Is The Nexus 5 Battery THAT Bad? Or Am I Unlucky? - Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

When I first got my Nexus 5, I got about 3.5 hours of SOT. This is with airplane mode 24/7. Note, I still have my phone in airplane mode 24/7. I upgraded to Lollipop 5.0 but before that I was getting bad battery. 5.0 I get about 2.5 hours. Now with 5.1 I got 2 hours. Barely.
I have used the troubleshooting battery life thread and searched around, tried custom ROMs, kernels, everything. Not a thing helps. BBS and Wake lock Detector show absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
I've had my phone a little over a year now, and its just deteriorated. Is it just my phone? Bad battery perhaps? Or is everyone getting this awful battery?
I know what everyone is going to say to, it depends on usage. And it does, but to an extent. I'm a light user, I'd say. Greenify installed, I use Kik sometimes, little camera here and there and messenger to talk to people. That's literally it. If I have the phone sit there and do nothing I get good battery, well, better. But it seems switching apps or touching it at all hurts battery. I've tried App Ops, and location is off and sync. Literally every piece of advice I have tried.
So just a general question, how is everyone's battery holding up? It is really that bad? Or am I just unlucky. Nexus 6 has better battery and bigger screen but average battery. Which is sad. I think its software and bad battery related.

You definitely have a problem there the nexus 5 should last you much more than that even on lollipop

PhyscoAssassinx said:
You definitely have a problem there the nexus 5 should last you much more than that even on lollipop
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That's what I'm thinking. It used to be such a good phone, nothing is draining battery and nothing out of the ordinary is draining... :/ I think it is just a bad, used up battery.

Well you did look into replacing it with a G2 battery, you'll lose QI charging but have a bigger battery

It's not just you. In fact I'm very close to just going back to kitkat. I get no wakelocks, my phone shows as in deep sleep and just today my phone came off charge at 11am and was dead by around 5pm with half hour screen on time. That's just ridiculous! It was showing as deep sleep the entire time.
I've tried everything. I'm 80% sure lollipop is the problem because I know a lot of people with the same issues. Anything Google related I've turned off and I still can't shake this battery drain

If you're using airplane mode then you should get more, I get above 4 hours with adaptive brightness and a signal.
Sounds like a bad battery or something isn't right software wise
Feel free to posts stats and stuff, maybe have a look at what the times are for your cpu frequencies

JonesL said:
If you're using airplane mode then you should get more, I get above 4 hours with adaptive brightness and a signal.
Sounds like a bad battery or something isn't right software wise
Feel free to posts stats and stuff, maybe have a look at what the times are for your cpu frequencies
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I may post those stats, because I'd like to know. Me and so many others are getting lousy battery but you get this amazing battery. I'm starting to believe 80% of Nexus 5's just got awful stock factory batteries...
dan-fish said:
It's not just you. In fact I'm very close to just going back to kitkat. I get no wakelocks, my phone shows as in deep sleep and just today my phone came off charge at 11am and was dead by around 5pm with half hour screen on time. That's just ridiculous! It was showing as deep sleep the entire time.
I've tried everything. I'm 80% sure lollipop is the problem because I know a lot of people with the same issues. Anything Google related I've turned off and I still can't shake this battery drain
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If you decide to go back, please let me know if things improve. I'm with you in that, me, you, and others are getting just awful battery. I don't understand it, deep sleep and nothing is causing any drain... But like the guy above, he is getting 4 hours with a signal? It has to be maybe we have bad batteries... It is just awful.

Definitely something wrong. I've got a launch week device putting it at almost 18 months old. I leave absolutely everything turned on, even have Google Fit tracking steps, Facebook app, and a couple games. I have also overheated the battery several times during bootloops. Just today I finished out a charge cycle with just over 3 and a half hours SOT, including 2 hours Bluetooth music, and just under an hour of wired headphone music using ViPER4Android with a couple options known to drain more battery.
I'd look into Better Battery Stats for some hidden kernel wakelocks.

AndrasLOHF said:
Definitely something wrong. I've got a launch week device putting it at almost 18 months old. I leave absolutely everything turned on, even have Google Fit tracking steps, Facebook app, and a couple games. I have also overheated the battery several times during bootloops. Just today I finished out a charge cycle with just over 3 and a half hours SOT, including 2 hours Bluetooth music, and just under an hour of wired headphone music using ViPER4Android with a couple options known to drain more battery.
I'd look into Better Battery Stats for some hidden kernel wakelocks.
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I've tried literally everything and nothing is showing up. Nothing... Bluetooth music to my stereo drains batter horribly. 1 song per percent. Maybe I as well as others have bad batteries and you're just lucky... Are you on 5.1? It literally makes no sense...

I came from a Galaxy S3. The Nexus 5 battery isn't that great, but your description sounds like you're unlucky. I went from Kitkat to Lollipop on the N5 and the battery life was definitely better. Perhaps try the Elemental X kernel?

snappycg1996 said:
I've tried literally everything and nothing is showing up. Nothing... Bluetooth music to my stereo drains batter horribly. 1 song per percent. Maybe I as well as others have bad batteries and you're just lucky... Are you on 5.1? It literally makes no sense...
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I'm running CM12(5.0.2).

The only thing keeping me from trying to replace my battery is that there are occasional days right after a reboot where everything work as is should. (I.E., 3-4 Hr SoT, Bluetooth streaming 30min or so, 16-24hr total time). After that first day it goes to **** and I get maybe 1-2 hrs SoT and 12-16hrs total time. I'm just waiting on 5.1.1 at this point. In the mean time, it just lives on a wireless charger if I can access one at home or work easily.

