I returned the Nexus today :-(

[kyler13]

Does the LTE radio get shut down when on wifi then? Or do we have to manually go in and change the networks option from LTE/cdma to cdma? I'm not using the LTE radio since I know I'm on wifi, but am I using power keeping the LTE radio on but idle?

All cellular data connections are shut down when connected to Wifi. In the case of LTE, the radio is off. In the case of CDMA, radio is on, but 1xRTT voice only (no EVDO). You should notice better battery life on wifi. I think I can go all day at home on the weekend on wifi and the battery only drops 30% max.

...was it on 4G all day? If so you cannot! compare it to the X. LTE EATS battery, I know that Verizon and the manufactures don't advertise that, but seriously, it kills it.

Allegedly, right? Do you blame the radio? My stock Incredible couldn't make it to lunch from 6am without needing a battery swap. Literally would be down in the teens with light usage. I switched to CM7 and my battery life tripled. Crappy HTC ROM? I haven't noticed a difference between stock and custom ROMs on the Charge, but I can go 6am to 6pm on about 70% of my battery with 4G on all day. Conditionally, if you're pushing/pulling serious data on a weak signal, LTE will suck your battery dry, moreso than EVDO. But on good signal strength, I see absolutely no difference between 3G and 4G with light data usage (ie. not downloading large apps or videos at a time, but rather web browsing and such). Battery life is dynamic to begin with, hinging on a number of factors. It's a bit shortsighted to pin the problems on 4G exclusively.

 

[Shockwave78]

Here's the problem: no, you don't necessarily have a good 4G signal. Now just maybe they addressed this in ICS, but....

*****THE SIGNAL STRENGTH METER IN THE STATUS BAR IS NOT YOUR LTE SIGNAL STRENGTH.*****

Really, this needs to be pinned at the top of any Verizon 4G phone thread. To date, no Verizon 4G phone reports to you the signal strength on the LTE frequency; not in the status bar and not in the menus. It's your CDMA radio because it is always connected for voice. On one side of my building, I get horrible battery life because my phone sucks power trying to hang on to 4G. Where my desk is, I can get through the day on 50% of the battery. I'm willing to bet your GN was hanging on for dear life most of the time.

No it was not, i did a few speed test and I am not sure if i mentioned it in the original post but i was rock solid on about 20 speed test I did over the course of 24hrs and i was always over 20mb down and 7mb up, usually though i was hitting 30 down and 10 up!! This was at my work and pretty much wherever i drove during the day just checking out the LTE...it was fast as hell.

Big difference in everyday task? no not at all, which makes me start to think is it really worth it at this point...I could have just turned 4g off, but 4g was a big factor in me purchasing the phone as most thought it was going to get pretty decent battery life pre-release.

**EDIT**

also just to add...at home I can see the top of the tower in the winter time with all the leaves gone, just barely but i can see it..Its not even a 1/4 mile from my house. I am blanketed in perfect signal everywhere i go in southern NH

 

[Shockwave78]

All cellular data connections are shut down when connected to Wifi. In the case of LTE, the radio is off. In the case of CDMA, radio is on, but 1xRTT voice only (no EVDO). You should notice better battery life on wifi. I think I can go all day at home on the weekend on wifi and the battery only drops 30% max.



Allegedly, right? Do you blame the radio? My stock Incredible couldn't make it to lunch from 6am without needing a battery swap. Literally would be down in the teens with light usage. I switched to CM7 and my battery life tripled. Crappy HTC ROM? I haven't noticed a difference between stock and custom ROMs on the Charge, but I can go 6am to 6pm on about 70% of my battery with 4G on all day. Conditionally, if you're pushing/pulling serious data on a weak signal, LTE will suck your battery dry, moreso than EVDO. But on good signal strength, I see absolutely no difference between 3G and 4G with light data usage (ie. not downloading large apps or videos at a time, but rather web browsing and such). Battery life is dynamic to begin with, hinging on a number of factors. It's a bit shortsighted to pin the problems on 4G exclusively.

This is why i am starting to lean towards the battery problem was not with 4g at all but with something with the OS or it was a bad battery itself...I was at home with wifi with a freshly charged phone and the thing was dropping just as fast as if i was not on WIFI, and yes my WIFI signal is strong

 

[zerocool79346]

All cellular data connections are shut down when connected to Wifi. In the case of LTE, the radio is off. In the case of CDMA, radio is on, but 1xRTT voice only (no EVDO). You should notice better battery life on wifi. I think I can go all day at home on the weekend on wifi and the battery only drops 30% max.



