Samsung Galaxy S6 Google Play Services - Battery Drain

[mferrinda]

Re: Google Play Services - Battery Drain

Hi all, noticing similar problems with my S6. Received it last Friday and since haven't had a 'decent' expected battery life. After a full charge to 100% estimated battery life is 10 hours, with power saving usually on adds an extra 30 minutes, ultra is usually around 19-22 hours expected when full.

I would say most of my use has been moderate to little. I was using google now and have since gone through and disabled a lot of stuff. I do like locations/gps for smart lock etc. Google play services is giving me a bit of grief it appears. Couple of questions, can anyone suggest any other settings or something to check? Also, does anyone know if the expected battery life when fully charged is based on the history of battery life?

Cheers

 

[anon(5316299)]

Re: Google Play Services - Battery Drain

Sure - go into settings, Personal, Accounts. Go through each account and turn off sync you don't need. Specifically, Google likes to try to sync EVERYTHING. I turned it all off except contacts, music, and chrome.

Next go to the application called "Google Settings" in your app drawer. Scroll down to "Location" and on "Google Location History" turn it OFF. I think that might have been my main culprit.

Hope this helps!!

An alternative is to change location accuracy from high (uses GPS chip) to battery saving (uses wifi and tower triangulation). This preserves the location history, which makes Google Now more useful (for those of us who like it), while dramatically reducing battery drain. I do have to manually turn location accuracy to high when I use Google Maps or Waze, but that's it.

 

[paridge]

Re: Google Play Services - Battery Drain

An app to check is Google's Play Newsstand. The default setting is “download via Wi-Fi only” — a battery killer because it's continually updating even if you've never used the app. The “download while charging only“ option can make a big difference.

 

[mferrinda]

Re: Google Play Services - Battery Drain

Update - after disabling as much as I could. I let the battery go down to 5%. Battery use was low to moderate I was asleep from 11pm until 7am, here was the final battery usage before I charged:


After charge here is what I got from estimated life:

 

[Alex_NJ]

Re: Google Play Services - Battery Drain

Some great, but simple advice in this thread for all phones. Well done guys!

 

[anno54]

Re: Google Play Services - Battery Drain

For what its worth, I had a similar problem with my M9. After a bit of tweaking Google Wallet started to appear as the second biggest user of my battery with the screen off. With the first being Google Services. Uninstalling Wallet seems to have made a large difference. I still use Google apps Newsstand, Chrome, Music, Movies, Books, Rewards and YouTube. With location settings set to battery saving mode unless I need GPS for something specific.

 

[Daniel Ziegler]

Just a question: by disabling Google location history, do you still get Google Now cards coming through? I would like to start using Google Now but I'm worried about the battery drain associated with it, as my battery is already not as good as I would like on my S6

 

[roccos]

I commute to work everyday using public transportation. I took a cab the other day and left my phone in the cab! I was able to go to my google location history and see everywhere my phone had been. I was also able to set the phone to wipe as soon as it was turned on (it had been turned off). My question is if I disable location services, how would I track my phone or tablet in such a scenario?

 

[ccates]

You still get google now cards if you disable location history, it merely limits the cards you get. You can still receive weather etc, but nothing that would rely on where you are in relation to where you've been, like commute notifications etc.

 

[ccates]

I think the issues is this bug with lollipop.
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=165558

 

[majgaard]

I am also new to android and samsung, but i've found that the location service is draining battery quite a bit. Try and disable that - unless you really need it enabled off course.

 

[mush10]

Just throwing out another fix. Go to settings and lock screen and security, then other security settings and finally other security settings. Turn off Android Device Manager. Go to the play store and you can now uninstall Play Services updates. Once they are uninstalled there will be a prompt to upgrade. Click on that and reinstall the updates. That has had some success for people.

I would recommend going back and turning on Android Device Manager if you use it. If not, leave it off. I do use it so it goes back on.

This is very frustrating as I need to be able to trust my phone died not drain when I am sleeping in some instances.

Posted via Galaxy S6

 

[Muhammad Gadayev]

Re: Google Play Services - Battery Drain

Hi
I got fixed my s6 edge, i also was getting really high battery drain by Google services.

Here is the fix: Go to play store and download gservicefix and follow the steps in this downloaded app. Now i get 6 - 7 hours screen on. Thats amazing

 

[yanks4life]

Re: Google Play Services - Battery Drain

Hi
I got fixed my s6 edge, i also was getting really high battery drain by Google services.

Here is the fix: Go to play store and download gservicefix and follow the steps in this downloaded app. Now i get 6 - 7 hours screen on. Thats amazing

So looked at this app in market and seems to have good reviews, but what does it really do? So did you do what it said after installing it like turned off GPS and Sync? I don't use GPS, but why would I turn off Sync when I want things to still be able to sync in background for push notifications etc.... To me turning off Sync would be pointless to have a phone so hoping the fix would still work without having to do that. Any insight from your install and fix would be helpful, also do you have to keep the app running or can you uninstall it once you apply the fix? Thanks!

 

[Stang68]

Re: Google Play Services - Battery Drain

So looked at this app in market and seems to have good reviews, but what does it really do? So did you do what it said after installing it like turned off GPS and Sync? I don't use GPS, but why would I turn off Sync when I want things to still be able to sync in background for push notifications etc.... To me turning off Sync would be pointless to have a phone so hoping the fix would still work without having to do that. Any insight from your install and fix would be helpful, also do you have to keep the app running or can you uninstall it once you apply the fix? Thanks!

Yeah, same question here. This app just seems like it gimps the phone. I can turn off sync, too, but then what's the point?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[sonja77]

I downloaded the gservicefix app and it didn't do anything!

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[CharlesCC2]

Strange how the search function works as ten seconds before clicking in here I did a search on "Google Play Services", searching only the thread titles (across the entire forum) and this thread didn't show up on the first page of most recently replied to threads. Weird, but I'm glad I saw this before making my own thread.

Now I'm not complaining in general about the battery life I've gotten this cycle, as it seems to be the best I've gotten since I got the phone, but it irks me to see Google Play Services as the number one offender on here. Here is my battery usage last night before going to sleep with 2 hours 20 minutes of SoT:



Here it is again in the afternoon with having barely used it this morning, with only an additional 10 minutes of SoT:



This is with about 2.5 hours of SoT, so all in all not horrible relative to what I was getting about a week ago before making a few additional changes and switching to Nova launcher. Still, what the heck is cause Google Play services to suck up all this battery when the phone is idling? My phone hasn't updated to the new build yet btw, and this is an AT&T phone. Location services are always on - might start turning that off. And The Weather Channel app was behaving for a few days but now it's back to being a cold blooded killer. I might've had the program running for a long time in the background having forgotten to close it after using it though.

 

[fritzo81]

There's an update to Google Services.

http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google...ices-7-5-66-1939950-440-android-apk-download/

Warning: Make sure you know your version number before downloading.

 

[stabbedintheface]

Just to pile on here...

I disabled background data for GPS and my battery life sky rocketed. And I mean like 10 hours off charger, still at 90% kind of sky rocket. Though that was with roughtly 1.5 hours of SOT.

The only issue I found is that I couldn't recieve GV or hangout messages if I didn't actually have the app open. Which kind of makes it so I can't actually disable it as I need that for work.

I wish there was a way to know exactly what in GPS is chewing battery. So I could figure out how to turn things off at a more granular level.

 

[razza1987]

I have everything switched off from location settings to syncing and I STILL have Google Play services showing up in my most used and like the original poster I don't get it at all