Ford Pass Battery Drain Survey (Results Are In)

[ARK]

I have an iPhone SE Second Generation. I have not noticed any excessive battery drain. As of this morning, iOS says FordPass used 2% of my battery in the last 24 hours and 4% of my battery over the last 10 days.

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[Capnkt]

My battery usually lasts a day and a half. Not any more...

Pixel 4a, survey filled out.

 

[gafear]

For Android users - solution is to force stop the app (and open again before entering the car)

 

[Murse-In-Airy]

iPhone XR with PAAK. I haven’t been out to the garage yet today. Haven’t force closed the app in over a week. FordPass shows 1% of today’s battery usage. More than my Bluetooth thermometer I’m using to monitor my smoker. Less than Siri (which I’ve used to set a couple reminders but nothing more).

 

[mpshizzle]

For Android users - solution is to force stop the app (and open again before entering the car)

Hopefully soon enough we won't have to use band aids! ??

 

[bellyer]

Just responded to the survey. I definitely have massive battery drain on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, but my wife on her Galaxy S20 does not have any issues at all, even though her FordPass and PaaK settings are the same as mine. Interestingly, I do also occasionally get notifications that FordPass is overloading the CPU and needs to be closed.

 

[benk016]

For Android users - solution is to force stop the app (and open again before entering the car)

That's not a solution. Its a workaround if you care more about battery life than PAAK functionality.
When you force close the app, you stop the bluetooth connection from working at all until you open the app again.

You can also let android put FordPass to sleep, and your battery life will improve greatly, but PAAK will only work when you pull your phone out and open the app.

In the current state, on android at least, if you want to use PAAK as its supposed to work, you will experience battery drain.

 

[gafear]

That's not a solution. Its a workaround if you care more about battery life than PAAK functionality.
When you force close the app, you stop the bluetooth connection from working at all until you open the app again.

You can also let android put FordPass to sleep, and your battery life will improve greatly, but PAAK will only work when you pull your phone out and open the app.

In the current state, on android at least, if you want to use PAAK as its supposed to work, you will experience battery drain.

Agreed, but for now this is what I'm doing, better than having my phone energy drained.

Btw - I'm also finding android wireless auto also a pain. Cell phone gets way too hot and drains energy, a small USB C is the best solution so far

 

[mpshizzle]

Okay, the results are in! Thanks to everyone who participated! Before I get into results I would like to temper everyone's expectations ?. This was a very small sample size (41 responses), and as such the results are far from conclusive. That being said any information is good information.

What OS is most affected?
Of the phones experiencing battery drain, 86.4% were Android phones. (Insert smug faces from iPhone owners here)

What Brands Were Most Affected?
The short answer is all of them except Apple. The majority of responses were from owners of Apple, Samsung, and Google Phones. Of those 3 brands, Apple fared the best with only 15% of phones experiencing battery drain. Google, on the other hand had 100% of phones affected.

Was There a Trend in Which Models Were Affected?
Yes! For this section, I'm just going to focus on the Apple, Samsung, and Google (spoiler alert: OnePlus and Essential only had one entry each. Both had battery Drain)

Let's start with iPhone - The only iPhone affected was iPhone 11. 50% of iPhone 11s were affected.

On the Samsung side, the S20 was the only model that managed to escape the battery drain. No S20s were affected.

And then the Google Pixel... Uph. Owners of the 3, 3a ,4 , 4a, and 5 all responded and all were affected.

What are the Conclusions?
Of the phones included in the survey every single one (with 2 exceptions) was equipped with Bluetooth 5.0. The exceptions were iPhone 7 (BT 4.2 - not affected by battery drain) and Galaxy S21 Ultra (Ultra uses BT 5.2 - S21 and S21+ have BT 5.0).

Given the above findings with BT versions, and the fact that almost every Android was affected regardless of brand, processors, etc, I'm thinking it's not hardware related at all.

It seems to me that the app performs poorly on any hardware, and is poorly optimized for Android. My guess is that since Ford is an American company, and iPhones make up 65+% of the US smartphone market, they put far more resources into the iOS app. The end result is sloppy back end programming and performance on Android phones.

*Disclaimer* This conclusion is 100% my opinion, and is based on a very limited survey. So what do you see? Is there something I'm missing here? Any other thoughts or ideas on this issue?

 

[macchiaz-o]

Can I pull the Mirak card and suggest that ALL Apple users experience battery drain problems with FordPass but are simply ignorant to it?

??

 

[macchiaz-o]

I've already suggested this in some other threads, but just in case...

Dear Ford,

If you haven't yet, can you consider some potential fixes for PaaK?

• Back off connection attempt frequency as I walk further away from the vehicle. Increase frequency as I walk very close.
• Back off connection attempts when neither phone nor vehicle are moving.
• Have the vehicle periodically attempt to initiate connection to my phone. The vehicle's battery is significantly bigger.
• Try to connect more aggressively when I press a door open button.
• Use interrupt driven timers between connection attempts instead of whatever the heck it's doing now so that my phone's CPU can sleep.
• Do some analysis on the hundreds/thousands of app responsiveness logs we've collectively been submitting to you through the OS/store app feedback reporting.
• Provide the PaaK developers with paak enabled vehicles for their personal, daily use so they can dog food it.

 

[Tyldum]

PaaK is the function that triggers drain on my Note 10+.
I used FordPass for a week regularly, no drain. Configured PaaK, and back to 25%/hour. Phone is too hot to keep in my pocket.

 

[me-stang]

Is force stop of the FordPass app the only option to disable Paak? Used 94% of my Pixel 4 battery....

 

[Tyldum]

Only way I found.
Added the API to my smarthome so I can open that app instead of the Ford app...
Use Home Assistant for this.

 

[benk016]

Only way I found.
Added the API to my smarthome so I can open that app instead of the Ford app...
Use Home Assistant for this.

Do you have any instructions, or a link to how you set it up? I'm curious about this as I have HA running at home.

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