Help Battery life Discussion

[shalemail]

So it's been a while since anyone has talked about this (like a year? dang ) but I am just so endlessly impressed with this phone that I had to start a new discussion. I am 20 months in (give or take - got it late Nov 2014 just after release) and my battery life seems to just get better and better. Now that I am on fi I had worried it might burn quicker since I connect to Sprint's (poopy - is that an ok word?) signal strength while at work all day. Not the case. Since the latest updates (security patch June 1) I am getting easily 24 hours out of this phone. It's the only phone I've ever had that did not degrade in battery life over time. I am (and have been with every phone I have had) on WiFi nearly all day save for travel time and evening/weekend errands and tasks and I surf the internet, read articles, veg out on discussion boards for cars, boats, camping, diy and android - social media, tweet, Instagram etc etc along with tracking weather, email on both Gmail and Yahoo, and this phone just hums along. Really I couldn't be happier, and am still a bit shocked this phone is not more highly thought (and spoken) of across the tech landscape. It has the red-headed stepchild reputation and I really don't get it.

So what say you fellow N6'ers? How's yours holding up these days? Battery still good, still running smoothly?

 

[lunatic59]

I've had a couple of instances recently where it seemed the power level dropped fairly quickly, but that wasn't repeated. Based on my usage, mine's been off the charger since 9:00 a.m. and I still have 29 hours left.

 

[shalemail]

Off charge since 5 am and I have 19 hours left and I have been using the phone today. Just crazy good if you ask me.

 

[lunatic59]

You won't hear me complaining.

 

[marctronixx]

Moto 360 version 2 speeds watch face with sweeping seconds hand.

Off shore power at 4:57am pacific, and now at 3:21pm pacific it's at 73%. Version one would have been dead a long time ago...

 

[shalemail]

I have the v2 360 as well I haven't seen it below 45% battery for months. (Oh and yesterday when I plugged in my phone at 9 pm I still had 43% battery) - I think the watch was at 70 something, both off charge at 5 am yesterday. Still boggles my mind after all the phones I have had.

 

[lunatic59]

A couple of weeks ago I was in a warehouse for a couple days working on the inventory management system and the reception there was little to none and the constant sync'ing as I moved around dropped the charge pretty quickly. By quickly, I mean maybe low ~40% by the end of the day. I don't think I've ever had this phone die on me, even if I forget to put it in the charger overnight.

 

[electricpete]

As shown in attached screenshot, gsam tells me I have an average SOT (screen on time) per complete charge of 4 hours and 45 minutes (almost five hours!) as an average since I installed the app in Feb. That's higher than I would have guessed, considering I also have smartwatch. I would estimate lower by looking at my battery stats most days. There may be some trick in the way they define/calculate screen-on time in that gsam app. But I am very pleased overall.

I use auto/adaptive brightness with slider mostly at 50% (any lower is too dark for me). Since we can limit the battery use of screen on our Amoled using dark backgrounds, I do a lot of things to make sure almost any screen I use has a dark/black blackbround:

• For the last month, I used Layers (needs root) with inversionUI theme (gives black background in notification shade, google messenger, gmail, phone dialer app, google calendar app, playstore app, android settings, google calculator etc). Doesn't work well for some apps like keep or chrome... see bullet about lightning browser below.
  • Xposed module "enable doze invert" fixes a problem created by layers/inversionUI where the ambient mode notifications were unreadable (black on black background) and puts them back to white on black background.
• black background of course in my launcher
• black theme in all apps that allow it
• use lightning browser, great browser which turns all web pages black with white text. In lightning settings use dark theme and "inverted" rendering *
  • * Doesn't invert photos... they still look their normal color.
  • Fast browser... just as fast as chrome (unlike firefox which has dark addin but is slow as mollasses)
  • Bonus - in pro version of lightning you also get ad blocking. I used to use Adaway for phone-wide adblocking, but I had to reboot to turn it off whenever I cast miracast at my mother's house... so I prefer having ad blocking in the browser instead of system wide.
• With Tasker and root, you can set up to automatically switch to "inverted" screen mode any time you use a particular app... good for apps that don't have any other option to turn them dark. I use this for Keep set and also chrome (for the few times I still use chrome). It has the small advantage that the navbar turns white with everything else black... tends to equalize screen burn-in on the nav bar that doesn't otherwise get as much use as the rest of the screen. It is a little distracting that the change has about 1-second lag, so you'll see that switch in inversion mode just after you enter the app and again just after you leave the app.

