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Galaxy Nexus Battery Life

Full day #2... weekend, with plenty of opportunities to screw off and burn battery. Screen at default auto-adjust brightness. We've had some 3G, some 4G, some Wifi. Plenty of widgets running. Everything syncing as often as I can. Even added a second email account which the OS had to totally sync up.

We did some browsing, lot of texting, lot of G Chat, installed apps, did some speed tests, etc etc. Typical usage day.

Result: 9h 49m to go from 95% to 15%, on stock battery. Projects out to 12 hours and change to burn through 100%, or 11 hours to go from 100% to 10% (what I'd call a full use).

Still quite happy. And, I have the $25 extended battery coming in, which will bump those numbers up an extra hour.
 
I posted this in another thread but felt it appropriate to post it here as well:

I'm in the same boat with the OP. This phone is so amazing. I love it. However my battery life is abysmal, but I know better than to return it after a day (been using smartphones forever). Thursday night I put in my extended battery and charged overnight. Friday I took it off the charger and immediately turned off LTE. I set screen to 25% brightness, wifi on. I managed to kill the 2100mah battery in 10 hours (7am to 5pm). Screen time or actual usage was approximately 2.5 hours. Friday evening I took the phone back for an exchange due to the earpiece sounding like it was blown. So today I put brightness at 20%, LTE off, and this time no wifi to test out the 3G connectivity reliability. I took it off the charger at 9am and when I got home at about 7pm (again 10 hours) it was at 6% left and just under 2.5 hours of screen time.

So that is two phones with just about the same battery life on the 2100 extended. I put it on the charger just after 7pm and did a factory reset. I'm going to run the phone the next couple days without loading it up with all my stuff. I may not even put FB or anything on it. Just use it completely stock. I'm going to give it several days to see if the battery life improves due to the OS learning the battery or whatever it does after several cycles. If I don't see an improvement by Thursday, I'm going to exchange the extended battery. Then I will put it through its paces again for several days/cycles. All of this time I will keep LTE off permanently. I don't need it.

If I cannot get the 2100mah battery to last at least 16 hours of being off charger and about 5, preferably 6 hours of screen time, I have a decision to make. I absolutely do not want to return this phone. It's so incredible. As much as I love my iPhone 4, I love the Nexus more in its own way. If I can't get it to meet my day to day uses I'm so tempted to just reactivate my iP4 and use this as a mini-tablet. It's that awesome. My only other option is to get the iP4S but I can't see using an upgrade and paying $300 for basically a slightly better camera than my iP4 (I won't use Siri). I think I'd rather keep the Nexus as a mini-tab and also maybe with the development there will be a kernel or something that will dramatically improve battery life, then I can reactivate later. Decisions decisions.
 
Wow. Major batt problems. I will confirm this on my phone. 13 hours very moderate use. 9% left. I need better if I am not by a charger at least 2 times a day. I can't take a chance of running out of batt. 2 hours of calls and would have been out. Plan ahead is my motto.

Wow I love this phone though.!
 
JoJoCal19 said:
I posted this in another thread but felt it appropriate to post it here as well:

I'm in the same boat with the OP. This phone is so amazing. I love it. However my battery life is abysmal, but I know better than to return it after a day (been using smartphones forever). Thursday night I put in my extended battery and charged overnight. Friday I took it off the charger and immediately turned off LTE. I set screen to 25% brightness, wifi on. I managed to kill the 2100mah battery in 10 hours (7am to 5pm). Screen time or actual usage was approximately 2.5 hours. Friday evening I took the phone back for an exchange due to the earpiece sounding like it was blown. So today I put brightness at 20%, LTE off, and this time no wifi to test out the 3G connectivity reliability. I took it off the charger at 9am and when I got home at about 7pm (again 10 hours) it was at 6% left and just under 2.5 hours of screen time.

So that is two phones with just about the same battery life on the 2100 extended. I put it on the charger just after 7pm and did a factory reset. I'm going to run the phone the next couple days without loading it up with all my stuff. I may not even put FB or anything on it. Just use it completely stock. I'm going to give it several days to see if the battery life improves due to the OS learning the battery or whatever it does after several cycles. If I don't see an improvement by Thursday, I'm going to exchange the extended battery. Then I will put it through its paces again for several days/cycles. All of this time I will keep LTE off permanently. I don't need it.

If I cannot get the 2100mah battery to last at least 16 hours of being off charger and about 5, preferably 6 hours of screen time, I have a decision to make. I absolutely do not want to return this phone. It's so incredible. As much as I love my iPhone 4, I love the Nexus more in its own way. If I can't get it to meet my day to day uses I'm so tempted to just reactivate my iP4 and use this as a mini-tablet. It's that awesome. My only other option is to get the iP4S but I can't see using an upgrade and paying $300 for basically a slightly better camera than my iP4 (I won't use Siri). I think I'd rather keep the Nexus as a mini-tab and also maybe with the development there will be a kernel or something that will dramatically improve battery life, then I can reactivate later. Decisions decisions.
Click to expand...

