I’ve got an HTC One phone, and whilst I know the battery life on these devices is never going to great, since downloading Android version 4.3 I’ve noticed the battery life seems distinctly worse.

For instance, checking the battery usage Android system is now running around 70%-80% which it never used to be before updating to 4.3. And even when the phone is dormant the battery level seems to drop significantly, about 5% in an hour.

Anyone else have similar issues with Android, particularly 4.3?

Hmm, just updated to this today. One of the reasons for doing this was reported improvement in battery life – this is on an Xperia T, which has never had great battery life; was one of the things always mentioned in the reviews, but I’m rarely far from a charger.
Anyway, battery has taken a hit this afternoon but I have been fiddling with it lots to see what’s different. We’ll see how it goes over the next few days. Plenty of nice features though so far.

Running 4.3 on an HTC One Mini – battery life rarely drops below about 60% in any 24 hour period and that’s hammering it. Damned sight better than my old Motorola, I could run that dead in about 2 hours without really trying.

If you have just updated you may have to have a look at your power management options, they could have defaulted to something other than an eco setting. I have a stamina mode on my Xperia Z1 however had to manually go and activate it under settings > power management.

Not having had an HTC I don’t know if this will apply so apologies if it doesn’t.

Mine was loosing around 10% an hour after the update (whilst in sleep mode). Took me a while to work it out but it was due to the added bloatware stopping the phone sleeping due to the wakelocks.

Downloaded wakelock detector (no root required) and it showed which apps were doing it. Disabled the stock apps from communicating and hey presto battery use dropped to 1-2% when not in use.

Got a link to that app?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.uzumapps.wakelockdetector

Well about 24 hours in and it does seem to be spanking the battery a fair bit. Woke up this morning to find the phone recommending. Stamina mode, which I didn’t bother with previously but will see how it goes with that turned on.

A few apps seem to have keeled over after the update, but a reinstall seems to sort that.
Yet to see if they have fixed the most annoying bugs for me, which were the sound still being occasionally sent to the headphone port after you pull the headphones out.
And in silent/vibrate when a call comes in, if you answer and hit the speakerphone icon it doesn’t send the incoming caller to the speaker as the phone is on silent! You have to take the phone out of silent for it to work!

the sound still being occasionally sent to the headphone port after you pull the headphones out

That might be a physical cause, pocket fluff in the socket? That kind of soft-wear issue is difficult to patch.

Check the sync settings for your apps. Google might have ticked all the boxes to sync all their apps like drive and google+. I found that un checking all the sync options for programmes that i don’t use the phone then stopped trying to sync the data across multiple devices and the battery life improved.

whats 4.3 that youve updated to? sorry im not up on my numbers, is it jellybean or kitkat?

just updated my software to 4.4.2 i think it is, (kitkat on an old desire HD) and the battery life is great, certainly as good as jellybean. this is on a rooted phone tho, so maybe the ROM developers ensure the settings are maximised for better battery use?

EDIT: just looked and 4.3’s jellybean. any chance of updating to kitkat?

Cougar – Moderator

the sound still being occasionally sent to the headphone port after you pull the headphones out

That might be a physical cause, pocket fluff in the socket? That kind of soft-wear issue is difficult to patch.

Pretty sure it’s not physical/mechanical….but not 100% sure.
It does it if you have the Walkman app on, but the phone ‘asleep’. Pull the headphones out and it puts the Walkman on pause. But, if you then unlock the screen and hit play you get no sound out of it. But, you can plug the headphones in and it is still playing through the headphone socket.
If you then stop the music (hit pause), take the headphones out and then hit play again, it will play through the phone speaker. So it is fine when the Walkman app is active and the phone is ‘awake’, but struggles when the phone is ‘asleep’ with the app running.

retrorick – yeah I do need to check all my sync settings.

sadexpunk – Jellybean I think. Don’t think Kitkat is available for my phone; it’s getting on a bit.

That just sounds like a bug in the walkman app – report is (there’s often an option to do this in the app). Or check the app on google play and look at reviews – you’ll often see people have the same issue.

clubber – yeah, you’re probably right. Searching ‘Xperia T no sound’ or variations of, does give a lot of hits, but nothing I have found relating to the Walkman app specifically. I have seen reports of ‘bugs’ with the app, but I can’t recall seeing this ‘bug’. Could be that I am using the wrong search terms.
I did consider downloading another music player app to see if it was that, but never got round to it.

Any recommendations?

I use Google’s ‘play music’ app.

PowerAmp. It’s the canine’s plums.

EDIT: just looked and 4.3’s jellybean. any chance of updating to kitkat?

Don’t think this is possible on my HTC One without rooting the phone, which I don’t fancy doing as its a bit too technical for me.

Comparing my phone to someone running 4.4 their Android system runs around 5-6%, whereas mine is 80% odd, so something is definitely amiss.

I’ve not changed any other settings so I’m sure its something to do with the update. Or a duff phone.

First thing to look at if its Android System that is top of the battery usage is Location, turn it off and watch your battery drain drop.

Checked my location settings and they’re all unchecked/off…

Anything else?

Next in line for Android System are synch settings for various accounts. Go into Settings/Accounts and work your way through all the accounts you have for various services/apps and change the default synch settings into them to something more sensible. For example I use Evernote across my devices but its just as easy to manually synch it every time I open the app rather than it constantly doing it in the background eating up the battery. Oh and turn off Google Now if you don’t really use it.

*goes off to check phone*

Checked and already had auto sync switched off, plus each app under accounts (not that many btw) has auto sync switched off too…

Have you checked the wakelocks yet? Mine was also showing VERY high Android OS usage.