Nexus 7 battery life?

[simonsun347]

Hi guys I might need a little help here....Unplugged N7 this morning at 9, idled it all day and when I go check 10PM it has 50% battery which is terrible. My Xoom idles for 2 days and still have 85% battery. I did have WIFI on all the time, but what's interesting is Andriod OS takes 67% of battery usage. Is there something wrong with the OS?

Thanx

Simon

 

[cheidt76]

Almost 13 1/2 hrs, with 13 % left... I am VERY happy with my Nexus!

 

[sygys]

On my xoom wifi i get 4 days with 8 hours of screen usage and that battery is more then a year old. this nexus 7 has a pretty poor battery!

I get this usage on the xoom while the CPU is overclocked to 1600 mhz and brightness half way

 

[Eduardo06sp]

View attachment 36298

To achieve this great Wife off during sleep effect, just turn off all location services. Settings--->Location Services under Personal, I unchecked them all.

I got this off someone from the forums, sorry as I forgot your username.

View attachment 36299

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[Inishatr]

I found online a few tips to increase the battery life Nexus 7:

1. Turn of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Global Positioning System (GPS) when not in use. These services use considerable amounts of charge. You can turn them off by navigating through Settings > Personal > Location Services.

2. Apps like Maps and Navigation are equally power-draining. In addition, they use the GPS function as well, leading to even more battery drain. Turn on these apps only when needed.

3. Reduce screen brightness and set shorter Sleep Timeouts. Do this by navigating through Settings > Device > Display.

4. Check for messages, emails and other notifications manually and turn off all automatic syncing for all apps. Do this by navigating through Settings > Accounts > Google Accounts - name.

5. Switch to Airplane Mode when not near or using a Wi-Fi network. To enter Airplane Mode, press and hold the Power button or navigate through Settings > Wireless & Networks > More > Airplane Mode.

6. Keep an eye on which app uses more battery charge and customise these settings to your individual preferences. In order to understand how each app uses charge, navigate through Settings > Device > Battery and study the list showing breakdown of battery use.

 

[ChromeJob]

My simple way to super-charge charging is to switch to airplane mode, and turn display brightness to minimum. The ICS Android Power Dashboard lets you most of this manually (i.e. disable Wifi, BT, GPS, Autosync, and set display brightness)[1]. In fact, I think they designed the dashboard for just this. On my HTC phone, I can do this with the same dashboard, and a couple more of the HTC settings widgets, still keeping phone functions operational.

. . .

I thought I know a lot about conductors and P=IE and E=IR from my avionics days, but from time to time consumer electronics throw me for a loop. ... I determined today that the charger and the thin, short cable supplied with the Nexus 7 charge faster than the same charger and a third-party cable of better construction. The AmazonBasics 4' cable (on the Asus charger) supplied something like 1150 mA to the tablet (as measured with Battery Monitor Widget Pro), while the Asus 3' cord with the charger seems to be providing up to 2300 mA of charge. In short, much faster charging time using "what's in the box."

I hate when I find things like this, just as I found that the HTC T500 cable coupled with a U250 charger provided up to 916 mA to my Amaze, while other 1A chargers (verified, AC chargers with the data lines shorted) and other solid cables provided from 500 mA to 750 mA. I certainly hope the AmazonBasics Kindle Fire 2.1A charger I have on order doesn't disappoint. Playing THE DARK MEADOW on my the N7, the battery got sucked down plenty fast, even with a 1A auxiliary battery pack plugged.

Additional Asus chargers for the N7 are *only* $30.

[1] Cycles between Min - 50% - MAX - AUTO on my HTC 4.0.3. On the Nexus 7, seems to be 10% - 50% - MAX - AUTO.

 

[anon(924308)]

Hmm.... I always have the brightness turned to the lowest possible setting, but I can't get more than 4 hours of use at a time. 75% of the time I'll be web browsing, the other 25% I'll be playing an app or two (none of those 1GB monstrosity games). Is this normal? Should I contact Google's CS?

What I hate is how battery life and wifi are so subjective--every time I contact CS about issues like that, they try to blow me off by saying it's the router's fault, or I didn't charge it enough .

 

[c4v3man]

Hmm.... I always have the brightness turned to the lowest possible setting, but I can't get more than 4 hours of use at a time. 75% of the time I'll be web browsing, the other 25% I'll be playing an app or two (none of those 1GB monstrosity games). Is this normal? Should I contact Google's CS?

What I hate is how battery life and wifi are so subjective--every time I contact CS about issues like that, they try to blow me off by saying it's the router's fault, or I didn't charge it enough .

I'm having a similar experience. I did a factory reset, and still getting close to 4hrs of screen on time max. It sounds like there's 2 cells in the N7 running in parallen (3.7V, not 7.4V)... I wonder if one of them failed? Seems like the most logical explanation. It sucks to use it for browsing, etc and have it dying within 4-5 hours. Don't even get me started on games, even 2D games, which seem to absolutely slaughter the battery.

