Tips and tricks for prolonging battery life (4.3) to a Nexus 4 newbie?

[wonderful_donut]

I should preface this with saying, I am not an Android newbie, but I am not an Android guru either. I know enough to get my way around, but I couldn't tell you how to code for it or anything.

I just picked up my Nexus 4 on Monday and so far, it's AMAZING. I am upgrading from a HTC Inspire and it was not a great phone. In fact, I hated everything about it. Moving to the N4 was insane. It was like going from beat up, dying Geo Metro, to a fast, sexy, but cheap car. (I suck at these metaphors). I plan to keep it stock for a while as I don't know much of rooting. I had rooted my Samsung Infuse some time ago and it was nice and simple, but I never really did anything with it.

So far, everything is great except for my battery life. I have a Nexus 7 tablet as well, and since getting the OTA 4.3, I noticed a decent battery life boost, but not in my phone. The first day I had the phone, I got about 4 hours of screen on throughout the day. Much better than the 1 of screen-on I got with my Inspire. I got 4.3 at the end of Monday and have been using it yesterday and today.

Yesterday, I got about 3 hours of screen on, and now today, 2 hours and 15 minutes of screen on before I was at 18% battery, discharging from 100%.

I have a reasonable amount of apps, but I am not a power user or anything. I don't use widgets and ALL of my apps have notifications disabled except for Facebook Messenger. I mostly use social media apps and I know that Facebook is a battery zapper, but I don't use it THAT much. I think of the 2 hours I had today, maybe 20 minutes of it was FB. The rest was Snapchat and Instagram. Yeah, I know that camera apps are also battery zappers, but 2 hours seems pretty ridiculous.

Also, I'm aware of the crashing that Snapchat causes with 4.3 and it happened twice today. Both times, when rebooted, my battery went down about 12-15% in life just from the reboot. I don't get it, but it did.

I have bluetooth off, wifi on at home, off when out. Screen brightness is barely past the lowest setting. Maybe 1/4 of the way to the right. I have my phone sleep after a minute and so forth. All of these things I do on my tablet, but with that (when I am not playing games on it), I get 4-6 hours of use, easily.

Any other tips and tricks I should know about? 2 hours is sad and frustrating. I want to get the most out of my phone!

 

[B. Diddy]

I have just the thing for you: http://forums.androidcentral.com/general-help-how/298919-guide-battery-saving-tips.html

 

[wonderful_donut]

I have just the thing for you: http://forums.androidcentral.com/general-help-how/298919-guide-battery-saving-tips.html

Fantastic! Thank you for sharing. I did most of these just a bit ago, so it's good to see I was on the right track. I even disabled Google Currents, and Google+ as I really just don't use either.

I was under the impression that having WiFi on, is better because it's a more stable connection in certain circumstances? I get pretty good service where I live. Almost always 3-5 bars, but at home I just use WiFi because I might as well since I have unlimited data on my home internet, and only 2 gigs on mobile.

 

[B. Diddy]

As long as your home internet connection is reliable and fast, using wifi at home will always be more reliable than mobile data. But the wifi radio still uses battery when it's on, so if you're not using your phone and the wifi is on, it's still using up battery for no good reason (unless you need to have constant alerts for incoming emails or other notifications). Personally, I just keep wifi and mobile data off until I want to check me email or otherwise access the web, and then I'll turn on the connection that I need. The downside is that it takes a little more time to sync things like Gmail, since it hasn't been constantly syncing.

 

[ohyeahar]

Just going to copy and paste one of my previous posts about this question from here: http://forums.androidcentral.com/google-nexus-4/273965-bad-battery-life.html#post2744649

I find that there's one surefire way to get significantly longer battery life: Don't play games.

I use my N4 heavily for everything except games: streaming music, watching videos, chatting, email, web browsing, etc. My battery always lasts more than a day.

I find that many games drain enough juice to completely discharge a battery within just a couple hours. Sure, there are exceptions but I find that anything that leverages the GPU will wreck havoc on your battery life.

I do all my gaming at home on the N7.

 

[wonderful_donut]

I do all my gaming at home on the N7.

I do the same actually. My Nexus 7 is the one who gets candy crush, PvZ or whatever else. I just use my phone for texting, calls and social media stuffs.

 

[Captainbob767]

Install Juice Defender Plus and set it up. https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...droid.juicedefender.plus&hl=en&token=yqbV1mQ-

 

[mr_nobody]

Also, the device will not have the best battery life out of the box...it takes some time for the battery to get "broken in"...