Phone Idle - Battery Drain

[ed8907]

I consider the battery life of this phone to be good (6 hours screen time) but "phone idle" ghost is still there. I've been trying to research about the causes of this but I haven't gotten a very good response. I remember this didn't happen to my Z5C while on Marshmallow but it started happening in Nougat. Why is phone idle consuming so much battery?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Phone Idle could be high due to poor cell signal -- how has yours been? If you tap that battery graph, do you get a fullscreen graph that includes the cell signal strength bar as well? If not, install GSam Battery Monitor and look at its cell signal strength graph over the span of an entire battery charge. If it fluctuates widely, or is mostly low, that's probably a big reason.

 

[ed8907]

Welcome to Android Central! Phone Idle could be high due to poor cell signal -- how has yours been? If you tap that battery graph, do you get a fullscreen graph that includes the cell signal strength bar as well? If not, install GSam Battery Monitor and look at its cell signal strength graph over the span of an entire battery charge. If it fluctuates widely, or is mostly low, that's probably a big reason.

Thanks for your answer. I tried deactivating LTE and using 3G that has a stronger signal but phone idle stays. Some people in other forums say this is because of adaptive brightness and location.

 

[B. Diddy]

It's hard to tell how consistently strong the cell signal is just by looking at the indicator at one point in time -- that's why I usually recommend looking at the cell signal strength graph after a whole charge.

Location could cause some drain if it's set to High Accuracy, with wi-fi and Bluetooth scanning on. I would imagine that the GPS battery use would show up as GPS, though. Wi-fi and Bluetooth scanning might show up as Phone Idle, so it's worth checking to see if those scanning features are off. Different phones can have that option in different locations -- go to your Settings>Location menu and look for the Scanning option -- if it's not on that screen, then tap the Menu button again and see if shows up in that dropdown menu.

 

[Daniel Ruben]

I have this problem too. I just completely turn off my phone when I go to sleep now. This stops the phone from doing anything, including idling away when I am not using it.

 

[Jacob Franklin1]

Likely, you need to disable a service that is tracking your phone's location for security purposes, like Android Device Manager or Find My Phone. It is keeping your phone idle awake to track its status and location.

You would find this service under Settings > Security > Phone Administrators