Google’s Hangouts application, used to provide instant messaging, video conferencing and SMS/MMS integration on Android devices, has been found guilty. Guilty of draining excessive battery power, that is. Raised on Google’s Hangouts Group (a support forum), a number of users were finding higher than normal battery usage attributed to the app — as high as 30% in some instances — caused by excessive wakelocks (i.e. the app requesting that the device stay awake).
Fortunately, a Google employee has publicly acknowledged the existence of the problem, and has advised that engineers responsible for Hangouts are working on a fix which should be pushed out to Android users shortly.
There’s no timeframe on this, so just keep an eye on the Play Store if you’re a Hangouts user, and hopefully the bug won’t affect you too badly.
If you are affected, you might be able to roll back to an earlier version (prior to 2.1) which isn’t affected. Do this by going to your Settings app, then the Apps list, and find Hangouts in either the Downloaded or All categories. If it’s installed as a system app (as it often is), you should be able to roll-back updates, and hopefully revert to an earlier version without the battery drain. However, be careful doing this, please.
Good. Glad they’re working on it. I’ve been rolling back and forth from the factory version to the current to see if it’s fixed yet. I’ve given them some feedback – hope it helps and they get it sorted quickly.
thank goodness they came out and said this- i was wondering why hangouts was using nearly as much battery as my screen. I reckon it was the 2 bug reports that i sent them that made them realise this. When Ausdroid talks, Google listen 😀
i’d just be happy for them to fix the auto-rotate issue on mms images
The best way to have a rollback installer library is to have an app which makes a backup of every app installer you download, as you install or update apps.
On my devices to build this archival library, I use the secondary function of the paid app Root Uninstaller Pro, which I originally purchased for uninstalling unwanted system apps on my devices.