Nexus 5 Battery Drain >20% Overnight

[zatarregaza]

Just a few weeks ago I moved over to my Nexus 5 from a Samsung Galaxy S3. When I noticed battery life on the S3 seemed to drop considerably in the last 6-7 months, I assumed the battery was just going bad on it. Normal battery life was just under 24 hours. I noticed when I got my Nexus 5 (after having installed almost all the same apps I had on the S3) that the battery life was also just under 24 hours.

The first thing I did that seemed to improve battery life was to change the Location settings to Battery Saver. Not much improvement but enough to notice. Then I limited Facebook updates to Never. Huge improvement. Where the battery used to last just over 24 hours, by never allowing the Facebook app to update (I manually update during the times when I'm actually looking through my newsfeed anyway) I'm now easily at 1.5 days of battery life.

 

[coochiemoochie]

UPDATE:
Received my replacement N5 from Google, reinstalled everything, and the battery life is a gazillion times better. Last night I lost about 2-3% battery, whereas before I was losing anywhere between 30-60% overnight.

Pretty much every app that was on the old phone is on the new one (inc. Facebook). The only settings that I've changed from default have been changing Facebook refresh interval to 4 hours and turning off some Facebook notifications (Photo tags, Event invites, etc.).

OK, It's only been a couple of days but so far battery lasts pretty much most of the day (hitting the phone fairly hard) and that's with Wi-Fi on. Yes, it was a PITA to reinstall and reconfig everything (I'm not rooted and didn't use Helium - went old skool) but this is one happy N5 user (finally).

HTH

 

[lets_go_android]

Here is my update: I received my replacement N5 also and it has been working better for a few days, although it's not quite 100% good. I usually lose only about 3-4% overnight now, but there have been a couple of times when I've lost 30% and 40%. I am also totally stock (not rooted), don't have Facebook installed, and don't have Google Now on.

Some observations about the overnight idle drain:
In airplane mode --> NO drain
Wifi only (mobile data off) --> drain
Mobile data only (wifi off) --> drain
Reboot just before going to bed --> NO drain

So my theory is that it's some sort of low level Android OS issue (i.e. bug) related to the cell (talk) signal. Maybe something in the Android OS is running into issues after some time and starts doing something unnecessarily, causing the battery drain.

Could the drain be related to the cell signal being weak or unstable? Those who are seeing this issue, which carrier are you on? I'm on T-mobile (post-paid) and at the spot where I place my phone at night, my signal fluctuates between -90 to -93 dBm. I believe the fluctuations are normal. The signal translates to 3 out of 4 bars, which seems like a pretty solid signal to me. Maybe some of my network settings for T-mobile are not quite right?

 

[Baalaajee N]

Hi,

My Nexus 5 was working absolutely fine so far,but suddenly I can the battery is draining much quicker.

when I bought it,even heavy usage drained fair battery and now even normal messages drains battery at a rate of 1% /min.it has just been 2 months.

Regards
Bala

 

[pbc]

I'm about ready to give up on this thing. The battery drain is just embarrassing. Has great battery life in airplane mode though. Useful.

I may try to get my work to RMA it, but at this point I'm tempted to go back to BlackBerry. It is a significantly better device for work (most attachments, Exchange emails, contacts, calendars work much better on it) . I think the Z30 can use the Google Play store as well for the few apps I need.

This has been a frustrating first experience with an Android device, that's for sure. Ie, cant open tiff files directly from an email (without saving them first), same thing with wav files, contacts don't seem to port over to my Bluetooth devices unless I decide to purchase Touchdown HD email app, then the battery drain is just downright frustrating. When I travel I don't have to want to worry about not being able to charge the phone for a few hours. I've literally lost about 30% battery in the last 3 hours and I've made 1 phone call that was about 5 minutes and otherwise checked my email a few times.

Hopefully the RMA works (and I can find apps that will allow me to open certain files in the email clients themselves) as I do like the size, screen and weight of this phone, keyboard too . But having to cycle the power and/or put the phone into airplane mode and keep the brightness almost all the way down (thereby killing the great screen) is embarrassing. Not to mention the horrendous radio on this thing (which is likely causing a lot of the drain).

For the record, I've lost 4% battery coming to this website and typing this response.

 

[ssjmink201]

I have the same problem what should i do?

 

[ssjmink201]

yeah same! idk why though i think maybe cuz when i chagre it i take in and out of the charger while i use my phone for a couple of seconds

 

[Bront]

What service is using all the battery?

I had a brief stint where Google Search was using an unusuall amount of battery (65% one day, 75% the day before). Turns out, if you have Google Now on, but don't have location services enable for all your google accounts, it gets stuck in a loop and drains the battery. Turning the location services on (Settings > Location > Google Location Reporting, set "on" for everything, be sure to go into it and don't trust that it already says "on"), and suddenly my battery drain dropped back to almost nothing (2-3 days per charge with light use, with ART, Stock rooted)

Or you can turn Google Now off.

