Android M & L "Active Mobile Radio" Bug equles massive battery drain

[Christopher Shelton1]

Since the release of Android L there have been thousands of complaints about battery life with Android phones. Manufacture and model of phone doesn't matter, the results are the same, and "Active Mobile Radio" seems to be the main fault of this issue. The bug has been confirmed by Google developers in Android M previews, and It has last been acknowledged to still be in M preview 3. What has been extremely frustrating to Android users is the complete lack of Google to even acknowledge that this bug exist in Lollipop, even though the issue is the 2nd largest and most followed complaint on the Google developers tracker boards.

Below are the links to follow this MAJOR bug in both L and M versions of Android. If you are experiencing this issue with either version please post in the corresponding links. without are feedback Google can't fix the issues. Thanks

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=165558 "Android L"
https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/detail?id=2556 "Android M"

 

[Almeuit]

Our guys (on the forum team) running the M preview actually are reporting the opposite -- it seems to be better.

 

[Golfdriver97]

The Nex5 had some really good standby on Preview 2. I won't post any screen shots of 3 for the time being. I just flashed it.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[LeoRex]

Yeah... while there may be a bug out there related to the radios, I don't think it is systemic or widespread. I've seen significant improvements in overall battery performance, specifically on idle. When the new 'Doze' feature kicks in, I see idle battery drains as low as 0.4%/h. I've been running M builds since preview 1 was first released and I haven't seen anything to indicate a bug in the mobile radio.

Just looking at my phone now... over that last 9+ hours, the mobile radio, which has been on the entire time and 'active' for probably about half that time... My battery has drained 18%, with the mobile radio accounting for approximately 4% of that drain... or about 0.72% overall. And that includes several different signal strengths, from strong to nada.

So yes, there might be something going on... but the issue might be as much a OEM issue as it is Google.

 

[Christopher Shelton1]

Working in the Technology sector for 20 years, I know how hard it is to duplicate or replicate a known software issue, without knowing the end users habits or phone setup i.e. apps, custom launcher, ROM..ext. But it's pretty evident from the tracker forums that there is definitely something wrong with L and M. "In investigating the bug-reports shared in this tracker we discovered and fixed an issue where the device was waking up unnecessarily. There are some fixes for additional improvements. This particular fix will ship in Android M, and is just one in a number of efforts to improve battery life."

You can rule out OEM or Carrier specific faults, as the issue has been reported from users across multiple OEM's, models, carriers, and ROM's.

 

[turf]

On the android issue tracker, someone just stated that the bug is still present in the final released version of marshmallow. Hopefully that's not true since I will have to then stay on kitkat for yet another year. Can anyone with a nexus phone confirm once it is evaluated.

 

[Forest Dane]

Why stay on kit kat when you have a very small chance of getting impacted by this bug? Might as well update, have the benefits and pay a few quid for a battery pack from eBay

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