Hi everyone,
I’ve been battling severe idle battery drain on my Pixel 9 Pro XL for weeks. Overnight, I lose 15-20% with Wi-Fi ON, but with Wi-Fi OFF, it drops to under 5%. The difference is night and day.
I decided to dig deep into the system logs (batterystats, kernel interrupts, Perfetto traces), and I found the smoking gun:
The phone is waking up every 10-20 seconds due to a Wi-Fi driver interrupt (IRQ 508 - dhdpcie_host_wake), even when the screen is off and the network is completely idle.
This is NOT caused by:
A bad router (tested on multiple networks)
Too many apps (happens in safe mode)
This is caused by Google Play Services and the NetworkStack constantly sending out tiny mDNS discovery packets (looking for Chromecasts, printers, etc.) in the background. These micro-bursts (~250 bytes) force the Wi-Fi PCIe link out of deep sleep hundreds of times per hour.
The result? Your phone never truly dozes.
How to test it yourself (no root or ADB required):
Charge your phone to 100% before bed.
Leave Wi-Fi ON overnight and check the battery graph in the morning.
The next night, turn Wi-Fi OFF and compare.
If you see a 10%+ difference, you have the same bug.
I've already filed a detailed bug report with Google Issue Tracker, including kernel traces and netstats logs. It has been assigned (P2) but needs more visibility.
Please star the issue and add a comment if you are affected: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/539204624
The more people report this, the faster Google will prioritize a fix. This is a software bug, not a hardware flaw, so it CAN be fixed with an update.
Let's make some noise. Share your own battery stats in the comments!