Beyond fed up...

[sarakat79]

Ok, so I had that dumb updated pushed through to my Rezound about 3 days ago in the middle of the night while my phone was charging, unbeknownst to me until I woke up and the screen was lit up continuously for no reason. When I unlocked the phone, there it was, the update info that I had no idea would be coming since my phone was finally working flawlessly for several months after many switch outs for problems with the last update (ICS). I no longer had to troll the internet for answers to problems anymore. Ha, jokes on me, now I am having ridiculous battery drainage when I don't even use the phone like an average user, let alone a heavy user. I can barely go 8 hours with almost no usage and my battery is down to 20 something percent or less. This is unheard of from my past experiences with this phone. I could Always make calls, check email occasionally and at the end of the night, surf the web, check facebook and so on for a couple of hours straight before I would be anywhere near the low battery level message popping up. Having not had issues like this with the battery, even with the last update, I am utterly beside myself on what is going on. Since I don't use the phone very much, I really don't have anything to remove, stop syncing, kill, etc. The one day the battery indicated in the 20 - 30% usage for both the phone idle and cell standby, while the screen is at 40 + % usage and the screen is manually turned almost all the way down, literally. Today I made 52 minutes worth of phone calls on and off, no web browsing, and almost no email checking and it said cell standby and phone idle were around 8 - 9% each for usage (normal) and voice calls were 75% (Not normal) and screen is only 13% which it is NEVER that low for screen usage. WTH! Verizon's useless employee is now referring me to HTC since I am out of warrenty and supposedly No one else has called with this complaint. I am completely at a loss here for what to do. I am now paying for a useless phone/brick that would have to be tied to a charger to use as it once normally could be for hours without any problems. Any info or advice would be appreciated. I already know I can do a factory reset but I've found those to be useless in the past for my issues. Keep in mind I am nowhere near tech savvy and I don't download apps hardly ever and have very few on my phone. I guess I just want to know that I'm not the only one with this issue after the update, especially when I barely use my phone in the first place...

 

[acejavelin]

Take a deep breath and calm down.... there, that's better...

Probably 99% of users who got the recent update have reported no battery drain issues, or any visible changes whatsoever, so your experience is unique for some reason. As a quick and dirty shot in the dark, I would do a battery pull reset, boot into hboot and recovery and clear the cache, then see what happens.

Battery drain issues are not usually terribly hard to diagnose, but you need the right tools. I would recommend installing GSAM Battery Monitor and seeing what is really using the battery up. If your battery is draining in 8 hours with little to no usage and good signal strength, something is probably holding the wake lock, it is much more detailed than the stock battery monitor and can usually help find the culprit quickly. Now, if these doesn't seem to help or point you in the right direction, consider the factory default, but do not install any apps that are not essential to your phone use right away, if that goes well, add in a few apps at a time and hopefully all will be fine.

 

[sarakat79]

Thanks for some insight. I have already did the battery pull and reset to no avail and I do not know how or have instructions to easily boot into the hboot screen, let alone clear the cache (under the hboot screen do you mean?) I have had to try to get into the hboot screen before when my previous refurb went into the dreaded boot loop mode. I remember it being pretty difficult for some reason for the hboot screen to come up/register a couple of other times in the past when following instructions from VZW Tech Support on how to enter it for some different issues. It kept bypassing my attempts to enter it and the phone would just restart as normal. I can't help but to feel disgusted with having to pay $30+ a month extra now for something that is almost useless as a "smart" phone. Basically I can use it for only short phone calls or an occasional text msg if I want any type of battery life. I might as well have a non smart phone, but even then I would get 10 x's the battery life at least. I can no longer look anything up on the internet, check email for more that a couple minutes at a time or log into facebook without draining my battery within the hour. I can't stay stuck to a charger all day, it's just not possible. Now to go from a perfectly respectable battery life (for my usage amt) to watching the battery drain at every swipe or tap of an app is really discouraging. I currently have Battery Indicator and Tiny Battery Widget Apps installed to help monitor usage, but they all seem to reflect similar info that the stock battery/power usage app is registering. I will install the GSAM app. and see what happens, but again I do not know a lot about apps in general. Also, none of the 15 or less apps I have downloaded have ever been suspect in the past, so I'm not really sure what to do about those, if anything. I do get an excellent signal, and have always kept it in 3G CDMA only. I have double checked all settings and they all seem to have retained the current settings throughout the update. I guess last resort will be to try the factory reset which I was planning when I have more free time and a fully charged battery, but not having an obvious solution to why my battery is draining through the monitoring of my settings and apps is driving me nuts. Especially when my OEM standard battery that I'd been using without issues is not very old and stated to be in good health. There's not enough air left for deep breaths at this point... Sorry for ranting!

 

[Lactose The Intolerant]

I guess last resort will be to try the factory reset which I was planning when I have more free time and a fully charged battery...

This could almost be classified as "first resort" after updating -- especially the way things get "knocked around" with system updates. Your contacts are hopefully saved to Google and not to the phone -- that way, when you enter your account after the fatcory reset, your contact list is automatically imported from Google. Additionally, your 15 or so apps may have worked great before the update but that is no guarantee that they will be 100% great after the update. Acejavelin recommended a great (FREE!) app GSam Battery Monitor -- it will show you what is using your power, shows how well your connections are doing (wifi, 3G and/or 4G connections affect battery life) and shows you temperature of phone (which, you guessed it.. affects battery life.)

 

[sarakat79]

Thanks, after loading the GSam app from the market, it seem to identify the Hotmail app ( from the market, not stock) as the source of my battery drainage as well as many, many wakelocks. Something like 500+ the one day alone after about 1/2 day on a full charge. I also seen somewhere else on the forum where I believe someone had pinpointed Hotmail as a huge battery hog, but I didn't pay too much attention to it since it had caused 0 problems in the past with battery drainage. I didn't even have it set up to push my mail, but instead manually only. I never would've guessed it was an email app that I barely used in the first place since I didn't set it up to pull mail from the server until I refreshed it myself. Goes to show you how little time I've taken to learn the inner workings of a smart phone and how well apps play together or respond to new updates. At this point I'm not even sure what a *wakelock* is or what triggers one, let alone hundreds. Done some research but I've still not found a difinitive answer . Or at least one I understand completely. My battery seems to be responding more normally now that I've deleted the account and uninstalled the app, so I'll keep my eye out for any other suspicious activity. I'll probably still do the factory reset at some point, but at least it's not quite as necessary for the moment as I thought. Hopefully in due time I'll return to my normal web usage and shake that nagging feeling of disappointment I have been getting when it comes to the thought of surfing the net at the end of the night for a couple hours without worrying my battery will be dead within 1/2 hour or less. Been too gun shy to try this last day or two since battery has started responding more as expected. I could easily do this before without any issues for at least 2+ hours after a light day of usage. Thanks again for both replies...

 

[danhartman26]

After the recent Rez update, GSAM indicated the Hotmail app was draining my battery too. I removed it about a week ago and started using the default mail app... Battery life is back to normal - so it sucks, but at least I can get a few hours

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