Help LG G4 Terrible Battery Life

[Lars]

Once settled in, this phone is as good as the Droid Maxx and Razr HD Maxx which also have big batteries. I'm happy.

 

[Ravenbrook]

How high is your brightness set? Phone's got a lot of screen, so having it cranked up and on constantly will take a lot out of it. That said, I leave my brightness at 100% and make it through a typical day of moderate use (no streaming video, minimal gaming) with about 10-20% battery when I get home.

Not a perfect solution, but if you're in the US and bought it from a major retailer, LG is having a really great promotion until the 30th: free battery, USB battery charger, and 32GB microSD (the one in my package was a SanDisk Class-10 U1).

I work outside so I typically keep it near 100% but even when I've turned it down to 70% I still don't get great battery life. Given that my G2 would last two days on a typical charge the way I use this phone, I was expecting something more inline with that. I know it has a big screen and higher resolution but I've been reading all over the net the usage that people are getting and it differs way to much. Maybe it's that I'm in weak areas for a while and the phone is just struggling to find signal and that is trashing the battery. I have already received my free battery, charger and SD card from LG and while that is great, it's not a solution to this issue. I'm hoping the next update solves this problem.

My girlfriend did improve her battery life exponentially by turning off LOCATION when she doesn't need it. Now her phone lasts an entire day without charging. Not sure what is sucking so much batter life with it turned on but she doesn't have a lot of apps installed on the phone and no new ones that she didn't have before the lollipop update.

 

[naff89]

I work outside so I typically keep it near 100% but even when I've turned it down to 70% I still don't get great battery life. Given that my G2 would last two days on a typical charge the way I use this phone, I was expecting something more inline with that.

You're right that there's probably more to it than just the screen, but the resolution difference is pretty significant: the G2 has a 5.2" 2 MP screen, while the G4 has a 5.5" 3.7 MP screen -- almost twice the pixels. And the G2 is a quad-core instead of a hex-core. And yet, both phones have the same 3000mAh battery capacity.

Battery density just isn't evolving as fast as our phones are :/

 

[DDELONG]

Sorry to hijack the thread here, but I'm thinking of going to a G4 from S4 also. I do not have big hands. Have you had issue with the difference in size?

Coming from G3...no size issues here.

 

[saralena62]

I have had my G4 for about 3 days. I had no trouble tweaking it to the point I have no battery or data worries. I just googled all the help informatin on each issue I perceived, and then took advantage of the suggestions. My former phone was a G2. I love this phone! Now my only struggle is to decide on whether to get the circle case in the future.

 

[Proctorc]

When I first got the phone first week was Horrible battery life. After that had nothing but great battery life. I use it moderately and only couple times got down to 15 percent on full day.

 

[Einhornisfinkle]

My battery dies three times a day. A DAY!!! And I have all apps turned off, brightness % at like 50 (which means it's too dim for my liking), GPS is turned off, and screensaver turns on after five minutes. What gives with the G4 battery?

 

[SpyderBite]

Still getting 15 hours out of mine. Maybe take advatage of LG's promo for a free spare battery?

 

[Nevis]

My battery dies three times a day. A DAY!!! And I have all apps turned off, brightness % at like 50 (which means it's too dim for my liking), GPS is turned off, and screensaver turns on after five minutes. What gives with the G4 battery?

Wow. That's not typical at all. Have you installed GSam Battery Monitor, and checked to see if there is an app that's drinking all of your juice? Not sure if the G4 has it, but the M8 has a safe mode you can boot into, and that takes it down to just the basics. That would isolate it to applications.

 

[BikeHelmet]

I must be an outlier, because my battery life is totally stupidly awesome.

I had an original LTE Galaxy Note before. Battery life was about 3-4 hours the way that I use my phone... just a few months ago I replaced it with a new Anker battery for $14. After that I could go a day to a day and a half... ~12-15 hours of semi usage, I'd say.
http://www.amazon.ca/Anker-Batteries-SGH-I717-International-Multi-purpose/dp/B007JSSNHI

With the LG G4, I'm getting about 3-4 days of semi usage.

Possible factors:

• I have screen brightness at 50% on automatic.
  
• I have Mobile Data and WiFi turned on.
• I have background apps - Steam, Skype, and various others.
• I have Battery Widget Reborn: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.hubalek.android.apps.reborn.pro - it does shut stuff off at night.
  
• Location services and all that jazz are turned off.
• I live in a town with one cell tower for my cell carrier.

