Bad battery life on nexus 4

[Freshly_Snipes]

I went 13hrs total after this.


Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[darthus]

I recommend GSam Battery Monitor. It has done wonders for me in terms of finding wakelocks or programs using far too much battery. Just to throw in on the battery life debate, so far my experience on the Nexus 4 has blown my Galaxy Nexus out of the water. When I used my Galaxy Nexus in my normal moderate to heavy usage, 50% of the battery usage would be screen and I had trouble making it through a day without charging my phone both on the way to work and when driving home.

I forgot my car charger today, took my phone off the charger at around 9am, it's now 11:40pm, and it still has 28% battery left. As mentioned I didn't charge it once all day, I used it to listen to bluetooth podcasts both on the way to and back from work, 30 or so min each way. I used it relatively heavily during the day, and even used Navigation on my drive home, with the screen on the whole time.

I had 1.5 hours total screen on time and it used 15% of my battery. I have Google Now fully enabled, and am even logged into Latitude. My battery record in GSam reflects that with maps using 13.4 percent of my App usage, mostly due to processes like "FriendService" etc. I'm sure if I disabled Latitude I would have even less drain.

Really, with the Nexus 4, as long as you don't have some errant process that's sucking down battery, I think it's been a pretty equivalent experience to my month of using an iPhone 5, which is a first for me for an Android phone. I also notice that when it's on WiFi, and on standby, the battery just doesn't drain. If I happen to not check it for 2 hours, it will be maybe 1 percent lower.

Hope that all helps you guys.

 

[gone down south]

I've found that turning the screen down to about 10 percent brightness leaves it perfectly viewable in indoor lighting and saves a ton of battery life.



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[gone down south]

I did a couple experiments this week, leaving the phone on overnight but killing various processes.

With WiFi and mobile data off, the phone lost 8% battery over 8 hours of now use, which seems pretty good. Even better, in airplane mode it lost only 1% overnight!

This tells me that there's nothing in the background causing problems. I'm going to go through my different apps now to see which ones are using more battery than they should, but I'm guessing the bright screen is the worst culprit.

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[natehoy]

I've added an app called "Custom Auto Brightness" by Dmitry Matzuko (shows up in the app tray as "Screen Brightness") that runs as a background service, replacing the "auto brightness" provided by Android. It allows you to define your own heuristic brightness curve based on various ambient light levels, and adjust how often brightness is sampled and what kind of averaging to use.

I find it really useful for several reasons:

1. 4.1.1 of Android on my Nexus 7 introduced really annoying "flicker" on auto brightness. Basically, the thing was responding instantly to subtle brightness changes and meant the brightness was CONSTANTLY shifting up and down based on slight motions of the device. 4.1.2 made it a little better, and 4.2 made it bad again. By increasing the sample averaging time, the adjustments aren't so "Jack Russell Terrier".

2. My HTC Thunderbolt's built in AUTO setting is really annoying. It's ludicrously bright in a darkened room and uselessly dim outdoors on AUTO. By setting a dimmer light in the darkness and actually bringing it to 100% in daylight, I'm so much happier using my Thunderbolt.

3. I've been able to run all of my devices significantly dimmer than the manufacturer designed them for in their AUTO profiles under most circumstances, because most manufacturers want the screens to look bold and bright and beautiful. Since I can still run AUTO but a lot dimmer than stock settings (but still plenty bright enough for my use), I've seen dramatic increases in battery life with no loss of useability.

4. I'm a geek, and being able to doink around with heuristic curves is just fun.

 

[dcdttu]

I'm seeing 12-17% drain per hour, depending if I'm using the phone or if it's sitting idle on wifi with screen off (~12%/hr). I did a hard reset with nothing but the stock apps running and screen at minimum brightness and no change. I'm debating sending the phone back as a defect and going back to my Galaxy Nexus in the meantime, which has 2-3x better battery performance in my experience. The screen off/idle fast drainage is what's most puzzling to me.


I'm trying to read through this thread and figure out what is normal for the Nexus 4. For me, I'm not able to hit 7 hours of light usage with the screen at minimum brightness.

This is precisely me. My phone is dead within 10 hours no matter what I do. The battery drains at a remarkable rate, and nothing I do stops it from doing so. I've even reset it, no luck.

 

[darthus]

Can either of you guys install GSam Battery Monitor, use it for a day, then post both the main battery usage screen and App usage? Even with stock apps sometimes Android can do weird things like Maps can randomly drain a lot of battery searching for your location due to latitude etc.

 

[bobsacomano]

Mine has better battery life than my Evo 4G, but not nearly as good as the GSM Galaxy Nexus. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the recurring problem my phone seems to have with the screen randomly waking up. No idea why this keeps happening but I'm sure its killing the battery.

Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk 2

 

[DirkBelig]

Can either of you guys install GSam Battery Monitor, use it for a day, then post both the main battery usage screen and App usage? Even with stock apps sometimes Android can do weird things like Maps can randomly drain a lot of battery searching for your location due to latitude etc.

I posted a ton of screens from GSam here: http://forums.androidcentral.com/go...fe-horrible-major-drainage-4.html#post2385688

This was after a worst-ever evening where it bled 90% in about 8 hours of just sitting there. Last night's result was to lose 35% in about 6 hours; still pathetic IMO. I'm used to losing 8-15% overnight (5-6 hours off charger), but this is pathetic. I had to use my GS2 when I went out in the morning because the N4 was starving for juice. Now that my GS2 was borked by a buggy GSam update last night, I'm down to just the Nexus and that's not good. Next step is to Airplane Mode it while sleeping, but what if I need to receive an emergency call? So lame.

What's puzzling is how most of the reviews, which were done with pre-final software, generally reported acceptable battery life, getting through the work day without a refill while a lot of us are seeing 6-8 hours which is simply unacceptable, especially since we have no option to swap in another battery, not that we should have to deal with that inconvenience.

 

[jd914]

Maybe this is a software issue and Google hopefully will address ASAP. From personal use I get between 8 and 10 hours battery life with light to moderate use. After a full charge, it will drop to 94% after only a couple hours just sitting idle. My iPhone 5 takes about 6 hours to drop to 99% sitting idle with no use. There's defiantly room for improvement on Google's end as far as battery life.

 

[ragnarokx]

I'm going to close this thread up, no need for 2 bad battery threads. Please continue discussion here: http://forums.androidcentral.com/go...fe-horrible-major-drainage-4.html#post2385688