My quick and dirty battery life study
Purpose: To find out about how long the STOCK (1850mAh) battery lasts from 100% charge under varying usage conditions.
Method: I set out over the course of three days to use my phone to varying degrees without charging until the battery got below 10% and keep logs of what I did and battery levels, as well as supplied screenshots of the battery usage page.
Phone setup:
---Software: 4.0.4 / Stock ROM / Franco M4 Kernel (1334mhz max, 384mhz min, ondemand governor) / Stock baseband. As far as apps and internal storage, I have quite a few useful apps... no games, a couple of widgets (extended controls, beautiful widgets etc.)
---Settings: Wifi - on (scan interval is set to every 5 mins, stock is 2), GPS - on, Bluetooth - on, Data - on (4G), Sync - off, Brightness @ 100%
Accuracy: As far as my calculations I measured the sizes of the bars with a tape measure and used that information to calculate my stats, I rounded here and there to make the numbers easier but er'd on the side of accuracy rather than ease... so lets say +/- 5%.
KEEP IN MIND: This, like all things android, is unique to each user. That is why I did my best to supply as much necessary information regarding how my phone is set up and how I used it... this way you can interpret the results in a more meaningful way by comparing them to how your phone is set up and how you use it, and thus be able to more accurately estimate your expected battery life.
Data:
Day 1:
HEAVY USE - 4G service the entire time, made over an hour and half of voice calls the majority of which were over BT, listened to pandora while I drove over BT and with the speaker, used navigation, ran a couple quadrants, some internet browsing, LED flashlight for a few mins, watched some youtube videos, checked my email, about a half hour of wifi tether... I pretty much did a little bit of everything you can do with the phone, I really put it through its paces. I was constantly interacting with my phone, screen was on, things were happening.
Right at 6.5 hours I was down to 10% battery, 7:00 was 6% when I got home.
Day 2:
LIGHT USE - 4G service the whole time, but much less use. Sure I did make a few calls, a little bit of BT, a little bit of pandora and fiddled around doing random phone stuff but this would be considered by most everyone to be a light use day.
After 5.5 hours I was down to 78% battery.
Day 3:
HEAVY USE - Not as heavy as the first day, but still making the phone do plenty of work with plenty of interaction. Lots of use, less screen use
After 6.75 hours I was down to 10% battery
Results: note that "battery life" in this section refers to when the battery hit 10% charge from 100%, not until the phone died... so be sure to factor that in.
Day 1: Battery life - 6.5 hours, screen on time - 53%, awake time - 66%,
Day 2: Battery life - 24.75 hours**, screen on time - 10%, awake time - 40%
Day 3: Battery life - 6.75 hours, screen on time - 25%, awake time - 56%
** - This is a projected value. If I were to have continued using the phone at that same rate it would have taken 24.75 hours for the battery to hit 10% or less. The actual test time for that period was 5.5 hours. ~20% battery loss over 5.5 hours = ~24.75hrs
Interpretation: Well, I think the numbers speak largely for themselves... the life of your GNex is going to be hugely effected by exactly what you do with it and how often you do it, as well as your settings. So keep in mind, this test was conducted making the phone do the maximum amount of work (ie: 4G, tether, 100% brightness, WiFi on, calls, BT, streaming etc... pretty much the definition of heavy use) which most people are not going to do.
The heavy use days (1 and 3) are interesting to look at because they are only 15 minutes apart but the usage characteristics of those days was totally different. I had double the screen on time for day 1 vs day 3 and awake times were comparable (within 10%)... so double the screen time and only lose 15 minutes of battery? Deal.
Conclusion: There is a lot that you can draw from this depending on what you want to get out of it. Here are the main things I notice: Of course the battery isn't going to last ALL DAY if you are smoking through data like there's no tomorrow, calling people, navigating, tweeting, texting, youtubing etc... if you make a powerhouse phone like this work its going to need power, that is to be expected, get used to it. That being said, very rarely will people use the phone as much and have as many battery wasting settings on as I did for the purposes of this test, so the average user can expect their "heavy use" to not be as heavy as this, giving them more expected battery life in those conditions.
There is also a lot to be said for the light use, if you are a light-moderate user battery life should not be an issue for you 90% of the time. This could just be the way my particular phone is set up, but you get the idea. Moderate-heavy users can expect to have to juice up throughout the day if they are really making their phones work. In the grand scheme of things when are you not near a charger be it A/C, USB, Car for more than 7 or 8 hours at a stretch AND using your phone heavily for that entire time... hardly ever. And hey guess what, do what I did, buy a spare battery and charging kit from samsung and roll with an extra battery at all times, or buy an extended battery if you can deal with having a thicker phone. All in all, the battery life is not nearly is bad as everyone makes it out to be, I for one am quite pleased at the moment.
Discussion: I open up the floor...
