Help Nexus calls out for "programming"!

[Tim K]

Every morning, with a full charge (I go to bed with a full charge and I shut off my phone) my battery life is now at 89% with only 18 minutes of usage. My phone never showed results like this before. Now, on a day like today, I have work and it wont get used much, but on the weekend, it'll never stand a chance. I mean, I only surfed the web. What if I do more than that? It'll die after an hour with the screen on?

I know you read my post yesterday...but maybe you forgot. So here it is again....

yes. its normal. Stop watching your battery. Remember that the first 10-15% drop is not indicative of the actual battery usage. You read this article right?

My phone has been on wifi at my house for 2 hours. My screen has been on for 12 minutes.

I made a 7 min phone call and sent 4 texts.

My battery is at 87%.

I'l finish the day with 20+ hours, over an hour of screen time, more voice calls, texts and web surfing.

Try not to look at your battery life until at least halfway through your day.

 

[Dankees]

I didn't read that article, yet. I looked at it, but it's a little technical for me. I can just tell you that the battery is dropping a ton every morning with light usage, and it's dropping a ton now, ever since I got the new PRL and the new SIM Card.

I have to use my wife's phone for a half hour, and see what happens with hers.

 

[Tim K]

Let me sum up the article for you.

Holding a battery at 100% is bad for the battery. Phones charge to a predetermined level of fullness, then stop charging. They display this as 100%. Then your charge trickles down to about 90% even though it is reporting 99-100%. Its lying to you so you don't freak out about your phone being plugged in and losing charge. When your battery meter drops 10% in 10 minutes its not really losing 10%, its just programmed to drop the displayed % down to match the "actual" charge level.

That's why I keep telling you to stop paying attention to the first 15% of your battery usage. Its inaccurate and thus meaningless. Do you care if the first 10% drops in 5 minutes if the last 95% lasts 25 hours?

Stop staring at the battery meter and use your phone.

 

[Dankees]

Tim, I am sitting in my home right now, right next to my WiFi router.

Anyway, I have had my screen on for about 15 minutes now, and it is dropping at the same rate it was dropping before (when I was at 100%).

I've gone down about 8% in 15 minutes (and, for most of the time, I have just had the screen on, but I haven't been doing anything with the phone).

So, now that I am at half battery life, how can I still be losing power at the same rate I was losing power before?

I can keep the screen on for a while longer and you can see how the rate of decline is just as steep as it was this morning when I was at 100% battery life.

Even as I typed this, I lost about 2% battery life. What the hell?!?!?!

 

[Dankees]

Check this out - the rate of battery usage is the same dismal rate at the beginning as it was when the battery was around 50% (and, I was in my home for both times), just surfing the web.

 

[Tim K]

seems reasonable depending on screen brightness. I think you can get about 4-5 hours per day of screen on time IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE. The more you do the less screen time you get. Lower brightness = more time.

I'm going to do a test right now. I'll set my screen at 30% and let it sit on a static browser page for 15 min. Started at 31% remaining at 5:02pm. Then I will do a 15 min test at 10% brightness (which I usually use indoors.)

 

[Tim K]

Doing nothing else. Just a static Google browser screen.

At 70% screen brightness
15 minutes equals a ~7% drop = ~28%/hr or less than 4hrs of screen time available.

At 30% screen brightness
15 minutes equals a ~5% drop = ~20%/hr or approx. 5hrs of screen time available.

At 10% screen brightness
15 minutes equals a ~4% drop = ~16%/hr or just over 6hrs of screen time available



Obviously all these numbers are relative to my other usage and are really just estimates as battery meters are far from precise (your phone is really guessing). Plus, they don't do decimals so I don't know if the drop was from 31.9% to 25.0% or 31.0% to 25.9% - hence my approximations.

 

[Dankees]

OK, this is odd. I just fully charged my phone, with it off, unplugged the phone, and I restarted the phone. I didn't use the phone at all, and in a half hour, my battery said 94% (with no usage). How can that be?

