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Help Battery life just dropped off the table. What happened?

I got my Nexus Friday night. I went home and let it drain down to 15% before charging. Then I started pushing my apps and music to it all weekend, most of which was while plugged in since I had to keep interacting with the screen to download my music from Dropbox.

My battery life is horrid. I charged it overnight and after 1hr 53 min I am now at 75% battery life left and going down pretty quickly. At this rate I won't make it to 5pm.
Here's the details:
41% Screen
13% Mediaserver
12% Android OS

Is this normal battery performance for the Nexus? I want to keep this phone SO bad, but if it doesn't improve I'll be forced to get the Maxx as a consolation phone. Please help!
 
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No one can diagnose your battery life without lots of info.

Wifi, 3G or 4G?
Screen brightness?
Screen On time?
What sync's are enabled?
Under Android OS what is your "keep awake" time?

My guess is that your screen is too bright and you've been using it a lot because its a new toy.


Turn brightness way down. I use 10% unless I'm somewhere bright. I wouldn't go over 30% if I could help it.

Keep wifi on and use it whenever possible. 3G and 4G data use a lot more battery. 4G uses the most. The speed is a trade-off for battery life.

Turn off any syncs you don't need. Google+ is a known data hog which chews battery. If you can avoid syncing photos, twitter, facebook, etc you will be better off. I only sync gmail, email, browser, calendar and contacts. Most of those other apps will update when you open them, so unless you need to be notified of every google+ and facebook post, turn off sync.

Also, phone calls use more power than most people realize.

If you really want to get crazy, use darker/black wallpaper... and no live wallpaper.


Right now I am sitting at 40% battery after almost 25hrs. My screen on time is 1hr 20min. 23/25hrs I've been connected to Wifi. 10% brightness. Black wallpaper. No idea how much talk time, but probably less than 10min.

Normally, I can get about 19-20 hrs with 2-3 hrs of screen on time. For me, screen on is the most substantial user of battery and really determines my battery life. The other stuff just maximizes it.
 
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No one can diagnose your battery life without lots of info.

Wifi, 3G or 4G?
Screen brightness?
Screen On time?
What sync's are enabled?

My guess is that your screen is too bright and you've been using it a lot because its a new toy.


Turn brightness way down. I use 10% unless I'm somewhere bright. I wouldn't go over 30% if I could help it.

Keep wifi on and use it whenever possible. 3G and 4G data use a lot more battery. 4G uses the most. The speed is a trade-off for battery life.

Turn off any syncs you don't need. Google+ is a known data hog which chews battery. If you can avoid syncing photos, twitter, facebook, etc you will be better off. I only sync gmail, email, browser, calendar and contacts. Most of those other apps will update when you open them, so unless you need to be notified of every google+ and facebook post, turn off sync.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I don't use LTE since I spend most of the weekend at home on wifi. I don't do facebook or twitter, and I don't do Google+ very much so far. I don't like really bright screens so it's pretty dim, but not at 10%. And I've only taken one picture so far and I don't auto-upload yet.I'm like you I guess, I really only sync Gmail, Exchange Push mail, Contacts and Calendar. I guess Google Voice and Listen are running too tho.

I have Lookout which is using loads of memory, but so is the Settings which I'm using to look at what apps are running. I notice Chrome for Android chews a lot of memory as well.

I've now dropped to 69% battery life in 2hr 15min. And it's just sitting here, playing a podcast with the screen off.

I'm also on Android OS 4.0.2, and I've dropped to 66% while typing this post. I'm crying in my coffee.
 
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How much of your 2hr 15min has the screen been on? If you go to the battery stats and click on 'screen' it should tell you the time ON. That has got to be the key if you've got everything else under control.

Have you clicked on the graph in the battery stats? Sometimes you can tell by looking at the graph where a big dropoff occurred and see what the trigger is (like screen off but phone awake, or a loss of signal or something).

Final step would be to install betterbatterystats (free in market) and run that. You can choose "partial wakelocks" - since charged. That will basically list every process that has triggered a CPU action but without waking the screen (hence partial wake lock). It lists triggers by the most time used. I've seen 'backup' as the #1 trigger with a red line almost all the way across the chart. That told me google backup service was hanging up and I shut it off. That really helped me.

I'm currently at 28 hrs and 20 min. Still holding at 12% with a screen on time of 2 hrs and 15min.
 
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I found the betterbatterystats but it's not free, it's 2.99. I may get it if I can't find out what the problem is without it first. THanks for the heads up. Btw, are you rooted to get that kind of battery usage?

I had to plug my phone in, it was down to less than 30% before 5 hours of use. For awhile I wasn't running anything at all. My screen was off and face down on my desk. I wasn't running music since it didn't recognize my music files in the default music folder it came with. I would unlock the screen every so often (20 min) just to monitor where the battery level was at, which was dropping pretty quickly for just sitting there.

