android battery life: left hand not talking to the right hand

[rh71]

something I'm sure most of us care about. Just raising the question if they're too big for their own good.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/1182...ife-nexus-and-motorola-whats-the-problem.html

 

[Ravynmagi]

This article seems kinda stupid.

The Droid Maxxx has great battery life because it has a giant battery. Other manufactures could definitely do this too, we don't need Google and Motorola for that. Manufactures right now seem to want to make slimmer phones, maybe it's what the customers want.

The Nexus 7 wasn't created from scratch in just 4 months. ASUS had been working on a similar tablet for some time already. It just took Google and ASUS 4 months to redesign and existing product to become the Nexus 7.

Google hasn't owned Motorola for 18 months. I believe the deal was only finalized this summer. And Google has made it clear in the interest of fairness to their other partners they want to treat Motorola the same as the other partners. Even if Google works with Motorola on products, which I'm sure they are doing now, I imagine they still had pre-existing commitments to LG to make the Nexus 4 first, and possible commitments to other partners. So there being no magical Motorola Nexus right now doesn't have anything to do with the lack of ability for Google and Motorola to have made one yet.

Personally I think the battery life in my Nexus 4 has been very good. There is room for improvement, especially with idle power usage. But this doesn't keep me up.

And it's kinda weird that this article made it sound like everyone wants a Nexus phone instead of buying regular Android phones from the carriers. My impression is the opposite is the case.

 

[Red Storm]

This article seems kinda stupid.

The Droid Maxxx has great battery life because it has a giant battery. Other manufactures could definitely do this too, we don't need Google and Motorola for that. Manufactures right now seem to want to make slimmer phones, maybe it's what the customers want.

The Nexus 7 wasn't created from scratch in just 4 months. ASUS had been working on a similar tablet for some time already. It just took Google and ASUS 4 months to redesign and existing product to become the Nexus 7.

Google hasn't owned Motorola for 18 months. I believe the deal was only finalized this summer. And Google has made it clear in the interest of fairness to their other partners they want to treat Motorola the same as the other partners. Even if Google works with Motorola on products, which I'm sure they are doing now, I imagine they still had pre-existing commitments to LG to make the Nexus 4 first, and possible commitments to other partners. So there being no magical Motorola Nexus right now doesn't have anything to do with the lack of ability for Google and Motorola to have made one yet.

Personally I think the battery life in my Nexus 4 has been very good. There is room for improvement, especially with idle power usage. But this doesn't keep me up.

And it's kinda weird that this article made it sound like everyone wants a Nexus phone instead of buying regular Android phones from the carriers. My impression is the opposite is the case.

Agreed. People who write this stuff seem pretty clueless to me.

 

[dguy6789]

Android has been the platform that has had the phone with the best battery life for well over a year(And today probably holds the top 4 or 5 slots for best phone battery life). Lots of Android phones have poor battery life but not all.

 

[Zstream]

Android has been the platform that has had the phone with the best battery life for well over a year(And today probably holds the top 4 or 5 slots for best phone battery life). Lots of Android phones have poor battery life but not all.

That maybe so but when it takes hundreds, if not thousands of phones to make four or five with a decent battery life, that is sad.

The only phones that I'm aware that are worth using is the HTC One X, razr i and razr M and I would not be proud of that.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Android has been the platform that has had the phone with the best battery life for well over a year(And today probably holds the top 4 or 5 slots for best phone battery life). Lots of Android phones have poor battery life but not all.

Well that's because they cram massive batteries in Android phones? On a Whr basis, Apple is damn efficient. And it still does quite well in browsing.

I dual carry and there's no way I can get that many hours of on screen time on my Nexus. I can sit and read articles and watch the battery drop like a rock. Meanwhile I can play Temple Run (1 not 2) on my iPhone for hours and still be fine in addition to reading articles. 2 drains battery like mad due to GPU use though.

I have to "conserve" my Nexus 4 on a daily basis and worry about switching airplane mode on or sync off in areas of bad reception, whereas the iPhone 5 I can use liberally without worrying about battery.

