Galaxy Nexus Battery Life

ryotto · Dec 16, 2011

I think battery life in a phone is like gas mileage in a car. Your mileage may very. It just depends on how you use it. Give a racecar driver a car and turn him loose on a racetrack and he'll get horrible gas mileage. Now give that same car to a hypermiler and he'll go much farther on a gallon of gas then Mr. Leadfoot.

Anyway. I got my Galaxy Nexus last night and plugged it into the charger as soon as I got home (was at 52%). Charged it to 100% while playing with it. Then used it non stop on battery only while on 3G. Drained it to 50% in like 2-2.5 hours, then charged to 100%. Then I unplugged it at midnight and let it sit all night (I didn't disable anything, it was just like it was out of the box) At 7:30am it was at 92% and telling me I received an email. I then went to work and had it in my pocket mostly unused. I showed it off a little and played with the GPS feature and used it for a 10 minute drive to my next service call. At 5pm when I got off work, I think I was at 68%. So I used 8% in standby for 7.5 hours and 24% in 9.5 hours of mostly standby and maybe 30 minutes of use.

I'm going to have to get used to charging my phone everyday. My first phone was an LG VX-8300 and I could go 10-14 days on one battery charge with the stock battery if I didn't talk much on it (but I'd usually charge at 50%) My phone I had before the Galaxy Nexus was a LG Chocolate 3, that I would charge twice a week at 50%, and could go over a week if I didn't use it much and just had it on standby.

Dubbin1 · Dec 16, 2011

Going on 10hrs and still have 46%, nothing to complain about here.

SkinnyD · Dec 16, 2011

Shockwave78 said:
lol WAT?

it proves my theory then ...the phone has something going on with it that is killing the battery. I don't think i could go 2hrs without checking my phone so i give you props on that at least!

It was amazing though i would constantly check the battery as i was using the phone and i pretty much figured that it drops 1% per every minute of usage, sometimes 2%!!

Yeah mine is a dud. After pulling the factory reset and charging it all the way up a little over an hour and half ago it is already down to under 50%. I checked facebook for five minutes and had one phone call. If it is in use I can literally watch it lose about 1% of battery life per minute. The fact that Samsung and Verizon would not address this when confronted is lame. They released this thing before it was ready.

bobwiley · Dec 16, 2011

jdk2 said:
I got one of the duds, I guess. Charged fully this morning. Went to work, never touched the phone until nine hours later. Phone dead

To say I'm not pleased with the battery life thus far is an understatement.

Definitely could be dud...but, I wouldn't be surprised if something was running in the background without you knowing it. I'd check stats if you haven't and download a battery monitoring app.

Jersey Tom · Dec 16, 2011

I wonder if Samsung has had consistency issues in the manufacturing of their batteries. Boggles me that some people would get 3-4 hours of non-stop use and 14+ of moderate.. and others are dead within hours of doing nothing?

Doesn't add up.

jdk2 · Dec 16, 2011

One of the moderators on another forum thought he had a bad radio. I'll exchange it over the weekend and see if that's the case. I expect battery life to be dismal on a 4G phone but not this bad. It's got to be a hardware issue somewhere. Hopefully a new one will solve the problem as there aren't a great deal of people with the issue.

Shockwave 78: Not using the phone all day was not my idea. Work was hectic and I just didn't have the time. Believe me, I wanted to use it badly.

SkinnyD · Dec 16, 2011

jdk2 said:
One of the moderators on another forum thought he had a bad radio. I'll exchange it over the weekend and see if that's the case. I expect battery life to be dismal on a 4G phone but not this bad. It's got to be a hardware issue somewhere. Hopefully a new one will solve the problem as there aren't a great deal of people with the issue.

Shockwave 78: Not using the phone all day was not my idea. Work was hectic and I just didn't have the time. Believe me, I wanted to use it badly.

