topic Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain in XZ Series

Bluetooth Battery Drain

Xocnai — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 11:40:16 GMT

I've searched high and low for information on this, but to no avail.

I experience heightened (2x-3x) battery drain when bluetooth is enabled, even with scanning disabled.

Ordinarily, my XZ1C would pair with my Fitbit Charge 2 and/or my car (UK Fiesta 2017). Even when away from my car, and with all day sync and notifications disabled on the fitbit app, bluetooth is causing a wakelock, which in turn is causing drain on the battery.

Currently, my only solution is to keep BT off which cripples some of the functionality of my phone, particularly pushing notifications to my fitbit.

Has anyone else experienced this drain/wakelock with BT enabled?

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Xocnai — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 08:15:37 GMT

Has no one else experienced this issue with the XZ1C?

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Damo_ — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 19:31:19 GMT

I have bluetooth turned on 24/7 and it never shows more than 1 or 2% of app usage since last charge which is inline with my other low usage apps. I also use a bluetooth headset for music probably 3 hours a day so even when active it's not causing any kind of drain like you're seeing.

Ref wakelock, no, not happening at all. I also have the headset set up as a smartlock device but again it doesn't cause any issues.

Only issue I have had is when I first paired the headset that the volume and function keys didnt work on teh headset until after a restart. This has happened one time since too (within a couple of weeks of owning the phone) but again a quick restart fixed it. Not really related to above battery issues but yes I have experienced a tiny bluetooth bug, just not anywhere as extreme as yours.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Xocnai — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 11:24:43 GMT

It's a frustrating one, make no mistake. I'm having no luck in tracking which app might be calling BT to cause the wakelock either...if I'm honest, rather than trial and error I'm not really sure how I'd go about doing it.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Xocnai — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 09:54:21 GMT

I've been tinkering and still finding no success. I've removed/suspended various apps that are indicated to have BT permissions but I still experience the drain if BT is left enabled.

I'm wondering if it's constantly trying to make a connection with my car as a paired device if BT is on. Sometimes if I looks at the BT settings screen I do see it attempting to pair with my car even though I'm indoors and the car is both off and out of range anyway.

Is anyone seeing behaviour similar to this, ie the phone is trying to constatntly connect to a paired device that is off/out of range?

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

DyfrigD — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 14:46:53 GMT

Just recently purchased the XZ1 compact and I have the same problem where the battery is draining really fast when Bluetooth is enabled. Last night when I looked at the Bluetooth setting I notices that it was connected to my car even though I was in an upstairs bedroom, on the other side of the house and the car was turned off.

Just turned off Bluetooth scanning to see if that makes a difference, but have not tested yet as I have turned off Bluetooth for today.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

jrbmed08 — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 02:54:24 GMT

Yes, this is a huge problem for me. With my Pebble connected, idle drain is about 3%/hour, which is completely unacceptable. Without signing into the Pebble app or pairing my Pebble and while keeping Bluetooth off, idle drain is about 1%/hour. I've already done a software repair and it's the same. I've also identified apps with bluetooth permissions and made sure they're not running in the background. BT scanning has been off since the beginning. Wakelock detection apps show a "hal_bluetooth" kernel wakelock and a "bluetooth_timer" partial wakelock as running when I enable Bluetooth. This is a major problem for me.

Edit: What I find particularly curious is that bluetooth or my Pebble app never show up high on the stock battery stats. It's always Phone Idle, Android System, and Android OS.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Xocnai — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 09:01:20 GMT

I'm finding that with BT enabled and nothing connected at all, the idle drain is still a minimum 3% per hour, and I'm finding that the phone is warming too which suggest something churning away and constantly draining the battery.

Is there any hope for advice or information from Sony on this? I didn't experience this issue with my Z2 or my Samsung S7 Edge. Having trawled countless android forums, it also doesn't seem to be obviously related to Oreo, either.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

ECC_DARc — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 12:32:54 GMT

The same with TWO Z5 phones I have. More or less about 3 months ago, after one of system updates BOTH phones started experiencing short operation time... Than we have noticed that the guilty area is BT, as after 3-5h of operation BT gets 85-95% of battery usage and this is until we have to charge the phone.

Something has been screwed by Sony and all support suggestions are rubbish (like factory reset etc) as they cause a lot of issues later on to bring system and application exact personalized configuration.