All this with brightness below 20% at all times. I used to get 7+ hours of screen on time no matter what I was doing... charging it every other day. Now I charge every day, and often times mid day. Going to try killing it tonight, let it fully charge overnight on the factory charger, then turn off the screen lock, set brightness to minimum, and just leave it on my desk. If it lasts 9hrs with wifi off just sitting at the home screen, then it stays. If it lasts less than 6 hours, then off to the ASUS monkeys...

 

[anon(924308)]

I contacted Google's support to see if my battery life was normal. I told the lady that 1.5 hours total--of magazine reading/light app usage at lowest possible brightness with all features turned off--chewed up 40% of the battery.

She asked if I had used a lot of data, and I said I had 3GB of music but few apps more than 40MB. she was like "well, thaaat'll do it, thaaat'll do it." Was she just totally incompetent, or is there that big of a correlation between memory and battery?

 

[c4v3man]

I'm having a similar experience. I did a factory reset, and still getting close to 4hrs of screen on time max. It sounds like there's 2 cells in the N7 running in parallen (3.7V, not 7.4V)... I wonder if one of them failed? Seems like the most logical explanation. It sucks to use it for browsing, etc and have it dying within 4-5 hours. Don't even get me started on games, even 2D games, which seem to absolutely slaughter the battery.

All this with brightness below 20% at all times. I used to get 7+ hours of screen on time no matter what I was doing... charging it every other day. Now I charge every day, and often times mid day. Going to try killing it tonight, let it fully charge overnight on the factory charger, then turn off the screen lock, set brightness to minimum, and just leave it on my desk. If it lasts 9hrs with wifi off just sitting at the home screen, then it stays. If it lasts less than 6 hours, then off to the ASUS monkeys...

Well killed it last night and charged up to 100%, set screen brightness at 10% and had DICE player play videos non-stop for 7 hours so far with wifi off, and it's sitting at 30% battery right now... maybe some of my apps are more power hungry than I anticipated... will have to look into setting up CPU profiles to underclock when using poorly coded applications.

 

[ChromeJob]

I contacted Google's support to see if my battery life was normal. I told the lady that 1.5 hours total--of magazine reading/light app usage at lowest possible brightness with all features turned off--chewed up 40% of the battery.

She asked if I had used a lot of data, and I said I had 3GB of music but few apps more than 40MB. she was like "well, thaaat'll do it, thaaat'll do it." Was she just totally incompetent, or is there that big of a correlation between memory and battery?

I think she was asking if you were doing a lot of data transfers. E.g. accounts syncing every 30 minutes. Downloading from Play store every 15 minutes. Browsing the web -- a lot. Yea, that could use more than average power.

But just magazine reading (Play Magazines), playing music? No, should not kill the battery in 4 hours IMHO.



My own update: I charged the N7 from 0% - 100%, then continued charging overnight. Left it in sleep mode (and have Wifi stay on only if charging during sleep) all day, came back, it was still at 100%.

It most definitely will kill the battery to do things like constant gaming (Glowball, Dark Meadow, Dead Trigger), like I did Sunday. I was more concerned about time to recharge. It seems that on the OEM charger and cable, it took 5 hours Monday night to recharge from 40% to 100%. That's ... a little odd if BMW is correctly indicating a charge current of 2300 mA or so. I'll be keeping an eye on this.

I would not start under-clocking or overclocking to troubleshoot, unless you plan to keep it. Because if you DO have a bum unit, and have to return, any indications that you've been overriding the hardware specs and configuration could be valid reason to void the warranty. Stick with stock, and prescribed activities. My 2?.

 

[anon(924308)]

Well killed it last night and charged up to 100%, set screen brightness at 10% and had DICE player play videos non-stop for 7 hours so far with wifi off, and it's sitting at 30% battery right now...

Today, I spend ~4 hours with wifi on the whole time, browsing the internet and taking notes, playing a light game, reading a magazine on the commute, etc, and I still have 45% battery left. The other day, 1.5 hrs of the same thing (min. brightness, except no wifi) ate 40% of my battery, and a couple hours later I was down to 14%.

Attached is a screenshot I took this morning, when 20 minutes ate up 17% of my battery. I was dreading a dead battery by the afternoon, but somehow the remaining 3.5 hours of the same exact tasks chewed up only 28%. Anyone have any reasonable explanation for this?? Maybe it was a faulty indicator after all? But how could it change midway through the day..

\\edit: now that I look at the pic, I'm noticing that it doesn't indicate rate of consumption. it was definitely on for 21 minutes, and the battery was at 99% (it can never get to '100%') when I unplugged it this morning. maybe it's my charger, in combination with some faulty software in the tablet?

I'm kind of frustrated. I wish it was either really bad so I could get a replacement, or good enough that I could hold onto it--not some weird combination of both that makes me wonder what the underlying issue is. Either way, I don't think I'll ever get the amazing battery life that OP has lol

 

[ChromeJob]

... Attached is a screenshot I took this morning, when 20 minutes ate up 17% of my battery. I was dreading a dead battery by the afternoon, but somehow the remaining 3.5 hours of the same exact tasks chewed up only 28%. Anyone have any reasonable explanation for this?? Maybe it was a faulty indicator after all? But how could it change midway through the day..

