Weird, I must be imagining the 16+ hours of battery life I've been getting nearly daily for the past 3 and a half months.
I know different people have different usage patterns, but the Nexus 4 battery is far from "horrendous", especially when compared to other flagship devices.
I've seen people claim that the Nexus 4 has bad battery life, and just don't understand it. I charge my Nexus 4 roughly every other day. And not because it runs out of charge at that point, but because I don't like to have the battery go much under about 40% or so. In my normal usage, the battery would easily last at least 3 days. (I've got a screenshot of the battery being at 25% after 4 days since last recharge).
My use case is roughly:
- About half an hour of screen on per day, mostly web browsing
- About 2h of audio playback per day
- About 3-4h on HSPA every day, on WiFi for the rest of the day
- Several kinds of automatic syncing going on (for example all default Google services, Google Now enabled, automated podcast polling + downloads)
Now, that might not be the heaviest workload in the world. But it's certainly realistic, and at least compared to any other Android phones I've used the battery life is nothing short of amazing.
My Nexus 4 lasts about 4 hours of usage, about 10 hours of standby time. I really wish it had a replaceable battery. Phones these days just don't last very long.
If you're having problems with battery life, look at your apps.
I use my Nexus S ALL THE TIME, and in fact, am posting this message on it. I still get better than 12 aggressive hours of use out of it per day.
Before a couple of months ago though, I was lamenting its battery life too. I would be looking for a charger after about 6 hours -- then Words with Friends came out for Facebook, so I uninstalled it from my phone and started playing it there, and voila, my battery life shot _way_ up.
The Nexus 4 had great battery life initially - you could get through nearly 2 days with it. After a lot of use, mine is not so great any more, but still quite usable - I don't have to worry about whether it'll make it through the day.
I own a Nexus 4 and agree with the parent poster. 14 or more hours mostly idle is normal. I get even more if I dim the screen for normal use.
Fortunately, Android JellyBean provides all the data you need to fix your problem. If you are getting worse battery life, you need to check Settings -> Battery and determine which apps are unreasonably eating up your battery life.
Do you buy a lot of tablets or do you find most to have unacceptable battery life? The battery on my 2013 Nexus 7 is crazy good as far as I can tell and lasts for days of moderate use even two years into its life span. Compared to my phone which likes to die partway through the day even without me touching it.
on battery life, i get anywhere from 1.5 to 3 days on my HSPA+ nexus (from play store) the way i use it. definitely have never sweated getting through a day.
* fair amount of web browsing
* little or no media or games
* heavy twitter, fairly heavy facebook
* 50+ SMS/gvoice messages per day
* 50+ emails a day
* ~1-2 hours of phone
* ~30 mins of tethering a day
coming from an iphone myself i was worried about battery life on the nexus, but it actually does better than my iphone did.
It's worse than this: the state of battery life reporting is abominable. TheVerge says "Battery life was also top notch", with anecdots of 10h lifetime, while Engadget (and Anandtech[1]) say it's at the bottom of the barrel.
At least I'm pretty sure Anandtech controls for screen brightness in nits ["50%" doesn't cut it, just think about how easy that is to game]. Can't anyone do it right?
I say anectodally because I've heard both good and bad about every phone out there. A friend at work with an iPhone 4s can't get through a full day without also charging his phone at work. Then I hear about the 5 having similar battery life to the 4s. Same for the Galaxy S3, I've heard both praises and horror stories. A lot of it depends on the network you're on too. Anand does good objective tests and the Razr and the iPhone blow everyone away in those but again they do not take real life use into consideration. I also have an old Nokia phone that I could play snake on for days on end but now I have slightly higher demands out of my phone. My comparison was limited to the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus 4 (all other things being equal including the carrier) and saying that the OPs battery claims are false in my opinion. I just came back home at noon with 12% of battery life after having taken my phone off the charger yesterday at 6:30am. But I only had the screen on for an hour and 40 minutes... that doesn't mean I have 1:45 hours of battery life. But thanks for adding your experiences to the mix. What is usage time by the way? Is that like screen time?
Not to rain on your hyperbole parade ;), but how long is the "incredible" battery life? Asking for a friend with an ageing nexus 4, who swore not to spend that much on a phone again...
I'm always confused about people who complain about battery life not lasting over a day. How often are you not near a source of electricity at least once a day?
That being said, my Nexus S tends to run out after about 10 hours now, which is intensely frustrating.
When I used a Pixel 3a with LineageOS, I recall never having to think about battery life unless I didn't plug it in overnight, and even then, it would survive just fine for a second day, it would just be at like 20-30%?
I know different people have different usage patterns, but the Nexus 4 battery is far from "horrendous", especially when compared to other flagship devices.
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