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Abysmal battery life keeps getting worse.

Battery life has been poor since day 1 (May 2014), but it has only gotten worse since then. The 'upgrade' to KitKat was hugely detrimental to the battery life. Looking for suggestions on this forum a month or so after the upgrade, I tried a few things that had been suggested by Verizon and other members. I reluctantly did a hard reset. This helped the phone run a bit smoother, but no improvement on the battery life. I've also been running the SnapDragon Battery Guru App that was recommended. I can't say that there is much, if any, improvement.

I'm on WiFi most of the time. I don't use blue tooth or NFC and those features are off. The Battery Guru app needs location service, so that is on. I've tested with it off as well and it seems to perform about the same (whatever benefit the app has is negated by having the location set to "on" probably).

Below are screenshots of my battery performance from today. I woke around 6:30. I was charging again at 11:15 because I was under 15%. Is this phone just defective?

To be fair, this seems to be pretty commonly complained about amongst G2 users online, so it doesn't seem that my experience is isolated.

Comments

Snn5

Your battery stats should never have the OS or system ahead of screen. Screen, OS then System in that order. I have been getting 18-22 hours between charges since day one. If you have done an FDR, then you need a replacement phone. Sounds like a kernel issue. Gsam battery app is the only app I know which works entirely. I have never heard of this Guru app, nor should any app that monitors better use need location.

benichole621

Thanks for the reply. I may look into the GSAM app, but at this point I have little faith in a software fix. The SnapDragon Battery Guru app (from the people who make the phone's processor) seems like it is supposed to work like Motorola's "Smart Actions". It takes 2 days to learn initial patterns and uses that data to turn off wifi (and maybe other features??). Anyway, maybe it is time to start talking to Verizon.

Snn5

I should clarify. Gsam will let you know whats going on in more detail as far as battery usage. It does not optimize anything. I can tell you that with no app conflicts and kernel/system issues that you should get a min of 15 hours with heavy use and up to 24 with minimal use. There isn't a software fix, not an update anyway that would help your problem. Sounds like a rogue app to me, and it's possible that even a well-known app in quality could cause a glitch. I wonder what strength signal you're getting as far as 1x and 4G are concerned. If you take a look at Settings>Tethering and networks>Mobile Networks>Signal Type and Strength...how many bars of each do you have? Most likely you'll always have less 4G than 1x. If you are where you spend the majority of your day when you check it and find 1x very low, or find that your phone switches to 3G and back and forth to 4G or even less, I'd take a look in you Settings>Battery> tap on the battery Icon and scroll down to Cell Standby. Tap on that and look for Time without Signal. If you have any time without signal you can bet that's eating your battery because you have lost signal and the phone is searching for it pretty hard. If by chance you do another Factory Reset, make sure to uncheck the options to Back up app data and Automatic restore. It's possible that last time you had those enabled and whatever app is this problem was reloaded with its previous settings. If none of this helps, I'd definitely call VZW or stop by a store and ask for a replacement to be shipped to you. It would take 2 business days via FedEx. Stores won't have refurbished units to exchange with. Hope some of this helps.

benichole621

I checked cell standby and it shows time on 4h 10m 28s, 0% without signal. In that time, I've dropped to 24% battery. As for signal, 4G shows 2 bars (114dBm) and 1X shows 1 bar -100dBm.

I would have tried to get a replacement already, but my last experience doing this was so much of a hassle that I am reluctant to go down that road. I had a Droid RAZR MAXX replaced 3x as they kept sending me phones with problems. The one I ended up keeping had a broken headphone jack...but I was just sick of dealing with them so I just used it.

Thanks for the help! I am downloading GSam now to see if it sheds any more light on things.

tdunnusa

My phone has horrible battery life as well. I'm curious if anyone else out there that has the issue has done a factory refresh and found their battery life was much better afterwards? I'm considering trying that but would like to know if anyone has some recommended steps one should follow before doing so? I also do not want my phone to automatically begin downloading every app I've ever installed from the Playstore, how does one prevent that or can you?

Snn5

Have you tried all steps listed within this thread?

tdunnusa

No I haven't not yet I just was reading this for the first time. Hopefully it gives the steps to perform this formatting on my phone. I am concerned of all the apps automatically reinstalling and not letting me chose so that I can find out if it's a rogue app or not though.

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