Slashdot Mirror
Android Pie Has a Battery Life Problem (venturebeat.com)
Emil Protalinski, writing for VentureBeat: After upgrading to Android Pie, most users have either seen a slight improvement in battery life or reported no perceivable difference. But soon after we published our story, some users told us that they are experiencing the opposite: significantly higher battery drain after upgrading to Pie. We've been tracking this issue for the past few months, during which the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL launched with Android Pie out-of-the-box and new device owners reported similar problems. Some Android Pie users simply don't expect their phones to make it through the day.
Users on Reddit, the Pixel forums, and Google's issue tracker have been discussing battery life issues on existing devices after upgrading to Android Pie, and some even on new devices (although there are naturally fewer of those cases). VentureBeat was able to independently confirm the issue on a Pixel 2 XL and a Pixel 3 -- we sent the details to Google. Given that Adaptive Battery is the main feature highlight when it comes to battery improvement in Android Pie, many suspected it could be the culprit. Users have reported, however, that turning it off didn't help the situation much, if at all. We were also able to independently verify that Adaptive Battery is not the cause. Adaptive Battery is only available in Pie, but in our tests battery life only drained faster with the feature off. We did, however, confirm that the problem is unique to Android Pie. Users have reported significant battery drain when their phones are idle, anywhere between 10 percent to 20 percent drained in an hour.
Users on Reddit, the Pixel forums, and Google's issue tracker have been discussing battery life issues on existing devices after upgrading to Android Pie, and some even on new devices (although there are naturally fewer of those cases). VentureBeat was able to independently confirm the issue on a Pixel 2 XL and a Pixel 3 -- we sent the details to Google. Given that Adaptive Battery is the main feature highlight when it comes to battery improvement in Android Pie, many suspected it could be the culprit. Users have reported, however, that turning it off didn't help the situation much, if at all. We were also able to independently verify that Adaptive Battery is not the cause. Adaptive Battery is only available in Pie, but in our tests battery life only drained faster with the feature off. We did, however, confirm that the problem is unique to Android Pie. Users have reported significant battery drain when their phones are idle, anywhere between 10 percent to 20 percent drained in an hour.
Jon Prosser explained in a recent video that he left iOS a few years ago because it was a mess, just got a gold iPhone XS because iOS is working again, and Android is in the same mess as iOS was a few years ago.
Goodbye, Slashdot!
All Android versions have a battery problem.
From one of the links:
"Phones sometimes shut down abruptly when Android reports 5 percent battery life left."
Hmm, doesn't it sound awfully a lot like Android users could benefit from the optional Processor Throttling feature also posted on Slashdot today? Maybe having that around as an option is not a bad idea after all.
I wonder if there's anything on Android like a battery capacity check? Maybe it's simpler failing batteries with lower capacity that are seeing lower life under Android Pie for some reason...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who gives a fuck, it's a damn phone. Get a life fanboys.
People who own one of these things and need it for work? I'm on 24 hour standby for emergency tech support one week every month, the last thing I need is a phone that keeps switching off on me.
Imagine that.
You think Google would sell out users for the fees from cell phone makers?
I know Google sold out to the Communist Chinese, but that's not like selling out to those EVUL CAPITALIST PIGS at Verizon.
I just expect any new OS upgrade from any developer will have issues and require multiple revisions if not a possible halt to the release like in the Windows 10 1809 or the Apple IOS 12.1 for Apple Watch. The trouble is, so many of these upgrades are now pushed or forced updated and that means little choice in dealing with these problems.
MY Android Pie phone doesn't have this problem, so no one's does!
Just like with Windows 10, MY upgrade to v1809 didn't delete any files, so anyone who says it did is a Trump-supporting LIAR!
Pie
Seriously, every fucking mobile phone has a battery life problem.
Hmm, doesn't it sound awfully a lot like Android users could benefit from the optional Processor Throttling feature also posted on Slashdot today? Maybe having that around as an option is not a bad idea after all. No, there is a battery save option already on the damn thing.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
My Pixel XL lasts about 3 days on a charge sticking with Android 7. Ever since I upgraded a phone from Android 4 to 4.3 and completely lost the ability to use VPN and my wife's phone was bricked by an update from 7 to 8.1, I NEVER upgrade my phone's OS.
For those of you who can't remember the correlation between the stupid names and the version numbers. My brand-new phone, in its setting menus, only tells me the number, so I had to use google (ironically) to find out if I was a "Pie" user. I guess I have Jellybean or Kit Kat or Maple Syrup or something equally uninformative as my version...sigh...
Have you read my blog lately?
As a long time Android user I have to say this: there are two areas where Android totally completely utterly sucks: battery management and process management.
Battery management: it's nigh impossible to understand what exactly is draining your memory, how often your device wakes up and what sensors are in use unless you install quite specific apps and grant them quite specific permissions via adb, which is near impossible for 99% of users out there. And even when you do all of that, in most cases you're still left without any solutions because you don't know how to force Android not to use the said sensors or not to wake your device as often as it does. Also, most sensors in Android are 100% nondescript: you're looking at some weird combinations of symbols and digits and in most cases you cannot even Google for them. It's not like Android says: rotation-vector sensor is being used 100% of the time or anything like that.
Process management: in the past you could at least install certain apps which could show overall CPU usage and the CPU usage of each active app. Nowadays, there are no such options even when you enable development mode. Google did that for the sake of security but in the process they made Android even less opaque than it was before. Then you have another issue: which apps are indeed running in memory? which apps are swapped out? which are cached? It's all a fucking mess and unless you've rooted your device your only option is "Memory" [Information] which is simply a fucking abomination as it doesn't even show current info: it only shows aggregated stats for the past 3/6/12/24 hours.