You will not get 5 or 6 hours of usage out of any LTE phone. Heck I'm not sure that you will get 5 or 6 hours out of any Android phone for that matter. The Nexus is on par with every other Android I've ever used or been around.

Edit: By the way, the 4S has gotten crap for battery life as well. I don't think you're going to find a modern phone that will do 5 to 6 hours of use anymore unless you keep your I4 and don't update to iOS5.
 
We had lots of family stuff going on today so this was more like a "normal" usage day to me as opposed to a "new phone" day.

I was using the extended battery today.

Network Mode: CDMA only for most of the day except to check if 4g was available in a few different places we went, do a speed test if 4g was available then back to CDMA.

Screen set to go off after 1 min, brightness around 40%

GPS: Only on when using Navigation which was a total of about an hour.

FWIW, I took about 50 pictures today and about 5 minutes of 720p video.

Here's the results:




Link to the album of 13 screenshots to show as much usage stats as possible:

Galaxy Nexus stuff (Sorry about the volume bar in some of the shots, I didn't notice it until after I uploaded)
 
Today I got excellent battery life. After 7.5 hours I was at 50%, did a lot of web surfing and texting. At that point I decided to charge back up to 90% and download my entire music collection from G-music, 10gb worth. Music is currently at 86% complete and battery is at 4.5 hrs at 17%, not bad at all for the 80+ pictures I took tonight, web surfing, app downloads, and screen on at 50%. No complaints about battery life.

I conditioned the battery prior to first use and I beleive it has helped.
 
finally with heavy use of the phone. 1hr of calling, web surfing some navigation, and plenty of angry birds i am at 31% with the phone at 12h 45m 26s.
 
I assume this has already been posted but one change I made today from default was to turn Wi-Fi off when the phone is asleep. By default the wifi never sleeps. Hope it helps.
 
zerocool79346 said:
You will not get 5 or 6 hours of usage out of any LTE phone. Heck I'm not sure that you will get 5 or 6 hours out of any Android phone for that matter. The Nexus is on par with every other Android I've ever used or been around.

Edit: By the way, the 4S has gotten crap for battery life as well. I don't think you're going to find a modern phone that will do 5 to 6 hours of use anymore unless you keep your I4 and don't update to iOS5.
Click to expand...


I have LTE completely off and always will.

On my iP4 I have iOS 5.0.1 and I regularly get 7 to 8 hours of usage/on screen time and at least 20 hours off the charger.

Also the battery problems with iP4S seem to have been isolated to something with restoring from backups from what I've read. Also have read lately that people are doing much better than before.

*Edit: As of now I'm at 7hours 56 minutes of usage on my iPhone 4 and have 19% left :-)
 
Premium1 said:
So you use the phone like a computer and expect the battery to last? Come on now..
Click to expand...

So with LTE off, using wifi, screen at 20%, and what I would consider light usage (some texts, emails, fb, web), an extended 2100mah extended battery dying at just under 10 hours off charger and a little over 2 hours of actual screen being on (not even truly using the whole time its on), thats okay with you? As much as I love the phone, that just reeks of fanboyism, sorry. As much as a I hate the Apple apologists, I hate it just as much on the Android side.
 
I'm getting awful battery life, but not complaining. I love this phone! Today I took it off the charger at 12:30pm, on WiFi all afternoon, gmail and Plume constantly syncing, normal to heavy use, listened to about an hour of Google Music and by 4:00 I was down to 33% :eek: I keep screen at 100% (I know, but it's so beautiful :)) and it was taking up 78% of the battery. I'm usually near a power outlet so I'm not concerned. I was thinking of trying the extended, even if I can squeeze just an extra 2 hours out of it. I think once we have custom kernels available and can undervolt it'll help tremendously. The fact that the phone idles at 700 is a huge killer, too
 
Premium1 said:
So you use the phone like a computer and expect the battery to last? Come on now..
Click to expand...

And yes, I pound on my iPhone 4 with its puny 1420mah battery like its a computer, or at least a tablet, and it lasts over 8 hours in most cases. Thats screen on time and using. Over 20 hours off the charger.

I know Android phones suck up more juice, but a battery with almost 700mah should not die in 1/4 the time. Sorry.
 
WormDoes said:
I'm getting awful battery life, but not complaining. I love this phone! Today I took it off the charger at 12:30pm, on WiFi all afternoon, gmail and Plume constantly syncing, normal to heavy use, listened to about an hour of Google Music and by 4:00 I was down to 33% :eek: I keep screen at 100% (I know, but it's so beautiful :)) and it was taking up 78% of the battery. I'm usually near a power outlet so I'm not concerned. I was thinking of trying the extended, even if I can squeeze just an extra 2 hours out of it. I think once we have custom kernels available and can undervolt it'll help tremendously. The fact that the phone idles at 700 is a huge killer, too
Click to expand...

