Android Pie Battery Drain

[Don Valdini]

Hi, I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S8 with android 9, and I've been having a battery draining issue recently. I've always kept apps like Whatsapp, Instagram in the sleeping apps list, but I do take them off the list from time to time. But recently, even when I put whatsapp to sleep, it's still draining my battery. My battery drained overnight like it never did, and I went to see what apps were doing this and I saw that it was Whatsapp, I put it back in the sleeping apps list, disabled background activity, and nothing happened, when I go to the battery options, I see that is still Whatsapp that's consuming my battery, so what is the cause of this and what can I do? The only thing that seems to work is to manually force stop Whatsapp from the apps setting, but this is I don't know, tiring and consumes my time, because I always have to open and manually stop everytime, like, I want to send a message, I open it, then I have to force stop it right away if I want to use another app.

 

[anon(10614692)]

It's nothing to do with Android Pie. WA is a known battery hog. You could try disabling push notifications. There is little more you can do, perhaps the app is poorly coded although Iphones have this problem too.

 

[Don Valdini]

Okay, I actually have push notifications enabled, I'll disable it but I don't think that's the problem because even If I'm not receiving any messages, the battery still drains because the app is still running

 

[anon(10614692)]

Until WA is rewritten you are stuck with high battery usage. This is an issue which has gone on for years so there doesn't seem to be any urgency to resolve it

 

[Javier P]

Welcome to the forums. That's strange, I've used WhatsApp for many years and never had a battery drain like that. Same thing with most friends and relatives that use WhatsApp as their main messaging app.

I wonder if there's any problem in some background processes like backup or media auto download. You could try changing these settings in the app and see if it makes any difference.

 

[Rukbat]

You could run Greenify (if the phone's not rooted, you have to check it once in a while to "sleep" apps not being used manually in Greenify) - it really does save a bit of battery. Or you could use an app that allows you to remove apps from RAM (like SystemPanelLite). If the app isn't in RAM at all, it's not going to be using battery. (Just remove WA after you finish using it. Next time you run it, it will load into RAM again.) Or you can force stop it (in Settings > Apps) after you finish using it.

 

[nonreality]

I'm assuming that you have cleared your cache, if not, try that. It's such a simple fix but it actually can solve problems like that. I would back it up and then uninstall followed by a reinstall. Again a simple fix if successful. Yeah it's not just normal or you would have had this problem before. Hope one of these helps.
Also make sure it's not whitelisted in the battery optimization settings. My battery drain was a bit worse after the 9 update. It seems to have adjusted now. One other thing. It's a lot harder in 9 to see the location setting that you are on. Make sure that your GPS isn't running all the time. I've had an app change mine a couple of times and had not realized the switch from battery saving mode to full GPS. The new location setting page really sucks.