FP3 overnight battery drain

OK, thanks for your responses, I just wanted to make sure. So there must be a different solution.

Hi urs_lesse,
I also have the A.0120 build release. And as mifads said, it has been after upgrading to it that the problem started.

I’ve now had some days with a more normal battery usage. For anyone else here’s my suggestions:

  • Use AccuBattery to get good idea of which apps are most responsible for the power drain.
  • For any app that is a heavy power drain look for in app settings to help or, if you don’t need it, uninstall it.
  • If an app seems to be stuck in a heavy power usage then try rebooting the phone.

In my case WhatsApp seems to have been responsible for a lot of the drain:

  • Each message is going to cause some drain so big groups or very active groups could be a problem.
  • I had already left some groups but I also archived them.

I hope that helps.

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I also had some good days now. I don’t have WhatsApp, but I saw that gmail was using loads of network data (despite hardly being used!), and the NYT app also. I switched off the “background data” setting (in Settings/Network & Internet/Data usage/App data usage) and things improved a lot! I did the same for some other maps, and the phone is keeping charge nicely now (last recharged 2 days ago!).

The last few weeks, my battery, only one year old, dropped by 65% every night. The phone is in airplane mode and only tracking my sleep (Sleep Like Android). During the day I only did 11 hours on one battery load.

I took out my mini SD card (I read that in a closed forum post about draining batteries) and the battery lasts like it did before (about 2 days). Problem solved for now.

Does any of you recognise this behaviour?
Would this be hardware or software failure?
I haven’t tested a new SD card.

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I have the same experience. Reboot does not help, Just installed AccuBattery.

Welcome to the community forum.

The Fairphone 3 came out in August 2019. It’s now June 2020.
Rough estimate, or wrong topic :wink: ?

(The hint concerning the SD card could be universal, though, appreciated.)

Update from me - things have degenerated again. I charged to 80% last night, and am now at 13% (8am). This rapid discharge has been happening the last few days, and one can see from the battery manager app that it just starts suddenly at some point, for no reason that I can see.

accuBattery isn’t helping, In fact, it is now showing per-app usage of 19 mAh for AccuBattery(!), 7 for settings, and 7 for quickstep. It shows deep sleep of 0% of screen time, which is as bad as one can get (and suggests a re-boot is needed anyway). The battery manager app is showing usage since full charge to be 5% for messages (just a few SMS), 1% for photos and 1% for google-play services.

I haven’t tried taking out the SIM card, but just now I can’t think of anything else. All very odd still, since I had quite some days with normal (long-lasting) battery usage.

LOL @AnotherElk.
Not even a year old; this makes the problem even more distressing.

I spoke to soon by cheering “problem solved”. Some days later the battery was draining like a released balloon. This time I tried to remove the sim card (as read in this Forum post) and voila: my phone endures for 30 hours now.

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Did you try taking out the SIM yet?

No, I didn’t dare touch the SIM so far. I am dependent on the phone for access to my remote computer systems (google-authenticator), as well as bank stuff and the like. If taking out the SIM can affect the battery usage so much, I am scared it might do bad things too. Probably stupid, but then if I lose especially the authenticator I am in big trouble - I need to physically access computers in another country to re-install, and in these corona times I can’t visit that country!

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Hope this has gotten better for you. In the meantime my FP3 arrived and so far for roughly two months I get around 2.5 - 3 days out of the battery. Which is a great step up from my old FP2 battery which died 1 - 2 x day at the end :wink:

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Not so far, I had several sessions with support via email, passing on lots of screenshots to show the results from several tests (e.g. safe mode), but in the end they just said that they had passed on the issue to their IT folks, and I have heard nothing since.
Maybe the latest (Android-10) update will fix things. I hope!

Crossing my fingers and toes!

Just an update. I’ve had no problems with the battery at all since the Android-10 update. The phone lasts for days when under light use now, as good as it was in the beginning :grinning:

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Thanks for the update! :upside_down_face:

Hi, same experience in recent days: I noticed that the battery of my Fp2 was giving strange signals: I put it in charge in the evening and in the morning it was still at 75%. I changed the battery (the old one was 4 years old) and charged the new one for the first time, leaving it longer than it should to get to a full charge. Last night it was 100% charged, I decided to leave it in charge and this morning it was 75%.
Ghosts in my house using the phone (fascinating but unrealistic) or weird battery problems. How did you solve it?

Hi!
I don’t think I can help. My problem disappeared after that software update, and I never did find put what the source of the problem was. You should probably contact supprt though since you bought a new battery; at least to let them know that people are still having issues with this important problem!

Hi Ugo,

I had the same experience as mifads, the issue kind of got solved after a software update. Note that for me the issue was in a FP3, and never occurred while on charge. So that it may be a totally different issue.

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Grazie Emanuele, ci provo!