Google services / Google Play services battery drain while at work or on the go?

[janneo]

Can anyone explain this: my new Galaxy S6 (5.1.1) suffers from excessive battery drain due to either Google services or Google Play services whenever I am at work or on the go. The battery drain stops immediately when I arrive at home. For example last Friday I spent most of the working day at meetings and the phone got very little screen on time or voice calls, however the battery dropped to 60% during the 11 hours of driving to work, being at the office, driving back home and shopping for groceries. The biggest culprit was Google services at 11%, screen was only 1%. Then I got home, the battery drain from Google services stopped and I only had to recharge my S6 yesterday evening. This battery drain behaviour seems to be similar even when turning off location services and/or wifi or mobile data. Mobile reception is far better at work than at home. I have even tried factory resetting the phone, but it didn't help. Sounds mysterious, doesn't it?

 

[cohoman]

I had a similar issue and I turned off Google Location. Try this: Tap the Google Settings app icon and then tap "Location". From there, turn off the location switch. See if this change helps with the battery drain.

 

[janneo]

I tried disabling location services completely and got slightly less battery consumption than with location services on. Of course in this case the consumption curve did not level off when I got home, it went on dropping at home faster than with location on instead. The top energy consumer was now facebook (almost the same percentage as Google services when location is on). Could it be that facebook keeps asking Google services for location when location settings are on thus raising G services' consumption?

 

[cohoman]

My understanding is that the Facebook app is a known battery hog. I don't use Facebook, so I can't verify that observation.

 

[Likorisa]

Hi, this drainage can be from many things. Sometimes, you might not know but, the sync settings can be the main battery drainer. You should try disabling auto-sync. You can read more about that and other tips to prevent google play services from eating away at your battery here.