It's even worse on BlackBerry - I don't have personal benchmark numbers (I use my phone a lot anyway, so it usually is pretty dead by the end of a day), but if I have Skype running my battery drops to literally a few hours. I've moved to a third party app (IM+) instead now.
Interesting. Doesn't Microsoft included Skype with their Surface tablets? I wonder if it is affecting those machines as well, or if they are doing something different with them.
This is a bug specific to android devices that is caused when the camera is used. Skype accesses the camera often so it can cause the bug to appear more, it's not Skype itself causing the issue
How does that mean it isn't Skype causing the issue? On my Windows desktop I recently uninstalled Skype because it would frequently saturate a core for long periods of time while doing absolutely nothing of relevance.
I use Skype almost every other minute, and never witnessed any huge battery drains either from my Windows Phone or Windows RT tablet or even in an iPhone. Guess its an android issue
Better (as good) idea: Disable Google Now, Google location reporting, and all those Google sync services.
I'm far from free of battery problems, but do better than most with those not running and startup receivers disabled for apps that insist on another useless service. Not that I have Facebook or Skype apps installed either though...
Disabling Google location reporting leads to more battery drainage, as that means disabling the Wifi location provider, unless by that you mean disabling location services completely. Android 4.3 had a bug in it leading to a lot of battery drainage if the Wifi location provider was on (my phone's battery life went from almost 48 hours to less than 12). As a result of me disabling it, the GPS ended up being activated a lot, like on each opening of Facebook or others that insist on getting your approximate location, with no way to turn the behavior off, unless I completely disabled location services, which I did eventually (thank Android's broken permissions system for that).
Thankfully it is now fixed in Android 4.4 - so if you experienced problems with Android 4.3 (as I did on a Nexus 4), then upgrade.
> Not that I have Facebook or Skype apps installed either though...
Not having any messenger synchronizing in the background sure helps with battery life. I've got an older Galaxy S that's not synchronizing with anything and that stays in standby for 7 days.
BUT - mobile devices are all about communications and being online. I communicate with people on Skype, Facebook's Messenger, GMail, Hangouts, etc... and not having these services on my mobile phone defeats the purposes of a smartphone. After all, why is my phone a smartphone if I can't keep it synchronized with my online accounts? For browsing? It kind of sucks for browsing. For games? I don't do that.
Disable Google Search, Google Bookmarks Sync, Google Contacts Sync (doing this also lets you have local contacts again), anything else Google Now related.
Instead of disabling Google Search, if you use CM or XPrivacy, you can also just revoke the location and wakelock permissions from it.
yup. my nexus 4 battery was getting drained by something called mediaserver, and after a quick google search it was google now and google currents; which had absolutely ridiculous sync rates murdering my battery in a span of 2 hours. A thing to note is that when a significant portion of the CPU is being used on the nexus 4, the phone gets REALLY HOT. Untouchably hot. Leaving the phone in my pocket was actually burning my thigh.
mediaserver using a lot of battery can be caused by a corrupted media file. Wiping stored music / pictures often fixes that one. I've had that happen and tracked it down to a single small (empty?) file - once removed, the problem went away.
After reading that is when I really considered uninstalling Skype. Creepy indeed. Is there any mod which remedies the issue with something like a "fake camera access"?
I installed it just yesterday (it was very easy). It really is great, it can even notify you for permissions as the app tries to access them (and you can allow or deny), and you can even vote on permissions and download the crowdsourced ones (with the paid version).
People are voting devx down, but as far as I remember Microsoft was the first to join PRISM, and at the time they paid a ridiculous amount for Skype in an area they really had no interest in being.
What I basically mean is a large portion of the money paid for Skype may not have been from MS, but from someone that wanted Skype's data without anyone knowing they are involved. MS is the perfect puppet because they already agreed to the PRISM related bullshit years before the existence of PRISM, and once it was a documented/codenamed thing they were (obviously against their will) the first on the list.
Downvote me too, I don't care. This is something I think is being blatantly under-examined.
