Has anyone read, or experienced, the effects of widgets on battery life?

finn5975

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I can't imagine this has not been asked, but several searches did not produce anything so here goes. Has anyone read, or experienced, the affect of widgets on battery life? I currently am running the Weather Channel widget and ESPN Scorecenter widget. If those, and other widgets, are constantly updating in the background then I have to imagine there is battery life impact. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
 

kataran

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

Funny I was wondering the same thing and just recently disabled all my widgets and it seems to have helped a little bit

Mind you I had a total of 6 widgets running at that time
 

taz323

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

Been wondering the same thing, been running Weather channel and Sports center. haven't really noticed much if any drain.
 

ThePinkChameleon

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

I'm running yahoo weather, pcalc, calendar, reminders, and stocard in the noti center. My battery life has been just as good as it previously was without the widgets....and I use the noti center & lock screen a good bit through out the day for checking off reminders, emails and text messages.
 

morrisbuttermaker

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

I'm not knocking anyone's choices, but for those that are using widgets...why ? It appears to me to create steps to get to apps.
 

acerace113

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

I think so, I did some tests and found my phone woke up for about 15 minutes per hour with the ESPN sportscenter widget on.

Sent from my Surface 2 using Tapatalk
 

Ledsteplin

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

I don't think they drain much. I thought so at first, but after removing them, no change. One culprit is Location Based Alerts in system services of location services. It uses geofencing non stop. I saw the icon in the status bar and it took me a while to find what it was. It was running my battery down fast.


Sent from my ancient but trustworthy iPhone 5
 

darksora14562

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

I don't think they drain anything as long as you have background at refresh turned off but if you have it on then yes it will be updating automatically because you're allowing the apps to update on their own as well as updating the widgets
 

Ledsteplin

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I'm learning a lot from you guys. So...using a widget isn't like going to an app on your home screen and tapping on it ??
I think it's more like a photo in an album is the same photo on the camera roll or in Moments. The one in the album takes no additional space. It's kind of like that with the widgets it seems. Same info and actions, different place. I may be wrong though. :D


Sent from my ancient but trustworthy iPhone 5
 

H_D

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

I use them to avoid the need of opening an app. The info I need is now one swipe away.

To go a step further you don't even have to open the phone if you have it set up to access the Notification Center from the lock screen. Saves time when you just want a quick update or glance.
 

Rolandh

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

Can't say I've noticed any excessive battery drain from using Notification Center Widgets, the biggest battery drain for me is the need for Bluetooth to be on 24/7 for my fitbit Flex.

Roland
 

mikeo007

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

It seems like some widgets do cause a drain, while others do not. The ESPN widget doesn't cause me any noticable drain, but weather underground definitely ate into the battery.
 

Ledsteplin

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

It seems like some widgets do cause a drain, while others do not. The ESPN widget doesn't cause me any noticable drain, but weather underground definitely ate into the battery.
I haven't noticed Weather Underground do anything. What makes you certain it was weather underground?


Sent from my ancient but trustworthy iPhone 5
 

mikeo007

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

I haven't noticed Weather Underground do anything. What makes you certain it was weather underground?


Sent from my ancient but trustworthy iPhone 5

It was the only new app I had installed, showed significant battery usage, and my phone discharged about 10% faster than normal.
 

Trees

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

It was the only new app I had installed, showed significant battery usage, and my phone discharged about 10% faster than normal.

As much as I like Weather Underground, uninstalled it for two reasons:

1. Widgets were constantly crashing per details in the Diagnostics and Usage.
2. Weather by location never worked via GPS. Always showed my "home" station - even after purging static locations to force GPS.

When it was installed and active, didn't notice any significant battery usage (> 2% daily) for the widgets.
 

Scatabrain

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Re: IOS 8 widgets and battery life

It seems like some widgets do cause a drain, while others do not. The ESPN widget doesn't cause me any noticable drain, but weather underground definitely ate into the battery.

I have the WU widget active and disabled background update. Seems to still work fine.
 

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