For the past three development cycles (Android 7/8/9) I've created bug reports, i.e. feature requests, in Android bug tracker but each time they were either rejected or abandoned.
Google is hell-bent on making Android's internals opaque for the user and nothing so far has been able to persuade them otherwise.
The end result is that Android users are royally fucked but Google doesn't seem to care one bit.
And then you have this (a little bit outdated but still mostly relevant).
You think processor scaling doesn't exist on Android and you're posting logged in?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Android has this and Google didn't have to hide it or lie about its existence.
Have you considered use of a landline? Granted it won't work at Starbucks or Wal-Mart, but...
Wait, 24 hour tech support for a week's duration? OK, I give up. That's extreme I.T. you're living in.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Who gives a fuck, it's a damn phone. Get a life fanboys.
People who own one of these things and need it for work? I'm on 24 hour standby for emergency tech support one week every month, the last thing I need is a phone that keeps switching off on me.
Why the hell would you use your own personal phone for this?!
If your company demands this they need to issue you a corporate phone that they own. There are loads of good reasons for this.
Two upgrades ago it was fine, but with the last two, out of luck. A colleague with the same phone has the same problem: I think they back-ported a bug (:-))
davecb@spamcop.net
I have a Pixel 2 and am sticking with 8.1 Oreo. It runs great and I didn't see anything in 9.x that I have any need for.
No, there is a battery save option already on the damn thing.
Adaptive Battery on Android is very different than the feature I'm talking about. Is there a battery saving feature that works the way Apple's does b throttling back a little when the battery is degraded?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Don't configure a 5GHz wifi connection.
6 months from now all this B.S. will be over, the Pixel 3 will be solid, and I'll buy one off Swappa for about 65% the current new price. And it will work just fine.
I have an S7, on Oreo and had battery problems after installing. The problem is with all the background CRAP running from Google'n CO. Seriously, the phone never gets to enter a deep sleep. Radios are constantly on.
I say "had" because I was able to work around it for the most part by removing bloat and in some cases chmod -x the binaries just so it wouldn't spawn. The CPU scheduler has a whole lot to do with it too especially if you flash a respin. Short version is some try to keep the cpus pegged at full speed but that doesn't do anything besides give you inflated benchmarks.
- Root the device
- Remove Google bloat
- Remove OEM bloat
- Remove "Partner" bloat ( ie Facebook)
- Remove Carrier bloat
- Run in airplane mode (there's something even in Oreo that keeps the phone very busy)
Only then will you come anywhere near their claimed battery times.
as much as Haters like to
Can't you ramble on with your cult dog-whistles someplace else?
Hmm, doesn't it sound awfully a lot like Android users could benefit from the optional Processor Throttling feature also posted on Slashdot today?
Or more likely doesn't it sound like we could all use more accurate estimates for battery life remaining at the very edge of a battery's usable life. Seriously these kinds of estimates are hard to make. But since you need a low power option it may be worth mentioning that not only has Android had such a feature for a good 5+ years now, but you can even set it to automatically activate at a low battery on most phones.
I wonder if there's anything on Android like a battery capacity check? Maybe it's simpler failing batteries with lower capacity that are seeing lower life under Android Pie for some reason...
Every single release of Android to date, and I'm sure every release of iOS has had people reporting battery life problems. It's far more likely that the upgrades are hitting edge case bugs.
NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES FOR YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Nor did Apple ever hide or lie about this, as much as Haters like to pretend they did
Jan 23, 2017 - iOS 10.2.1 is released, which is the first version (that we know of) to begin slowing down phones.
For months and months forum posters speculated they may be slowing down the phones. Apple says nothing.
December 18, 2017 - John Poole from Geekbench pulls together benchmarks from 100k iphones and creates irrefutable graphs showing how performance is throttled, and exactly which version it started happening for each iPhone version
December 20, 2017 - Apple finally admits to slowing down phones.
Nope, they didn't hide anything. Its just pure coincidence that Apple sat silent for almost an entire year***, and then suddenly 2 days after the irrefutable evidence surfaces Apple decides they should probably let users know about it.
Yeah, and it's the haters that are pretending, right?
***actually it may have been longer than a year, as apple's December statement admitting to it said they introduced it "last year"
Android and battery use...
Unsurprising that a battery wont last.
Hook up your phone to a PC and do âadb logcatâ(TM) to see a whirlwind of logs flying by at the speed of light.
So.....much......crap.
Iâ(TM)m a mobile dev, and Android devices are just too bloated. iOS bloat is growing too btw, but Android is in a league of its own.
I dare you... adb logcat, and try to read it. You canâ(TM)t.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
The google like of phones has ALWAYS had battery problem, i mean not like note 7 problems but still the nexus and pixel lines batteries have always been a weak point. I have to replace the battery on my 6P one a year or it starts shutting down at 40%. just look at the number of class action lawsuits google has against them for battery Issues. If you want the latest bleeding edge, yes get a google flagship phone, but if you dont want to be a beta tester, go with anyone else.
Android is the good enough for Google's (not so talented) developers. Battery, memory, performance and security problems are features not issues or bugs.
It's always the wifi, especially when you're being spied on.
Thank you for the reminder. Almost forgot that it was also a phone!
Telemetry like GPS, wifi point thumprinting, etc, does a good job of sucking battery, and given this is google, it seems safe to assume this is the reason (whatever the faux excuse is offered up to be)
Only a mug would use Android.