Not sure if that is the whole problem, but Skype is bad everywhere battery wise. I switch it on only when I have a meeting. It's a shame the competitors are not moving faster ; there is definitely an opportunity for this. I see Skype taking far too many resources on Android, iOS, Mac and Win. Best behaviour seems to be iOS so far for me.
If I log out of Skype every time after use and Skype doesn't even show up in my battery statistics, does that mean I'm not affected by the bug, or could Skype's battery drain be hiding behind those system services?
Nexus 4 here, very poor battery performance, would be great to know what causes it, but I'm not convinced it really is Skype.
I'm one of those users that monitors the battery drainage of every app that I use - since I'm a heavy apps user, I care about my phone's battery life and certain apps make for a dramatic difference.
Skype has always been amongst the worse in terms of battery drainage. 6 months ago it was so bad that my phone wouldn't last for a couple of hours in standby with Skype active. It got much better but it's still so bad that I cannot keep it active. I basically keep it disabled and only open it when I need to talk to a contact, then I logout again. And I don't know what's wrong with WhatsApp messenger, because it too is guilty of a lot of battery drainage lately. Hence I uninstalled it completely.
Google's Hangouts is barely visible in the stats on battery life that I collect (with GSam Battery). The battery usage could be hidden within system services, however I always test messenger apps with a before & after test. In the case of Hangouts, I disabled it completely for a complete discharge, after which I enabled it again and no significant difference happened.
it doesnt matter if you disable hangouts, the push and update subsystem will always run. you will never get a better reading unless you disable several google services you cant disable.
skype et al era just more visible. though it is just a matter of google not allowing other in their infrastructure for the benefit of the user. not even offering as a paid service for those competitors. pure old greed.
1. you can for example disable the google account synchronization happening, either for Hangouts specifically, or for the whole google account and notice the difference. If you don't trust doing that, you can always install CyanogenMod on your phone, without any of Google's services, at which point you'll have no capability of synchronizing your Google account at all. And then notice the difference between that and simply not synchronizing your Google account. I did that btw, because as I've said, I'm a fanatic in regards to battery life.
2. I use and have used other messenger services regularly, like Facebook's Messenger. None of them have been so bad as Skype is.
That's the funny thing about Google abysmal failure in most products outside search and gmail, their subpar competition doesn't even rank in most people's mind unless they force it on you.
Well, WA actually did win, because it was the best.
Whatsapp is like the Ryanair of messaging: no ads, no games, (up to FB acquisition) no data mining, basically: no frills, no hassles.
Compare that with Skype/MSN Messenger, the FB Messenger or basically any other messenger out there: ads, more ads, MORE FUCKING ADS, a PITA to add/find new contacts (Whatsapp just bootstraps with the contact manager of the phone!), oh and did I forget MORE FUCKING SHITLOADS OF ADS? And no way to pay to just get rid of them?
Well, the current version of WhatsApp is eating my battery like crazy on my Android 4.4 / Nexus 4. And I hate their accounts / login system, as it depends on having an SMS-enabled plan and capable device. This means I cannot use WhatsApp on my desktop, on my iPad, on any device other than my primary phone basically, or when traveling at which point I shun roaming charges for local pre-pay plans.
Facebook's Messenger for example, or any messenger service not mapped directly to your primary phone number, has no problems with any of that.
This goes for Google Hangouts, Skype, Slack or XMPP services in general (hosted by you or not), amongst myriads of messenger services that don't do ads. So I think you're exaggerating.
> This goes for Google Hangouts, Skype, Slack or XMPP services in general (hosted by you or not), amongst myriads of messenger services that don't do ads. So I think you're exaggerating.
Google is known to mine your data for personalization of advertising of Mail ads, but I do not know if this is also done for Hangout chats.
Skype has ads like hell (open a chat on a netbook, half the vertical screen size is lost to ads and fucked up layout), Facebook the same (sidebar on the web site), and likely also data mining.
Nexus 5 + Skype (with 0 actual skyping done) = 16hrs autonomy. I almost RMAed the phone.
Nexus 5 sans Skype = after 24hrs I still had 50% battery.
Don't belive me? Try it on your KitKat device!