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Help Why does my Pixel 6 Pro when idling uses more battery than my Nexus 5 when idling

minun

Lurker
Feb 14, 2018
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I've recently upgraded to the Google Pixel 6 Pro after 8 years with the Google Nexus 5, so, this would be my first time with a "modern" smartphone as of present

Everything is wonderful except one thing, the battery life

When idling (I do not touch the phone at all, rarely or no lock/unlock) I watched my Pixel 6 Pro drained 6% in the span of 2 hours, so roughly 3% per hour (That is a lot!), compared to my Nexus 5 which feels like it drained 5% if left alone for the whole day

What is going on? is it a "modern" phone thing? is it my phone? my settings? at this rate, it needs to be charged daily

Here is the Battery Usage breakdown;
https://imgur.com/a/mgJsN7n

Battery Usage breakdown while asleep;
https://imgur.com/a/Mj3VDE3

Why does "Mobile Network Standby", "Ambient Display", "Phone Idle" eat so much battery while idling, I am thinking of getting rid of "Your Phone Companion" even though I find it useful, conflicted if it is worth the battery, everything else looks good

EDIT: I am happy to say, after uninstalling "Your Phone Companion" the battery began to show improvement and following all the battery tips helped me maximize it, now I feel like I can go 3 days with the phone without charging it
 
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Yeah, many 'convenience' apps are battery hogs.

And modern phones have more of these apps.

Count on anything automatic to use up battery, because if it is automatic, it is always running.

Things like auto brightness are notorious for using up battery.

Open Developers Options, and inside there you can find Running Services.

This will give you a breakdown of what is running and how much memory each uses.

Any of your own apps may be just as large of an issue, although things like Google Play Services and automatic type apps are usually real pigs.
 
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Here is a sample of mine on this device.

You can see that apps that run in the background are the largest users.
(Although I have Google Play Services blocked from the web, so it is not using much- but itvis still second highest user!)

Things like Telegram are going to use because they must constantly be running in order for alerts to work and to keep updated with current information.

If I turn off the ability for it to run constantly, then when I open the app it takes time for messages and new items to download since the last time it was open.

Screenshot_20211128-181645.png
 
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I'm not familiar with "Your Phone Companion" but it definitely seems to be doing its share of draining battery. (Ah yes, it's the Microsoft thingy to sync stuff from your phone to your computer - that's definitely going to cause an added amount of drain.)

Facebook Messenger is also widely known to cause issues (not the least of which being high battery consumption).

Why does "Mobile Network Standby", "Ambient Display", "Phone Idle" eat so much battery while idling
  • Mobile Network Standby: It takes power to maintain a connection with the mobile network. This can be be impacted significantly by the network signal strength as well. And shifting to a 5G phone can definitely have an impact on that as well - the phone will prefer a faster 5G network even if it's a lower signal strength than the LTE network you may have been using previously.
  • Ambient Display: It takes power to keep parts of the screen lit up (less than illuminating the whole screen, but it still takes some).
  • Phone Idle: ... I'll be honest that I don't remember the details of how this is different from the Mobile Network Standby.

You should also pay attention to how the battery usage is displayed on Android 12 versus... whatever the Nexus 5 was running last (Android 6? Wow - what a jump!). Traditionally, the battery usage screen has displayed the phone's battery consumption since the last full charge. With Android 12, Google decided to shift to only showing consumption for the last 24 hours. I'm sure They think that this is a more intuitive approach but I disagree, and it can make it more difficult to determine exactly how much responsibility should be attributed to different apps and processes.

How long have you had the new phone? I've found that it often takes a new device several days to a week to really settle in. I would encourage you to resist the temptation of fiddling with things in Developer Options or using apps to forcibly freeze other apps unless you really need to. The most I do is watch for any apps which have a high background usage and then set them to "Restricted" using the user-facing battery options, and I never have any trouble with my Pixel 6 Pro's stamina - even with streaming YouTube Music over Bluetooth for most of the work day.
 
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Things like auto brightness are notorious for using up battery.
Though to be fair if auto brightness is using power while the display is off someone needs to send Google developers a "software design for dummies" book...

(And if the display isn't off when the phone is idling then there is your problem ;))
 
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Since nov 17 but I had only really been using it for half a week, prior to that was setting it up
In that case I'd just keep using the phone as normal for a few more days to see if things even out a bit more. The whole Adaptive Battery thing actually does a pretty great job of optimizing battery performance based on how you use your phone - if you let it!
 
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Though to be fair if auto brightness is using power while the display is off someone needs to send Google developers a "software design for dummies" book...

(And if the display isn't off when the phone is idling then there is your problem ;))

It will use the lux sensor to sense the surrounding light, whenever the screen is on.

If auto brightness is not used, then this sensor is (should be) not running.

Also, when the screen is on, the actual act of Auto Brightness adjusting the brightness up and down uses power.

Not to mention that now, on modern devices, this auto control also supposedly 'learns' your brightness habits.

Mine did not (after a week or so), and I was constantly battling the stupid auto crap in order to properly/comfortably see the screen.

It was crazy!
I would go outdoors into bright daylight, and the auto crap put the screen at ~80%.

I would pull down the quick settings, turn the brightness all the way up, just to see it go right back down.
Again and again.

Likewise in the opposite, it would hover around 70% to 90% indoors with a 40w equivalent bulb across the room.

Down to 25% I would place it, only to watch as it creeped right back up.

Stupid automatic junk.
It wasn't learning anything from me, unless I was telling it how to piss me off while I was talking in my sleep.

So I put an obsolete app called Brightness Control (from Curve Fish Apps) on it, and it gives me quick, pinpoint brightness control even faster than Auto Brightness could figure out where I did not want the brightness to be.
 
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