I found that the battery in my 4-year-old FP4 is draining mostly overnight. Much faster than usual.
A few things I notice: charging it from a computer docking station boosts it to 75% in 20 minutes, to 90% in 30 minutes, and the last bit takes a much longer time.
Checking apps, I find some apps are using background activity even though I switched that off for those apps. Facebook Lite for example. And a music player (NPO for Dutch TV abroad) was using background activity even though I thought I had stopped it.
My phone is usually on the nightstand in a rather cold bedroom. Would keeping it warmer, screen down, make a difference?
I have been using 5G since a few months. I did start after that though not directly.
Even when I switched off wifi and mobile data yesterday before bed, it drained 50%.
Is it just time to replace the battery? Or are there things I can do to get this better?
this is completely normal, charging slows down when the battery is closer to full as it’s better for the battery health.
regarding the apps running in background – even when you exit an app or force close it, it can still relaunch itself in the background if it’s designed to do things on certain schedule (or if it simply misbehaves). try opening the problematic app’s properties (long press on the app icon and pick App info, or go to Settings > Apps > See all apps and find it there), and then go to App battery usage and uncheck the Allow background usage toggle. it will restrict what the app can do in the background, although keep in mind that you might miss some notifications, so it’s probably not wise to do it with apps that you rely on performing things in a timely manner.
also, if you haven’t updated to Android 15 yet, you might consider doing that. my FP4’s battery drain used to be horrible over the past year and a half or so, but they’ve implemented some fixes in the Android 15 update (which also made mobile data much more reliable for me).
Does backside of the phone get warm ? Then you should also check if some background process plays havoc, e.g. by running the “top” command in an adb shell or using Developer Options.
In my case, some google process tried to download something from the app store again and again thus draining the battery until I cleared its cache …
Thanks for the explanation and tips. I am at Android 15. Coincidentally, the problems started after that, though not directly so I didn’t think it was related to the upgrade.
I switched off background use for several apps, like Facebook Lite. (I switched off notifications for FB anyway.) But the battery status says it still runs in the background. I found that a little weird.
Oh that could be something… I see some Google service in the battery stats that I don’t trust. I want to get rid of Google completely (had to have it because of some app that I no longer use). I’ll do some digging there, thanks!
Same here, it should not affect your phone (unless by “rather cold” you mean below freezing temperatures…). After all it isn’t supposed to do much during the night (some synchronization, some housekeeping).
Yes, yes, 5G is still the big scary bogeyman, it uses secret Microsoft nanotechnology to induce Covid so the lizard men infiltrating the government can brain-control you!
Seriously, I’ve been using 5G since I bought my FP4 in 22, and it doesn’t make any difference in battery consumption, at least not in France (where 5G has excellent coverage) and apparently not in Germany either (where 5G coverage is more irregular). People experiencing issues with 5G most likely have their providers to blame.
Yes, I have noticed too that some apps don’t respect that setting. Seems it is more like a proposal than an iron rule.
As about battery issues: It’s a topic which does reappear regularly, and especially after every OS update. After the A13 update in 2023 there was for instance an issue with some (apparently random) app draining battery (there was a thread about it); For me that app was Quickstep (the launcher), and the problem sort of solved itself after half a year (or I got used to it).
If you make a forum search for “battery drain fp4” a lot of other cases will emerge. Bugs aside, it seems every update further degrades battery capacity. Now is this due to the increasing fragmentation of the OS code (as opposed to a clean install on a brand new FP4), or is it the aging battery which isn’t as forgiving as it was in its youth? Hard to tell.
Some have suggested to factory reset the phone and reinstall everything from scratch to fix that OS fragmentation, something which seems to have worked for some, but not at all for others… So, personally I’d rather suggest to sacrifice a black rooster at midnight on new moon (that would be January 18th): It might not be any more efficient than a system reset, but roasted chicken is tasty so I tend to always prefer that solution…
The best battery saving I have found with my FP4 is disabling 5G. I use dual sim and I thought that I needed a new battery, it drained very fast, within half a day my FP4 was empty.
After disabling 5G (select 2G till 4G) the battery draining was way less. Remeber, 5G is more like WiFI for distance and if there are blokkades between your phone and nearest antenna, then your phone needs more power to communicate with that network.
Think about aaluminium inside roof isolation for example, or HR++ glass. After fully isolating our house, inside the phone reception went way down, but for 4G enough signal to be ble to communicate.
in the night, is your phone connected to local wifi also?
Depends on the network coverage in your area I’d say. I for one have been using 5G (in France - excellent coverage) since I got my FP4 (in 2022), and never had any battery issues. Even when roaming in the countryside in countries with lesser 5G coverage (like Germany). It’s a typical case of “your mileage may vary”.
(5G is indeed more prone to attenuation by walls and such, but as I said, I didn’t notice. My phone gracefully switches to 4G when 5G isn’t available.)