If I'm a baseline (I'm probably not) then you certainly seem to have a problem.
I do seem to get marginally worse battery life on Lollipop, but still nothing to complain about - considering. Generally I get 3.5+ SOT over a 14+hour day (from 85% as I almost never let it run lower than 15-10%). That's with every service turned on (including precise location & always listening), and I normally listen to at least 2-3 hours of podcasts (accelated playback + skip silences, both processor-heavy) and some Tune-In radio & Play Music. Playback is usually a split between BT & the phone's internal speaker. My normal usage is almost all on Wi-Fi. 3G can be disappointing & will sometimes eat through my battery significantly faster.

dan-fish said:
It's not just you. In fact I'm very close to just going back to kitkat. I get no wakelocks, my phone shows as in deep sleep and just today my phone came off charge at 11am and was dead by around 5pm with half hour screen on time. That's just ridiculous! It was showing as deep sleep the entire time.
I've tried everything. I'm 80% sure lollipop is the problem because I know a lot of people with the same issues. Anything Google related I've turned off and I still can't shake this battery drain
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Click to collapse
To be honest kit Kat is the nexus 5s Prime os I doubt it's going to get better than that

You guys have to remember the jump from JellyBean to KitKat was nowhere near as expansive as the jump from KitKat to Lollipop and Google spent a year refining KitKat to 4.4.4. We're less than half a year into Lollipop. Yes, Lollipop should be in a much better state than what it is but obviously Google fell short of that mark.

my N5 also over 1 year, light usage but even with 2hrs SOT I still have at least 40% battery
p.s. wifi and bluetooth is always on

NotFromMountainView said:
If I'm a baseline (I'm probably not) then you certainly seem to have a problem.
I do seem to get marginally worse battery life on Lollipop, but still nothing to complain about - considering. Generally I get 3.5+ SOT over a 14+hour day (from 85% as I almost never let it run lower than 15-10%). That's with every service turned on (including precise location & always listening), and I normally listen to at least 2-3 hours of podcasts (accelated playback + skip silences, both processor-heavy) and some Tune-In radio & Play Music. Playback is usually a split between BT & the phone's internal speaker. My normal usage is almost all on Wi-Fi. 3G can be disappointing & will sometimes eat through my battery significantly faster.
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DummyPLUG said:
my N5 also over 1 year, light usage but even with 2hrs SOT I still have at least 40% battery
p.s. wifi and bluetooth is always on
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Okay you guys (and hopefully others) take a look at this battery. I did play Clash of Clans somewhat today and got den m decent battery but yeah. Any thoughts? Bluetooth streaming to my stereo still used 2 percent in 10 minutes. I'm adding more to a new post. I think I may have a bad battery still because even though it said 98 it went to 99 for a brief minute. I see messenger and Line during battery some, and cause wake issues but FB is greenified. Messenger isn't... Also the other apps like Google Calendar, and the Google App itself cause battery drain, and it shows Android OS in battery under screen.

More screenshots hopefully adding

Phone is hating me

snappycg1996 said:
Okay you guys (and hopefully others) take a look at this battery. I did play Clash of Clans somewhat today and got den m decent battery but yeah. Any thoughts? Bluetooth streaming to my stereo still used 2 percent in 10 minutes. I'm adding more to a new post. I think I may have a bad battery still because even though it said 98 it went to 99 for a brief minute. I see messenger and Line during battery some, and cause wake issues but FB is greenified. Messenger isn't... Also the other apps like Google Calendar, and the Google App itself cause battery drain, and it shows Android OS in battery under screen.
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I do suck at math, but 2% per 10 minutes of bt streaming doesn't really sound that awful. That seems to work out to 8+ hrs of active usage. Most of my battery drain on streaming audio comes from the apps themselves - Most of my listening is of podcasts where I'm playing at 1.5x speed +skip silence which are both processor-heavy. TuneIn is pretty battery-hungry (and annoyingly buggy!) as well. Play Music seems a bit easier on my battery, but I'm mostly listening to the non-music apps & I probably don't do much better than 2% per 10(ish) minutes a lot of the time.
It's fairly common to see your battery level jump up or down a point or two once in a while. Others can better explain this technically, but I gather it's just refining the estimate of where you are at the moment.
*Edit* Looking at your screenshots, I don't see the app that you're streaming on. ?

Related

Samsung Captivate on the Quest for the Greatest Battery Life!

