The so called Nexus 4 battery woes

[badbrad17]

Okay first full day with My new N4 phone. I came from a Galaxy S2 which was marginal in battery but had the replaceable battery which did help in a pinch.

Here's my comments so far.

I have had no issues with the phone when it is idle. Many people have complained of the phone sucking down battery while the screen is off at night etc. I let it sit for most of the day at work and it used almost no battery (Maybe 3% all day. My GS2 would suck down 20% or more just sitting unless I turned off all settings. I left on WiFi, data, Bluetooth and sync (GPS off) and after 10 hours I have 70% left. I am actually quite shocked as I played with it a fair bit and have had 1.5 hours of on screen time. This is certainly going to be enough to make it through the day, and I am hoping that I get even more when the battery settles.

But, what i have noticed is that when I used the phone it certainly sucks down the battery. Maybe even faster than my GS2, but I will still need to play with it more to determine where I am at the end of the day.

 

[DogPsyche]

I think there will be another OTA release soon, the camera software is in need of a tweak, the flash is way too powerful and the white balance detection indoors is shocking, but I'm confident it's again software not hardware, it'll come in time

Yep I've found this too.

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[TheLibertarian]

Google seemed to put a good bit of effort into Project Butter, I hope next they turn their attention to battery life.

I don't think it seems unrealistic to expect better battery in the next OS or at least the next update. Especially bothersome is hearing (some) reviewers talk about phones with a smaller capacity battery having better battery life.

Just my thoughts!

 

[VertigoM]

I'm dropping about 10% of battery for every 30min of screen on time. Seems excessive to me or is that normal??

 

[TheLibertarian]

I'm dropping about 10% of battery for every 30min of screen on time. Seems excessive to me or is that normal??

5 hours of on screen time would be extraordinary.

 

[badbrad17]

I'm dropping about 10% of battery for every 30min of screen on time. Seems excessive to me or is that normal??

Not sure if you came from a smart phone or not, but if you can get 4-5 hours of on screen time you should make it through a full day. There are always exceptions, but this is what I've been trying to set as a goal and so far it's been great.

The other thing you may notice is the battery drains a bit faster at first. After it hits 85% or so it tends to settle for me.

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[gyroslice]

I posted this in a separate thread but I think it goes here. The play store was destroying my battery as you can see in the picture. I did a factory reset and so far the play store hasn't been draining the battery but I'm only 36 hours after the reset.

 

[VertigoM]

Not sure if you came from a smart phone or not, but if you can get 4-5 hours of on screen time you should make it through a full day. There are always exceptions, but this is what I've been trying to set as a goal and so far it's been great.

The other thing you may notice is the battery drains a bit faster at first. After it hits 85% or so it tends to settle for me.

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Good points. I guess 4-5 hrs of screen time isn't too bad after all. And you're right about the battery dropping fast at first then settling down after the initial 10-20%.

 

[TheLibertarian]

Good points. I guess 4-5 hrs of screen time isn't too bad after all. And you're right about the battery dropping fast at first then settling down after the initial 10-20%.

Bad?! Take a screen shot when you hit 4hrs+, I don't think I believe the device can come close to it. I'm not arguing with you or anything, but 3hrs is solid as far as on screen times go; anything over 3 is just gravy.

 

[AbuYazeedUK]

It's possible



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[badbrad17]

Bad?! Take a screen shot when you hit 4hrs+, I don't think I believe the device can come close to it. I'm not arguing with you or anything, but 3hrs is solid as far as on screen times go; anything over 3 is just gravy.

Totally doable but you need to turn gps off unless it's needed.

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[Dr0me]

great tip to save battery!!!

I recently got a new work email app that causes me to use a pin or pw instead of the pattern draw to unlock. to prevent how often i had to input this, I changed the setting. time before locking after phone screen turns off to 30 min and noticed some SERIOUS battery drain. I figured out it was that setting keeping the phone awake until the 30 min after i used it and it finally locked and slept. I turned the setting to 1 min and it completely fixed the problem. Using anything except a low setting will give you awful drain and will show as android OS on the battery stats page.

 

[Bazinga11]

When I first got my phone, for the first few charges my battery was horrible. Now it is much better but I also switched carriers (before I was barely ever getting reception) I think that also plays a part in drainage because the phone is always trying to connect to the network. RIght now it is at 11% 15h and 30m with 3h 27m screen time.

 

[peejay1977]

I think the key to Android is the to treat it like a PC or Laptop, you have almost unlimited control over what you can do and you need to take responsibility for what you install and configure, then it makes perfect sense. Also some people say what's the point in having all these features if you can't have them on in case they drain battery but from my point of view its no different than a brand new PC, work recently bought me a shiny HP Ultra book laptop and its great, BUT I uninstalled most of the preinstalled HP crap and turned off a lot of the services bloating the OS, runs much better now. I treat Android the same way.


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[Grizzle34]

Try deep sleep battery saver works amazingly well.

 

[Plano26]

Here is how I did for the last charge; I wish I knew why "Mediaserver" is taking up battery life. I do have GPS off and no location sharing (which I don't use anyway) I'm pretty happy with this

 

[KwietStorm]

It's not the battery life when my phone is off that bothers me. It's just that when I can visually see the percentage points dropping in realtime while the screen is on, it makes me feel like something isn't optimized properly in 4.2. Also a question, is it possible to flash a kernel to your phone without flashing an entirely different ROM?

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[badbrad17]

So are you not happy with those numbers? That looks great in my books. I got 16 hours today with over 4 hours screen time. And still have 20% left. It's all I need to get through the day.

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[Bazinga11]

So what would you guys say is the average screen time for the nexus 4 stock? I usually get around 2.5 to 3.5 hours on auto brightness, less if I play a lot of games. This is my first android phone so is it easy/worth it to root it to improve battery life?

 

[sonicresidue]

That's about what I have experienced. The most screen time I have had is 3.5 hours on my last charge. Total battery life was close to 40 hours.