Yep, another battery-life issue Post PIE

[JoeT69]

Hi all,
Yes I read a bunch of threads already.

I waited until this week to run the 9 PIE update on my 2XL. I love this phone, that's why I waited. I kept reading about the issues and the battery life problems.

So far I haven't noticed any glaring issues besides the very reduced battery life. Before the update I could surf and watch video and music all day long and still have 30-40% battery life at the end of the day. Now it's warning me I only have 17% left long before the end of the day.

No I don't have Battery Saver on... I've never used it. Adaptive Battery says 'Limiting Battery for Infrequently Used Apps'. It also says Full Charge Lasts 21 Hours...which it USED to, but does not anymore. Screen Usage since full charge (this morning) is 4 hr. 42 min.

I force stop every app that I don't use as a habit. I have great cell coverage around here but 90% of the day is on wireless. Location service is always OFF. I made sure all the settings I've used for the past year are the same after the update.

I do NOT want to do a factory reset. Are there things I missed or can look at before doing that? I don't want to lose all kinds of stuff or brick the phone.

Thanks for the help!

 

[J Dubbs]

A factory reset will probably be your only option unfortunately. It fixes 99% of battery issues no matter what os you're upgrading to. Battery issues and 3rd party apps not working/going rogue and killing your battery are the number one complaint after an os upgrade.

That's why I don't run 3rd party apps unless it's an absolute necessity..... and I always plan on doing a factory reset after an os upgrade. I went through the new os killing my battery issue as well and learned how to fix it. So now I run a lean machine and reset and no more problems..... I have a phone that runs like new again, the reset even fixes niggling issues I didn't even realize I had.

Some folks can get by without a factory reset, I've done it myself thinking there were no problems.... until I did the reset and saw how much better my phone worked ;-)

And remember many apps haven't been designed yet to play well with Pie, so if you reset then restore all your apps you could very well be in the same boat again. Why not try running in safe mode for a few days to rule out any rogue apps? Although I would still reset because the difference in phone performance will be shocking :-D

Too bad Google took away the ability to wipe the cache partition, that was a very handy feature that was one step before a factory reset, often fixed major issues, didn't erase or change anything on your phone, and was super quick and easy to do.

 

[hallux]

With a new update comes new battery management capabilities. Give it some time to "learn" usage patterns and it'll improve over time.

 

[JoeT69]

Thanks folks. I'm gonna sit on it for a while and see what happens. I can give Battery Saver a try as well before wiping it. I let it die last night (which wasn't hard) and will try to kill it again tonight. The battery lasts so long I rarely got a chance to let it hit Zero% before charging.

 

[hallux]

There should be no reason to let it run until it dies. In fact - it's detrimental to the long-term life of the battery to do so.

 

[joe01880]

Have you installed any new apps either shortly before or shortly after you updated.
If you just updated, as in today give Pie a chance to work into your phone's system.
Have you rebooted your phone since it updated? Don't include the reboot it did during the update. Reboot that sucker, just do it. If it helps cool, if it doesn't no harm no foul. If your not going to be connected to WiFi turn it off so your phone's not looking for WiFi all the time. Also put your phone on dark mode. OP four plus hours of screen on time burns a lot of battery. OLED displays such as that on the P2XL uses power to produce colors, the color that uses the most power on an OLED is white. Black uses no power. A given Pixel producing black simply doesn't turn on so logically your phone will use less power on dark mode.
In the end a factory reset will most likely fix any battery problems your having outside of apps doing it or screen on time doing it, or searching radios in your phone doing it.
My P2XL was burning battery before the PIE update. Installing Pie seemed to take care of it for me. I think the previous months update caused my phone to use more battery but now, after pie it's better than ever before..
Lastly go to updates and or check on the Google website to see your running the most up to date version of pie. I updated the day it was avalable to do so, there have been several updates after pie was released.
Best of luck!

 

[JoeT69]

Hi,
I've only installed one new app in the past month and it's Force Stopped. I always clear the cache and Force Stop any app I don't use.

As far as rebooting, it's been rebooted (as well as powered off restart) several times since the PIE update the other day. I kept getting notifications for about a day to restart the phone to finish the update(s). I thought that was kind of odd. Then it stopped asking me to restart.
It's updated all the way to the Dec. 5th security update.

I'm on Wifi 90% of the time. I'm always stationary so it's not really searching for radios constantly.
If that's what it's doing and it's constantly searching, then that's a major flaw that needs to be addressed or have options to stop it. I'm not going to use cell service and burn data when there's Wifi available.

I haven't changed my usage habits at all. It still chows the battery like mad.

I'm gonna research the best way to Factory Reset in another day or so. It's gonna hurt, but it's a last resort.

Thanks

 

[joe01880]

Hi,
I've only installed one new app in the past month and it's Force Stopped. I always clear the cache and Force Stop any app I don't use.

As far as rebooting, it's been rebooted (as well as powered off restart) several times since the PIE update the other day. I kept getting notifications for about a day to restart the phone to finish the update(s). I thought that was kind of odd. Then it stopped asking me to restart.
It's updated all the way to the Dec. 5th security update.

I'm on Wifi 90% of the time. I'm always stationary so it's not really searching for radios constantly.
If that's what it's doing and it's constantly searching, then that's a major flaw that needs to be addressed or have options to stop it. I'm not going to use cell service and burn data when there's Wifi available.

I haven't changed my usage habits at all. It still chows the battery like mad.

I'm gonna research the best way to Factory Reset in another day or so. It's gonna hurt, but it's a last resort.

Thanks

So uninstall the app last app you installed, reboot your phone and see what happens. You can always reinstall the app.
Force stopping some apps close them but phone operations can cause them to open again or simply stay running in the background. The main issue from the original post here looks like screen time on. The screen being on will burn more battery than anything else. If you know your going to be on screen for extended periods plug your phone in to save battery for when you need it.. Active screen time combined with CPU usage from playing high graphic intensive games will drain your battery rather quick. It's a cell phone, keep that in mind, they all have limitations. To keep them think and light batteries can only be so big. You can always get something else but IMOP you will be hard pressed to find a better phone than a P2XL, especially in taking pictures. Mine takes amazing pictures!
Or
Make sure you have your Pixel backed up to at least Google, bite the bullet and do the bloody factory reset.. that should take care of any issues pie may have caused installing itself. Or not!

 

[JoeT69]

UPDATE:

All seems well now. I didn't do anything...didn't uninstall anything, didn't factory-reset, didn't turn on battery saver.
Although I tried battery saver for a day, it screwed with some operations that I wasn't willing to live with.

Battery life seems to be back to or very close to what it was before PIE.
It's just that I've never encountered issues like this in the past from any update so I was impatient.

Thanks all

 

[Rukbat]

If you didn't update until December 13, you might have gotten a few incremental updates, so the phone was updating almost constantly. (The new system - since Oreo, IIRC) will download the update quickly, then update the side you're not using (they finally either listened to me or thought up 1988 themselves - because we did it back then), then, when it's done - when step 1 is done, you switch over to the updated side and the other side gets updated. No more waiting around for the phone to update. But if you get a few of them in a row (Pie has been out since August), it can eat a lot of battery until you get them all. Now you should be up to the December update and the January update is coming out in just over a week. (One update will shorten the battery life for that one day by just a little bit, you might not even notice it.)

You couldn't have seen it with Oreo, because the phone came with it.