\\edit: now that I look at the pic, I'm noticing that it doesn't indicate rate of consumption. it was definitely on for 21 minutes, and the battery was at 99% (it can never get to '100%') when I unplugged it this morning. maybe it's my charger, in combination with some faulty software in the tablet...

Not long enough to really tell much. I would do without the games as the processor and graphics demand of games will skew your measurements.

Worth the money: Battery Monitor Widget Pro. Turn on Monitoring without widget. Set history update rate about 5 minutes or so. What it will tell you ... the usage mA screen will indicate the RATE at which the battery is being dragged down, and when. It won't tell you what apps, for that you need...

SystemPanel Pro. Registered version has neat features, worth buying. It will show you how much CPU apps were using, when, and also how much CPU a particular app was using, and when. Unfortunately, you can't slide the history around like in BMW. But if the period you are examining is within the last 8 hours, it's helpful enough. Do NOT use System Panel to kill apps. Their docs say as much; just use it for analytics.

Both apps helped me immensely when identifying power outages on my Amaze, and also drains on the battery. Using the two, you can get a much better picture than Android usage shows you, as to what app is using more power than others. For example, after a full charge, play 30 minutes of a really processor-intensive game like Osmos (there's a free preview) or Dark Meadow. Your hand will tell you too, the lower back (opposite the audio plug gets quite warm. Then stop the game for 10 minutes, and look at BMW and SystemPanel. You should see the % the game has been using, and see the spike in power consumption.

Tip: setting markers in BMW allows you put start and stop times in the history graph when you're doing something you think is a power hog.

Hope this helps.

 

[anon(924308)]

^ Thanks so much! I'll make sure to check out those apps. just spoke with CS, and they said it's probably an indicator problem, and that it needs to be 'trained' so I should leave it on until it dies a few times. I put it to sleep at 14% a couple hours ago (aside from 1 app at 6%, nothing was running that wasn't factory standard), and it just told me the battery was at 4% and should be charged immediately.

I think you might be on the money about the syncing, for at least part of the issue. just finished uploading my music to google play tonight (usually when I sync the tablet's charging, but I had the charger packed away). so that may have killed the 10% battery.
it doesn't explain the rapid consumption with wifi off while reading an e-book/magazine, and I had great battery almost all day today while using the internet and dl'ing a couple apps--but that's probably the indicator issue along with syncing.

So, I'm going to DL those apps and monitor consumption, turn off wifi when asleep, disable syncing/delete cache for google music, and run the battery dry a few times. hopefully that'll do the trick lol. thanks again for all the battery-saving advice on this thread!

 

[Jussumguy88]

About 9 hours with 60% left. I'd say I'm very pleased. Battery life is good enough to get me through the at if I do some VERY HEAVY usage. But if not I can get through a day or two without charging at all.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[memsom]

I just joined to add my experience.

I found my way here because I too was seeing giant spikes in the amount of battery being used, making my actual usage time smaller than expected. Even on standby, I was seeing the battery drained with in 2 days.

What I did was as follows:

1) I uninstalled any apps that I really didn't need that had background tasks. So for example, I had two RSS feed readers, I uninstalled one of them.
2) Syncing:
i) I stopped my second Google account from syncing (it was attached to Google code and used for a open source project entity I use to publish stuff with. Nothing essential to sync.)
ii) I stopped my main account syncing everything except mail and a couple of other things. No music, no video and no Google+. I also stopped Newsrob from auto syncing my RSS.
3) I turned the screen brightness right down and turned off auto level.
4) Periodically look at the app list and close apps I don't need. I also killed a few processes that I believe don't need to be running (e.g. the free Winamp left 2 processes running that looked pointless to me as I'd run it once and had no intention of using it to do anything but listen to my already purchased music on device.)

So far, I have had pretty good results. 1 day 58minutes on battery. 93% battery. Screen 47%. GPS on, WIFI on (though when I travel 1.5 hours to and from work, it is obviously not connected to an AP, still "on" though.)

I haven't used it for many long periods, but I haven't used it sparingly. It's my go to tablet when I want to reply to email and look at Twitter/Facebook/Youtube.

This is all anecdotal, but it's doing a lot better than it was the day before. I had a similar experience with my iPhone and iPad - the more you sync, the more it causes battery usage to go up. Seems like a no brainer, but it's amazing how true it turns out to be.

 

[Verdes8891]

I'm loving my battery life on my n7.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[jlanik4]

I am at 37% after around 4 hrs of screen time, watching YouTube, playing Beach Buggy Blitz, Minecraft and Poolbar, web surfing, and Facebook with brightness on lowest most of the time. Uptime is around 1 full day. Is this normal? Anyone plz reply. Thx.

 

[Eduardo06sp]

I am at 37% after around 4 hrs of screen time, watching YouTube, playing Beach Buggy Blitz, Minecraft and Poolbar, web surfing, and Facebook with brightness on lowest most of the time. Uptime is around 1 full day. Is this normal? Anyone plz reply. Thx.

In my opinion, that's great. I can barely squeeze out about five hours on my battery.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[jlanik4]

In my opinion, that's great. I can barely squeeze out about five hours on my battery.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

Thanks, I wasn't sure so I wanted a second opinion.