Develop Bugs

Battery Savings - WiFi Sleep Policy

Edit: Use at your own risk, it worked for me but people seem to be saying it's not true.
I figured I would share this tip because it worked so well for me. When I first got the Nexus and connected it to my WiFi, the battery was draining at an absurd rate, even at idle. I want to use WiFi because we don't have LTE out here, so turning it on and off was a pain. Then I remembered the Sleep Policy, and there it was set to keep the WiFi on, even during sleep. I'm assuming Verizon did this to help reduce congestion on their network and save them money. After changing this to "only when plugged in" my battery graph at idle flatlined.
Hopefully it will help someone else!
Steps:
1. Settings
2. Wifi
3. Menu -> Advanced
4. Keep WiFi on during sleep
5. Pick an option best for you. I chose Only when plugged in.

From what I have read, keep wifi on during sleep was always the most power efficient. Maybe you have a weak wifi signal?
I'd like to hear what other people have to say on this one.

That's definitely interesting to hear. I'm usually one floor away from my wireless-N router which yields 3 or 4 out of 4 bars consistently. I guess I'll have to see if this works for anyone else then.

This is wrong.
You should set it to Always.
http://www.androidcentral.com/android-101-save-battery-keeping-wifi-alive
Because initiating wifi connection every time you turn on your phone will consume more power.
compywiz said:
I figured I would share this tip because it worked so well for me. When I first got the Nexus and connected it to my WiFi, the battery was draining at an absurd rate, even at idle. I want to use WiFi because we don't have LTE out here, so turning it on and off was a pain. Then I remembered the Sleep Policy, and there it was set to keep the WiFi on, even during sleep. I'm assuming Verizon did this to help reduce congestion on their network and save them money. After changing this to "only when plugged in" my battery graph at idle flatlined.
Hopefully it will help someone else!
Steps:
1. Settings
2. Wifi
3. Menu -> Advanced
4. Keep WiFi on during sleep
5. Pick an option best for you. I chose Only when plugged in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Well it significantly reduced my idle battery use (like at night), so I'll put a warning at the top but I'll keep mine the same.

I guess you haven't turned on the mobile data cause if you do, then this consumes more power than wifi for sure.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

Generally, radio management on the Nexus sucks. I want a setting where if it's in standby, ALL RADIOS ARE OFF except for base phone and text messaging. So this helps a little.
Sure, it uses more power initially to turn whatever on, but no where near as much if you don't use your phone for hours, and don't constantly need to be in sync with everything (like when you're at a computer all day, and you can check your gmail, yahoo mail, have gchat and skype and whatever).
I'd even like a setting policy which only turns on data or wifi when you have an app open that uses them.
I may be using my "phone" (my wife said about her Stratosphere, "I forgot I could use this thing as a phone") differently than most people with smartphones. I need it to be my computer and social device when I'm away from a computer, and only when I take it out of my pocket and turn it on.

Wifi set to always on, while at home. Slept for 9 hours, went down from 100% to 94%

andy2na said:
Wifi set to always on, while at home. Slept for 9 hours, went down from 100% to 94%
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here, with WLAN on my Nexus Prime drops about 6% over night.
Interestingly I just lost about 10% in 2 hours with the phone in stand-by but then I remembered I had to change my IP ~7 times in this time frame which likely caused a lot of WLAN activity and used up quite some energy.

