There is a problem with my mobile phone. A while ago the battery was 86%, it suddenly went to 45%. It’s even a little warmer than normal. What’s going on? The blame tends to go to apps that are notorious for saturating resources like the Google Chrome browser, but most likely on Android devices the fault is in another app. Someone we could consider invisible.

Google Play Services. The vast majority of Android devices have an app called Google Play Services, which is absolutely necessary to be able to work with Google apps. Without it, we wouldn’t have access to the app store, Google Maps, YouTube or Google Pay, for example.

Invisible. This app is not available, for example, on Huawei mobiles that do not have access due to the US veto in 2019. On other certified Android mobiles, the app is always there, pre-installed and working. in the background to support other applications connected to it. However, its functioning is transparent to users. We don’t have the invisible and typical app icon and we won’t be able to find it on our mobile desktops where other “normal” apps are installed.

A gluttonous practice (but with a specific reason). Google Play Services has the problem of being key to the operation of many other apps and tools we use on a daily basis. Background services aren’t usually memory or battery gluttons, but this Google app is so heavily used by the rest of the system that at certain times battery consumption can skyrocket. So if you check which apps are consuming the most battery on your Android mobile device and you find that Google Play Services is among those that do the most, fear not: it’s normal.

But also hot. If our battery is draining quickly, there will already be signs that something strange may happen, but there are also cases where our mobile overheats. It is possible to go for some possible solutions to fix the problem and get the device back to normal operation. Among them, the following stand out:

• restart your cell phone: The old IT Crowd joke is still a simple way to “fix” the problem.
• Pending Update: Sometimes this tool has an incomplete update, which is updated invisibly. To complete, simply enable this update manually from Google Play.
• stop the application: It can be done from Settings -> Apps, then showing system apps, selecting “Google Play Services” and finally clicking “Force stop”.
• delete data: If none of the above works, we can try to delete the data associated with Google Play Services. To do this, you must first go to Settings -> Apps. There we click on Show system apps, we click on Storage -> Manage space and there we click on “Clear all data”. There is no danger in doing this, we will not lose anything because everything will be synced from Google. Here’s a suggestion: do it from Wi-Fi, as this can consume a lot of mobile data.

Don’t even think about uninstalling. Manufacturers often do not offer an easy option to uninstall Google Play Services as many other apps depend on it. The usual among the options for this application is that the “Uninstall” button is grayed out for this reason. While there are alternative methods of achieving this, it is not recommended to do so. Of course: there are Android ROMs that focus on privacy like LineageOS; these are for example Google Play Services or Google apps (GMail, YouTube, Maps, Google Play store etc.) it is possible to add these components with packages like the famous GApps.

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on Xataka | How to find out how your Android battery may lose health status and capacity?