Mind you this is with using a custom ROM and a custom kernel that everyone raves for battery.

Honestly, there's a few things about Android that just causes it to use a lot of battery:

- Constant syncing. If you're stuck on 3G, battery life can be significantly worse especially dealing with congestion and low signal. Your 10mbps in ideal world drops to < 1mbps, and it can take a few seconds just to get the data connection started. The iPhone is pure push which saves a lot of battery. Go into a bad data area and your sync will keep your phone awake forever possibly. Blame the apps or whatever, but even your standard suite of apps is prone to malfunction.

- Project Butter while it makes the phone smooth, ramps up 2 cores on a Nexus 4 to 1ghz if not 1.5ghz to run smoothly. It's a brute force hack to get smoothness, but in the end we're just wasting CPU cycles.

 

[Red Storm]

That maybe so but when it takes hundreds, if not thousands of phones to make four or five with a decent battery life, that is sad.

The only phones that I'm aware that are worth using is the HTC One X, razr i and razr M and I would not be proud of that.

Please list these thousand different models. And really, those are the only three phones you think are worth using? That's just odd.

Guy who wrote the article must be talking about his own hands, cause if you want the best battery life you go for an Android flagship.

 

[Anton Ng]

Must be foolish to generalize this. There are thousand brands and thousand products. When there is big screen with touch and active data connections. It get tougher and tougher for the battery to survive.

 

[jacktesterson]

I'm very happy with my battery life. (I'm on a custom kernal though, but stock is also good on this phone)

I've done some light browsing, listened to SiriusXM App for 30 minutes (Stern), checked Tapatalk a few times. Took 2 photo's at work. All day on Wifi with Gmail and Facebook syncing.

Here is its 3:18pm. It's been off the charger since 6:20am. I have 91% left.

 

[vshah]

the biggest cause of battery life issues on android is that android can run apps as services in the background. combine with poorly coded apps and you run into lots of issues.

OTOH, i've been pretty happy with my N4. 24+ hours of use with 4 hours of screen time is plenty for me.

 

[Mopetar]

I don't know if it's a very good comparison to make. First of all, the only thing that Google can do to make battery life better is to improve the efficiency of the OS (Only to occasionally watch the third parties clutter it up with their own crap and diminish any improvements) and possibly to demand a larger battery in a Nexus device, but even then it's hard to say how much control they actually have over the finished device.

Compare this with companies like Apple and RIM who are responsible for both the hardware and the software. They have much greater control over all aspects of the product and can easily ensure that every device released has good battery life. Even Microsoft places some restrictions on the hardware that can be used in WP devices (e.g. screen sizes and SoC) so they're somewhere between the two extremes.

What's left are dozens of companies all trying to make a product that can fill some gap in the market or some other niche role. By that fact alone, there are going to be some Android phones that don't get good battery life, as battery life was sacrificed for some other trade-off such as being thinner or using a more powerful SoC. On the other hand, there are plenty of Android phones that have been designed to have a long battery life.

The whole point of Android was that it could be anything that anyone wanted it to be. If consumers can't be bothered to do a minimal amount of research to make sure that they're getting something that satisfies their needs, that's their own damned fault.

 

[Zstream]

I don't know if it's a very good comparison to make. First of all, the only thing that Google can do to make battery life better is to improve the efficiency of the OS (Only to occasionally watch the third parties clutter it up with their own crap and diminish any improvements) and possibly to demand a larger battery in a Nexus device, but even then it's hard to say how much control they actually have over the finished device.

Compare this with companies like Apple and RIM who are responsible for both the hardware and the software. They have much greater control over all aspects of the product and can easily ensure that every device released has good battery life. Even Microsoft places some restrictions on the hardware that can be used in WP devices (e.g. screen sizes and SoC) so they're somewhere between the two extremes.

