Help Battery life = suck

[clb2196]

do you get great 4g signal?? how many Dbm do yo have avg at work? go to settings, about phone, status to see.

to me, it seems it drains faster at idle with worse reception. on extended battery i'm lucky to get 2 hrs screen time and cant make it through a whole work day. i basically just check facebook, twitter, and email and listen to music for an hour on the way to work with screen off. (local, not from the cloud)

im usually at -93 Dbm at work.

-96 dbm right now, 3 bars. It's always pretty good at my desk, down on the first floor where the production floor is with all the metal walls and things it's way worse. If I go into the battery graph, it shows either yellow or green for the signal, I'd say 70% yellow and 30% green (edited: actually today it's almost all yellow. Interesting).

 

[jayn1321]

Well at around 1 today my phone finally died with a total of 18.5 hours. Total use (screen on time) was around 2 hours. It seems to me that is about average from friends and what i have seen on this forum. I accomplished this through disabling 4g in the settings to just EVDO. Mind you that about 7 hours during sleep.

I guess it is a problem with my 4g signal, whether its the phone's antenna or DC's 4g network coverage. My network signal graph was completely yellow with a few spots of green...no red areas which was occurring when i had 4g on. Also, my signal did not drop once throughout the entire time, compared to it dropping frequently on 4g.

 

[clb2196]

Screen time isn't all of it, though. I didn't plug my phone in so right now it's only at likr 40%, with only about an hour of screen time. But I've also been streaming music over 4G to Bluetooth for a few hours, too.

But 18.5 hours of mostly standby sounds about right to be- like I said, I lose about 4-5% an hour on standby (on 4G, with background sync), which translates to about 20 hours, so if you add in some use 18.5 sounds about right.

 

[crankerchick]

I would definitely try and get a new phone or flash a custom ROM and/or kernel. I am using Liquid's ROM and Minimalist kernel. I get around 10 hours of battery life with very heavy use. The pics I posted are of light to moderate use as you can see. I still have 48% left in the pics.

Your pics show the phone connected to WiFi and WiFi having been on all the time. Was it connected to WiFi most or all of the time? I have similar life to yours if that is your life on WiFi. I would also be around 50% if I was on WiFi the entire time and had the screen on for 1.5 hours of those 9 hours.

It would be helpful for the OP trying to figure out his battery life problems if the specifics of network connectivity (WiFi/CDMA/LTE) are noted.

 

[streetfish]

-96 dbm right now, 3 bars. It's always pretty good at my desk, down on the first floor where the production floor is with all the metal walls and things it's way worse. If I go into the battery graph, it shows either yellow or green for the signal, I'd say 70% yellow and 30% green (edited: actually today it's almost all yellow. Interesting).

Im usually almost all yellow. light yellow. i dont know what the diff is between light/dark yellow and green but im around the same dbm as you. i dont know, i never get 4 hours of screen time. as i said usually around 2, and i usually turn 4g off and only connect to 3g. android os time isnt that high either, maybe 3 hours.

 

[Sandroidfan]

Well at around 1 today my phone finally died with a total of 18.5 hours. Total use (screen on time) was around 2 hours. It seems to me that is about average from friends and what i have seen on this forum. I accomplished this through disabling 4g in the settings to just EVDO. Mind you that about 7 hours during sleep.

I guess it is a problem with my 4g signal, whether its the phone's antenna or DC's 4g network coverage. My network signal graph was completely yellow with a few spots of green...no red areas which was occurring when i had 4g on. Also, my signal did not drop once throughout the entire time, compared to it dropping frequently on 4g.

Weak 4G signal is definitely biggest battery hog in Nexus if it's left in LTE/CDMA mode in weak areas. Just hopping 4G connectivity on Nexus will get better with updates. And if you just turn on WiFi along with 3G/CDMA mode, I bet it will gain a bit more. Mine can go over 20 hours easily this way.

 

[jayn1321]

Screen time isn't all of it, though. I didn't plug my phone in so right now it's only at likr 40%, with only about an hour of screen time. But I've also been streaming music over 4G to Bluetooth for a few hours, too.

But 18.5 hours of mostly standby sounds about right to be- like I said, I lose about 4-5% an hour on standby (on 4G, with background sync), which translates to about 20 hours, so if you add in some use 18.5 sounds about right.

But for me to get 18+ hours, I have to stick strictly to 3g/EVDO...no 4g. As soon as I turn on 4g/LTE under the settings, I will drop down to only 5-6 hours total...

I guess I could do a 4g toggle when I actually want 4g, but it seems odd that the network would be so crappy in DC. Maybe I am wrong, but I would think it would be one of the better areas for 4g. Could it be an issue with the phone? Maybe my antenna? I have no clue when it comes to this type of hardware...

 

[clb2196]

5-6 hours in standby? Yeah sounds like it must be trying to stay connected to 4G. I really don't know. Is it possible to go to a VZW store and compare it against another Nexus to see if it's your device or the general 4G network? Or do some Googling to see if other people complain about 4G in your area? It's tough to compare since the Nexus is the only phone that's showing dbms for LTE, so you can't really compare signal to other devices on just the numbers.

 

[mntbighker]

try getting rid of vzw backup, heard that ones a killer. disable it!

For me VZBackup just spins and never connects. So not a lot of point in having it running and very likely it kills the battery if it can never connect. What does that have to do with the Backup settings?

 

[zerocool79346]

Yeah, that's why I'm confused. If it was on wifi, why was it trying so hard to hold onto a signal? Does the cell standby include voice/1x use/standby? I've never had a problem with voice in my house with previous phones, but I also don't make that many calls

I'll see how it does again tonight. Normally I leave my phone next to my bed, but last night it was downstairs. So the typical place I'd leave it is on my night stand, and if it does fine there I won't worry too much about it or I'll just plug it in before bed each night.

You would have to airplane mode the phone. WIFI does kill the data radio, but your graph shows that your voice radio was searching the whole night, and that will be the absolute worst battery killer on any phone. It'll be fine on your nightstand.