ARC B264 High Idle Battery Usage on Android 14

Early Access
1

As others have also observed, I’ve had fairly high idle battery usage on ARC builds for a while (S22, Android 14) but the most recent B264 has turned my phone into a pocket warmer when ARC is in the background, with correspondingly high battery usage, for example 25% over working hours. This makes it pretty unusable in practice. @Early_Access is this something team Roon are aware of? I can’t see any new reports so far…Thanks!

Edit: I did have battery usage set to Unrestricted, as I thought that was needed for correct operation. I have changed to Optimised so will see how that pans out.

2

There is one here

3

Sure, hence I said “as others have also observed”, but that was many builds ago, rather than highlighting any difference with this build.

4

Yeah, it’s cropped back up again after getting better for a bit. Yesterday ARC used literally 50% of my phone’s battery doing nothing at all. @Early_Access can we seriously get this looked into?

1 Like
5

Try restricted, it may help more.

6

I just tried to answer “is this something team Roon are aware of?”

7

I’ve been bringing this issue up for months now and the Roon team hasn’t really done anything to try and solve it.

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8

Thanks, will play around with these settings a little. I’m guessing this will break things like smart downloads though at the very least.

9

I’m guessing the increase in usage relates to this:

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…although today, when battery use is set to optimised, it seems to have got a handle on itself with regards to battery usage at least.

10

Yikes! you are right. I’m new to Roon, and ARC is important to me - and I can’t even use it right now. ARC is killing my iPhone 15 max battery and heating up the phone.

I hope that support is reading these messages and working to optimize the app

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11

This is still not resolved @Early_Access can we get this actually looked into. @ivan @oleh Someone!?

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12

Hi all, we’re currently looking into this and have run a few tests internally and have not yet spotted the culprit.

A few things to learn which would be helpful:

  1. Can you point to a specific timestamp in the past week where you’ve had a particularly draining session?
  2. What were you doing in ARC when this happened? (playback, downloads, on WiFi or data, Bluetooth, etc) As much detail as you may have is helpful here.
  3. Were there any other apps running simultaneously?
13

I personally always use ARC over bluetooth but the drain happens when the app is idle. It seems to be intermittent but in past threads I’ve provided timestamps and screenshots. Sometimes it behaves other times it does not. It’s hard to predict.

14

I generally run over Bluetooth too, often in the car, and sometimes with Google maps as well. I continue to get the frequent crashes message (as above) and suspect this probably relates.

Often the phone is overheated from a short session in the car, although I also agree with @mackid1993 that the usage can happen in the idle period following (less so I think since changing the battery policy for the app, though i believe this breaks smart downloads).

Edit: @michael Here’s an example of today’s activity - not sure if this is normal usage for a couple of hour’s music or not :man_shrugging: seems high to me but will watch for higher…and keep an eye on background.

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15

After installing Android 14 QPR3 on my Pixel 6 Pro (the June major update) it seems that ARC dies in the background on its own now. ARC still seems to suck a ton of power, but Android seems to be killing it now which helps the symptom but not the root cause of ARC being so power hungry.

16

This started happening again!

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17

Just happened again today B286. Timestamp 7/30/2024 9 AM - 12 PM EST.
@michael please let me know if that timestamp helps?

Edit: Happened again today, had to manually kill the app. 8/12/2024 9AM - 11 AM EST.

Edit 8/15/2024:
This is solved for me. It’s a bug with the Now Playing and Queue screens where there is runway GPU usage. Leaving ARC on any other screen when idle solves the power draw issue.

See here: [ARC] Idle Battery Drain Issue on Android 14 (ref#36KAR0) - #2 by connor

18

I have no idea why but Arc regularly drains my battery. Example from today, where I used Arc for maybe 30 minutes and then not at all for a few hours.

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19

Try disabling any DSP including headroom management. That may help power draw when listening.

20

The thing is it keeps draining the battery long after I stopped listening. The app lives in the background and does “something”. I would put it in deep sleep but I use smart downloads and want it to be able to do its thing. I’m sure it’s an issue that can be addressed.