Battery draining A LOT overnight while doing nothing - why?

[rimz808]

So I have changed the way I charge my phone, as I now charge it during the day while on my pixel stand at work.

Because of this, I no longer need to charge my phone over night. For the past 2 nights now, I have left my phone, on, with Do Not Disturbed set from 10pm-630am. I go to bed with about 70% battery, yet when I wake up, it's down to about 30%. A 40% drop in about 6 hours of the phone doing nothing. Is this normal? I do have adaptive brightness set and even though I do have Always on Display, once my lights turn off, the screen does go black.

Is there a deep sleep mode that I can place the phone in? Is this a normal drain?

Any help is appreciated

 

[HyperM3]

Have you checked to see what apps are waking the phone or what has used the phone battery overnight?

 

[rimz808]

Have you checked to see what apps are waking the phone or what has used the phone battery overnight?

Top of the list says ambient display

 

[HyperM3]

Top of the list says ambient display

Thats very odd. Do you ever expect any calls or messages from anyone during the time you have DND set? By that I mean, do you have it allow favorite contacts to get through DND when it is set?

 

[puch96]

Do you have good cell reception? That could kill the battery very quickly. (even if you are on WiFi), cell radios tend to consume battery if the signal is poor.

 

[HyperM3]

Do you have good cell reception? That could kill the battery very quickly. (even if you are on WiFi), cell radios tend to consume battery if the signal is poor.

Thats kind of where I was getting at with my previous post. If the OP could try putting it in airplane mode instead of DND to see if that keeps battery life longer. That being said, why not just put it back on the charger overnight and not worry about anything?

 

[puch96]

Thats kind of where I was getting at with my previous post. If the OP could try putting it in airplane mode instead of DND to see if that keeps battery life longer. That being said, why not just put it back on the charger overnight and not worry about anything?

Well, the phone should not go through that much battery unless there is an app issue and or cell reception issue. (especially when it's idle and not moving.

 

[HyperM3]

Well, the phone should not go through that much battery unless there is an app issue and or cell reception issue. (especially when it's idle and not moving.

Right, so by putting it in airplane mode for one night as an experiment, it would cut out reception issue or an app looking for data in the background issue.

 

[rimz808]

Thats kind of where I was getting at with my previous post. If the OP could try putting it in airplane mode instead of DND to see if that keeps battery life longer. That being said, why not just put it back on the charger overnight and not worry about anything?

That's a good suggestion, putting it in airplane mode. Yes I do have exceptions when set to DND for favorite contacts to call when on, which is really the MAIN reason I leave my phone on at night, just in case for those emergency situations. Will I not get calls if on airplane mode? Regardless, I will try putting it on airplane mode and see how much it drains, which I am going to assume not a lot.

In regards to putting it back on charger overnight.. will that not prolong the battery life? I go to bed at 70% and I thought putting it back on charger overnight is over kill?

I am curious as to why it does drain that much when doing nothing, which then makes me wonder why I don't get good battery life to begin with when using it. Although, this has been my experience with all 4 android phones i've had in the past. Only phone that i've had where battery was not a concern were my iphones.

 

[HyperM3]

That's a good suggestion, putting it in airplane mode. Yes I do have exceptions when set to DND for favorite contacts to call when on, which is really the MAIN reason I leave my phone on at night, just in case for those emergency situations. Will I not get calls if on airplane mode? Regardless, I will try putting it on airplane mode and see how much it drains, which I am going to assume not a lot.

In regards to putting it back on charger overnight.. will that not prolong the battery life? I go to bed at 70% and I thought putting it back on charger overnight is over kill?

I am curious as to why it does drain that much when doing nothing, which then makes me wonder why I don't get good battery life to begin with when using it. Although, this has been my experience with all 4 android phones i've had in the past. Only phone that i've had where battery was not a concern were my iphones.

If you put your phone in airplane mode you will NOT get any calls. So if that is important to you, I would not recommend doing that. As for the charging, my phone goes on the charger every night along with my watch whether it needs it or not. Ive been doing it this way since the dawn of time and never had any battery issues. YMMV of course and battery tech as well as charging tech has come a long way in the past years.

So far I find the P3XL to have the best battery life of all the Pixels so far. Granted, it also has the newest operating system which has had battery system upgrades. So if the original Pixel had this OS, would the battery last longer, I couldnt tell you. My phone has been off the charger since 645am this morning, about 10 hours, and I still have 65% left. Granted, Ive only been reading emails, texts and snapchat the whole day, so nothing really battery intensive.

