Why is my Nexus 5 battery life so awful?

[rj170590]

Nexus 5 Battery Life

I have looked around on the forum and online regarding this issue. Since 5.0 the battery life on my nexus 5 is awful. If I leave it alone and don't turn the screen on the phones battery life is fine, however as soon as I start to use it it drops. Yesterday I lost 10% in 15 minutes. I am now running Android 5.0.1. I was wondering if this could just be the battery going. The phone is about a year and a half old now. I've run battery checks but they come back as ok. Not sure what else to try, Hopefully someone can give me some pointers!

 

[DLK1]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

I have been having the same problem since I installed Lollipop. I could have 98% battery open camera app and take two pictures it would power it's self off and I would have to put it on charge before it would boot backup. It would show 30% or could be 70%. Other times I could have 85% battery open IMDB enter search and before I get result back, it would power down, and show 40%. So I order a REPLACEMENT battery, took 17 days to get here from China. I got it this morning and installed it, I have taken 20 pictures, ran IMDB search and played a 3 minute trailer. Now I am replying to this message and I still have 90% battery left. So yes, I would replace the battery. When I removed the battery, I could see that the old battery was swollen. I also noticed that the new battery ran 10 to 15 degrees cooler.

Edit: Last night I recharge the battery and at 22:40 hour I took it off charge and went to bed. When I got up this morning at 08:00 hour it read 94%. Before this battery replacement I would have lost 30% or more. I used the phone all day with Chrome, Android Central app, Weather Apps, a few games. At 18:30 it report 10% time to charge. I got 20 hours between charges and 4.5 hours of screen on time. 20 minutes of talk time. I am a happy camper, I have two more complete charges/discharges to go before I complete the (condition the new battery phase). I think I will keep this phone another year, if nothing better show in the Nexus 2015, I may get another battery then and go for three years.

 

[Rukbat]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

Have you regularly let the battery drain below 40%? If so, it could be the battery going. Look at the second chart at Battery University - How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries. The sweet spot is about 50%, but if you regularly drain down to 10%, you'll be lucky to get a year out of it.

 

[chezm]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

My battery has gradually got worse on lollipop, no differences or new apps installed. I am getting much less on screen time and even idle state chews the battery, I go to sleep around midnight @ 100% and wake up to it usually between 75-80%, with Kitkat i was waking up to it with over 90%. Pretty disappointing so far, although the notifications on the lock screen are a great addition, as well as the new pull down windows, everything else for Lollipop so far has not worked well, ive also wiped the cache partition and did a full format right after installing 5.0.

 

[grover5]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

My battery has gradually got worse on lollipop, no differences or new apps installed. I am getting much less on screen time and even idle state chews the battery, I go to sleep around midnight @ 100% and wake up to it usually between 75-80%, with Kitkat i was waking up to it with over 90%. Pretty disappointing so far, although the notifications on the lock screen are a great addition, as well as the new pull down windows, everything else for Lollipop so far has not worked well, ive also wiped the cache partition and did a full format right after installing 5.0.

My battery hasn't been as good on lollipop either. I'm on 5.0.1 now and both my stand by time and use time chew up the battery at a very rapid rate. I hope a fix is coming.

 

[Zendroid1]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

I've been struck by the google play services thing eating up my battery. now to disable apps 1 by 1 to figure it out.

 

[brosko]

I have been having the same problem since I installed Lollipop. I could have 98% battery open camera app and take two pictures it would power it's self off and I would have to put it on charge before it would boot backup. It would show 30% or could be 70%. Other times I could have 85% battery open IMDB enter search and before I get result back, it would power down, and show 40%. So I order a REPLACEMENT battery, took 17 days to get here from China. I got it this morning and installed it, I have taken 20 pictures, ran IMDB search and played a 3 minute trailer. Now I am replying to this message and I still have 90% battery left. So yes, I would replace the battery. When I removed the battery, I could see that the old battery was swollen. I also noticed that the new battery ran 10 to 15 degrees cooler.

Edit: Last night I recharge the battery and at 22:40 hour I took it off charge and went to bed. When I got up this morning at 08:00 hour it read 94%. Before this battery replacement I would have lost 30% or more. I used the phone all day with Chrome, Android Central app, Weather Apps, a few games. At 18:30 it report 10% time to charge. I got 20 hours between charges and 4.5 hours of screen on time. 20 minutes of talk time. I am a happy camper, I have two more complete charges/discharges to go before I complete the (condition the new battery phase). I think I will keep this phone another year, if nothing better show in the Nexus 2015, I may get another battery then and go for three years.

