CAT S60 battery life issue with 6.0.1 (Wifi drain)

[bandario]

There is some real weirdness afoot. After 24 hours of solid battery performance, using bluetooth for car audio, few google searches etc battery was holding up really really well.

I just picked up the phone and noticed that the screen was very warm, and even the back of the device was a little warm in places. WTF - screen hadn't even been on, nor wifi and no apps updating or downloading.

Check battery stats and once again, google play services has slotted itself into the top of the list. What the hell is going on?

I'm hoping this is something that can be addressed via software, but I have heard that the Snapdragon 617 does some weird stuff like this every now and again when left to its own devices and it will absolutely eat your battery if not addressed when it happens. Something to do with some of the cores getting stuck etc.

 

[Ninjakebab]

Hmm alright, thanks! Seems like you are both doing pretty good, battery wise.

I did a factory reset. Then I uninstalled everything useless, disabled a couple of the useless Google apps, and neglected to log into a google account, to completely eliminate sync and battery hogging from Google services.
I briefly activated battery saving, to disrupt any current wakelocks, as Mr. Slimbobaggins had success with.

Result = 4-5% lost per hour of standby... I.e., no improvement.

Activating plane-mode works, and pretty much gives infinite batterylife it seems. So the problem must be data, right? But what the hell is using data on a vanilla phone that isnt even linked to a single account?

 

[Ninjakebab]

I just picked up the phone and noticed that the screen was very warm, and even the back of the device was a little warm in places. WTF - screen hadn't even been on, nor wifi and no apps updating or downloading.

Check battery stats and once again, google play services has slotted itself into the top of the list. What the hell is going on?

THIS! Sounds pretty much like the randomness I was getting before my reset. It's so damn weird. Are you using any battery stat stracker, to pinpoint exactly what is using juice?

 

[bandario]

Yeah I have better battery stats installed but without root it is near useless apart from letting you know how much time is successfully spent in deep sleep (quite a lot with greenify running).

The stock battery settings does a much better job of breaking down usage and everything is as expected UNTIL I have one of those flare-ups where google play services starts absolutely monstering through battery and the phone gets warm. I find it really weird that nothing is visibly updating, and none of the things I have set to sync should require more than a few seconds to get done.

I've switched google play services to battery-save mode but this appears to simply adjust location services to not use the GPS which will be a major pain in the bum when I actually go to use the GPS and have to go that deep in the settings to re-enable A-GPS...I shouldn't have to do that. If anyone has any ideas I'd be keen to hear them as I absolutely love the device apart from this weirdness happening every now and again.

 

[slimbobaggins]

I've never been a fan of the apps that are supposed to monitor resource usage, or kill stuff to enhance battery life... they themselves use power and resources, so they add to the waste.

This is where I'm at right now... took it off the charger yesterday.

Now, full disclosure, I've taken to leaving the phone in power save mode, with location turned off, when I'm not using it. The little drop down menus at the top make it very easy to do this, so the little bit of extra effort doesn't really bother me. I don't need my email to automatically sync while in my pocket, and aside from that, I don't really notice anything else. If I'm using the FLIR or trying to stream video, I kick it out of battery saving mode, but otherwise, it works just fine streaming audio, talking on the phone, and using the regular camera.

This is with about 2 hours of voice calls over bluetooth, 2 hours of audio streaming over bluetooth, some (but not a lot) of FLIR usage, some camera usage, and some GPS usage last night. Screen-time-on comes in at 3 hours.

If you use your location service turned off, and then turn it on via the drop down button right before using maps or nav, it turns on into the highest state, so you don't have to worry about drilling down into subscreens to turn the GPS on.

If I were you guys, the first thing I'd be doing was removing the battery tracker, and greenify. That kind of stuff is snake oil, IMO.

 

[Ninjakebab]

Wow, thats a lot of use compared to me yet much better battery life. Right now I dont have a single app installed after the reset.

Observation: When I left the phone in plane-mode for a couple of hours, it seemed like I had infinite battery. When putting it in my pocket it felt surprisingly cold! It kept feeling cold against my leg for 10 minutes. This tells me my phone is usually warm from burning all those calories on nothing

As you can see from the picture, the behaviour is weird. The battery is being pounded on standby mode, then goes cold and infinite in airplane mode. Then after turning this off, and charging a bit, the battery does great again towards the end?! THIS IS SO RANDOM.

