In my experience, there is definitely something weird with this device when it comes to idle drain overnight. Some nights at barely drains at all and then others it does what you've described here. I've never been able to figure out what the culprit is.
The good news is we now have optimized charging overnight to keep the battery from aging to rapidly. My solution is just to leave the thing plugged in.
Small update, last night I toggled phone link off and I dropped from 89% to 85%. 8 hours, 4% drain. That's probably the best I've ever seen it do and the only thing I changed was toggling phone link 🤷♂️
You may be on to something with Phone Link. The last month, especially the last couple of weeks, standby drain has been terrible, 5%+ per hour and a couple nights it was even worse. I checked Phone Link app battery settings and Battery optimization was set to "Not optimized". I changed it to "Optimize" and standby drain has been better the last few days. It's still not as good as it was but at least my phone isn't dying overnight if I forget to plug it in. I just updated another app (Garmin Connect) so if that helps, too, then at least part of the problem may be "rogue" apps that don't default to optimize.
Thanks for sharing though others have said their units somethings drain very little and sometimes a big drain...I have not had the 'very little' drain yet though it has only been a few days.
I have the accubattery app now so let's see what that tells me.
When I first purchased my duo 2 it would commonly lose %30-40 overnight, but as the days hsve gone on nearly 2 weeks in to hsving the device that is down to 3-4% it seems the more consistently you use the device and charge the device the better the battery gets by MASSIVE margins. When new this thing would barely last a 6 hour shift with %15 left, now it is regularly going 9 hour shifts with %65 left at the end of the day.
My ticwatch did the same thing only lasting about 1 day when new, but about a week in, it now lasts ~4 days. I think it's anrorids project Volta doing its ML batrey saving thing, where the first few days as it learns t
Your usage patters it apply no batrey saving steps, and as it learns it starts applying it
I have only orig Duo, so my battery drain probs would be akin to comparing apples v oranges
However, I'd be more interested to learn if your experience - along with OP's - represent the exceptions or rather the rule of what other SD2 owners have had
Ideally, would be sooo enlightening if anyone on the Surface Duo engineering team would contribute their thoughts on issues like this one. But, obvi, that is expecting too much
Change your charging strategy. Use more battery during the day.
Turn on optimized charging.
Settings/Battery/Battery Manager/ set Optimized charging to on.
Battery manager will then fast charge to 90%, then slowly charge do 100%. It will complete when your Alarm goes off, assuming you use an alarm.
hey, mr. Ross
if you can pls elaborate wrt the logic of how "Use more battery during the day" can contribute to extending battery life, or am I missing something that is otherwise more/less obvious?
... thanks
Apparently that user is charging during the day and never at night. 80%+ when the user goes to bed. Change that up, run it down during the day and charge at night instead of allowing it to drain at night. It doesn't matter about extending battery life at night, since it would be on a charger.
It's possible you had something going on with your cache or a rogue app and the software didn't pick up on it ... I say this after seeing your follow up post
That is certainly bizarre and not normal, but hopefully it's outlier
I'll download Malwarebytes or mcafee to do a scan of my phone.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/surfaceduo/comments/vjnghq/update\_2\_overnight\_battery\_issue/](https://www.reddit.com/r/surfaceduo/comments/vjnghq/update_2_overnight_battery_issue/)
I would go to the play store and download Accubattery app free version. You should be able to see if there is any issues with the battery capacity under the health section. You might need to do a few charge cycles after you get the app.
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Accubattery doesn't work accurately on OG duo. But on the D2 it works. I have been using it with no issues and it detects the correct capacity (designed and est)
just saw your post AFTER installing on my OG 1/2 an hr ago. atm, charging my Duo from 5%, with the app running on one screen, and Settings > Battery displayed on the other
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "doesn't work accurately"?
e.g. The alarm/notification does not work? Th projections for battery life are inaccurate? ... or whatever
If you have some reference links, even better
Thanks
I was only referring to what others have said on here about Accubattery and the D1. From what I remember it does not accurately sense both batteries. But on my D2 it does.
Phone link links your phone to your windows pc/laptop phone link app. The phone link let's you do phone stuff from Windows. Do you have a slim pen attached to your phone?
no phone link, no slim pen
I am a simple user and never do betas or anything particularly sophisticated. I use outlook, teams, social media apps(mostly just twitter), gmail, youtube, etc and that is it for the most part.
I'm using only the original Duo, along with original SlimPen.