Purpose: To find out about how long the STOCK (1850mAh) battery lasts from 100% charge under varying usage conditions.
Method: I set out over the course of three days to use my phone to varying degrees without charging until the battery got below 10% and keep logs of what I did and battery levels, as well as supplied screenshots of the battery usage page.
Phone setup:
---Software: 4.0.4 / Stock ROM / Franco M4 Kernel (1334mhz max, 384mhz min, ondemand governor) / Stock baseband. As far as apps and internal storage, I have quite a few useful apps... no games, a couple of widgets (extended controls, beautiful widgets etc.)
---Settings: Wifi - on (scan interval is set to every 5 mins, stock is 2), GPS - on, Bluetooth - on, Data - on (4G), Sync - off, Brightness @ 100%
Accuracy: As far as my calculations I measured the sizes of the bars with a tape measure and used that information to calculate my stats, I rounded here and there to make the numbers easier but er'd on the side of accuracy rather than ease... so lets say +/- 5%.
KEEP IN MIND: This, like all things android, is unique to each user. That is why I did my best to supply as much necessary information regarding how my phone is set up and how I used it... this way you can interpret the results in a more meaningful way by comparing them to how your phone is set up and how you use it, and thus be able to more accurately estimate your expected battery life.
Data:
Day 1:
HEAVY USE - 4G service the entire time, made over an hour and half of voice calls the majority of which were over BT, listened to pandora while I drove over BT and with the speaker, used navigation, ran a couple quadrants, some internet browsing, LED flashlight for a few mins, watched some youtube videos, checked my email, about a half hour of wifi tether... I pretty much did a little bit of everything you can do with the phone, I really put it through its paces. I was constantly interacting with my phone, screen was on, things were happening.
Right at 6.5 hours I was down to 10% battery, 7:00 was 6% when I got home.
Day 2:
LIGHT USE - 4G service the whole time, but much less use. Sure I did make a few calls, a little bit of BT, a little bit of pandora and fiddled around doing random phone stuff but this would be considered by most everyone to be a light use day.
After 5.5 hours I was down to 78% battery.
Day 3:
HEAVY USE - Not as heavy as the first day, but still making the phone do plenty of work with plenty of interaction. Lots of use, less screen use
After 6.75 hours I was down to 10% battery
Results: note that "battery life" in this section refers to when the battery hit 10% charge from 100%, not until the phone died... so be sure to factor that in.
Day 1: Battery life - 6.5 hours, screen on time - 53%, awake time - 66%,
Day 2: Battery life - 24.75 hours**, screen on time - 10%, awake time - 40%
Day 3: Battery life - 6.75 hours, screen on time - 25%, awake time - 56%
** - This is a projected value. If I were to have continued using the phone at that same rate it would have taken 24.75 hours for the battery to hit 10% or less. The actual test time for that period was 5.5 hours. ~20% battery loss over 5.5 hours = ~24.75hrs
Interpretation: Well, I think the numbers speak largely for themselves... the life of your GNex is going to be hugely effected by exactly what you do with it and how often you do it, as well as your settings. So keep in mind, this test was conducted making the phone do the maximum amount of work (ie: 4G, tether, 100% brightness, WiFi on, calls, BT, streaming etc... pretty much the definition of heavy use) which most people are not going to do.
The heavy use days (1 and 3) are interesting to look at because they are only 15 minutes apart but the usage characteristics of those days was totally different. I had double the screen on time for day 1 vs day 3 and awake times were comparable (within 10%)... so double the screen time and only lose 15 minutes of battery? Deal.
Conclusion: There is a lot that you can draw from this depending on what you want to get out of it. Here are the main things I notice: Of course the battery isn't going to last ALL DAY if you are smoking through data like there's no tomorrow, calling people, navigating, tweeting, texting, youtubing etc... if you make a powerhouse phone like this work its going to need power, that is to be expected, get used to it. That being said, very rarely will people use the phone as much and have as many battery wasting settings on as I did for the purposes of this test, so the average user can expect their "heavy use" to not be as heavy as this, giving them more expected battery life in those conditions.
There is also a lot to be said for the light use, if you are a light-moderate user battery life should not be an issue for you 90% of the time. This could just be the way my particular phone is set up, but you get the idea. Moderate-heavy users can expect to have to juice up throughout the day if they are really making their phones work. In the grand scheme of things when are you not near a charger be it A/C, USB, Car for more than 7 or 8 hours at a stretch AND using your phone heavily for that entire time... hardly ever. And hey guess what, do what I did, buy a spare battery and charging kit from samsung and roll with an extra battery at all times, or buy an extended battery if you can deal with having a thicker phone. All in all, the battery life is not nearly is bad as everyone makes it out to be, I for one am quite pleased at the moment.
Discussion: I open up the floor...
