Bad battery life on nexus 4

[mike37918]

It's a pleasant surprise to find that when I have no signal (at home), the battery doesn't seem to notice. I've tried ST on ATT and TMO's 4G monthly. I get no bars and a -113db or worse and the battery doesn't drain seeking a better though non-existent signal. On my VZW 4G phones, that would spell real trouble.

Try as I might, I think I'm going to return the Nexus 4. I need a phone at home and don't have a land line. Oddly, I get full 4G on VZW just fine. Come on TMO/ATT. Build another tower :'(

You could try using one of the VOIP apps, like Bobsled.

 

[cozzy123]

The screen thing makes sense but do you really use gps and blue tooth all the time? I turn those only on when I need it.

 

[cozzy123]

try groove ip or talkatone (think that is what it is called). It does calling over wifi networks. Great when you don't have cell connections but do have access to wifi.

 

[KitN]

I'm noticing some rather poor battery life. Pretty disappointing so far but I'll run the phone through a few more charging cycles before completely condemning it.

Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[Exergy]

Nexus 4 Battery Life Not So Good | TalkAndroid.com

What do you all think?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Android Central Forums

I find it weird that the HTC One X is all the way up there when it's infamous for having very poor battery life...

 

[mattopotamus]

The battery was one of the reasons I went back to my iPhone =\

I don't want to have to micro manage a battery and I was getting nowhere near a full day.

 

[cynicist]

I find it weird that the HTC One X is all the way up there when it's infamous for having very poor battery life...

Yeah that is confusing to me as well. I'm assuming the benchmark they are using doesn't represent typical usage very well.

 

[fatkiid]

Yeah that is confusing to me as well. I'm assuming the benchmark they are using doesn't represent typical usage very well.

There is a Snapdragon LTE and Tegra variants.

 

[raysgrumpy]

The screen thing makes sense but do you really use gps and blue tooth all the time? I turn those only on when I need it.

I'm in my truck a lot during the day for work. I have a jabra cruiser bluetooth speaker that I use to play through my truck's stereo. I usually leave gps on because some apps need it or are far more accurate than just using cell signal for location. I know that I'll be charging my phone throughout the day, so I don't see any reason in toggling services on and off all day. That's just the way I use my phone. It's obvious by some people's comments that it almost seems like a game to squeeze as much time out of a battery as they can. Just charge the dang thing haha. People spend hundreds of dollars (thousands including contracts) and all you have to do is buy a $30 battery charger and you're set.

 

[LNWJ]

Over the weekend my phone usually sits idle and on my old NS4G I would get 2 days w/o a charge.

Today the phone sat idle with the screen off most of the day (as shown in the pic) but Android OS consumed a huge amount of battery. Not sure what is up with that. The only thing I have set to sync is Gmail/Contacts/Cal. The rest is manual pull.

 

[gone down south]

I can lose 20% in an hour just playing around on the internet with all sync'ing turned off and the screen at 40ish%.

 

[soma4society]

I also keep my screen at 100%. I saw somebody say that you shouldn't go above 20%. That is absolutely crazy to me.

Interesting you said this. I have gradually nudged mine down *below* 20%. I was at first doing this to see how it would affect battery life, but, ironically, every time I made a reduction and then returned to the home screen (or went to read something on currents, for example) I kept mumbling the same thing to myself: Jesus that's still really bright. So I'd go down another notch and so on. At any rate this has left me wondering how, with my brightness set darn close to "0", this screen is still so exquisitely usable--even pleasant, at least to my eyes. When I set my iPhone 4S to a comparable level I can barely read *anything*...even indoors. I'm assuming it must have something to do with the backlight, which is independent of the brightness settings? Not sure cause what do I know about screen technology. But the upshot is I don't really feel as though I'm "losing out" by keeping the screen at 15%. It still seems rather attractive to me: and no, I'm not a masochist

Anyway, between a low screen brightness setting and juice defender plus, I've got my battery to give me about an hour and 10 minutes for every 10% of charge, and that's with moderate to heavy usage (that means surfing, streaming music, etc--not video, but with the screen awake *most* of the time for that hour and 10).

Haven't really tested standby time yet, cause I can't stop fiddling around with this ridiculous device lol.

