Android Lollipop 5.0: Battery Life Bugs and Fixes

Android 5.0 Lollipop update often gets accompanied by a lot of battery life complains. Shoot, we hear about them even after a small update like 4.4.4 (from 4.4.2), but battery life issues are almost always reported after an update. So today we wanted to highlight a few specific devices and see what you can do to improve their battery life.

There are a number of devices that have been updated to Android 5.0, 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 Lollipop lately. These include the 2014 Moto X, 2014 Moto G, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S4, LG G2, LG G3, HTC One M7, HTC One M8, Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 6, and a few others. So if you have any Android smartphone that has experienced any loss in overall battery life since your Lollipop update, let’s talk about a few steps you can take to resolve those issues.

Let it Settle

The first tip I always suggest when someone is reporting battery life issues immediately after an update is to let the update settle in. When a brand new update is applied to your device, it can take 2-3 days before the Android system has ‘settled in’, so to speak. During this time, there are a lot of things happening like syncing data to and from the device, setting up the cached data that was wiped upon updating, and even you using your device more often (even if you don’t realize it) because of all the new features you are exploring. All of this uses the battery more than you are used to, so it can seem like the battery life is worse than it once was.

Clear the Cache

Sometimes an Android update will not wipe the cache partition properly and this can result in poor performance, as well as poor battery life. If there is any left-over cache data from an old install, this means that the new install isn’t able to utilize as much of the partition as it should be able to. This means less data and fewer apps are cached and that results in worse battery life since it’s having to pull the information from the internal storage each time. If you suspect this is happening with one of your Android 5.0 Lollipop updated devices, go ahead and boot up into the recovery and wipe that cache partition. You will not lose any of your data in this process, so there is nothing to fear about doing this. Also, this is different from the ‘empty cache’ applications that are so prevalent in the Google Play Store. You must boot up into recovery mode to wipe that cache partition.

Safe Mode

Sometimes a 3rd party application is using more of your battery than you are used to and this is what is causing the poor battery life. When some users have hundreds of 3rd party apps installed, it can be troublesome to find out if it is indeed one of those apps causing the trouble. An easy way to troubleshoot this is by booting up into Safe Mode. This mode is present in all Android devices and it will disable all 3rd party applications in the process. Rebooting the device again will take you back into the regular Android OS, with all 3rd party apps reactivated, so there is no need to worry about testing this out. If battery life is back to normal while you are in Safe Mode, then it is most likely a 3rd party application that is causing the issue and then you need to find out which one it is (most likely by uninstalling them one at a time, or all at once).

Factory Reset

The last thing we wanted to mention was that a factory reset can sometimes resolve battery life issues after an update. There are thousands of ways the update process can ‘hiccup’ and cause random issues with the device. This is the cause of 90% of the bugs that we see reported after new updates. It’s rare, but it happens often enough that we always hear about it. Doing a factory reset can resolve issues, like poor battery life, even when the problems don’t seem to be software related at all (like charging speed). We understand that it can be a pain to factory reset your device but almost all OEMs offer a program to help you back up your data (or at least the majority of it). When you think about the fact that a carrier technician will do a factory reset on your device if you return it for repair anyway, you might as well try it from the comfort of your own home.

-    androidorigin