Excessive Phone Battery Drain While Using Arlo App to View Arlo Baby

[Kyle-i]

Has anyone experienced severe battery drain on their phones while viewing the Arlo Baby video feed through the Arlo App? My wife and I have an iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and a MacBook Pro, and we've both experienced rapid battery drain on all of these devices. We'll keep the app open while our baby takes a 45-60 min nap and we'll end up losing as much as half of our battery life. This definitely doesn't happen while we're streaming movies via Netflix or Amazon, which I realize is a much different process, but movies and shows are streamed at a much higher resolution and usually at higher brightness and louder volume, and yet these apps drain a fraction of the battery power that the Arlo app drains.

Anyone else experiencing this problem?

Arlo Support - anything you can do to improve this?

[JessicaP]

Hi @Kyle-i,

When you say you're experiencing rapid battery drain on your devices, are you talking about for iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and MacBook Pro? For iOS devices, try checking which battery was used the most by going to your iPhone Settings > Battery. You can also try reading about how to extend the battery life here for your iOS devices: Maximizing Battery Life and Lifespan

[Kyle-i]

Hi @JessicaP,

Thanks for reaching out! I'm saying that my iOS/macOS devices are experiencing the unusual battery drain (not the Arlo devices). Looking at the Battery Settings on my iPhone 8 Plus, it shows that the Arlo app accounted for 56% of battery activity in the last 24 hours. The next three highest apps accounted for only 15%, 9%, and 4%, respectively, of battery activity. Arlo's battery usage seems incredibly high.

When you break down time on screen vs. battery activity, it further demonstrates the stark constrast between Arlo's battery usage and other apps. Keep in mind that all of these apps display photos, video, and audio:

• Arlo: 56% battery activity, 1h 50m on screen = 0.51% per minute
• Instagram: 15% battery activity, 1h 18m on screen = 0.19% per minute (yes, I know I spend too much time on IG 😅)
• Twitter: 9% battery activity, 41m on screen = 0.22% per minute

I think this means that Arlo consumes battery power at roughly 2.5x the rate of Instagram and Twitter.

This doesn't seem to be an issue with extending the iPhone's battery life. My iPhone 8 Plus exhibits normally acceptable battery life, except for when I'm using the Arlo app. And as I mentioned before, our iOS and macOS devices draw power normally when streaming video from other apps, like Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime. It seems more like a problem with the Arlo app and its efficiency in utilizing power to stream from the base station.

[AsheM]

I just purchased the Arlo baby. Yesterday. My wife has the iPhone 10 and I have the iPhone XR. The Arlo app is currently utilizing 72% of both our battery usage. My battery life has been reduced to half of what it was prior to adding baby Arlo. If anyone has recommendations on how to preserve the battery life, would be great to hear. Otherwise we are going to have to send this back and just buy a non-WiFi baby monitor.

[JessicaP]

Try to update to the newest Arlo app and see if that resolves the problem with battery draining: Arlo iOS App - 2.7.0 - 7th January 2019

[Kyle-i]

Hi @JessicaP,

I updated my Arlo app, and it's hard to tell if there was much of a change. Maybe it's slightly better? It's still draining really fast, though, compared to other streaming video like Hulu or YouTube. I will say that the new app is much faster at loading the live streams from my cameras (although now the app crashes once every time I open it, and then remains stable after that).

Sorry, not sure if that really helps. But it does still seem like there are processes that are still inefficiently using the phone's resources compared with other streaming apps. Thanks!

[Kyle-i]

It's been awhile but wanted to circle back. After a long period of observation, the Arlo app is still draining an excessive amount of batter life when streaming the baby camera. Recent updates to the Arlo app have yielded no observable improvement. My iPhone 8 Plus still has very healthy battery life when not using the Arlo app and I'm also still experiencing Arlo battery drain when streaming Arlo on my 2018 Macbook Pro, so it's not an issue with my phone. Would love to see some improvements in power efficiency.

[kkantard]

I have three arlo cameras and when they are armed, the battery drain on my Android MotoZ is excessive.  Compared to a day or more, the life of the battery was 5-8 hours. I could not figure this out initially, but after going through some  Verizon diagnostics and looking through the Arlo settings, I turned some things completely "off" in the app. The cameras are constantly talking to the app if the Arlo system is set to "armed" and, if full motion type detection is engaged on each camera, this constant barrage of notifications and/or chatter is draining the phone power. Turning off push notifications only goes so far, and this of course defeats the purpose of having the Arlo camera and app alert.  If you are concerned mainly about person motion for example, turn every other detection type off in the settings for each camera. Ironically, when I  completely disarm my cameras in the app, the battery life on my phone is normal again.