EDIT: Can anyone explain the meaning of the colors of the cell signal bar? The green happens to coincide with good battery life. But it isn't always green in the same location?! :/

 

[slimbobaggins]

The color of the mobile signal status bar indicates signal strength, with green being good, and the closer you get to red, the worse it is. The worse a signal you have, the more power is consumed by the mobile radio, so the faster your battery will drain. Of course there's lots of other factors. You can see that my signal wasn't great while I was asleep last night, but the battery didn't hardly drain at all.

 

[slimbobaggins]

Keep in mind that these bars are not "all knowing." I proved this with the Google messenger app. The awake bar did not indicate that it was awake, yet when I went into the power details for that specific app, it said that the app had kept the phone awake for a combined 4 hours.

The fact that removing the app immediately yielded an increase in battery life, seems to indicate that this was true. So, to get the full story on what's keeping the phone awake and eating the battery, you have to drill down into the individual power entries. I also think that because Marshmallow enables things to use the radios (wifi, bluetooth, GPS) in the background in spite of your settings, those are probably sometimes being manipulated and not recorded on the bar graphs.

Unfortunately, I think the moral of the story is going to be that 6.0.1 is buggy as crap, and we're going to have to hope for an update.

 

[bandario]

Some battery comparisons.

First image was a day I was having big trouble with the wifi drain problem.

The rest of the images shows what is possible when it doesn't happen (for whatever reason).
I decided to do a battery run down so that I could charge from 10% to 100% - about half way through I decided to just push it and see how far I could go whilst minimising my usage a bit - just using the phone when it rang, couple of SMS, bit of reddit when I was in waiting rooms, few photos at the pool and googled a couple of things when required. Otherwise, the phone was in my pocket idle.

Full disclosure: on the 2nd night (only) I put my phone in airplane mode but re-enabled bluetooth because people were calling and I was trying to sleep. It was at this point that I also swapped to using 3G over 4G...I am wondering if this has anything to do with the fact that I managed to get near zero wifi usage during this run? Is the LTE radio implicated?

Also - I tend to think that the colour of the mobile network signal graph is based on type of connection, not strength; you can clearly see the colour change there.

On the 2nd day, I had my phone get really warm and google play services usage blast up which is when I did those things I described in my previous post.

For those saying that greenify is not worth running: you are mistaken. The hibernate function, if used, might cause some issues for you, but enabling aggressive doze in the settings is an absolute godsend. According to better battery stats my phone spent 75% of its time in deep sleep state which is probably how I managed to get almost 4 days of usage out of it using it almost normally. I could easily have pushed it to 5 if I was prepared to turn off Gmail push or check my phone less often, say if I was out camping or something and just looking to keep my line of communication functional.

I'm pretty pleased with these results, but still quite anxious for a software update or root method so that custom kernels and some proper nailing down can be done.

 

[slimbobaggins]

Thanks for the intel. Perhaps I need to rethink greenify.

I unplugged my phone this morning and didn't use it a whole lot... just a little calling and some web surfing. Estimated remaining battery is 3 days. So things are going well here.

 

[Ninjakebab]

Some good info here. I'll try out the aggressive Doze in Greenify as a last resort before RMAing. I'm still not entirely convinced I'm only dealing with Marshmallow issues, since there is so much difference between our phones :/

Bonus question: The coverage in my area should be decent, as I live in the 4th biggest city in my country. Signal indicator is usually H+, some 3G. Never any worse. So I really shouldn't be seeing drainage due to this, right?

 

[slimbobaggins]

Some good info here. I'll try out the aggressive Doze in Greenify as a last resort before RMAing. I'm still not entirely convinced I'm only dealing with Marshmallow issues, since there is so much difference between our phones :/

Bonus question: The coverage in my area should be decent, as I live in the 4th biggest city in my country. Signal indicator is usually H+, some 3G. Never any worse. So I really shouldn't be seeing drainage due to this, right?

Yeah your issues sound a little worse than what I've dealt with.
I don't know the answer to your question, but for my own curiosity, what kind of data speeds are you getting on H+ and 3G?
I have 4G LTE in the US and I'm getting about 15 Mbps down/ 5 Mbps up. I'm curious how this compares to elsewhere.