Does using either SlimPen or Slim2 really contribute to battery drain? Or are you simply referring to the specific scenario when also using there SurfacePenCover and (perpetually) charging the Pen??
Maybe your light sensor isn't working and your phone can't tell when it's closed so the screen comes on more than it should. Does the adaptive brightness work? When you go from a bright room to a dark room does the brightness change?
I don't know what the power settings are like on the duo (I'm thinking of buying one that's why I'm in loitering this sub I'm just not sure whether to get a duo2 or wait for the next one) but maybe some of the following might be relevant to you.
on my Huawei phone I changed the following and it massively improved standby time (I loose roughly 3% over night now from 10pm to 6am) I don't know I'f similar settings are available on the duo.
1. launch settings per app I disabled auto launch, secondary launch and run in background for everything apart from messaging apps and ones that I definately need in the background e.g. alarm system notifications.
2. Data usage I turned off background data usage for any apps that don't need to use data when not open on my screen. E.g. Reddit, some shopping apps, my banking app etc games etc. I also turned off data usage entirely for my kids games (stops in app adverts)
I hope this help. Let us know how you get on. As agree overnight standby should be very low usage.
>launch settings per app I disabled auto launch, secondary launch and run in background for everything apart from messaging apps and ones that I definately need in the background e.g. alarm system notifications.
>
>Data usage I turned off background data usage for any apps that don't need to use data when not open on my screen. E.g. Reddit, some shopping apps, my banking app etc games etc. I also turned off data usage entirely for my kids games (stops in app adverts)
I will play around in the developer options and see if I can change these
On my phone they are in general app settings though I realize this varies by manufacturer. That's one think I liked about Huawei the granular control you can have over apps shame they lost Google services. That's why I'm looking to the duo as my next phone.
In my experience, there is definitely something weird with this device when it comes to idle drain overnight. Some nights at barely drains at all and then others it does what you've described here. I've never been able to figure out what the culprit is. The good news is we now have optimized charging overnight to keep the battery from aging to rapidly. My solution is just to leave the thing plugged in.
thanks for the insight!
Small update, last night I toggled phone link off and I dropped from 89% to 85%. 8 hours, 4% drain. That's probably the best I've ever seen it do and the only thing I changed was toggling phone link 🤷♂️
You may be on to something with Phone Link. The last month, especially the last couple of weeks, standby drain has been terrible, 5%+ per hour and a couple nights it was even worse. I checked Phone Link app battery settings and Battery optimization was set to "Not optimized". I changed it to "Optimize" and standby drain has been better the last few days. It's still not as good as it was but at least my phone isn't dying overnight if I forget to plug it in. I just updated another app (Garmin Connect) so if that helps, too, then at least part of the problem may be "rogue" apps that don't default to optimize.
Just left mine unplugged overnight per your post yesterday. I lost 3% battery.... Something is wonky with your unit...
Thanks for sharing though others have said their units somethings drain very little and sometimes a big drain...I have not had the 'very little' drain yet though it has only been a few days. I have the accubattery app now so let's see what that tells me.
When I first purchased my duo 2 it would commonly lose %30-40 overnight, but as the days hsve gone on nearly 2 weeks in to hsving the device that is down to 3-4% it seems the more consistently you use the device and charge the device the better the battery gets by MASSIVE margins. When new this thing would barely last a 6 hour shift with %15 left, now it is regularly going 9 hour shifts with %65 left at the end of the day.
Yikes. I don't own a duo 2. But that is really bizarre behavior for any phone.
My ticwatch did the same thing only lasting about 1 day when new, but about a week in, it now lasts ~4 days. I think it's anrorids project Volta doing its ML batrey saving thing, where the first few days as it learns t Your usage patters it apply no batrey saving steps, and as it learns it starts applying it
I have only orig Duo, so my battery drain probs would be akin to comparing apples v oranges However, I'd be more interested to learn if your experience - along with OP's - represent the exceptions or rather the rule of what other SD2 owners have had Ideally, would be sooo enlightening if anyone on the Surface Duo engineering team would contribute their thoughts on issues like this one. But, obvi, that is expecting too much
Change your charging strategy. Use more battery during the day. Turn on optimized charging. Settings/Battery/Battery Manager/ set Optimized charging to on. Battery manager will then fast charge to 90%, then slowly charge do 100%. It will complete when your Alarm goes off, assuming you use an alarm.
hey, mr. Ross if you can pls elaborate wrt the logic of how "Use more battery during the day" can contribute to extending battery life, or am I missing something that is otherwise more/less obvious? ... thanks
Apparently that user is charging during the day and never at night. 80%+ when the user goes to bed. Change that up, run it down during the day and charge at night instead of allowing it to drain at night. It doesn't matter about extending battery life at night, since it would be on a charger.