 

[raysgrumpy]

Interesting you said this. I have gradually nudged mine down *below* 20%. I was at first doing this to see how it would affect battery life, but, ironically, every time I made a reduction and then returned to the home screen (or went to read something on currents, for example) I kept mumbling the same thing to myself: Jesus that's still really bright. So I'd go down another notch and so on. At any rate this has left me wondering how, with my brightness set darn close to "0", this screen is still so exquisitely usable--even pleasant, at least to my eyes. When I set my iPhone 4S to a comparable level I can barely read *anything*...even indoors. I'm assuming it must have something to do with the backlight, which is independent of the brightness settings? Not sure cause what do I know about screen technology. But the upshot is I don't really feel as though I'm "losing out" by keeping the screen at 15%. It still seems rather attractive to me: and no, I'm not a masochist

Anyway, between a low screen brightness setting and juice defender plus, I've got my battery to give me about an hour and 10 minutes for every 10% of charge, and that's with moderate to heavy usage (that means surfing, streaming music, etc--not video, but with the screen awake *most* of the time for that hour and 10).

Haven't really tested standby time yet, cause I can't stop fiddling around with this ridiculous device lol.

Are you practicing some kind of voodoo, because I think you've converted me?!? I have to admit that I had made my previous comments based on screen brightness of my past phones (Mytouch 4G and most recently HTC One s.) I was amazed how good this phone looks at a lower brightness. At 100%, the screen use would be 70-85% of the battery. Putting the screen at around 35-40 last night, I was perfectly fine with it and the battery didn't "plummet" like I'm used to. The fact that I also can't seem to put this thing down might be a factor as well!

 

[smileman]

i've found that the battery is quite good, as in make it through a day with pretty heavy use (streaming Spotify, lots of screen time, etc. -see my other posts for detailed battery info) unless you do one of two things:

a) set the screen brightness to 100%

b) navigation, even with screen brightness on auto, drains the battery pretty quickly. i can kill the battery by the end of the day if i've done about an hour of navigation.

 

[joshuay04]

I think the nexus 4 suffers from new phone syndrome. Give it a week, go back to normal usage than take a look at how long it lasts.

 

[anon(110041)]

Over the weekend my phone usually sits idle and on my old NS4G I would get 2 days w/o a charge.

Today the phone sat idle with the screen off most of the day (as shown in the pic) but Android OS consumed a huge amount of battery. Not sure what is up with that. The only thing I have set to sync is Gmail/Contacts/Cal. The rest is manual pull.

View attachment 48198

The same is happening for me - Android OS is the biggest drain.
I downloaded CPU spy and it seems like the phone is idling at 384 MHz for hours instead of going into deep sleep. Something it keeping it from sleeping hence the bad battery life?

 

[clove#AC]

I'm seeing 12-17% drain per hour, depending if I'm using the phone or if it's sitting idle on wifi with screen off (~12%/hr). I did a hard reset with nothing but the stock apps running and screen at minimum brightness and no change. I'm debating sending the phone back as a defect and going back to my Galaxy Nexus in the meantime, which has 2-3x better battery performance in my experience. The screen off/idle fast drainage is what's most puzzling to me.

I'm trying to read through this thread and figure out what is normal for the Nexus 4. For me, I'm not able to hit 7 hours of light usage with the screen at minimum brightness.

 

[safavi]

The same is happening for me - Android OS is the biggest drain.
I downloaded CPU spy and it seems like the phone is idling at 384 MHz for hours instead of going into deep sleep. Something it keeping it from sleeping hence the bad battery life?

I am having this exact issue. I have disabled google now as well as auto location update in maps, and some other stuff but no luck so far. Idle use is way lower when I am on wifi, but I still get massive time at 384 MHz which seems to be killing the battery.

 

[flipmoder7]

Interesting you said this. I have gradually nudged mine down *below* 20%. I was at first doing this to see how it would affect battery life, but, ironically, every time I made a reduction and then returned to the home screen (or went to read something on currents, for example) I kept mumbling the same thing to myself: Jesus that's still really bright. So I'd go down another notch and so on. At any rate this has left me wondering how, with my brightness set darn close to "0", this screen is still so exquisitely usable--even pleasant, at least to my eyes. When I set my iPhone 4S to a comparable level I can barely read *anything*...even indoors. I'm assuming it must have something to do with the backlight, which is independent of the brightness settings? Not sure cause what do I know about screen technology. But the upshot is I don't really feel as though I'm "losing out" by keeping the screen at 15%. It still seems rather attractive to me: and no, I'm not a masochist

Anyway, between a low screen brightness setting and juice defender plus, I've got my battery to give me about an hour and 10 minutes for every 10% of charge, and that's with moderate to heavy usage (that means surfing, streaming music, etc--not video, but with the screen awake *most* of the time for that hour and 10).

Haven't really tested standby time yet, cause I can't stop fiddling around with this ridiculous device lol.

I installed juice defender to try it out. But now I can no longer connect to 3/4g even after uninstalling the app. Any suggestions?

 

[TinaVane]

what i dont understand is iphone suck at battery life. all my iphone friends complain about it.
but yet they are at the top. my nexus S battery last longer than my friends iPhone.

Notice they left out the razor android phones