[Q] My Sprint S6 get's terrible battery life

Now.. I'm on my phone a lot normally. I text, and use FB messenger, and a lot of Google Now. Because my phone battery dies so quickly, it sits plugged in a lot, and I don't use it nearly as much as I'd like to.
If I am using my phone a lot, I can take my phone from 100% to 15% 3 times in a day.
I factory reset recently, and just let my phone sit with nothing but Google Messenger and Facebook. It still dies from a full battery in ~4-5 hours, without me touching it. Thing is, all the battery stats show less than 5% usage. And there's no crazy crap like games, etc running. I can't figure out what's eating the battery.
I just put the phone in Airplane mode, and enabled Wifi. I'm getting all my emails, fb messages, gmail, google voice, so on. Battery only went down 30% in 28 hours. I turned off airplane mode (it's not connected to Sprint at the moment, I took it off the account), and I have an Airave...battery dropped 15% in about 30 minutes. Went back to airplane mode with Wifi on, and back to a really slow drain.
Right now, I'm planning on packing up my phone tomorrow and sending it to Samsung for a battery replacement. Because my standard 2A-5V can charge this phone from 10% to 100% in an hour...which isn't right. Not the original QC2.0 charger.
Update: I turned off airplane mode again, and the phone is steadily losing 10-12% battery an hour.. and there's nothing running. It's sitting face up on my coffee table.
What can I do to stop the battery bleed? It's completely stock, on the latest update from Sprint, with no root.
I got an RMA from Samsung to send it in for a battery replacement.

Attached are screenshots of my battery stats. It just makes no sense. Even after a factory reset, not everything using the battery is reporting to that page. The sharp drops in battery are from when the phone is not in Airplane mode (only wifi on)

I've got the same issue. No better than 7-8 hours of standby time. My cpu will also heat up to 160 degrees while running very basic apps.

Any guesses on what's wrong? What have you tried?

turn off:
mobile networks > Connection optimizer
wifi > always allow scanning
these worked for me. hope helps you too.

besotsima said:
turn off:
mobile networks > Connection optimizer
wifi > always allow scanning
these worked for me. hope helps you too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes this is a battery hog for sure shut off that Connection Optimizer, also I set my screen brightness to auto (little check box after the slider) and I noticed a big difference in battery life, I use to crank up the brightness and battery would drain fast, I been on 2 days now at 79% battery..... also not sure but I shut off notifications everywhere too, I don't need facebook telling me everytime a monkey posts on another monkeys wall every 2 minutes, that helps on battery drain as well.

ditto.
This has gotten much worse since I updated to 0I1 rooted with unikernal v9
Also for some reason now... even though both the connections optimizer and wifi scanning turned 'off'-- wifi still keeps randomly turning itself "on" frequently. That with the incredibly poor battery and overheating is frustrating.

Good for you

I had the smart connection optimizer, and wifi scanning off. I also have the wifi location scanning thing turned off.
None of that helps.
My phone is on it's way back to Samsung right now to have a new battery installed.
At this point, I'm pretty sure it's faulty hardware.

Battery life

I am suprised, there still is no battery life thread.
People must be very happy with their battery lifes or nobody is buying this tablet
I do have one big issue with battery life.
WIFI is the biggest battery hog, using 2-3 times more battery than the screen.
For 3 hours WIFI roughly 1400mAh.
So I only manage like 5 hours of SOT.
Btw. I have set WIFI to be disabled, when the screen is off.
Any suggestions?

I haven't had mine off charge long enough to really be able to comment about this yet but I can't complain with it so far.

Mine seems good so far. Had one freeze as you can see. 33% left.

bill3508 said:
Mine seems good so far. Had one freeze as you can see. 33% left.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still, I think it is strange (as seen in your screen shots), that WIFI accounts for almost half of your battery usage. And 5+ hours SOT is only 6%?
Could you be so kind and post the screen for wifi too, so we can see the "computed power use"?
When looking at my phone, wifi is at 52 mAh power use over an 18 hour period, on this tablet it is 2700 mAh for 10 hours.
An alarming discrepancy.
Or am I missing something?

supersquishy said:
Still, I think it is strange (as seen in your screen shots), that WIFI accounts for almost half of your battery usage. And 5+ hours SOT is only 6%?
Could you be so kind and post the screen for wifi too, so we can see the "computed power use"?
When looking at my phone, wifi is at 52 mAh power use over an 18 hour period, on this tablet it is 2700 mAh for 10 hours.
An alarming discrepancy.
Or am I missing something?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here you go. I'm guessing screen is only 6% because the tablet has been up now for 4 days, so 6 hours is a small portion of the activity.

supersquishy said:
I am suprised, there still is no battery life thread.
People must be very happy with their battery lifes or nobody is buying this tablet
I do have one big issue with battery life.
WIFI is the biggest battery hog, using 2-3 times more battery than the screen.
For 3 hours WIFI roughly 1400mAh.
So I only manage like 5 hours of SOT.
Btw. I have set WIFI to be disabled, when the screen is off.
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesnt Wifi use more battery when its connecting and reconnecting with it disabled when the screen is off?

