Lollipop Battery Life

[Phil H Wood]

This battery problem is such a pain, I use the battery doctor app and I am constantly having to re-optimize the battery???

I am a bit technically challenged so I have several basic questions:
0. Can the phone be reset to the previous operating system before Lollipop? (My wife received the notification that Lollipop was available and asked her to update, I told her not to do it leave it alone.)
1. How do I conduct a factory reset?
2. What happens to my current setup - - will I lose my installed apps and settings?
3. How do I verify that I have a Google account?
4. How do I reinstall my apps from my Google account?
Thanks for helping me with the questions above.

 

[Ntimid8ter]

you can use the Verizon software upgrade assistant. that is how I got upgrade because I was rooted and phone clean from bloat.

 

[TNCattleDog]

Apparently changing from global to LTE/CDMA does not stick. My phone keeps reverting back to Global.

Battery life has been horrible for me on Lollipop too. I used to get better than two days at home, but now I get right at about 18 hours.

Battery life at work is atrocious!! I now carry a battery bank around with me because I have to charge at least twice a day. I start my day at 6am and by noon I am at 30% and have to plug into the battery bank. By 4pm, I am almost dead again and have to plug in for the drive home. Absolutely ridiculous

Screen is on 30%, WiFi and Location services are turned off and GSAM does not identify any particular app. Phone gets HOT and has locked up several times in the last couple weeks. I have done several FDR's and it only fixes things for a day or so.

Verizon is no help.... they blame it on spyware/adware... maybe the crap that they loaded on my phone but nothing I have put on it. Very few apps in use and all are well known apps from the PlayStore.

David

 

[TNCattleDog]

Woaaahhhh Nellie!!! Jackpot!

So in trying to figure out why my G2 battery drains faster than a top fuel dragster and my wifes G2 has the stamina of a Tesla, I went digging. As above, I am lucky if I can go a day on a charge at best. My phone gets HOT, especially the upper right corner, yet my wifes G2 can go almost three days on a charge. FDR's have done no good. Until.... I compared settings.

My wifes location service is set to "battery saving" and mine is set to "High Accuracy". I changed mine to battery saving last night and plugged in to charge up. Came off the charger at 7am today and as of now 13:06, I am at 92% battery!!!! Wooohoooo! Google services and Android System use of resources have been cut in HALF and, my phone stays cool.

Give it a try and report back...

David

 

[scottysize]

Yup. The G2 and G3 become battery hogs when location services are active. Turn off Location, and it'll sip instead of gulp juice.

 

[TNCattleDog]

Yup. The G2 and G3 become battery hogs when location services are active. Turn off Location, and it'll sip instead of gulp juice.

The interesting thing though about turning off location via the drop down menu, is that it really made no difference for me. Phone would still get fery hot and battery would drain rapidly.

Now, of course, one day of testing is much less than scientific, so it remains to be seen how the rest of the week goes. Difference between yesterday and today is like night and day though. The real test will be when I go back to work in a couple days.

David

 

[razr maxximus]

My wifes location service is set to "battery saving" and mine is set to "High Accuracy". I changed mine to battery saving last night and plugged in to charge up. Came off the charger at 7am today and as of now 13:06, I am at 92% battery!!!! Wooohoooo! Google services and Android System use of resources have been cut in HALF and, my phone stays cool.

Give it a try and report back...

David

I was excited when I saw this until I checked my phone and its already on battery saving mode.
This stinks as my battery drains fast now since the update.

 

[tollonodre]

I was excited when I saw this until I checked my phone and its already on battery saving mode.
This stinks as my battery drains fast now since the update.

I had same issue, my unscientific experiment seemed to point to Google Now location functionality hammering at my battery. Even in 'saving mode' the battery would plummet several percent an hour. Reboots did nothing. So you might try dumping Google Now if you have that active.

I eventually gave up on my G2 as I got tired of chasing battery fixes. I bought a used Windows Phone off Ebay and I'm running that until things are safe back in Android land. (At least at the end of the day I still have 60%) The tech at the Verizon store said the upgrade is actually bricking a lot of both the G2 and G3, so I guess we're 'the lucky ones' in that it's only battery issues...

 

[mayhem8]

Also posted this in the "Battery life" topic. Gist of it is that Verizon had a stock app (NFL Mobile) on the LG G2 when I got it. This was not showing significant battery use under "Settings > Battery > Battery Usage" but it was under "Settings > Location". My phone was continually searching for location even with the Location set to off.

Going to Settings > Location showed this app as "High battery use". I never use it so just uninstalled it. I had also noticed Amazon AppStore using between 20-30% according to Settings > Battery > Battery Usage, so uninstalled that. I think it actually just reverted to the stock version according to the uninstall message I got.

I've gone from having to recharge my phone daily to getting at least 2 days on a charge now. Figured I'd share since these are easy low-risk changes you might want to try. Worth noting that I only have about 5 Apps that I personally installed on my phone and that typical daily use is a few texts, a quick call or 2, quick check of Google Maps for traffic on the way home and briefly accessing some websites a few times a day.

