) I noticed you have WiFi on 100% of the time but you aren't connected to any WiFi signal. Has that been the case all day because if so your phone had been wasting battery searching for signals?

Just something I noticed

 

[MA2GA28]

From the pictures above in the op (second op lol) I noticed you have WiFi on 100% of the time but you aren't connected to any WiFi signal. Has that been the case all day because if so your phone had been wasting battery searching for signals?

Just something I noticed

It is a waste to have WiFi on with no signal, but it isn't a huge drain on battery (unless the OP keeps going in and out of a WiFi range, causing the phone to ping a lot).

 

[MA2GA28]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

Screen shots.

Posted via the Android Central App

Your usage indicates heavy screen on time. Also, can you download GSAM to get more specific readings?

 

[Melissa Stigers]

Re: Battery Suddenly Draining

Just an update: I've instituted some of the changes talked about here, and my battery has done better over the past couple of days. I haven't had any problem with massive battery drain through the middle of the night. Thanks all for the help.