Z2 Weak battery life - faulty?

[denegi20]

Ok so I've been using my Xperia Z2 for 2 weeks now. This morning I tested my battery again, without any battery saver mode or anything else. Brightness was at 15%. After using it to browse for about 15 minutes, my battery dropped from 100% to 95%.

15 minutes, -5% battery, 15% brightness (might be less). What?

[JonC1]

Hi denegi

Odd you mention that.  I get between 4 to 5 DAYS from my Z2 (.55 firmware, wifi, BT, GPS always on, 6-8 hrs total screen usage, Stamina on) BUT... my Z2 also does that, diving from 100% to 95% in an hour or two non-usage, and then goes more regularly downwards.

My Z2 is also 2 weeks old, its an UK sim-free phone with a manufacturing date of 14W18 & customisation number of 1282-0226

[_alexdon_]

Are you using some battery savers,task killers etc?

[BR4DOKYBrazil]

Mine is like that, too, especially after I upgraded to .402! I believe that to be a problem in the firmware!

[denegi20]

@JonC Perhaps it is the Android firmware, might I ask your current version?

@alexdon no, I don't know about those things

@BR4DOKYBrazil yes, I'm trying to get more information on the firmware itself. With the majority of Z2 users and all tech review sites claiming their battery is superior, I'm guessing it's the firmware.

[JonC1]

@denegi - Firemware 17.1.A.2.55; I have Stamina mode enabled, with Falcon Pro (Twitter), Fast Pro (Facebook), Gmail, gReader Pro (RSS) & Pebble (smartwatch) whitelisted.  Both the official Facebook & Google+ applications are disabled.

Oh, and my Z2 has 71% battery left after 1 day 17 hours.

[BR4DOKYBrazil]

When I was with the .69 fw, battery life was much bigger! What fw are you using?

[soupladel]

I recently bought the z2 sim free on the strength of the reviews all stating that it had the best batery performance of the current crop of smartphones and sadly, i dont appear to be experiencing what the reviews have stated, in fact frankly i am seeing what i would term as quite poor performance and I am starting to think that the phone might be faulty, or at least there are issues with the firmware.

I think in standby the phone seems to be ok, mostly due to having Stamina mode enabled (in addition to having Battery Doctor installed) however when using the phone, the battery just starts to drop like a stone. I have disabled auto sync, set brightness to auto adjust, disabled bluetooth, NFC, mirroring and 4g as well as having Battery doctor set to auto kill apps when the screen is off but as the phone is not rooted, what battery doctor can actually do is limited.  However, i watched about a minute of video on BBC Iplayer and i dropped in the region of 2-3%, I performed the same task on my iPhone 5s which was fresh off charge and it didn't even drop a single % and stayed on 100%.

As I am new to Andoird, I have tried to follow the advice that is out there about preserving  battery life but short of disabling most of the functions of a smartphone, I am not sure what else I can do in order to improve things.  If indeed things can be improved and this is not an actual fault or firmware issue.

Any advice?

[soupladel]

To add insult to injury in my case, it would appear that the charger that came with the phone is in fact faulty, if i try to charge the phone with it, it shows as if it is charging but doesnt in fact increase the amount of charge and if i leave the phone for a period and lock the phone, eventually the orange light at the top will go off and on unlocking, the phone doesnt even recognise the charger is connected.

I know this is the charger because if i use the one that came with my PS Vita, the phone powers ok, but it does lead me to the conclusion that if the charger could develop a fault so easily, the phone might also be faulty.

Is it normal for the phone to become so very hot when playing a game? i mean i played for approx 10 mins and the back of the phone, just below the camera sensor, become really quite hot, not enough to burn but certainly enough to cause concern for such a short period of time. it also killed in excess of 10% of the battery and it was not even one of the most intensive games (Frozen Free Fall).

Can anyone else verify this or should i look to take this back for an exchange?