Nexus 5: Battery Very Inconsistent - What's the culprit?

[ianhanson85]

I think I'm going to give Snapdragon Battery Guru a shot. Anyone have any experience using this on their Nexus 5?

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ils?id=com.xiam.snapdragon.app&token=8heLgDSO

I tried this app for a week and my battery life was worse while it was running. I think it did more harm than good and it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Ultraman1966]

The first hour or so has a lot of awake time even though you don't have the display on that much. I take you're not rooted? Might be interesting to see what apps like BetterBatteryStats can reveal.

 

[onthecouchagain]

The first hour or so has a lot of awake time even though you don't have the display on that much. I take you're not rooted? Might be interesting to see what apps like BetterBatteryStats can reveal.

I think that was my music. I play music on my commute (about 45 mins). It's in my pocket playing, but screen is off. Google Music Player and Mediaserver are usually near the top of the battery usage list immediately after my commute.

However, the little individual bars of "awake" is a bit of a mystery. I am not rooted. Here's what the list looks like around the time I took the screen shots:



Again, this is pretty normal usage pattern. I don't use my phone that differently from day to day. It's usually fine doing the same things I do, but once every 1-2 weeks, there's a day I need to reboot because something is draining the battery abnormally fast. It's very tall-tell when it happens. The graph is extremely steep for no particular reason. I've kept a careful eye on my daily usage patterns (what I run, what I install, etc.). There's no rhyme or reason.

I hate to sound petty, but the Nexus 5 battery life -- for whatever reason -- just isn't reliable. I will move on when a better option comes down the line this year. I'm hoping the Moto X+1 may be my next device.

 

[onthecouchagain]

As you can see, it's fine today. Same usage patterns and same cell reception.





Then in a week or two, it'll suddenly drain really quickly for no apparent reason. Reboot, rinse and repeat.

 

[crxssi]

Then in a week or two, it'll suddenly drain really quickly for no apparent reason. Reboot, rinse and repeat.

I have reported the exact same problem in several threads already. I don't use the phone at work and when it is in the "drain mode", it will consume 25% of the battery doing absolutely nothing by the time I get home. Reboot it and it is back to a few weeks of 6% drain over the exact same conditions.

Drives me batty- the only major problem with this phone.

 

[onthecouchagain]

I have reported the exact same problem in several threads already. I don't use the phone at work and when it is in the "drain mode", it will consume 25% of the battery doing absolutely nothing by the time I get home. Reboot it and it is back to a few weeks of 6% drain over the exact same conditions.

Drives me batty- the only major problem with this phone.

Yeah. This issue straight up sucks. I wonder if it's hardware, as I cannot find any discernable reason on the software side why it would behave like this. But hardware doesn't quite make much sense either...?

Dunno.

 

[Aglet]

Not petty at all, I completely see your point. Whatever any smartphone's faults -- perhaps a little slow at opening apps, or m/f applied bloatware, or a screen that's not the world's best resolution, whatever -- it should be reliable. Many of us use these phones for business or other important tasks, and if you can't be certain whether yours is going to be alive in the middle of the day due to random battery drains, I don't think that's acceptable.

I haven't had the problem with my Nexus 5 but I did with my BlackBerry Bold 9500 and Samsung Galaxy S2 so I feel your pain, and I hope yours randomly fixes itself. Somehow...

 

[whitenack]

Have you seen this thread which suggests wiping the cache? I came here looking for a solution to the same problem. My battery life was awesome in 4.4.2. Now it drains like a rock and I barely use it. It seems like it has gotten worse the past few days. I am trying the cache wipe and I'll see if that works.

 

[tonyr6]

I think what happens is somehow GPS it turned on then when it suppose to shut off it stays on draining the battery. I keep GPS disabled and have it set to battery save mode for location but it is still annoying that it does this every couple of weeks and that only a reboot fixes it.

 

[onthecouchagain]

Have you seen this thread which suggests wiping the cache? I came here looking for a solution to the same problem. My battery life was awesome in 4.4.2. Now it drains like a rock and I barely use it. It seems like it has gotten worse the past few days. I am trying the cache wipe and I'll see if that works.

I have tried this. No luck. Maybe you'll report better luck with that?

 

[crxssi]

Have you seen this thread which suggests wiping the cache? I came here looking for a solution to the same problem. My battery life was awesome in 4.4.2. Now it drains like a rock and I barely use it. It seems like it has gotten worse the past few days. I am trying the cache wipe and I'll see if that works.

Cache partition wipe works very well when an Android device gets mysteriously slow, starts crashing, programs lockup, that type of thing. Have used it several times on different devices, including the Nexus 10 & 5. However, it has *NEVER* made any difference for battery life or the mysterious "mode" that it gets into which starts to drain the battery at 2% per hour when it is supposed to be idle (when it should be 0.5% or something). All the battery usage is dumped into the generic "Android System" and/or "Android OS" (what a completely useless set of descriptions). But a simple reboot fixes it for a while- several days to a week or more.

