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KitKat giving you battery drain problems? Uninstall Skype, says Google
- gcb0 13y agoconvenient. just removed the entrenched competitor app for one of their services.
- mschuster91 13y agoUh, where does Skype compete with any Google service? edit: to those answering "Hangouts", can that actually be considered competition?
- SomeoneWeird 13y agohangouts? edit: yes.
- mpartel 13y agoHangouts
- interstitial 13y agoThat's the funny thing about Google abysmal failure in most products outside search and gmail, their subpar competition doesn't even rank in most people's mind unless they force it on you.
- josu 13y agoThe competition is not subpar, the apps just benefit from network economies, and the best does not always win. Just look at Whatsapp.
- mschuster91 13y agoWell, WA actually did win, because it was the best. Whatsapp is like the Ryanair of messaging: no ads, no games, (up to FB acquisition) no data mining, basically: no frills, no hassles. Compare that with Skype/MSN Messenger, the FB Messenger or basically any other messenger out there: ads, more ads, MORE FUCKING ADS, a PITA to add/find new contacts (Whatsapp just bootstraps with the contact manager of the phone!), oh and did I forget MORE FUCKING SHITLOADS OF ADS? And no way to pay to just get rid of them?
- bad_user 13y agoWell, the current version of WhatsApp is eating my battery like crazy on my Android 4.4 / Nexus 4. And I hate their accounts / login system, as it depends on having an SMS-enabled plan and capable device. This means I cannot use WhatsApp on my desktop, on my iPad, on any device other than my primary phone basically, or when traveling at which point I shun roaming charges for local pre-pay plans. Facebook's Messenger for example, or any messenger service not mapped directly to your primary phone number, has no problems with any of that. > did I forget MORE FUCKING SHITLOADS OF ADS? Facebook's Messenger has no ads, or promoted posts, or anything related to your stream in it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.orca https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.o... This goes for Google Hangouts, Skype, Slack or XMPP services in general (hosted by you or not), amongst myriads of messenger services that don't do ads. So I think you're exaggerating.
- mschuster91 13y ago> This goes for Google Hangouts, Skype, Slack or XMPP services in general (hosted by you or not), amongst myriads of messenger services that don't do ads. So I think you're exaggerating. Google is known to mine your data for personalization of advertising of Mail ads, but I do not know if this is also done for Hangout chats. Skype has ads like hell (open a chat on a netbook, half the vertical screen size is lost to ads and fucked up layout), Facebook the same (sidebar on the web site), and likely also data mining.
- josu 13y agoHow can you call an app that can only be installed in one device, "the best"? GTalk, for example, offered the same services, plus sync across all device, plus better security and encryption. There are and have been many messaging apps just like whatsapp: Viber, Kik... And many more that we have never heard of.
- bad_user 13y agoI'm one of those users that monitors the battery drainage of every app that I use - since I'm a heavy apps user, I care about my phone's battery life and certain apps make for a dramatic difference. Skype has always been amongst the worse in terms of battery drainage. 6 months ago it was so bad that my phone wouldn't last for a couple of hours in standby with Skype active. It got much better but it's still so bad that I cannot keep it active. I basically keep it disabled and only open it when I need to talk to a contact, then I logout again. And I don't know what's wrong with WhatsApp messenger, because it too is guilty of a lot of battery drainage lately. Hence I uninstalled it completely. Google's Hangouts is barely visible in the stats on battery life that I collect (with GSam Battery). The battery usage could be hidden within system services, however I always test messenger apps with a before & after test. In the case of Hangouts, I disabled it completely for a complete discharge, after which I enabled it again and no significant difference happened.
- gcb0 13y agoit doesnt matter if you disable hangouts, the push and update subsystem will always run. you will never get a better reading unless you disable several google services you cant disable. skype et al era just more visible. though it is just a matter of google not allowing other in their infrastructure for the benefit of the user. not even offering as a paid service for those competitors. pure old greed.
- bad_user 13y agoThat's not exactly true. 1. you can for example disable the google account synchronization happening, either for Hangouts specifically, or for the whole google account and notice the difference. If you don't trust doing that, you can always install CyanogenMod on your phone, without any of Google's services, at which point you'll have no capability of synchronizing your Google account at all. And then notice the difference between that and simply not synchronizing your Google account. I did that btw, because as I've said, I'm a fanatic in regards to battery life. 2. I use and have used other messenger services regularly, like Facebook's Messenger. None of them have been so bad as Skype is.
- interstitial 13y agoLaptop giving you problems, uninstall Skype. iPad giving you problems, uninstall Skype. Skype and the runaway supernode: https://www.google.com/search?q=skype+supernode https://www.google.com/search?q=skype+supernode
- nodata 13y agoDidn't Microsoft kill the supernodes on users' PCs?
- andyjohnson0 13y agoYes. http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-s...
