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Automattic / pocket-casts-android

Pocket Casts Android 🎧
https://forums.pocketcasts.com
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Battery drain on Android 14 #1576

Open joashrajin opened 11 months ago

joashrajin commented 11 months ago

Description

We have had a few users report rapid battery drain after updating to Android 14. So far, these reports are all from Pixel users.

Reports

If you find a new report of this issue, please leave a comment with the report and update the table with the information as well. 🙇

Date of report Android version Device Pocket Casts version Link
? 14 Pixel 7 7.46 report that @joashrajin opened this issue with
Oct 8 13 ⚠️ Pixel 7 7.48 7138315-zd-a8c
Nov 2 14 Pixel 8 Pro 7.50 7252454-zd-a8c
Nov 4 14 Pixel 8 7.51-rc-1 7261096-zd-a8c
Nov 13 14 Pixel 7a 7.51 7307094-zd-a8c
Nov 24 14 Pixel 8 Pro 7355006-zd-a8c
Nov 29 14 Pixel 8 Pro Reddit post - Excessive battery use on Android 14?
Dec 3 14 Pixel 7a 7.52 7399236-zd-a8c, 7430257-zd-a8c
Dec 9 14 Pixel 6 Reddit comment
Dec 14 14 Pixel 8 Pro 7.53 7451831-zd-a8c
Jan 13 14 Pixel 8 Pro https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-android/issues/1576#issuecomment-1890465055 (ralphbk)
Mar 2 14 Pixel 8 https://forums.pocketcasts.com/forums/topic/high-battery-usage-on-android/
Mar 20 14 Pixel 6 7.59 7930408-zen
Apr 2 14 Pixel 6 7.59 https://forums.pocketcasts.com/forums/topic/high-battery-usage-on-android/
Apr 8 14 Pixel 8 https://forums.pocketcasts.com/forums/topic/high-battery-usage-on-android/?view=all#post-3472 Apr 26 14 Pixel 6a 7.61.1 https://play.google.com/console/u/0/developers/7957760354032996428/app/4975504729640578607/user-feedback/review-details?reviewId=58b1dcae-302b-4861-8397-4d19190098a7&corpus=PUBLIC_REVIEWS

Some questions for users seeing this issue

  1. How much overall battery are they losing over what period of time? This helps us tell how much battery Pocket Casts is using when it is the top battery-consuming app on their device.
  2. Are they listening to a lot of episodes when their battery is getting drained, or are they seeing increased battery usage even when they aren't listening to any episodes?
  3. Are they streaming over wifi, streaming over a mobile network, or playing downloaded episodes?
  4. How are the listening? (phone speaker, wired headphones, bluetooth)
  5. Are they listening to audio or are watching video podcasts?

internal ref: p1701258938716229-slack-C02A333D8LQ

joashrajin commented 11 months ago

7355006-zd-a8c

joashrajin commented 11 months ago

I don't know why it just decides to pause at least four times a day ... Although sometimes these random stops occur when my phone is not charging, sometimes it is charging when they do, and that's what happened this last time. My phone was charging, and almost to 100% while I was listening to podcasts. I checked the status of app battery usage for Pocketcasts, and it was already set to Unrestricted.

7377026-zd-a8c

This one is relating to playback randomly stopping

joashrajin commented 10 months ago

7399236-zd-a8c

I noticed very high battery drain on my Google Pixel 7a in the last few days, checked the battery usage statistics and its Pocket Casts draining 30-50% every day with the next highest app only draining ~6%. This is new, so I don't think this has been for long. Maybe its the recent Android 14 upgrade. But currently, the app is unusable like this.

joashrajin commented 10 months ago

Screenshots:

image image

7430257-zd-a8c

azollafox commented 10 months ago

Another report at 7451831-zd-a8c

battery image 2 7451831

battery image 1 7451831

mchowning commented 10 months ago

I have not found any clear cause for this.

One thing that stands out is that all of the users reporting this issue are using Pixel phones. I was not able to find any problematic behavior when testing Pocket Casts on my Pixel device, but there are a number of general reports about issues with battery drain on Pixel phones, so there is a chance that these users are seeing a more general issue with Pixel phones that is unrelated to Pocket Casts, but we can't rule out an app issue yet.

1. Android Vitals battery analytics look fine

I checked the Android Vitals dashboard in Google Play, and the two battery vitals with data are excessive background network usage and stuck partial wake locks. Both metrics seem to be stable at good levels and are only marginally higher on Android 14 compared to Android 13. For example, excessive background data usage only went from 0.9% to 0.13% from Android 13 to 14, and the overall number appears to be lower during the second half of 2023 compared to the first half.

