seriously, I'm stumped about the battery life

[jeffrok]

I see that some people here are saying that they get very good battery life with their Nexus S 4G's.. I?ve seen people here say that with very little use, they?re still in the 70% range by mid afternoon. Well, I just had mine replaced with a different one (same battery though), and so far on day 1 with this new phone, I'm at 55% five hours after pulling it off the charger. At this rate, the phone will be need to be on the charger by 5pm or sooner.

How my phone is setup/configured:
ICS stock, with wifi, sync and auto-brightness enabled. And for most of the day I do have an actual wifi connection.

Apps that could be culprits:
Exchange e-mail, Yahoo mail, Scoremobile, Smooth Calendar, and maybe a couple Zynga game notifications. I haven?t texted anyone today as of yet, and I made 2 phone calls that were both under 5 minutes.

What I?ve done today:
A tiny bit of e-mail reading (less than 5 minutes), one game that lasted 5 minutes, and that?s about it. No web browsing as of yet, nothing else.

Does 45% usage in 5 hours seem about right, for very light use? Are some people just luckier than others with these phones?

 

[Skunkape60]

I think the majority of people getting great battery life are rooted and have more control over their setups. I can put a fresh battery in my phone before bed and when I wake up 6 hours later only lose a single percentage point of battery.

Freezing apps that you don't use or rarely use can be a tremendous help in conserving power. I only use Gmail so both exchange and stock email apps are frozen. Also never use google wallet so tags and nfc are frozen as well as drm content.

My battery has been off the charger for 14 hours and is currently at 55%. I use titanium backup to freeze the above apps and use setcpu for a screen off profile. If you are rooted and would like to try my battery settings pm me and I will be happy to help you out.

____________________
Just Flash It !!!

 

[skinneejay]

Let me jump in here for a min. If you have wifi on and don't have a connection that will drain the battery like no other. I left my wifi on over night and turned off my internet at home. I was drained before waking up. So my advice is if you are not activly using wifi turn it off. Also
exchange is a culprit for battery drain. If you don't need to use exchange shut it down or send to your gmail account.

second your Zynga game notifications are also causing drain. They are checking to see if they game has been updated to your move or whatever. This doesn't allow the phone to go into sleep mode. The CPU is always running. Try disabling this. Manually check yourself.

Then let me know how your battery does. if I did this "What I’ve done today:
A tiny bit of e-mail reading (less than 5 minutes), one game that lasted 5 minutes, and that’s about it. No web browsing as of yet, nothing else" Started out at 100% i would only be down to MAYBE 90%

Yes I'm rooted also and run Bugless Beast

 

[j_grouchy]

Let me jump in here for a min. If you have wifi on and don't have a connection that will drain the battery like no other. I left my wifi on over night and turned off my internet at home. I was drained before waking up. So my advice is if you are not activly using wifi turn it off. Also
exchange is a culprit for battery drain. If you don't need to use exchange shut it down or send to your gmail account.

second your Zynga game notifications are also causing drain. They are checking to see if they game has been updated to your move or whatever. This doesn't allow the phone to go into sleep mode. The CPU is always running. Try disabling this. Manually check yourself.

I've seen a lot of battery drain too. It seems to be a little worse than with GB.

My best battery life seems to be when I'm at home and running wifi with 3G/4G turned off. I can get through most of the day, if not the entire day, using it like that. When I bring it in to work, I usually have to start charging by 2 or 3 pm (unplugging from the charger around 7 am).

As of today I can get my subsidized upgrade...so I figure in the next 3 or 4 months I'll have at least two or three devices to choose from. Battery life will be a BIG factor there...especially if these devices don't have removeable batteries like the new EVO.
Zynga games seem to be a HUGE battery drain (Words w/ Friends, Scramble w/ Friends, etc.). I turn notifications off for those anyway.

 

[Tonian]

I had a similar problem. 3 hours off the charger, I'd be at 50%, and the phone would feel spontaneously hot and "Android OS" consuming most of the battery. Ultimately I did a factory reset and whatever bug was in the OS is now gone and I can use the phone all day with heavy use and still be over 70% (and Android OS behaving normally). It's painful, but the factory reset clears the gunk.

 

[kevincwelch]

I can put a fresh battery in my phone before bed and when I wake up 6 hours later only lose a single percentage point of battery

This is not good, skunk.

You need 7-8 hours of sleep as an adult male.

Studies prove this.

 

[kevincwelch]

Jeff,

I don't want to tell you that the solution is to unlock and root your phone, but it may very well be the better option if you can't change what you do.

There are two schools of thought (IMHO) about phone use. If you want to use your phone to its fullest potential, you're really only gonna get 6-8 hours of use per day. If you want to use exchange services, sync weather, sync games, sync your social feeds, text, email, browse, etc., then you're looking at high battery drain.

I think most people will accept that.

However, it's the people (I was among them) who could not accept a phone that drains when you're not using it. Unfortunately, when you're not using it, you're phone is by and large awake and doing all this syncing and searching for signal/data.

I agree with Skunk. Titanium is a BIG help. I use it to freeze and "defrost" apps at will. Freezing permanently stops the program without uninstalling it. You can instantly bring it back into action. I've frozen NFC, tags, DRM, sprintmenu, email, exchange, face unlock, live wallpapers, and few others. I've uninstalled wallet.

Getting a nice ROM under your belt will improve battery life and using a top notch kernel with the right settings will extend it even further.

Another thing I do is disable data. I use wifi almost exclusively, so I turn the damn data off when I need to. When I'm in the car or meetings, I turn all data off anyway (except for phone). When I really don't need my phone or don't want it, it's in airplane mode.

With all this, my phone right now is 14h and 37% battery left. I've had the screen on for just under two hours and made 46 minutes of phone calls.

