Weird battery drain issue

mark43 · 19 Dec 2015 at 11:45

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

I recently upgraded from a Nexus 4 to 5X, with my old phone I would set it to airplane mode every night and loose about 1-2% battery. I set my 5X to airplane mode Friday night and lost about 5%, seemed a bit much but not the end of the world. However last night I did the same and the battery went from around 40% down to 2% when I checked it in the morning.

What I find odd is that it doesn't show anything as using the power, I remember having an issue around a year back where my battery was draining, but at least then I could clearly see that facebook messenger was using loads, but on this occasion nothing is using much.

Tee Hee Johnson · 19 Dec 2015 at 12:42

I lose about 2% a night... With everything on!

Must be an app at fault.

mark43 · 19 Dec 2015 at 13:36

Yeah, I just figured it should show which app is using the power.

Tee Hee Johnson · 19 Dec 2015 at 16:46

mark43 said:
Yeah, I just figured it should show which app is using the power.

I think there are apps which monitor battery usage better than android does... better battery stats I think is a popular one.

mark43 · 19 Dec 2015 at 17:55

Yeah I'd get better battery stats but need to root which I don't intend to do. Currently down from 100% to 60% with 45 minutes SoT, definitely not right.

Tee Hee Johnson · 19 Dec 2015 at 19:02

mark43 said:
Yeah I'd get better battery stats but need to root which I don't intend to do. Currently down from 100% to 60% with 45 minutes SoT, definitely not right.

Damn. I didn't know it needed root, never used it myself.

I guess go hands on with it, think about what it could be and start removing apps!

mithrandir · 19 Dec 2015 at 19:17

My phone is temperamental on the battery too. Sometimes it would drain very quickly and others would be hours to drop a few %. I checked on apps and found what worked best would be to leave the charger on for an overcharge as I previously unpluged it after it reached 100. I left it on for another20-30 mins and seems to be better.

thebennyboy · 19 Dec 2015 at 21:14

Go to Settings -> Storage

Find "Cached data" - Press it and clear it then reboot the phone.

That might help, sometimes the cache can get a bit bunged up.

mark43 · 20 Dec 2015 at 21:34

Thanks for the suggestion, sadly that didn't work though.

After some googling I also tried clearing the cache in the recovery menu, and switching off wifi scanning, but neither of those made any difference. I tried turning off google now, uninstalling Facebook and Watsapp, but still no better.

Not sure what to try now besides a factory reset, anyone got any other thoughts?

Space Monkey · 20 Dec 2015 at 21:43

Tried it without using Airplane mode, Doze does a great job of stopping battery drain

mark43 · 20 Dec 2015 at 21:48

Yeah its just constantly draining throughout the day even when I'm not using it. I went from 100% to 36% in less than 10 hours with 40 minutes SoT today. The only reason I was testing with airplane mode is that I figured in theory the battery should hardly drain at all, but its the same without that on.

Dutchman · 20 Dec 2015 at 22:02

In your pic you posted just the battery screen, if you click on the graph it should ( and I say should as that's what it has done on my various samsung android phones ) show you a battery history and show you things like when your phone was awake. I had an issue on my old S4 where in certain places in my office my mobile network signal would be red and that seemed to drain the battery very quickly. Doesn't sound like your problem as you had it in airplane mode, but this screen will also show things like when gps was on, when your device was awake and times your screen was on, hopefully something there helps

mark43 · 20 Dec 2015 at 23:11

Thanks, here is that screen from today. I don't think there is anything amiss, a little time where my signal was poor but on the whole okay, and various gaps where I had airplane mode on.

I still find it odd that the other screen doesn't show anything using the battery, as I said above I had an app draining my battery once in the past and it clearly showed that app under the battery usage.

I think I'll go for a factory reset tomorrow, if that doesn't cure it then I might just send it back.

Rroff · 21 Dec 2015 at 07:18

I get this intermittently for some reason

sometimes its related to syncing stuff but not always. Doesn't help that the phone I use also has a known fault with a capacitor that will sometimes drain battery.

mark43 · 21 Dec 2015 at 16:56

Thanks for all the replies, seems fine after a factory reset. Annoying that I still don't know what caused it but at least I know its definitely not a faulty device (though I'm sure that was unlikely).

Guess I'll add things gradually and see if it re-occurs, not that I really use loads of apps.

pugwash · 22 Dec 2015 at 12:08

Good idea with keeping an eye on apps, also the app updates. The other half had an issue with Gmail, Nexus 5,and sync. Didn't want to do a factory reset, so put on typemail and no more battery issues.
I'm finding that app updates are my main cause of battery drain, so never auto update, and update an app at a time.

mark43 · 22 Dec 2015 at 19:39

Thanks yeah will keep an eye on it. Something was definitely not right though, it was only showing usage for screen and a few google services, but there were definitely other apps consuming power, looks as I would expect now though.

russell664 · 22 Dec 2015 at 23:07

Might be worth installing gsam. Are you rooted? You can obtain better statistical data for wakelocks, and kernel wakelocks

mark43 · 22 Dec 2015 at 23:47

Thanks, no I'm not rooted, which I guess limits my options.