Usage:

• Received about 20 minutes of calls over the past few days.
• Sent/received about 30 emails.
• Had two half-hour Steam chats.
• Took approximately 400-450 photos, then transferred the photos over WiFi to my NAS.
• Took about two dozen video clips (I'm in the honeymoon stage of owning a new gadget. ~20-60 seconds of well... anything. ), then transferred them to my NAS.
• Had one 3.5 hour Skype call. (Screen off.)
• Performed a couple dozen searches (maps, directions, etc.), and visited 5-10 websites.
• Read quite a few articles, again with brightness at 50% on automatic. (~20 articles? I am a reasonably quick reader.)

I've been watching the battery usage carefully since I got the phone. The battery seems to go down about 8% per day if I leave the phone asleep. (No notification LED blinking? Not going to work today? No reason to wake it up.) With WiFi enabled, that increases to about 12%. If I'm doing heavy tasks like watching 2160p videos with the screen brightness cranked up, I can deplete around 20% per hour. For regular usage, it's about 6-12% per hour of active use. Just after taking the above screenshot, I spent 10 minutes trying to locate it, and then 10-15 minutes exploring menus and trying to figure out if I could make my SD card the default location for screenshots. No such luck. 4% battery depleted on that ~25 minute quest.

It does seem to be the screen that gobbles the most power. Activities that hardly use the screen don't drain the battery all that fast. And with the wicked awesome camera, you can grab 10 GOOD shots in under a minute, then flick the screen back off. So far it's grabbing very good shots even during dusk/dawn without flashing, which could be another contributor to the excellent battery life. Flashes deplete batteries quickly. (Less quick with an LED flash, but it's still got to affect it!)

All I can say is... I'm impressed. They seem to have designed the phone to be perfect for my own usage. I have no concerns about getting through a day... or two... or three. I charge it when it gets to about 30%.

-BikeHelmet

 

[PlanetScott]

I have the G2 and after about a year, the battery life was awful. I tried every trick and tip posted on the interwebs and nothing helped. I finally gave in and did a factory reset. I did a back up, but when I did the reset, the device updated to lolipop and did not save the settings. The good news is battery life is almost as good as when it was new. For anyone suffering from miserable battery life, do the factory reset. Even if you lose settings, you may get your battery back. I have a friend with the exact same phone and his battery life was fine, so it appears each individual device can have different issues.

 

[mruno]

I noticed when I was in a fringe 4G area and was connected to 3G the battery would last like 4 hours and the phone was very warm. After moving to a good 4G area, I have awesome battery life.

 

[Ravenbrook]

Last night after rereading this thread I decided to reformat my phone. Right now I've at 15% with 24 minutes of talk time and 2 hr and 26 minutes of screen time. I have bluetooth on all day and I run WiFi when I'm home. I turn off location normally and I have the screen at 70%. (Can't turn it down further because with my eyes I couldn't see it). Phone has been on for 16 hours and 55 minutes. I do have the additional battery and charging cradle from LG but don't swap out batteries too much unless I've traveling. I would have thought that the battery life on this phone would have been better. Still don't see the necessity for a QHD display when an FHD would have probably improved battery life immensely. I didn't reinstall all the software I had on the phone before so I'm really baffled as to why my battery life is so/so when others have great battery life. I understand about cell towers and how they play a factor as I used to be a System Performance Engineer for a cell phone company. But my issue I've noticed is that if I'm in a crappy signal area, talking 1x signal, I notice my phone gets really not. I use GSAM to monitor battery and when the phone gets hot enough in my pocket for me to notice it, I've seen the temperature get as high as 112 degrees F. If I take the cover off the temp seems to drop a bit, down to the mid 90's or so. When signal strength comes back to 4G or even 3G the temp drops. I'm not sure if this is an issue on Verizon's software end or if it's with LG's software or even a Qualcomm problem with the chip. Either way I'm not totally thrilled with this phone. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice phone, I guess I just had my expectations set so high, it probably couldn't meet them.

Any thoughts?

 

[K341lg]

I've had similar experiences with my LG G4 when on 3G while at my office - the battery drains really fast, even though it's not really hot (< 100F). However when I'm on 4G the battery life is excellent. I also see 1x pop up occasionally, so it might even be changing modes more than the indicator shows, even though the 3G shows 3 bars.

I've done a lot of experiments the past couple of weeks with minimum brightness, WiFi on/off, uninstalling apps, killing services, etc. Nothing seems to change it.
GSAM Battery monitor says the highest usage is Android System.

So my conclusion is that it relates to being on 3G service somehow, which for me is while I'm at work. I also have issues sending/receiving text messages there - which also points to radio issues.

I've also had times where it appears to have gone into a fast battery drain mode while at work (on 3G) and it stays that way even on 4G until I reboot it (GSAM saying 1500mA drain until I reboot). When that happens the battery is around 112F and even plugged in it charges really slow.

