Your phone drains battery power even when the screen is turned off. Some apps continue to sync and check for updates in the background, but turning off all power-consuming services can cause notifications, updates, and other basic functionality to fail. Once I figured out which one was the worst offender in my phone, a few changes gave me almost two extra hours on a charge. What’s surprising is that the name at the top of the battery list was not the app I needed to change.
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My battery anxiety disappeared with one Samsung procedure.
Your phone can manage its battery itself. Let it be.
The scapegoat and the real culprit
One application creates another
Rob/MakeUseOf
If you’ve ever opened your battery settings, you may have seen Google Play Services at the top of the list. It looks like the obvious culprit, so limiting it or forcing it to stop might seem like a logical step. But that battery number doesn’t tell the whole story. It shows which service is doing the work, not necessarily which application is running it.
Think of Google Play Services as Android’s support system behind the scenes. It handles tasks such as location requests, account syncing, and push notifications for Google and other apps. Disabling or severely restricting it is a bad idea and can interfere with notifications, Play Store, Maps, and login.
On my phone, the app driving most of this activity was the Google app. Its location access, voice features, and background syncing continued to require Play Services to remain active through wake locks, which prevent the processor from going to sleep. Play Services took a visible hit to the battery screen, but the Google app was pulling the strings.
How I fixed it without deleting anything
Background features you can safely turn off
The first feature I disabled was the Discover channel. This is a news feed in the Google app. It loads articles and images in the background, so the feed appears instantly when you open it. This background sampling keeps your phone’s data connection active. To turn it off, open the Google app, tap your profile picture, go to Settings, then Other Settings, and turn off Discovery. Some phones also offer a separate switch on the home screen for the Overview page, but this varies by manufacturer.
With Discover disabled, I still had one background drain running. Hello Google With this feature, your microphone listens to the wake word 24/7. To turn it off, I opened the Gemini app, tapped Menu, then my profile picture, and went to Settings. In the “Talk to a Gemini Hands-Free” section, I turned off “Hey Google.” You’ll lose hands-free activation, but you’ll still be able to open Gemini manually when you need it.
After making these two changes, the Google app can still wake up and perform tasks in the background. I went to Settings > Apps > Google > Battery and selected Limited. This limits application background jobs, scheduled tasks, and network activity. Check it throughout the day and switch back if you miss something important.
Google raises Android battery standards
New standards for application energy use
Afam Onimadu/MUO
Partial wake blocking is a legal part of Android. They allow an app to keep the processor running after the screen turns off so it can complete important background work, such as completing a download or completing an urgent task. Android already manages battery consumption in the background with tools like sleep mode and app standby, but these tools don’t flag or penalize apps for holding the wake lock for too long.
This gap is what Google and Samsung set out to close. By refining the way it measures Wake Lock usage, Google has raised the bar for battery performance in late 2025 and made over-the-top Wake Lock tracking a core quality standard in the Play Store.
Under this policy, a session is considered excessive if an application holds non-excluded partial wake locks for more than two cumulative hours per day. This only applies when the screen is off and the app is running in the background. Wake-up blocks associated with audio playback, location services, and user-initiated background tasks are eliminated.
If more than 5% of an app’s sessions cross this line within 28 days, Google can remove it from recommendation surfaces and display a warning in the store listing telling users that the app “may drain their device’s battery more quickly.” Enforcement began on March 1, 2026.
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I used my phone without Google services for a week and everything was (almost) fine.
I never realized how dependent I was on Google services until I tried to live without them. I’ve found some good alternatives that respect my privacy.
Check what else is running after this
After making these changes, give the phone a full day of normal use. Then go to Settings > Battery and open Battery Usage. Look at the background time in the Google app. If it fell, the changes work. While you’re there, check other apps in the list that are showing long background time for apps you weren’t actively using that day.