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Pixel 2 battery issue

pavloslee95

Lurker
Hey community,

I just bought the Pixel 2 and I was so excited when all tbe reviews confirmed that it had a good battery life.

But to the honest, my personal experience is that the battery life isn't good at all.
I'm not a heavy user. I'm actually a really light user and I do anything just to minimjze the battery drain.
After charging my Pixel 2 to 100%:

I turned on:
-battery saver,
-lowered screen brightness
-Night mode for the display
-Battery optimization

I turned off:
-Screen saver /Ambient display,
-'Now playing' feature
-Location/GPS
-Bluetooth

Still at the end of the day I was having 35% of battery.

Imagine what would happen if I wouldn't do all the above optimization!

Do you guys have the same problem?
Do you have any tips to keep my battery health and last longer?

Thanks
 
Can you give us some indication of your usage? "Really light" is so subjective that it doesn't tell us anything.

Screen on time is a flawed measure, because it doesn't tell us what you are doing when the screen is on and because there are activities (e.g. playing or streaming music) which don't use the screen, but it at least gives some indication of how heavily you use it. Knowing what you use it for in a typical day would help. Knowing whether you spend a large part of the day in weak coverage would very much help - nothing kills a phone like constantly losing and regaining the network connection, or constantly switching between 4g/3g/2g. Travel uses power, as a phone is constantly handing-over between cells, so if you are a long distance commuter or a sales rep who does a lot of travelling that will make a difference. And of course what do you mean by "lower screen brightness" and even "end of the day" (when you go to bed or when you get home)?

So for example, I mainly use my phone for browsing, as a diary, a bit of music (local or streamed, but mainly when travelling so perhaps 30 minutes), as a calculator, a bit of light gaming (nothing 3d or online), a few messages, perhaps a couple of photos, sometimes a bit of GPS, that sort of thing. Location on but in device only mode, 4G and WiFi always on (but WiFi scanning for location disabled - if I turn WiFi off I want it off), adaptive screen brightness, usually set around 30% (not to save power but because too bright causes eye strain for me), no always listening features (tried it, don't use it, turned it off), night mode comes on at 9pm, off at 6am. I travel 30 minutes each way most days, have ok signal at work, very strong at home. With that lot I remember last night it was telling me I'd had about 4.5 hours screen on time with 40% power left.

My top tip would be to look at your Battery settings and see what is using the power. Don't forget to ask it to show "full system usage" or else it only tells you about apps. And look at the graph and see if there are particular times it falls quickly - that might give you some clues. If you need more information then a 3rd party app like GSam Battery Monitor may help.
 
I don't really do any battery optimization on my Pixel 2 - beyond periodically checking for misbehaving apps (as @Hadron mentioned above) and correcting or uninstalling them. Adaptive brightness, Always-On ambient display, location services, Now Playing, and Bluetooth are all enabled and regularly in use. Even so, I rarely have trouble with my phone making it through the day - which generally consists of streaming music over a mobile data connection for ~6+ hours. That is to say, I don't think there is any battery drain issue inherent to the Pixel 2 or to Android 8.1.

The two biggest battery drain factors (beyond just general usage) are cellular/Wi-Fi signal strength and apps. If your signal strength is weak, the phone will push more power to the radio to try to maintain a connection. There isn't really a lot you can do about this other than moving your phone to an area with better signal.

If viewing the battery usage statistics doesn't help to identify a misbehaving app, you might try running your phone in Safe Mode for a while. This will temporarily disable your third-party applications. If the battery drain decreases significantly while in Safe Mode, you've got an app problem.
 
I don't really do any battery optimization on my Pixel 2 - beyond periodically checking for misbehaving apps (as @Hadron mentioned above) and correcting or uninstalling them. Adaptive brightness, Always-On ambient display, location services, Now Playing, and Bluetooth are all enabled and regularly in use. Even so, I rarely have trouble with my phone making it through the day - which generally consists of streaming music over a mobile data connection for ~6+ hours. That is to say, I don't think there is any battery drain issue inherent to the Pixel 2 or to Android 8.1.

The two biggest battery drain factors (beyond just general usage) are cellular/Wi-Fi signal strength and apps. If your signal strength is weak, the phone will push more power to the radio to try to maintain a connection. There isn't really a lot you can do about this other than moving your phone to an area with better signal.

If viewing the battery usage statistics doesn't help to identify a misbehaving app, you might try running your phone in Safe Mode for a while. This will temporarily disable your third-party applications. If the battery drain decreases significantly while in Safe Mode, you've got an app problem.

ok that makes more sense! Thanks for the replies guys!
 
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