I'd love to hear how people are finding the battery life on the Captivate, and what their usage patterns are. I don't have many apps on the phone to begin with, but on the train to work I can easily knock out a third of the battery just listening to music. While using the phone for five or ten minutes, I'll sometimes see the battery dop 2-3 percent!
For tomorrow, I'm going to try using the stock launcher instead of LauncherPro, no widgets. I got rid of the Android Central app just in case it was fetching data in the background. But my hopes aren't terribly high, I'm afraid.
I have rooted the phone, but the battery life was bad before rooting. Once rooted, I tried some apps like JuiceDefender, and there seemed to be no change.
If I continue having these problems, I may unroot and bring the phone to an AT&T store to see what they say. I've heard it mentioned that Samsung is sending out new batteries that are better than some current ones, but I don't know if that's true.
I'd love to hear any suggestions. I want to use my new phone, not worry about it all day!
I too have been getting very poor results. I have talked on the phone for less than 3 minutes, went to maybe 15 different website pages, one 3:00 youtube video, 10 minutes of GBC emulation gaming, and regular texting, and I'm at 10% with 8 hours. I've probably only used the phone for 30 minutes total today.
Smartphones always drain battery, if you want a phone that can be heavily used for like 4 or more days on one charge cycle, get a feature phone....the samsung captivate has given me the best battery time overall, against all my past smartphones.
I don't think it makes sense, though, that it should run out halfway through the day like mine is. My former devices were a feature phone and an iPod Touch. The feature phone lasted a week or so, and the iPod Touch with heavy heavy use lasted three days at least. So even if I had both pulling from the same battery source, and with light usage, shouldn't it last at least a full day?
Weird, I had wireless on almost all day, with push mail and doing tons of market downloading and I was only down to about 50% by early afternoon.
Seems about the same as my two year old HTC Touch Pro to me.
My battery is running fine too, even after streaming music from my house with subsonic, testing out a couple videos, messing with the gps, push email a bunch of app downloading, and a live wallpaper and i was still at 33% by the time I got home, even seems to be getting better.
"On the train to work..."
There's a bit of your problem, methinks. The 3G radio is burning a lot of power trying to connect to towers inside a metal box that moves to a new tower on a regular basis. Unless you need to get calls on the train, put it in Airplane mode during your commute.
Have you actually let the battery die completely yet?
My first battery burn-down, (starting with the charge on the battery as it was unboxed) I was showing zero percent battery for almost two hours before it actually shut itself off, moderate usage with WiFi on.
The next charge-up burn-down, it was showing zero percent about fifteen minutes before the end.
And the charge-up burn-down after that, it showed 0% about twenty seconds before it died.
See where I'm going here? The software needs to be calibrated at zero and 100, and it can't do that if you don't let it reach zero a few times. Once you're sure the meter is accurate, then you can start making informed conclusions about battery life.
And like I've posted elsewhere, you've got 'Newshiny-itus', which is proven to suck extra life out of a smartphone battery. And it's hard forcing your new toy to die...for one thing, if it's dead, you can't play with it. Tough it out, kill it. At least twice.
Well if you want to find truly terrible battery life try the EVO.
I had one for a month and that thing really ate the battery fast. The capti is stellar in comparison.
smitty1 said:
Well if you want to find truly terrible battery life try the EVO.
I had one for a month and that thing really ate the battery fast. The capti is stellar in comparison.
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Yea I had one for two weeks and it was horrid. I would lose 6% just in standby time in between waking up and getting out the door to work in the morning!
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
I've had great results with the battery and I find it to be much better than my HD2. I watch quite a bit of youtube, text message a lot, and browse the web and the market on and off, not to mention all the time my wife plays solitaire, and I still have 30% battery at an uptime of 41:46. I don't use gps or live wallpapers, and I keep my display as low as possible, since it is still bright.
Bit better by the end of the day. 13 hours and 15 minutes
Croak said:
The software needs to be calibrated at zero and 100, and it can't do that if you don't let it reach zero a few times. Once you're sure the meter is accurate, then you can start making informed conclusions about battery life.
And like I've posted elsewhere, you've got 'Newshiny-itus', which is proven to suck extra life out of a smartphone battery. And it's hard forcing your new toy to die...for one thing, if it's dead, you can't play with it. Tough it out, kill it. At least twice.
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+1
Definitely agree with the last part. I've been doing my best to kill it, but I don't want it to be dead. Been noticing the inaccuracy of the meter quite a bit, especially when it's charging, but I'm sure it'll get better over time.
Thanks for the informative replies! It hadn't occurred to me that the battery meter might be uncalibrated - I've been charging once it reached 10% or so. I'll try letting it die fully today.
One thing that seems to have helped, too, is the brightness settings. Turning OFF the "power saving" auto adjust ing brightness option allows the brightness to stay low, and a brightness control widget lets me set it lower than stock controls allow. I've seen some definite improbement from this alone!
These are Li-ion batteries, DO NOT let them die completely before charging.
Ok, so...is there a safer way to make sure the battery gets calibrated? I'm reading in a lot of places that Android phones fairly often misreport battery info unless calibrated.
The lowest I can get on battery status is 60% after a full days use. Admittedly I'm not a power user but I had my phone unplugged for 16 hrs and still had 95% I'd like to know what you have to do to get such low battery levels , start your car
All I've done today is listen to music for an hour (used 25%) and texted/browsed the web for perhaps two hours (another 5/% down.)
I read that LIons can be occasiomally discharged, since they have undercurrent protection circuits. One guide for Android phones suggested leaving the phone on until it shuts itself down, turning it on again, and then letting it shut itself down again. Then, with the phone off, charge fully. The guide said once a month or do is safe and beneficial. How does it sound?
Battery is good today. Been sending a few texts, checked email, facebook, and surfed these forums a bit. I'm at 2 hours with 98% battery left.
i hope the battery doesnt suck, i plan on getting this phone soon and want good batt life!!!
tysj said:
These are Li-ion batteries, DO NOT let them die completely before charging.
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I agree with you, however, the phone's hardware will NOT let the battery completely die.
So I wouldn't worry about that all to much.
Basically though, Li-ion batteries are 'memory' free so they can be recharged on a whim partially.
They also prefer partial charges vs deep charges.
There are questions about this that I don't have answers for such as: When the phone displays 0% or shuts off due to low battery, how LOW is the battery?
Obviously the phone battery can't be dead dead, but it is low enough for the hardware to take precautions.
Anyway Li-ions will at max last 500 charges.. If you want it more than that, You're going to have to buy a new battery anyway. =)

