Help 2 Brief Questions......Battery / M update

[Raymond42262]

1. I don't come here often but I have noticed that there are several threads about battery issues. But I have not found one that pertains to me. My phone seems to drain quicker than it did when it was new......I bought it in February 2014. That does not bother me because I am rarely far from a charger. But..........it used to be that my phone would charge at the rate of about 1 percent per minute. If it was 40 percent full it would take 60 minutes to reach 100 percent capacity.

Now........it is about 3x that rate. Is it because my phone is getting old or because of a recent update to 5.1.1 ?

I have tried cutting it on and off numerous times.........I don't have a lot of apps that were not original to the phone ........I keep the phone volume down and the back light turned up. Nothing has changed in my useage, just the battery.

Do others have the same problems or is it just my phone ?

2. I see others with N5 have the new M update. I have T Mobile........are we going to get a free update for a 2 year old phone ? Is there a significant improvement ?

3. What kind of phone do N5 users plan on replacing it with, when its is necessary ?
I was thinking of the N6, Motorola X or even an Apple. I wonder what others will jump to.

It has been a good phone for me so far.........no complaints other than the battery issue.......and the crappy camera and speaker. But I can live with that............

OK, so that was 3 questions............no biggeee

Many thanks for your help.............

 

[GuitarG20]

1. Are you saying it's charging faster or slower than it used to? I'm not sure which way you meant with the 3x part. Also, to discount any differences, is it the same charger and cord or have you changed?

2. If someone has android M, it's because they specifically installed the developer preview themselves. It hasn't been released on the nexus factory image page or by OTA. Having said that, yes you will likely get the update once it is released.

 

[Raymond42262]

It is charging 3x slower or more..........I woke up this morning and it was at 79 percent.
I plugged it into the wall and 30m later it was at 81 percent.

It has been recharging this way for about the last 3 months or so. I have tried running it down to almost zero percent, deleting unused apps, reducing the phone volume and reducing the backlight brightness . It still recharges slower than me getting out of bed on a cold morning.

Thanks for the M update.

 

[EarlyMon]

It is charging 3x slower or more..........I woke up this morning and it was at 79 percent.
I plugged it into the wall and 30m later it was at 81 percent.

It has been recharging this way for about the last 3 months or so. I have tried running it down to almost zero percent, deleting unused apps, reducing the phone volume and reducing the backlight brightness . It still recharges slower than me getting out of bed on a cold morning.

Thanks for the M update.

Try GSam Battery Monitor - after a full charge, while running on battery, with the screen off for a bit - half hour is good.

Go to the graphic, Others tab - is the phone being held awake with the screen off?

If so, you have something running hard enough to wear down battery life and to take longer to charge (like, trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom).

Another way to rule out hardware - charge with the phone off. If that goes quickly, then it's definitely a running process while the phone is on and charging.

 

[Raymond42262]

Try GSam Battery Monitor - after a full charge, while running on battery, with the screen off for a bit - half hour is good.

Go to the graphic, Others tab - is the phone being held awake with the screen off?

If so, you have something running hard enough to wear down battery life and to take longer to charge (like, trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom).

Another way to rule out hardware - charge with the phone off. If that goes quickly, then it's definitely a running process while the phone is on and charging.

Thanks for everyone's help.
At 2 38 this afternoon I had 88 percent strength.
At 3 06 I had 91 percent.
It took 28m to charge it up 3 percent.
And this was with the phone cut off while it was recharging.

I deleted a couple of more apps I rarely used like the waze and a bar code reader.
And I reduced the backlight to about 50 percent as opposed to full illumination.

Maybe it is just getting old and the battery is wearing out.

 

[Gatman]

You said you are "rarely far from a charger", so I'm assuming you have more than one charger and you're seeing this on all of them. Just wanted to rule out the charger as the culprit.

~Gary

 

[Raymond42262]

You said you are "rarely far from a charger", so I'm assuming you have more than one charger and you're seeing this on all of them. Just wanted to rule out the charger as the culprit.

~Gary

Yes, I have a charger at home, work and in the car.
I have problems at home and work.........

But that was a good line of thinking.

Thanks for your time !

Raymond


BTW, I wonder what kind of phone people are going to replace their N5 with when the time comes ?
I wonder if there is a phone that dominates the others ?
It would be a nice survey......

 

[BynoUK]

Replaced my phone with the OnePlus One back in January (wasn't shelling out £500 for a Nexus 6)

Very happy with my choice still

 

[nx1977]

New nexus 5 is due October.

Providing I can last that Long with this appalling battery wakelock issue Google are doing sweet FA about, I may bag one.

But at this rate I'm really falling out of love with android given Google's ostrich approach to Lollipop

 

[Raymond42262]

New nexus 5 is due October.

Providing I can last that Long with this appalling battery wakelock issue Google are doing sweet FA about, I may bag one.

But at this rate I'm really falling out of love with android given Google's ostrich approach to Lollipop

Yeah, I cannot believe that some phones are still being sold with Kitkat.
I'd like to try an Apple but I'm not going to pay 696 dollars for a cell phone when I can buy a new Nexus for 396 and get the same results. My last 2 laptops did not cost 696, I sure as heck won't pay that much for a phone.