Hey JDK - I have been checking other forums and there are 3-4 other people with our same complaint. that is more than just an outlier, that is an awful ****ing lot of lemons. I'm pretty pissed off about it, serious lack of quality on Samsung's part. Please update this thread and let us know if the replacement worked for you. I can't get a replacement until Monday at the earliest...

sevenfourty · Dec 16, 2011

i noticed that my battery doesn't charge beyond 98%. anyone else have this problem?

yawdapaah · Dec 16, 2011

sevenfourty said:
i noticed that my battery doesn't charge beyond 98%. anyone else have this problem?

For me, it took quite a while to go from ~97% to charged.

MedioGringo · Dec 16, 2011

SkinnyD said:
I turned off locations services, wifi and sync. I charged it to 100%. I made sure no apps were running in the background and I went to bed.

I woke up six hours later and the battery was completely dead.

This phone is a piece of shit.

Great specs and I love the UI, but if it can't hold a charge it may as well be a $300+ paperweight. Called Samsung customer service - they have no intention of standing behind their product. Now they want you to spend $50 extra to buy an additional battery? Ridiculous.

Yeah there might be something wrong with your phone. Do you have wifi at home? If so, you should leave wifi on and connect to your network. Otherwise, it may be using the 4g or 3g radio and draining the battery. Also, sometimes you get a rogue shitty app that will kill your batter like that. One time I updated the Facebook app and by noon my battery was almost dead. I checked the battery graph and Facebook had used up 44% of my battery.

Otherwise, there's no way you should be getting battery life like that.

MedioGringo · Dec 16, 2011

sevenfourty said:
i noticed that my battery doesn't charge beyond 98%. anyone else have this problem?

That's normal, from what I hear. You guys correct me if I'm wrong, but what I've read is that the battery stops charging once it reaches 100% then starts discharging as if it's no longer plugged in. Once it gets down to maybe 95% or so, it starts charging again. So it really just depends on when you check your battery level.

MedioGringo · Dec 16, 2011

This is my first day of somewhat normal use for me and here's what I got:

About 2.5 hours of real use (surfing the web, texting, emailing, talking, messing with the people app)
Most of the use was on wifi
I left the LTE radio on when I went out today for about 3 hours but I didn't do anything that would use data (other than background)
Screen brightness is set at about 33%

I'm now at about 17% battery life after 12.5 hours on the battery. Not bad. Not great but not bad.

Matthew · Dec 16, 2011

I have had my phone off the charger for 4.5 hours where it was charged to 100% it's now at 31%. Screen at medium, normal use few texts, phone call, browsed facebook and that's it. That's pretty poor. I complained about my iPhone battery being bad. This is in a different league.

MedioGringo · Dec 16, 2011

Matthew said:
I have had my phone off the charger for 4.5 hours where it was charged to 100% it's now at 31%. Screen at medium, normal use few texts, phone call, browsed facebook and that's it. That's pretty poor. I complained about my iPhone battery being bad. This is in a different league.

We need more info. Were you on 3g or 4g the whole time? How long does it say the screen was on? I can usually get about 3-4 hours of actual use - web surfing, phone calls, etc as long as I'm usually on wifi, and about 14 hours of total time unplugged until the battery dies. My screen is at about 33%.

Also, do you see that any one app is using up a lot of battery?

Matthew · Dec 16, 2011

I was on 3G and it was in CDMA only. The screen has been on for 1 hour 42min total and at 50% brightness.

The battery section says the screen is using up the most at 53%. Followed by the OS at 14% then FB at 7%.

I'll charge my phone tonight and turn the brightness down and see what that does for me.

MedioGringo · Dec 16, 2011

Matthew said:
I was on 3G and it was in CDMA only. The screen has been on for 1 hour 42min total and at 50% brightness.

The battery section says the screen is using up the most at 53%. Followed by the OS at 14% then FB at 7%.

I'll charge my phone tonight and turn the brightness down and see what that does for me.

Yeah, try 33%. I am thinking about turning mine down to maybe 25 or so. This screen at 33% is much brighter than my old EVO 3D's screen at the same level, so I think I can get away with setting it lower.

Also, 3g or 4g use has always killed the battery for me. But I've always had an Android smartphone. Was your iPhone 4S good when using 3g?

