Fairphone 4 battery drain, is it just me?

Community
, ,
1

I’m wondering how you guys are experiencing battery life on a Fairphone 4?

Edit: I’m currently on /e/os version 3.2

I bought my FP4 in November 2021 and I’m a e/os user since January 2022. Since the beginning of this year I’m experiencing a extremely large battery drain.

I can’t even make it through one day without charging my phone, even when I’m barely using my phone. Even at night when I’m not using it, it still keeps on draining. For example: last night when I went to bed at 11pm, the battery was at 41%. I turned on the battery saver on and went to sleep. This morning I woke up at 7am and my phone was turned off. The battery was drained completely. That’s rediculous when compared to my work phone (Samsung), which can certainly last a few days with 41% when not used.

I’ve tried the following to reduce the battery drain:

  • First I tried to optimalize all apps and the OS settings, but to no avail.
  • In April I installed a new battery, but the battery life became only marginally better.
  • A few weeks ago I performed a factory reset, but this didn’t help either.

I’m not sure whether my phone’s hardware or the operating system is causing the battery drain, so therefore I’d like to know what your experiences are with battery life?

2

The battery drain bug was fixed in /e/OS 3.0

Which version do you run on your phone?

3

I am e-user since early 2022 and get good 2 days of battery life since then.

4

I’m currently on V3.2.

I also update this in the original post.

5

Good to know. I could go for about two days too in the past, but something has changed this year.

Are you still using your first/original battery?

6

I have no issues with my Murena FP4, now on 3.2. Same battery since early 2022 and I can use my phone for 3 - 4 days before I need to charge it

7

The battery drain bug was fixed in /e/OS 3.0

just for links, that were commits referenced in FP4: Battery drain (in flight mode) is substantial (#8082) · Issues · e / Backlog · GitLab

battery-historian is great for debugging battery drain, needs docker, here’s how it looks

8

Yes original battery with 94% capacity according to settings accu information.

9

I had (have) the same issue with my FP4, also from 2021 i think, and I also looked all around for any possible explanation.

In my case though, the likely cause is hardware: when I disconnect from the phone network (4g or 5g makes no difference) but with otherwise Bluetooth, Wifi, NFC activated, battery lifetime is back to normal (obviously even slightly better than say 2months ago as I rarely switch to airplane mode).

It seems the RF circuitry is something which can age, leading to much higher energy consumption.

Maybe worse a check for you too…

10

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll try switching off my mobile network during the night to see if this might explain the abnormal battery drain.

11

On second tought, i have data saving mode activated all the time, maybe that makes a difference ?

1 Like
12

It may be useful to study Settings > Battery > Battery usage.

Select a day, note that it may take more than a few moments for the performance for that day to become populated.

Now compare the options
. View by apps
. View by systems

In my experience it can be productive to Clear cache of any item which seems unreasonably high on the list, including System apps.

The app CacheCleaner is useful for this. (It has had a recent update but is still known not to work on all devices at higher Android versions. However it now works fine on my a15 Motorola)

Version 2.2.10 com.github.bmx666.appcachecleaner

1 Like
13

I found out that het APN of my mobile provider wasn’t configured correctly, but fixing this didn’t fix het battery drain.

However… I also noticed that the signal strength of mobile provider (KPN, Netherlands) is very low; -112db in my house. I didn’t expect that, because my mobile download speed look pretty good to me.
This might explain it, because my phone would probably try to boost the signal in order to keep a stable connection.

14

In my case it’s the CPU that used most battery, more than 80%.

I already tried helper apps like CacheCleaner, but this didn’t change much.

15

I filled it 2 days ago and it stays 82%. v.3.2, trackers blocked.

16

With mobile data, wifi, etc. enabled?

17

Yes. OK, I don’t use it much. It alerts me to a few emails that I read on my PC, notifies me of appointments, and I don’t make many phone calls nor pictures. Just a few games, when I take the train, a dictionary… I dislike to use Firefox on it.

18

Is battery usage capable of checking this window of time to see if CPU usage is directly tied to trying to keep mobile data alive?

Is WiFi fully available? Is the phone “fighting” over which network to use?

Developer options contains a switch to keep “Mobile data always active”.

19

Edit: Yes WiFi signal strength is excellent throughout our house (Fritz Mesh).

I disabled my mobile network completely this night and the battery went down just 1% instead of 40%!! So it’s definitely the mobile network consuming almost all of the battery power.

I can try to switch off the “Mobile data always active” option under developer option.

A few questions:

  • Is there a way to analyze the battery usage of the mobile network? I’d like to know which functions are is using most.
  • Could a reset of my network settings perhaps help? I personally doubt this, because I already performed a factory reset recently.
  • How can I turn off my mobile data (or even the complete mobile network) automatically at night? Preferably by using a schedule.

Any other suggestions to help pinpoint the exact cause or help to reduce the mobile network battery usage are much appreciated!

20

I tried watching CPU usage on the app DevCheck, flar2.devcheck. There is FAQ – DevCheck.

I could use the dashboard view to compare CPU use:

. Network as WiFi
. Network as Mobile data

doing some simple browsing. The CPU use seemed surprisingly similar … I guess you would get different … it might give some insight ??

… but then

Maybe search for ideas online as “High mobile power use due to poor signal” ?? For instance some building materials can be a real blocker, simple example but perhaps there are other ideas out there.

1 Like