I bought my FP4 3 weeks ago. My battery drains extremly quickly, even if I don’t use it.
I have had the case that i have had 80% of battery and left my phone untouched for hours on battery safer mode, had 30% left. Screen-on with notificiation is disabled. Also while on airplane mode during night (not charging) it loses around 10-15%.
Any Idea how to solve it?
Can you share some more info? Like the battery stats, if you use VPN or an adblocker, etc. Any apps you suspect? What about leaving your phone in safe mode for a night and see if that helped. Then it’s likely a 3rd party app that’s misbehaving.
I am new here. So i use addblocker on firefox and i installed ddg, no VPN. I have no clue what it is. But i’ll try that with the safe mode and see what happens. Any other tipps what i could do to narrow it down and find the problem?
I have read somewhere that it might also be due to a SIM card older than 2 years. Is that a possibility? Mine is rather old (>5 years i think). I have never had problems with my old Galaxy s11…
Do you use the app tracking protection? That caused overheating on my phone. Firefox with adblock is fine. These issues often only occur with e.g. a local or remote VPN that filters out ads and trackers. This VPN keeps the device constantly awake and may cause extra CPU cycles and thus heat.
This is indeed mentioned in the official docs from Fairphone, so there may be some truth in it. But maybe first rule out the possibility of a rogue app.
Maybe share your battery stats to give a general idea, they are not always complete, but it’s still better than guessing in the dark.
An example:
Do you use the app tracking protection?
Yes I tried it, but I just deinstalled it and back to add-ons from firefox
Maybe share your battery stats to give a general idea, they are not always complete, but it’s still better than guessing in the dark.
There you go. I am not aware of having used anything from google-play, so it might be that?
The curve looked exactly the same yesterday when I haven’t touched my phone for hours and battery still drained from 80% to 30% (I didn’t take a printscreen though).
I see you use SIP. Did you configure it for incoming calls as well? In that case it may constantly listen for incoming calls, which drains power.
You mean you don’t install apps from the Play Store? Play apps use Firebase to sent notifications which may be grouped, which is something the battery saver communicates as well. Without it apps may listen infrequently and waking up the device not in a coordinated fashion, which is less efficient. So yes, it may be that as well.
The three vertical dots have another option > Show full device usage which shows system apps also
I can also confirm this behavior, in my case it was the protonmail app that overheated and had massive background battery drain, and like in the shared screenshots it won’t show the real usage. Reading the other replies on this thread I’m inclined to say the issue isn’t an specific app but related to encryption (the apps mentioned all rely heavily in encryption).
The fairphone staff should check on this, I had to roll back to my old mi8 as I can’t use email on my FP4.
The three vertical dots have another option > Show full device usage which shows system apps also
They do? DDG uses a local VPN, which isn’t encrypted, it’s just used as a local default gateway so that you have central control over ingress and egress traffic. Which is then used to filter out ads/trackers. SIP sends a lot of status messages so that you get your incoming call when you do without delay, which consumes power. If apps don’t receive their notifications in groups, the device wakes up too often, which negates the positive effects of idle power usage.
Does the Protonmail app store emails encrypted on your phone locally? If it does, then this only affects battery life if you open mails all the time. Not sure what the issue may be, maybe also battery saver issues, but I doubt encryption.
I have had it already on my old phone, same configuration, never had any issues and yes I use it for incoming calls as well. Once I have a day or two when I don’t need it, I will remove it from my phone to test it
You mean you don’t install apps from the Play Store? Play apps use Firebase to sent notifications which may be grouped, which is something the battery saver communicates as well. Without it apps may listen infrequently and waking up the device not in a coordinated fashion, which is less efficient. So yes, it may be that as well.
I did not play any games today. And I am not quiet sure I got your point right, how would I change that or figure out what it behind it?
I used SIP on a few phones. Enabling SIP for incoming calls is killing for the battery, no matter the device.
Maybe the word “play” makes you think that it only affects games, but the Play Store is actually your central repository for many things. Such as apps, music (if you use Google for that), movies, books, etc. Apps get notifications through a service called Firebase, which uses some power efficiency to group notifications. This leaves your phone longer in idle mode, saving power. But if you only install stuff from the Play store, then I don’t think it can be this.
Android also has builtin SIP support, maybe that has better integration than this 3rd party app you’re using. But disabling incoming calls will for sure help as well.
I can’t change any settings on that SIP app regarding incoming calls. it’s a specific app i use for work, which I need. I’ll check if it’s that or the SIM. If you have any other ideas, let me know!
Thanks alot anyway
Try the native Android SIP settings. Open the native Phone app, go to settings and then open calling accounts. There you can add a SIP account. Also note the warning for incoming calls and battery usage.
But please be aware it may not be available on Android 12 anymore for Fairphone.
Did disabling incoming SIP calls make a difference?
I am still testing. But so far i can tell: SIP didnt make a massive difference. I changed to a new SIM day before yesterday evening and had yesterday the first full day with a new SIM. The improvement of batterylife was massive, i want to see it again today, but it seems it was the old SIM that was the problem. I will give a final feedback once i am sure
So I have tested a few things. Removing the SIP completly doesnt change much. The new SIM Card helped a bit, but battery performance is still poor and phone heats up.
There are two things I have noticed:
Do you have any other idea how to solve the battery problem?
Have you tried safe mode? If it’s stable there, then at least we can rule out a hardware problem.
I will be loggedout to all my accounts, right? That is a massive problem, i have several ebanking apps, 5 office accounts with authentificator etc… i don’t want to risk having a problemlwith all them as i need them daily…
This is not a permanent solution I’m proposing. I’m trying to help you pinpoint the cause. By using safe mode for a period of the day, you’ll be able to measure perhaps different battery usage. Then at least we know it’s not a hardware issue. next step is to identify which 3rd party app could be the cause. If using safe mode for 4 hours already shows you steady battery usage, then that’s enough to draw the conclusion that it’s a 3rd party app.
