950 & Battery Life

[awesomeindeed]

It's just the phone. I've been using mine since Wednesday morning and it's been terrible the whole time. The phone shouldn't hog battery and get hot just reading emails, but it does.

Been using it without a SIM since yesterday and there's virtually no change in battery life.

 

[casab1anca]

I'm quite happy with the battery life on my 950, first full charge was yesterday morning and after a day of moderate use, it's sitting at around 30% now. Of course, coming from a 920 (which would always heat up and drain quickly under use), anything seems like an improvement.

 

[majortom1981]

I think the excessive battery drain is in the settings app itself. When I go into settings I get the excessive drain. IF I restart the phone and don't go into settings at alI do not get it. I think there is a memory or cpu problem with settings on this phone.

 

[YKinase]

I've had Location settings chew through battery. Simply toggling location on and off may help. I read about someone having a similar problem on Win 10 preview in the past few days...

 

[uselessrobot]

I've had my 950 since Wednesday evening and things are improving, but I'd still say it isn't great.

Battery usage is minimal with the phone sitting idle, and this is with Bluetooth on and my Band connected. I'm also finding that the phone doesn't get warm nearly as much. It doesn't really warm up much at all while messing around with the OS, unlike the first day or two.

Also, I played a game for a couple of hours the phone was barely lukewarm. I'd have to test further to ensure this is always the case, because even with my old 920, some games didn't get the phone warm but other games made it alarmingly hot.

I will add a caveat; I have Telegram on my 920 it was a terrible drain on the battery. I had notifications disabled but simply sending messages is a problem. It seems these issues persist with the 950.

Looking at battery consumption this is the breakdown:
System - 33.6%
Display - 56.2% !!!

App consumption:
Store - 27.0% (That's a concern as I haven't spent a while lot of time on the store)
Telegram - 17.1% (Over the past 24 hours I haven't spent a lot of time with the app, but I've used it more than the store)

Mini Motor Racing clocked in at 11.6% even though I played it continuously for an hour or two, definitely more than either of the two apps listed above. And for whatever reason the store has since disappeared from the list.

 

[Fang Yuan1]

Had the same exact problem with battery not lasting more than 6-8 hrs with only moderate use. I ordered my 950 online and got it this past Wed.

Went to the store to grab a new one and it's a whole new experience! Chances are all of you have a defective device. You're all within the 14 day buyers' remorse period. They'll happily exchange your device no questions asked.

Do what I did, and save yourself the headaches

 

[casab1anca]

Looking at battery consumption this is the breakdown:
System - 33.6%
Display - 56.2% !!!

I think that's reasonable given that the display consumes the most power in any device. My display usage is currently at 70%, it's probably higher because I use the white theme.

 

[Chad Welsh]

go to setting and search for background apps and turn off those that you feel you do not need. there will be a lot of apps and they will periodically check for updates in the background. Might help your battery.

 

[n7slc]

Had the same exact problem with battery not lasting more than 6-8 hrs with only moderate use. I ordered my 950 online and got it this past Wed.

Went to the store to grab a new one and it's a whole new experience! Chances are all of you have a defective device. You're all within the 14 day buyers' remorse period. They'll happily exchange your device no questions asked.

Do what I did, and save yourself the headaches

I think I'm going to do that today but I think I'll set up the new one in store and see what it does while I'm there...here's to hoping they have one.

 

[n7slc]

go to setting and search for background apps and turn off those that you feel you do not need. there will be a lot of apps and they will periodically check for updates in the background. Might help your battery.

Thanks for the advice but I've already tried that as I'm certain the OP has as well.

 

[i_hiker]

I've had good battery life from the beginning and it's gotten better as I continue to explore the device, set it up and use it. Coming from a VZW Blackberry Z10, the L950 deficiencies have

 

[uselessrobot]

Battery life is improving for me. I forgot to charge it last night, it was roughly 35%, and it had barely budged 8 hours later.

Drain during actual use has improved but still isn't great. Almost any activity causes what I'd consider excessive drain. In fact, gaming almost seems to draw on the battery less than simply tinkering with the OS. But it does vary from app to app. In any case, I'd say it's worse than it was with the 920.

 

[n7slc]

Well, I'm off to the AT&T store to do an exchange. Here's hoping the new one works better as I really like this phone!

 

[mstrblueskys]

Well, I'm off to the AT&T store to do an exchange. Here's hoping the new one works better as I really like this phone!

Give it a couple of days before being too upset. Breaking in a phone battery has to happen. 3 or 4 days will be better than just a weekend.

 

[Sean Eppel]

Just wanted to chime in, also experiencing poor battery life and batter drain on my 950. Coming from a 1520, which thought had great life, I was excited by this device, especially since it has almost the size batter while having a smaller screen. At this time, I'd be at about 80% on my 1520, sitting at 63% now. I hope things improve, otherwise I'd probably switch phones. My wife's iphone has been way better on the batter.

 

[FaderMonkey]

I just wanted to chime in as well that my battery performance on my 950 is fairly poor. I've had in since Friday morning and it does seem better today, but still not good. Going to give it a couple more days or so before I try and exchange it for another and I'll keep a close eye on this thread.

I will also say that I've never experienced a break in period with a cell phone battery before. Hopefully that is all this is and my battery will get better, but if that is the case it's new to me.

 

[uselessrobot]

Just wanted to chime in, also experiencing poor battery life and batter drain on my 950. Coming from a 1520, which thought had great life, I was excited by this device, especially since it has almost the size batter while having a smaller screen. At this time, I'd be at about 80% on my 1520, sitting at 63% now. I hope things improve, otherwise I'd probably switch phones. My wife's iphone has been way better on the batter.

It's not the physical size of the display that matters, at least not with such a small difference.

The much bigger impact here is resolution and display technology. The 950 has a considerably higher resolution which means the hardware has to work harder to drive it, more so in games. Additionally, while AMOLED can minimize battery consumption with a mostly dark display, most of the time there's a lot of on screen content which can result in considerably higher consumption than a traditional LCD display. That said, I suspect that at least some of the issue is with the OS.

I also don't think these problems are unique to this phone. I've been reading a bunch of reviews of various Android phones, in case I decide to return my 950, and complaints are similar to what I'm seeing here. The relentless boost in hardware specs is resulting in worse battery life compared to the last generation. Nearly all current phones I've read about struggle to last a day with relatively heavy use.

 

[n7slc]

I got my replacement this morning and the battery was quite low so I let it charge all afternoon so it would be ready to play with. Well, after 15-minutes of configuring the start screen and downloading a few apps, the battery is at 96%. The previous phone would have been down more than 20% by now. Already looks positive but I'll reserve judgement until the end of next week. I'll definitely report back...good or bad.

Dan

 

[FaderMonkey]

I got my replacement this morning and the battery was quite low so I let it charge all afternoon so it would be ready to play with. Well, after 15-minutes of configuring the start screen and downloading a few apps, the battery is at 96%. The previous phone would have been down more than 20% by now. Already looks positive but I'll reserve judgement until the end of next week. I'll definitely report back...good or bad.

Dan

I'm curious to hear how it goes. That may be my next move as well.

 

[Fang Yuan1]

Here's my update after a full day's worth of use on my replacement device from the store. Needle barely moves when on standby.

Completely 100% satisfied with the device. Take my advice. Go get a new phone. Why waste your time trying to break in the battery?