What's left are dozens of companies all trying to make a product that can fill some gap in the market or some other niche role. By that fact alone, there are going to be some Android phones that don't get good battery life, as battery life was sacrificed for some other trade-off such as being thinner or using a more powerful SoC. On the other hand, there are plenty of Android phones that have been designed to have a long battery life.

The whole point of Android was that it could be anything that anyone wanted it to be. If consumers can't be bothered to do a minimal amount of research to make sure that they're getting something that satisfies their needs, that's their own damned fault.

Maybe Google should just say, in terms of stars or a ranking system, point out what applications use more battery life. If they can't control the entire eco system, they should be able to assist in alerting users.

 

[thecapsaicinkid]

Well that's because they cram massive batteries in Android phones? On a Whr basis, Apple is damn efficient. And it still does quite well in browsing.

I dual carry and there's no way I can get that many hours of on screen time on my Nexus. I can sit and read articles and watch the battery drop like a rock. Meanwhile I can play Temple Run (1 not 2) on my iPhone for hours and still be fine in addition to reading articles. 2 drains battery like mad due to GPU use though.

I have to "conserve" my Nexus 4 on a daily basis and worry about switching airplane mode on or sync off in areas of bad reception, whereas the iPhone 5 I can use liberally without worrying about battery.

Mind you this is with using a custom ROM and a custom kernel that everyone raves for battery.

Honestly, there's a few things about Android that just causes it to use a lot of battery:

- Constant syncing. If you're stuck on 3G, battery life can be significantly worse especially dealing with congestion and low signal. Your 10mbps in ideal world drops to < 1mbps, and it can take a few seconds just to get the data connection started. The iPhone is pure push which saves a lot of battery. Go into a bad data area and your sync will keep your phone awake forever possibly. Blame the apps or whatever, but even your standard suite of apps is prone to malfunction.

- Project Butter while it makes the phone smooth, ramps up 2 cores on a Nexus 4 to 1ghz if not 1.5ghz to run smoothly. It's a brute force hack to get smoothness, but in the end we're just wasting CPU cycles.

You're just pulling reasons out of thin air. Any proof project butter causes excessive battery drain? Or how not being 'pure push' is in fact the cause?

Your Nexus 4 is more than likely suffering from this
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41855

 

[Eug]

It should also be noted that the "non-Nexus software OS" in the Motorola phones now is almost stock. And the few changes Motorola has added are actually good.

That said, I'd still prefer completely stock.

the biggest cause of battery life issues on android is that android can run apps as services in the background. combine with poorly coded apps and you run into lots of issues.

Yeah, I've wiped my Nexus 7 a couple of times because of battery drain issues. I haven't had to yet on my Razr HD, but that's because I learned from my Nexus 7. It's unfortunate that Google doesn't have better control of this.

 

[Skurge]

You're just pulling reasons out of thin air. Any proof project butter causes excessive battery drain? Or how not being 'pure push' is in fact the cause?

Your Nexus 4 is more than likely suffering from this
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41855

I know, battery life improved going from 4.0.4 to 4.1 on my Gnex.

My GF's iphone 4S is always, I mean ALWAYS dead at the end of the day. Around 8-9pm. Same as my Lumia, a lot better than my old Gnex, but much worse than my co-workers S3 that still has charge left the next morning when he gets into work.

Iphone 4S is a 1400mah battery pushing a 3.5inch 0.6MP display.
SGS3 is a 2100mah battery pushing a 4.8inch pushing a 0.9mp display.

Everyone I know with an iPhone has their primary phone, be it 4, 4S or 5, only lasts a day. Previous gen Android phones were the same. The SGS3 though knocks the socks off the iPhone when comes to battery life. This is the i9300 GSM model btw.

The Nexus 4 might have worse battery life than the iPhone, I don't know. I can't say.

But that author is talking crap if he wants to compare WP with either android of iOS when it comes to battery life. This Lumia 800 is can't compare to those other phones when heavily stressed. It will last forever if you leave it alone or just play music, but the second, you try and surf the web, use a demanding app, watch video, use the camera and the battery just tanks.