25 min cost 27% battery

I unplugged the phone and got onto the bus. I read news with Captivate. Nothing fancy, just NY Times, Fox News etc. I got off the bus later, I only have 73% battery.
Yes, I just started my day and it's only 70% of battery.
#FAIL.
There are a few simple things you can do to increase battery life. Turn the screen brightness down and use a solid black background as a wallpaper. The screen uses the majority of the batter. so dimming the screen helps, when using a black background the amoled display does not light up black pixels so there is power drain.
I've been running on the same charge since 4pm yesterday. I've streamed music through pandora for about an hour while exercising, browsed the xda forums using the XDA App for 30 mins, made a few calls, browsed Facebook for 30 mins, surfed the web for a couple of hours before bed. Its now 10AM and I'm sitting at 36%. Not to bad really! The phone functions exactly the same at 36% as compared to 100%.
I wonder why everyone says to use a solid black background? Do most people use their phones primarily by staring at the home screen? I'm never at my home screen more than perhaps five seconds while switching apps
I've had pretty poor battery life as well, even after discharging, recharging, and deleting batterystats.bin. There are small tips here and there, like black background and screen brightness, but even following them all, my phone lasts me barely ten hours, and most of that time it's idle. For instance, I listened to local must (no streaming) with the screen off for about an hour and lost 10% of my battery life. What's up with that?
TimF said:
I've streamed music through pandora for about an hour while exercising, browsed the xda forums using the XDA App for 30 mins, made a few calls, browsed Facebook for 30 mins, surfed the web for a couple of hours before bed. Its now 10AM and I'm sitting at 36%.
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I am also shocked and confused by how people can use their phone so heavily.
I already killed those unnecessary processes (e.g., all AT&T crap). I have a static wallpaper. I have screen brightness at 60%. And all I have been doing is just reading news and surfing the web. It literally cost me 1% of battery for every 1 min of use. It's just ridiculous.
You are probably on your home screen a lot more than you realize.
Anyway it's a smartphone, they all eat through battery time. you will never get superb battery life unless you crowbar a 3000mah battery into your device.
edit:
set the screen on its lowest brightness setting, the only time I've had to increase the brightness is when I am outside in the sun.
if you are on a bus, if you are not using wifi, turn off the radio.
TimF said:
Anyway it's a smartphone, they all eat through battery time. you will never get superb battery life unless you crowbar a 3000mah battery into your device.
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You just said your phone is at 36% eighteen hours after charging! Compared to the 0% I'm at ten hours after charging...I'm not looking for superb battery life at all, just somewhat decent. I'm actually bringing a backup feature phone with me to college this semester in case I can't resolve this issue, because I will need to use my phone both in the morning and at night some days
TimF said:
edit:
set the screen on its lowest brightness setting, the only time I've had to increase the brightness is when I am outside in the sun.
if you are on a bus, if you are not using wifi, turn off the radio.
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I have Wifi, BT always off. And I don't listen to Pandora.
I think the key is you have the lowest brightness on your phone. It is going to save you a lot of battery 'cause half of the battery is for the screen.
But I just couldn't stand it. I wish I can set to 100% all the time. It looks so much better.
The phone radio is a huge consumer of battery - especially in weak signal areas. The bars are not that accurate either. that coupled with 3rd party apps that don't always behave nice, can equal rapid battery drain.
Putting the plain in Airplane mode is good way to see what battery life is like without the Cell radio always doing its thing. It is not a fix, but it can show that the battery/phone are not broken. There probably can be improvements and tweaks made by samsung, but I don't think the phones are defective.
mwxiao said:
I think the key is you have the lowest brightness on your phone. It is going to save you a lot of battery 'cause half of the battery is for the screen.
But I just couldn't stand it. I wish I can set to 100% all the time. It looks so much better.
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This is what you would call a trade-off I like the bright screen also but I like having longer battery life more.
The screen is still pretty bright on it lowest setting and you gt used to the lower brightness after a while.
magicdanw said:
You just said your phone is at 36% eighteen hours after charging! Compared to the 0% I'm at ten hours after charging...I'm not looking for superb battery life at all, just somewhat decent. I'm actually bringing a backup feature phone with me to college this semester in case I can't resolve this issue, because I will need to use my phone both in the morning and at night some days
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how are you using your phone? What apps are you running, are you using any emulators.