So, while I'm not sure how to fix it, I've found some workarounds - I just plug it in while at work on 3G, and reboot when leaving.

Another experiment I have done is with the battery chargers. That makes a big difference. The G4 appears to be picky about the charger you use - so make sure the poor battery life isn't caused by that. For example my stock Samsung 2A and Amazon Basic's 2A charger doesn't charge more than 500mA - ever. The stock charger will hit ~1500mA, and the Aukey Quick Charger 2.0 charger will hit ~1800mA. Same issue with my older car chargers. I've bought an Aukey Quick Charge 2.0 certified car and wall charger for my office and car, and that's allowed me to get to charged back up quickly. So, if you want to charge the LG G4 fast, get a Qualcomm certified charger.

 

[anySmarterIdRunLinux]

[QUOTE="Today, used it all day, camera, web, etc. from 9 am to 7 pm, it went down to 82%. .[/QUOTE]

Exact opposite experience. I go from 100% to 56% overnight on standby. All stock, not rooted, manual installation of all apps, after factory reset. Same with every lg g2 _after_ lollipop (25+ hrs between charges on KK)

Really tired of trying to fix my new phone. Really really tired of having to fix my new phone.

This is BS

 

[JimKnuckles]

I'm also having to charge several times a day. When the screen is on, I just watch the percentage drop before my eyes. I keep the brightness low. I've had the phone for a week now.

I get 4 hours to 4 1/2 SOT on my note 4. I can barely make 2 1/2 hours on the G4.

Having said that, the standby time is amazingly good. I'll take it off the charger at 3am for example, and when I wake up at 8:45a its still at 100%.

When the screen is on, its amazing how fast it drops. I watched it drop 3% just typing this miniscule message, and the phone is at its most dim setting. Crazy

 

[rcyphermd]

I downloaded Greenify from the play store. It really seemed to help by hibernating a couple apps that were using power that I did realize were even on!

 

[AMOCO]

This is after 10 day's of owning my G4:
And as you can see my phone has been running for 10 hours,And I also came from a G2,Which my wife is using now.

 

[corey0928]

I hate tbe battery life of the g4. I came from the note 4 and have nearly 99% of the same apps downloaded and that i use. If i play a game for 20 minutes I'll lose between 20-30%. Same games I played on my note4 with far less drain. And if i forget to charge my phone overnight i usually wake up to a dead phone.

On a weird point. When i use some chargers I lose a ton lf functionality on my screen where i just give up on using my phone. Until it charges

 

[AMOCO]

I hate tbe battery life of the g4. I came from the note 4 and have nearly 99% of the same apps downloaded and that i use. If i play a game for 20 minutes I'll lose between 20-30%. Same games I played on my note4 with far less drain. And if i forget to charge my phone overnight i usually wake up to a dead phone.

On a weird point. When i use some chargers I lose a ton lf functionality on my screen where i just give up on using my phone. Until it charges

My G2 would become laggy and none responsive when I charge it,So far my G4 isn't doing that.

 

[El Presidente]

I'm undecided on battery life.

Sometimes it's great, sometimes in exactly the same circumstances, it's pathetic.

Oddly, I seem to get better battery life on 3G/4G than I do when connected to WiFi.

One that that strikes me as odd about the battery life is that every time it hits 100%, no matter what I do, it will display 100% for ages before dropping. I can have a couple of games of Hearthstone when the battery is at 100%, finish playing and when I exit, it's still 100%. Same with other games/videos too.

Overall, I'm not too fussed as the battery is replaceable.

 

[kylecummins]

Hey guys long time forum member, havent been around for quite awhile.

Owned my fair share of androids most recently z2 and z3.. Anyways picked up a very lightly used g4 with the extra battery kit .


My first full charge i got 8 hours total with 4 hrs screeen time on full brightness with alot of dicking around.

Overall im very happy because the screen is so beautiful and when i run out i can just pop another battery in.

 

[dieselhazza]

Hey guys long time forum member, havent been around for quite awhile.

Owned my fair share of androids most recently z2 and z3.. Anyways picked up a very lightly used g4 with the extra battery kit .


My first full charge i got 8 hours total with 4 hrs screeen time on full brightness with alot of dicking around.

Overall im very happy because the screen is so beautiful and when i run out i can just pop another battery in.

I dont understand how you get 4 hours plus screen on time with full brightness. Can you explain how you achieved that. I cant even get 4 hours with screen dimmed. So i would like to know what you have done to get such a result

 

[LG1337]

If you have turned everything off and the phone has a good signal and its still dying return it.

 

[smootskin]

Did you update your phone?