Help Nexus S Battery (specific feedback requested)

meso100 · Apr 21, 2011

Ok so yes another boring battery thread, yawn! The only thing is its damn right annoying when your phone cant last throughout the day and I am hoping for advice from the technically savvy people in the forum.

Below are my battery stats for today:

Display: 27% = 1hr 41m
Voice calls: 23% = 50m
Android OS: 21% = 2hr 16m
Android system: 6% = 2hr 16m
Touchdown (Email): 6%
Cell standby: 5%
Ebay: 3%
Wifi: 3%
FB: 2%
Locale: 2%
Phone idle: 2%

Total time without a charge: 8hr 39m
Percentage drop: From 97% (apparent full charge) to 5%

Phone Details
Make: Nexus S
Age: 5 days
Launcher: Launcher Pro

Surely there has to be something not right if I am struggling to get 10 hours out of this bad boy.

I did notice that after the low battery warning my phone went very laggy indeed. To the point where I had to restart the launcher. Could the launcher be causing my problems are does anyone see another problem?

Thanks for your help in advance.

meso100 · Apr 21, 2011

OK since charging the phone to 20% after it died after 8hrs 39mins it died after an hour of me picking my girlfriend up from work.

I have put on charge AGAIN and got to 15%. The phone went a bit laggy so I restarted it and the battery went straight to 51%!!! How?

B2L · Apr 22, 2011

Your battery will get much better over time. It just needs proper charging. My battery was the same shortly after i had gotten it but now i get 16 hours of heavy usage everyday. You should charge it to full capacity and completely drain the battery 2-3 times it will help your battery life quite a bit.

meso100 · Apr 22, 2011

Thanks

Does anyone keep their GPS on all the time? I had mine or so switched it off today and desynced some stuff and got rid of Launcher Pro.

I am experiencing some higher numbers but will post these when the phone dies.

Another question. I had google navigation on in the car for 20 minutes before and the screen was very very hot. Is this normal? My iPhone 4 has never got half as hot as the nexus s. Is this a biproduct of having a super amoLED screen?

B2L · Apr 22, 2011

I have noticed that the SAMOLED will overheat quite frequently. Typically when it's charging.

And i never keep my GPS on all the time it kills battery so quickly. My battery is great using LauncherPro.

meso100 · Apr 22, 2011

So it wasn't Launcher Pro then? If I can get satisfactory battery life I will reinstall soon.

Out of interest whats your average battery life?

B2L · Apr 22, 2011

My average battery life is about 16 hours with pretty heavy usage. I send about 200 texts, 10-15 calls, and listen to music and play games for 3-4 hours throughout the day. It would be longer than that but I plug it in every night when I go to bed and it's at around 30%.

Dan1113 · Apr 23, 2011

Does it matter if you have the phone on or off when recharging after it's been completely drained? Need to try this... my battery has been crap, it lasted like 8 hours with not-so-heavy use yesterday. :\

B2L · Apr 23, 2011

No it doesn't matter my phone is on constantly when charging. I only turn it off for a few seconds every day.

meso100 · Apr 23, 2011

I don't know how the hell you're getting those figures. Very jealous!

I've just bought Juice Defender Ultimate to see if this can free up some charge.

Fingers crossed!

B2L · Apr 23, 2011

I think it's mainly because I'm running a custom rom and kernel. My battery life increased drastically when I switched to cm7.

meso100 · Apr 23, 2011

Can you say 100% its down to you rooting? Which kernel do you have installed? I've been debating this but Im so used to jailbreaking by a couple of button presses and this just looks a lot scarier!

PS I read something recently about rooting but not doing an OEM unlock. Did you do this or is your bootloader unlocked?

B2L · Apr 23, 2011

My bootloader is unlocked and it's much easier to root that way than superboot imo. I'm using the netarchy kernel its by far my favorite. It has voodoo sound and bln. (Back light notifications.) I have also noticed using the cfs version has been much smoother than bfs and haven't had any problems with it like bfs.

It's really not all that hard as long as you have some knowledge of what you are doing. And you can learn all of that from XDA.

Also I noticed a huge difference in battery life from rooting and using custom roms. But it also may have made a pretty big difference from using it for a month. Time really helps your battery. I have had mine since the beginning of January and I didn't decide to root until the first week in February.

meso100 · Apr 23, 2011

Im having trouble here and im lost in in instructions. I have my Cyanogen on the computer ready and waiting. I have downloaded the Android ask and now installing a lot of ask platform updates... I got to the bootloader screen and plugged into the computer and the computer said drivers not found. I opened cmd terminal on the computer and typed in "fastboot devices" and was told it was an invalid command.