There's an app called Spare Parts, which will show you what is using your battery when the screen is off. Open it up and choose "Partial Wake Usage" from the drop down to see.
My Captivate appeared to drain battery very quickly, but with moderate to decent usage throughout a day I was trying to kill the battery it lasted me over 13 hours. I think it's a matter of the battery reporting taking a good while to calibrate properly.
I've had an issue twice now with absurd battery usage. Both times I charged the phone to full and disconnected it; after doing that the phone would lose 10% charge every hour sitting completely idle! Using the phone during that time drained it even faster. Both times powering the phone completely off and back on resolved the issue.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
magicdanw said:
I wonder why everyone says to use a solid black background? Do most people use their phones primarily by staring at the home screen? I'm never at my home screen more than perhaps five seconds while switching apps
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In AMOLED, black pixels dont use power. This is different from LCD where even black pixels still use power.
Have you guys tried fully charging, then fully discharing then repeating this step 3 more times? It helps with the battery life tremendously.
You gotta do a factory reset. Many people as well as myself had the same issue. For me, a side effect was also that the att start up swoosh was stupidly loud.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
I only did the discharge thing once, last week, and today I am going on a 21 hours with 28% left.
2g app
I was told there is a 2g / 3g application. Has anyone tried this? Apparently it puts the phone in 2g when no data connection is needed and then updates to 3g when a data process is required...
i'm on day two of not charging mine... and i'm at 25%...
i unplugged it from a full charge yesterday (monday) morning before i left for work and today (29 hours later) i'm at 25%... this is with advanced task killer auto killing tasks when screen is off as well as being aggressive about it. i've been listening to music from my sd card, browsing facebook and taking some pictures (and uploading them to fb). i guess i'm either super lucky not to have any problems with GPS or the battery, or i'm a very light user.
I dunno what happened to the main battery thread?
I just got a new phone two days ago because of the restart issue. This one has the same battery issue. Drains 2-4%/hour just being idle. I have nothing beyond launcher pro and google voice installed. Everything is on lockdown in terms of batt usage. The only thing I haven't done is turn off the cell antenna.
I've tried the tricks I knew: factory reset, calibration trick. These didn't help at all. My last phone just needed a factory reset and it was all good. Now I'm sad again :-( will it just improve itself when the phone "learns" the battery or something? I wish I could teach it
Several things you can do.
1) Use WiFi if you can use it, it uses less power. If you don't have somewhere to use WiFi, leave it off.
2) Same goes for BT- leave it off if possible.
3) Use this to get rooted and remove all the ATT crap that sucks battery life. Applying the lag fix also means you spend less time with the screen on, so that can also help you out.
4) Use Auto Brightness
5) Disabling haptic feedback and the tapping sounds (I find it more annoying regardless)
6) Use a static black wallpaper- or something really dark. IMO it looks great black and plus the AMOLED... Black doesn't use power.
7) Use Advanced Task Killer. I have mine on Aggressive and Moderate security every half hour. This will make sure hung apps, etc get killed and apps you haven't ran. Make sure you whitelist the apps that run your widgets and such though.
That's the best things to do to.
Edit- above all, remember this is a SMART phone, not a feature phone like the iPhone is. The simple fact this full blown SMART phone can even begin to rival just a feature phone like the iPhone speaks volumes to how much more efficient it is than what you think it is.
starwolf256 said:
I've had an issue twice now with absurd battery usage. Both times I charged the phone to full and disconnected it; after doing that the phone would lose 10% charge every hour sitting completely idle! Using the phone during that time drained it even faster. Both times powering the phone completely off and back on resolved the issue.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
I too have had issues with battery life but quickly realized what had been causing the issues, twice it had been snesoid not closing down all the way after use, and this combined with an app that was hurting battery life (word feud), I realized what my problem was.
I leave the brightness jacked all the way down. I believe the lowest it goes on the stock rom is like 15%, but there are ways to go lower than that.
I've not used my phone much the past two days since charging it, and i'm currently down to 35%, but most of my battery use is cell standby, with display being 3rd or so on the list.
You can always use a program like tasker to make the phone go into airport mode between certain hours of the day (IE: while you're sleeping) to help conserve the battery life.
There are also tons of other good tips in this thread.
And trust me, the phone can last; i've managed 3days on one charge

