Battery Testing

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Yes I make it no secret I'm disappointed with battery performance of my Nexus 4. It flat out sucks. It's purely anecdotal that I find my iPhone 5 to perform better in terms of battery, but there's plenty of reasons why that might be.

So are there objective battery tests I can run on my phone similar to what Anandtech or GSM Arena runs?

Anyhow, I'm most interested in seeing how much installing custom ROMs or custom kernels, or tweaking such as undervolting, etc has done to my battery life. So after much digging, this is what I found:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.battery.utility

Perhaps this is something we should try before talking about "My XYZ phone lasts for AB hours, it's soooo much better than ABC phone."

 

[ChronoReverse]

I do a video playback test that's consistent when I want to do a drain test. MX Player, specific version, software decoding, specific video clip in loop, volume off, brightness max, airplane mode.



Unfortunately, it seems your problems might stem from apps that background syncing poorly from reading your previous posts.

Battery test apps tend to test the phone under load, which is interesting but doesn't cover your problem really.

I'd try installing GSAM Battery Monitor and collecting a week's worth of usage data to see if there's anything to be done.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I do a video playback test that's consistent when I want to do a drain test. MX Player, specific version, software decoding, specific video clip in loop, volume off, brightness max, airplane mode.



Unfortunately, it seems your problems might stem from apps that background syncing poorly from reading your previous posts.

Battery test apps tend to test the phone under load, which is interesting but doesn't cover your problem really.

I'd try installing GSAM Battery Monitor and collecting a week's worth of usage data to see if there's anything to be done.

Well I think that's why the browser test is actually quite representative of phone use. If there are apps that I run that sync in the background unecessarily, it's using data excessively. It's those data transmissions that drive battery drain up. The Nexus 4 does absolutely horrendously in the 3G web test. 4.17 hours? Sure it's at fixed intervals, but if you spread those connections out across a day, that could be representative of my phone syncing in the background.

Either way there's something fundamentally bad about the 3G chip which makes the N4 perform so horribly.

I do monitor wakelocks and stuff but I only have a few apps syncing. There's plenty of users here who claim they sync everything and still get great battery life. Anyway I don't want to turn it into a my battery problems thread, although I will be open to posting screenshots and going through my use patterns.

 

[ChronoReverse]

That's true. It's one of the reasons why I'm glad the next generation phones (One, GS4) seem to have really good 3G web browsing battery times (on par with the excellent iPhone 5).

 

[QueBert]

Well I think that's why the browser test is actually quite representative of phone use. If there are apps that I run that sync in the background unecessarily, it's using data excessively. It's those data transmissions that drive battery drain up. The Nexus 4 does absolutely horrendously in the 3G web test. 4.17 hours? Sure it's at fixed intervals, but if you spread those connections out across a day, that could be representative of my phone syncing in the background.

Either way there's something fundamentally bad about the 3G chip which makes the N4 perform so horribly.

I do monitor wakelocks and stuff but I only have a few apps syncing. There's plenty of users here who claim they sync everything and still get great battery life. Anyway I don't want to turn it into a my battery problems thread, although I will be open to posting screenshots and going through my use patterns.

question, if you turn off 3g and browse on Wifi how's the battery life?

 

[holden j caufield]

battery has been good for me, moves like 1% when left overnight with wifi on. I do have auto brightness off and brightness turned way down, screen idle turn off at 30 secs and the phone easily lasts me the entire day with 40% left. Mine was manufactured in March.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

question, if you turn off 3g and browse on Wifi how's the battery life?

excellent... well any phone's battery is excellent on wifi... basically at night the phone does well on 3G too.

I think Google latitude updates very little if you don't move. The other factor is that at night there's fewer notifications and data syncing through. But during the day when exchange mail is syncing, it seems like quite a bit of data flows past my phone. There's also the issue of Google+. I think those Ingress groups I join is probably still causing excessive data flow. I've turned off most Google+ notifications, but perhaps messenger constantly syncs in the background still.

 

[Skurge]

Well I think that's why the browser test is actually quite representative of phone use. If there are apps that I run that sync in the background unecessarily, it's using data excessively. It's those data transmissions that drive battery drain up. The Nexus 4 does absolutely horrendously in the 3G web test. 4.17 hours? Sure it's at fixed intervals, but if you spread those connections out across a day, that could be representative of my phone syncing in the background.

Either way there's something fundamentally bad about the 3G chip which makes the N4 perform so horribly.

I do monitor wakelocks and stuff but I only have a few apps syncing. There's plenty of users here who claim they sync everything and still get great battery life. Anyway I don't want to turn it into a my battery problems thread, although I will be open to posting screenshots and going through my use patterns.

I don't think it is, since browser tests also tax the display. Your phone syncing in the background will on tax the radio. The Radio which can be found in many other phones that use S4pro and get much better battery life. It's just that the phone isn't optimized very well. Similar to what Samsung/HTC/LG does on their flagship phones. These new S600 phones use the Same radio's if I'm not mistaken, but they have much bettery life.

