Nexus 5x Battery Life Thread

Henrald · Oct 22, 2015

I can't return it to Google as I didn't buy it from them - it was from Carphone Warehouse in the UK.

I guess I'm spoiled as my last phone, the z1 compact, lasted all day and still had a third left at bedtime. It's ultra stamina mode would let it run for many days, even. Anyway, I was having the problems at home where I live above our router, and all my other devices have good wifi. My phone signal is very poor here, but again the Z1c never had any battery issues.

I can't get my head around the terrible battery life on this 5x still. I haven't made it from breakfast to dinner without charging it. I don't even use it all that much. 4 hours SOT would be great!

Every other phone I've had, the screen has been the #1 battery hog... It's usually 80% at least. Currently my 5x has dropped to 65% battery life, but the screen usage isn't even in the top three! It's beaten out by Android OS, Android System and Chrome. Anyone think it could be a software issue rather than the anything else?

Maybe I should try a factory reset. Perhaps disconnect my Android Wear watch too... ironic given I finally, after many months, started finding it useful this last week.

Edit: here's a screenshot of my current stats:
https://goo.gl/photos/PmB53y15BvqeqZD99
Notice how it slopes down suddenly at 1am? That's when I actually started using it, rather than leaving it idle. It lost a third of its battery in 4 hours being rarely used while I watched tv. At that rate, I could unplug it from my charger at 9am, not touch it all day, and it would be dead by 9pm! You guys aren't going to tell me that's normal, are you?

km8j · Oct 22, 2015

Henrald said:
I can't return it to Google as I didn't buy it from them - it was from Carphone Warehouse in the UK.

I guess I'm spoiled as my last phone, the z1 compact, lasted all day and still had a third left at bedtime. It's ultra stamina mode would let it run for many days, even. Anyway, I was having the problems at home where I live above our router, and all my other devices have good wifi. My phone signal is very poor here, but again the Z1c never had any battery issues.

I can't get my head around the terrible battery life on this 5x still. I haven't made it from breakfast to dinner without charging it. I don't even use it all that much. 4 hours SOT would be great!

Every other phone I've had, the screen has been the #1 battery hog... It's usually 80% at least. Currently my 5x has dropped to 65% battery life, but the screen usage isn't even in the top three! It's beaten out by Android OS, Android System and Chrome. Anyone think it could be a software issue rather than the anything else?

Maybe I should try a factory reset. Perhaps disconnect my Android Wear watch too... ironic given I finally, after many months, started finding it useful this last week.

Edit: here's a screenshot of my current stats:
https://goo.gl/photos/PmB53y15BvqeqZD99
Notice how it slopes down suddenly at 1am? That's when I actually started using it, rather than leaving it idle. It lost a third of its battery in 4 hours being rarely used while I watched tv. At that rate, I could unplug it from my charger at 9am, not touch it all day, and it would be dead by 9pm! You guys aren't going to tell me that's normal, are you?

While I am not commenting on your overall battery experience, you SHOULD be seeing the screen as the lowest consumption when you haven't been using the phone. That's exactly what it means.

Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

TCstr8 · Oct 22, 2015

Very impressed for first day. Heads and shoulders better than my N5.

WiFi on all day
Location Setting to High Accuracy
Google Now always listening
Ambient Display turned off (was coming on at unneeded times)

EeZeEpEe · Oct 22, 2015

TCstr8 said:
Very impressed for first day. Heads and shoulders better than my N5.

WiFi on all day
Location Setting to High Accuracy
Google Now always listening
Ambient Display turned off (was coming on at unneeded times)

That's pretty respectable on battery and SOT right there.

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy S5.

gotzaDroid · Oct 22, 2015

Do any of you feel that having ambient display on will hurt the battery. I've held my phone upside down (like it would be in my pocket) and I can shake the phone and get the screen on. So, I'm wondering how often it's turning on in my pocket.

km8j · Oct 22, 2015

gotzaDroid said:
Do any of you feel that having ambient display on will hurt the battery. I've held my phone upside down (like it would be in my pocket) and I can shake the phone and get the screen on. So, I'm wondering how often it's turning on in my pocket.

I'm not understanding how ambient display works anyway given the display is lcd. Highly inefficient no?

Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

robstunner · Oct 22, 2015

gotzaDroid said:
Do any of you feel that having ambient display on will hurt the battery. I've held my phone upside down (like it would be in my pocket) and I can shake the phone and get the screen on. So, I'm wondering how often it's turning on in my pocket.

I'm confident it does. How much? Not sure but having it off certainly doesn't drain any battery at all.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

lysm bre · Oct 22, 2015

Well I never would've expected to get 5 hours of on screen time, but I was on Wifi for most of the day and browsing Reddit. Regardless, I'm quite impressed with the battery life I got today, my 2nd day of usage. I'm not sure why it says my phone's been awake the whole time, so either there's a wakelock (which I doubt since I only drained 1-2% per hour) or the battery stats are kinda glitched. Cerberus was in my top amount of usage because I didn't turn on battery optimization for it until midday. Overall very happy with this battery performance, compared to the 3 hours of OST I got on my N5 after upgrading to Marshmallow, especially since this was achieved on stock everything. Going to root and use Greenify and see how my battery is after. Will report back tomorrow.

jimv1983 · Oct 22, 2015

EeZeEpEe said:
That's pretty respectable on battery and SOT right there.

