Pixel 8 Pro battery tips (mainly for WiFi drain)
Random less known battery tips mainly for the wifi chip (was causing huge drain for me), have been messing/diagnosing random drains/wakeups with adb n stuff past few days,, finally happy have gone from about ~50mah (crazy) > ~4mah idle ,,, anyway just thought i'd write them down and share what has worked so far,,, feel free to add findings/tweaks! (and no, not recommending battery saver as it kills refresh rate and looks awful,, and yes the battery life in general sucks vs other phones, no escaping it)
#1. Fixed Mac address 1.Open your phone's Wi-Fi settings, tap the gear next to your network, and change Privacy from "Randomised MAC" to "Device MAC" ,, this made massive difference to me in idle wifi system drain,, apps were using 0.5mah ,,, idle system wifi was using 40+mah (i have no idea how this bug is a thing that google haven't found/identified as problematic (i use bt hub uk) it seems to be looping wifi wakeups and stopping the wifi chip from dozing or something on pixels or the latest update?
#2. Data Saver + Metered connection 2.use data saver while setting ur wifi connection to "metered" (makes it same rules as mobile data) ,, then only enable phone/messaging/weather/discord etc stuff u want updating in bg,,, it blocks random apps/bugs from waking wifi doze,, this also can stop them using so much cpu too if they don't have access to new updates/checks etc,,
#3. Disable googles "special app access" 3.settings > apps > special app access > "modify system settings" access > turn off google/playservices/playstore,, think it stops google from messing with these tweaks...
#4. BetterBatteryStats reloaded (new version github) 4.bbs reloaded on github updated recently, VERY good for checking/comparing battery loss (u can see the process/systems) its FOSS i think,,, can help u diagnose any rogue processes/bugs,, see wakeups etc
#5. Wifiscan throttling
pretty sure u want this enabled (pretty basic/common tweak), from old thread
"It is there so apps cannot just scan for wifi whenever they want. Any apps, including built in system apps. Some apps want wifi all the time, even if they are not being actively used. There really isn't a great reason for that especially if the app is just some waste of time game.
But you want some apps to be able to update actively and on the fly. My ISP has hotspots all over the country. If I'm using a map app and have given the device permission to connect to those specific hotspots and set the app to use wifi before mobile data then I am totally fine with that specific app checking for new wifi every couple minutes while walking around a new city trying not to get lost.
So if the wifi scan setting is on and if you have apps that are not trying to be all crazy with the wifi for no reason then the battery power saved would be negligible. But if there is a crazy app that just wants wifi all the time, this setting stops it from trying every 2 seconds (or whatever timeframe the developer wrote into the code) which will improve battery life.
The settings doesn't really improve wifi connectivity in any meaningful way unless you want the device to scan for a new network that may have stronger signal but it won't change the active wifi connection strength or anything."
#5.1 Suspend execution for cached apps 5."Suspend execution for cached apps" in developer settings helps some people, pretty well known tweak also common to enable,,, (if u don't notice a difference, i would leave this off, as it will make your phone feel a little smoother when switching apps and they are ready/waiting for you,, but test it yourself - imo its less obvious to enable than all other tweaks
#6. Disable "Allow background usage" on apps that don't need it 6.Disabling "allow background usage" on apps that don't need it also helps (u can do this on messaging apps, they still receive/listen for new messages/calls/updates/notifications,, like whatsapp/messages/discord etc still work fine when not allowed to run in bg) (long press app icon/recent tab to bring up the info menu option, or from apps settings) ,,, this is pretty well known but u can also can disable bg data for these (even better with data saver on) ,, saw people complaining some apps were still running in bg with background usage setting turned off,, well it might be pure data/listening for updates only (similar to phone/messages),, disabling data too/enabling datasaver may help (as that option seems much higher level authority than disable background usage,,) not sure...