Allegedly, right? Do you blame the radio? My stock Incredible couldn't make it to lunch from 6am without needing a battery swap. Literally would be down in the teens with light usage. I switched to CM7 and my battery life tripled. Crappy HTC ROM? I haven't noticed a difference between stock and custom ROMs on the Charge, but I can go 6am to 6pm on about 70% of my battery with 4G on all day. Conditionally, if you're pushing/pulling serious data on a weak signal, LTE will suck your battery dry, moreso than EVDO. But on good signal strength, I see absolutely no difference between 3G and 4G with light data usage (ie. not downloading large apps or videos at a time, but rather web browsing and such). Battery life is dynamic to begin with, hinging on a number of factors. It's a bit shortsighted to pin the problems on 4G exclusively.

Not allegedly. 1st Gen (all there are out right now) LTE radios are not as power efficient as 3G radios because they are on a bigger process (45nm). They will catch up quite a bit when the 2nd Gen (28nm) are released next year. All other variables (battery size, signal strength, OS...etc) being equal, today's LTE radios will absolutely eat more power than 3G radios. This is a big reason why Jobs declined putting 4G in the Iphone 4S (or 5 as it probably would have been called).

 

[Evilgrin]

Well here is my take on your battery issue
1. you very well may have had an app running in the background that was constantly sending small data packets.
2. you were the unfortunate one to end up with a turd of a battery.

I have to admit that this is my first android phone I come from the world of blackberry phones and although battery life is excellent on BB phones the odd app can and will kill your battery life if you don't close it properly.

I pulled my GN of the charger last night at 11pm It was on almost constatly surfing the web watching an HD movie at 720p (iron man 2) streaming pandora radio(not while watching the movie) DL apps and widgets galore and even a little bit of angry birds. I got the 14% battery warning at about 3:45am that's when I shut it down for the night and finally got some sleep put it on charge at 7am didn't look at it again till almost 11am (went back to bed) so far battery life is not stellar but to be honest my old BB couldn't last that long under the same amount of usage so in my case i'm happy with it as it is and I know that after a few updates and as we as a community learn the ins and outs of ICS the battery life will improve.

*important info* I was on WI-Fi the entire time with 4g shut off screen at approx 50% WI-fi signal was at about -30 to -50db I was on the second floor and my wireless router is in the basement so I wasn't getting the best of WI-fi signals but it never once dropped signal. I think the screen was off for all of about 5min during that entire time.

 

[Premium1]

you best bet is an iphone. Oh wait that isn't doing the best with ios 5. Plus you are stuck with 3g... But really a day? Come on if you were drooling over it you are going to take it back that quick???

 

[Deleted User]

I'm at 63% after taking it off the charger at 7ish AM and using it normally all day until about 10:30PM now

The LTE can obviously have worse battery life but stop being ridiculous and buy the extended battery that doesn't add much bulk. I would suggest a 4S but it's battery life blows.

 

[Androidjunkee]

I wish I could post a screen shot of it but I was at 8% and had 1 Day 2 Hours and 13 min's..

I put it on the charger yesterday evening and took it off at full battery before I went to bed, so it was not on the charger throughout the night. I turn off mobile while I am at work because I dont get that great of service at my office. I do text and call quite a bit for work. I also had the 4G turned on and was surfing all throughout my lunch break. Then was on 3G all night with youtube, FB, and calls/texts..

Honestly man 1 day is not enough to judge the battery and you claim you were constantly performing speed tests throughout the day. Well actually you claimed over 20 in all different areas around town and at your office. So essentially you did over 1 an hour the entire time you owned your Nexus (im obviously taking out the hours you were sleeping).. Just curious as to why you would need LTE on 100% of the time? To perform speed tests? 3G is fantastic throughout the day for surfing and plenty fast and you can always crank the LTE on whenever your streaming, downloading, or whenever you feel like it. I would rather enjoy more than a full day of not worrying about the charger and having 3G on then cranking LTE and performing speed tests based on "the principle of the situation".. I hope it does work out for you whichever phone you decide on. I just hate hearing that you waited 3 months and only gave the phone a day and refused to give 3G a chance for normal day to day surfing. You can even add a shortcut to your home menu that takes you right to the option of turning on the 4G radio.

