Clearing Cache Partition only Temporarily fixes Battery Drain

[NB99]

Hi

New to the forum. Thanks in advance for any thoughts or ideas.

I've got a Moto E4 running android 7.1.1 (latest software update in France). No problems at all until just recently. Battery draining at about double normal rate for no apparent reason. When I go into battery usage details the categories (Screen, wifi, google play services) only add up to about 12% total yet the drain is 70% total. Don't know if that's relevant or not.

So I cleared the cache partition and problem seems to be fixed. Then 2 or 3 days later, high drain rate again. Cleared cache partition again and for 1-3 days no problem, now drain back again. No new apps downloaded recently. No unusual usage. Most apps have sync permissions turned off.

Has anyone any ideas or suggestions other than factory reset which I'd really rather avoid if at all possible?

Thanks very much

NB

 

[svim]

I have an E4 too and this is a completely off-hand suggestion to try. A year or so ago when I ran into a similar 'mystery' battery drain issue it turned out to be tied to some kind of glitch with an OTA update. Go into your Settings >> Apps menu, tap on the three vertical dot icon in the top left, tap on 'Show system', and then scroll down to the 'Downloads' app entry, tap on Force stop, then 'Storage' and 'Clear data'. This wipes that app's config files and its cache. Do the same steps for the 'Download Manager' app, and restart your phone. I'm hesitant to even tentatively claim this will solve your particular problem but anecdotally it work in my situation, and it won't hurt anything to try.

Another possibility is the battery is just beginning to fail. It's a couple of years old now so while that's pretty unlikely to be the case (they tend to fade off more gradually) in retaining a charge, not so much just suddenly crapping out), at least this model has an easy user-replaceable battery for when the time to replace it does occur.

 

[NB99]

Thanks for this. I've followed your instructions - will have to wait and see if it works!

Don't think it's just a battery hardware issue - clearing the cache partition returns battery to normal usage for a couple of days which wouldn't be the case if the battery was dying.

Will monitor for next few days and see if any improvement. Thanks.