Have you ever wondered why you wake up with your phone's battery down 30% instead of the usual single digits overnight? Then you start reading about rogue apps with ghost consumption when idle, and try to find the culprit, only to find out that your penchant for stand up comedy has netted you a battery drain worthy of a gaming session while sleeping.
Yes, it's one thing to hear about apps leaving processes running that constantly wake up the CPU and munch on electrons, another to demonstrate how certain versions of Netflix are behind your mid-morning range anxiety.
Using their battery drain testing tool, the folks from Mobile Enerlytics managed to plot the power consumption of the last few Netflix for Android versions when idle. This was prompted by excessive drain on their own phones, of course, and then plotting the observations against a surge in battery drain complaints in the Netflix app user reviews since last May.
Netflix has been rogue on idle battery drain lately
It turned out that the Netflix versions since 6.1 have essentially been entering a background process management loop of sorts, consuming up to the whopping 300 mA just sitting there doing nothing.
After being contacted with the findings, Netflix quickly patched things up, and the latest releases of the app have already rectified the loop request problem. Moreover, if you have a newer Android version on your phone that manages background processes more aggressively, you might have never experienced the battery draining phenomenon, yet you might want to bring Netflix up to date on your older Android phone to be on the safe side anyway.
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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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