Same issue with Samsung S10e. All of the suggestions--clearing cache, reinstalling, etc.--fail to help. If I give the app anything less than unrestricted background battery use, the private listening mode goes mute every couple of minutes, so that's not an option.
The only thing that helps is to force stop the app after every time I use it. This is the only app I've ever heard of that requires that!
Hi DTM54,
Welcome to the Roku Community!
We understand that you're having a problem with your Roku mobile app. We're happy to help. If the issue persists on the Roku mobile app after attempting the troubleshooting steps, We suggest contacting the Samsung customer support team to report the issue and get help. In this case, there's likely an issue with that specific phone that needs to be addressed with an update from them.
Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to help you.
All the best,
John
John, it amazes me that every time I've contacted Roku about a problem--there hasn't been a single exception--the response I get is that it's someone else's problem and you send the customer to them to get it fixed.
I'm an engineer with decades of experience with software development. Let me give you some advice. When your product doesn't work, it's YOUR problem, not someone else's. And it's YOUR responsibility to fix it, not the customer's. Even if this really is an issue with Samsung's phones, it's YOUR job to contact Samsung and work with them to fix the problem. My company has done that many times with other products that were at fault, and we would NEVER just tell our customer, "it's not our problem, you figure it out."
By the way, those other issues that were all "someone else's problem"--they miraculously got fixed right after a Roku update.
Hi John,
It's not just Samsung, battery drain is happening on my Pixel 7 with stock Android 13. The Roku app is clearly has issues.
Hi W8877,
Welcome to the Roku Community!
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We'll be happy to take a closer look at this. Could you please provide the following information?
Your response would be much appreciated.
All the best,
Kash
Hi Kash,
I am using the current version, currently that's:
Roku Android version: 9.5.1.2109001
Phone: Google Pixel 7
OS: Android 13 (security update 5 July 2023)
But this has been happening for quite a while. I don't use the app at all and it still drains 10%+ battery.
I tried deleting completely and reinstalling but that didn't help.
Tried the Roku app for the first time last night as the battery drain when plugging headphones into the remote is beyond insane, changing batteries every other day, when before using without headphones the batteries would last like a year.
I understand that the remote uses a built in sound amplifier or something which is responsible for the high drain, but at least I have a ton of rechargeable batteries.
The app continues to drain long after the headphones are disconnected from my phone (Pixel 5a). I unplugged my phone this morning when I got up and noticed within a few hours the battery has dropped by close to 20% without even using it! No headphones attached. The culprit? The Roku app!
What's really annoying is that you have to go into settings>apps and literally force close the Roku app to shut it down. Very few apps behave this way, so I'm uninstalling it because I can't risk it killing my battery if I'm out and forgot to force close it even when no headphones are attached.
As a previous customer commented, please stop passing the buck to anyone other than yourselves, this is a Roku app that is having the same issues on multiple different brands of Android phone, iPhones etc, so it's pretty obvious the fault lies firmly with the app.
Continuing to push customers away is unprofessional and ensuring they will look for alternative streaming devices in their future purchases.
I'm writing directly to Roku HQ detailing that their paid support agents are not helping customers and passing them blame literally everywhere else except the app. What is the point of having support reps when they do not help, not even to proactively pass information along to the app dev team. Of course I understand that I'm likely wasting my time and getting a canned response about how they care about customers and will look into it.... Reality is that support reps are likely very low skill call center phone jockeys with limited scripts they can refer to, so it's hard to blame them too. The problem is far deeper, and one that suggests Roku has very little interest in customer support beyond this flimsy facade.
You can be better than this!
Here's just an example of just how nefarious this app is.
As you can see I had a full charge on waking this morning. I've barely even touched my phone, but I forgot to force close the Roku app last night after watching a show using headphones on my phone.
I unplugged the headphones last night before going to bed and charging my phone, so there should be no reason why the app should be using battery 6 hours after I last used it, especially with no headphones attached.
As you can see it's just silently demolishing my phone's battery, and this is even with changing Android app settings from optimized to strict.
I have no choice other then to uninstall the Roku app and use the remote from now on when using headphones, keeping a bunch of charged batteries handy for that battery hog too!
Latest version of Android on my Pixel.
