Battery Drains Fast

nandohyphen1

Pixel 6a. I've notices a significant battery drain overnight. I went to bed with it at 71% and woke up with it at 48%. Its happened a few times now.

MetropleX

nandohyphen1 are you seeing the same app/item listed within your battery stats as the top drain and how much percentage overall it's using?

nandohyphen1

MetropleX First app is VLC. It used 19%. Next is Vanadium. It used 18%. Background usage is disabled for both apps. At first I thought it might be Proton VPN (which has been running in the background for 16+ hrs) but it only used 5% in that time frame. Vanadium and VLC were running in the background even though I wasn't using them and background usage is disabled.

MetropleX

nandohyphen1 what do you see when you toggle to view by systems instead of by apps?

nandohyphen1

MetropleX right now it just says 'screen. Used for less than a minute.' Used 0%. Probably because I just finished charging my phone as I couldn't wait much longer to charge it. I can report back what system apps said tomorrow morning after the battery's low again

nandohyphen1

Alright, here's the update. I went to bed with my phone at 100% battery and woke up with 82%. When looking at battery usage under system apps, it says mobile network used 98%. Every other system app used like 1%.

n3t_admin

nandohyphen1 try turning off VoWiFi and VoLTE for a test. You might also try going from 5G to 4G for a day. Some users here reported these as the root causes for their issues.

MetropleX

nandohyphen1 I have to say this concurs with my suspicions, airplane mode would solve the problem, it's possible, if not more than likely, your device is hopping between cell towers and constantly searching for a better cellular connection as neither mast is offering a stable enough strong connection.

My advice would be to use airplane mode and reenable wifi if having a network connection over night is important.

For balance I will also do the same tonight with my Pixel 8 and report back, how long is the device left untouched for is this a solid 8 hour window or less?

nandohyphen1

n3t_admin

try turning off VoWiFi and VoLTE for a test.

I usually do turn off both during the night.

also try going from 5G to 4G for a day

I also am always on 4G (my phone plan doesn't support 5G and I don't like to use it anyway)

n3t_admin

nandohyphen1 then I can only suggest trying a different SIM card to see if it's specific to your connection.

nandohyphen1

MetropleX that's good to know! I'll try airplane mode tonight. I don't need any connection to cellular towers/WiFi at night so that would be fine. My device remains untouched for about 7-8 hours. Would using battery saver also help? It I click on it it says 'using battery saver will prevent some apps from sending notifications and restrict background activity'. Its not like I need notifications in the middle of the night anyway, as my phone is on vibrate and DND.

nandohyphen1

MetropleX so using airplane mode seemed to work. I only lost like 2% battery.

krysor

I've experienced a battery drain on 8a after switching providers. After switching back the problem went away.

nandohyphen1

krysor that is quite weird! (also a bit interesting! I wonder what caused it?) I have never heard of that happening before!

MetropleX

nandohyphen1 possibly but I'd have expected to see apps that might be doing something like this keeping the device active showing more battery drain and not having a mostly network inert app like VLC topping your list.

n3t_admin

nandohyphen1 wonder what caused it?) I have never heard of that happening before!

In general, mobile networks are pretty complicated. There's a lot you can configure (and misconfigure) and different providers all have different approaches. That's why I also suggested a different SIM card to test that theory :)

nandohyphen1

n3t_admin I would try the other sim card, but I only have one. ;)

nandohyphen1

MetropleX this morning under viewing battery usage by apps Breezy Weather was at the top. Using 17% of my battery! I never expected a weather app to use so much battery - even in the background!

n3t_admin

nandohyphen1 I think you're not reading the graph correctly here: the 17% refers to 17% of the total usage. So even if 1% of your battery was used, 17% would be a fraction of that. Which can be quite a lot and also almost nothing, depending on total usage.

nandohyphen1

n3t_admin OK. Thats a different way to look at it. I didn't see it like that, because beside the app, it just says 17% so I assumed that is what it was using.

MetropleX

nandohyphen1 ahh good couldn't do it last night as ended up on the road for reasons, I am going to do it tonight when I had up for the night. Glad we appear to have resolved it though.