I also use franco kernel in battery saving mode for the last two months or so.

• Throttles back cpu to save battery in some situations but still pretty darned snappy. I don't get much lag at all
• FKupdater gives an interface for Tasker to switch Franco modes.
  • I use a with a tasker profile that bumps it up to Franco's performance mode whenever the camera app is open (minimizes lag in camera app). Then it automatically switches back to Franco's battery saving when exit the camera app.
  • I can easily bump up the Franco mode to balanced or performance manually using easy interface I built with Tasker, but I don't often find the need.
  • I could do all above thru FKupdater without Tasker, but I like the better control of UI that I get with Tasker. Whenever I switch Franco cpu mode into something different than battery saving mode, Tasker automatically places a permanent notification in the status bar to remind me to put it back.
• With or without Franco my phone sometimes slows a little if I don't reboot for a few days... when that happens reboot invariably fixes it (I usually clear cache in recovery at the same time for good measure).

Since I don't use wifi away from home, I have a Tasker profile that automatically turns off wifi when I leave home.

I also keep mobile data off except when I intend to use it, as managed by a few different Tasker profiles. That's a holdover from a few years back when my monthly data budget was 200MB, but I've grown used to managing my data connection this way and it might save some power.

 

[stuarta]

Always seemed to have had problems and never get to the bottom of them. Recently I've had to wipe the cache a couple of times because the phone comes back saying the battery stats are unavailable. They are back now, but battery is still pretty pants as shown. Seems to be idle time. If I use the phone solidly I can get a good couple of hours SOT but as you will see from these shots, currently about 1hr with 29% left

lost 4% just typing this and laggy

Just wondering whether root will help, although never tried. Might test on my N4. Same again this morning, down to 76% with 21m SOT

 

[psionandy]

by itself root will make zero difference... it might open up other options once you are rooted... if you see what i mean.

 

[stuarta]

Yep that's what I was wondering. Only real apps I have syncing is the Gmail inbox one and Nine for my work emails. Really love phone and looking at keeping it past its 2yrs contract in Feb but like to improve battery

 

[TexasBadger]

Been there, done that. You have a bad app. It is the one that heats up your phone. Also, you should go into settings and turn off Google's Ambient Display. Finally, you can get the battery replaced for $70 at uBREAKiFIX. There is more information on all of this in a thread titled "Battery Replacement".

 

[stuarta]

Just turned off ambient as that was the only difference between mine an day wife's phone yet tocay I'm 70% and 40mins SOT and she is 50% 2hrs SOT. Although I'm also reporting 35% without signal, she is 4% although she has been with me all day

 

[joe71]

I have been serious issues the last week with my Nexus 6 including goofy battery issues

 

[lunatic59]

Things wear out eventually.

 

[jj14x]

I have been serious issues the last week with my Nexus 6 including goofy battery issues

I have, in the past, swapped the battery out on my Nexus 5 (bought the replacement for eBay) - that replacement battery was almost as good as the OEM one, and lasted me another year and a half, before I sold it.
That may be an option to consider.

 

[jwbeeler]

So, I now have the BlueTooth battery drain. I am on 7.1.1 and have not installed any new apps. I've had the same apps installed since the flashing to 7.1.1. It must be a software issue as it just "started" today. Any thoughts? I am thinking about going back to the latest version of 7.0 to see if that fixes it.

1) Cleared the Cache
2) Restarted
3) Turned off instant tethering
4) Not rooted

I've turned OFF BlueTooth and it has drained my battery by 5% since I turned it off.