Maybe Apple will drop in price. Demand in China is falling and so is Apple's stock price. I doubt if the new Apple will be cheaper but maybe the current 6 or 6S will be.

 

[Spec2nirvash]

Something else to consider.... Your charging rate depends on the output of the charger as well as the cord being used.

If you use a charger with 2.0A output or better your phone should charge from zero to 100% in 90 min or less, factory charger and cable should charge within 2 hrs or less.

If I use any older chargers that have 1.0 +/- amps and/or cheap gas station cables you're looking at almost 4 hours charge.

I've had the same results with every OS starting with stock 4.4.2 all the way up to CM12.1 (5.1.1 nightly). I will also note that battery longevity increased substantially when I started using Lollipop Cyanogen 12, stock 5.0 seemed to drain a little bit more than KitKat.

There are many variables to battery life, my results have always been with running bare minimum, only a small handful if daily apps, no CPU tweaking, and I charge only once overnight. Your situation I'm sure is different... If you plug your phone in several times a day, like heavy cycling, your battery life will surely decline with that kind of use, may want to look into a new battery. As others have mentioned, check app activity and permissions to see if wakelock is an issue. Lastly, Waze app is probably a major factor. Its a cool app, but not worth the battery drain it gave me. Hope that helps some.

~spec

 

[Raymond42262]

Thanks, I deleted Waze after your recommendation ........I rarely use it anyhow.

I never thought about the capacity of the chargers..........

I wonder how many apps the average person installs beyond the ones provided with the phone ?

These are the ones I have installed:

BBC News 25.5 MB
Block It! 3.7 MB ...........it's a pop up blocker
BP Watch 18.6 ..............it's a fun app that measures you blood pressure after exercise
Cartwheel 25.3.................a coupon app from Target
CNBC 31.24.....................news
Curb 24.86.........................taxi app
Drudge Report 26.4..................news
Fit. 28.5...................measures how far you long and run
Gold Live 22.1............current gold and silver prices
Heart Rate...18.7........gives heartbeats per minute
Iheart Radio........38.1........link to online radio
Market Watch.16.7.........current stock quotes and market news
Mr. Number 23.9............an app for blocking numbers
Penny Stock alerts..17.1.........app for penny stock news
QR Code Reader.....13.9......barcode reader.............rarely use it
Radio+...17.8.............app for online radio
Scutify..46.4..........forum for stock chat
Scutify Sentiment.......7.5.........app from Scutify
Shop Savvy...35.4........some kind of sale or coupon app..........I don't think I have ever used it
Tune in radio....50.3......online radio app
Yahoo Weather....35.4.........gives local weather in a nice format
WFAA........ 28.2..............weather and news from local station
Youtube..........40.28.......I got it but I rarely use it.......

--------------

Damn,..........I did not realize I had downloaded so many........... 23 with 595.9 MB data .
I wonder what the average is ?

 

[Raymond42262]

Okay I searched..........the average American has 29 apps installed on their phone........in addition to what is already there.
I did not find a reference to the total MB's used.

 

[csiemers]

Damn,..........I did not realize I had downloaded so many........... 23 with 595.9 MB data .
I wonder what the average is ?

I think you answered yourself why you have battery issues. Most of those apps are constantly reaching out to "home." That activity chews up battery life. Many of those I bet you could access via browser and not have to have an app constantly pinging in the background.

 

[mogelijk]

I haven't really seen Waze be a problem, despite having run it on multiple phones. I'll admit that, like all Navigation programs, it uses a lot of power but the nice thing about Waze is that it can (and should be) turned off in the app (or the pull down notifications).

 

[Raymond42262]

I deleted WAZE, the QR bar code reader and Shop Savvy. That was about 95 MB.
Then I uploaded Periscope, which I am still trying to figure out how to use.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Spec2nirvash]

I think you answered yourself why you have battery issues. Most of those apps are constantly reaching out to "home." That activity chews up battery life. Many of those I bet you could access via browser and not have to have an app constantly pinging in the background.

I have to agree there. Most apps, especially news, stocks, games and Yahoo apps are constantly pinging servers to give you info, check for mail etc.

There are apps, and I think there are settings in the 5.x security menu that allow you to limit or eliminate any particular app's data consumption. You can use that to curb the traffic on your Nexus, perhaps even turn sync off and check your stocks, mail or whatever manually.

If you keep WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS on, that's also going to take a mega hit on the battery. Turn those off when you don't need them. WiFi, when toggled on is constantly searching for open networks and also has permission from MANY apps to transfer data, assist GPS in attaining a fix for your phone, to name a few.

Take a good look at your settings and app activities. Just a few setting changes alone could add hours to your battery. If you have a data cap on your phone and really need the WiFi, just toggle it on/off as needed. Have unlimited data? If you have good signal, leave it off altogether. 3G/LTE uses less battery than WiFi. For me, anyway.

Let us know if any of that worked for you. There are other things you can do.

~spec