For Some Users, Google Hangouts 2.1+ Draining Their Battery

On April 21, the Hangouts team announced the newest v2.1 version of the app for Android. The main focus of the updated version was for better SMS integration, although there were other improvements as well – new home screen widget for quick access to your conversations, merged contacts and a simplified contact list – but still no voice integration. This new version is great for people that like their text and messaging all in one thread – myself, I prefer them separate and with Hangouts v2.1 you can take your pick. Although hangouts has come a long way since it was first introduced, it still needs a few improvements and fixes along the way.

One of the most recent findings that many users are experiencing is excessive – and we are talking about extreme battery drains – see picture below that was left by one reader. It does not happen with everybody – I have no problems to report – but for some posters on the Google Hangouts Group you can read stories such as:

I woke up this morning, my battery was dead. When I saw it was Hangouts that took the power, expected to see a massive chat list (and how motog had been ping-pinging for 8 hours) but there was none. I’ve sent feedback via mobile – is there anything else I can do to to investigate this? This is the second time, I’ve had battery drain just once before, the other time was an issue with phone searching for wifi aggressively (I’ve since uninstalled a few apps, that I thought were the cause).. thanks.. And another wrote:

Since updating to the latest 2.1 release, my hangouts is by far and away the biggest battery drain on my phone, even when mostly on standby and not messaging – it can easily account for 40+% of all app power use (per GSam battery).

I rolled back to the stock version of hangouts that came preloaded on my phone (2.0.217, 944332-30) and it has rectified the situation. I’m using a HTC One M8 on stock HTC rom based on 4.4.2 with no mods.

Fortunately, Google has left them an answer: Hi All! Thanks for your patience!

The engineers believe they have found a fix! As soon as the fix is released I’ll let you know! Unfortunately, I wasn’t provided a timeline, so stay tuned!

So no time frame was given, but at least we know they are working on the problem. In the meantime, you can go back to v2.0 and it should clear up the issue until a fix is sent out for everybody…maybe Google will even add Google Voice support in the update.

Please hit us up on our Google+ Page to discuss any issue that you have had with your Google Hangouts 2.1 related to excessive battery drain…as always, we would love to hear from you.