Lumia 950 battery drains rapidly

The funny thing is, by setting it to allow apps to use cellular data, my cellular data usage did not go up, but my wifi connections became completely stable. Before, if I had say 7 apps that needed updating, it would update three or four, and then stop. And I would see things like apps saying "unable to get data right now, are you connected to the Internet" even though it clearly showed 4 bars of wifi up in the status bar. All those issues are gone, but my cellular data usage is just a few MBs.

Your slow OneDrive syncs may be something similar, so that might be worth a try. Change the setting, recycle the phone in and out of airplane mode to reset the wifi, and see if things start moving, and if so, see if your cell data usage goes up. If it does, change the setting back, no harm, no foul. It seems to me on the phone that OneDrive is auto-upload only, and only for photos, so it shouldn't go nuts and chew up your data plan, I think. Also, most of the high-volume system stuff will only happen over wifi (map updates, system updates, etc.). That won't change, but it again does seem like the wifi connection works a lot better if you allow cellular data too.

Anyway, good luck - hope it gets sorted for you, as the phone hardware is fantastic.

:-)

Shubert, you seem to have come to mostly the same conclusions that I have regarding W10. First and foremost I need a working phone, of course, and I assumed L950 would at least provide a better experience than the low-end 5xx Lumias that I have used and quite enjoyed for the last couple of years. At least on paper, the L950 would provide me with a good camera that I have missed many times (wife's got a 1020), and dual SIM meant that I could leave my work iPhone at home. The good news is that image quality is great, and dual SIM works really well for me. However, the constant need to recharge, OneDrive (which I have now disabled), and the many other glitches and regressions in W10 makes owning a L950 quite frustrating right now. I haven't upgraded any of my family's PCs to Win10, solely because of OneDrive, but believed that the experience on a phone wouldn't be as bad as it turned out to be.

If the issue really is that you get into a bad state if you restore from a W8.1 backup but not from a W10, it should be possible push out a fix for this, so I'll wait a little more for an update to materialize. If that doesn't happen in the near future, I promise I'll try a reset and post the results here. :) After all, a hard reset is the miracle cure suggested for almost any ailment that strikes our precious Windows Phones.

So far, allowing more apps to use cellular data has been out of the question, due to OneDrive consuming ungodly amounts of bandwidth (and probably also battery power, so this rant isn't completely off-topic) in order to mostly annoy me. The "new and improved" Data Usage report only displays totals, and not WiFi/cellular separately like in WP8.1, so it's harder to spot the offending app if more can use cellular data in the background. But thanks for the tip - I have noticed some oddities with WiFi as well, such as it becoming completely disabled and requiring a reboot to see any networks again. Oh, and I just had to redo Bluetooth pairing with my car, and so on and so forth... :)

/ David (in a Holiday mood)

I guess the question is, what do you need more, an official explanation, or a working phone?

OTOH, sounds like you don't care much for WP10 anyway, so are the new features worth the trouble for you? I myself haven't upgraded any of my "production" machines to Windows 10 for that very reason. WP10 I am still split on - still seems a little rough, but the 950 camera is actually better than the 1020 camera, and the removable battery, SD card, dual SIM, and built-in wireless charging are all pluses over the 1020. So for me, the hardware upgrade is well worth the growing pains of the OS, and certainly worth the day it took to do the reset and restore.

My theory (guess) is that something in the WP8.1 backup I originally restored from caused some kind of issue (one of the failed apps, or something, maybe?). Certainly the restore from the WP10 backup seemed to go much more smoothly.

Also I changed the settings in Data Usage to Allow apps to use cellular data. This fixed a lot of issues where apps would stop updating and syncing. My cellular usage is still minimal (7 MB in 30 days), but I no longer have a problem with updates getting stuck until the phone is cycled through Airplane mode and back. I suspect here that the wifi radio periodically goes to sleep, and if the apps can't hop to cellular for a moment then their connection is dropped and is not restored when wifi reconnects. Again, just a feeling.

I would say try the reset. If it still doesn't work, then you probably have a defective unit. Just make sure to restore from a WP10 backup, not a WP8.1 backup.

Have you tried a backup, reset, restore? Mine is fine after that.

No, I haven't (yet), because it's just a lot of work, with no guarantee that it resolves the issue. Everything isn't backed up (e.g. various 2FA tokens), and that is what makes the process so time consuming. Add to that the piece of garbage that is the "new" OneDrive client and I haven't even got all photos off the phone yet. Others have tried a reset and not seen any effect.

I would need some official explanation why a hard reset would solve a problem that manifested itself on the first day of use, and why this can't be resolved with a software update. Thanks for suggesting a fix, but the pressure should be on Microsoft to deliver a phone that doesn't turn into a part-time job to keep running.

Regards,

/ David

PS. I just helped a relative with her first smartphone, a Lumia 640, and was absolutely amazed by the long battery life and overall performance. That phone is extreme high value for money (if you don't need Snapchat, good low-light camera and all that jazz). And to see again how well WP8.1 worked, compared to the W10 work-in-progress with its countless regressions and inexplicable feature removals that you get if you go "flagship"...makes you think what has happened.

interesting my email wont sync at all, is anybody else having this issue?