ZiggSVO said:
Doesnt Wifi use more battery when its connecting and reconnecting with it disabled when the screen is off?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I really don't know. You may be right.
I guess the high wifi in battery stats is a reporting error / miscalculation. I have wiped the cache partition in recovery (to fix my ambient light sensor) and ever since wifi is at the bottom of my battery list.
And I did not get any better SOT, so there could not have been any real battery drain from wifi even when it held the top spot in the stats.
Still disappointed with only 4-5h SOT.
Thanks everybody for helping out.

ZiggSVO said:
Doesnt Wifi use more battery when its connecting and reconnecting with it disabled when the screen is off?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No its still going to use far less unless your picking it up every 30 seconds or so.

bill3508 said:
No its still going to use far less unless your picking it up every 30 seconds or so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my understanding of how android has utilized the wifi sleep policy is that its best to leave wifi always on when sleep. It will use more battery to reconnect to the wifi network when it is woken up and disconnect when sleeping.
Any sources to support your theory? I'd like to read up on it more.
Info I've always followed. This is from 2011 as well:
"This tip is one that seems counter-intuitive, but you can save a lot of wear and tear on your Android phone's battery if you tell it to keep the Wifi radio turned on and connected while the phone is sleeping. Your phone needs a lot of juice to keep pinging those cell towers, and even more to transmit data to and from them. Wifi radios use much less power because of their design, and they don't have to keep searching for a better access point. It's the way cellular data communication was designed, and it's a necessary evil.
But what if you're spending all day (or all evening) in one place, connected to Wifi? If you tell your phone to shut off Wifi when idle, it bounces back to cellular data (be it 2G, 3G, or 4G) and starts sucking down the electrons again when the screen shuts off. That's no good, and easy to fix:
Open the advanced Wifi settings by pressing the menu button, then Settings, Wireless & networks, Wi-Fi settings, and tapping the menu button again. You'll have a choice to either Scan, or go Advanced -- go Advanced.
Tap the Wi-Fi sleep policy entry, and you'll get a pop up dialog with the choices you see in the picture above. Choose Never.
Now even when your phone goes into standby mode, you'll stay connected to Wifi and be able to get mail and messages without turning the cell radio back on and trouncing your battery life. And for the times when you're not in an area with a Wifi connection, just shut Wifi off, either through the menu or with a handy toggle widget. Your battery will thank you for it."

ZiggSVO said:
my understanding of how android has utilized the wifi sleep policy is that its best to leave wifi always on when sleep. It will use more battery to reconnect to the wifi network when it is woken up and disconnect when sleeping.
Any sources to support your theory? I'd like to read up on it more.
Info I've always followed. This is from 2011 as well:
"This tip is one that seems counter-intuitive, but you can save a lot of wear and tear on your Android phone's battery if you tell it to keep the Wifi radio turned on and connected while the phone is sleeping. Your phone needs a lot of juice to keep pinging those cell towers, and even more to transmit data to and from them. Wifi radios use much less power because of their design, and they don't have to keep searching for a better access point. It's the way cellular data communication was designed, and it's a necessary evil.
But what if you're spending all day (or all evening) in one place, connected to Wifi? If you tell your phone to shut off Wifi when idle, it bounces back to cellular data (be it 2G, 3G, or 4G) and starts sucking down the electrons again when the screen shuts off. That's no good, and easy to fix:
Open the advanced Wifi settings by pressing the menu button, then Settings, Wireless & networks, Wi-Fi settings, and tapping the menu button again. You'll have a choice to either Scan, or go Advanced -- go Advanced.
Tap the Wi-Fi sleep policy entry, and you'll get a pop up dialog with the choices you see in the picture above. Choose Never.
Now even when your phone goes into standby mode, you'll stay connected to Wifi and be able to get mail and messages without turning the cell radio back on and trouncing your battery life. And for the times when you're not in an area with a Wifi connection, just shut Wifi off, either through the menu or with a handy toggle widget. Your battery will thank you for it."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know that leaving WiFi on runs your battery down on any device when its connected and it takes all of 2-3 seconds to connect. No reason to leave it on full time when your not using it. Also, the device is continuously checking and sending small amounts of data to maintain that connection.
Were talking about the pixel here and not a cellular device.