I suspect LOTS of people have the problem I describe, but they just don't know it... because they use their phone through the day. All they notice is a generally mediocre battery life.

 

[onthecouchagain]

Cache partition wipe works very well when an Android device gets mysteriously slow, starts crashing, programs lockup, that type of thing. Have used it several times on different devices, including the Nexus 10 & 5. However, it has *NEVER* made any difference for battery life or the mysterious "mode" that it gets into which starts to drain the battery at 2% per hour when it is supposed to be idle (when it should be 0.5% or something). All the battery usage is dumped into the generic "Android System" and/or "Android OS" (what a completely useless set of descriptions). But a simple reboot fixes it for a while- several days to a week or more.

I suspect LOTS of people have the problem I describe, but they just don't know it... because they use their phone through the day. All they notice is a generally mediocre battery life.

I suspect so too. Well said. The Nexus has always been known for its average/mediocre battery life.

 

[Clem_SuperHippo]

I'm a big fan of my Nexus 5 but this battery thing is a pain... What did I do to improve:
- Disable every syncs of every apps
- Killed some android app services that I didn't use
- Only allowed location for Google Maps
- Turned off the wifi scanning thing and Keep wifi during sleep. I left the Wi-Fi optimization on, did you see any difference if you untick it?

Even with theses changes, if I use my phone a bit, (1h in the subway) and multiple times during the day, I go on air plane mode when I go to bed, I wake up the next morning with some like 15-20% battery, which is not bad but I know that I wont finish the day if I dont charge it at work

 

[Kage_]

Re: Battery Very Inconsistent - What's the culprit?

I have found on days when Google Play Services updates my battery goes to crap with the same discharge graph that you showed. I use WLD (Wake Lock Detector), App Install History, and Battery Snap to monitor my phone. It's very consistant, when Play Services updates I have to reboot my phone a time or two to get it back to normal. BTW, yesterday Play Services updated and my battery went to crap. I rebooted my phone twice and today I'm setting at 90% since I took it off at 9am and my discharge graph is normal.

 

[crxssi]

Re: Battery Very Inconsistent - What's the culprit?

I have found on days when Google Play Services updates my battery goes to crap with the same discharge graph that you showed. I use WLD (Wake Lock Detector), App Install History, and Battery Snap to monitor my phone. It's very consistant, when Play Services updates I have to reboot my phone a time or two to get it back to normal. BTW, yesterday Play Services updated and my battery went to crap. I rebooted my phone twice and today I'm setting at 90% since I took it off at 9am and my discharge graph is normal.

What do you mean by "Google Play Services updates"? I never see any such updates. Is this part of the the Play Store app? Does it update itself without saying or asking? And if so, how do you know it is updated recently? I checked current and recent updates and don't see anything that would point to an update on anything "Play"...

 

[Kage_]

Play services does a lot of things on your phone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Play_Services


Sent from my Nexus 5 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[crxssi]

Play services does a lot of things on your phone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Play_Services

" it can automatically be updated through Google Play Store, and is automatically installed on any Android device that runs Android 2.2 or higher."

Again, how is it you know that they updated such services on some date? Are you going in and manually/regularly looking at and comparing the version number under settings-> apps-> all-> Google Play Services ?

 

[Kage_]

" it can automatically be updated through Google Play Store, and is automatically installed on any Android device that runs Android 2.2 or higher."

Again, how is it you know that they updated such services on some date? Are you going in and manually/regularly looking at and comparing the version number under settings-> apps-> all-> Google Play Services ?

It's like any other app it updates on a regular basis. I use an app that keeps tracks of apps that have been installed and when so I can see when it was updated and thus correlate the battery drain after the update.

 

[crxssi]

It's like any other app it updates on a regular basis.

But it isn't like any other app, because any other "regular" app will update through the Play Store and show up as an app and also as a recently updated app. Google Play Services doesn't appear as either.

I use an app that keeps tracks of apps that have been installed and when so I can see when it was updated and thus correlate the battery drain after the update.

Seems sad we would have to rely on a third-party app to monitor app updates because Google is hiding stuff from us

 

[surrealjam]

As you can see, it's fine today. Same usage patterns and same cell reception.

View attachment 131041

View attachment 131042

Then in a week or two, it'll suddenly drain really quickly for no apparent reason. Reboot, rinse and repeat.

Hi there - I don't suppose you ever got anywhere with this issue? I have the exact same problem (see image - note a reboot occurred where the slight gap is):



The idle battery drain can be great (say 3% over night) while other times it's horrible. I cannot pin it down to a particular thing though "WiFi" seems to feature higher up the battery usage stats than I would expect...

It seems even if I kill every open app, disable WiFi, disable location services etc. the only "fix" is a reboot. It's a little random but if I leave the phone on without a reboot for a week or so I'll generally get it.