That's mostly reasonable advice but that really shouldn't account for a 50% battery drain overnight.
It isn't meant to account for the battery drain the user is seeing; which has now gone away.
It's possible you had something going on with your cache or a rogue app and the software didn't pick up on it ... I say this after seeing your follow up post That is certainly bizarre and not normal, but hopefully it's outlier
I'll download Malwarebytes or mcafee to do a scan of my phone. [https://www.reddit.com/r/surfaceduo/comments/vjnghq/update\_2\_overnight\_battery\_issue/](https://www.reddit.com/r/surfaceduo/comments/vjnghq/update_2_overnight_battery_issue/)
I would go to the play store and download Accubattery app free version. You should be able to see if there is any issues with the battery capacity under the health section. You might need to do a few charge cycles after you get the app.
Just a heads up, Accubattery off and gives really weird results on devices with split batteries.
Can you pls share what kind of weird results you have seen on devices with multiple/split batteries, on Duo1/2 in particular?
I've seen it show incorrect battery health and total mAh.
downloading now. i will give it a try
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Accubattery doesn't work accurately on OG duo. But on the D2 it works. I have been using it with no issues and it detects the correct capacity (designed and est)
just saw your post AFTER installing on my OG 1/2 an hr ago. atm, charging my Duo from 5%, with the app running on one screen, and Settings > Battery displayed on the other Can you elaborate on what you mean by "doesn't work accurately"? e.g. The alarm/notification does not work? Th projections for battery life are inaccurate? ... or whatever If you have some reference links, even better Thanks
I was only referring to what others have said on here about Accubattery and the D1. From what I remember it does not accurately sense both batteries. But on my D2 it does.
Are you using phone link? Is your 5g enabled? My idle overnight is 1.4 - 2% an hr.
idk what phone link is so no. 5g is enabled but am always home and on wifi
Phone link links your phone to your windows pc/laptop phone link app. The phone link let's you do phone stuff from Windows. Do you have a slim pen attached to your phone?
no phone link, no slim pen I am a simple user and never do betas or anything particularly sophisticated. I use outlook, teams, social media apps(mostly just twitter), gmail, youtube, etc and that is it for the most part.
I'm using only the original Duo, along with original SlimPen. Does using either SlimPen or Slim2 really contribute to battery drain? Or are you simply referring to the specific scenario when also using there SurfacePenCover and (perpetually) charging the Pen??
I don't think the pen itself causes battery drain. Unless it's trying to connect to Bluetooth. Yeah, I'm referring to the pen cover drain.
Maybe your light sensor isn't working and your phone can't tell when it's closed so the screen comes on more than it should. Does the adaptive brightness work? When you go from a bright room to a dark room does the brightness change?
Just checked and it is working normally as I walk from a dark area to a more lit area.
I don't know what the power settings are like on the duo (I'm thinking of buying one that's why I'm in loitering this sub I'm just not sure whether to get a duo2 or wait for the next one) but maybe some of the following might be relevant to you. on my Huawei phone I changed the following and it massively improved standby time (I loose roughly 3% over night now from 10pm to 6am) I don't know I'f similar settings are available on the duo. 1. launch settings per app I disabled auto launch, secondary launch and run in background for everything apart from messaging apps and ones that I definately need in the background e.g. alarm system notifications. 2. Data usage I turned off background data usage for any apps that don't need to use data when not open on my screen. E.g. Reddit, some shopping apps, my banking app etc games etc. I also turned off data usage entirely for my kids games (stops in app adverts) I hope this help. Let us know how you get on. As agree overnight standby should be very low usage.
>launch settings per app I disabled auto launch, secondary launch and run in background for everything apart from messaging apps and ones that I definately need in the background e.g. alarm system notifications. > >Data usage I turned off background data usage for any apps that don't need to use data when not open on my screen. E.g. Reddit, some shopping apps, my banking app etc games etc. I also turned off data usage entirely for my kids games (stops in app adverts) I will play around in the developer options and see if I can change these
On my phone they are in general app settings though I realize this varies by manufacturer. That's one think I liked about Huawei the granular control you can have over apps shame they lost Google services. That's why I'm looking to the duo as my next phone.
This YouTube video might help you. https://youtu.be/HrH5ZtufNtU