Pretty happy with the C.

I haven't really payed attention to how long this device lasts, I use it pretty casually so it lasts me up to a week. I have used it to stream movies and it has lasted me the whole day (8 hours) watching movies with about 30% left. Compared to other tablets I've had including the nexus 9 this one blows them all away. My old nexus 9 would die after a few episodes (about an hour)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I streamed a good 6 hours of a live feed on battery and the device used around 50%, can not complain with the battery life at all with this device

bill3508 said:
Pretty happy with the C.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Was that with bluetooth (and keyboard) on?

Ves said:
Was that with bluetooth (and keyboard) on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, just WiFi, don't have a keyboard.

As a heads up, there appears to be a WiFi issue with MM itself. I'm seeing the same issue on my Nexus 7 2013 running a MM ROM, and I found a thread online talking about it...maybe from the Android Central forums or something, I can't remember now. People seem to be unsure as to whether or not WiFi is actually causing a battery drain, or if it's just reporting incorrectly. But at least on my N7, the battery can drop 40-50% in one day while on standby, and when I have WiFi set to Off when it's sleeping. And I used to get DAYS of standby time before going to MM.
Edit: Here's an XDA thread about it: http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/general/guys-call-wifi-battery-drain-6-0-t3219870

I had the same issue with WiFi battery bug on the nexus 5. Fixed it via router by turning off the auto disconnect (the option where router decides if a device can connect based on signal strength) on both 2ghz and 5ghz. After this the Wifi went back down to the bottom of the battery list. Long shot, and most likely not even related, but hope it helps anyone.
On a Asus rt router.

ZE 551ML battery drain since a few days

As my title suggests, the phone was working fine until a few days ago (the battery drops by 1% at every 2 hours normally), when it suddenly started dropping by 4% each hour.
I tried everything I could think of: restarted the phone, wiped storage cache, formatted recovery cache, checked for drain applications, turned it off and charged it like that and left it there for a few hours, restored google play to factory settings and updated it again (first tried to reset google play services just to make sure that isn't the problem, but the phone wouldn't let me). I have no idea what to try anymore.
Anyone has any idea regarding this?

Please provide more details, what firmware are you on? Which ROM are you using if any?

Firstyxd said:
Please provide more details, what firmware are you on? Which ROM are you using if any?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using WW firmware .184 (the problem started while i was still on .183 though) and I'm still on stock ROM, unrooted (and never rooted it).
Everything was working fine until a few days ago...

zapz said:
I'm using WW firmware .184 (the problem started while i was still on .183 though) and I'm still on stock ROM, unrooted (and never rooted it).
Everything was working fine until a few days ago...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you please post a screenshot of your battery usage? And please try using a different charger. I've noticed that my phone gives me more battery power on a low voltage charger.

