Android Lollipop Hit By Big Battery Life Problem

 On Monday Google GOOGL -1.46% announced the launch of Android 5.0 Lollipop. The company is known for its gradual roll-outs, but with no Nexus 4, 5, 7 or 9 yet to update the frustration has been growing. Now we know why: Lollipop has problems.

Android Police got wind earlier today that a WiFi bug in the final build of Lollipop is dramatically impacting battery life. This was backed up by mass reports of the problem in the official Android Developer Forum which were quickly fused into a single thread that is now over 800 posts long.

Google Android Senior Developer Trevor Johns ultimately chimed inconfirming that:

“Android Engineering is aware of an issue affecting Nexus 5 users running Android 5.0 which causes significant “Miscellaneous” battery usage while WiFi is enabled. This appears to be caused by an abnormally high number of IRQ wakeup events. We are continuing to investigate this issue.”

Android Lollipop WiFi bug causes dramatic battery drain 
       (image courtesy of Android Developer Preview)

Johns’ welcome candour confirms Google doesn’t yet have a fix for the bug and the many uploaded screenshots to the thread (some samples above) show “significant” is an apt description with Nexus 5 testers showing a full battery is lasting 4 hours or less.

Other testers have noted that disabling WiFi eliminates the problem, but this is hardly a practical solution for a mass roll out.

Furthermore it flies in the face of what Google is trying to achieve with Lollipop and its ‘Project Volta’ scheme which aims to dramatically increase battery life. In factArs Technica found earlier builds of Lollipop were incredibly successful at this with their tests on a Nexus 5 showing battery life increased by more than a third compared to Android 4.4 KitKat – a potential game changer.

Google has yet to confirm whether the bug impacts other Nexus smartphones and tablets and whether that means they will get their Lollipop updates ahead of the Nexus 5 remains to be seen. Either way it seems the new Nexus 6 phablet and Nexus 9 tablet are unaffected, with both devices shipping.

Android Lollipop is vital for Google and its Material Design interface will be used across all Google services

Of course the last thing Google needs right now is to release Android 5.0 full of bugs. Apple AAPL +0.24% hadproblem after problem with iOS 8 which it is only now fully resolving and Google will be loathe to waste the opportunity to contrast that with a slick Lollipop release, particularly if it only costs a few more days to get it right.

November 12 is now pegged as the day when legacy Nexus devices will receive Lollipop, but this could easily change. On the bright side it shouldn’t make a major difference to non-Nexus devices which have a longer wait in any case...