I think ChronoReverse hit it on the head with his suggestion.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I don't think it is, since browser tests also tax the display. Your phone syncing in the background will on tax the radio. The Radio which can be found in many other phones that use S4pro and get much better battery life. It's just that the phone isn't optimized very well. Similar to what Samsung/HTC/LG does on their flagship phones. These new S600 phones use the Same radio's if I'm not mistaken, but they have much bettery life.

I think ChronoReverse hit it on the head with his suggestion.

You can run browser tests with the screen on or off. It depends what you want to test right? Screen off = testing radio. Screen on = radio + screen, with screen occupying most of the drain. Video = CPU/gpu or some sort of prime/folding app can test cpu as well. Using a browser test with screen off gives you a representative feeling for how your phone will do on background syncing. That's one thing that's not mentioned in any of these tests.

I'm not sure about the web browsing tests that GSM Arena does, but they do mention the HTC One has "high standby battery drain." I know what they mean, but how did they even test this?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

question, if you turn off 3g and browse on Wifi how's the battery life?

So after reading the HTC One review, there's something about HTC using network batching optimizations to improve battery life. I'm curious if this is implementable in AOSP Android. BTW, now that you have a Nexus 4, please let me know how the battery is compared to your previous phones.

 

[QueBert]

So after reading the HTC One review, there's something about HTC using network batching optimizations to improve battery life. I'm curious if this is implementable in AOSP Android. BTW, now that you have a Nexus 4, please let me know how the battery is compared to your previous phones.

JESUS the battery life's bad, I'm going to read up on what I can do to improve it. I rooted it and installed the All In One AOKP rom. It's almost unreal how quick the battery drains for me. My other phone is an iPhone 4, which I've always gotten good battery life with. Even after 2 years and the same battery I get way more life out of it. With some tweaking I can hopefully get the Nexus battery life to a usable state. At the moment half way thru my day the battery sits at about 10%, which is not acceptable.

But to be fair to LG I did no research on the phone before I bought it, I held a neighbors and it felt good in my hand. I liked it didn't have a removable battery and I love the glass back. It was an impulse buy so I had no idea the battery would be this bad. I think it might be worse than my EVO was, which is fucking crazy lol.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

JESUS the battery life's bad, I'm going to read up on what I can do to improve it. I rooted it and installed the All In One AOKP rom. It's almost unreal how quick the battery drains for me. My other phone is an iPhone 4, which I've always gotten good battery life with. Even after 2 years and the same battery I get way more life out of it. With some tweaking I can hopefully get the Nexus battery life to a usable state. At the moment half way thru my day the battery sits at about 10%, which is not acceptable.

But to be fair to LG I did no research on the phone before I bought it, I held a neighbors and it felt good in my hand. I liked it didn't have a removable battery and I love the glass back. It was an impulse buy so I had no idea the battery would be this bad. I think it might be worse than my EVO was, which is fucking crazy lol.

Yeah this is why I hope we can get our hands on the Anandtech mobile testing methodology or some sort of script we can run to simulate what they get. I'm curious to see if custom ROMs/Kernels affect much.

But the issue with the Nexus 4 seems to be the radio and how the system handles data requests. Given the One uses batched requests and how 3G can rape your battery, I suspect this is the issue with the Nexus 4.

 

[QueBert]

Yeah this is why I hope we can get our hands on the Anandtech mobile testing methodology or some sort of script we can run to simulate what they get. I'm curious to see if custom ROMs/Kernels affect much.

But the issue with the Nexus 4 seems to be the radio and how the system handles data requests. Given the One uses batched requests and how 3G can rape your battery, I suspect this is the issue with the Nexus 4.

I'll have to look into what's using my battery the most and go from there.

 

[Skurge]

TBH, I might just dump my Nexus 4 and get an SGS4 in a couple of months. Talk time is really good. But I have a lot more free time these days so I browse on my phone a lot more and it's poor battery life is showing.

 

[saratoga172]

This is why I left my Nexus for an iPhone 5. I enjoy both OS's. They both have strengths and weaknesses. Loved my Nexus phone, though the phone was a bit large, but the battery life was atrocious. Can't have that as I'm constantly using email, looking up things online and making phone calls.

If I recall the N4 was supposed to have better battery than the Nexus?

Yes, I know there are some Androids that get good battery. I used the Razr M which was a dandy. Had some other reasons for swapping back. Not to derail the thread.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Another thing that's not covered by most sites is standby battery life. This is where I find my Nexus 4 to be abysmal. It's just anecdotal, but compared to my gf's GS3, I seem to do a lot worse. Many factors include the lack of LTE and software optimizations, but dang I thought I did a good job optimizing my phone.

Right now only GSM Arena tests standby battery rating, but it's been doing endurance ratings for a while now. I remember the Galaxy S2 had an endurance rating. But let's not forget that was Gingerbread. Android 4.0+ is a lot different. Now with Google Now and other features that can easily drain your battery, I'm not sure if they're capturing the full scope of standby battery. Anyway, I think it's still a decent benchmark to compare phones. The 32 hours the Nexus 4 got is far less than the S2, S3, or S4, as well as the HTC One and One X.