Battery performance

[Gary_Berg]

I am puzzled over the behavior of my Nexus 5. I upgraded to Lollipop yesterday via OTA. Under KitKat my battery life was good enough that I would worry if the battery dropped below 50% because that was very unusual (I have a tablet that I use for most things).

I took the phone off the charger this morning at 6AM. By 12:00 it was down to 58%. I only used it for a few minutes and made no phone calls. I charged it back up to 88% by 12:30 and by 2PM it had dropped to 70% of charge with the only usage to listen to Doggcatcher for 10 minutes. Screen brightness is set low, maybe 20%.

Using GSAM, top user is Android System with 25% of power used which corresponds to 6:54 CPU minutes used. WiFI corresponds to 10%, screen to 23% (11m 56s). Underneath the Settings, Battery section, however, Android System is said to take 28:19m CPU, keep awake 33:51. Screen is 4%, SOT 22m. I'm confused at the differences between the two sets of stats.

I have a good WiFi connection, cellular is 3-4 bars.

Phone normally rides in my front shirt pocket, right now after sitting out for several minutes it is still running 95F, 400mA, 3.96V. Phone is not rooted.

I've got the feeling that either there is something cranking the CPU in the background and not being noticed by GSAM or the charging circuitry/reporting is confused. This phone has not yet been factory reset; I'd rather avoid doing that.

The phone did well on battery running Kitkat why is it so much worse under Lollipop?

 

[Crashdamage]

Go to: Settings > Storage > Cached data > Clear cached data > OK. Restart the phone and see if that helps.

Android since v1.0. Linux user since 2001.

 

[belodion]

I agree with Crash. A Cache Partition wipe may be useful too.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[ptkelly]

Or, a factory reset which would require you to back up data but would give you a clean install.

How to do a factory reset on Android - CNET

 

[unashamedgeek]

Before I updated my Nexus 5 to lollipop I could get one day of use and here I'm using the term "one day" as from when I wake up to when I go to bed. There were things I could do to drain it much quicker obviously, but for the most part, I could go one day without charging and head to bed with around 20-30 percent battery left. After the upgrade to lollipop, I can no longer last a day on a charge no matter my usage. I always have to charge it after work for at least some amount of time just to make it last until I go to bed. I have done the steps that have been mentioned above without any luck or change in battery. I prefer to run stock over doing another kernel/ROM so I have learned to deal with this for now and am waiting to buy my next phone after the MWC announcements come out.

 

[Gary_Berg]

I had already cleared the cache from within the Settings app. I've not done a cache partition wipe; I may try that.

I tried something that I found mentioned in another forum or topic at least. Someone commented that the battery might need calibration. Last night about 7:15 I was down to 28-30% battery. I turned on a video and let it crank. More than 1-1/2 hours later it finally conked out (I have battery saving set to 15%) and shut down. I put it on a charger and restarted and by 11PM it was back to 100%. I left it on the charger overnight.

Today the behavior of the battery is much more normal. I'm not sure whether the calibration solved it or the fact that it's now been almost 48 hours since I did the upgrade.

Does someone have a pointer to how to do the cache partition wipe? I know that it exists, and that there's a combination of buttons to press while the device is starting to get to where this can be done, but I've never done it.

Thanks.

 

[oskar1995]

I've seen a lot of inconsistencies in battery life since the update to Lollipop. I was one of the early adopters who side loaded the OTA, then did a fresh install after I ran into some other issues. My usage pattern during the week barely changes but my results vary significantly. One day I'll get home with 25%, the next day 55% and then the following day I'll have to recharge before I leave otherwise I know the phone's going to die way before I go to sleep.

I've also noticed that periodically I HAVE to power cycle the phone because the lag when I hit the home button is just unbearable. This has never been an issue in any previous Android phone and even prior to Lollipop it was never an issue with the Nexus 5. I'm assuming that the update was a little buggier than hoped and a 5.1 update will squish some of these issues. It's souring me on Android as a whole (since my iPad Air 2 has about the most consistent battery I've seen).

 

[belodion]

Rather than try to describe the Cache Partition wiping procedure, here's a useful guide. Note that with the Nexus 5, the actual wipe can take ten minutes or so....this is normal. Note also that getting into Recovery can be a bit tricky....the phone tends to reboot instead.
https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-9578

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Gary_Berg]

I was able to do a cache partition wipe. Behavior seems unchanged from my most recent note. Which, overall, is OK.