Abnormal battery drain after casting to Chromecast

[pgoelz]

Nexus 5X (16GB)
Build NPD56N
ATT
At home, on WiFi

Anyone notice extremely high battery drain after casting to a Chromecast device? I'm not sure if there is a connection and I forgot to generate a bug report. But after weeks of completely normal battery drain, I cast my screen to my Chromecast device (first time on Android N) and then forgot to stop casting. Later, I noticed higher than normal drain, realized I was still casting and terminated the cast. According to the battery graph, looked like the drain stopped but then resumed and discharged maybe 50% overnight (100X the normal standby drain). Battery stats did not add up to the total drain and did not show any unusual usage. I rebooted and am charging now. I assume the reboot will fix it, but something is amiss.

Paul

 

[Golfdriver97]

Not sure if this is the same in N, but in Settings>Google>click the 3 dot menu at the upper right, and click help and feedback. That should give a general feedback field where you can describe your problem. I'm pretty sure it includes system information as well.

 

[Major Henderson]

Nexus 5X (16GB)
Build NPD56N
ATT
At home, on WiFi

Anyone notice extremely high battery drain after casting to a Chromecast device? I'm not sure if there is a connection and I forgot to generate a bug report. But after weeks of completely normal battery drain, I cast my screen to my Chromecast device (first time on Android N) and then forgot to stop casting. Later, I noticed higher than normal drain, realized I was still casting and terminated the cast. According to the battery graph, looked like the drain stopped but then resumed and discharged maybe 50% overnight (100X the normal standby drain). Battery stats did not add up to the total drain and did not show any unusual usage. I rebooted and am charging now. I assume the reboot will fix it, but something is amiss.

Paul

This is no minor problem. All devices on which I have attempted to use Google HOME to cast to the Chromecast have so severely overheated that I could not use them. The battery is completely drained, even with the devices plugged into the charger. Never seen anything draw so much current.

 

[hallux]

This is no minor problem. All devices on which I have attempted to use Google HOME to cast to the Chromecast have so severely overheated that I could not use them. The battery is completely drained, even with the devices plugged into the charger. Never seen anything draw so much current.

Are you casting cloud-based content to the Chromecast or is it content stored locally on the device? Is it content for which the Chromecast has an app or is your mobile device streaming from the web then pushing to the Chromecast?

I haven't noticed any issues like this with casting YouTube or music to my Chromecast.

 

[smvim]

Casting content from your device requires your device to use its own system resources (CPU, GPU, screen, WiFi connectivity) on a continuous basis so of course all this is going to drain the battery in a very significant way. (...and if you're screen casting higher res content that taxes the CPU and GPU even more.)
Using an app like Youtube, or Netflix, or whichever when casting however, only requires that app on your device to be used as a remote control. The media content doesn't require your device to process anything at all, it's being streamed from the Internet through your modem/router to your Chromecast. Your device's battery doesn't get tapped as much because it's just an app that's in use when you're interacting with it, the rest of the time it's just idling. (... and conversely now higher res content isn't using your phone's system resources, that's now a matter of network bandwidth speed.)

 

[Robisan]

Recently got Chromecast and have been unpleasantly surprised by battery drain on both Android devices (Nexus 6P & 2013 Nexus 7). It appears that when casting, Play Services keeps both devices awake. Today casting TuneIn audio content the N7 battery lost over 20% in ~3 hours, screen off the entire time. I have to turn off wi-fi in the 6P when casting from the N7 because Google Home activates casting control in both devices.

What am I missing here? Everything I read before said that using Chromecast would have minimal impact on device batteries.