Help Battery is draining faster than it should (VZW)

[Oarsman05]

My wife and I both got new Verizon Galaxy Nexus phones about two weeks ago. Having heard of the poor battery life, I immediately bought an official Verizon extended battery; wife stayed with the stock one. After both of us set up our phones and went through a few charge cycles, I noticed something odd: while her battery would last 24-36 hours with mid-level use, mine would die within 9-12 hours with minimal use (it has never made it overnight).

My first thought was that some widget or app was syncing or otherwise waking the phone when it shouldn't, so I removed all the widgets from my homescreens and disabled all syncing but Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts. I also turned the screen down to minimum brightness. Still had the fast discharge issues.

Next step: uninstall all apps that I've downloaded. Battery still drains too fast.

Finally, I did a factory reset of the phone, and did not download any new apps. I thought maybe there was some deeper setting that I had overlooked that was causing the issue. After the reset, the battery had its worst performance yet at ~9.5 hours with bare minimum use (mostly overnight). Wife's phone was still going strong with about 34 hours of usage.

I am in wifi coverage all day (except when driving to/from work), so I have kept that on. Bluetooth and GPS have been off the whole time. Average time without signal is ~2%. 4G is also on. I also tried 1-2 charge cycles with the regular battery to make sure that it wasn't just a faulty extended battery, but it predictably resulted in even worse discharge time.

I have kept track of the battery usage stats both in the standard Settings as well as Badass Battery Manager, but nothing has seemed out of the ordinary. Right now I am charging up my wife's standard battery in my phone, and she is using my extended battery, to make double sure that I didn't just end up with two bad batteries.

Both of us are using stock ICS 4.04, and are not rooted.

Is there anything else I could have missed that could contribute to this issue? This is my first post, so unfortunately I cannot link to my actual usage graphs/stats. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, it's back to Best Buy to exchange for a new phone.

UPDATE: This was a hardware issue. Exchanged phone and saw immediate, drastic improvement. See my last post for more detail:
http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...ining-faster-than-should-vzw.html#post4871608

 

[Crashumbc]

Well, first if your Wife's getting 30+ hours, that's EXTREMELY lite usage

As far as your issues.

I "think" a app called "cpuspy" works on stock and will tell you if your phone is sleeping or not.

there's another battery app people use also but I can't remember the name hopefully someone will chime in.

If you look at your battery stats, what's your average screen on time? what apps are showing up high on the list?

If you take her phone and yours and sit them both on the "night stand" record the % before you go to bed and when you get up. What's the difference?

 

[Petrah]

[APP] [04 Aug - V1.9.2.1] BetterBatteryStats adds battery history back to Android - xda-developers

Seems I remember someone having a severe battery drain, and they had a support tech at Verizon fix it (resetting their connection or something like that). I wish I could remember where that post is. It's here somewhere.

 

[Oarsman05]

She uses her phone for Google Talk, Facebook, Tamadroid (Tamagotchi app), etc. throughout the day (don't have more exact usage stats at the moment), while mine has been sitting practically unused for the last few days while I try to see if my various steps work, so the top drainers have been (in order) Mobile Standby, Phone Idle, and Screen On.

Last night when we went to sleep, my phone was at ~70% on the extended battery, and hers was about 14%. This morning, mine was dead and hers had 5% left.

 

[Sandroidfan]

I think your extended battery might be a defective one given things you have done to reduce battery drain.

 

[Tim K]

post screenshots of your battery graphs / usage pages.

 

[Tim K]

I think your extended battery might be a defective one given things you have done to reduce battery drain.

The easy way to tell would be to switch back to the stock battery that came with it for a day. That will determine if its the phone or the battery.

 

[Oarsman05]

The easy way to tell would be to switch back to the stock battery that came with it for a day. That will determine if its the phone or the battery.

That's why I'm doing the battery switch with my wife. I know that hers works well. I am going to exchange the extended battery at a Verizon store this evening, just in case (tomorrow is the last day they'll accept it).

 

[stew930]

[APP] [04 Aug - V1.9.2.1] BetterBatteryStats adds battery history back to Android - xda-developers

Seems I remember someone having a severe battery drain, and they had a support tech at Verizon fix it (resetting their connection or something like that). I wish I could remember where that post is. It's here somewhere.

I think it may have been the post where Verizon had to drop it off their network and add it back on.

The only way I had 24+ hours of my Nexus was if it was on WiFi and hadn't touched in almost the whole 24 hours.

 

[gaajiwaaih]

I had a similar issue with massive unexplained battery loss. Here's a link to that thread. However, my issue was only when I was on Verizon's network. I did not have a problem with battery life while connected to wi-fi.

 

[Oarsman05]

Got a new extended battery from Verizon, and it seemed to be working a lot better during the day. However, once I went to sleep the charge dropped like a rock! I am doing a new charge cycle with Badass Battery Manager watching over it, and will post pictures when it is done. I have no apps other than fully updated stock apps and the battery manager. This is incredibly frustrating because my wife's phone is not experiencing any issues overnight. It is looking more and more like this is a faulty handset...