Firstyxd said:
Could you please post a screenshot of your battery usage? And please try using a different charger. I've noticed that my phone gives me more battery power on a low voltage charger.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will do so when I'll have the chance, I recharged the phone overnight and I unplugged it 2 hours ago. I tested these days all kind of different networks (2G/3G/4G) and WiFi on and off. I left the phone with Wi-Fi off and only 2G. Now when I checked it after 2 hours, I see that it's at 99%, as it's supposed to be normally, 1% per 2 hours discharge. Now I've re-enabled WiFi and I'll see if it starts dropping as fast as before or not. After that I'll re-enable 3G (that's on what I'm usually using my phone) and turn Wi-Fi off and see if it starts dropping normally. I wanna see if for one reason or another, Wi-Fi might be the issue.
Normally,the phone drops 1% per 2 hours with 3G and Wi-Fi enabled.
If this I won't get any result or conclusion from this, then I'll post a screenshot.

Once try safemod.

Firstyxd said:
Could you please post a screenshot of your battery usage? And please try using a different charger. I've noticed that my phone gives me more battery power on a low voltage charger.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
zapz said:
I will do so when I'll have the chance, I recharged the phone overnight and I unplugged it 2 hours ago. I tested these days all kind of different networks (2G/3G/4G) and WiFi on and off. I left the phone with Wi-Fi off and only 2G. Now when I checked it after 2 hours, I see that it's at 99%, as it's supposed to be normally, 1% per 2 hours discharge. Now I've re-enabled WiFi and I'll see if it starts dropping as fast as before or not. After that I'll re-enable 3G (that's on what I'm usually using my phone) and turn Wi-Fi off and see if it starts dropping normally. I wanna see if for one reason or another, Wi-Fi might be the issue.
Normally,the phone drops 1% per 2 hours with 3G and Wi-Fi enabled.
If this I won't get any result or conclusion from this, then I'll post a screenshot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay so it really seems that Wi-Fi might be the issue. While my phone had Wi-Fi on and 2G, it dropped like crazy again. After i disabled Wi-Fi, I also moved the phone back to 3G and there was only 2% drain in like 6 hours. Now I re-enabled the Wi-Fi and trying again...but it seems that indeed Wi-Fi is consuming the battery for an unknown reasons. I've always kept Wi-Fi on before and it didn't drain battery.
mr_gourav2000 said:
Once try safemod.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do I do that, if you can please tell me?

zapz said:
How do I do that, if you can please tell me?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
long press power button,
now you see power option.
now long press power off.
one popup comes Reboot to Safe Mod,
now press ok.

"Wifi scanning" always on could be the issue...

lucky4814 said:
"Wifi scanning" always on could be the issue...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's off
And after leaving Wi-Fi on and getting a huge battery drain...and after a while turning it off and the drain stopping, I can confirm that the problem is somehow Wi-Fi related.
Screenshots attached.
As you can see, when Wi-Fi was on, the battery drained faster, when it was off, it went down a lot slower. The cell networks doesn't look too good but I can confirm that on 2G, where I have green cell network in the battery usage, with Wi-Fi enabled, it drops at the same rate.

zapz said:
It's off
And after leaving Wi-Fi on and getting a huge battery drain...and after a while turning it off and the drain stopping, I can confirm that the problem is somehow Wi-Fi related.
Screenshots attached.
As you can see, when Wi-Fi was on, the battery drained faster, when it was off, it went down a lot slower. The cell networks doesn't look too good but I can confirm that on 2G, where I have green cell network in the battery usage, with Wi-Fi enabled, it drops at the same rate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bro could there be an app constantly syncing or downloading data in the background that u may have recently downloaded or have changed certain such settings for an app..

Wi-Fi won't shut off, and it's by far my largest battery user.