What is my observation (important tip for SONY’s support who is… anyway not listening or they KNOW the problem but it has “low priority” assignment):

Not all he time just turning on BT is causing 90% battery drain
It is mostly like this, but I have had sometimes the situation that I have forgotten to Turn BT Off after leaving my car (to stop battery drain) and… after few hours I noticed that BT is still on so went to battery consumption screen terrified to see… no BT listed at all as important battery consuming process (surprice),
Of course I have not been using BT actively at that time but all processes (like BT scanning for SmartLock or possible BT devices connection) have been active and Z5 behave AS IT USED TO BE BEFORE 7.x Android update – I have never had BT service listed as important battery consuming process in the past until about September/October.

But now, if I turn on BT, I usually (9 out of 10 times) get 85-95% battery consumption report after few hours of use (phones use, not active BT connection use!) and the phone does not last until evening being charged over night to 100%.

As there is no massive reports flow about this BT issue, it might be something not obvious and visible to all Xperia users with Android 7.x system. But still I see many posts about such a sudden BT power consumption increase after 7.x System Upgrade on different Xperia models.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

pseudonym — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 14:07:31 GMT

I'll just add my experiences here as another data point. I have bluetooth enabled 24 hours a day, generally listen to Bluetooth headsets for about 2 hours a day perhaps, and perhaps an hour or so connection to a Bluetooth car audio system. I presume I must have Bluetooth scanning enabled, as the phone will connect to any active available Bluetooth device that I paired, and will also ask me if I want to pair with new Bluetooth devices.

With this kind of use, I have not noticed any sort of inordinate battery drain.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Xocnai — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 15:17:57 GMT

Have you ever looked at idle drain with bluetooth off as a comparison?

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

jrbmed08 — Sat, 23 Dec 2017 19:20:54 GMT

I have, and I noticed 2-3x the idle drain when I have my Pebble connected. Also, I'm paired with my car's BT audio system, and I've only been turning BT on when I'm driving, but the hal_bluetooth and bluetooth_timer wakelocks take over pretty soon after I turn it on. I think they go away when I turn it back off, but I was able to leave previous phones' BT on all day without this many wakelocks and this much drain.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

albenex — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 19:12:58 GMT

Just bought a XZ1c and experience the very same problem.

I use an Android Wear smartwatch and Bluetooth headsets so I'm used to keep Bluetooth always on.

I have about 40% battery drain overnight caused by Bluetooth (as shown in the drainers list under battery setting) and the curious thing is that it drains even if my smartwatch is turned off.

Actively using phone or leaving it idle is the same in terms of drain.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Xocnai — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 09:43:30 GMT

This frustrating issue still seems to be ongoing. Has anyone found any sort of information on this?

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

albenex — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 10:31:40 GMT

after my message here i performed a factory reset and BT drain seemed disappeared.
having also an Android Wear device (Huawei Watch) i reset it too and i think BT drain could be related to watch's activity.
after about 3 weeks it appeared again but lasted for couple hours and suddenly disappeared.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Joyride1176 — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 02:26:11 GMT

Xa1 dual sim

Same boring issue there no solution so far

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Xocnai — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 08:26:07 GMT

Maybe I'll try a reset then, but it's just such a pain to have to go through...

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Qatrium — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 08:33:07 GMT

If you are going to do a reset anyways, I'd suggest that you perform a software repair using Xperia Companion. This will do a clean installation of the latest firmware and will also wipe your internal memory, which is better than a simple factory reset. Don't forget to backup using Xperia Companion, but preferably without adding apps or settings to the backup.

Follow the steps given in blue links, and keep us updated.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

Xocnai — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 11:38:45 GMT

Thanks for the heads up on the repair option - it will likely be the weekend before I can go through this but I'll update here once I've gone through the process.

Re: Bluetooth Battery Drain

dkaller1 — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 13:02:18 GMT

Let me add my two cents. I see on my XZ1C similar issues using my gear s3 smartwatch. I usually have BT activated like on my previously used Z5C but now see a huge battery drain with 15% accuracy left end of the day where BT shows up in the high 20-30%. Since Sunday evening I switched BT off and do have now still 56% left. For the time being I'll go forward with this setting and activate BT just for short synchronization between gear s3 and XZ1C but this is really boring as I don't get now the notification on the watch.