With so many updates automatically downloaded and subsequently installed on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, it’s hard if not impossible for me to pinpoint the culprit on the battery-hogging problem that my tablet has experiencing.
THE BATTERY-HOGGING SYMPTOMS
Even at more than 50-percent of battery life, my Note 8.0 displayed these past few months an unusual flickering of the screen indicating a diminishing power supply. In fact, i have to connect the charger when it is below 50% battery life otherwise the tablet either reboots or turned off.
As usual, i do some surfing around to look for answers on what’s bugging my tablet these days. Some posts say they experienced the same and suspected the OS updates for causing the trouble. I can remember installing updates of the Android Jelly Bean OS–the latest was the 4.2.2 update. The Note 8.0 is stocked with the Jelly Bean 4.1.0 when shipped from its factory. The 4.1.0 was released on July 9, 2012 and is an incremental update primarily aimed to improve user performance of its interface. On the other hand, the 4.2.0 was released three months later and is said “A new flavor of Jelly Bean”. It improves a lot of the Jelly Bean’s functionality including Daydream screensaver and Photo Sphere panorama shots. The 4.2.2 update supposedly fixes bugs and enhances performances of our Android tablets and phones.
But just like some of the online commenters, i am not sure if the update caused the hogging. Just lately, i have noticed that Google Play Services app is kept on crashing. Earlier, i had checked on the battery usage in the Setting and found that the app is eating much power. I wasn’t able to screen grab it but this post has it.
So, i tried stopping the Google Play Services and uninstall it in the meantime to troubleshoot my tablet. Screenshot below left shows Google Play Services in the Google Play Store back to its factory state while the screenshot at right shows the battery usage at 51% power left without already the Google Play Services updates.
The downside for not updating the Google Play Services includes paralyzing some Google services like Hangouts and Google+ which i don’t care at all.
Since then, i can fully use again my Note 8.0 even at less than 10% battery left. The only thing annoying is Google always ask you to update the Google Play Services to let its other services work. Bleeh!