Yea in no way am I considering returning it at this point. I need to give it a couple of weeks. And yes part of my thought is holding on to it because I know low voltage kernels will come. This phone is amazing. If battery technology would improve at the rate the phones themselves are, we would all be in heaven.
 
44% percent battery. Removed FB app which kept running in the background. This was also on wifi all day. Pretty normal use though.

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TylerM said:
Screenshot_2011-12-17-01-46-25.png
Click to expand...

Is there a way to get percentages for how much of the time it was awake and had wifi, GPS, and screen turned on? Apart from wifi, it's tough to tell from the graph.

Jersey Tom said:
Total time out: 40ish minutes. Battery drop during that time: 20%. As an engineer I hate to do big extrapolations with limited data... but that projects out to about 3.5 hours of heavy (effectively non-stop) use. Close to 4 hours if I had the 2100 mAh battery.

I call that pretty good. At the end of the day, it's a phone. A phone that can do a lot of amazing things, but still a phone - not an entertainment center. I have a laptop with an extended battery for work, and I'm lucky to get 2.5-3.0 hours out of it.
Click to expand...
It's relative. People were expecting more because other LTE phones seem to do a bit better. FWIW:

imagesizer


zerocool79346 said:
By the way, the 4S has gotten crap for battery life as well. I don't think you're going to find a modern phone that will do 5 to 6 hours of use anymore unless you keep your I4 and don't update to iOS5.
Click to expand...
There were early some battery issues with iPhone4S, but I believe that has been mostly resolved via software update (someone correct me if I'm wrong... I don't have one myself).

From what I've seen and read, and my personal experience with iPhone4 and 3GS, iOS is better at power management. To be fair, the iPhone has ~39% less screen area than the VGN and no LTE, but is also has a much smaller battery.
 
JoJoCal19 said:
I have LTE completely off and always will.

On my iP4 I have iOS 5.0.1 and I regularly get 7 to 8 hours of usage/on screen time and at least 20 hours off the charger.

Also the battery problems with iP4S seem to have been isolated to something with restoring from backups from what I've read. Also have read lately that people are doing much better than before.

*Edit: As of now I'm at 7hours 56 minutes of usage on my iPhone 4 and have 19% left :-)
Click to expand...

Then I would suggest sticking to iOS if that's not acceptable. I rooted/ROMed/kerneled both my Eris and Inc and I can promise you neither ever came close to getting 8 hours of usage. I think you will be VERY fortunate to get 4-4.5 hours out of the Nexus no matter the ROM/kernel configuration.
 
deslock said:
Is there a way to get percentages for how much of the time it was awake and had wifi, GPS, and screen turned on? Apart from wifi, it's tough to tell from the graph.


It's relative. People were expecting more because other LTE phones seem to do a bit better. FWIW:

imagesizer



There were early some battery issues with iPhone4S, but I believe that has been mostly resolved via software update (someone correct me if I'm wrong... I don't have one myself).

From what I've seen and read, and my personal experience with iPhone4 and 3GS, iOS is better at power management. To be fair, the iPhone has ~39% less screen area than the VGN and no LTE, but is also has a much smaller battery.
Click to expand...

After reading the battery life complaints on forums for virtually EVERY phone on that chart, I seriously doubt the validity of it FWIW. Heck the majority of former TBolt owners will tell you exactly how much of a nightmare that phone was.
 
My 4s battery life has been by far the worst of all the iphone versions. This is on 3g so i can't even fathom how poor it would have been on lte. Ive just rooted and added a custom rom and some are claiming improved results. Pretty sure some of the software bumps coming up will address the radio which will also help.
 
Still 14% left after some pretty heavy usage. Went to the coffee shop, browsed a lot. Played around with the phone a lot. Whatsapp chatting, g+ chatting all day. Took a couple pictures, shared a couple pictures.

screenshot2011121802160.png
 
deslock said:
imagesizer
Click to expand...

ANewDay said:
Technolog - Battery life is price you pay for Verizon Galaxy Nexus
Click to expand...

Just to be clear, the above bar graph is the "evidence" of the Technolog article.

What a sensationalistic piece of trash. What they did was admit to performing an LTE radio power consumption test, which is not at all representative of how people use their phone (unless they were attempting to model Phandroiders constantly refreshing the MEGAthread in the weeks leading up to the Nexus' release).

And to use that one piece of data and dismiss it as "worse than the Thunderbolt"? Wow, that's a cold-hearted assassination right there. This isn't even CLOSE to the Thunderbolt.
 
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