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Help Dismal Nexus 5 Battery

jojo99

jojo99

Member
I've had the Nexus5 for about 19 months now. Battery power was never great, but it was generally acceptable.

However, in the last month or so, I'm seeing huge battery drains and it looks like it is coming from the Android system itself.

Last night, I charged the phone to 100% and then left it unplugged. When I woke up about 7 hours later, the phone was dead with no battery left.

After charging it to 82%, I took the phone outside while I did some backyard work. In about 50 minutes and while not touching the phone at all, I dropped 34% charge.

I was think that maybe the battery was dying after 19 months but looking at the battery stats, it appears that Android system itself is killing the battery.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what I might do here?

The phone is not rooted btw.
 

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Android system doesn't show up as using much CPU per your pictures, so I'm hesistant to say it's definitely what is causing it. Can you type in *#*#4636#*#* in your dialer, go to battery information, and see what it says about your battery health?
 
GuitarG20 said:
Android system doesn't show up as using much CPU per your pictures, so I'm hesistant to say it's definitely what is causing it. Can you type in *#*#4636#*#* in your dialer, go to battery information, and see what it says about your battery health?
Click to expand...

Here is the battery screen.

After posting initially yesterday, the phone began working correctly (sort of like when you go to a an MD to see about a problem and suddenly, the problem disappears!). I even left it unplugged last night and it only lost about 15% overnight.

But then I was reading news from an app called Flipboard this morning. I started in the app at 32% battery. I looked at a few stories and was down to about 28% (at last glance), when BOOM - the phone went black and the battery was apparently at zero.

I then put the phone on the charger and less than 30 minutes later, it was charged to 90% when I rebooted it. Huh? That's a much quicker charge ramp up than usual!

Since that point about 3 hours ago, I have had the phone sitting by my side but have not used it much, other than to look at a couple of emails. The battery is now at 66%.
 

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This is too weird. I have had another experience where I should have had enough battery but then the phone suddenly went dead.

I had 60% battery in the phone and was listening to an internet radio app called RAD.IO. I had been listening on bluetooth 2.1 headphones for about 80 minutes when suddenly, the music stopped. Just complete silence. I picked up the phone and tried to turn it on. But no luck. The power button didn't do anything, as if the phone was out of juice after only 80 odd minutes of listening.

I plugged the phone in for 5 minutes and then tried to turn it on. I had to reboot, which would be characteristic of the phone shutting down with a drained battery. But after rebooting, the battery % read 59%! Say what? This makes no sense but is similar to an experience I noted the other day, when again, the phone suddenly went dead while in an app.

I am starting to wonder if this problem might be due to the new Android bug as described here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/30/android_crashing_matroska_files/

What is happening on my phone seems similar to the description of the phone appearing lifeless and with no sound, until rebooting. The fact that the last two times this happened to me, the battery percentage wasn't near zero seems like a good fit. Any thoughts on this possibility? Any suggestions?
 
I think this is the worst part of Nexus 5 the battery life suck despite many promise by Google on improvement on Battery life the same is just a false assurance
 
@jojo99

You may have answered your own question here. I apologize in advance for the long post here, but I'll try to sum it up for you.

FACT:

- Your Nexus 5 is almost two years old.

- You mentioned streaming radio apps, Bluetooth headsets and I'm not going to rule out your use of WiFi as well (all of which are battery suckers by themselves, let alone used simultaneously and/or left on when not using (exc Bluetooth)

- The Nexus 5 is a 2.3 GHz quad cored monster that has a fairly small battery for what it's running.

- The battery monitor app is not going to tell you exactly what any app, or it's function is draining the battery, but will *maybe* kinda point you in the right direction to track it down. Think of it as a check engine light in a car. It's not happy with some collected data its seeing, so you need to look everywhere to see what makes the light come on.

Most commonly you'll see Android system, display or system idle process with a high percentage, which means crap. Like that little battery heath indicator in the service menu, its only going to say your battery is crap after it sees you repeatedly charging, how long it takes to charge, how long it takes to drain, and if it drains quickly. Not real time, it watches for a bit before it says anything.

So if it's a recent issue, its not going to say it's bad any time soon. Batteries can develop crippling or fatal problems with snap of the fingers. And symptoms range from no charge, very slow charge, and rapid drain, even with very little draining it.

- The Nexus 5 gets hot quickly, no matter what you do with it, whether reading a web page or playing a videogame. Batteries do NOT like heat. Poor little guy is sweating away under the cover when the board gets hot or when the battery itself is experiencing a heavy drain, or both.