 

[lets_go_android]

What service is using all the battery?

I had a brief stint where Google Search was using an unusuall amount of battery (65% one day, 75% the day before). Turns out, if you have Google Now on, but don't have location services enable for all your google accounts, it gets stuck in a loop and drains the battery. Turning the location services on (Settings > Location > Google Location Reporting, set "on" for everything, be sure to go into it and don't trust that it already says "on"), and suddenly my battery drain dropped back to almost nothing (2-3 days per charge with light use, with ART, Stock rooted)

Or you can turn Google Now off.

Thanks for the tip. I turned off Google Now as soon as the battery drain started happening for me. I think there may be more than 1 cause of drain.

As for what we can do, for me, rebooting it makes it work fine (i.e. without drain) for a couple of days, so that's what I do. I'm hoping Google will fix it in a future update.

 

[Zense]

Have any of you who are having the battery drain issues notice a service running on your device called mm-qcamera-daemon or is this something totally different?
The service can consume my entire battery in about an hour.

 

[lets_go_android]

Have any of you who are having the battery drain issues notice a service running on your device called mm-qcamera-daemon or is this something totally different?
The service can consume my entire battery in about an hour.

Wow, that's pretty serious.

I did see it, but only once, and it "only" drained my battery 10% overnight. So, it's there, but it's not a big an issue for me as whatever is causing some 40-50% loss overnight.

 

[zhangxiao4616]

I am facing the problem you met before. When my Nexus 5 connect to the router, 1% drain per minute. How did you solve this problem before?

 

[archimedies]

after reading the forums here for the last few weeks, I reflashed my nexus 5 back to stock 4.4
this fixed my battery drain problem.

 

[pbc]

Have any of you who are having the battery drain issues notice a service running on your device called mm-qcamera-daemon or is this something totally different?
The service can consume my entire battery in about an hour.

I think I saw this the other day when I went from some 50% to 16% in less than an hour at a model home where I took maybe 10 pics in HDR mode. Remember checking the battery app usage and seeing something like this.

RMA 'd device should be here in a few days so will hopefully fix my battery drain issues

 

[vividrich]

No issues here yet but just read on Phandroid that there's a known issue with 4.4.2, the camera, and battery drain. Google working on a fix. It's confirmed on the N5.

Posted from my Nexus 7 2013 via Android Central App

 

[tobleeh]

I have 68% left from 4h 23m 26s of usage and 1h22m56s of screen time on. Is that normal? There's only chrome running on background. Please help. I just got my phone 2 days ago.

 

[JohnnyBroccoli]

I want to say that sounds pretty normal. Probably shouldn't expect much more than 4 hours of SOT total.

 

[bmx045]

like others have said, the mm-qcamera-daemon service running in the background kills battery life on the kitkat. google is working on a fix. if that daemon isn't listed in your Battery usage list then it's obv something else. I'm having this stupid daemon issue. powered off, then on, daemon still running. I don't have skype or yahoo or snapchat. i disabled the camera, thing is still running, at 53% CPU usage constant, battery life yesterday was 8hrs nearly all with screen off. finally i powered off, left it overnight to charge, booted it up in the AM now daemon is gone. annoying as all hell m8

 

[zatarregaza]

I've been keeping an eye on my battery usage since I replied and subscribed to this thread a few weeks ago. One thing I noticed this morning has me curious.

I charged my phone to 100% a little more than 13 hours ago. Over the last 13 hours I'm only down to 83%, which isn't bad to me as I did use it a bit before I went to bed last night. What I found strange was that the process using the most battery was Wifi at 23%. Details showed it had been running for all of 13+ hours. The thing is when I checked my phone I did not have Wifi on. In fact I have not used Wifi in a few days. Where would this amount of Wifi usage come from?

 

[lets_go_android]

like others have said, the mm-qcamera-daemon service running in the background kills battery life on the kitkat. google is working on a fix. if that daemon isn't listed in your Battery usage list then it's obv something else. I'm having this stupid daemon issue. powered off, then on, daemon still running. I don't have skype or yahoo or snapchat. i disabled the camera, thing is still running, at 53% CPU usage constant, battery life yesterday was 8hrs nearly all with screen off. finally i powered off, left it overnight to charge, booted it up in the AM now daemon is gone. annoying as all hell m8

It may be that one (or more) of your apps which startup automatically also starts the daemon process? And then while your phone was plugged in overnight, after some N hrs of non-use, that daemon process timesout (i.e. shutsdown by itself)? Dunno, just a guess...