How fast does your N5 battery drain?

ragnarkar · Oct 30, 2014

I find that my battery drains about 1% every hour or so when idle in the following state:

- GPS, Wifi, LTE, and Bluetooth ON.
- No misbehaving apps running in the background.
- Auto-sync off for everything except Gmail

Does this drain rate sound typical?

Also, I generally don't bother with turning GPS, Wifi, data, Bluetooth, etc. off every time I'm done using the particular service. I find it too bothersome when I need to use one of those services and have to fumble around my settings to get it going again. For example, when I want to search for restaurants nearby in Yelp, I'd like to open Yelp and start searching right away, not be greeted by a message that my GPS is not working then wonder what's going on before realizing I turned it off 4 hours ago to save power and have to fumble around in my settings to turn it back on again. By the time I have the GPS working, I've already lost my original train of thought about picking a restaurant.

GuitarG20 · Oct 30, 2014

My battery tends to drain at a rate of 5-6% per hour during my normal day. This includes: hangouts (a lot of hangouts), about 15 minutes of calls a day, and about 2 hours of listening to locally cached music.

Omar Days · Oct 30, 2014

1% battery drain per hour idle equates 100 hours in total if you were to just leave your phone in standby. I'd say that's pretty good.

Rxpert83 · Oct 30, 2014

Cell signal is one of the largest battery consumers on a device, rivaled only by the screen. So "normal" can depend largely on where you are and what kind of signal you are getting.

Another factor is what is syncing in the background, and how often that happens. The more the device is being woken, the more drain.

ragnarkar · Oct 30, 2014

Omar Days said:
1% battery drain per hour idle equates 100 hours in total if you were to just leave your phone in standby. I'd say that's pretty good.

I'm estimating it around 1% per minute with all background apps killed and wifi, gps, etc. all on though this estimate is only based on a few data points (seeing the % drop like 2% in roughly the last 2 hours) and is no scientific result.

On a side note, I've noticed the app "Google Search" draining a ton of power. Whenever it's active, it drains about 5% every single hour with no other apps on. I have the Battery Doctor app installed and it keeps complaining about its wastefulness.. anyone else see to have this issue?

GuitarG20 · Oct 30, 2014

ragnarkar said:
I'm estimating it around 1% per minute with all background apps killed and wifi, gps, etc. all on though this estimate is only based on a few data points (seeing the % drop like 2% in roughly the last 2 hours) and is no scientific result.

On a side note, I've noticed the app "Google Search" draining a ton of power. Whenever it's active, it drains about 5% every single hour with no other apps on. I have the Battery Doctor app installed and it keeps complaining about its wastefulness.. anyone else see to have this issue?

I assume you mean per hour?

The amount google seach uses probably depends on what your location settings are etc.

ragnarkar · Oct 31, 2014

Here's a screenshot of battery doctor with Google search using 26% of my battery in the last 24hr. Keep in mind I use Bing as the default search on my phone and barely touch Google.. I also ended up killing it countless times so the proportion would've been even higher if I left it alone.

Incakola · Oct 31, 2014

ragnarkar said:
View attachment 76924

Here's a screenshot of battery doctor with Google search using 26% of my battery in the last 24hr. Keep in mind I use Bing as the default search on my phone and barely touch Google.. I also ended up killing it countless times so the proportion would've been even higher if I left it alone.

Turn off hotword detection?

nx1977 · Nov 1, 2014

Sounds good to me.

I can drain mine in 4 hours with constant use surfing the web

Bartman2 · Nov 1, 2014

Something was draining my battery 10%/hr last week except when I was home. This week it's 1-2%/hr on standby.

nx1977 · Nov 1, 2014

The recent play update killed mine in half the time of normal.

Firstly time the update has affected me that much. But a few days later it's back to normal.

Just what does it do behind the scenes after updating itself to cause so many issues?

kingdave · Nov 3, 2014

In the last few days my battery has become so poor the phone is getting to the point of being worthless.

I unplugged at 8am this morning, and at the time of writing this (10.40am GMT) I'm down to 33% with almost no usage! Yesterday was similar, I plugged it in at around 5.30pm and by 9.45pm I was down to 6% with no usage at all.

