🪫 Battery life: how to troubleshoot?

[brendxn]

I am consistently getting max 2 days of battery life, despite. what I would consider very light usage of the device. I’m not currently using it as my main phone, so I expect I should be getting much longer battery life.

My main questions:

1. Is there any way to see which apps / processes / functions are causing the battery drain?
2. Has anyone discovered specific optimizations that gave you much better battery life, other than Offline + mode?

Some details how I’m currently using the phone:

• Sending 3-4 SMS per day
• Sending ~15 messages daily on WhatsApp, receiving about the same amount
• Usually making 0 phone calls, sometimes 1 call, maximum 3-5 minutes
• Sideloaded WhatsApp, FUTO keyboard, Here WeGo and PocketCasts via aurora store. I leave WhatsApp open in the background, but quit the podcast, maps app after I’m done using them
• I listen to ~1.5 hours of podcasts during this 2 day period
• Backlight always off
• Hotspot used 30-60 minutes during the 2 days
• I rarely use the sideloaded maps application (0 times during last 2 charge cycles)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I feel that if I transitioned to using this as my main device, I would somehow be getting < 1 day of battery life, despite getting 2x that on my iPhone. It feels like something is off, but I can’t figure out what. Others seem to be getting amazing battery life, despite using the device more heavily than I am.

[sinnari]

As per my knowledge, WhatsApp working in the background drains battery very fast. If it’s possible, you can try to disable WhatsApp and check if the battery performance improves.

[japsenpapsen]

What would be the way to tell Whatsapp not to run in the background?

[brendxn]

What I mean here is, I open the “manage apps” menu, click the app, then choose “Force stop”

[brendxn]

Thanks, although I believe @urszula (and others too) are using WhatsApp, and even other messaging apps, and not quitting them each time - yet somehow achieving a week of battery life (if my memory isn’t wrong)

[urszula]

@brendxn Yeah, I have only these 3 apps sideloaded & really- it’s not that much of a drain. I’m on Day 4 at the moment. However, I very rarely use ‘wifi hotspot’ I prefer USB tethering.

[buiosu]

@urszula

I prefer USB tethering.

BTW do you always experience USB tethering shutting down each time you unlock the phone?

[urszula]

@buiosu Nope. I just tried it again and it’s all good

However, it did happen to me one, awhile ago. What I did was just opened the phone, made sure the USB tethering was on & closed the phone.

[mchodakowski]

I was just about to start an identical topic today. I’m testing the Compact another week and my record is 3 days. @urszula how do you do it

Phase 1 of testing:
Wednesday 10:45 pm - 99%
Saturday 6:15 pm - 19%
Usage:

• 30 minutes of calls,
• a few minutes in maps,
• 10 photos taken
• 5 minutes playing chess
• 15 minutes of note-taking
• sending/receiving a few MMS
• 1.5 hours listening to a podcast via sideloaded Pocket Cast
• 1.5 hours listening to music via sideloaded Apple Music
• A few minutes recorded on a voice recorder
• a few dozen messages on Signal

Phase 2 testing:
Wednesday 20:45 - 100%
Friday 20:45 - 19%

• 0 minutes of calls
• 5 photos taken
• 3 hours of podcast listening
• saving several appointments in the calendar
• dozens of messages on Signal
• a dozen text messages sent/received

Phase 3 of testing:
Monday 22:00 - 80%
now (Tuesday 19:30) - 47%

• 5 minutes of calls
• one hour of listening to the podcast
• a dozen or so messages on Signal
• several times opened sideloaded Slack.

Apps I’ve installed:

• Signal
• Pocket Cast
• Lithium
• Apple Music
• Futo keyboard

The trend is unfortunately downward.
Sideloading the apps, of course, I was aware that this would affect the working time, as you can see that the 6 days claimed by Mudita are quite far from being reached.
Out of curiosity, @uruszla, with what usage did you adjudge that the battery will last for 6 days of work? How many calls/texts per day, listening to music from mp3 files, etc.?