 

[Tim K]

In addition to what I posted previously, the meter is really just the phone's estimate.... and as you can see, sometimes just turning a phone on and off can cause quite a large variation in the level of charge. I've seen it go both up and down....sometimes more than 10%.... just from a reboot.

How many hours a day do you spend watching the battery meter? You may need professional help.....

 

[Sandroidfan]

Let me sum up the article for you.

Holding a battery at 100% is bad for the battery. Phones charge to a predetermined level of fullness, then stop charging. They display this as 100%. Then your charge trickles down to about 90% even though it is reporting 99-100%. Its lying to you so you don't freak out about your phone being plugged in and losing charge. When your battery meter drops 10% in 10 minutes its not really losing 10%, its just programmed to drop the displayed % down to match the "actual" charge level.

That's why I keep telling you to stop paying attention to the first 15% of your battery usage. Its inaccurate and thus meaningless. Do you care if the first 10% drops in 5 minutes if the last 95% lasts 25 hours?

Stop staring at the battery meter and use your phone.

Indeed Gnex seems to behave very differently on charging from the other phones. If you take close look at it on recharging, when it hits 100% it still displays "Charging (AC)". Then after about 15 minutes of more charging, it turns to "Full" at 100%. I think that's when it reached top capacity. If it's left on charger more than 15 minutes after this, it seems to go down to 99% Full and begins power recycling between 100% and somewhere below it like you described.

I noticed that I get maximum battery life when I unplug it at 100% full than at 100% charging or 99% full. Hard to tell by exact number, but I feel like getting 10% more battery when unplugging it at 100% full.

 

[Dankees]

So, I just did a SIM Card pull. And, I got a new SIM Card the other day.

I just restarted and it f*going ghost dialed. What the f*uck? I guess that the SIM Card has nothing to do with this ghost dialing sh*t. I am beyond mad now. And, a minute later, it ghost dialed again .

What the hell?

 

[Tim K]

I don't want to say I told you so.... oops I guess I just did.

 

[Dankees]

This is nuts! No one knows why.

 

[The_Chief]

WOW, Dankees, if your Nexus is ghost dialing CONSTANTLY, sounds like it's time for a warranty replacement...

 

[Dankees]

I'm so sure the next will do the same thing.

 

[The_Chief]

Well, mine does but not constantly... and not every Nexus does it or there would be a lot more complaints in here...

 

[Dankees]

Mine didn't do it for the first three weeks.

What made it suddenly do it? VZW pushed an update to my phone when I had a bad signal?

 

[RRMan03]

My phone is on 24/7. Never turned off. and I have never ever had a ghost dial. So from that info it has to be something to do with the power being turned off.My phone has been on since the day I got it and that was day 1.I have decent batttery life,I am not in a 4G area so it is set on 3G.Hope this info might help somebody figure it out.

 

[Dankees]

So, don't shutdown? My wife shuts her phone off each night.

 

[Dankees]

Check out these screenshots. The first two show my phone at the beginning of a full cycle.

It actually didn't drain that badly. Then, I woke up this morning and my phone ghost dialed. I restarted, toggled Airplane Mode, and it ghost dialed again upon the restart. (The phone even shut off by itself at one point.)

Check out these screenshots and tell me what looks abnormal. Thank you so much!

 

[Tim K]

I'm so sure the next will do the same thing.

So, let me get this straight. You'd rather spend a month trying to fix a broken phone yourself rather than take the chance that the brand new replacement phone you get at the store might also be broken - which on the off chance that even it if was broken, you can get another and another until you get a good one. I mean....the choices are

A. Keep a broken phone

or

B. Return it and get a new phone which will probably work.

If you choose A you DEFINITELY keep a broken phone.
If you choose B you probably get a working phone, but at worst you'll still be in the same position.

 

[Dankees]

You do make a good point.

I hate having to set up my phone, repeatedly.

 

[The_Chief]

I hardly EVER turn off my phone either. Only if I have to reboot or troubleshoot something. It's by my side all day and it's my nightstand clock at night. And mine STILL ghost dials out every 7-10 days.