Mine says the screen used 55%, Android OS at 20% and Phone Idle at 6% and I'm at 13 hours and 28 min with 11% left. But I've been on wifi almost all day.

johnatthebar · Dec 16, 2011

Today I went from full charge to dead, most of the day on wifi, but a good chunk of the day in a large walk in freezer (so ~30+% of the time I had no coverage). My screen on time was over 2 hours, I played podcasts thru my A2DP headset for a few hours, and generally put it through some heavy you (sans being on wifi).

Tomorrow should be similar, but Sunday I will have coverage all day and not use wifi so I can see the contrast. Overall I'm happy so far (though again, taxing the CDMA radio due to coverage, but not the LTE radio at all) as my Droid X would have likely died a bit earlier under the same conditions.

MedioGringo · Dec 16, 2011

johnatthebar said:
Today I went from full charge to dead, most of the day on wifi, but a good chunk of the day in a large walk in freezer (so ~30+% of the time I had no coverage). My screen on time was over 2 hours, I played podcasts thru my A2DP headset for a few hours, and generally put it through some heavy you (sans being on wifi).

Tomorrow should be similar, but Sunday I will have coverage all day and not use wifi so I can see the contrast. Overall I'm happy so far (though again, taxing the CDMA radio due to coverage, but not the LTE radio at all) as my Droid X would have likely died a bit earlier under the same conditions.

What the heck is Screebl Pro and why is it eating so much battery?

Matthew · Dec 17, 2011

MedioGringo said:
Yeah, try 33%. I am thinking about turning mine down to maybe 25 or so. This screen at 33% is much brighter than my old EVO 3D's screen at the same level, so I think I can get away with setting it lower.

Also, 3g or 4g use has always killed the battery for me. But I've always had an Android smartphone. Was your iPhone 4S good when using 3g?

Mine says the screen used 55%, Android OS at 20% and Phone Idle at 6% and I'm at 13 hours and 28 min with 11% left. But I've been on wifi almost all day.

The 4S is always using 3G because it loses my wi-fi signal in my room but it lasts for at least the day. My previous android devices I have used for the exception of the Thunderbolt have met the 1 day requirement in terms of battery. The Gnex, not so much. I'll keep working at it though to see if I can get some more time out of this battery.

johnatthebar · Dec 17, 2011

MedioGringo said:
What the heck is Screebl Pro and why is it eating so much battery?

Screebl is an app that I need to find a replacement for b/c the dev hasn't issued an update in a while (and obviously one is needed for ICS), and it is a wonderful tool.

Basically, it monitors the position/movement of your device so that if still and flat the screen shuts off very quickly, but if moving and/or in a normal 'reading position' (you can set the angles you desire) the back-light stays on. So, it keeps your battery from draining because your back-light is on needlessly, but also keeps the back-light from shutting off while you are reading something.

Favorite app ever. (it doesn't usually cause that much drain for me, maybe 1-3%)

Ngo93 · Dec 17, 2011

How exactly do you condition the battery when you first get it?

- turn on
- use until shut off
- charge to 100% undisturbed

....and then the charges after that would I still need to drain it to 0%? Or just charge / discharge regulary?

ThrottleAbuse · Dec 17, 2011

How do you make sure no apps are running in the backround?

Appleanche · Dec 17, 2011

So after fully charing it and using it about 2 days I can say I'm not really impressed with the battery life.. but I suppose it could be a lot worse. It's to be expected with LTE.

I hope there is an LTE on/off widget sometime soon, since that would largely be the answer to my issue. I mean I really don't need 4G on when it's idle pulling down Gmail.

I'd like it for things like Youtube, browsing, etc.. and having that on as a widget would make it much easier to manage.

Byf619 · Dec 17, 2011

Is anyone using Juice defender?

snoguitar · Dec 17, 2011

Here is my day 2 graph... a bit more reasonable with my usage today, but still a good amount of youtube/maps/surfing web/etc. In 4g all day, no Wifi. This is plenty acceptable for my day-to-day (plus I have an extended batt on the way, so will have a spare for those heavy usage days).

Galaxy Nexus Battery Life

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