 

[bandario]

Some good info here. I'll try out the aggressive Doze in Greenify as a last resort before RMAing. I'm still not entirely convinced I'm only dealing with Marshmallow issues, since there is so much difference between our phones :/

Bonus question: The coverage in my area should be decent, as I live in the 4th biggest city in my country. Signal indicator is usually H+, some 3G. Never any worse. So I really shouldn't be seeing drainage due to this, right?

Given your previous posts, I think you're dealing with something a little more serious going on. Until you decide to RMA, I would experiment with limiting your connection to 3G only if you can. See if it helps.

 

[Natalie from Cat phones]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your feedback on this topic - we try to look out for users discussing or raising issues with our devices, and do our best to address issues and concerns where we can. We completely understand that this issue is a frustrating one, and we've now investigated it fully, and are confident we can address it.

As some have rightly identified here, even when WiFi and Bluetooth have been disabled in user settings, Android devices running Marshmallow will still perform WiFi and Bluetooth background scanning if the user has enabled “Improved Location Accuracy". This regular scanning can have a significant impact on battery life. However, the latest version of Marshmallow now includes a new feature which allows users to manually disable this background WiFi and Bluetooth scanning.

We plan to provide an over-the-air update for the Cat S60 on Monday 22nd August (pending quality and stability testing) which includes this new option. To install this update, please select “About Phone”, “System Updates” and then “Check for Update” from the Settings menu. Once your device has been updated, you will be able to disable this background scanning by going to the new settings menu under “Location” (select the three vertical dots in the top-right corner, and then select Scanning, and then disable the WiFi and Bluetooth scanning). We hope this will resolve the issue and give you significantly improved battery performance.

Thanks,

Natalie, from Cat phones

 

[slimbobaggins]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your feedback on this topic - we try to look out for users discussing or raising issues with our devices, and do our best to address issues and concerns where we can. We completely understand that this issue is a frustrating one, and we've now investigated it fully, and are confident we can address it.

As some have rightly identified here, even when WiFi and Bluetooth have been disabled in user settings, Android devices running Marshmallow will still perform WiFi and Bluetooth background scanning if the user has enabled “Improved Location Accuracy". This regular scanning can have a significant impact on battery life. However, the latest version of Marshmallow now includes a new feature which allows users to manually disable this background WiFi and Bluetooth scanning.

We plan to provide an over-the-air update for the Cat S60 on Monday 22nd August (pending quality and stability testing) which includes this new option. To install this update, please select “About Phone”, “System Updates” and then “Check for Update” from the Settings menu. Once your device has been updated, you will be able to disable this background scanning by going to the new settings menu under “Location” (select the three vertical dots in the top-right corner, and then select Scanning, and then disable the WiFi and Bluetooth scanning). We hope this will resolve the issue and give you significantly improved battery performance.

Thanks,

Natalie, from Cat phones

Awesome, thanks Natalie! Great to see such customer support!

 

[bandario]

Great to hear from Cat! Fantastic news and very excited for the update.

Hopefully it will not only deal with the wifi drain when wifi is turned off, but do something about the amount of power consumed by wifi when you actually use it, even for a few hours.

Only time will tell but I am pretty impressed to be hearing from you guys directly. Awesome.

 

[Ninjakebab]

Yaaas! Awesome that you're checking in, Natalie. So far, I'm confident that the S60 will be awesome, and that Marshmallow is to blame.

Update: I have a theory! And it makes me look silly

I manually cut my microSIM down to nanoSIM size when receiving the phone, because I couldn't wait getting it up and running. I began to wonder if that could have an effect. Googling the theory yields a couple raised concerns that this practice CAN result in slight shorting of the SIM print on the holder sides, as the microSIM variety has a wider copper print. This CAN cause the phone to continously loose/regain data connection, eating up battery.

Working from this theory, I disabled mobile data entirely, and switched WiFi on - since 90% of the time I'm either at work or home, where there is excellent Wifi, and when I'm out I dont need data anyway (except for Pokemon Go - trololoo).

Result: 6% drain over the last 16 hours of light use, Battery estimate gives me 10 days lefton this charge! Holy chorizo!

This is with Wifi constantly on. I get no sync issues with mail (Cloudmagic), WhatsApp and Messenger (in Disa). Everything is instant. So I feel no negative effects at all.

