Worse battery life after upgrading to Nougat

[Pete7874]

Hello,

Ever since I upgraded my 5X to Nougat (7) several weeks ago, my battery life isn't as good as it used to. I haven't installed any new apps since the upgrade.

When I look at battery usage info, the top 2 battery consumers are "Android OS" and "Android System".

Has anyone experienced anything similar? What's the fix?

 

[ptkelly]

I don't have a battery issue on my Nexus 5x with Android 7. My two largest, by far, power users are screen and cell standby. Both Android OS and Android System are way below those two.

 

[vVick3d]

Hello,

Ever since I upgraded my 5X to Nougat (7) several weeks ago, my battery life isn't as good as it used to. I haven't installed any new apps since the upgrade.

When I look at battery usage info, the top 2 battery consumers are "Android OS" and "Android System".

Has anyone experienced anything similar? What's the fix?

There is definitely something not optimized with N. Doze should be more aggressive than MM, so when not using the phone it should use even less battery.

My personal findings show that under idle usage MM was using less battery than N. Normally had I left my phone unplugged all night i might lose a total of 3-5% over 10 hour idle. Now it's just about doubling that on N. I did however install a pretty hefty September N patch today ~49MB so let's hope it's improved.

I'm not super worried because it will get fixed eventually.

 

[anon(522161)]

I have. My overnight drain used to be 3-5% on MM. With N it was some crazy 30% with the same Android OS and Android System at the top you had mentioned. Reinstalled MM 2 days ago, reloaded all apps and it's back to what it used to be. I'm gonna pass on N at this point as I need a working phone.

 

[laurencewo]

Battery life is far worse since Nougat. Why is it every time there's an OS update the battery life turns awful and we have to wait a month or two for another update to fix it? How can Android talk about Doze being an amazing feature improving battery life when battery is significantly worse?

I used to get around 3 hours screen on time, now I'm struggling to get to two. So frustrating!

 

[ianhanson85]

Doze isn't working for me at all. I'm fine with the 3.5- 4 hour SOT but I'm beyond irritated by the drain when not in use. My wife's iPhones standby is ridiculously good. I don't get why Android can't do the same.

 

[Pete7874]

FYI, on MM, I used to get 3 days of life with very limited screen use. Now on N, I'm lucky if I get 2.

 

[Koato8]

I just got back from a long trip, switched back to my iPhone 6 for a few months to test a friend's app. Moved back to my beloved N5x a couple days ago and updated to N. Phone is warm all the time, battery draining with no discoverable culprit. You would think a nexus would have no problem with a new android version, considering it is in some ways a "google phone"... now I know that is not really how it works.. but I will consider this when the pixel phones are announced and weigh my options

 

[Pete7874]

OP here... I just noticed that upon upgrading to 7, the "OK, Google" detection option got automatically changed to "Always on", which means the mic is always hot, continuously analyzing sounds, listening for that key word, even if the screen is off and device is locked. I just disabled it. Will see if that has any noticeable impact on my battery life.

 

[ianhanson85]

OP here... I just noticed that upon upgrading to 7, the "OK, Google" detection option got automatically changed to "Always on", which means the mic is always hot, continuously analyzing sounds, listening for that key word, even if the screen is off and device is locked. I just disabled it. Will see if that has any noticeable impact on my battery life.

Mine is off and battery still inexplicably draining...

 

[Pete7874]

Yeah, mine's still draining fast, although a little bit slower than before.

 

[ianhanson85]

Yeah, mine's still draining fast, although a little bit slower than before.

It drives me nuts. If I could get the standby time an iPhone gets this phone would be perfect for me. I don't see doze kicking in at all for me after the update. My graph is just a steady decline even during periods of no activity.

 

[ljbad4life]

I don't know if this applies to everyone, but when I put the phone in "data saver" mode my battery life decreased significantly. My normal operation includes web browsing, playing music via bluetooth headphones and my 5x lasts 9-10 hrs before it needs to be recharged (I'm a moderate to heavy user). When I use data saver mode my phone only lasts 6 hrs. It has happened twice. doing the exact things (in fact I had used wired headphones one of those times) and in the same places. My theory is that the cpu is kept awake and active more because the phone is constantly checking the "white list" of applications to see if that app is allowed to use data.

 

[aysiu]

I hope you all have starred this issue:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=222769

That said, I haven't experienced this myself (5x), but my spouse has (6p). My 5x upgraded to Nougat and has been absolutely fine on battery. Doesn't matter if I use data saver or Bluetooth or whatever. I haven't changed a single setting. My spouse upgraded her 6p to Nougat and immediately (no change in behavior or apps) the battery life took a huge plunge. One day, it just died in the middle of the day doing nothing. And once it was taken off the charger, it took about ten minutes for it to go from 100% to 86% (meanwhile mine was still at 100%).

She's done Settings > Apps > Reset App Preferences, wiped the cache partition, and turned on Data Saver, and now the battery life seems okay again.

 

[anon(50597)]

I actually get very good battery life on my 5x.

 

[Pete7874]

I hope you all have starred this issue:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=222769

I don't use bluetooth, and my battery life still sucks.

 

[youngusaplaya]

As of the recent update with the October Security Patch I can say that my battery life has changed dramatically going from an 8 hour shift before yesterday and having almost 30% towards the end of my night to having around 75-80% when I got off last night, if anyone else has the latest update can you report your usage??

 

[anon(50597)]

As of the recent update with the October Security Patch I can say that my battery life has changed dramatically going from an 8 hour shift before yesterday and having almost 30% towards the end of my night to having around 75-80% when I got off last night, if anyone else has the latest update can you report your usage??

Just updated a few hours ago.

 

[Pete7874]

As of the recent update with the October Security Patch I can say that my battery life has changed dramatically going from an 8 hour shift before yesterday and having almost 30% towards the end of my night to having around 75-80% when I got off last night, if anyone else has the latest update can you report your usage??

Mine still seems to be just as bad as before. Android OS and Android System are still eating up most of the battery.

 

[anon(50597)]

Not a big difference from what i can see. Still getting very good battery life.