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Android Bug Operating Systems Software

Android Pie Has a Battery Life Problem (venturebeat.com) 76

Posted by msmash from the bug-trackers dept.
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.
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Android Pie Has a Battery Life Problem More

Android Pie Has a Battery Life Problem

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  • Maybe Android needs to take a page from Apple here (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @03:21PM (#57576654)

    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...

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by pgmrdlm ( 1642279 )
      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.

      • You think processor scaling doesn't exist on Android and you're posting logged in?

      • 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?

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Android has this and Google didn't have to hide it or lie about its existence.

    • 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 re

  • Pie == 9.0 (Score:5, Funny)

    by 14erCleaner ( 745600 ) <FourteenerCleaner@yahoo.com> on Thursday November 01, 2018 @03:50PM (#57576880) Homepage Journal
    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...
    • But they are 'edgy' and 'unique' and 'hip', and are the likely result of non-tech people inserting themselves into the tech industry and making a need for themselves and their jobs. Android 9.0 would be much more useful...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nasch ( 598556 )

      It's worse than that even. Besides the version number (9) and the name (Pie) there's also something called an API level that only developers see (28). Name -> number would be easy to figure out if it were always a major revision number, but it isn't. For example they didn't get to version 2 until Eclair, which starts with the 5th letter in the alphabet. Then Eclair, Froyo, and Gingerbread are all version 2.something. And so on. Only recently have names lined up with exactly one major revision numbe

      • It's worse than that even. Besides the version number (9) and the name (Pie) there's also something called an API level that only developers see (28).

        Android version (7,8,9) and the SDK version (25,26,27) are independent. Moreover, the SDK version is not something a user of Android knows or needs to care about.

        • The beauty of it is that Android developers have the freedom to build their apps at the API level they wish. You can release your app to run on Android Versions as old as 4.0 or 2.3 if you wish. It's your option as a developer.

          Apple, on the other hand, urges and as much as they can forces their developers to always build at the edge-tip of the API using the latest version of their closed-source toolchain.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nasch ( 598556 )

          Android version (7,8,9) and the SDK version (25,26,27) are independent.

          No they aren't. Here's Google's documentation on them: https://source.android.com/set... [android.com]

          Moreover, the SDK version is not something a user of Android knows or needs to care about.

          That's what I said. It's right there in the text you quoted.

          • No they aren't. Here's Google's documentation on them: https://source.android.com/set [android.com]... [android.com]

            Maybe you don't understand. The SDK version and the Android version vary independently. There's obviously a mapping between them, but if you look in the link you pasted for a single Android version with 2 different SDK versions, and two different Android versions have a single SDK version. So obviously you can't have "Android version X == SDK version X". You're the one that said it's "worse". It's not "worse" it's a necessity. One is an API version and one is a software version. There are completely differe

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by nasch ( 598556 )

              The SDK version and the Android version vary independently. There's obviously a mapping between them

              It can't be both. Either they are independent, or there's a mapping between them.

              if you look in the link you pasted for a single Android version with 2 different SDK versions

              Which Android version number has more than one API level?

              Users never even know about that. So why is it worse?

              Because developers are people too.

      • It's worse than that even.

        only developers see (28)

        So it's not worse at all then since no one ever sees the API version number.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nasch ( 598556 )

          So developers are no one?

          • In terms of the end user experience. Yes developers are no-one. Developers spend their lives pouring through libraries, references, APIs, all of which have nothing to do with the name or number of the software presented to users. On top of that developers are the one set of people who have access to all the hot little information right at their fingertips.

            I stand by my comment, NO-ONE will be confused or impacted by this.
            Consumers don't see it.
            Developers have it cross referenced in every tool they see or us

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by nasch ( 598556 )

              In terms of the end user experience. Yes developers are no-one.

              That's an interesting perspective, since without developers there would be no end user experience. Or end users.

              Or maybe just fire up Visual Studio

              Visual Studio for Android development? No thanks.

              If you're a developer and you're getting confused, please stop developing.

              While I understand it can be amusing to make up stuff, I never mentioned being confused. Perhaps you're the one who is confused actually. You're mentioning all these resources for finding the relationship between the various pieces of information, when the comment that started this whole conversation specifically mentioned finding the informatio

              • That's an interesting perspective, since without developers there would be no end user experience. Or end users.

                If that's what you read in my post then you missed the point. Developers and end users by their very nature REQUIRE two completely different experiences. What is presented to one should be completely different to what is presented to the other.

                Visual Studio for Android development? No thanks.

                Whatever floats your boat.

                While I understand it can be amusing to make up stuff, I never mentioned being confused. Perhaps you're the one who is confused actually. You're mentioning all these resources for finding the relationship between the various pieces of informa

    • If you can't remember what letter of the alphabet you are up to, how are you supposed to remember the number?

  • Oh, Android (Score:5, Informative)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @03:56PM (#57576914) Homepage

    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 [altervista.org] (a little bit outdated but still mostly relevant).

    • Battery management: it's nigh impossible to understand what exactly is draining your memory

      (I'm assuming you meant battery instead of memory.) I just go to the "Battery" thing in settings, and it gives a detailed breakdown of exactly how much power each app or process has been using. Am I missing something?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ftobin ( 48814 )

        It only shows how much battery was used per process since when you last fully recharged. I never charge above 85% to reduce battery stress, so I can't see a breakdown of say, the last 30 minutes.

        A good example of this failing during last night, something was eating my battery, but since the history includes everything over the last 4 days, I can't look in detail at the more recent timeperiod.

      • a detailed breakdown of exactly how much power each app or process has been using. Am I missing something?

        You're missing close to 90% of battery information which Android is hiding from you. Google for GSam Battery Monitor and BetterBatteryStats. Both require advanced permissions which could only be granted by using adb.

        • Thanks for the info. Now that I think about it, it may be that what I see is different than most, I'm a LineageOS user... not sure if their display is different or not...

    • 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.

      To be fair to those 99% of users they likely just charge their device at night and don't have problems. If your battery needs "management" you're either the most power of power users, your phone needs a factory reset, or your phone needs to be replaced/repaired.

      • Oh, yeah, that's why there are literally tens of thousands of messages from Android users who disable Wi-Fi and cellular data and "enjoy" up to 35% battery drain overnight and this drain is not shown in Battery information.

        Oh, wait, I've seen such messages even from Google Pixel [google.com] owners. These phones must be perfect, right? Android straight from its creators.

        So, you're right, I'm the geekest geek and people are making things up and Android battery management is perfect. Except it sucks.

        You see I've own

        • Oh, yeah, that's why there are literally tens of thousands of messages from Android users who disable Wi-Fi and cellular data and "enjoy" up to 35% battery drain overnight and this drain is not shown in Battery information.

          As I said, a micromanaging power user. I.e. one of the 1% (10s of thousands seems about the right number) that actually don't do something simple like have their phone on charge overnight.

          So, you're right, I'm the geekest geek and people are making things up and Android battery management is perfect. Except it sucks.

          Why are you putting words in my mouth?
          Yes, you are the geekiest of geek (wave at your fellow geeks here on Slashdot).
          I didn't say Android battery management is perfect. I said micromanagement isn't needed for 99% of people.

          You see I've owned close to a dozen Android devices and I have yet to see a single one where battery information is complete and self-explanatory and you're always in control of your battery discharge.

          You see I've owned close to a dozen Android devices where I've never looked at or cared about battery

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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 (:-))

  • Didn't upgrade (Score:3)

    by bobbutts ( 927504 ) <bobbutts@gmail.com> on Thursday November 01, 2018 @04:39PM (#57577254)
    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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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