[Q] Awful battery life - just me?

I got my Nexus 5 on Monday and have been pretty happy with it so far. Today was the first day I actually had to be away from WiFi for the day and the battery life has stunned me with how poor it has been. I haven't seen battery drop so fast since I had my Desire HD. I took it off charge about 9am and at just after 8pm as I type this I'm down to 10% with under 2 hours screen on time. 100% to 10% in around 10 hours with less than 2 hours screen use.
Has anyone else had this poor battery life? I'm going to let it run down completely, install GSam and see if it happens again but from what I've read on a few reviews (The Verge was the main one) this seems to be almost normal. I would be unhappy with battery life this bad after two years, not two days.
Dyonas said:
I got my Nexus 5 on Monday and have been pretty happy with it so far. Today was the first day I actually had to be away from WiFi for the day and the battery life has stunned me with how poor it has been. I haven't seen battery drop so fast since I had my Desire HD. I took it off charge about 9am and at just after 8pm as I type this I'm down to 10% with under 2 hours screen on time. 100% to 10% in around 10 hours with less than 2 hours screen use.
Has anyone else had this poor battery life? I'm going to let it run down completely, install GSam and see if it happens again but from what I've read on a few reviews (The Verge was the main one) this seems to be almost normal. I would be unhappy with battery life this bad after two years, not two days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The good battery apps like BBS are broken on KitKat.
But your battery life is not normal. Mine is quite good, about what I would expect. For reference, my GS3 would use 0.2-0.4% per hour while idling during the night. I can't get real numbers or monitor wakelocks on this phone yet. But so far, seems at least somewhat similar to that.
Use Greenify.
Dyonas said:
I got my Nexus 5 on Monday and have been pretty happy with it so far. Today was the first day I actually had to be away from WiFi for the day and the battery life has stunned me with how poor it has been. I haven't seen battery drop so fast since I had my Desire HD. I took it off charge about 9am and at just after 8pm as I type this I'm down to 10% with under 2 hours screen on time. 100% to 10% in around 10 hours with less than 2 hours screen use.
Has anyone else had this poor battery life? I'm going to let it run down completely, install GSam and see if it happens again but from what I've read on a few reviews (The Verge was the main one) this seems to be almost normal. I would be unhappy with battery life this bad after two years, not two days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We can't really answer about your phone without knowing your usage habits. I mean, what you posted doesnt seem bad, especially if you're in a crappy signal area or play games.
my battery has been around 20% better than on the N4
Sent from my Nexus 5 using xda app-developers app
Coming from an iPhone 4, I am shocked by how much faster Android is sipping on the juice.On my iPhone, I would probably be around 70% 7 hours into the day, my N5 is at 50%.
47% after 11 hrs for me
thfreedumb said:
We can't really answer about your phone without knowing your usage habits. I mean, what you posted doesnt seem bad, especially if you're in a crappy signal area or play games.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A brief summary of my brief usage. I haven't played any games at all since I got the phone and the only usage has been social network apps and very light browsing of around <20 minutes. Oh and I made a call that lasted around 15 seconds. Everything else is stock setup. I have unlocked the bootloader but I did that prior to setting it up due to it wiping everything in the process.
Basically I've used it as much as I'd use my Nexus 4 and that wouldn't see so much as a 30% drain by now. The only thing that I am looking at as a possible cause is that the phone defaults to wanting 4G only. I'm not on a 4G plan or in a 4G area but even with that Mobile Standby is only showing 4% battery use. Suffice to say I switched that to 3G when I saw it just before posting. As I said, I'm going to drain it completely then charge to full and watch it very closely but I wanted to get thoughts while I waited.
I have contacted Google to see if there are any known issues that have popped up but the response I got just suggests turning off practically everything! Why would I opt for a powerful phone just to turn off sync, location services and anything that makes it a smartphone? The baffling one to me is suggesting I switch to AIRPLANE mode if I'm not near WiFi! I didn't buy a WiFi only tablet, I bought a phone!
"If you know you won’t be near a mobile or Wi-Fi network for a while, switch to Airplane mode"
I have been very pleasantly surprised with the battery life with my Nexus 5, I have noticed however that Google Location service likes to use battery power, more importantly - GPS - way too much..
However, I leave it on and even still it easily lasts me a day of use, with around 30-40% left depending on how much I use it.
What are your highest apps in the battery use screen?
Try turning off Google location services.
I am really pleased with battery life. Around 30-40 % left at end of day.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Just you.all stock and battery life is way better than galaxy s4.
LaurenceGough said:
I have been very pleasantly surprised with the battery life with my Nexus 5, I have noticed however that Google Location service likes to use battery power, more importantly - GPS - way too much..
However, I leave it on and even still it easily lasts me a day of use, with around 30-40% left depending on how much I use it.
What are your highest apps in the battery use screen?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I saw similar with the Nexus 4 but refused to switch off location services and it seems ok. I've attached screenshots just taken. It seems I was a little off with my browsing estimate which shows 36 minutes in Chrome but still hardly astronomical.
OK so far the general opinion seems to be that it's just me. That helps me eliminate the phone and / or battery just being awful so thanks guys.
I'm at near 11 hours and am at 69%.. with an hour screen time. Not great but it easily gets me through the day. By the time I plug it in tonight it will probably have 20-30% and 3 maybe 4 hours of OST. That's more than enough for me
I should mention I have location off.. and only turn it on if I'm going to use the GPS
I also have Google Now off I don't need those flash cards to tell me how long it's going to take me to get home.. it's useful sometimes but I rarely look at em.
I'm pleased with my battery so far.. for the super heavy user they definitely wouldn't get a day.. but for me I'll get it easily.
its been pretty terrible for me with identical setups as other devices.
it has me seriously contemplating going back to my htc one. overall i do love the phone tho so hopefully I get a better idea when betterbatterystats is updated.
Few things with battery thats annoying me is google services kill this phone worse than any other ive owned. Even with google now disabled and location disabled. Also my daily drive to work I always use waze w/ screen on. With my other phones (htc one / n4 / iphone 5) i generally lose between 10-15% battery. On this phone im easily losing 25%.
I have access to charging so not a huge deal for now. Its a new os update so maybe it will get ironed out.
garyHal said:
Coming from an iPhone 4, I am shocked by how much faster Android is sipping on the juice.On my iPhone, I would probably be around 70% 7 hours into the day, my N5 is at 50%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you are forgetting you are having a full HD and quad core phone now.
Ahh you got that google services bug eh.. that will kill any battery
Despite not wanting to I did a factory reset and installed a handful of apps, nothing that should cause issues anyway. When I got to Twitter though just after installing I noticed two warning notifications crop up that I remember just dismissing without thinking last time.
com.google.android.gsf.login
com.google.android.calendar
Both state they need installation of Google Play Services. I've ignored them for now so it'll be interesting to see if they have anything to do with it. I know the screen is going to be using more battery than I'm used to when it's on and notice that in battery use it's just everything else.
Friday will be the ultimate test of sorts. I've disabled WiFi, I'm charging it up and have disabled a few location things I don't care about. If it goes down hard again then it's going back.
thegtfusion said:
you are forgetting you are having a full HD and quad core phone now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And a MUCH larger battery
My battery life over the last 3 days on the N5 has been equal to and a little bit better than my GS4 I've had since launch. Very pleased
Dyonas said:
OK so far the general opinion seems to be that it's just me. That helps me eliminate the phone and / or battery just being awful so thanks guys.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think what you're getting is that out of the ordinary. Between screen time and cell reception (the largest contributors to battery life) you could easily be seeing 'normal' battery life.
Don't expect more than 3.5 hrs of screen time, especially if you have reception issues when not on WIFI. And I'm talking 'normal' computer/dev/IT guy usage (e.g. using the phone as it's intended aka using google now, using one or two emails with push sync, using music services occasionally and sparingly during a day, NOT running in airplane mode, not disabling a crapload of smartphone features).

