I guess you are talking about verizon Gnex?
It will depend on your definition of moderate usage and signal strength in your area. It seems my nexus can go over 30 hours on 3G if used lightly. I would say about 20~24 hours with moderate usage.

I find JD free version at balanced mode gives about 40% extra juice, but I rarely use it and keep it disabled most of time. I also avoid using SNS apps like G+, Facebook that are notorious on battery drain.

 

Using the extended battery and Juice Defender Plus on default Balanced mode, I can go ALL DAY LONG on a charge. My usage includes occasional texting, e-mails, apps, web surfing, videos and nearly continuous music streaming to my Bluetooth headset. And I never turn off 4G (which is very strong in my area).

"ALL DAY LONG" means - for me - from about 7 AM to about 9 PM. Yeah, she's about dead at the end of the day and goes back on the charger with only about 10% battery left... but she makes it.

 

Have you nixed the Razr Maxx as an option?
My battery life is so-so. I'm fortunate to not really use it at work and just keep it on the charger. Chief's tips are legit, but I don't want to add the extra bulk (which I know isn't much) of the extended battery and Juice Defender sometimes has mixed results.

 

OP i assume your talking about a VZW nexus correct? If so would you mind editing your title to add (VZW)? Thanks.

 

How strong is 3G where you will be? Do you have access to WiFi? How much will you use it during the day?

I don't use JD, and as an experiment I ran a whole day without WiFi. That amounted to 14+hrs on 4G and a little 3G to total 15 hrs. My usage was basically very moderate. 1 hour of screen on time (which is really the best measure of usage for me), 20 min of voice calls, some texts, but no streaming of video or audio and no listening to music even locally on the device.

I imagine that I could have run at least 2-3 more hours on 3G, and I can easily get 20+ hours if most of my day is on WiFi.

Note that screen brightness plays a big factor in battery usage. I try to keep mine low. Mostly I am at 10%, though lately I've been sacrificing battery time to run at 30% and see how I feel. It costs me a couple of hours but I can usually make it from 7am to 11pm without charging. Last night I had to plug in after about 14 hours because I ran nearly 3 hours of screen on time.

 

If you look on Rezound, Razr forums, you can easily see the same battery complains. It really depends on how it's used and it's fairly easy to kill battery in 5~6 hours in phones of this much caliber. But that's under pretty extreme usage or some bad apps going on. So yes, you can get 12 hours.

 

My phone is off the charger from 7am to usually 10-12 at night. I do just basic stuff. Don't touch it much at work except some music and emails. I live out in the sticks with no 4G signal for like 75 miles and then fairly bad 3G here at home and work, like -93dBm.

You should be able to make it a full day no problem, people who say they get 5 or 6 hours are either using it the whole time or have a bunch of crap running in the background. Like Tim said, you are only going to get around 3 hours of screen time, i even keep mine around 40 percent brightness.

I say go for it and if it doesn't work for you take it back and swap it for a RAZR MAXX or something else that fits your needs.

 

I get around 10-12 hours if 4g usage before I need to charge. When I'm on wifi, I can usually make around 24 hours.

I always have a charger around though....so its not a huge concern.

 

IMO they all have poor battery live. Although I have a friend that has the maxx and he loves it.

 

Honestly, I don't think I've ever gotten less than 14hrs on my busiest day. But even on my busiest day I have never used the screen for more than 3 hours.

Just for reference I did a test the other week to see how much battery the screen uses doing nothing else. Just a static Google browser screen.

 

buy and carry an extra battery at all times and be done with it.

typical usage for me (2.25hrs screen on time, 50/50 LTE wifi, hour streaming music, 10 minutes voice calls, 20 texts, forum browsing, light gaming) i can get about 13 hours out of her.
but i have an extra battery when i know i will be out and about so i can just swap it in and be done with it.

 

vzw customers should not get the Nexus, and eventually, google will get the hint that the Nexus on vzw was a mistake and should never be repeated again... there was a reason the Nexus One never made it to VZW... proof is how VZW screwed up the Nexus experience for it's customers with slow updates to latest OS, and blocking use of google wallet...

Razr MAXX is probably a better bet for vzw customers...

 

I hope verizon does get the next nexus. Love my phone.

 

I am thrilled VZW got the Nexus. Not a mistake in my book.

Yes, it took 30 days longer to get 4.0.4 (OK, I got the leak but the OTA will be out shortly) than the GSM Galaxy Nexus. That is too long. I don't think VZW needs a full month to test their radios. 2 weeks I could live with... 30 days, eh, I'll survive but I won't like it.

As for Google wallet, read the article I link to below. ONLY the Sprint Nexus S actually came with Wallet. No other Nexus did before this. Plus, you could install wallet yourself... I did. As for the "bloatware" people complain about, well I just posted this in another thread but I'll repost here...

 

So I updated to 4.0.4 a while back and managed to pull this off yesterday. I admit I didn't touch my phone much and part of that was while I was at a movie, but I must say that it did alright. Screen time was like just over 2 hours. Also that is 4:26am.