battery [Pixel 4a / Android 11] Battery life took a bad turn

[Varusal]

Hey folks,

 

My current daily driver is the Pixel 4a with Android 11 (RP1A.201105.002) and my battery life is pretty bad especially in idle.

Now let me explain my issue more clearly.

 

I use the Pixel 4a now for a month and after 1-2 weeks I've noticed that Android 11 doesn't close apps automatically if you swipe them away, which wouldn't be a big deal if they would stop getting notifications or simply stop running in the background. But I've found out that some apps still run in the background despite restricting background battery usage and using battery optimization (ofc with adaptive battery on).

On my previous daily driver which used Android 10, it worked flawlessly. Some apps would run in the background but would be put to sleep after about 15 minutes.

On the Pixel 4a I currently use Greenify to force stop some apps I don't need to run in the background and my battery life is pretty amazing as you can see in this screenshot and this screenshot.

 

Fast forward to today, without Greenify apps still run in the background (force stop in app info is clickable) and the "while in background" timer just goes up. I've restricted those apps but they still run in background even though I only use them once a day for about 5-10 minutes as you can see here in this screenshot. Keep in mind that I forced closed the app after discovering that the app still run in the background.

 

So now my battery life looks like this. Which isn't really good. Some people might say that it is maybe an app, that drains the battery. Well guess what, no apps installed only the default apps and here you can see the madness. I charged my phone up to 95% and after about 4 hours in idle and 12 minutes SoT, it dropped down to 81%.

Currently it looks like this. As you can see now I only have 74% with 5 hours and 30 minutes in idle with 40 minutes SoT.

 

So what the heck is going on?

 

[2FA]

21 minutes ago, Varusal said:

So now my battery life looks like this. Which isn't really good. Some people might say that it is maybe an app, that drains the battery. Well guess what, no apps installed only the default apps and here you can see the madness. I charged my phone up to 95% and after about 4 hours in idle and 12 minutes SoT, it dropped down to 81%.

Currently it looks like this. As you can see now I only have 74% with 6 hours and 30 minutes in idle with 40 minutes SoT.

Uhh, that seems like fairly normal battery usage and seems to match up with the battery life in this article https://www.droid-life.com/2020/10/15/google-pixel-pixel-4a-5g-battery-life-how-good/

[Varusal]

2 minutes ago, 2FA said:

Uhh, that seems like fairly normal battery usage and seems to match up with the battery life in this article https://www.droid-life.com/2020/10/15/google-pixel-pixel-4a-5g-battery-life-how-good/

I don't have the 5G version.

Also the big difference is that the writer used the phones. My screenshots show you that not a single app is/was running and the phone was in idle.

[2FA]

2 minutes ago, Varusal said:

I don't have the 5G version.

Also the big difference is that the writer used the phones. My screenshots show you that not a single app is/was running and the phone was in idle.

5G version is identical except for the 5G antenna, if anything it would use more power. Going from 95% to 81% after 4.5 hours with a little screen time very much seems normal to me. What was your previous phone?

[Varusal]

2 minutes ago, 2FA said:

5G version is identical except for the 5G antenna, if anything it would use more power. Going from 95% to 81% after 4.5 hours with a little screen time very much seems normal to me. What was your previous phone?

It's not. Even during my setup day (installing apps etc) it went through a day without problems at all (iirc it had a runtime of about 2 days with 4-5 hours SoT). I had a Pixel 3 and a Realme 6 both phones didn't have any issues. It occurred after the November Security Patch.

[EL02]

Many users have been experiencing a decrease in battery life after updating to A11. Also a 3000mah battery isnt really enough for a full day of use, at least for me.

But yeah, i mostly blame it on the poor android 11 optimization. 14% is too much when idle.

[Varusal]

16 minutes ago, EL02 said:

Many users have been experiencing a decrease in battery life after updating to A11. Also a 3000mah battery isnt really enough for a full day of use, at least for me.

But yeah, i mostly blame it on the poor android 11 optimization. 14% is too much when idle.

Kinda interesting, I restarted my device and now it look like this (see below). Nearly two hours more in idle but only 1% went down. Doesn't make sense but with Android 11, there is apparently a new battery feature and only some users can change the behavior of it (https://www.xda-developers.com/google-tests-new-background-suspension-feature-android-11-improve-battery-life).

Quote

"freeze apps when cached and unfreeze them once removed from the cache or killed. Frozen apps won’t use any CPU cycles, reducing power consumption for misbehaving processes which might attempt to run while cached."

So this pretty much confirms that Android 11/or some apps has/have a bug in which processes still run in background even though they shouldn't and as long as you can't change this setting so that those apps will be frozen, the issue will not go away.

Weirdly enough is that this feature is apparently already implemented in all Android 11 devices but the setting is only changeable for some users in developer options. I don't have this setting on my Pixel 4a.
 

[Happy_Hopper]

On 11/10/2020 at 12:04 AM, Varusal said:

Kinda interesting, I restarted my device and now it look like this (see below). Nearly two hours more in idle but only 1% went down. Doesn't make sense but with Android 11, there is apparently a new battery feature and only some users can change the behavior of it (https://www.xda-developers.com/google-tests-new-background-suspension-feature-android-11-improve-battery-life).

So this pretty much confirms that Android 11/or some apps has/have a bug in which processes still run in background even though they shouldn't and as long as you can't change this setting so that those apps will be frozen, the issue will not go away.

Weirdly enough is that this feature is apparently already implemented in all Android 11 devices but the setting is only changeable for some users in developer options. I don't have this setting on my Pixel 4a.
 

I use Pixel 4a still running on Android 10. When I first started using the phone I noticed that "Android System" had a very high battery usage on my phone. It was always positioned at 2nd or 3rd in my battery usage list with like 10-15% battery usage, affecting my battery life. Compared to my other android phones with similar usage, it was higher on Pixel.

For a long time I couldn't figure out what caused it. Played around with many system apps by turning things on/off, turns out it was due to Device Personalization Services (now called Android System Intelligence). It had a high data usage when I checked it. I disabled it and it solved my problem. Now Android System drains just 3-4% of my phone's battery. I use 2 phones and bought Pixel 4a specifically for its camera. I don't use any of the Device Personalization Services and completely fine without it. So I'm mentioning my experience incase anyone wants to turn it off.