sherlock5545
Android Expert
I'm not sure whether to label it as a "Tip" or a "Support" thread, since it might be useful information to you, although I'm seeking advice as well.
I recently got very bad battery life, with a drain of about 5%/h. In fact, just by letting the phone alone for about 2 hours, without doing anything, it would go down to about 89%. After hours of investigating, I found out that a certain audioOut_2 was causing the issue, by waking the phone very frequently. Not only that, the phone was barely deep sleeping, as I found out by setting a custom reference point on Better Battery Stats. Since the audioOut_2 should be related to sounds, etc. I initially thought it was caused by the Android System or a Music Player, well, those weren't causing any issues.
After freezing apps one by one to try figure out the culprit, I surprisingly found it being Viber. I immediately froze it and set a custom reference on BBS from that point on. Yes, it really was the culprit, audioOut_2 wasn't waking the device so many times anymore, and battery life improved drastically.
I later enabled Viber back, and the issue, as expected, was back, so I had to remove it.
Just to make sure it wasn't only affecting my phone, I installed Viber on a Sony Xperia T and a Note II, both of them were suffering the same issues as my S3, so it definitely does have some sort of bugs.
Now, I contacted Viber and forwarded the issue to them, although I got a pretty "useless" reply, something I knew myself anyway:
Now, my question: is removing the app my only choice or can I do something else to prevent the wakelocks?
TL;DR
If you have battery drain issues and use Viber, remove it and see if it's getting better, because it definitely is the culprit.
I recently got very bad battery life, with a drain of about 5%/h. In fact, just by letting the phone alone for about 2 hours, without doing anything, it would go down to about 89%. After hours of investigating, I found out that a certain audioOut_2 was causing the issue, by waking the phone very frequently. Not only that, the phone was barely deep sleeping, as I found out by setting a custom reference point on Better Battery Stats. Since the audioOut_2 should be related to sounds, etc. I initially thought it was caused by the Android System or a Music Player, well, those weren't causing any issues.
After freezing apps one by one to try figure out the culprit, I surprisingly found it being Viber. I immediately froze it and set a custom reference on BBS from that point on. Yes, it really was the culprit, audioOut_2 wasn't waking the device so many times anymore, and battery life improved drastically.
I later enabled Viber back, and the issue, as expected, was back, so I had to remove it.
Just to make sure it wasn't only affecting my phone, I installed Viber on a Sony Xperia T and a Note II, both of them were suffering the same issues as my S3, so it definitely does have some sort of bugs.
Now, I contacted Viber and forwarded the issue to them, although I got a pretty "useless" reply, something I knew myself anyway:
What they said has nothing to do with the issue. Viber isn't directly draining the battery, it's causing the phone to consume too much power by keeping it awake for too long.
Now, my question: is removing the app my only choice or can I do something else to prevent the wakelocks?
TL;DR
If you have battery drain issues and use Viber, remove it and see if it's getting better, because it definitely is the culprit.
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