My Pixel 6 is draining like crazy. I'm talking like 4-5% per hour, while the device is not in use. When I do not touch it for multiple hours, I check my phone, seeing the battery level drop significantly.

5G is disabled, 4G Only mode is enabled, and the battery usage screen does not at all even come close to the the % drained.

How can I troubleshoot this?

  • Hulk replied to this.

    enduring78 Hello!

    Try going without LTE-only mode, as it actually drains more battery than the default setting.

    Do you have Sandboxed Google Play installed? Google services provide a more battery efficient way of checking for new notifications.

      Hulk Thank you for your response!

      I do have the Google services installed, but on another profile that I always fully quit, so they are not running all the time. I'll disable the 4G only mode and report back later!

      Hulk Hi, just curious where did you hear that the LTE-only mode drains more battery? It's so hard to find reliable information about whether LTE-only has any effect on battery life.

      a month later

      i recently bought a used pixel 3 device to expremint GOS
      installation was smooth, all my needs are covered with GOS big shout out to devs.

      i also have super fast battery drain issue as OP mentioned 2 to 4% in an hr even on standby. is there any tweek or something?

      22 days later

      i took some time to take some measurements to compare 4G/5G and VPN-scenarios:

      Signal, element, telegram running (google-less installation)
      5g dBa: 107-115, second sim active
      all measured over night at same location

      • screen off
        • 5G, VPN on: 5,6 %/h
        • 5G, VPN off: 3,9 %/h
        • 4G, VPN on: 3,6 %/h
        • 4G, VPN off: 2 %/h
        • off: 0 - 1,8%?
      • screen on, 4G, VPN on: 15%/h

      do you see a similar behaviour on your phones?

        uala thank you for the reply and effort /

        i would say 95% similar behaviour

        According to Battery Usage, the culprit for me are "Mobile network," "Android System" and "Android OS."
        Obviously not something that can be dealt with by just uninstalling.

        2 questions arise:

        1. Why is Mobile network draining so much battery (15%)? Don't recall ever suffering from this in the past.
        2. What is the difference between "Android System" and "Android OS"? Why are the two listed separately and why does each use 15-20% of the battery?

        VPN apps are notorious for significant battery drain due to their continuous need to encrypt/decrypt traffic and that cannot be helped. What can make a difference is if you need VPN all the time. At home, my ASUS router is connected to Mullvad VPN, so I don't need to run the VPN on my phone, but when I'm out and about on cell network, you bet I'm using a VPN!

        Here's a great way to tell which apps are sucking your phone's battery dry. Turn on Developer Mode and check Running Services.

        Turn On Developer Mode
        Settings > About Phone > Build number > tap 7 times consecutively and Developer Mode will be enabled.

        Check Running Services
        Settings > System > Developer options > Running services

        What you'll see are the current foreground apps, that is, apps actively consuming the battery.

        In the upper-right corner of the screen, you'll see the "triple dots", and when you click on it, you'll see "Show cached processes." These are apps running in the background that are also consuming battery but at a slower rate. For example, I use Pulse SMS for texting, but since I'm not using it at the moment, it's waiting for an inbound SMS, so it sits in cached processes, but it still consumes battery. Any application whose Battery is Optimized can be a cached app. The goal is to get as few apps as possible running in cached processes. I'm preparing a very long post on the battery optimization I've done and how I achieved it.

        All that said, the Pixel 6 was not my favorite phone for battery optimization. I have a 5a 5G (best overall), 6, 6a (meh), and 7 Pro (very good). I think if we worked together, we might be able to get your battery to last much longer.

        4 days later

        uala Yes, very similar behavior over here with Pixel 6a. I would say even more extreme for me.

        I also suffered from about 4-5 %/h. What suprised me was that this even occured when I was on Wifi all day.

        My experience:

        • 1 normal SIM + 1 eSIM: "5G" with normal SIM, only on Wifi all day (with mobile data switched off), VPN on all day --> Phone battery barely takes me through the day (sometimes less than 10% left)
        • 1 normal SIM + 1 eSIM: "LTE only" with normal SIM, only on Wifi all day (with mobile data switched off), VPN on all day --> Phone battery barely takes me through the day (usually above 50% left at the end of the day)

        So, at least in my case, switching off 5G seemed to have made a huge positive impact on the battery life.

        Edit: I've also noticed this "Ghost App" which is mentioned here but I didn't notice that it was significantly draining my battery. It's "just" 6% after one day.