Just my 2 cents

 

[pragmatous]

you go to any smartphone forum and there's always someone complaining about battery life.

It's just the way it is either adapt and learn or get a dumb phone.

 

[Major54]

I am by no means well versed in the workings of the smartphone. I know PC's inside and out but that is irrelevent to battery knowledge. I have noticed a couple of oddities in my 2 days with my G-Nex.

I live in a pure 3g area. Closest 4g is 90 miles away until ~March 2012. My only smartphones have been a BB that was replaced by the Droid X when it came out and then a DX2 for the wife 2 months back. I learned from the DX to shut off all services I don't use.

Network set to CDMA only, screen to 36% brightness, BT, GPS and WiFi disabled, I got 4:12 minutes from my first charge with the 2100mah extended. Even on day 1 with the DX stock I didn't do that badly. I may have a bad unit as I charged the stock battery and got ~3:50.

The "oddity" was that in store, when trying to activate it, the sales rep tried for over 30 minutes to get it to recognize the 3g tower on the same property as the store. She finally managed to get it activated using a WiFi hotspot in store. Right now with the G-Nex sitting beside the DX2, the DX2 has 4 full bars/steady 3g and the G-Nex 2 bars and the 3g icon arbitrarily appearing and disappearing.

Said times listed were used for downloading and installing apps from the Market (from my DX list the market tracks) and general setup of features, layout, etc. I am thinking the unit itself is worth replacing to see if battery life is any better since it performs fairly equally with 2 different batteries.

Others have mentioned the battery meter being inaccurate. It is. During the first use cycle, twice when doing other things and the phone in sleep mode, it came out of sleep listing a higher battery percentage (as much as 6%) than when it was put to sleep. Is that normal? I wouldn't think it was.

Thanks

 

[dirkbonn]

...was it on 4G all day? If so you cannot! compare it to the X. LTE EATS battery, I know that Verizon and the manufactures don't advertise that, but seriously, it kills it.

I would tend to agree. The extended battery would help, but I think with 4G the big advance will be the 2nd generation 4G radios. I believe they are expected to show up in phones sometime in the 1st half of 2012.

 

[summamd]

I used my gn yesterday with heavy texting and phone use and was only down to 25% after 12 hours. Only thing odd I noticed this morning was that, after charging over night, it still ready only 98%. I rebooted and it seems like that fixed it.

 

[Jay3]

Bottom line, under normal use the two main hogs are the screen and talking on the phone.

If you're not talking on the phone much, the screen should probably be over half your power usage. If it's not, maybe something is wrong. If it is, then you're playing with your phone too much because it is new, and the consumption will get better.

I've done fine for two days. I think the battery meter gets better through a few cycles.

 

[kyler13]

No it was not, i did a few speed test and I am not sure if i mentioned it in the original post but i was rock solid on about 20 speed test I did over the course of 24hrs and i was always over 20mb down and 7mb up, usually though i was hitting 30 down and 10 up!! This was at my work and pretty much wherever i drove during the day just checking out the LTE...it was fast as hell.

Big difference in everyday task? no not at all, which makes me start to think is it really worth it at this point...I could have just turned 4g off, but 4g was a big factor in me purchasing the phone as most thought it was going to get pretty decent battery life pre-release.

**EDIT**

also just to add...at home I can see the top of the tower in the winter time with all the leaves gone, just barely but i can see it..Its not even a 1/4 mile from my house. I am blanketed in perfect signal everywhere i go in southern NH

I hear you, but without the LTE signal strength, you can't really know if this is or is not the problem. From reading around, LTE is a different beast in terms of wireless data speeds. You may be pushing/pulling fast, but on a low signal strength the radio may be boosting power and eating your battery. I should note that even when I'm on a fringe within my building at work, by no means am I getting paltry LTE speeds, but I can almost see the battery ticking down running speed tests and doing other data-related activities. I know you don't want 3G only, but I would have suggested you give it a day on 3G to make sure it wasn't a bad phone or something. Also, LTE vs CDMA coverage area for a cell isn't equal, so there's no guarantee that the tower where you're connected to the CDMA network is the same as your LTE tower. Some of your assumptions aren't necessarily wrong, but they aren't necessarily correct either. I've been waiting months for an app to hit the market that can query the LTE radio signal on any Verizon handset.

