If you’ve found your phone battery doesn’t last the way it did lately, you may be suffering the battery drain of a bug in Google Messages. The bug itself — reported on Reddit — has a number of elements that need to happen to occur, primarily that you’re taking photos in Google Messages.
Once you’ve taken a photo, the camera continues operating in the background and depleting the battery quickly. A partial resolution is to remove camera permissions for the Messages app in the short term. Given the capability to attach recent photos — via the camera — to messages, this may result in a minor workflow change for some users.
Longer-term, as confirmed by Scott Westover, communications manager at Google to The Verge the bug has been found and a fix is rolling out. So, if you’re unfortunate enough to b suffering from this battery sucking bug, keep your eyes open for a Google Message update.