Similarly, breaking these numbers down based on the app version also does not reveal any issues with a specific build of the app.

2. Patterns in the Reports: only Pixel users

I've collected all of the reports I've found and added them to a table in the issue description so it is easier to track these. The patterns I see are:

  1. Every report is from a Pixel device
  2. All but one report is from a device running Android 14. This could indicate either (a) that it is an Android 14 issue or (b) that it is a Pixel device issue, but it's almost always showing up on Android 14 devices because Pixel devices are the first to get updated.
  3. Reports have increased recently and that surge started around the beginning of November. The first report in November was a 7.50 build, but I do not see any concerning changes to our app in either 7.50 or 7.51. It also looks like the November security update for Pixel devices started rolling out on Nov. 6, so that doesn't match up with the Nov. 2 and Nov. 4 reports of battery issues.
  4. Looking at the logs of our users, nothing concerning stands out in what the app is doing. It is noteworthy though these all seem to be heavy users of the app. In particular, they listen to multiple hours of podcasts in a row. This would explain why they see Pocket Casts as the cause of a lot of their battery usage, but it would not explain why their battery usage would have gotten worse recently.

[!NOTE] The fact that a user sees that Pocket Casts is the top battery-consuming app on a device may, but does not necessarily, mean that Pocket Casts is using excessive battery, even if the number is really high. I think that number is only really meaningful in the context of how much the user's overall battery was drained during the time factor. Another large factor is how much of the time since the device was last charged that Pocket Casts was used (the app battery stats start over when the phone is charged).

For example, if you took the phone off the charger, streamed a video podcast for an hour, and then immediately checked the battery usage stats for Pocket Casts, I wouldn't be surprised if Pocket Casts had used 80% or 90% of the battery relative to the other apps.

In my testing, I played a podcast for 1.5 hours and the overall battery level on my device went down only 4%. During that time, the battery usage stats for Pocket Casts went from <1% at the beginning of that test to 37% after the 1.5 hours. In isolation, that 37% number looks bad, but in the context of only losing 4% of my total battery after playing a podcast for 1.5 hours, it seems very reasonable. If I had lost 30% of my battery over the 1.5 hours, however, then the 37% number for Pocket Casts would likely point toward a problem.

3. I have not been able to reproduce the issue

I have done a fair bit of testing have not found any particularly concerning battery usage on my Pixel device. As one example, I streamed a podcast to my wired earbuds for 1.5 hours on my Pixel 6 Pro running Android 14, and the overall battery level on my device only went down from 93% to 89%.

In my tests, I compared:

None of these produced significant battery usage. The thing that seemed to make the biggest difference was streaming over a low-quality mobile network. On that, I saw my battery drop by 4% over 30 minutes whereas streaming over wifi on that same device only dropped the overall battery level by 2% in that time frame. Losing 4% of my battery over 30 minutes doesn't seem too concerning doesn't sound what our users are reporting though.

4. There are reports of general issues with battery drain on Android 14 and Pixel Devices

It is possible that our users are seeing a more general Android 14 issue with battery usage. There have been quite a few reports of issues with battery usage on Android 14, and the Google Issue Tracker has a lot of reports about this over the last few months. I'm sure the issue tracker always get a lot of reports about battery issues though, so I don't know whether there have been more issues reported recently than is normal.

I also see a lot of complaints from Pixel users about battery issues (for example). Again though, I do not know if this is an increase in the baseline level of complaints about battery issues, although there are certainly some comments that indicating things have gotten worse recently, e.g.:

October update to Android 14 had really good battery life. November security update has made it nearly as bad as what it was on Android 13. -comment on reddit

Basically, it seems possible that our users may be seeing a broader issue with Pixel devices, but I am certainly not confident that is the problem. There could be an app issue I haven't found.

What should we do from here?

Let's keep collecting reports of the issue here. In addition to the standard device/os/pcversion info, it would be helpful to get some additional information about how these users are using Pocket Casts when the issue occurs:

  1. A lot of users show us the screen indicating that Pocket Casts is the app using most of their battery, but it would be good to know how much their battery had fallen since they last charged as well since that provides some helpful context (i.e., Pocket Casts being responsible for 40% of a 2% drop in battery is very different from Pocket Casts being 40% responsible for their battery completely draining in 4 hours).
  2. Are they listening to a lot of episodes when this happens, or are they seeing increased battery usage even when they aren't listening to any episodes?
  3. Are they streaming over wifi, streaming over a mobile network, or playing downloaded episodes? If using a mobile network, the strength of the network is also relevant since that can significantly affect battery life.
  4. Are they listening over the phone speaker, wired earbugs, or bluetooth?
  5. Are they listening to audio-only or are these video podcasts?

