Topic: Switch battery issues

For a few months now, my Switch's battery has been draining much more quickly than normal. If this only happened when I was actually using it I could chalk it up to the battery just being a bit knackered - I've had the console for 7 years(!), after all, and the battery life wasn't that brilliant to begin with - but the more concerning part is that if I leave it out of the dock without even touching it, the battery goes from 100 to 0 in just a few hours.

I know there was some talk of the v19 firmware update causing problems like this, but I'm still having this problem long after the following patch was released and I haven't heard any more about this being a widespread issue since then. So is anyone else having any problems like this, and do you know if there's any way to fix it if so?

Mine is V1 machine, already updated to version 19.0.1, didn't experience with draining battery issue.
Surprisingly, sometime my Switch battery gained a few % of battery energy after I didn't play for a few days.

@Dogorilla Hey my NL friend! Short answer: sleep mode power saving may still be broken.

As of a week or so ago, I still see people on reddit discovering that their battery is drainig fast in sleep mode like almost daily. If your console is doing this and it's updated, I guess the patches haven't fixed it? In which case, I guess you should assume sleep mode is broken, and keep your switch docked or plugged in if you're going to use sleep mode.

I wish I could say I've tested it, but personally, I've almost never used sleep mode with the switch out of the dock or unplugged. I've just never wanted to waste any battery power cycles on sleep mode. It's very rare I use sleep mode unplugged. If I do, it's for like 5-15 minutes max, and usually my games are closed, wifi is possibly off.

@Dogorilla I want to pin down the details so I can try an reproduce the issue. Forgive me if any of these questions seem redundant.

Your battery's running down during sleep mode while undocked & unplugged?
And you're on the current update, 19.0.1?
Was a game game open during sleep mode? If yes, cite at least one game, if you can.
Was switch wifi on?

@WoomyNNYes Hi Woomy! Glad to hear it's not just me, I just hope that means Nintendo will actually do something about it! I tend to just put it in sleep mode whenever I'm not using it rather than fully powering it down - that seems to be what it's designed to do.

Yep that's right. I think it happens whether I leave a game open or not, but I always leave Wifi on.

@Dogorilla Then I guess sleep mode's power saving is broken with wifi on.

There's sleep mode setting for maintaining internet connection, but I noticed they end of that setting's description says, that setting is only for "wired connection", which implies the setting is specific to while being docked, and should have no bearing on sleep mode undocked/unplugged (If I'm understanding it correctly)

@WoomyNNYes Hmm, I'll test this theory by leaving it out of the dock in flight mode and see how it is later. (Although I actually took it out of the dock half an hour ago with WiFi left on and it's still at 100%, which I wasn't expecting. So either the power drain takes more than half an hour to kick in, or it's suddenly fixed itself as soon as I made this thread...)

Yeah, I left my OLED in sleep mode with wifi off & no games open for like 40 min, and it only dropped 1% or didn't drop at all. Maybe there's something to your thought there.

The common theme with people's story about their switch battery running down in sleep mode is, these are people that leave their console in sleep mode over night or for 2-3+ hours.

@WoomyNNYes Seems like you might be onto something with the WiFi idea. I left it undocked in flight mode all night and it only dropped about 5%.

That would seem to suggest it is indeed a firmware issue and not a physical battery problem, which is good to know. I'll take the minor inconvenience of having to switch off WiFi when I take my Switch somewhere over having to send it off for repair.

@Dogorilla AHH, interesting..... So, no game open during that test?

@WoomyNNYes No, no game open. Maybe I should test that next.

Ok, I tried leaving it in flight mode overnight again, this time with the Game Boy NSO app suspended, and again it only dropped 5%. Seems like WiFi is the main culprit.