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy S5.

I find it pretty disappointing. Mine is coming next week but if that's the kind of battery life if get I'll likely send it back. Can't even managed a full 4 hours of real usage?

PhilipL · Oct 22, 2015

Hi

gotzaDroid said:
Do any of you feel that having ambient display on will hurt the battery. I've held my phone upside down (like it would be in my pocket) and I can shake the phone and get the screen on. So, I'm wondering how often it's turning on in my pocket.

From what I can tell when the phone is covered ambient display doesn't come on as the proximity sensor knows it is covered up, try it with your hand over the sensor and pick up the phone, no ambient display, so no it will not turn on in your pocket, happy days.

Regards

Phil

---------- Post added at 08:42 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:32 AM ----------

Hi

km8j said:
I'm not understanding how ambient display works anyway given the display is lcd. Highly inefficient no?

Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

Ambient display is nothing new, you used to be able to set Android phones to turn the display on when a notification came through yonks ago, the only difference today is they can optimise the power draw on AMOLED displays by making it all black with white text, add features like pick up to wake etc.

For an LCD display you are correct in that ambient display uses the same power as if the screen was full on, but it is only on for a few seconds so overall isn't going to make very much difference, and if it is on a desk or table and we can see the notification isn't important, we've saved some power anyway from not going into the phone and reading it. I'm pretty sure as well doze mode will turn off ambient display, so it's not lighting up at night when the phone has been idle for a while and we are unlikely to be with it, plus it doesn't operate when it's in a pocket or covered case.

If we say ambient display is on for 4 seconds and it gets triggered 100 times a day (unlikely for most), that's around 7 minutes taken from our screen on time, so probably not noticeable overall, but if that has saved us turning on the phone and reading irrelevant messages some of the time, we've probably broken even or gained some.

Just enjoy the feature I say and not worry about battery power.

Regards

Phil

blinkin · Oct 22, 2015

Isn't ambient display turning on with really low brightness? This alone would save some battery...

Georg111 · Oct 22, 2015

smth new)

MrBelter · Oct 22, 2015

Henrald said:
I can't return it to Google as I didn't buy it from them - it was from Carphone Warehouse in the UK.

CPW accept returns for 14 days after purchase.

EeZeEpEe · Oct 22, 2015

jimv1983 said:
I find it pretty disappointing. Mine is coming next week but if that's the kind of battery life if get I'll likely send it back. Can't even managed a full 4 hours of real usage?

He was 5 minutes shy of 4 hours with 10% left. Pretty sure sure he could've hit 4 hours. And that was just his 1st day of use. Not only that but it looked like he went from 7am to 11pm. What are your expectations?

Also, someone else got 5 hours of SOT on 2nd day. 4-5 hours sounds just about right for this phone.

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy S5.

Henrald · Oct 22, 2015

km8j said:
While I am not commenting on your overall battery experience, you SHOULD be seeing the screen as the lowest consumption when you haven't been using the phone. That's exactly what it means.

Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

No, I agree generally, but I'd been using the phone for the previous hour before posting it, trying to work out what was up with the battery! And still after that, it was significantly less than whatever the hell it was doing when I wasn't using it. I only have 2 accounts, Twitter and Google, so other than maybe AccuWeather for my Wear watch, it can't have been syncing very much.

Anyway, it sounds like other people are having a drastically different experience to me, so hopefully a factory reset will cure it, otherwise I think I'll have to send it back for a replacement. Like the guy who is running it from 7am to 11pm. As I pointed out before, my 5x would die before that without me using it once, by my calculations.

TCstr8 · Oct 22, 2015

jimv1983 said:
I find it pretty disappointing. Mine is coming next week but if that's the kind of battery life if get I'll likely send it back. Can't even managed a full 4 hours of real usage?

Wow. I'd suggest cancelling the order now. Ended up with almost 4.5 hours of SOT, and it far exceeds my expectation.

Really not sure what I would be doing to need more SOT. It's a phone.

gotzaDroid · Oct 22, 2015

Thanks for all the ambient display replies. I ended up turning it off as it was sporadic at best on when it would actually activate when I picked it up.

km8j · Oct 22, 2015

gotzaDroid said:
Thanks for all the ambient display replies. I ended up turning it off as it was sporadic at best on when it would actually activate when I picked it up.

Does the ambient display on the 5x "pulse" like the moto phones? That would kill battery on lcd...

jbdan · Oct 22, 2015

km8j said:
Does the ambient display on the 5x "pulse" like the moto phones? That would kill battery on lcd...

Yeah, sometimes. It's inconsistent in the time I played with it. It hasn't been 100% consistent with the N6 either. I don't think it uses an appreciable amount of battery at all imo. I don't use it though I like the LED

donutman · Oct 22, 2015

Is it still recommended to use the phone right out of the box until the battery dies and then fully charge from there? Or does that not matter

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