I have added these questions to the issue description above.

ralphbk commented 9 months ago

I'm using a Pixel 8 Pro with Android 14.

  1. Here are some battery usage screenshots as requested: Screenshot_20240112-081447 - 56% battery usage while using Pocket Casts to listen to audio podcast for 30 minutes - using bluetooth Pixel Buds. Screenshot_20240112-101233 -10% battery usage while not using Pocket Casts at all.

Screenshot_20240113-120454 - 55% battery usage while using Pocket Casts to listen to audio postcast for 60 minutes - using wired ear buds (via USB-C to audio dongle)

  1. I try to only charge my phone to 80%, however I would estimate that using Pocket Casts for about an 1hr drops my battery by 10%.
  2. I am generally only listening to 1-2 podcasts on my 25minute commute to work. The biggest drain is seen while listening.
  3. I am nearly always plating downloaded podcasts. (I got behind on my podcasts over the Xmas holidays.)
  4. I mostly use bluetooth earbuds, but this morning I tried with wired earbuds, with very similar results. See section 1.
  5. I only listen to audio podcasts. No video podcasts.
winter98 commented 8 months ago

Also having this on pixel 6a, between 30 and 50% battery usage meaning I get less than a day on my battery so going to change to another app.

winter98 commented 8 months ago

Oh and also on android 14 so does seem this combination. I changed the battery settings for the app to optimised, have done background downloading of podcasts and listened to about 5 minutes of a podcast during 1 hour when it was to draining app

hsghori commented 8 months ago

Also seeing this behavior on a Pixel 5 and Android 14

Canabale commented 7 months ago

Description

We have had a few users report rapid battery drain after updating to Android 14. So far, these reports are all from Pixel users.

Reports

If you find a new report of this issue, please leave a comment with the report and update the table with the information as well. 🙇 Date of report Android version Device Pocket Casts version Link ? 14 Pixel 7 7.46 report that @joashrajin opened this issue with Oct 8 13 ⚠️ Pixel 7 7.48 7138315-zd-a8c Nov 2 14 Pixel 8 Pro 7.50 7252454-zd-a8c Nov 4 14 Pixel 8 7.51-rc-1 7261096-zd-a8c Nov 13 14 Pixel 7a 7.51 7307094-zd-a8c Nov 24 14 Pixel 8 Pro 7355006-zd-a8c Nov 29 14 Pixel 8 Pro Reddit post - Excessive battery use on Android 14? Dec 3 14 Pixel 7a 7.52 7399236-zd-a8c, 7430257-zd-a8c Dec 9 14 Pixel 6 Reddit comment Dec 14 14 Pixel 8 Pro 7.53 7451831-zd-a8c Jan 13 14 Pixel 8 Pro GitHub comment (ralphbk)

Some questions for users seeing this issue

1. How much overall battery are they losing over what period of time? This helps us tell how much battery Pocket Casts is using when it is the top battery-consuming app on their device.

2. Are they listening to a lot of episodes when their battery is getting drained, or are they seeing increased battery usage even when they aren't listening to any episodes?

3. Are they streaming over wifi, streaming over a mobile network, or playing downloaded episodes?

4. How are the listening? (phone speaker, wired headphones, bluetooth)

5. Are they listening to audio or are watching video podcasts?

internal ref: p1701258938716229-slack-C02A333D8LQ

I am facing strongly increased battery drain on my ASUS ROG 6 Pro too. So it's not just pixel users.

I checked the apps that drained the battery, and it seems that all apps (simple stuff like Instagram) had a massively increased drainage.

n1xim commented 7 months ago

Since it isn't mentioned here, this is likely related to the fact that this app DEMANDS repeatedly to be added to the list of apps for which power management policies do not apply. I have not caved and made the unnecessary configuration change and therefore my phone, despite running Android 14, does not experience this problem (and continues to play audio just fine...even when I want to scream because the damn pestering configuration change dialog has come up again). This is, I suspect, a 100% configuration generated issue and therefore a bug in that it demands the end user to put it into a configuration state which is bound to cause issues.

ralphbk commented 7 months ago

This is, I suspect, a 100% configuration generated issue and therefore a bug in that it demands the end user to put it into a configuration state which is bound to cause issues.

