Reduced Battry Life since Verizon required update

[jdklove18]

Hello all!

I was wondering if anyone else has been experiencing reduced battery life since installing the Verizon pushed update in the past few weeks? I installed the update about 2 weeks ago (I believe) and since then I can't even make it through the day with practically no use of my phone. I used to plug my phone in at night with great than 30% battery life and now it is dying completely by 7 or 7:30pm (coming off the charger around 8am...so less than 12 hours). Is this happening to anyone else? I did noticed that in the ~3 hours off of the charger today 30% of the battery drain has been Googlemaps, but I haven't even opened that app today. I don't have any media at all on the phone (movies or music) just pictures that I taken with the camera. I've only installed a few apps since then and they have all either been Amazon apps of the day or directly from Google Play for specific stores (and all had high recommendations). I miss my old battery life and I hope that someone out there can offer me some help!

Thanks all!

 

[osubeavs728]

You'll probably need to do a hard reset. Sometimes updates just make the phone janky without a wipe.

 

[Infinite Jest]

I've had higher idle usage than before for no apparent reason. WiFi also seems to be using more juice.

 

[jdklove18]

You'll probably need to do a hard reset. Sometimes updates just make the phone janky without a wipe.

What does this entail? Will I lose everything on my phone? Never done one before....

 

[Jennifer Stough]

Don't do a reset. Uninstall all updates of Google maps and uncheck all options in app under settings, primarily location sharing. A new maps update made the phone wonky. If you check the battery graph, im willing to bet maps has been keeping your phone awake.

Sent from my Verizon Droid DNA

 

[Jennifer Stough]

I was having the same issue a few weeks ago. My afore mention actions solved it. Disabling maps couldn't hurt either, if you don't use the application. This is now what my battery useage is looking like.

Sent from my Verizon Droid DNA

 

[XenIneX]

In BetterBatteryStats, I've seen a significant bump in consumption by the Google Maps app; particularly the NetworkLocationLocator thread, which, IIRC, is responsible for Google Now's background location awareness. I haven't bothered to do anything about it, since battery life hasn't been an issue for me as yet, but you can disable Now's creepy stalker mode in Google Maps (Settings -> Location settings -> Location reporting).

 

[Daniel.Lynch]

These last few days I was losing battery very quickly. There was a bit of suspicious maps usage, but not much. What was eating up my usage was something called media servers or something? I asked about it here, and I did what was suggested and my problem has been solved. Check eet out. http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-droid-dna/274308-battery-usage.html

 

[hannsoft]

I was having the same issue a few weeks ago. My afore mention actions solved it. Disabling maps couldn't hurt either, if you don't use the application. This is now what my battery useage is looking like.

Sent from my Verizon Droid DNA

Jennifer, that's awesome info, thanks!

 

[MikeC01]

I've been experiencing seriously reduced battery life since the update as well. It seems every day wifi is using a significant portion of the battery. I'll leave it off the charger tomorrow and post my battery usage at the end of the day.

 

[MikeC01]

For the first several months I owned my DNA I would take the phone off the charger when I woke up and put it back on the charger when I would go to bed. In that four month or so time I think I saw one maybe two low battery warnings. A few weeks ago, after the operating system update to fix the SIM issue loaded, my battery started lasting only until about 5 PM. Yesterday after reading this thread I uninstalled all the updates to Google Maps and I turned off all location services for the day in hopes of recovering the battery life I enjoyed from my phone up until a couple of weeks ago. Normally, at the time I took the screen shots below I would have at least 30% of the battery left (if not more) at this hour but instead (FYI I took one photo with the camera and it was on for maybe 20 seconds) . . .

 

[hannsoft]

For the first several months I owned my DNA I would take the phone off the charger when I woke up and put it back on the charger when I would go to bed. In that four month or so time I think I saw one maybe two low battery warnings. A few weeks ago, after the operating system update to fix the SIM issue loaded, my battery started lasting only until about 5 PM. Yesterday after reading this thread I uninstalled all the updates to Google Maps and I turned off all location services for the day in hopes of recovering the battery life I enjoyed from my phone up until a couple of weeks ago. Normally, at the time I took the screen shots below I would have at least 30% of the battery left (if not more) at this hour but instead (FYI I took one photo with the camera and it was on for maybe 20 seconds) . . .

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b63/mike_cohen/Screenshot_2013-05-07-19-02-33.png
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b63/mike_cohen/Screenshot_2013-05-07-19-02-39.png
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b63/mike_cohen/Screenshot_2013-05-07-19-02-51.png

Mike, may be a silly question, but after deleting the updates, did you power off the phone? Just for S&Gs, give that a shot. Oh and make sure Maps isn't set to auto update.

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD

 

[MikeC01]

I uninstalled the Google Maps updates again, turned off all location services, and then restarted the phone. Battery performance was about the same today.

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Android Central Forums

 

[XenIneX]

I uninstalled the Google Maps updates again, turned off all location services, and then restarted the phone. Battery performance was about the same today.
<---snip--->
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Android Central Forums

Android's built-in battery metrics are useless. Install BetterBatteryStats to see what is actually keeping the phone from properly sleeping. ($3 on Google Play; free from the XDA Forums {second post; may need to register}.)