- interstitial 13y ago"There is no known way to disable Skype SuperNode on Macintosh" http://help.igb.illinois.edu/Disable_Skype_SuperNode http://help.igb.illinois.edu/Disable_Skype_SuperNode
- devx 13y agoSkype has battery drain problems on all devices. I guess it's understandable considering NSA has to keep it on to spy on you through it.
- _quasimodo 13y agoI guess heavy obfuscation is more to blame.
- mschuster91 13y agoPlain static obfuscation doesn't really kill off your battery.
- ThePinion 13y agoPeople are voting devx down, but as far as I remember Microsoft was the first to join PRISM, and at the time they paid a ridiculous amount for Skype in an area they really had no interest in being. What I basically mean is a large portion of the money paid for Skype may not have been from MS, but from someone that wanted Skype's data without anyone knowing they are involved. MS is the perfect puppet because they already agreed to the PRISM related bullshit years before the existence of PRISM, and once it was a documented/codenamed thing they were (obviously against their will) the first on the list. Downvote me too, I don't care. This is something I think is being blatantly under-examined.
- blueskin_ 13y agoBetter (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...
- uchi 13y agoyup. 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.
- ydant 13y agomediaserver 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.
- uchi 13y agoI don't store any music on my phone and I hardly have any pictures on it
- StavrosK 13y agoDo you have instructions for that? There are a bunch of settings, and I want to make sure I get everything.
- blueskin_ 13y agoDisable 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.
- blueskin_ 13y ago>an update to Skype, which began to regularly access the camera from its background services That's not suspicious at all, is it?</s>
- egeozcan 13y agoAfter reading that is when I really considered uninstalling Skype. Creepy indeed. Is there any mod which remedies the issue with something like a "fake camera access"?
- unvs 13y agoXPrivacy is your friend! It needs root, though.
- fakenBisEsRult 13y agoThank you! Didn't know this app yet.
- StavrosK 13y agoI installed it just yesterday (it was very easy). It really is great, it can even notify you for permissions as the app tries to access them (and you can allow or deny), and you can even vote on permissions and download the crowdsourced ones (with the paid version).
- jms 13y ago... causing my phone to refuse to let me use the camera! I was getting helpful error messages something like: "Camera Error: Camera Error". After much searching, I found the solution... Uninstall Skype!
- luka-birsa 13y agoRegardless of what it looks like when Google puts down a IM competitor, but as a KitKat user I can confirm this. Nexus 5 + Skype (with 0 actual skyping done) = 16hrs autonomy. I almost RMAed the phone. Nexus 5 sans Skype = after 24hrs I still had 50% battery. Don't belive me? Try it on your KitKat device!
- corin_ 13y agoIt's even worse on BlackBerry - I don't have personal benchmark numbers (I use my phone a lot anyway, so it usually is pretty dead by the end of a day), but if I have Skype running my battery drops to literally a few hours. I've moved to a third party app (IM+) instead now.
- RexRollman 13y agoInteresting. Doesn't Microsoft included Skype with their Surface tablets? I wonder if it is affecting those machines as well, or if they are doing something different with them.
- legacy2013 13y agoThis is a bug specific to android devices that is caused when the camera is used. Skype accesses the camera often so it can cause the bug to appear more, it's not Skype itself causing the issue
- phaemon 13y agoWhy is Skype accessing the camera often, when there's "0 actual skyping done"?
- corresation 13y agoHow does that mean it isn't Skype causing the issue? On my Windows desktop I recently uninstalled Skype because it would frequently saturate a core for long periods of time while doing absolutely nothing of relevance.
- luka-birsa 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- DocG 13y agoI've given up on skype for a while already LG L9 Sleep of death(with battery drained) when I had skype. Warranted the device, final solution was not to use skype. On one laptop, skype is using one cpu core to the max. Solution is to use IE as deafult browser(or not use skype) On second laptop, just yesterday lost all its history.
- currysausage 13y agoIf I log out of Skype every time after use and Skype doesn't even show up in my battery statistics, does that mean I'm not affected by the bug, or could Skype's battery drain be hiding behind those system services? Nexus 4 here, very poor battery performance, would be great to know what causes it, but I'm not convinced it really is Skype.
- tilt 13y agoSkype appears not to be the only application affected by this issue. Related to https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=60058 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=60058
- tluyben2 13y agoNot sure if that is the whole problem, but Skype is bad everywhere battery wise. I switch it on only when I have a meeting. It's a shame the competitors are not moving faster ; there is definitely an opportunity for this. I see Skype taking far too many resources on Android, iOS, Mac and Win. Best behaviour seems to be iOS so far for me.
- raverbashing 13y agoExactly I really don't see the point of keeping it always on. (And I hate using it Skype as IM, but ok, it's needed sometimes) For always on, go to the desktop, I don't trust Skype using my resources correctly (just see how long it takes for it to start up and log in)