Interesting theory. So you think it is still somehow background checking the config over-enthusiastically even when it has been granted unrestricted battery usage?

joashrajin commented 7 months ago

Since it isn't mentioned here, this is likely related to the fact that this app DEMANDS repeatedly to be added to the list of apps for which power management policies do not apply.

Are you referring to giving Pocket Casts Unrestricted Battery access as the cause? If so, I have that enabled but don't have these battery drain issues on Android 14 either 🤔

n1xim commented 7 months ago

Since it isn't mentioned here, this is likely related to the fact that this app DEMANDS repeatedly to be added to the list of apps for which power management policies do not apply.

Are you referring to giving Pocket Casts Unrestricted Battery access as the cause? If so, I have that enabled but don't have these battery drain issues on Android 14 either 🤔

Well, there goes that theory... I'd love it if it would stop demanding I change that setting nonetheless.

erricgunawan commented 7 months ago

3-star app review (7930408-zen):

Is something wonky with the latest update? 03/20/24 my battery is draining 15+% per hour, with the screen off.

Device: Google Pixel 6 App version code: 9200 App version name: 7.59 Android version: Android 14 (SDK 34)

joashrajin commented 7 months ago

image

https://forums.pocketcasts.com/forums/topic/heavy-battery-usage-android-14/?view=all#post-3347

joashrajin commented 6 months ago

https://forums.pocketcasts.com/forums/topic/high-battery-usage-on-android/?view=all#post-3472

I’m also confirming this. 19% battery use for 4 mins of screen time, and less than a minute of background (which I don’t believe, I listened to podcasts for about 45 mins today). Pixel 8 on Android 14

joashrajin commented 6 months ago

the battery drain seemed worse when my work profile was active (even though my PocketCasts app is installed on the personal profile). If work was active, the phone got warmer, battery drained more, and PC was displayed as the leading battery drainer.

Overall, battery usage was 40%, in roughly 3 hours of play time. Minimal other phone usage in that time (email pings, some basic social browsing, no video streaming or heavy game playing). I saw the battery usage while I was listening / streaming, both via bluetooth (earbud) and Android Auto (wired). Always listening via download, not streamed. Always audio, not video.

https://forums.pocketcasts.com/forums/topic/heavy-battery-usage-android-14/

hsghori commented 6 months ago

Fleshing out my repro with the additional info

I spent a decent amount of time switching to pocketcasts from Spotify podcasts and this issue has gotten quite unsustainable. Before this cropped up, I was planning on buying a pro subscription. Now I'm highly considering switching to a different app.

Screenshot_20240416-085044.png

erricgunawan commented 6 months ago

8072023-zen (3-star App Review):

It consumes a lot of battery and data. It is no longer what it was...

Device: Samsung Galaxy S23 Android version: Android 14 (SDK 34)

azollafox commented 6 months ago

Reported in Google Play https://play.google.com/console/u/0/developers/7957760354032996428/app/4975504729640578607/user-feedback/review-details?reviewId=58b1dcae-302b-4861-8397-4d19190098a7&corpus=PUBLIC_REVIEWS

App version code: 9214 App version name: 7.61.1 Android version: Android 14 (SDK 34)

dgsharpe commented 5 months ago

I'm experiencing this as well on a Pixel 7. Android 14 on the May 2024 security patch (AP1A.240505.005), Pocket Casts 7.63 (9232). The issue is longstanding, probably over a year, I just haven't reported it until now. I regularly see figures like, Pocket Casts is responsible for ~40% of a 60% drop in battery charge. I'm a regular listener in fits and spurts throughout the day, but I think that the battery drain is happening even when I'm not actively listening, during my workday.

I listen exclusively to downloaded audio episodes via bluetooth earbuds.

thabotswana commented 5 months ago

Reported in Google Play

Device: Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra App version code: 9232 App version name: 7.63 Android version: Android 14 (SDK 34)

mebarbosa commented 5 months ago

Taking a look over the internet I still see a lot of reports complaining about Android 14 battery drain, but nothing exclusive to Pocket Casts app

thabotswana commented 4 months ago

Reported in Google Play

Device: Google Pixel 6a App version code: 109242 App version name: 7.65w Android version: Android 14 (SDK 34)