Windows Phone 8.1 battery drain


Recommended Posts

Im using a 920 and have noticed increased battery drain also. I suspect that it is due to the fact I am now using facebooks Messenger app, rather than the more lightweight/efficient Messenging app when it still supported fb chat. Generally badly made/intensive apps are pretty obvious to me because my phone gets very hot to the touch. While the Messenger app doesn't get hot, it does get a very obvious level of warm.

Im using a 920 and have noticed increased battery drain also. I suspect that it is due to the fact I am now using facebooks Messenger app, rather than the more lightweight/efficient Messenging app when it still supported fb chat. Generally badly made/intensive apps are pretty obvious to me because my phone gets very hot to the touch. While the Messenger app doesn't get hot, it does get a very obvious level of warm.

The messenger app gets hot? ummmm ;)

The added battery drain, depending on how much it is, could be a mix of the fact that with 8.1 more things can happen/run in the background now and also that we don't have any firmware updates yet so still optimizations with drivers and so on that should put it all back to normal.

 

Battery sense will show you what's using the most, btw,  for you guys who have said that facebook uses a lot, did you update to the newer 8.1.4.4 version that's just for 8.1 or are you using the older 5.x version from 8.0?

I have definitely noticed it on my 920 as well. battery sense shows Music and Podcasts as the culprits and I am not surprised - both are really slow and buggy.

 

The Music app is actually an old beta version,  I'm surprised It hasn't been updated though I have a feeling they're working on a new version for many apps that are specific for 8.1 and had to wait for the OS to be more final first.   It shouldn't be long till we see those though, not with new phones coming in May.

The Music app is actually an old beta version,  I'm surprised It hasn't been updated though I have a feeling they're working on a new version for many apps that are specific for 8.1 and had to wait for the OS to be more final first.   It shouldn't be long till we see those though, not with new phones coming in May.

 

WMPowerUser claim that an update to the Music app is on its way.

WMPowerUser claim that an update to the Music app is on its way.

 

Wouldn't surprise me at all, I'm just shocked that they decided to drop in an old beta of it with 8.1 preview.   I also expect the update to be more of a universal app type deal and to get a update for Windows 8.1 devices to.

Wouldn't surprise me at all, I'm just shocked that they decided to drop in an old beta of it with 8.1 preview.   I also expect the update to be more of a universal app type deal and to get a update for Windows 8.1 devices to.

I don't think the OS team is responsible for these apps anymore since now core apps are seperate from the OS to ensure faster updates and bug fixes. The Skype team develops the Skype app, the Office team Office and the Xbox team writes the Music, Videos and Games app. They all have their own priorities and aren't on the same schedule as the WP team. 

I don't think the OS team is responsible for these apps anymore since now core apps are seperate from the OS to ensure faster updates and bug fixes. The Skype team develops the Skype app, the Office team Office and the Xbox team writes the Music, Videos and Games app. They all have their own priorities and aren't on the same schedule as the WP team. 

 

I'm sure that's the case but my point being that they can't ship a beta build of apps out with the final version of 8.1, specially on new phones.  So while the teams are split I'm sure they all share the same schedule as far as cutoff dates for adding new things and so on. 

starting to notice the drain and i think i have figured out what is going on. Due to how Cortana works it is constantly looking at your location. I am noticing that every time i unlock the device it is looking at the location and then depending on what i am doing it is looking at it as well. however, if you try to turn the location services off. Cortana will pop up and tell you she cannot do anything without location services enabled.

One thing I've noticed about Windows Phone is that every time there is a major update, or if I get a new phone, battery life seems to suck at first. I noticed it on my new 920 and when I set up my wife's 1020.  But then after a few days, battery life seems to dramatically improve. 

 

Microsoft may be doing some use-based optimizations in the background. That, or we just use the phones more when they're new -- getting everything set up and all. I think it's a combination.

 

Short version is the first day my battery life was awful. Yesterday and today it's fine.

 

-Forjo

I did a hard reset and a hard reset today (restoring from the backup) and the battery drain does seem to have improved. Obviously it hasn't been a day yet so haven't fully tested, will fill you in.

 

I'm in the UK where cortana isn't available yet, so don't have a problem there.

 

Also, when I looked at battery saver, none of the apps showed very much use in the foreground. Some of then showed reasonably high use in the foreground (facebook messenger!) but that is to be expected as I was using it.

 

That said I havn't signed into facebook Messenger yet after a reset, so will see how it goes, sign into it, and see if that makes a difference.

starting to notice the drain and i think i have figured out what is going on. Due to how Cortana works it is constantly looking at your location. I am noticing that every time i unlock the device it is looking at the location and then depending on what i am doing it is looking at it as well. however, if you try to turn the location services off. Cortana will pop up and tell you she cannot do anything without location services enabled.

 

I've also noticed location services running each time I turn the phone on but I'm in the UK and don't have Cortana. 

 

Battery Sense says that the two apps using the most battery on my phone are IE and Music.  I always leave IE open but I have only opened Music once and haven't used it because performance is so poor.  However, they both run in the background and I think that's causing my battery drain.

 

No doubt updates will fix these issues over the next few weeks.