Rooting & kernels really help. Tweaking helps even more.

 

[giograves]

Anyone ever have any luck using the pay versions of juice defender?

 

[pingcharlie]

What helped me was uninstalling all apps and then slowly reinstalling one at a time, in addition to all the suggestions above. Also turn off all widgets and notifications for a while and then slowly introduce them back on. I am getting 24+ hrs on my rooted, stock rom.

 

[zzz0ned]

I had major problems after the upgrade to ICS. It drained my battery completely in about 4 hours.

I did two factory resets.

The second one was very successful when I added the apps I needed one at a time. I also turned off browser sync with my Gmail accounts.

Now I can go over 48 hours on a single charge with light use of the phone...which is better than with GB.

 

[kevincwelch]

Anyone ever have any luck using the pay versions of juice defender?

I used Juice Defender extensively on my Epic 4G when I had stock Froyo. It worked. It worked so well that it was the first app I ever bought on the market. (That was back when I believed everything should be free.) After rooting my phone, it offered no savings advantage and questionably made battery life worse.

I haven't tried it on GB or ICS.

I imagine it would potentially help, but privacy not if you're phone is rooted and has a custom ROM or kernel.

 

[jeffrok]

Well, not to be a naysayer or go against some very good sounding advice, but I'm going to say that I'm not interested in rooting (at this time at least).. I totally get the benefits of rooting and unlocking my phone.. I've owned this phone for 9 months, and have been tempted, but never really had a GREAT reason to root. Yeah, I can see getting better battery life- that'd be nice.

The reasons I don't root are this: Unrooting seems like a pain in butt, and manually upgrading when a new ROM comes out seems kinda a pain. Over the years I used to be a computer and phone geek, constantly upgrading just to stay a step ahead.. Hardware, software (applying patches and betas all the time, the day they came out).. Then I realized all these numerous tweaks and whatnot took up a ton of my time. I didn't enjoy doing it anymore. I just wanted stuff to work ok- not excellent, not great even.. So unless there's a really important reason to root, I'm sticking with stock.

So if the best solution is to root, I'll stick with the other recommendations first. I've also bought a 3500mah battery from Amazon.. I'd rather add a little thickness as a quick fix than goof around with custom ROMs, FOR NOW.

In the future if this phone p***es me off enough, maybe I'll have a change of heart

 

[Skunkape60]

I had the 3500 battery in my epic and it only gave me an extra hour so after about a month it went into a desk drawer where it is to this day.

____________________
Just Flash It !!!

 

[kevincwelch]

Well, not to be a naysayer or go against some very good sounding advice, but I'm going to say that I'm not interested in rooting (at this time at least).. I totally get the benefits of rooting and unlocking my phone.. I've owned this phone for 9 months, and have been tempted, but never really had a GREAT reason to root. Yeah, I can see getting better battery life- that'd be nice.

The reasons I don't root are this: Unrooting seems like a pain in butt, and manually upgrading when a new ROM comes out seems kinda a pain. Over the years I used to be a computer and phone geek, constantly upgrading just to stay a step ahead.. Hardware, software (applying patches and betas all the time, the day they came out).. Then I realized all these numerous tweaks and whatnot took up a ton of my time. I didn't enjoy doing it anymore. I just wanted stuff to work ok- not excellent, not great even.. So unless there's a really important reason to root, I'm sticking with stock.

So if the best solution is to root, I'll stick with the other recommendations first. I've also bought a 3500mah battery from Amazon.. I'd rather add a little thickness as a quick fix than goof around with custom ROMs, FOR NOW.

In the future if this phone p***es me off enough, maybe I'll have a change of heart

Reasonable thought process.

Fyi: over the past month, I've utilized two ROMs: pool party and AOKP. There's no reason you have to switch or upgrade; it's just that most of us do because we always love it.

 

[Grey_girl]

I had major problems after the upgrade to ICS. It drained my battery completely in about 4 hours.

I did two factory resets.

The second one was very successful when I added the apps I needed one at a time. I also turned off browser sync with my Gmail accounts.

Now I can go over 48 hours on a single charge with light use of the phone...which is better than with GB.

When adding your apps back onto the phone, were there any you didn't add back? I'm considering this route myself.

 

[djw39]

I think my phone loses a lot of battery searching for data coverage while I am at the office (wifi, 3g and 4g). It often gets really hot if it is in my pocket doing nothing. Airplane mode is the best solution I guess, but I'm hoping the improved 3g coverage once Sprint completes Network Vision upgrades in my area will help.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

[sk1win]

Try going into settings > Developer Options > background process limit (change to 1 or 2). Also check the Don't Keep Activities box right about the background process option. I found this made all the difference. You have to check it once a day because sometimes it switches back to standard but it's better than your battery draining quickly.

 

[akabadnews]

I recommend the Slim ICS rom. Google it. I got it from XDA.

Turn off NFC if you don't use Wallet or any sort of NFC charging, etc.
Turn off GPS when not in use. (Not just via toggle, go into the settings and uncheck everything)

Set apps/widgets to manually update instead of auto update. There will be less services running in the background/keeping the phone awake.

Things like that are how "we" get that insane battery life for our phones. Most of the things can be done without root... but I recommend it.

 

[6tr6tr]

Set apps/widgets to manually update instead of auto update. There will be less services running in the background/keeping the phone awake.

Is there a way to do this for all apps at once? Or to I have to go into each individually (in google play)?

 

[tknepher]

I got a plug-in charger and two spare batteries in a bundle from Amazon. Now I always a spare with me--one in my pocket, the other in the car. The batteries take about 3 hrs to charge from 4% or so and the charger has a usb port so I could charge the phone and a battery at the same time, and a nice led that changes from red to blue.