Great battery life with MM update

Hello ..
I am getting amazing battery life since I got 6.0 .. Before with lollipop I used to get around 5 hours on screen time. Amazingly though I hit 6.30 hours on the first day after update, and this with wireless, mobile data and Bluetooth on. And no data saving and screen on 70% which is amazing.
Good job Motorola
Excellent I would say
Excellent batt life with this new update very impressive how a software help the hardware to accomplish that task.
I replaced my STYLE and got a new one two days back. The old one would be dead even though it has 80%+ battery.
The current one is pretty good compared with the old unit. I got 4+ hours of SOT and I was on 4G and WiFi all the time. Was using it heavily for browsing and chat.
mohan_168 said:
I replaced my STYLE and got a new one two days back. The old one would be dead even though it has 80%+ battery.
The current one is pretty good compared with the old unit. I got 4+ hours of SOT and I was on 4G and WiFi all the time. Was using it heavily for browsing and chat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not bad at all. What I am saying is after MM update battery life increased about 1.5 hours extra SOT
Perhaps the update fixed something else? Looking at the MM update from L, there appears to be nothing besides Doze, which only works when the device is still and not used. I notice perhaps 15% better battery life if using the device sporadically during the day (medium use for me). With heavier use, I notice zero difference so far.
I was hoping some kernel adjustments were made, but the device spikes with heat about the same. I first thought it was less, but notice the same apps get the device very warm to hot (the GPU is over it's head with 1440p). Standby time is a lot better though, but only a significant improvement if lighter use though the day (so Doze can be a factor).
Usage is relative only to the user though
How do you get such great battery performance? I barely manage to get 3 hours SOT.
When the device is idle there's no drain, i only lose 2-3% overnight. But when the device is active the battery drains very quickly.
Tried a lot of battery saving stuff, greenify, powernap, and so on, but no luck.
I'm on MM stock rooted. Having a lot of apps installed. May this be the culprit?
dyonissos said:
How do you get such great battery performance? I barely manage to get 3 hours SOT.
When the device is idle there's no drain, i only lose 2-3% overnight. But when the device is active the battery drains very quickly.
Tried a lot of battery saving stuff, greenify, powernap, and so on, but no luck.
I'm on MM stock rooted. Having a lot of apps installed. May this be the culprit?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If 20% brightness or less, all you do is web surf and a little Youtube, with good LTE signal or wifi and VERY little use of apps that force the GPU to push 1440p, you can get five hours. Everything is relative to the user. That's it.
Counting stock apps, I have 395 apps and 5GB free (64GB model). based on MM battery report, I have no apps that are background battery demons.
rushless said:
If 20% brightness or less, all you do is web surf and a little Youtube, with good LTE signal or wifi and VERY little use of apps that force the GPU to push 1440p, you can get five hours. Everything is relative to the user. That's it.
Counting stock apps, I have 395 apps and 5GB free (64GB model). based on MM battery report, I have no apps that are background battery demons.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you talking just 1440p video in general or are you talking 1440p games?
I'm lucky if I get 2 hours of SoT. I can't tell if Android Wear is eating my battery or if it's Sprint, despite having a decent signal. Bluetooth and Cell Standby are chewing up the majority of my battery power. I think the network management is trying to shuffle my phone between their three frequencies and while at work, I can only get on the 1900MHz PCS band due to having to use a repeater.
brholt6 said:
Are you talking just 1440p video in general or are you talking 1440p games?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some games and apps run at 1440p and choke the GPU. They stand out by running very warm to hot and drain the battery more quickly.
dyonissos said:
How do you get such great battery performance? I barely manage to get 3 hours SOT.
When the device is idle there's no drain, i only lose 2-3% overnight. But when the device is active the battery drains very quickly.
Tried a lot of battery saving stuff, greenify, powernap, and so on, but no luck.
I'm on MM stock rooted. Having a lot of apps installed. May this be the culprit?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes the apps do drain battery.
I uninstalled one particular email app that alone would drain 6% daily!
Anyway this time I got is without gaming. Mostly chatting and browsing and a lot of movies (vlc). I think that day I watched not less than 3-4 hours of continuous movies on the phone.
The only thing I did differently than before is removing unnecessary app permissions and notifications. Other than that I have done nothing. Like I said I do not try to save battery because I always have power source near by, but this 6.30 hours SOT i s awesome I tell you.
Based on my little experience with Android some apps will screw up the phone for no reason. First time I got the phone I got around 3 hours SOT with so many unneeded apps, and I did not know which app is draining my battery so I formatted the phone, and started installing apps one by one and watching the battery. And I managed to hit 4-5 hours with lollipop. Now with the update I got this and I was shocked.
Fully back to stock, unrooted, bootlocker relocked.
Upgraded to MM via OTA.
Installed all my apps via Play Store. Until now, i always restored my apps via TiBu, including data/settings.
I'm curious if my battery life will improve.
Will post the outcome, if any
Cheers!
A lot of the time my phone is just sitting on my desk. It used to say I would get around 1-2 days battery life from it sitting there doing nothing. After MM it says there is 8 days left. I have had it unplugged all day and even with some moderate use I am only at 95%. The doze mode really makes a big impact in stand by times!
rushless said:
Perhaps the update fixed something else? Looking at the MM update from L, there appears to be nothing besides Doze, which only works when the device is still and not used. I notice perhaps 15% better battery life if using the device sporadically during the day (medium use for me). With heavier use, I notice zero difference so far.
I was hoping some kernel adjustments were made, but the device spikes with heat about the same. I first thought it was less, but notice the same apps get the device very warm to hot (the GPU is over it's head with 1440p). Standby time is a lot better though, but only a significant improvement if lighter use though the day (so Doze can be a factor).
Usage is relative only to the user though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it did do something to the apps. The way you can block apps from getting access to location or other services is pretty impressive. I love that as I hated that apps would have access to everything on my phone and I cannot do anything about it. Now I can and this particular feature made me love Android even more after I switched two months back.
Is there something wrong with me. I only get 2 to 2 1/2 hours battery tops and actually I've tried amplify (paid version), and power nap and they don't seem to help much. I have only got 3 hours once since I got this phone. Is it just AT&T maybe?
I'd like to mention something else. Probably not related at all, but ..
My old MXS was a faulty unit (as I mentioned in my previous post). Once I got a new replacement, I have not yet charged the phone using Turbo Charger. I am charging it with Mi Pad charger (non-turbo). Yes, it took about 2+ hours to go from 30 to 100%.
Old MXS was always charged with turbo charger and I was getting pretty bad SOT and the baterry would drain as fast as it would charge. Does it have to do something with using a normal vs turbo charger?
I stop pretty much all background services and apps not in use. The only active applications are firefox, whatsapp and VLC.
My screen is set to 50% brightness with adaptive brightness ON. Moto X display and attentive display is ON.
Non-root (planning to root soon) and Moto ROM.
mohan_168 said:
I'd like to mention something else. Probably not related at all, but ..
My old MXS was a faulty unit (as I mentioned in my previous post). Once I got a new replacement, I have not yet charged the phone using Turbo Charger. I am charging it with Mi Pad charger (non-turbo). Yes, it took about 2+ hours to go from 30 to 100%.
Old MXS was always charged with turbo charger and I was getting pretty bad SOT and the baterry would drain as fast as it would charge. Does it have to do something with using a normal vs turbo charger?
I stop pretty much all background services and apps not in use. The only active applications are firefox, whatsapp and VLC.
My screen is set to 50% brightness with adaptive brightness ON. Moto X display and attentive display is ON.
Non-root (planning to root soon) and Moto ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe if it is a faulty device. I use turbo and i t has nothing to do with battery life.
Notstewie said:
Maybe if it is a faulty device. I use turbo and i t has nothing to do with battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably yes. But i would charge on non turbo for two weeks so that I get definite data for comparison.
timde9 said:
Is there something wrong with me. I only get 2 to 2 1/2 hours battery tops and actually I've tried amplify (paid version), and power nap and they don't seem to help much. I have only got 3 hours once since I got this phone. Is it just AT&T maybe?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Less than 3 hours is not good bro, really anything below 4 hours is just bad. You better figure out what is draining your battery, or maybe it Is a bad unit?
mohan_168 said:
Probably yes. But i would charge on non turbo for two weeks so that I get definite data for comparison.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what difference does it make if it is charged slowly or not??
It should not matter, if the battery is not keeping the power that means it is defective, nothing to do with slow or fast charging.