I would start with a new battery. The N5 is tough on its own battery, and 19 months of torture is probably all it can take. Time to replace, can't argue with that.

If you are really against replacing the battery, go through ALL of your apps. Remove them, add them back one at a time to see if one or more are causing a drain. An app that drains your battery is going to show up in battery monitor app as a system process. When you install apps, you give permissions that sometimes include transmitting heavy amounts of data, turning things on and not allowing your phone fully sleep in standby.

Its a grueling process, but it may yield you a good amount of battery life. Also good combined with a new battery. I didn't see what you're running, but consider a custom 5.1 ROM. My Nexus around a year.5 old, and battery life doubled using CM12.1 ROM.

Something to consider, hope it helps you somehow.

Good luck!

~spec
 
Last edited:
@spec

1. I don't think the battery is bad but I would not be adverse to trying a replacement. How does one go about that given that the battery isn't replaceable by design? I am not running a custom ROM and don't really know anything about these.

2. Yes, I know that radio apps, bluetooth, wifi, etc. put a load on the battery, but what I am seeing when it does run down is worse than what it used to be. Actually seems worse since Android 5.1 but I have no way of confirming that.

3. My real interest/concern at this point is the times I am seeing the phone suddenly shut off and the batter seemed drained. Yet when I put it back on the charger and reboot, within minutes the battery is back to a high percentage. That is not normal. As I mentioned there is a possible bug that may be exploited that sounds like what I am seeing in two cases I reported here.

All of what you say shows that Google should make a lot more performance data available including some kind of baseline operation and periodic baseline updates (say every month?). But I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.
 
jojo99 said:
@spec

1. I don't think the battery is bad but I would not be adverse to trying a replacement. How does one go about that given that the battery isn't replaceable by design? I am not running a custom ROM and don't really know anything about these.

2. Yes, I know that radio apps, bluetooth, wifi, etc. put a load on the battery, but what I am seeing when it does run down is worse than what it used to be. Actually seems worse since Android 5.1 but I have no way of confirming that.

3. My real interest/concern at this point is the times I am seeing the phone suddenly shut off and the batter seemed drained. Yet when I put it back on the charger and reboot, within minutes the battery is back to a high percentage. That is not normal. As I mentioned there is a possible bug that may be exploited that sounds like what I am seeing in two cases I reported here.

All of what you say shows that Google should make a lot more performance data available including some kind of baseline operation and periodic baseline updates (say every month?). But I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.
Click to expand...

Then the first thing you should do is a total wipe of your phone, including your data partition. 100% obliterated. I'm sure you haven't rooted or modded anything so that should be fine. Yeah wiping a phone is a pain, but it will confirm your problem.

See how it runs with only a couple of apps installed. I'm sure battery is going to be an improvement over what you had before, but watch to see if it still has abnormal battery drain. The display being on, while browsing the web and streaming will be enough to drain.

If the battery performs a lot better, it has to be one or more of you're old apps causing the problem. Install them again, just watch for whichever causes the drain.

And no, nexus battery is indeed replaceable, you just have to be careful while removing it. Here's a page with step by step instructions:

https://www.androidpit.com/how-to-manually-replace-nexus-5-battery
 
I am wondering if these times when the phone suddenly shuts down, even though minutes ago it had plenty of battery might be due to a short from the battery connections rather than some virus/hack? I might consider changing the battery. Thanks for the link.

The two internet radio apps I use (Audials and RAD.IO) both seem to use an extraordinary amount of battery power! Like 50% in 90-120 minutes.
 
jojo99 said:
I am wondering if these times when the phone suddenly shuts down, even though minutes ago it had plenty of battery might be due to a short from the battery connections rather than some virus/hack? I might consider changing the battery. Thanks for the link.

The two internet radio apps I use (Audials and RAD.IO) both seem to use an extraordinary amount of battery power! Like 50% in 90-120 minutes.
Click to expand...

A shorted battery connection could theoretically cause that, but it's very unlikely that's the case unless your phone took a bath or if your phone is exposed to a lot of perspiration. You would also experience a lot more problems than just battery drain. More likely cause would be a shorted cell or something within the battery, considering the amount of heat it's exposed to.

I'd really consider the battery. Even if the phone data remains untouched, you'll still have more time before it drains completely. A nearly 2 year old battery is pretty old for a cell phone :)
 
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