Prior to the update my phone wouldn't go below 50% by 3pm, but now I'm sitting at 33%. I attached a screenshot of my battery saver report. It doesn't appear anything is using all that much battery, but nonetheless my drain is severely worse than before the update.

post-22691-0-91836600-1397692974.jpg

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Who is paying for this 30x scale-up? Its sounds expensive.
    • Millions of users to benefit from Windows 11's new performance boost on Adobe Photoshop by Sayan Sen Despite the advent of AI-generated imagery, Adobe's Photoshop remains one of the most popular tools on this planet. Adobe does not have a publicly reported total user count but it's probably not wrong to assume there are millions. As of 2025, Adobe Creative Cloud has had approximately 41 million paid subscribers, many of whom likely use Photoshop. In addition, more than 166,000 companies worldwide are apparently also using the app. These figures are according to a very recent report by SQ Magazine. Out of them, it is fair to assume that many are probably running Windows. As such, there is good news for these users as Microsoft has announced Photoshop is getting a big 20% performance boost on x86-64 (AMD64) systems and a 13% bump-up on Arm devices. This is definitely great news for them as many have complained about the slow performance and general sluggishness of Photoshop on Windows 11 ever since the advent of the latter back in 2021. If you are wondering how Microsoft managed to do this, the answer lies in a combination of compiler-level optimizations and a technology called Sample Profile Guided Optimization (SPGO). According to Microsoft, Adobe worked closely with the company’s Visual C++ team and adopted the latest MSVC toolchain enhancements together with SPGO to squeeze more performance out of Photoshop’s CPU-bound workloads. Unlike traditional Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), which requires developers to create special instrumented builds and run lengthy training workloads, SPGO gathers performance data directly from optimized release binaries. This means Adobe could collect real-world usage information which gives a major advantage to this technique, as companies could leverage data collected from actual customer workloads rather than only relying on synthetic benchmark runs. In theory, this should allow optimizations to better reflect how users interact with software in the real world. Thanks to this, there are improvements to code layout, function inlining, hot-and-cold code separation, and other low-level tweaks that help processors execute instructions more efficiently. Essentially the compiler is better able to identify “hot” code paths, those which are most frequently executed, and optimize them accordingly.
    • "The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months¨ I'd prefer to see the lowest price in over a year
    • Glad these prices are starting to come down, but that is still crazy. I bought the 2TB 9100 Pro (slightly more expensive version with PCIe 5.0) last year for $240.
    • The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months by Sayan Sen Yesterday, we covered a really good deal wherein you can get a 4TB TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD for a low price of just $400 with a special discount coupon. That's just $100 per TB, making it a very good offer during these hard times. The deal is still live, so you can check it out in its dedicated article here if you do not want to miss out. Meanwhile, if you don't have that kind of budget but still wish to buy an SSD for a good price, the 2TB variant of the TeamGroup SSD at $280 its lowest price in over three months. Meanwhile, those seeking 2TB but faster performance can check out Samsung's 990 PRO, which has hit the lowest price also in the last quarter or so, as it's on sale for $370 (purchase links under the specs table down below). Thus, you want a faster drive, get the 990 Pro, or you want more capacity, grab the TeamGroup 4TB linked in the first para. The 990 PRO is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD and still one of the fastest drives available today for under $500. Speaking of fast, sequential reads and writes are rated at 7450 MB/s and 6900 MB/s, respectively. The random throughputs for reads and writes are 1400K IOPS and 1550K IOPS, respectively. The 990 PRO is based on Samsung's 7th Gen V-NAND flash, and it too is TLC. It packs 2 gigs of LPDDR4 DRAM cache, which helps the random performance. The endurance rating for this is 1200 TBW (terabytes written), which should be sufficient for most users. The Samsung 990 PRO is compatible with the PlayStation 5, but if you are going to use the 990 PRO on a PC, check out the Samsung Magician app that lets you track your drive's health, update its firmware, customize various settings, and more. The tech specs are given below: Specification TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 2TB Samsung 990 PRO 2TB Interface PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4 PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 Form Factor M.2 2280 M.2 2280 Controller InnoGrit Controller Samsung In-house Controller NAND Flash 3D TLC 3D TLC DRAM Cache None (HMB supported) 2GB LPDDR4 Sequential Read (Max) 5,000 MB/s 7,450 MB/s Sequential Write (Max) 4,500 MB/s 6,900 MB/s Random Read (4K) Up to 600,000 IOPS Up to 1,400,000 IOPS Random Write (4K) Up to 700,000 IOPS Up to 1,550,000 IOPS TBW (Endurance) 1,300 TBW 1,200 TBW MTBF 3,000,000 hours 1,500,000 hours Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C 0°C to 70°C Storage Temperature -40°C to 85°C -40°C to 85°C Shock Resistance 1,500G / 0.5ms 1,500G / 0.5ms Heatsink Patented Graphene Heat Spreader No Get them at the links below: Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB (MZ-V9P2T0B/AM): $369.99 (Sold and Shipped by Amazon US) TEAMGROUP T-Force G50 2TB SSD (TM8FFE002T0C129): $279.99 (Sold by TeamGroup, Shipped by Amazon US) Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      Jocimo earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      suprememobiles48 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Prasann earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Prasann earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      519
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      174
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      90
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      81
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      70
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!