 

[Eug]

It should be noted that the RAZR MAXX HD gets great battery life only because it has a 3300 mAh battery. The iPhone 5 has a 1440 mAh battery, and still gets decent battery life by most objective measures (although not as good as the RAZR MAXX HD for obvious reasons).

As I've said before, Android should really try to get itself sorted out with regards to battery life issues, instead of just cramming in larger screens with quad-core CPUs. Motorola recognizes there is an issue, but not being able to control the OS, they've taken the brute force solution of cramming in ginormous batteries as well. At least it's a start though, since some other companies, like Google itself with the Nexus line, continue to just keep their heads in the sand about battery life.

 

[Red Storm]

It should be noted that the RAZR MAXX HD gets great battery life only because it has a 3300 mAh battery. The iPhone 5 has a 1440 mAh battery, and still gets decent battery life by most objective measures (although not as good as the RAZR MAXX HD for obvious reasons).

As I've said before, Android should really try to get itself sorted out with regards to battery life issues, instead of just cramming in larger screens with quad-core CPUs. Motorola recognizes there is an issue, but not being able to control the OS, they've taken the brute force solution of cramming in ginormous batteries as well. At least it's a start though, since some other companies, like Google itself with the Nexus line, continue to just keep their heads in the sand about battery life.

The Maxx doesn't just get great battery life, it gets unmatched battery life (still waiting for that review AT...). Also it doesn't matter how big of a battery they put in there, only if it drastically effects the size of the phone which it doesn't. Honestly I really wonder why Apple doesn't do the same? It's not like they're fighting razor thin margins...

I had the Nexus 4. It lasted me through a typical day just like every other smartphone I've ever had (except for the Droid Charge, 1st gen LTE) including the iPhone. The only phones to last me more than a day have been the older Razr Maxx and the Note 2.

 

[Mopetar]

Maybe Google should just say, in terms of stars or a ranking system, point out what applications use more battery life. If they can't control the entire eco system, they should be able to assist in alerting users.

Almost impossible to measure. First, there are hundreds of thousands of apps to test. That's a problem in and of itself. Second, how do you account for all the differences in hardware and software and all of the other possible confounding variables that could influence the results?

You really can't, or at least not to the extent where the ratings are all that meaningful or more than just a generalization.

 

[Eug]

The Maxx doesn't just get great battery life, it gets unmatched battery life (still waiting for that review AT...). Also it doesn't matter how big of a battery they put in there, only if it drastically effects the size of the phone which it doesn't. Honestly I really wonder why Apple doesn't do the same? It's not like they're fighting razor thin margins...

I like Motorola's solution too, but it's an interim solution to an Android problem beyond Motorola's control.

Why doesn't Apple do the same? Cuz they don't have to. Their battery life on the iPhone 5 is (by objective measures) amongst the best for smartphones (although not THE best, which is the MAXX).

It's sort of the same reason they haven't bothered with a quad-core CPU yet, or 2 GB RAM. They just don't need to do that and incur extra costs to brute force deal with issues that should be addressed through software optimization.

 

[Mopetar]

Honestly I really wonder why Apple doesn't do the same? It's not like they're fighting razor thin margins...

Apple always seems to target a particular usage time and then just make the device thinner or smaller. Like I said before, it's all a matter of engineering trade-offs. Apple chooses a smaller device over a larger battery.

 

[SpongeBob]

I like Motorola's solution too, but it's an interim solution to an Android problem beyond Motorola's control.

Why is this a "problem"? Why should google care if it's not efficient when the handset manufacturer can just stick a huge battery in there and still make it thin and cost-effective? It has already been proven possible with the RMHD. I don't know why other manufacturers aren't following suit of motorola other than the market demand must not be there.

 

[Eug]

Why is this a "problem"? Why should google care if it's not efficient when the handset manufacturer can just stick a huge battery in there and still make it thin and cost-effective? It has already been proven possible with the RMHD. I don't know why other manufacturers aren't following suit of motorola other than the market demand must not be there.