#7. Use efficient apps, check/compare them with bbs 7.Use brave for youtube/twitch etc,, I tried all the other browsers and brave beat them all for video media by a good 20-50% (even tho i love firefox/forks with extensions),, i use brave for any media/twitch/yt + it can natively play in background well too... , then use other browser for normal browsing and have background usage disabled ,, also browsers sites block ads, whereas apps have them built in (youtube/reddit etc),, health apps can be absolute killers for battery , so check with bbs or other battery apps,, (gadget bridge offers alot of similar/controllable/adfree stuff),,, basically any FOSS alternative is usually good.
#8. Random other tips Heres some other random tips that i find useful,, 1-4 was main ones
8.1 Bonus unrelated thing, can hide navigation bar (the white pill/puck at bottom of screen) using "essentials" by sameerasw on github (which i didnt think was possible on pixels without root, but its awesome and looks so clean)
8.2 And you can disable at a glance/google bar , with lawnchair, which helps a bit for battery,, its very clean + allows double tap to sleep (WHY GOOGLE doesn't add these things is madness)
8.3 Custom icons ^ u can use custom launcher, then use custom widget pack , then edit the entire custom widget pack (colour/value/saturation etc) with iconpackstudio ,,,
8.4.. u can also enable/freeze apps without uninstalling them (sometimes useful for clutter/annoying apps that u still use occassionally) with essentials + shizuku ,,,,, and also if ur using that combo ,, u can also edit top notification bar stuff (eg u can hide areoplane mode symbol, or time/battery/wifi/datasaver) which is nice for minimal ui!
8.5 ... bluetooth earbuds jank,, best settings for me (minimal stutter/weirdness) "disable absolute bt =enabled", "disabled bt a2dp offload = disabled" , avrcp1.4, "Le audio = disabled" "disable le audio hardware offload = enabled" "hd audio = off" .... bare minimum standard = stable, sounds good,,
8.6... "slideshow screensaver" old app from fdroid app built into default screensaver options in android , to allow you to play a much slower custom slideshow when charging (set it to while charging, "restrict wireless charging = off" "low light mode off" to never get annoying moving clock/blackscreen combo ,,, can set photos to stay on screen for ages, 15+mins etc,, nice for art/memories without being distracting like default one is,,,
#9.Finally (probably stop reading here),,, if u wanna go down rabbit hole diagnosing weird usage (this is kinda pain) ,, but if u want to diagnose weird battery usage when u think its abnormally high,,, i'd reccomend u start with "adb shell dumpsys batterystats > batterystats.txt" in adb when connected to a pc ,,, and/or exporting bbs reloaded battery report (much easier) with the share button in app,,, these 2 .txt files u read or can pass through with ai (use multiple for higher confidence + common sense) they are good at spotting obvious weirdness,,, (would reccomend chathub if u want a free mini roundtable sorta thing,, etc) also battery historian (https://bhist.tiukov.com/) current online battery historian viewer (no clue if its trustworthy or not, so maybe don't use if u care about that),,, u make a bugreport in dev settings and share it to gdrive or something, then upload it there,, it provides graph of battery drain,,, and u can usually crosscheck things ai points out easily,,, and research them/look through forums (whoever is hosting that, if it is trustworthy, tysm!)
10.Currently testing* One possible wifi thing that pixel sucks at is noisy router/booster disks for wifi ,,, will test with wifi/boosters over serveral nights vs phone wifihotspot only on several nights,,, specifically these wakes can be abnormally high overnight for no reason,, i had this the other night... still trying to figure out what it was from
wlan_rx_wake: 3509 counts wlan_txfl_wake: 1947 counts. wlan_wake: 17,608 counts
,,, could be some buggy stuff to do with wificalling maybe,, dunno will try find out this week...
Anyway thats it rn,,, Also probably good to research/test stuff before u change settings and forget,, (screenshot + notes helps alot)
If you have found any less known tweaks/tips for battery life on latest updates with p8p, feel free to share/discuss!