Nexus 5 battery drain - new battery, new ROM, still persists

My beloved red Nexus 5 starts acting up... the battery drains extremely fast. Some weeks ago, I could barely make it to 2pm without having to recharge after unplugging. So I got a new battery (directly from LG, so definitely a genuine part) which improved the situation, but didn't completely solve the problem. Additionally, I flashed a CM 13 CAF ROM (using myfluxi's kernel) onto the N5 - I enjoy it so far, but there was actually no further change converning battery life.
Right now, the phone is at 10% after being unplugged in the morning at 9am. Wifi, bluetooth, GPS and mobile data were constantly on, cell signal was mostly perfect, wifi was connected for about 3h, bluetooth was always connected to my Moto 360. Screen on-time is about 2h and I listened to music using GPM for about 2h. The battery settings do not indicate any app using up too much battery power - it shows the display at 15%, cell standby at 10% and then several apps.
What do you think - a Nexus 5 with a new battery should make it through a day, shouldn't it?
I remember my first Nexus 5, back in the days with a G watch, making it through a day without any problem with 15-20% left when I plugged it in before going to bed... because of that, I start to think if there might be a bad electronics part, like the display backlight or something on the mainboard, using up too much power without being noticed by the OS. Is that possible?
Thank you very much for your advice!
iYassin
Read and post in the battery life troubleshooting thread stickied to the top of this forum, it will help logically determine what is using your battery.
You have a lot running at once, so difficult at the moment to solve your issue. It's better to turn things on/off one by one to make logical conclusions whether it has any noticeable effect.
The best logical way to conclude if it is a hardware problem is to go fully sock no additional apps no root etc, see if it 'drains' by itself
If not hardware, then 99% of the time it is a bad app(s) keeping your phone awake
This is likely not the case, but have you checked the CPU settings? I've only encountered such a drain while using performance governor together with overclocking.
Same here
I have the same problem and I have been banging my head about it, I don't really use my phone for anything much else than a phone and I kept having at least 3 days of using it with no problems.
Now the phone barely lasts 2 days and even switches off in the middle of the night...
Stormspik3 said:
I have the same problem and I have been banging my head about it, I don't really use my phone for anything much else than a phone and I kept having at least 3 days of using it with no problems.
Now the phone barely lasts 2 days and even switches off in the middle of the night...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the OP's case, his drain is likely caused by having GPS on all the time. That will absolutely devour battery life, so he could save himself some grief by turning it off until he than your phone turns off occasionally. First guess would be the power button going bad; that is generally the reason for needs it.
For you, who knows? You've not given any information, otherthat type of behavior
SteveMurphy said:
In the OP's case, his drain is likely caused by having GPS on all the time. That will absolutely devour battery life, so he could save himself some grief by turning it off until he than your phone turns off occasionally. First guess would be the power button going bad; that is generally the reason for needs it.
For you, who knows? You've not given any information, other that type of behaviour
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, sorry about that I was a bit annoyed at the phone. I found and fixed the problem. Go to settings > apps > disable google fit > click yes when it gives you some notifications about how you'll lose data or stuff like that > and click force stop at the end for good measure.
I am in my second day now of battery life at 59% with a looooooooot of talking today , I mean more than usual so it is definitely a fix for me. Hope it helps
Take care gents
Regards
Nik
Again same problem
Hi all,
Unfortunately I have better battery life but I am again losing a lot of battery.
I have a screenshot but I am unable to upload it sorry about that.
I use my phone mainly for calls roughly about 15 mins per day at the most in total ( not a lot at all I know) and I also have my bluetooth on at all times cause I have LG G Watch.
thing is that I have never had problems with the battery before. When I say before back in the day I still had my LG G Watch ( I have it for about 6-7 months) . Problem with the battery started roughly around 1 month.
Location is off, wi-fi is on on very rare occasions throughout the day when I need to check my e-mail and mobile data is the same. Navigation is used only if needed.
The real problem is that before I knew what was draining my batter now I have 79% of battery usage and I have 5 apps listed that drained each 1%
Android System 1%
Phone Idle 1%
Screen 1%
Google play services 1%
Android OS 1%
Where are the other 15 % ??
It is weird I really took pride in that phone and his battery life, I know that it is mainly because I don't use it as a regular used do i.e. gaming, facebook etc, but I still want to charge less than 1 time per 2 days or less
Thanks in advance
Regards
Nik
Stormspik3 said:
Hi all,
Unfortunately I have better battery life but I am again losing a lot of battery.
I have a screenshot but I am unable to upload it sorry about that.
I use my phone mainly for calls roughly about 15 mins per day at the most in total ( not a lot at all I know) and I also have my bluetooth on at all times cause I have LG G Watch.
thing is that I have never had problems with the battery before. When I say before back in the day I still had my LG G Watch ( I have it for about 6-7 months) . Problem with the battery started roughly around 1 month.
Location is off, wi-fi is on on very rare occasions throughout the day when I need to check my e-mail and mobile data is the same. Navigation is used only if needed.
The real problem is that before I knew what was draining my batter now I have 79% of battery usage and I have 5 apps listed that drained each 1%
Android System 1%
Phone Idle 1%
Screen 1%
Google play services 1%
Android OS 1%
Where are the other 15 % ??
It is weird I really took pride in that phone and his battery life, I know that it is mainly because I don't use it as a regular used do i.e. gaming, facebook etc, but I still want to charge less than 1 time per 2 days or less
Thanks in advance
Regards
Nik
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As stated above, read and post in the battery life troubleshooting thread stickied to the top of Q&A.
They will help logically diagnose what is using your battery.

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