Google Play Store updates eat CPU and battery

[NJtoTX]

I keep everything off at night. But if my battery is even moderately low and I turn on WiFi or data without plugging in, Google Play updates can take my battery straight down to the point of turning off the phone. Watchdog lite shows it using constant CPU for a good 10 or 15 minutes.

Any way to improve this? I do have a lot of updates available that I have not installed due to negative reviews of the latest updates of apps.

 

[breadnatty08]

App updates use a LOT of data especially if you have many to update. Consequently, CPU runs fairly high hitting your battery pretty hard. Not sure there's much you can do about it outside of keeping it plugged in overnight.

 

[bruce73]

Why can't you just do manual updates?

 

[GKL]

I'm not sure if I understand, - does simply having updates "available" use up CPU / battery ?

I have seen notifications on my tablet that some updates are available, but I also am reluctant to download updates due to the frequency of negative comments about updates when many apps are updated. (that is why I do not check the box for "automatic updates" when downloading a new app for the first time, so I choose whether or not to update)

I could see where actually downloading updates could use battery / cpu, but how would merely have updates "available" use up battery power ?

(I'm still relatively new to tablets / android, so I realize there is still much to learn yet

 

[John Bean]

I'm adding to this older thread rather than creating a new one because I'm experiencing similar unexplainable battery drain with the Play Store app on my Nexus 7. It doesn't happen often but when it does it's very inconvenient and annoying.

Scenario: full battery, straight off charge, notifications that updates exist, manually apply the updates (successful), check email and stuff then not use the Nexus 7 for a few - maybe four - hours.

Later: turn Nexus 7 on to read new mail, battery shows 50% and the case is noticeably warm. Checking the battery monitor (I use GSam) shows over 90% is app use and almost all is the Play Store app which showed nearly three hours (!) of cpu time with an almost identical "held awake" time. This is clearly not correct behaviour.

This is the second time in a week that this has happened and on both occasions I had to force close the app to restore normal behaviour; I'm looking for solutions that don't involve disabling the app altogether but I'm getting nowhere fast.