Aggressive battery drain when steamdeck goes on standby

[mputtr]

I'm running into an odd issue. I am currently playing Dishonored 2 and noticed that when I put the steamdeck on standby, the device acts like it's sitting on the game screen and drains the battery pretty aggressively. From the testing that I did, I'm seeing 6% loss every hour.
All I did was start the game, and then when the game loads, I would pause it and put the device on standby by pressing the power button once. Then I place it in the case and I ignore it until I am free (usually in the late evenings). When i take it out, I immediately noticed the fan is running and the device is warm (not hot, just warm).
At first I thought this might be an issue with Dishonored 2 specifically.. but I noticed that when I take the device out of standby, the game is sometimes quitted out, but the battery drain is still happening. I tried this with Trine - Enchanted Edition and same issue.
I'm not sure what is causing it since the device is as close to stock as it gets (other than logging into wifi and my account and downloading some games). I haven't even turned on bluetooth.
Steam support says to try the beta channel.. which I did, but same issue. The only way to temporarily stop the drain is to shut down the device, wait a moment, and turn it back on and do not start any game.. which doesn't make sense to me. This hasn't been an issue when i first got the device.
Any advice?

[mputtr]

Originally posted by Ozwald:

Food for thought. I thought I heard something about this before & did a quick search. I think this was related, might be worth a check, it's free. Note that you have to do it in Desktop Mode. I wasted a good 5 minutes looking through the regular menus for it.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/2/3385030647936480235/

Thanks. I will check this out if valve decides to do nothing. it would be extremely frustrating if they can't fix it tbh. I feel like the device is more than capable of logging the events that happen that's keeping the darn thing up. Even after a bios reset and a re-image.. it was still doing it.
I wonder if it's a part hardware, part software issue...

[mputtr]

Originally posted by Ozwald:

Originally posted by mputtr:

Thanks. I will check this out if valve decides to do nothing. it would be extremely frustrating if they can't fix it tbh. I feel like the device is more than capable of logging the events that happen that's keeping the darn thing up. Even after a bios reset and a re-image.. it was still doing it.
I wonder if it's a part hardware, part software issue...

No idea, but IMO it's worth taking the 2 minutes to look since it doesn't cost anything. I've never watched mine to have data to compare to, but I don't often use sleep/standby if I'm not plugged in at my desk. Even the 15 minutes to the airport - I'm fully shut down until my ass is in my seat. I'm also old & partially disabled with limited use of 1 hand, so my recently played list is pretty mild, both on action & on hardware/software demand.

Good luck.

Thank you. I do appreciate you sending me the link. The steamdeck is currently on its way to the RMA place as of last thursday. I do hope they can fix it and i can somehow keep the antislip grips on the side and the glass screen protector I put on it.

I do really think it's part hardware, part software. Whatever it is, my biggest frustration is with how valve "tech" support basically only asks me to reformat and reimage stuff. the only one thing they did differently is to ask me to burn the battery down to 0 and charge it back up to 100% then pull a battery check command.. which doesn't do anything other than report the estimated capacity of the battery, which was not my issue. I kept on re-explaining myself to these guys and they either ignore the issue or make absurd claims because they don't know what else to do and can't be bothered to help.
If they asked me to do something like pulling a system log for the past 24hrs on the steamdeck and send them the file.. I feel like that information might be what they need, but instead they just tell me to factory reset the firmware, factory reset the bios, and re-image the entire device. It's literally all boilerplate crap with no actual problem solving.

[Smart]

Nintendo Switch has exact same issue right now:


draining battery in standby (about ~70 Percent per day) with newest update.

I doubt this can be fixed with an update...

Going into Standby requires polling performance. No Polling performance left? No Standby possible!

[mputtr]

Originally posted by Smart:

Nintendo Switch has exact same issue right now:


draining battery in standby (about ~70 Percent per day) with newest update.

I doubt this can be fixed with an update...

Going into Standby requires polling performance. No Polling performance left? No Standby possible!

man that is awful.. admittedly I haven't used my switch in months.. I should pick it up again.
I really just wished valve used different tech support agents instead of these people who just respond off a bullet point list of things to do, then eventually end up contradicting each other.
the other issue is how a case basically gets passed around to the next available person and a lot of time, they don't read the previous messages and give an answer that doesn't even pertain to the issue.
I tried to not lose my temper with them but their support team was of no help.
1 thought I had gameplay issue.
1 thought I had battery capacity issue.
none bothered to try to teach me how to pull system logs that could probably tell them exactly what is going on.
2 made absurd claims that contradicted other agents and basically say that it is normal standby battery drain and tried to tell me I'm SOL.
others here have proven that my steamdeck is faulty for some reason. and I have proven that it's not a normal behavior by testing the steamdeck out in various environments (no game launched, game launched, game launched and quit out, less intensive game launched, and less intensive launched and quit out) and reported all my findings, but they just ignore everything I tell me and just kept on going off their damn boiler plate list.

[Silicon Vampire]

Flat hierarchy in any company is a bad idea. Nobody wants to take responsibility for the things that don't make money directly... and in my opinion, it's those very things that bring down companies if neglected

[mputtr]

i just wanted someone who can actually give me more indepth technical help. I hated that the only things they asked of me was all just reformat this, re image that, start from scratch. No attempts to pull system logs, no attempts to try to actual troubleshoot. just reformat/reimage.

[mputtr]

Originally posted by Ozwald:

Food for thought. I thought I heard something about this before & did a quick search. I think this was related, might be worth a check, it's free. Note that you have to do it in Desktop Mode. I wasted a good 5 minutes looking through the regular menus for it.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/2/3385030647936480235/

i just got it back. the technician couldn't "fix" it because they weren't able to replicate the issue. i called them up and asked them what was the note for the repair and it was a vague "6-7% power drain an hour" with not explanation that leads to the power drain. I'm super frustrated because this just leads the technician down the wrong path and it means they weren't give the correct information to fix the product. instead they were given partial information.
Now i"m just hoping that I can get another RMA and I will print out the entire support dialogue to show the issues.

[mputtr]

Quick update. got a replacement. now standby time is exactly like it's supposed to. steam support agents were mostly awful and frustrating but the replacement did the job

[Dobke]

You have to keep in mind that the steam deck runs on the x64 platform, which is the same platform most notebooks and computers use.

Unlike phones, which use ARM, the x64 architecture consumes considerably more power when sleeping compared to arm processors.

While modern x64 chips have improved power management features, they generally do not achieve the same level of power efficiency as ARM processors in low-power states.

[mputtr]

Originally posted by Dobkey:

You have to keep in mind that the steam deck runs on the x64 platform, which is the same platform most notebooks and computers use.

Unlike phones, which use ARM, the x64 architecture consumes considerably more power when sleeping compared to arm processors.

While modern x64 chips have improved power management features, they generally do not achieve the same level of power efficiency as ARM processors in low-power states.

sure. I understand that but some of the tech support clowns insisted that 6-7% power loss on standby is normal when it isn't. something that is proven by another poster here and the replacement steamdeck that I have. I believe my original steamdeck had some sort of physical hardware issue that was keeping the system fully awake instead of standby.
I'm not comparing the steamdeck to another device. I'm comparing the original oled 512gb steamdeck to the replacement of the same spec.