I've got a brand new unlocked Moto Z play with the Offgrid battery mod. This morning I was disappointed to see my wifi, despite being disabled, had nearly drained my battery mod. I have the wifi configured to only maintain a connection while asleep and plugged in. The toggle for background location via wifi is absent from the advanced wifi menu.
Why is my wifi constantly on, despite it being toggled off?
I've attached a screen shot of the battery screen.
Edit: found the wifi scanning toggle in locations. I've just switched that off.

fourpointsix said:
I've got a brand new unlocked Moto Z play with the Offgrid battery mod. This morning I was disappointed to see my wifi, despite being disabled, had nearly drained my battery mod. I have the wifi configured to only maintain a connection while asleep and plugged in. The toggle for background location via wifi is absent from the advanced wifi menu.
Why is my wifi constantly on, despite it being toggled off?
I've attached a screen shot of the battery screen.
Edit: found the wifi scanning toggle in locations. I've just switched that off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's strange. Android Marshmallow comes with Doze functionality, and if the user is not using or moving the phone, it cuts down all background app activity that may eventually drain your phone, thus preserving your battery. You'll still receive notification about emails, and messages in social apps, as they're considered priority, if I'm not mistaken.
I'd say the source of your mod losing battery is your cellular reception. By the print you've posted, the Cellular Network Signal bar is most of the time red, orange or yellow. Poor cellular coverage eats up your battery.

I thank you for saving me the trouble of creating this thread, also did turning off the wifi scanning help?

keep wifi during sleep?

Wi-Fi has been switched off most of the day, wifi location scanning is disabled, and wifi connections while asleep are set to never. Still, it's almost ALWAYS on. Even when my ATT connection is strong it's still sucking down my battery. Wi-Fi remains my largest drain. Larger than cell standby, play services, and the screen.
Edit, looking at my images again, it appears my Z Play is treating the battery mod as a charger. Once the main battery drops to 80% and it switches to the mod battery, the wifi never turns off (despite my settings).

I also have similar problem with my moto z play. I haven't used wifi but still showing top ahead of others. Pls help to resolve this issue.

I had a Moto X Play before for a good while. this problem also showed up there (on Marshmallow as well), but I did find out my battery did not actually get drained, it was a reporting error in Android.
I am not sure if that is the case here with you, is the total battery life definitely lower or is it hard to tell?

Battery is still good but it could be better without the wifi drain. Mine is also more than the total energy the screen consumes and I have battery saver on with wifi location scanning off and wifi on only while plugged in. Not sure what would cause this.

Well, this is interesting. Flew to Boston today around 8:30, and as you can see, toggling airplane mode for the relatively short duration of my flight seems to have fixed my wifi drain. Although the phone did reboot in my pocket around 1530. At the time of this screenshot my internal battery is at 80%, and the battery mod is at 55% with only ~2.5 hours screen on time.

Out of curiosity, when you go into settings>location>3 dot menu>scanning, is wifi scanning turned on or off? Not sure about exact menu location as I don't have a Moto Z play, so working off a custom ROM on my Moto E2. Not sure if it would make a difference, but....

Wi-Fi location scanning is disabled.

Interesting, 24 hours after my flight (both legs visible in the chart) I'm showing no more wifi drain. This is with ~3.75 hours SOT. I am disappointed to see the Offgrid mod lost ~30% over night though. I'll still easily get 2 full days out of one charge, but I was hoping for 3-4. Hopefully Nougat's improved doze helps.

I am thinking my phone is also suffering from the same issue. Take look at my other post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=69486349&postcount=77

Mine is even worse. Even when i activate the airplane mode, wifi does not turn off. It is open literally 24 hours. Seems like it drains the battery but I still have 9-10 Hours of SOT, depending on usage this can go up to 13-14 hours.

I fixed mine by following this:
http://androiding.how/how-to-fix-wifi-battery-drain-on-marshmallow/

emailrob said:
I fixed mine by following this:
http://androiding.how/how-to-fix-wifi-battery-drain-on-marshmallow/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didn't work for me, but I stopped caring. I computed total power usage, wifi does not seem to have that portion

Guys, you must confirm if the WiFi actually drains that amount of power. 8/10 times it is a reporting error in Marshmallow, experienced it myself as well. Gsam battery monitor could tell you more.

This solution is for the MotoZ, a similar issue, maybe it could help us a little
http://forum.xda-developers.com/moto-z/help/extreme-wifi-battery-drain-solution-t3476579