The graph shows 12% of battery use was the Mediaserver process. That seems extreme according to someone else's post.

I see I'm not the only one with battery problems and I don't expect anyone to tell me how to 'fix' it, but I'm on the verge of replacing my phone with BestBuy to see if I can get a new phone, maybe this one's defective.

Edit: it appears not every micro-USB cable charges the Nexus the same. I'm using an older cable plugged into the wall that I used to charge my Droid X. This is basically trickle-charging the Nexus. Even at times it drops a percentage if I turn on the screen to see how far it's charged.
 
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Mediaserver process means an app like Google Music, Spotify or something is connecting. If you don't quit the Music app, it stays on and can drain battery pretty quick. Which apps do you have stream media? Check to see if those are properly closed. If that doesn't solve your issues, download an app called Watchdog. Tracking memory isn't a big deal, since Android does that for you. However, some apps are just rogue and eat up CPU cycles. Find out what those apps are; I usually uninstall those apps. And yes, not all micro-USB cables charge the same (or even work).
 
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Do you have location turned on perhaps or you have a navigation/map running in the background.

Maybe check and see what running apps and running processes are happening.

When my battery suddenly plummets or my charging is taking forever I pretty much know that its because I had turned on 4G previously and forgot to put it back on 3G. Thats battery suicide for me since I can't hold on to a 4G signal for more than 15 minutes at a time.
 
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Thanks for the prompt reply.

I don't use LTE since I spend most of the weekend at home on wifi. I don't do facebook or twitter, and I don't do Google+ very much so far. I don't like really bright screens so it's pretty dim, but not at 10%. And I've only taken one picture so far and I don't auto-upload yet.I'm like you I guess, I really only sync Gmail, Exchange Push mail, Contacts and Calendar. I guess Google Voice and Listen are running too tho.

I have Lookout which is using loads of memory, but so is the Settings which I'm using to look at what apps are running. I notice Chrome for Android chews a lot of memory as well.

I've now dropped to 69% battery life in 2hr 15min. And it's just sitting here, playing a podcast with the screen off.

I'm also on Android OS 4.0.2, and I've dropped to 66% while typing this post. I'm crying in my coffee.

If your mobile network setting is on LTE/CDMA, it will drain your battery fast no matter if it's actually connected on 4G or not. Still it should last 8+ hours on 4G if properly configured. By setting network to CDMA only and turning WiFi on all the time, I'm getting over 20 hours easily.

Also make sure you sign out of Google+, Gtalk if you are not using them. Just not using them is not good enough as they will still be syncing on background. If you still can't figure out, try to remove your apps one by one until you catch culprit one.
 
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Gtalk isn't nearly as bad as Google+. I leave gtalk signed in and have no problems with it draining battery.

Final tally for today was 29 1/2 hours on battery. about 27hrs on wifi, 2hrs on 3g/4g. 2hrs 45min screen on time. about 5 minutes talk time. Finally plugged it in at 2% remaining.

HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS? I even have 4G turned off!!

Before I left my house last night my battery life was was 61%. I drove 5 minutes to baseball practice, at which time it read 59%. I figured it'd be dead at the end of practice! Now get this: After an hour and a half at baseball practice (at which time I never touched it) I got it back out and I actually saw it turn from 58% to 57%! It was a miracle! It actually went about 3 more hours before I finally plugged it in before I bed. Problem is, it never charges past 98% on the OEM charger. Why?

I uninstalled Chrome for Android thinking it was constantly syncing my desktop bookmarks. I also read somewhere that Lookout Mobile Security might be causing a drain. I had this on my Droid X with no issues, but I am using the 14 day Pro trial that probably runs more during web browsing.
 
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Problem is, it never charges past 98% on the OEM charger. Why?

The phone will charge to 100% and then stop charging until it drops to something like 96-98%, start charging again and repeat. It does this as it is better for the long term life of the battery (continuing to charge a full battery is bad).
You probably are just catching it in the middle of the cycle and are paying attention as you are having battery life issues.
 
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If you've eliminated screen, 4g/3g and syncs as your cause its time to look at what's running the CPU. If you see Android OS reporting unusually high 'keep awake' time, you've got to find the cause of that. betterbatterystats is the way to find out what that is.

My goal was to minimize awake time when the screen was off.

Here's an example of something running a background process with my screen off. Obviously, this is an extreme example, but this graph really shows the cpu is running with the screen off.
TwBNXl.gif


Here's what my screen looks like normally with everything tweaked.


buecK.jpg
 
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I installed BetterBatteryStats and I'm figuring out how its.

In the mean time, my phone took over 5 hours to charge from 3% to 100% last night. So I unplugged it and used it for abit and left it unplugged from 11:30 until 6:30 when I got up. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared in reference to the partial wakelocks, but AudioOut_1 used 11.8%. I saw on XDA forums that it references touch clicks. I disabled those to see if that makes a difference.
 
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