So, obviously, my issue is with mobile data. I have ordered a proper nanoSIM from my supplier. Will update once I have it. And give you some speed statistics, Mr. Slimbo.

Its funny that all the measures I've put in to reduce battery usage is now kicking in, and it almost seems like overkill haha.

 

[slimbobaggins]

Interesting find on the nanosim. I had AT&T give me a new nanosim for this card, so I guess that's part of the reason my battery life has been great. I started day 3 today with 25% battery life left, with regular usage, which easily surpasses all phones I have owned since smart phones became a thing.
I love this FLIR camera for work, but I honestly love the battery life more... best part about this phone.

 

[cavell219]

Received my S60 today, update popped up during first use. Phone feels thicker than I expected but I like it, feels good and sturdy in the hand. And the speed of the phone is on par with my S7 and Xperia Z5c, actually it's faster than the Xperia lol. No battery comparisons here really other than very heavy usage for 5.5 hours for setup and playing with FLIR camera. at 14% now and got the phone at 47% from CAT.

 

[slimbobaggins]

Received my S60 today, update popped up during first use. Phone feels thicker than I expected but I like it, feels good and sturdy in the hand. And the speed of the phone is on par with my S7 and Xperia Z5c, actually it's faster than the Xperia lol. No battery comparisons here really other than very heavy usage for 5.5 hours for setup and playing with FLIR camera. at 14% now and got the phone at 47% from CAT.

I like that I feel this thing can double as a weapon. Could really put a hurting on someone if you needed to, lol

 

[cavell219]

I like that I feel this thing can double as a weapon. Could really put a hurting on someone if you needed to, lol

Haha have to agree with this.

Everyone at the refinery I work at just compares it to a phone with the OtterBox case built in. Now I just have to hide it from them today as they love playing with the thermal camera. And also gonna check again today but the thermal camera had less than a 2% error when comparing the temperature of a flare tip to my temp sensor at the tip.

 

[Ninjakebab]

And also gonna check again today but the thermal camera had less than a 2% error when comparing the temperature of a flare tip to my temp sensor at the tip.

Nice! That's very impressive. Maybe I should do a reference test aswell. I work with liquid cooling, so we have some thermal cams lying around.

UPDATE: The NanoSIM theory has been disproven, as my new SIM showed no difference with data connection.

I however did as previously suggested, and simply set my data to 3G preferred. This has actually eliminated battery drain aswell, so I'm guessing the 4G/LTE coverage in my city is shit, causing the phone to drain when searching for this.

Speed on H+ connection: 14.8Mbps down, 4.3Mbps up. So I really dont think 4G can be utilized properly I dont see why I should waste battery on more speed than I already have.

A note for you guys, I actually use less battery when having WiFi constantly on, since the phone will shut down mobile data entirely, when WiFi network is available. Thus giving WiFi priority wherever I can log on automatically. You should try it. If you have good WiFi at work and home, anyway - which is my case.

A summary
I can currently get 4+ days out of a full charge by:

1. Limiting network to 3G preferred
2. Keeping WiFi logged on, so data shuts off when I'm in WiFI range
3. Using CloudMagic instead of Gmail
4. Using Disa for Messenger and Whatsapp
5. NOT having Facebook installed
6. Disabling Google Now's "Ok google" thing
7. Disabling backup
8. Disabling automatic updates, and update notifications in Play Store (manually update all once a week)
9. Limiting background data for: Play store, Youtube, Google Services, Google app, Chrome, Instagram
10. Greenify: Aggressive Doze - even better with paid version for dozing system apps

This gives me 2 weeks of standby time!

I am now a very satisfied customer

 

[slimbobaggins]

Nice checklist. I'm currently getting 3 days to a charge with normal (for me) usage. I need to look into a couple of the things on your list though.

How did you disable OK Google?

 

[slimbobaggins]

For no good reason, my Wifi is locked on again. I used location services, and then shut it back off, but according to my battery meter, it's been locked on for the last 9 hours, and is murdering my battery.

 

[slimbobaggins]

Went ahead and installed the update, and was able to disable the wifi scanning, but my wifi is still locked on. Has burnt through 10% of my battery life in the last hour and a half to two hours.

The wifi setting is of course "off," I tried putting the phone in airplane mode, and have started uninstalling apps one by one, trying to find the offender.