I still think the root cause of the problem was the upgrade to Lollipop as I never had this problem until after that, but this seemed to help quite a bit. YMMV.

 

[onnad]

Does anyone know if a certain keyboard (say LG or Google) is more of a battery drainer? What other things should I be looking at that can cause battery drainage? I'm not a heavy user and my phone drops like 15% sitting overnight on average. I don't have location turned on unless needed and is turned off when done.

 

[TrekkieMonster]

My battery life was actually okay when I first updated to 5.0.2 - not as good as it had been on 4.4, but better than some were reporting. But, it's gotten steadily worse over time. I've tried everything, and removed a bunch of apps, even though nothing I'm seeing suggests they're causing any problem. Finally, a couple days ago I completely disabled GoogleNow, and my battery life seems to have stabilized a bit. Again, it's not anywhere near as good as it was before Lollipop, but at least now I can get through an average work day on a single charge - as long as I plug it in while I'm driving and using Waze. I still have to shut off Location, Bluetooth, and WiFi when I'm not using them, and I'm constantly making sure no apps are active if not in use, but it's something. And with all that, I still cannot get through a full day, from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, on a single charge, which is just ludicrous. Just thought I'd share in case it helps anyone else. Good luck with this POS OS everyone.

 

[brotherman]

Hopefully this will help someone. I upgraded to Lollipop. I had issues sending and receiving texts and that was fixed with a factory reset. The biggest troubleshooting I had to do was with the battery life. It would drain 4% every 15 min. The culprit for me was my Straight Talk APN settings. I set them exactly as they were when I was on 4.2. I noticed the drain occurred when I added the APN settings. So I did more research and set my APN Type to "default,mms.supl". After rebooting the phone, my battery is back to how it was prior to the update. I never had set that before cause the Straight Talk settings I found online never mentioned changing the APN Type at all. What is weird is that the drain would only happen in some locations but not others.
Hopefully that will help some of you.

 

[mccornwall]

I can't find anything called Straight Talk APN settings...is that even on Verizon?

 

[brotherman]

Straight Talk is a reseller of AT&T, Verizon, etc's services. They are a cell phone provider that leases major companys' lines. If your carrier is Verizon then ignore my post, but maybe call your provider to verify your APN settings if you are having an issue.

 

[scottysize]

This isn't going to help if you are still using the G2 as your daily driver, but mine's been living in Airplane mode for the past 7 days. The battery has yet to go below 50%.

 

[escondido]

After trying all of the suggestions on this thread and even doing custom roms, I went back to kitkat. Now my battery finally lasts all day again. Yesterday I had 2 hrs talk time and 4.5 hrs screen on time. Plus a lot of streaming podcasts and music while the screen was off. Went all day from 7am to 11pm with a little left over. I would have had to charge at least twice throughout the day if my phone were still on lollipop.

Kind of lame that we are stuck using old software to have a decent experience. I ordered a windows phone off eBay so I am going to try that for a while.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

 

[TrekkieMonster]

After trying all of the suggestions on this thread and even doing custom roms, I went back to kitkat. Now my battery finally lasts all day again. Yesterday I had 2 hrs talk time and 4.5 hrs screen on time. Plus a lot of streaming podcasts and music while the screen was off. Went all day from 7am to 11pm with a little left over. I would have had to charge at least twice throughout the day if my phone were still on kitkat.

Kind of lame that we are stuck using old software to have a decent experience. I ordered a windows phone off eBay so I am going to try that for a while.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

Ya know, I'm seriously considering this as well. I loved my phone on KitKat. I've resisted thus far only because I've never done it before and I'm not sure I'm completely comfortable with the process, but I find my daily experience with my G2 on Lollipop so incredibly frustrating that I'd almost rather risk bricking the phone than continue using it as it is.

I've been seriously following the new G4 thinking I might just switch to it once my VZW upgrade is available in a couple months, but then I realized it'll have Lollipop, too, and there are so many things I hate about Lollipop, whereas I was perfectly happy with my G2 on KitKat.

I need to look into this.

Congrat's.

 

[BrayLandon92]

I used to love my G2 from Verizon. When it was on Kit Kat it had excellent battery life. Just from typing this my battery has gone down 1 percent. I am constantly on battery saving mode, i never have location services on unless needed, my screen brightness is always at 0%, and i am sick of only getting 2 hours of battery life. I am on my third replacement phone. The phone sometimes burns me and restarts itself. Oh look! Another percent! I have done EVERYTHING suggested here and everywhere else. I am super frustrated. I am locked into a 2 year contract with Verizon. Along with the battery apps will randomly close out when i am using them. It took me 10 minutes to write this. Ok im gonna kill this phone, just went down another percent. 12 minutes..

 

[mccornwall]

Sounds like mine. When it gets on one of it's jags, the battery falls like a stone.

 

[muckrakerX]

I always uninstall all the Amazon apps, and any other preinstalled apps I don't need. I disable any I can't uninstall.