There are a lot of tutorials but I am sure they assume some previous knowledge of rooting! Its late, im tired and annoyed. Can you help at all?

B2L · Apr 23, 2011

You should look at the tutorial on TheUnlockr. It goes pretty far into detail. I am betting that you didn't install the driver from the Android SDK.

http://theunlockr.com/2010/12/17/how-to-root-the-samsung-nexus-s/

meso100 · Apr 24, 2011

Thanks.

I was up until 4am doing this and still couldn't get fastboot to be valid. When I followed the unlockr instructions it again came up no drivers installed. I don't understand because when I installed the sdk I installed the nexus driver and a galaxy tab thingy as instructed on another site. I've had 6 hours sleep and want to get back in this.

Do you think this is just driver related? Would this cause cmd to not recognise fastboot?

Lastly did you have to do anything under System and Environmental Variables? One guide told me to add some details in a specific Path.

Any help appreciated.

meso100 · Apr 26, 2011

Big thanks to member B2L.

I was struggling getting 9 hours battery life as standard.

I was talked into and through Rooting and have just got 15 hours battery with about 10% remaining!

CM7 and Netarchy kernel have done what was promised!

B2L · Apr 26, 2011

meso100 said:
Big thanks to member B2L.

I was struggling getting 9 hours battery life as standard.

I was talked into and through Rooting and have just got 15 hours battery with about 10% remaining!

CM7 and Netarchy kernel have done what was promised!

That's great to hear! I figured it would help out quite a bit. Hope you enjoy it, and your very welcome, I am always glad to help out.

frankkduf · Apr 27, 2011

Here are my stat stock nexus s rom (using ultimate juicedefender)

Stats are same every day with my seidio 1600mah :

Booting
on the battery since the last charge : 14h36 mn 36s
charge remaining : 34 %

Display: 40% = 2h27 mn 21s
Cell Standby: 15% = 14h36 mn 33s
Modern combat 2: 12% = 37 mn 3s
Android system: 7% 2 mn 30s
Wifi: 5% = 15 mn 12s
Browser: 4% = 6 mn 58s
Phone idle: 4% = 12h 9mn 6s
Market: 3%
etc.

Display set auto or lower

Enjoy!

guerreiro · Apr 30, 2011

Is this normal?!
Shitty battery!

Below are my battery stats for today:

Display: 50%
Android OS: 34%
Android system: 8%
Cell standby: 3%
Ebay: 2%
Google Services: 2%
ShopSavvy: 2%

From fully charged to 66% (Total time without a charge: 1h28!!!)

Phone Details
Make: Nexus S
Age: 3weeks

aburro · May 11, 2011

I had a similar problem with my Nexus S. Battery life was poor and the "Android OS" showed up as major drain.

I have upgraded to 2.3.4 and the problem seems to have gone away, with much improved battery life.

I suggest trying that first.

Deleted User · May 11, 2011

aburro said:
I had a similar problem with my Nexus S. Battery life was poor and the "Android OS" showed up as major drain.

If "Android OS" shows any higher than a few percent, then the issue is a rogue app, widget, or ATK which is interfering with the OS and causing constant restarts of essential services and drivers. If you have ATK, get rid of it as Android v2.x does not need any help and ATK actually causes more problems. If you don't have ATK, then it's another app accessing services and improperly sucking up battery.

I have v2.3.3 out of the box, and no such battery drain issue. I typically get a full day from the Nexus S with 50% or more battery at the end of a typical 16h+ day. That's with 3G, GPS and mobile data all on, 2 email accounts, news updates, stocks, hourly weather updates, etc. With lighter use, I can easily get 2 days out of a charge with 40% left. Even with fairly heavy use, I can get a full day out of it.

So before you blame the phone or firmware, consider what apps/widgets are installed. The most common culprit is software not working properly with the device, not the phone itself.
YMMV.

aburro · May 12, 2011

bfksc said:
So before you blame the phone or firmware, consider what apps/widgets are installed. The most common culprit is software not working properly with the device, not the phone itself.
YMMV.

I appreciate your logic, but I am merely reporting what happened to me. With no dodgy apps and light use, I get a high "Android OS" % on 2.3.3 and with exactly the same apps and use on 2.3.4 I get a much lower %. I do not have an explanation, but the impact was very clear.

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