[brendxn]

Thanks for sharing your usage as well. I think also most importantly to confirm with @urszula - was your device always powered on and not in offline+ mode during this time?

@mchodakowski FYI I’ve noticed that a 1hr podcast on Pocket Cast costs me ~5% battery life.

I’m testing another cycle today with 3 changes:

• WhatsApp has been uninstalled
• Bluetooth always off
• Wifi always off

I guess this isn’t a great test setup because if it works, I won’t know which one of the changes was most useful but I will report back here nonetheless if it helps.

[mchodakowski]

I’ve recently uninstalled Pocket Cast and installed AntennaPad instead. I’m also killing all apps (besides Signal) which I currently not use. I’m not sure if it helps, will see. I’m iOS user, and know that starting the app “from zero” each time is worse for the battery than keeping them open for a long time, but I’m not sure how is it working on Android.

[denguefeber]

@mchodakowski @brendxn What is your general signal strength during the day? I’ve noticed that Komtakt often shows full bars, but in the settings (Settings → About → click SIM status (SIM slot x)), you can see the actual signal strength. Mine generally shows around -90 dBm and 47 ASU, and DuckDuckAI indicated that this is a weak signal.
I.e., a weak signal equals battery drain.

[brendxn]

Thanks for this suggestion. Mine always shows full strength, and I didn’t know there was another way to check this. Generally though, I’m in the center of a large city and have never had cell signal problems with other phones. Right now I’m seeing -77dBm and 63 asu, which apparently is “excellent” (based on a quick search).

Thanks a lot for the recommendation - I appreciate it.

[janlo]

thanks for this thread. I’m following it closely. I haven’t sideloaded anything yet. For your comparison.
Charged - sunday - 8PM 99%
Now - wednesday 11am - 60% More than 3 days left
Normal usage, calls cca. 30min, SMS, Notes, Meditation, Ebook, Camera, Calendar, Recorder cca 1,5h

[eden]

@brendxn

Hotspot used 30-60 minutes during the 2 days

an hour of using the wifi hotspot will drain significant amounts of battery life. remember that the phones battery longevity is largely down to its minimal power use, not a larger battery. using power heavy features will drain the battery like any smart phone.

wifi tethering effectively doubles the amount of work the phone is doing. your using the phone as an access point transmitting and receiving data constantly to the connected device, and on top of that you are now also using the power power hungry mobile network (4g compared to wifi) to also transmit and receive constant data.

add on top of that your 5% per hour audio listening and that combination probably accounts for a large portion of your battery usage

[buiosu]

Mine says -110 dBm 28 ASU for LTE and 3/4 bars on the home screen but my calls are totes fine. In the same place, data transmission on my smartphone is fair enough for all but Youtube that may glitch at times.
Not sure why it is deemed poor signal although it’s true that signal to noise ratio will then be low. Noise floor in LTE is around -118 dBm.

[brendxn]

I’ve been watching the battery a bit more closely. Quick summary: After uninstalling WhatsApp and keeping bluetooth and wifi off, the phone is lasting much longer. In particular, the battery doesn’t drop so drastically when I’m not using it. I’m going to add WhatsApp back to see what happens next. More details below for anyone interested.

• Fully charged the phone ~ 24 hours ago, and now at 76%. So trending at 4 days battery life…much better!
• 15 minutes of hotspot usage drained 1% of the battery. So I assume 1 hr = 4-6% (accounting for some likely rounding issues)
• 1 hr podcast listening consistently uses 5-6% of battery
• Lost only 3% of battery during 8 hours of sleep. Previously it was dropping ~10% (with WhatsApp sideloaded, bluetooth and wifi on)

[ovy]

when I kill WhatsApp each time after the usage my battery can last 4 days. Without killing, 1-2 days

[brendxn]

Great to know, thank you. Killing WhatsApp is very tedious unfortunately, so I probably won’t do that in the long term. Do you still receive notifications from messages after killing the app? I assumed not, but didn’t check.

[ovy]

Nope, there is no info about the app after killing it. But this is kinda good Less distraction I can control that by not killing the app if I need notifications at some timeframe