Sony Xperia 5iii battery drain and very hot

[Traveller23]

Hello, 

I am a long time Sony fan and have only used their phones for the past ten years so when it came time to upgrade, I opted for the 5iii but am shocked at the initial way the phone behaves.  I will admit, I have only had the phone for two days now but the battery life is shocking.

I am having massive power drain on the phone and it is constantly warm/hot to the touch, even when not using it.  I do not use the phone for gaming or watching TV, etc, if anything, it is always very light usage.  I have turned off all the apps and system resources that I do not use and the life of the battery is still bad.  As you can see from the picture below, after practically no usage, the phone has only a predicted nine hour battery life.  Is this normal or am I missing something?  If this is normal, I might have to look elsewhere for a new phone...

If anyone can help/suggest anything, I would appreciated it!

Cheers

[Strampke · Accepted solution]

Maybe try a 2 minute force restart of your phone.

The other thing you might do is tap the 3 dots in the upper right corner (like on the screenshot you added) and find out what is draining your battery.

[Traveller23]

Hello Strampke, 

Thanks for the reply.  I had never heard for a 2 minute force restart, I will try that now.  The other battery page (when pressing the three dots) does not show anything apart from from the current state of the battery and battery options.  The screen I posted up is the only one that shows what is using battery power.  I will try the restart now and post again after that, 

Thanks again!

[Strampke]

When you tap on the apps you can see background activity.

By restricting background activity your battery might live longer.

You can even restrict chat apps like WhatsApp.

Not just your battery might live longer but you might as well.

It'll give you more peace of mind not being alarmed all the time. 😉

[Hardy.66]

Hello Traveller23,

this sounds like a similar experience I had with my new Xperia 5iii.

In my case the culprit was a process called com.sonymobile.hook, which also shows up in your battery usage statistics. It is not this process by itself that consumes that much battery, but it is starting endless wakelocks that keep the system from going to deep sleep mode most of the time.

When I stopped this process the huge battery drain disappeard. I have no clue what com.sonymoble.hook is good for, but I did not notice any problems after stopping it a couple of weeks ago.
After a restart of the phone that process needs to be stopped manually once again however.

Maybe this helps for your phone also.

[Traveller23]

Hello again Strampke, 

Thank you for the background activity hint.  I had already gone through all the apps limiting or uninstalling them when I first got the phone which was why I was surprised by the shocking battery duration.  However, I did the reset and the phone is completely different now; I got over two days off of one charge which is amazing compared to the XZ2 that I have just replaced.  This sort of battery life was what I was expecting from Sony!  I guess the battery needed to do one cycle monitoring my usage and when it saw how I use the phone sparingly, it has switched off all the unnecessary processes.  Thank you again for your help!

[Traveller23]

Hello Hardy.66, 

Thank you for your reply and it is good to know that I am not the only one experiencing these issues.

Thank you for suggesting the com.sonymobile.hook, I was not sure what that process was and did not know if it was integral to the phone so I left it alone but it is good to know that I can stop it and it will have no affect.  After Strampke messaged me, I did a restart of the phone and it seemed to do the trick.  I managed to get over two days of normal usage (for me) from one charge which is was I would normally expect from a Sony and the estimated usage time for the next time is three days!  

Thanks again for replying and I have made a note of the com.sonymobile.hook in case the phone starts playing up again.

Cheers

[Jwterhorst]

I am experiencing the same problems, battery drain and hot. I tried the 2 min restart (I googled it) but no effect, or I am doing it wrong. Limited some apps but that didn't help either.

I bought this phone to replace my XZ1 because it battery was getting tired but I start to regret it....

[Traveller23]

Hello Jwterhorst, 

When I had the battery problem, I closed all the apps I didn't use in the settings and then did the restart.  As you can see from the screenshot I uploaded, I had used the phone for a couple of hours and my guess is the phone needed to do one battery cycle to monitor my usage so it could react accordingly.  I am not sure if this is correct or not but since the restart, I have had no trouble with battery life, even getting three days when I am not using it much.  If you have done the restart, one of the other members here mentioned a sonyhook app that was running which they closed with no adverse affects.  I have not done that so I do not know if that would work or not.  I hope this helps, 

Cheers

[EMS_MO72]

Hi @ Jwterhorst

You can have a look on the instructions in this link Battery runs out quickly they might help you with this issue