 

[Angras]

Sad to hear it. Bit surprised too.

On stock battery... I unplugged at 7:00am when I got to work. It is now 2:41pm - over 7.5 hours later - and I'm at 50% charge.

This is about what I get too....I travel for work, so the Nexus is jumping from tower to tower constantly. In and out of 4G as well. With moderate Youtube use and a lot of twitter I'll get 10-12 hours out of it.

 

[kyler13]

Not allegedly. 1st Gen (all there are out right now) LTE radios are not as power efficient as 3G radios because they are on a bigger process (45nm). They will catch up quite a bit when the 2nd Gen (28nm) are released next year.

Die shrink as a means of improving efficiency applies to CMOS (processors and such), not for MMICs (radios). Power efficiency for radios tends to hinge on the transmission protocols and how the signal is processed (think application specific processing).

 

[speede541]

Die shrink as a means of improving efficiency applies to CMOS (processors and such), not for MMICs (radios). Power efficiency for radios tends to hinge on the transmission protocols and how the signal is processed (think application specific processing).

It has more to do with the fact that the chipsets running the phone and controlling the radios is all smooshed together onto one die, i.e. dual- or quad-core processor + graphics + memory controller + CDMA / GSM + LTE + BT + WiFI. So there should be a noteworthy efficiency improvement when the LTE is finally integrated into this package.

Qualcomm describes Snapdragon S4

 

[kyler13]

Bottom line, under normal use the two main hogs are the screen and talking on the phone.

Agreed. This is why with AMOLED screens, I've tended towards art or patterns on black backgrounds instead of photos or bright, colorful, full screen images when setting my wallpaper. Wouldn't make a bit of difference with LCD, but every black pixel in AMOLED is off and not consuming power.

 

[speede541]

Agreed. This is why with AMOLED screens, I've tended towards art or patterns on black backgrounds instead of photos or bright, colorful, full screen images when setting my wallpaper. Wouldn't make a bit of difference with LCD, but every black pixel in AMOLED is off and not consuming power.

Thanks, that's a good point for me to consider. I've already dismissed the live wallpaper as "cool but wasteful" though the CPU/GPU overhead to process this is probably, in the end, insignificant.

 

[dirkbonn]

Here's a link to an article by MSNBC regarding the NEXUS and battery life,

Technolog - Battery life is price you pay for Verizon Galaxy Nexus

 

[kyler13]

It has more to do with the fact that the chipsets running the phone and controlling the radios is all smooshed together onto one die, i.e. dual- or quad-core processor + graphics + memory controller + CDMA / GSM + LTE + BT + WiFI. So there should be a noteworthy efficiency improvement when the LTE is finally integrated into this package.

Qualcomm describes Snapdragon S4

I see the benefit of integrating more baseband function into the processor itself for power efficiency, but since these things are fabbed in Si, some portion of the radio will always be off-chip and not subjected to the die shrink. I see in the article you linked that it makes mention of baseband integration, but not in entirety as it mentions support for radios, not integration of them. I've seen mention of 65nm designs for compound semiconductor RF processing, but clearly it still lags Si logic.

 

[DJ_10]

lol samsung tried adding a button on the bottom....but apple put a stop to that. haha

 

[Sodequis]

11 hours 47minutes
Screen on and activity for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours.. soo about 9 hours of sleeping... sitting at 61%. should be able to go a full day of moderate use on a single charge.. with 4g on.

Better than the Rezound was doing. Tis only been a day as well.

 

[Laxstar785]

I had simar experiences with it showing low battery really quickly I fully charged fully drained until it turned off three times and its way more accurate and easily lasts .e all day with moderate usage once we see some pics of the extended battery and how much it bulges out I may even get that or just wait awhile until 4g is better near my house when I may actually need it

 

[rawness]

I had simar experiences with it showing low battery really quickly I fully charged fully drained until it turned off three times and its way more accurate and easily lasts .e all day with moderate usage once we see some pics of the extended battery and how much it bulges out I may even get that or just wait awhile until 4g is better near my house when I may actually need it

We got that before the phone came out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6J34VPPXVlohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6J34VPPXVlo

Verizon Galaxy Nexus extended battery makes blurrycam debut, shows off its hump - Engadget