 

[MikeC01]

Android's built-in battery metrics are useless. Install BetterBatteryStats to see what is actually keeping the phone from properly sleeping. ($3 on Google Play; free from the XDA Forums {second post; may need to register}.)

Thanks! I'll see if Better Battery Stats can shed some light on the situation.

 

[MikeC01]

Very strange day here with my phone. The battery life has suddenly been much better (55% after about 9 hours) but I got two SIM card errors today and I had to restart my phone to get rid of one. This phone is really starting to irk me.

 

[XenIneX]

Not sure what to tell you. After 12 hours off-charger, I'm sitting at 85% charge. Sure, it didn't see much more use than deleting spam emails, thanks to my tablet-using ways, but still....

Now, I did see a considerable reduction in idle battery consumption after I disabled everything -- and I do mean everything -- under the Location Settings heading in Google Maps' settings. It gave me something like a 50% improvement in idle consumption.

Then again, the "Mobile Network Signal" bar in your metrics screenshot is reading as consistently 'meh', except when it reads as worse, at which point the battery plot shows a distinct downward slope. Take a long lunch in a Denny's sitting directly under a cell tower and see if your battery graph flattens out for the duration.

 

[Infinite Jest]

I've had increasingly erratic battery consumption and I can't seem to pinpoint the source. I'm probably going to try a factory restore when I get the chance.

 

[MikeC01]

Not sure what to tell you. After 12 hours off-charger, I'm sitting at 85% charge. Sure, it didn't see much more use than deleting spam emails, thanks to my tablet-using ways, but still....

Now, I did see a considerable reduction in idle battery consumption after I disabled everything -- and I do mean everything -- under the Location Settings heading in Google Maps' settings. It gave me something like a 50% improvement in idle consumption.

I don't really see the purpose of having a phone that can do so much if you have to turn everything off in order to get the battery to last an entire day. I like to leave everything on. Up until the last system update I could do that and still have 20-30% of the battery life left at bed time. It's much improved lately but a couple of days ago the phone was giving me a low battery warning mid-afternoon even with some things turned off.

Then again, the "Mobile Network Signal" bar in your metrics screenshot is reading as consistently 'meh', except when it reads as worse, at which point the battery plot shows a distinct downward slope. Take a long lunch in a Denny's sitting directly under a cell tower and see if your battery graph flattens out for the duration.

I don't get a great signal when I'm home (3 bars max depending on where I'm standing in the house) and I drive around a lot during the day so I'm often hitting low signal areas. I would also add that the longer I own the phone the weaker the cell radio seems to get. It seemed to pick up a signal much better when I first got it.

This whole situation is quite ironic because when I upgraded my two concerns that I wanted to correct in my next phone were battery life and signal strength. I saw HUGE improvements in those areas with this phone but the gain has shrunk quite a bit and continues to shrink the longer I own the phone.

I've had increasingly erratic battery consumption and I can't seem to pinpoint the source. I'm probably going to try a factory restore when I get the chance.

I did a factory reset when my phone was REALLY quickly going dead. It helped a bit. I might do another one.

 

[XenIneX]

I don't really see the purpose of having a phone that can do so much if you have to turn everything off in order to get the battery to last an entire day. I like to leave everything on. Up until the last system update I could do that and still have 20-30% of the battery life left at bed time. It's much improved lately but a couple of days ago the phone was giving me a low battery warning mid-afternoon even with some things turned off.

Location services are problematic, and seem to get more so with every extension to functionality Google bolts on. Persistent location awareness may be the future, but technology may not be ready for it to be the now. <Pun! (Kill me.)>

Note that turning off everything in that menu I mentioned in no way hampers normal GPS usage. All it does is kill location reporting for Latitude, Google Now, and some ill-defined and vaguely concerning "location history", which I assume affects Google searches. Those are the ones which are becoming a constant, unrequested battery drain.

You might also want to manually turn off Wifi when you're not in range of a hotspot. It shouldn't be a huge drain, but when you're getting down to single-digit battery percentages, every little bit helps.

I don't get a great signal when I'm home (3 bars max depending on where I'm standing in the house) and I drive around a lot during the day so I'm often hitting low signal areas. I would also add that the longer I own the phone the weaker the cell radio seems to get. It seemed to pick up a signal much better when I first got it.

This whole situation is quite ironic because when I upgraded my two concerns that I wanted to correct in my next phone were battery life and signal strength. I saw HUGE improvements in those areas with this phone but the gain has shrunk quite a bit and continues to shrink the longer I own the phone.

It might be worth asking other people in your area who are on your carrier how their signal is -- it's possible you have a bum device. If everyone's signal sucks, well, complain to the carrier.

And when you're in the car, you should be charging -- particularly with a battery profile like yours. Short term, it'll keep you from running dry at the end of the day; long term, it'll avoid capacity-killing excessive discharge, which will extend the battery longevity and keep you from hating the device at the end of its lifespan.