Huge battery drain on two Pixel 6a devices in the last week

DirtyDan

Two pixel 6a's in my household running up to date versions of GrapheneOS are draining battery FAST with no changes to apps or usage compared to previous weeks and months. Two separate people using their devices with the same battery issues in the same time frame.

The devices are going from 80℅ charge to 0℅ in 4-5 hours of screentime (mostly web browsing like reading static web pages, signal messaging), not even audio/video calls or playing/streaming video or audio.

One of the phones just dropped from 16℅ to 2℅ charge in less than 2 minutes.

Anything on the GrapheneOS side causing this? Were those pixel 6a battery updates ever brought over? Even still, I can't imagine they would be this bad...

nandohyphen1

DirtyDan Same scenario here. Pixel 6a battery also drains super fast. At night I have to put it in airplane mode or its dead when I wake up. Haven't found any other solutions other than airplane mode. Mobile network drains the most battery - 86%

de0u

DirtyDan nandohyphen1

Does 4G/LTE make a difference compared to 5G? Is Wi-Fi calling on or off? Physical SIM or eSIM?

I think the developers are aware of at least one 6a-specific bug: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/6144

nandohyphen1

de0u My current phone plan only supports 4G LTE anyway so thats what I always am using.

I think the developers are aware of at least one 6a-specific bug: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/6144

Good to know about that issue

DirtyDan

de0u both devices have LTE as the preferred network. They're on wifi 99℅ of the time regardless. Both are using esims. WiFi calling is enabled for both.

de0u

DirtyDan They're on wifi 99℅ of the time regardless. Both are using esims. WiFi calling is enabled for both.

Though it might seem counterintuitive, I wonder what would happen if you disabled Wi-Fi calling on one of them for four or five hours? I honestly don't know what might happen, but it seems like an experiment that is cheap to run, and perhaps the result would be useful to the developers.

DirtyDan

de0u I just disabled wifi calling for over 3 hours on one of the phones. No noticeable difference.

de0u

DirtyDan Thanks! The next easy experiment I can think of would be to have both of them on cellular, but one of them with Wi-Fi off, for several hours. (And then, of course, the reverse.)

UseLinux

For whatever its worth, I have NOT noticed any unusual battery drain with my up-to-date stable Pixel 6a (using it without any Goolag services or extra profiles).

Edit: New-ish battery, under 200 cycles.

spring-onion

@Toiletterider This is not the first time you have come forth claiming GrapheneOS was compromised. Unless you have evidence I ask you to stop as these are very serious allegations. Battery drain can have a million reasons.