TL;DR: My new Pixel 11 Pro XL was losing about 2.5 to 3% per hour sitting idle on home Wi-Fi. Kernel wakelock data showed the Wi-Fi chip waking the phone ~135 times a minute, with the phone failing to suspend more than half the time. Changing only the router's 5 GHz mode from 802.11ax to 802.11ac dropped that to 2.4 wakeups/min and ~1% failed suspend. Looking for others with the same pattern.
Setup
* Pixel 11 Pro XL, Android 17, build CD1A.260905.001.B1
* Router: Tenda Mesh3X (firmware V16.03.31.20), wired to the ISP modem
* 5 GHz on channel 161, 20/40/80 MHz
* Measured with BetterBatteryStats (BBS Reloaded) using ADB-granted permissions. Each test ran 25 to 45 minutes with the screen off and the phone untouched, with stats reset before each run.
Results
| Network | wlan_rx_wake per min | Time failing to suspend |
|—|—|—|
| Mesh 5 GHz, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) | 135 | 59 to 67% |
| Mesh 5 GHz, Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), everything else identical | 2.4 | 1% |
| Mesh 2.4 GHz, Wi-Fi 4 | 15 | 3.7% |
| Galaxy Z Flip 7 hotspot, Wi-Fi 4 | 3.8 | 0.8% |
| ISP public hotspot, Wi-Fi 6 (large shared network, so not a clean comparison) | 83 | 56% |
On Wi-Fi 6, BBS's power model put the Wi-Fi radio at about 85 mA while idle. The Wi-Fi 5 link still runs at 866 Mbps, so the workaround costs very little.
What I ruled out
* LAN broadcast/multicast: a 5-minute capture from a Linux box on the network showed ~950 broadcast/multicast packets per minute, mostly mDNS, which Android's Wi-Fi packet filter drops. ARP aimed at the phone was about 1.5/min.
* My home server: it only answered DNS queries the phone itself started.
* IPv6: router advertisements go out every 200 to 600 seconds, 2.4 GHz with IPv6 on was fine, and the ISP hotspot without IPv6 was still bad.
* Apps: BBS attributed fewer than 100 Wi-Fi wakeups to apps over the whole day, against ~52,000 wlan_rx_wake events.
* Wi-Fi Calling / IPsec tunnel: I removed an eSIM that was running one early on, and wlan_rx_wake didn't change.
Workaround
Set the router's 5 GHz network mode to 802.11a/n/ac. My Tenda firmware doesn't expose TWT or DTIM settings, so I couldn't test whether TWT specifically is the trigger.
Related
The wakelock names (wlan_rx_wake, wlan_txfl_wake, wlan_oob_irq_wake) look like Broadcom's bcmdhd driver, as on earlier Pixels. I found similar wlan_rx_wake idle-drain reports on older Pixels (for example https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/6125 on a Pixel 9) and a Pixel Community thread titled "WiFi Battery Drain on Pixel 11 Pro" (https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/463798738), but nothing that isolates Wi-Fi 6 on the Pixel 11. I've sent it to Google through the feedback tool.
Questions
-
Anyone else on a Pixel 11 (or 10) seeing high wlan_rx_wake on Wi-Fi 6 routers? Which brand and model?
-
If your router exposes TWT or DTIM settings, have you tested turning TWT off while keeping 802.11ax?
How to check your own phone: install BetterBatteryStats, grant its permissions via ADB, reset stats, leave the phone idle on Wi-Fi for 30+ minutes, then check Kernel Wakelocks for the wlan_rx_wake count. Dozens per minute at idle is worth investigating.
Source: r/GooglePixel · by /u/Albamen13