topic Re: Play Services battery drain in XPERIA archive

Play Services battery drain

Scheep — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 15:10:46 GMT

Hello

As in the screen provided below, even if the phone lies unused for a day Google Services tend to drain between 70 and 90% of Battery power.

I have already disabled Google Now, localisation services, bluetooth, wifi, data transfer, 3G connectivity, decreased screen brightness, muted sounds. Phone was left near window, where network coverage is good.

Translation of screenshoot:

20hours, battery operated

Google services - 90%

Screen - 3%

Radio - 2%

Iddle - 2%

Thats for iddle. If used normally the phone battery is drained empty in 7-8 hrs. Used in battery saving mode lasts for about 48 hrs. I suspose some of the google aplication componnents freeze and don't allow the CPU to go to deep sleep state but the main question - why is this happening only on my (and my friends) Xperia, while other android devices operate normally?

I've noticed also that removing all Google Services updates does help, but prevents Flash content (YT etc) and Hangouts from operating.

Re: Play Services battery drain

_alexdon_ — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 15:58:40 GMT

You have a problem in the operating system.Have you installed a specific app lately?Also,the screen should be draining most of the battery.When the picture will be visible(it has to be approved),I will see exactly.Also,try a force restart(power button+vol up until the phone vibrates).

Re: Play Services battery drain

Scheep — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 18:57:54 GMT

I've tried factory reset + update all stock aplications to current version and it looks the same way, so I think it has something to do with stock applications instead of mine, additional. As said before, simply uninstalling all google services updates does also help the draining problem.

As to your suggestion that screen should have the most draining precentage - have to disagree too. As said - phone was left on a desk near to the window, iddle for most time, screen off. Only to check if it has something to do with my surfing style, maybe visited pages, flash content, photos taken etc. I would be strongly surprised if the screen had more than 5%.

Re: Play Services battery drain

_alexdon_ — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 19:13:08 GMT

Listen to me,the screen must drain most of the battery.Only if the system has an issue,than the os drains more than the screen.Try to boot in safe mode,see if there is any difference.To boot in safe mode(power button-tap longer on turn off-restart in safe mode).

Re: Play Services battery drain

Scheep — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 06:16:07 GMT

It looks a bit better. I've booted safe mode and left the phone overnight on the desk. It dropped 7% in 8 hrs instead of the usual 35% which is fairly ok for idle. I need at least one full charging cycle to gather more information tough.

Still, Google services and Android system drain together 80% of the total amount (but this may be misleading yet, I'll update you when the test is complete).

What's the difference between safe mode and factory reset + updates? Only apps? Some drivers, daemons maybe? I've noticed till now that it didn't run FB, Timescape, Friend streams, G+ and other crap that im stock-stuck with - so uninstalling them without root is impossible.

Re: Play Services battery drain

_alexdon_ — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 09:44:54 GMT

Safe mode boots only the needed apps for starting the OS,nothing else.Factory reset will reset your phone like in the day you first bought it,apps settings will be deleted,phone memory cleared(not micro sd or internal sd).

Re: Play Services battery drain

Scheep — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 15:20:32 GMT

So it would seem that one of the stock apps that are not needed for system booting is causing the problem (for I'am experiencing it after factory reset, while safe mode seem to work fine). Probably one of google apps or timescape-like extensions (because of enormous amount of google services wakeups).

I think I'll wait two more weeks and see if it can be fixed in system update when it comes out, or see which social apps / extensions I could turn off without causing the system to crash.

Do you see some other possible solutions?

Re: Play Services battery drain

_alexdon_ — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 15:40:11 GMT

One of the stock apps makes you trouble.I guess only repairing phone software could make a difference.Or taking the phone to a sony service:

http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/support/contact-us/

Re: Play Services battery drain

Scheep — Wed, 25 Dec 2013 20:14:29 GMT

Turned Google+, Timescape and FB with all extensions off, and it looks good now. I can live without them.

Shame that the user does not have the choice of keeping or uninstalling social apps. Removing them will have to wait till I root.

What's intresting, my screen is still using <10% of battery, while Android system uses up to 70%. Can you explain why would you expect screen to use up most of the battery power while idle?

Re: Play Services battery drain

_alexdon_ — Wed, 25 Dec 2013 21:20:07 GMT

While idle,the screen should drain very little,but still the OS should not be over the screen.If the OS is doing something while idle,you would experience drain all the time.

Re: Play Services battery drain

AlfreedoS — Thu, 26 Dec 2013 02:23:36 GMT

i have the same issue, but i cant do a repair with PCCompanion, i have windows 8.1 and the software keeps telling me that it needs to be done with windows 7, is there any sw update for the PCC?? Need to repair my phone :L

Re: Play Services battery drain

_alexdon_ — Thu, 26 Dec 2013 09:09:13 GMT

Try sony update service to repair.

Re: Play Services battery drain

AlfreedoS — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 05:52:32 GMT

if i could, i would... PCC doesnt work on windows 8.1 and Sony mobile update service doesnt show my smarphone... WHY? 😞 i wanna repair it, but i cant atm, can you guys help us out?

Re: Play Services battery drain

_alexdon_ — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 09:28:39 GMT

SUS has a scroll bar on the right,if you go down,cannot you find V?I can find it on my laptop.

Re: Play Services battery drain

Scheep — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 12:27:34 GMT

Ok, as to the problem described at the beginning - repairing using PC Companion didn't help. Drain by Android system and Play Services was still above 75%

Yesterday I had the phone system cold-started (removed battery) and started in extended stand-by using since then only the e-book reader and calling functions. Battery dropped since then by 30% and commit consists mostly of screen and radio-related functions. Maybe i'll just try the apps one-by-one to see what can cause the Android-system process to freeze, and then look for the Google Play Services issue orgin. It may as well be that play services are freezing because of the system freeze.

Re: Play Services battery drain

Scheep — Wed, 21 May 2014 15:09:47 GMT

Final note:

Battery drain persisted through updates 4.1 to 4.3 and was hard to track as it seemend not to be applications-deppendand.

After rooting i was able to track it a bit more precisely using wakelock and commit logs, and it turned out that services "backup" under operating system and checkin handoff under google services were causing wakelocks up to 1200x a day. Turning off the backup feature and turning of autostarting the checkin handoff service caused my batery to last for 6 days without charging, so i'm quite happy now with my phone performance and the case is closed.

Has anybody the knowledge of what is the "checkin handoff" service for? I didn't notice any problems after turning it off.

Re: Play Services battery drain

Adeel27 — Sat, 24 May 2014 03:56:49 GMT

Hey,

My phone was recently updated to 4.3 Jelly bean and now the new update is draining battery very fast. The Google services used up 79 percent of the battery in the last 8 hours. The phone was not used but still the battery got down from 83 to 64 percent. How do we disable checkin and backup? Are you talking about the Backup in setting or the Google backup transport in the all apps area? Please explain.

Thank you.

Re: Play Services battery drain

Scheep — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 12:08:47 GMT

I've sold the phone since solved the issue but here is what might help:

- Make sure the location info is turned off.

- Turn off personalised adds

- Turn off google now

- Turn off infos about news and changes blabla from google play store

- Turn off google backup transport (Yes, this one under options)

- Clear data for Google Play Services

If this does not help uninstal all updates for play services (leave the phone like this for few hours to see what happens) and update it again.

To find out what causes wakelocks in your phone you could use Wakelock Detector. To disable autostarting of services you need to root your phone. Doing that may void your warranty so i would recommend that only to those who know what arte they doing.

Regards

P.S.

It seems that the issue is widely known to Xperia Z users after KitKat update. Sony pushes the blame on Google:

Link