Wifi drains battery after Marshmallow Upgrade - See first post

I had the same problem with the wi-fi constantly ON even if it was turned off.

I solved by searching for WiFi scanning and deactivating it.

I put the lenguage of my phone in english to find it, because in italian it has a different name and i couldn’t find it.

The issue of the battery drain has again been reported in the bugtracker, but with different description (not about Wifi, but about CPU)
https://bugtracker.fairphone.com/project/fairphone-fairphone-os-android-6/issue/63

Maybe someone can add it to the main post above

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If it’s indeed the same issue, just with different symptoms, it will be rejected again for the same reason or marked as a duplicate and closed. If it’s a different issue, then well, it’s a different issue.
So either way it makes no sense to mention it in the top post of this topic.

Checked out the instructions and followed them where possible. Not all of the options are available on FP2 with Android 6. Still the wifi module is the top battery drainer, even though it is generally deactivated, except for FP updates.

Thanks for the guide. I’ve had this issue too. I’ve disabled ‘Wi-Fi scanning’ as you suggested. I’ll report back tomorrow.

Indeed, it was the WiFi scanning. Now battery use seems better. I assume an app was scanning for wireless networks in the background even with WiFi turned off. Thanks again.

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Hi,
I have been experiencing the same problems this week: battery drain that seems to be caused by Wifi even if it is supposed to be off (Wifi scanning was also off), phone hot on the back. I have seen this at least 4 days in a row. No big changes lately (update applied in July). The only thing I could think of was some new app. I suspect Chrome: I am on Fairphone Open and uses Lightning but I had to install Chrome to set up an app and I forgot to uninstall it right away after the set up.
Anyway, I uninstalled the 2-3 apps I had installed lately, I cleared the cache of all apps (via settings/storage), I made a battery reset (when my battery was empty) according to these instructions:

Today, the phone is not hot, no wifi shown in battery usage and it appears to be no battery drain.
I don’t know if it can help someone, as everything I did had already been advised on the forum, but I just wanted to give a positive feedback!

I don’t know if Chrome was responsible, but I like to think that to comfort me in using Fairphone Open OS :wink:

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Thank you so much for this great tip! Finally I found that elusive setting. Now let’s hope it makes a difference.

I received my Fairphone 2 only a couple of days ago with OS 17.11.2.
I experienced the Wifi battery drain issue and proceed with described solution by Tom’s guide.

It worked partially and it needs an update:

STEP 11: the three dot menu in the “location” setting is gone, in order to find the “Scanning” menu I had to use the search line in the main setting page (in italian, my language, goes under the name “ricerca…”)

After following the guide the situation got better but not perfect. sometimes the wify gets stuck on “active” even after turning it off.
It needs a reboot to actually go “inactive”.

Any suggestions?

This looks like a BUG to me…

I think this is probably caused by G%§$e:

G%§$e collects your location data via connected wifi cells.

To avoid it you’ll have to ditch G%§$e and switch to FP Open OS or Lineage OS.

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How come I am not surprised by this news…
Google is not stupid, it simply uses all options there are if it comes to collecting data…

But as I am considering upgrading to Marshmallow I still have concerns about this “Marshmallow Wifi Battery Drain” issue.
Is changing the “turn off Wifi when asleep” option the only idea? Not really a solution as I think. So again a bug G$$gle don´t want to realize.

I bought my FP2 phone 14 days ago and I had the same problems with battery drainage as described in these posts. Already wanted to return the phone to vendor. Than I also faced a camera issue (just saw artefacts on the screen) and reset the phone to factory defaults (via settings) twice.
Now I have Fairphone OS 8.01.1 installed and battery life seems to be fine again, with WIFI switched on all the time, positioning “device only”.
I´ll keep a close eye on every new app which I will install and settings, I`ll make.
Get back to you if anything changes.

Hy everybody. I have a similar problem as mentioned above. I’ve followed all advice. Scanning is disabled, location as well, maps is forced to stop and wifi is switched off manually. But still I see that my battery is draining fast and the wifi is the biggest spender. Above 20%. Is there maybe a way to prevent apps from using wifi secretly?

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Same here! Did you find a solution? The battery drains switched on too quickly.

I followed all steps in the #batteryguide. After the Android bug “recommendations” the drain got a little better, but not the heat.
EVEN when the FP is switched OFF and charging, the CPU get pretty hot (when swiching on, checked at AccuBattery and it says 44 Celsius!
The battery is not even 6 months old and it doesn’t last a day…
The FP CPU gets hot also just watching 1 video for a few minutes.

That it gets hot while charging quickly is usual, but does it also get hot during daily usage and have you used an app to check for excessive CPU usage? I once had the GMail app using a lot of CPU because of a problem with one of my e-mail accounts, but it could just as well be any other random app. I used ‘CPU Monitor Advanced Lite’ to find out but there are other good apps as well mentioned in this thread.

Is it usual that the CPU gets hot when charging? The battery is not getting hot, what I would assume when charging SWITCHED OFF.
And yes, it also gets pretty hot during daily usage.
I checked and no App is extreme.
As I said before, I’ve already followed all steps in the batteryguide.

I sometimes have the experience as well, that the phone (the area of the SoC above the battery) gets hot when charging with the phone switched off. And in those cases it is not really charging, but sticking at about 5% . As soon, as I turn the phone on, everything is fine again.

The phone (as above) getting hot is not normal of course; if you are not doing some tasks that present the SoC with a heavy workload (like 3D-gaming maybe?).
That does not mean, that I myself don’t know this kind of behaviour. As I was not able to find any app or process responsible, I just turn off the phone, take out the battery for a short while and turn it on again.
Strange enough, it regularly happens in those cases, that I have to do it twice or even three times. So, there seems to be some really persistent process responsible in my case.
It’s a bit annoying, but fortunately a rather rare occurence for me (I would estimate less than once a month).

It seems that it is an old “recurring” problem after some updates. I hope the next update solves it, and that it comes soon!!! Otherwise I have to do a factory reset.
The heat has even busted my SD card.
Android 6.0 and hot backside FP2

I am afraid it won´t be solved for Android 6 anymore as Android 7 is going to come this year and afaik it´s related to an Android 6 bug which only Google can solve but effectively has neglected in the past.
Read more about it here.
You can use the workaround to reduce symptoms, but there isn´t more you can do for now up to my knowledge (beside switching OS).

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