Well, it's not just about usual battery life. It's also about Android's ability to deal with applications that have excessive battery use under certain configs.

Like I said before I've wiped my Nexus 7 twice to eliminate severe battery drain issues. While I haven't had these problems on my RAZR HD, I've read many similar reports of the same behaviour with various Android phones, and it's sometimes very hard to troubleshoot. Just yesterday I read a thread at my carrier's forum from a guy complaining of super-fast battery drain from his RAZR HD. I suspect the main reason I haven't had these problems on my RAZR HD is because I've become much more conservative with what I will install on my Android devices. (I had my Nexus 7 before my RAZR HD.)

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

You're just pulling reasons out of thin air. Any proof project butter causes excessive battery drain? Or how not being 'pure push' is in fact the cause?

Your Nexus 4 is more than likely suffering from this
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41855

Project butter ramps CPU to 1ghz upon ANY touch event. Two cores chugging at 1ghz each. Why? To combat lag. Effectively, Google just made the CPU more responsive. It's like if you just used the performance governor to begin with.

Ok, then there's the fact that butter makes sure the UI is a dedicated thread that stays running at full speed.

How is this not using more power? The CPU is more responsive, blah blah. Yeah there's things like vsync, but the fundamental issue here is the lack of GPU rendering requiring loads of CPU power being thrown at it. Project butter makes sure the CPU is tasked consistently to maintain 60 fps and also it makes sure the CPU is more responsive so that there aren't slowdowns.

Look, I appreciate lag-free, but this isn't a complete solution. It may be a limitation of Android due to the vast amounts of hardware platforms out there, or whatever excuse there is, but it's not as efficient as say iOS or Windows Phone.

Then there's apps. Lots of apps sync. All apps other than the official Twitter app will pull data on a regular basis. The Facebook app pulls data. In fact Twitter refuses to give you push notifications unless you sync data at an interval. Combine that with your weather widgets, google reader, etc. all pulling data at fixed intervals, it's pretty clear data is used a lot.

In general, I find that it's pretty easy for an Android phone to gobble up data. On an iPhone unless you're actively using apps, data use is far more limited in idle conditions. It's for this reason I could get away with the 200mb plan and see friends getting away on 200mb on an iPhone. On Android? I've never been below 800mb for months, and I'd have to try hard to stay low.

I dual carry an iPhone and Nexus 4. It's a pretty noticeable difference. I've carried many other Android phones also like the SGS2, Nexus S, Nexus One, Motorola Droid. None have had spectacular battery.

As for the wakelock stuff, I've tried custom kernels that got rid of wakelocks. It's not that much better.

Go read the iPhone review where they plot power usage in idle and while the phone is active against other phones out there. The iPhone's idle power consumption is ridiculously low. Like half of the competition.

I'm not saying that this means Android is bad or whatever. Google's going for a different beast. You have all your information at your hands any time. Weather widgets constantly refreshing, facebook timelines updating on widgets, news flashing across your homepage, reading forums on a widget, Google Now prompting you left and right based on your location. Yeah. These things are great. I love it, but it's not like they don't use battery. They dramatically change battery use, so unless you keep your Android phone plain as hell with no apps, there's no way you can idle better than an iPhone.

 

[zerocool84]

Well, it's not just about usual battery life. It's also about Android's ability to deal with applications that have excessive battery use under certain configs.

Like I said before I've wiped my Nexus 7 twice to eliminate severe battery drain issues. While I haven't had these problems on my RAZR HD, I've read many similar reports of the same behaviour with various Android phones, and it's sometimes very hard to troubleshoot. I suspect the main reason I haven't had these problems on my RAZR HD is because I've become much more conservative with what I will install on my Android devices.

There must be a bad app killing it for you. I've had nothing but great battery life with the 7.

 

[Eug]

There must be a bad app killing it for you.

Yes probably bad apps. However, my point is that this is a problem on Android.

Now my Nexus 7 has great battery life too, but as I said I've become much more conservative as to what I will install on my Android devices now.