So if you are finding that your battery is not staying idle while the screen is off and you arent using it, something is acting up. Like I said, find an app that tracks wakelocks and figure out what app keeps telling the phone it wants something. Maybe its a rogue app you recently downloaded or something you recently changed permissions to.

 

[Mike Dee]

Top of the list says ambient display

Ambient display is not normally a big consumer

 

[rimz808]

ok. I did the test of turning on airplane mode and left it on overnight. I was at 45% when I went to bed. when I woke up, it was at 35%, so a 10% drop. better than the 40% drop the night before. would it be my cell reception or wifi causing the battery drain? what test should I try next? turn off my wifi or mobile data?

 

[18t]

Restart phone before bed, then airplane mode, then look at results in the morning. Shouldn't drop more than 3-5%

 

[HyperM3]

ok. I did the test of turning on airplane mode and left it on overnight. I was at 45% when I went to bed. when I woke up, it was at 35%, so a 10% drop. better than the 40% drop the night before. would it be my cell reception or wifi causing the battery drain? what test should I try next? turn off my wifi or mobile data?

Heres a question for you. When you charge your phone, are you charging it to 100% and then taking it off the charger? Or are you intermittently plugging it in during the day?

 

[rimz808]

Heres a question for you. When you charge your phone, are you charging it to 100% and then taking it off the charger? Or are you intermittently plugging it in during the day?

In the past, this is what I use to do:
1. Charge phone during the night
2. Charges up to 100% when I wake up
3. End of day, before bed, phone is usually at 12-15%, depending how I use it during the day.
4. Repeat process

Now:
1. Leave home with whatever % is on phone. Usually between 15-30%
2. Go to work and use the Pixel wireless stand to charge it throughout the day. I usually take it off the stand once my phone reaches above 80% charge.
3. At night, i leave phone on, but not charging.
4. Repeat process

leaving it on at night, battery drained about 40% with everything on

 

[HyperM3]

I think since you arent giving the phone a full charge anymore, its eating away at itself. I could be wrong, but I honestly think you should go back to the old way and charge fully at night so you have 100% when you wake up in the morning.

 

[rimz808]

Restart phone before bed, then airplane mode, then look at results in the morning. Shouldn't drop more than 3-5%

so is the 10% drop still a lot? I thought so a s well. I was expecting maybe 3-5%. I did notice that my always on display was on throughout the night, just not as bright. Would this be causing battery drain?

 

[HyperM3]

so is the 10% drop still a lot? I thought so a s well. I was expecting maybe 3-5%. I did notice that my always on display was on throughout the night, just not as bright. Would this be causing battery drain?

You can set the ambient display to dim when in darker rooms as a setting. Maybe you were seeing that. I highly doubt that was causing much of a power consumption though. Are you checking what apps are using the most in the digital wellbeing or in the battery app itself?

How much time was the 10% drop over? 1 hour, 3 hours, 8 hours? If I see a drop of about 5% an hour then I know I can make it through the day. However, I charge it fully when I go to bed every night and take it off the charger before I head to work. My phone has currently been off the charger for 8 hours and 22 minutes and SOT is 1 hour 18 minutes and my Ambient Display has been running 6 hours 39 minutes.

Granted, everyone uses their phone differently. So its tough to say what works for one person works for every person.

 

[rimz808]

You can set the ambient display to dim when in darker rooms as a setting. Maybe you were seeing that. I highly doubt that was causing much of a power consumption though. Are you checking what apps are using the most in the digital wellbeing or in the battery app itself?

How much time was the 10% drop over? 1 hour, 3 hours, 8 hours? If I see a drop of about 5% an hour then I know I can make it through the day. However, I charge it fully when I go to bed every night and take it off the charger before I head to work. My phone has currently been off the charger for 8 hours and 22 minutes and SOT is 1 hour 18 minutes and my Ambient Display has been running 6 hours 39 minutes.

Granted, everyone uses their phone differently. So its tough to say what works for one person works for every person.

The drop of 10% was during an 8 hour time frame. That was with Airplane mode on. However, without it on, it was a 40% drop. I will test it again tonight with airplane mode off and see what the drop is. I wonder if there is a useful app that could give me more details? I've use GSAM before, but didn't really find the information useful.

Thank you,

 

[foxbat121]

Excess battery drain typically are app related, e g. You installed some app that just eats up battery even when you are not using it.

That or you have a very poor cell signal that your phone tries real hard to maintain a connection.