Nexus phones have never been spectacular when it comes to battery life. I think there's a misnomer that Vanilla Android somehow has better battery life than a skinned version of the OS. I'm beginning to realize that the opposite appears to be true. Google doesn't care about battery life.. they care about content delivery and advertising. Because of that, Vanilla Android by default has all the bells and whistles they have conceived over the years TURNED ON by default. Google wants you connected/synced at all times and wants to push content to you nonstop. I think the OEMs like Samsung, LG, and HTC take the basic code, and try to pair it down to what's necessary, then they add their wrinkle. I think that's why you see such a heavy skin like Touchwiz still have tremendous battery life like what people are seeing with the Note 5 which only has a 3000mah battery.
It just looks like we the user will have to do a lot more work to fine tune the Nexus 6p to get it's battery as optimal as possible. Don't depend on it being optimal right out of the box.
I don't agree with your assessment. I've had a lot of Android phones, and in general they have had less battery life compared to the Iphones. I've had every Note, and have never seen the battery life like some Note fans on this site have claimed. Nexus Phones have a lot of stuff turned on by default but so do phones with skins, in fact from my experience, the phones with skins add even more stuff that syncs that you don't want. At least the Nexus phones sync the Google stuff correctly & smoothly from my experience.
IMO, good battery life comes from a combination of size and software optimizations. The Nexus 6 used to have garbage battery life, now it's really good after all the Google updates ( something that won't happen as fast with a skinned phone). The Iphones 6+ has a bigger battery and combined with whatever Apple does makes the battery life outstanding.
The OnePlus One ran CyanogenMod, the OS that used to be a custom rom, and has a history of helping battery life on some phones.
I don't think there's a misnomer about Nexus phones having good battery life cause it's stock Android. I've heard a lot of things from posters about what they like about stock Android over skins, but better battery life is something I don't recall reading much. I'm not saying no one hasn't said it, I've just not read it.
The LG G2 & 3 (especially the G2) are the only skinned phones to have battery life comparable if not better than the Iphone. LG definitely seems to be doing something, although I have a G4 and, while it's good; It's not as good as the previous two models from my experience.
With the improvement that the Nexus 6 has shown, I see no reason why it won't be improved on the Nexus 6P. In fact I will go on record right now and say that it will be, for me at least. I wouldn't say they don't care about battery life. I think Google really stepped it up with the Nexus 6P.
As far as Google pushing their services, I'm sure they do that. They want to make a profit like any other company, but I don't think that's the total picture. I'm a Google fan I admit and use a lot of their services.
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