A swollen up battery is a tell tale sign that the battery is dead. On my old Nokia bar style phone the battery actually swelled up so bad that it pushed the back plate off the phone and would no longer fit.

 

[chezm]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

My battery hasn't been as good on lollipop either. I'm on 5.0.1 now and both my stand by time and use time chew up the battery at a very rapid rate. I hope a fix is coming.

Yes im on 5.0.1 as well and experiencing same issue, my other 2 friends are also experiencing battery issues N5 compared to KitKat.

 

[crxssi]

A swollen up battery is a tell tale sign that the battery is dead. On my old Nokia bar style phone the battery actually swelled up so bad that it pushed the back plate off the phone and would no longer fit.

That happened on my Evo 3D phone. It was very strange to see the battery swell to about 33% larger than stock.

 

[belodion]

A swollen up battery is a tell tale sign that the battery is dead. On my old Nokia bar style phone the battery actually swelled up so bad that it pushed the back plate off the phone and would no longer fit.

I remember a post from a guy whose battery bulged the other way and damaged the display. How he must have laughed.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[mclasser]

If you're rooted, try running a wakelock detector to see if any rogue apps are eating up the battery.

 

[RealDogBoy]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

Have you regularly let the battery drain below 40%? If so, it could be the battery going. Look at the second chart at Battery University - How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries. The sweet spot is about 50%, but if you regularly drain down to 10%, you'll be lucky to get a year out of it.

That's an excellent article -- well worth the time to go through it.

One thing from the article that's rarely discussed: battery life can be prolonged by not charging to the full 4.2v. I wonder if there's a way (preferably software-controllable) to choose the target voltage where the charger shuts off. So on a day where I know it's unlikely that I'll need the full capacity, I'll charge to only 4.1v.

The whole issue of how 5.0 and 5.0.1 has affected battery life was discussed at length in another thread -- that's a separate issue from how to prolong the life of a Li-ion battery.

 

[brosko]

I remember a post from a guy whose battery bulged the other way and damaged the display. How he must have laughed.

Posted via the Android Central App

Wow! That's something else!

 

[tonyr6]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

I've been struck by the google play services thing eating up my battery. now to disable apps 1 by 1 to figure it out.

Disable Google Fit. That helped my battery greatly.

 

[Zendroid1]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

Disable Google Fit. That helped my battery greatly.

I tried doing that and no luck. I am disabling apps one by one but I'm at a point where I'm losing the functionality of the phone the way I like it. I just don't understand why this just showed up one day despite me not adding any new apps or changing the way I use apps.

 

[belodion]

^^^Following a recommendation from PPP mcleod2 in the thread linked below, I've been using my N5 with Google Now switched off the last few days and results are positive. Try?
http://forums.androidcentral.com/go...lay-services-battery-drain-under-5-0-1-a.html

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[shonay]

Replace the battery. I was having all the same issues with my Nexus 5 battery ever since upgrading to 5.0 and 5.0.1. I just replaced the battery a few days ago and I've been running pretty solid so far. On a full charge from 7am, it's now (the next day) 2am [19hours], and I have 53% battery still left. I've had normal usage like taking photos, whatsapp, bbm, phone calls, youtube, browsing the net, etc. Before I wouldn't have even made it past 6 or 7 hours.

I think Lollipop some how screwed up users batteries with the Nexus 5 (shorting it in some way).
Bottom line, just replace the battery and test it out, it doesn't cost that much and you don't have to send it in, you can change it yourself (not very hard, just youtube it).

Good luck.

 

[DLK1]

Lollipop has not screwed up users battery directly. Most of the Nexus 5's are close to a year old or over a year old, which is close to the life span of the battery. Lollipop is just a more demanding user of the battery, causing its weakness to show.

 

[Andrei Paval]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

Could you please post the link with the replacement battery you bought ?
I also got this one from ebay: "ebay.com/itm/361075010454" (cannot post links), but I cannot get more than 2 hours SOT from it,
it's driving me crazy. Thanks.

 

[DLK1]

Re: Nexus 5 Battery Life

I got mine here took 20 days as it had to come from China.

"http://www.amazon.com/Genuine-Google-LG-2300mAh-Battery/dp/B00J6SKDH2/ref=aag_m_pw_dp?ie=UTF8&m=A3DBTLUFHCYALX"

"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J6SKDH2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...ag=hawk-future-20&ascsubtag=UUacUvbUpU4169042