Android phone software upgrade

[Tmation]

My Google Nexus 4 did an upgrade to Android 4.4 Kitkat and since then it drains the battery really fast.


My wife's Samsung Note did the same upgrade a few days later and now has the same problem with the battery.


Anyone got any idea how to stop that happening or know if there is an upcoming update?

[Punkstig]

I'm new to android but surely there's an option in settings to turn off automatic updates?

[Samaha]

There will probably be a patch/fix update soon to remedy the problem. Kit Kat hasn't been rolled out on all devices yet so you're pretty much the guinea pig.

[mickvp]

nexus is always the first devices to receive updates as google owns it (and they own android too).

There will likely be a fix soon to help battery life. in the meantime you might want to dig into the setting and se if there is any features you are not using/hardly ever use which you could disable to help out (for instance, if you  dont use the sat nav much, get the GPS switched off).

If you have an email account synched up with the phone, check the settingd and see how often it synchronises. if you dont need the emails from it instantly set it to synch every 3-4 hours instead which will help reduce the amount of work thedevice is doing in the background.

there are a couple of more little tricks like that to help prolong battery life a bit, and it all adds up - just use a bit of common sense in your approach

[richfzs]

Check in the settings, there's a utility tells you what's using the battery. Mate of mine has a Nexus 5 (which had kitkat out of the box), battery wasn't lasting - the PayPal app was the guilty party. Took it off, no more bother. Both my Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 have been updated, with no change to battery life - it'll be an app you've got that's doing the damage - take it off until it gets updated to fix the issue.

[NorthWestern]

I am still on Jelly Bean but the last update I took really drained my battery too.  I found that it was the Chrome browser causing the problem, it has an option to use your location for searches which runs all the time using both network and GPS silently, this sucks your battery.  I was charging mine overnight and by the time I got home from work it was down to ~10%


To turn it off (assuming this is the same on your phone) its in:


Settings->LocationServices-> and the option is "Location and Google search.  Make sure that is turned off.  Try that and see if it improves, obviously your phone will no longer benefit from whatever that option brings but I have not noticed any change since switching it off and the battery is back to lasting days between charges.

[mtread]

Like NorthWestern I too had the same problem when upgrading from Ice Cream Sandwich to Jellybean. Problem is that an upgrade installs/re-installs much of the Android or manufacturer's 'tat' applications which sit there gobbling up battery and bandwidth. Each upgrade seems to think you need more stuff that will constantly know where you are, what you're doing, check for messages, check for this and that etc etc. All of which use the battery all of the time.
Following lots of trawling through forums for the problem, I downloaded '2 Hide Apps'. This is an app which lets you choose which apps to 'switch off' both now and on restart. Doesn't uninstall them, just disables. So if you disable something important, you can switch it back on again.
I switched off about 20 apps, with no ill effects. Result, battery back to normal.

[Tmation]

checked the settings, most apps only using a few percent but screen was using 67% turned it down as much as I could but still hasn't made much different.
Tried rebooting again and it did some more updates and seems to have gone back to normal, hopefully it lasts.

[locksmith]

Juice defender is a good free ap for battery saving

[mtread]

Juice defender is a good free ap for battery saving

  :thumbup
Does it by disabling or allowing intermittent GPS, WiFi and 3G when you are not using the phone, and quickly puts them back on when you are using it. Allows you to set various 'strengths' of battery saving

[Tmation]

Thanks will try the app

[nsr500v4]

Use battery Guru, its qualcomm's own battery saving app, it learns your usage patterns and adapts, its compatible with Nexus 4. I have been using it on Nexus 5 and it does make a difference