“How can phones go through 20% of charge overnight, when they’re closed and no apps are running in the background?”

(Answer requested by Jamie Moore)

Assuming the phone and battery are otherwise in good condition, the only way it’d lose that much charge when “closed” overnight is if it’s not really idle: Clearly, some apps are still running, despite your efforts. Perhaps they’re periodically waking themselves to go online for updates.

Try this: Turn your phone completely off for one night. When you get up in the morning, if your phone still shows anything like a 20% drop from the night before, something’s majorly wrong with the hardware. Get thee to a repair center, pronto!

But my guess is that the turned-off phone won’t lose any significant amount of power overnight, meaning that is indeed background software actions that are consuming the battery when the phone is supposed to be idle.

You might try Airplane Mode to prevent apps from waking up and going online for updates during the nighttime hours; and/or be more rigorous in limiting what permissions you assign to your apps, so they truly only run when you want them to.

For example, Samsung’s “Medium power saving mode” can automatically limit excessive background operations, limit maximum CPU speed, and reduce screen brightness and resolution. (See Fig. 1)

If you still see a large overnight battery drop with Airplane Mode or aggressive power-saving enabled, it’s back to the repair shop.

BTW, Samsung and many other phones, can tell you explicitly how much battery your apps are using. (See Fig. 2.) When in doubt about battery life, that kind of information can be invaluable.

With your apps under good control, instead of waking and doing whatever they want, your battery should show minimal charge-loss overnight.

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