Extreme battery drain from Mobile Network

Oggyo

Lama2 I lose a lot of battery at night while connected to wifi and the stats page says that mobile data is responsible for the battery drop.

Is there any difference if you manually turn off the mobile data but leave anything else as before?

Lama2

I'll try tonight. If there are logs to provide let me know the procedure to retrieve them.

Lama2

Wifi only and mobile data deactivated, there's the same loss of around 10% overnight.
https://i.ibb.co/mrJ7jdDD/signal-2025-05-02-092904.png

ryrona

ryrona In a few days I will get Wifi here, so can try if it really is the cellular modem that is causing the battery consumption. I suspect this, and will not look further if Wifi helps.

My battery consumption issue was resolved by using Wifi instead of 4G. Battery time almost doubled, back to having to charge every second day, instead of every day.

I think it is very unreasonable 4G would stand for half of all battery consumption on the device. I even measured, and I have perfect 4G reception here. Weak 5G reception, but that doesn't matter as I had 5G disabled. Either way, I will not look any further, as I have a solution that works for me.

Eagle_Owl

ryrona
Same here with my Pixel 9 Pro XL.

henryofthehill

Hi everyone, for what it’s anecdotally worth, the battery on my Pixel 8a (new purchase, less than two weeks old) has also suffered from considerable drain when idle. My app setup is light and the usage the same – airplane mode for the majority of the day, WIFI for most usage, rare 4G usage otherwise. Most apps are on restricted background use as well. Battery charge drops ₁₀% per hour from an 80% optimized charge with little to no use with neither 4g nor WIFI connected, just cellular, sitting in my pocket. Overnight battery usage indicates mobile network contributing over 90% of battery consumption. How is this possible when it's on airplane mode?

MrQ

Hi guys! I just want to say that i also got the same problem with modem eating battery life on my Pixel 9 pro. I dont know exactly when it started, but i would say a month ago. Maybe its some kind of modem firmware update bug? Just guessing. The usage of modem is about 85 to 98%. Its quite killing the usability. With airplane mode its not so dramatic, but its still working in the background as it seems. Its so strange... Love the phone, so im waiting for some info like other guys.

kropotkin

I have a very similar problem on my Pixel 8.

For example, the battery will drain completely from about 30% to 0% overnight, while I'm sleeping, while connected to WiFi only (not mobile data), with no apps active.

Battery usage data shows that the mobile network is responsible for pretty much all of the battery usage. For example, my last full charge was about 10 hours ago. Battery usage shows 30 mins of screen time since then (I've been asleep most of the time!). The battery now has 60% of charge left, so it's discharged 40% while basically doing nothing, and under "systems", mobile network accounts for 90% of the usage.

This has only started to be a problem recently, and I have not changed any mobile network settings myself, so I can only think that something has been changed by an update. Further, I use the phone in both the UK and Sweden, using different SIM cards and networks in each country. This is only a problem in Sweden. So there seems to be something changed about the way in which the phone works with the Swedish mobile network that is seriously compromising battery life.

Following suggestions elsewhere, I have tried disabling "adaptive connectivity", and also disabling the "mobile data always on" option in developer settings. Neither has helped. My phone does not seem to have an "LTE only" option for the Swedish sim card, so I can't do that as some have suggested.

I'm really at a loss, and this is seriously compromising the usability of my phone. Further suggestions very welcome, and happy to provide info, logs etc if useful.

ryrona

kropotkin Further, I use the phone in both the UK and Sweden, using different SIM cards and networks in each country. This is only a problem in Sweden. So there seems to be something changed about the way in which the phone works with the Swedish mobile network that is seriously compromising battery life.

Okay, this is a really interesting clue, as I have also seen those extreme battery consumptions, and I also have a Swedish SIM card and live in Sweden. At this point I think it might be interesting to figure out if there is a specific SIM card provider that these issues are happening for, because it could be for a specific possiibly unusual mobile connectivity configuration this issue is happening on, or maybe even be the fault of the software that runs at the cell towers for that provider that ping the device unnecessarily or something like that.

What SIM card provider do you have? I have Hallon / Tre.

Everyone else in this thread who also experience high battery drain due to mobile network, please also share what SIM card provider you have, and from which country, even if you are in another country, because it could be an issue with a few different specific providers.

kropotkin

ryrona
My SIM card is from Vimla, using the Vimla network by default (according to SIM card settings).

ryrona

kropotkin My SIM card is from Vimla, using the Vimla network by default (according to SIM card settings).

Okay. Vimla is using Telenor's network according to their website. So not the same as mine (Tre).

kropotkin

ryrona

I've isolated the cause of my problem. I have two SIMS, one UK (physical) and one Swedish (e-SIM). The UK SIM was the issue in Sweden. Deactivating it completely solved the problem.

The UK SIM was accessing the Telia network.

I have had the same dual-SIM setup for a year, so I don't know why it only became a problem in the last two weeks.

tree-barker

Same battery drain here, during the night 9℅ of the battery was drained by the mobile network I'm travelling in Germany but I do not experience that battery drains at my home country.

This 9% for me is quite extreme as I only have Molly +ntfy running in the background.

Can it be that 5g consumes that much ? A constant pinging to antennas? I'm quite ignorant on telecommunications

andrej567

I had a massive drain 40% of battery per hour on Menorca last year, and i wasnt on remote locations.
I set the phone then to not use 5g at all and it helped a bit.
Came back home and all was ok. I used the same sim card as always, from home.
Wife's Iphone, same sim card issuer, was running ok.

tree-barker

I'm starting to think it might be related to roaming but no facts to back my theory

DeletedUser203

My battery drain is now back to normal, is 5% on standby over 12.5 hours. My SIM is in permanent roaming mode. What changed my battery problem was dispensing with Molly, a huge battery drain and using the phone with only GrapheneOS installed and no apps. No everyone's solution but works for me.

Gebdax

Hello, i have the same problem on a 4 month old Pixel 9
Since i'd say a month the battery drain too quick...
I tried things i'm on 4G only but didn't resolve it

Elysium

On a Pixel 8 and seemingly have the same suspicion about mobile data. Using 4G only. I tried force cancel Vanadium as I suspected it to run in background a lot, but it doesn't seem to be the reason. I sometimes browse the internet, while loading, and the battery % either doesn't change or just like +1-5% over 30min-1h. Also I think the predictions for normal loading times are off now. It can display it takes 15min to charge to 80% (full) - but it takes considerable longer while not in use.
Airplane mode noticeably makes the phone cooler again too and makes charging faster.

A different issue I noticed is that hotspot doesn't turn off when a secondary profile is active - even though the hotspot is supposed to go inactive automatically after some time. When switching back to main profile it seems to stay that way. And display 0 devices connected.

MartekJanuszaj

Same for me. I am traveling in germany and left mobile data on at night. Woke up to 30% battery drain. Travelling by bus during the day without using the phone has something like 50% drain on idle. Way more than in my home county. Notably though, this only happens with my travel esim. I think this is because I have seen it connect to several providers and switch between them (so O2 and Vodafone). In the czech republic I also got slighly worse numbers and in Austria almost conparable drain to my home counrtry. In the czech republic I DID update to the android 16 release (don't remember which number)

nchrtd

Any news on this? I'm on P9P and the battery drains much too fast. Mobile network looks to be the culprit. If I put my phone in flight mode over night, there's hardly any drain.
Does seem like a Google-issue and not specific to GrapheneOS, just to be clear on that.

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