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Comment by blueskin_ | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

This is (generally) pretty bad advice.

Google location services is the least battery-intensive way to get your location. If you turn it off your phone will use other methods instead.

Google Now doesn't do much unless you use it. It's almost all Serverside functionality anyway.

Google Sync services are mixed. Gmail is pretty good, but Google Currents seems terrible.

Do you have instructions for that? There are a bunch of settings, and I want to make sure I get everything.

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.

> anything else Noogle Now related.

I like Noogle so much I might write up a quick chrome extension that turns Google into Noogle everywhere.

...and the next s/keyboard/leopard / cloud2butt is born.

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.

I don't store any music on my phone and I hardly have any pictures on it

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