Looking at the battery info screen, Google+ was using 25% yesterday and today's drain is down to Android OS using 77%.

I hope this gets fixed soon as I can't carry an external battery or charger around with me all the time.

Any ideas?

Omar Days · Nov 3, 2014

kingdave said:
In the last few days my battery has become so poor the phone is getting to the point of being worthless.

I unplugged at 8am this morning, and at the time of writing this (10.40am GMT) I'm down to 33% with almost no usage! Yesterday was similar, I plugged it in at around 5.30pm and by 9.45pm I was down to 6% with no usage at all.

Looking at the battery info screen, Google+ was using 25% yesterday and today's drain is down to Android OS using 77%.

I hope this gets fixed soon as I can't carry an external battery or charger around with me all the time.

Any ideas?

Do you have Google Now on? I found it a terrible battery drain. I turned it off and have great battery life. Also, I have location reporting off as well. Maps, GPS, etc still work fine with it turned off.

kingdave · Nov 3, 2014

Omar Days said:
Do you have Google Now on? I found it a terrible battery drain. I turned it off and have great battery life. Also, I have location reporting off as well. Maps, GPS, etc still work fine with it turned off.

I do have Now turned on, but I always have. It is only in the last couple of days that battery consumption has got this fast. I've also not changed any of the other settings around location - GPS is off, but location reporting is on.

Everything is identical to how it was a week ago, only now the battery is depleting much faster

Hook · Nov 3, 2014

kingdave said:
I do have Now turned on, but I always have. It is only in the last couple of days that battery consumption has got this fast. I've also not changed any of the other settings around location - GPS is off, but location reporting is on.

Everything is identical to how it was a week ago, only now the battery is depleting much faster

It may not help, but try a simulated battery pull. Hold the power button, ignoring the pop up menu, until the unit spontaneously shuts down and reboots. That will often straighten out power issues the same way a physical battery pull can.

kingdave · Nov 3, 2014

Thanks. Tried that and now 41 mins later I don't think it has made any difference. I charged to 100% and this is what has happened since I unplugged it....

JBentleyR · Nov 3, 2014

kingdave said:
Thanks. Tried that and now 41 mins later I don't think it has made any difference. I charged to 100% and this is what has happened since I unplugged it....

Ah! Google +

I disabled that long ago and haven't missed it.

fartblossom · Nov 5, 2014

Rxpert83 said:
Cell signal is one of the largest battery consumers on a device, rivaled only by the screen. So "normal" can depend largely on where you are and what kind of signal you are getting.

Another factor is what is syncing in the background, and how often that happens. The more the device is being woken, the more drain.

I experienced this last week, when I went camping and couldn't get LTE, kept dropping to 3g and even 2g. My battery wouldn't last 6 hours.

nx1977 · Nov 23, 2014

Seems the WiFi never sleeping bug still exists as mine drained in a few hours

BynoUK · Nov 23, 2014

Mine lasts a day or two, I'd say I'm a medium to heavy user.

csiemers · Nov 23, 2014

Mine was lasting about 1/2 a day when I saw that Google Exchange services was taking up most of the processing. I dumped it and went to using the Outlook app and now I'm getting about 3/4 of a day. Before Android 5.0 I was easily getting a full day. I'm definitely not impressed with the supposed better battery life that was touted before 5.0 was released.

thisISjoel · Nov 24, 2014

Mine's been draining pretty quick too, not sure if it's a kernel thing (franco) or 5.0 thing but it hasn't been great.

GuitarG20 · Nov 24, 2014

Personally, I've found battery life to be better on 5.0 then before. Whereas before I was looking at 20-30% at the end of most days (about 15-17 hours for me) now I'm looking at 30-40% most days.

YoungGun · Nov 24, 2014

I did a clean wipe and flash to 5.0 few days ago.. Battery life has gone down since then.. No idea why o_O

BCM · Nov 25, 2014

YoungGun said:
I did a clean wipe and flash to 5.0 few days ago.. Battery life has gone down since then.. No idea why

I did too and was noticing bad battery life. I had two apps that I'm blaming, a 500px wallpaper app and surprisingly Google Fit. Once I disabled Google Fit my battery life doubled, it was amazing. I can easily get through my normal day now without plugging in.

How fast does your N5 battery drain?

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