I have a Pixel 8. The battery use is absolutely crazy. Today - and this is not an unusual day, it's always like this - it has been 8 hours since I stopped charging my phone. It's been on my desk all day doing nothing except for 1 hour of browsing the web while listening to music. But the battery is down to 15% after 8 hours since charging with 1 hour screen-on time. Meanwhile my work iPhone is still showing me 98% after 8 hours of sitting on my desk doing nothing.
The battery usage in the settings shows:
- Firefox: 22% (after browsing for 1 hour)
- K-9 Mail: 10%
- Kakaotalk: 9%
- Element: 9%
- Auxio: 5% (I listened to music via Bluetooth for 1 hour)
- Molly: 5%
- Whatsapp: 4%
- Tasks.org: 3%
In sum that is just 67%, so I don't think it is a problem with any particular app, and I think the numbers refer to the percentage of energy used (i.e. all apps will add up to 100%) rather than percentage points of battery used (i.e. all apps will add up to in my case 85%).
All these messengers listen to new messages in the background and I've given them unrestricted battery permission. Tasks.org is syncing via CalDAV at regular intervals and K-9 Mail is connected to multiple email accounts via IMAP.
Battery usage by systems shows me 60% was used by the mobile network. The other day I was at home with Wifi connected, not using my phone at all, and it still went down to 40% after 8 hours so considering I didn't even use it for the browser or music it is basically just as bad with Wifi.
So my conclusion would be that this a hardware issue rather than a software/app issue. There's something seriously wrong with the hardware of this phone. Is this the case for all Pixels (I've read that none of them have a great battery life) or did I just get a "lemon"? I really like GrapheneOS but if all Pixels are this horrible I might have to switch to another phone/OS, I mean even my laptop has a better battery life...
Or is there anything I can do on my side, any settings or apps? I'm not really keen to install Google Play for notifications, because all the apps I need work without Play and avoiding giving data to Google was the reason for me to go install GrapheneOS in the first place. But I would nevertheless consider it if it makes a serious, significant difference to battery life. Still, it seems more like a hardware issue to me?