 

[vandyman]

Check the sim card.
Check the network settings; CDMA to LTE/CDMA
Turn off roaming.
Check data usage and see what app is running the most.
Check and make sure that you have radios FC04 and FC05.

New Batteries take from about a week or two, to settle in.
^^^I know this sounds dumb, but it is hit or miss with new phones being broken in.

 

[dhworph]

I've had random high drainage on occasion (maybe a handful of times over 8 months), but never what sounds like is going on here. Lots of good recommendations above.

One thing you could try to to charge it to full 100% and set it to airplane mode and let it sit overnight to see how much the battery drains. And do the same thing on wifi, 3g, 4g, and data-off (just voice-on). Try 2-3 nights on each setting. I think I normally get about 1.3-1.8% drop per hour on 4g(LTE) --- about 10-15% drop over a 6-7 hr sleep period, and maybe 2% drop over 6 hrs on airplane mode (cant exactly remember but it was negligible - near zero). And I get 2-2.5 hrs screen time over a half to full day out of a full charge 100% to 0%, with moderate use, mostly email and web surfing. Games, phone calls, and video will drain it fast and make the phone hot. I get about 1% drop per minute of phone call, maybe about the same to twice as much for video, and for games it depends on how cpu-intensive the game is... but generally 1-2% drop per minute. This all seems pretty normal to me.

 

[Gekko]

1. turn off LTE. (select CDMA only).
2. reduce display brightness.
3. log out of GTalk.

 

[Tim K]

I haven't been logged out of Gtalk since the day I got the phone in December. I've never had issues with Gtalk and can easily go 20hrs on a charge as long as I am not streaming or have a lot of screen on time. I don't think Gtalk is a battery hog despite its appearance on logs in BetterBatteryStats and the like. If you look closely at the stats, even though it shows a lot of occurrences, they are extremely limited in time and % of drain.

Google+ yes. Google backup - on occasion. Never installed facebook but I've heard its a killer as well.

 

[Oarsman05]

post screenshots of your battery graphs / usage pages.

Here are the results from my first full charge cycle. They seemed pretty good; got about 34 hours of mostly standby time. Unfortunately, the subsequent charges have been worse and worse.

 

[Oarsman05]

Here are the results from the next cycle; there is already a noticeable drop to just over 22h.

 

[dzuchowski]

I already say never install any apps other then what the phone came with.
Also.turn off all data when not being used. Also only use wifi when you have to as even wifi I'd capped now.

 

[Oarsman05]

This is from last night. After letting the battery completely discharge, I recharged it while the phone was off. It hit 100% around 12:30AM, when I went to sleep. Fast forward to 8:00AM, and the phone has discharged 66%! Obviously, I was not answering calls/texts/etc. during this time.

 

[Oarsman05]

I already say never install any apps other then what the phone came with.
Also.turn off all data when not being used. Also only use wifi when you have to as even wifi I'd capped now.

The only non-stock apps on the phone are Chrome, Badass Battery Monitor, and now CPU Spy.
I am in wifi coverage for ~95% of my day (work and home, only the short drive in between is not covered), so that is why I've kept it on. I thought that keeping it active even during sleep was supposed to be better than having it reactivate on wakeup?

 

[quickaudi]

turn your cellular radio off and watch the battery drain - it looks like even though your phone has good signal that it is running at full power

 

[quickaudi]

oh, and while everyone here has said to keep wifi on even at night, I have found the opposite - having wifi on overnight dropped my battery 20%

 

[Oarsman05]

turn your cellular radio off and watch the battery drain - it looks like even though your phone has good signal that it is running at full power

This is just airplane mode, right?

 

[Tim K]

I don't know anything about the battery apps you are running. I'd like to see the detailed screens from the battery monitor. It looks like in some of the screens your signal is dropping out. That by itself can kill your battery. The red dashes indicate a lost signal, and even yellow signal dashes can indicate a signal low enough for the phone to consider it 'dropped'.

If you click on 'phone idle' and 'cell standby' what does it say? My guess is you are seeing a LOT of 'time without signal' under cell standby. If your phone is dropping signal all night long that will easily kill the battery as your phone boosts power to try to search for a tower to connect too.

I also see a lot of 'awake time' while the screen was off. That can be attributed to poor signal but it could also be a background app. I'm not familiar with the battery app you use but it looks like that is showing the phone is waking your processor. Either you are getting tons of phone calls or the poor signal in your house is responsible.

 

[Oarsman05]

If you click on 'phone idle' and 'cell standby' what does it say? My guess is you are seeing a LOT of 'time without signal' under cell standby. If your phone is dropping signal all night long that will easily kill the battery as your phone boosts power to try to search for a tower to connect too.

This is from last night (66% drop in ~7.5hr), showing 4% time without signal.