Terrible battery life

**bmstew** · 08-30-2012, 03:48 PM

Hey guys, my wife just recently (about 2 weeks ago) upgraded from a Droid Incredible to the Galaxy Nexus. The first few days she had the phone, everything was fine. Battery got through the day (she's always had 4g off and uses Wi-fi whenever she can). The last couple of days though, her battery has been absolutely terrible, as in dead in about 5 hours or so. At first I thought it was a rogue app that was going haywire, but Watchdog doesn't show any one app above 5% CPU usage, and most of them are below 1%. Everyday, the screen is usually the biggest battery hog, usually around 40-50%. Phone idle is next, and Cell Standby after that. For some reason it says her time without signal is 61%, even though she has a clear signal all day - at no point is she in a low signal area. She uses 3g through the day at work, and switches the Wi-fi on as soon as she gets home. And today, it got extremely hot, as in almost painful to the touch. She had to turn it off because she was afraid it was going to fry. This was after she had used it about a total of five minutes the entire morning.

So with no apps going wild, and the phone thinking she's at a low signal (even though she's not), are we looking at a bad SIM card here? I'm thinking about taking the phone into Verizon, but would like to avoid that if I could. Thanks in advance for the help guys.

I tried to post the screengrab of the battery usage for today (so you can see the super sharp dip) but I don't know how to post the screengrab. If it's necessary, someone can tell me how to do it, and I'll be happy to get it on.

**saichick04** · 08-30-2012, 04:23 PM

The Nexus battery is horrible.. I too had one and even though I read the reviews and everyone said the battery is HORRIBLE I didn't want to believe them bc I wanted that sweet 4G vanilla android experience....

2 weeks later? I got a Droid RAZR Maxx. I couldn't take charging my phone once at night, at lunch at work and then again at night. I had extra batteries as well. If she can I'd say take it back and get something else. The SGIII is pretty sweet. Battery? Not the best but better then the Nexus. I did the whole 4G off when I wasn't using it and Wifi at the house but don't you want to use your 4G when you can?

Your stats sound very similar to mine. The screen being a hog

. Maybe you can try that seidio extended battery?

**NoICon** · 08-30-2012, 05:01 PM

Is the GPS enabled in location services? That caused my battery to drain very quickly and it did get quite hot.

**Gekko** · 08-30-2012, 05:23 PM

i suffer no hardships doing this -

Battery Tips for Android

1. Toggle off LTE, WIFI, GPS, BT, NFC, Hotspot. Toggle on as needed.
2. Display Brightness - Turn off Auto Brightness and Reduce Setting Bar to Minimum.
3. Sign out of Google Latitude, GTalk, G+, Google Now, and Messenger. Disable Location Reporting/History.
4. Beware of constantly syncing Apps and Bloatware like Facebook, Twitter, News, Non-Push Email, etc. Set Sync interval for every 1 hour or more.
5. Turn off keyboard haptic feedback.
6. Don't use Live Wallpaper. Use dark wallpaper if possible.
7. Set Display Sleep Setting to 2 Minutes or Less.
8. Set WIFI to Always stay on during Sleep if you regularly use WIFI.
9. Turn off vibrate for Emails.
10. Be careful of using too many live widgets.
11. Sync Exchange Emails 30 Days or less.
12. Do NOT use a Task Killer App.

**dcastillo** · 08-30-2012, 05:48 PM

check the data usage in settings....
the exchange email sometimes goes haywire....
see whats using the most data and if its more foreground or background

-Danny

**NoICon** · 08-30-2012, 07:15 PM

Don't mean to hijack bmstew's post, but for me excessive battery drain only occurs while I'm on the network. While on wireless, my battery life is good. Some of my colleagues at work have LTE phones, and they don't have this problem. In fact, they run pretty much everything while I have synch and location turned off, and I avoid apps that run in the background whether I want them to or not. I could toggle to CDMA, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having blazing fast LTE. What am I doing wrong? I am a novice with smart phones; do I have bad radios? I mentioned my conundrum to a Verizon Rep at the store one time, and aside from detecting his disappointment that I wasn't there to buy anything, he quickly blamed the size of the screen. That makes sense to a certain extent, but again on wireless my battery life is pretty darn good. I am a stock user; and I really hate throwing this out there, but does rooting offer better battery life? Once the OTA Jellybean udpate rolls out I am worried that I will not be able to take full advantage of it becaues I have all of the mobility stuff turned off to conserve battery.

**Nakrohtap** · 08-30-2012, 07:31 PM

Originally Posted by Gekko

i suffer no hardships doing this -

Battery Tips for Android

1. Toggle off LTE, WIFI, GPS, BT, NFC, Hotspot. Toggle on as needed.
2. Display Brightness - Turn off Auto Brightness and Reduce Setting Bar to Minimum.
3. Sign out of Google Latitude, GTalk, G+, Google Now, and Messenger. Disable Location Reporting/History.
4. Beware of constantly syncing Apps and Bloatware like Facebook, Twitter, News, Non-Push Email, etc. Set Sync interval for every 1 hour or more.
5. Turn off keyboard haptic feedback.
6. Don't use Live Wallpaper. Use dark wallpaper if possible.
7. Set Display Sleep Setting to 2 Minutes or Less.
8. Set WIFI to Always stay on during Sleep if you regularly use WIFI.
9. Turn off vibrate for Emails.
10. Be careful of using too many live widgets.
11. Sync Exchange Emails 30 Days or less.
12. Do NOT use a Task Killer App.

Basically, don't let your phone do all the nice little things that truly give you the full experience of owning a smartphone with an advanced software design.
You are basically just dumbing down your phone for the sole purpose of battery life.
You may as well under clock it as well.
The battery is the only thing I seriously dislike about this phone.
OP, basically your options are plugging in your phone every opportunity you get or get a phone with better battery life.

Sad but true.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

**Gekko** · 08-31-2012, 06:17 AM

Originally Posted by Nakrohtap

Basically, don't let your phone do all the nice little things that truly give you the full experience of owning a smartphone with an advanced software design.
You are basically just dumbing down your phone for the sole purpose of battery life.
You may as well under clock it as well.
The battery is the only thing I seriously dislike about this phone.
OP, basically your options are plugging in your phone every opportunity you get or get a phone with better battery life.

Sad but true.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Nope. Like I said, homie, I suffer no hardships.