Bad battery life on Pixel 7 (especially strange is screen off consumption)

valaka i could be wrong here, purely mentioning this as i had a samsung note 20 ultra in the past (exynos variant), and battery was utterly trash out of the box. After then researching possible causes, it seemed it was inherent to exynos variant note 20's, compared to qualcom versions. In that specific phone exynos variants efficiency was lacking far behind that of qualcom variants.

Perhaps this fenomen is transferable to this specific example, as i think p7 uses a exynos modem (and exynos based chipset?), while your poco perhaps used a more efficient qualcom chipset & modem?

Your poco also had approx 17% more battery capacity compared to pixel 7, perhaps this combined with a potentional more efficient modem/chipset could explain the difference.

I also think tensor g2 is more performant than the snapdragon in poco 3 nfc. This isn't necessarly true in general as efficiency mostly improves per generation as performance improves, but for example i have a very old laptop with a trash celeron which easily outperforms my newer laptop with much more performant and newer cpu in regards of batterylife.

I think u got the point and there are so many variables to take into account that it's actually practically undoable.

Even between same hardware, it's practically impossible, unless u have an identical setup, both next to eachother constantly having the same wifi/cellular strength and have an identical use.

valaka I have a similar pattern, with the addition that location services are always off, and almost constantly on airplane mode (at work and home), with moderate use. These should decrease battery drain in theory. Though i have tailscale running 24/7 which in theory should increase battery drain. I charge to 80% aswell and when going to sleep i have +-20% left, on a pixel 9 pro, and i percieve this as good.

Though that 'good' is compared to my previous note 20 ultra.

r134a a bit off-topic, but here is the Note 20 Ultra battery graph. Fresh setup, no SIM card. I only installed two apps and was reading articles on the Google app.
It was annihilated by my, by that time, almost 2 year old 11 Pro Max, which was also connected to an Apple Watch, had a SIM installed and tracking AirTags too.
I sent that sucker back REAAAL quick. It was around 1300€ at that time... Exynos is utter garbage.

On-topic: it's sadly not that easy to determine the root causes of battery drain. The graphs are sometimes inaccurate and don't really show how much hardware (modem, display, speakers) drained compared to software (OS and apps). Try investigating if the modem is the culprit by removing the SIM for a day.

n3t_admin I managed to buy it 10ish months into release for €699 with 2 year warranty, new, it was just displayed in store but had not much total screen-on time. If not for that i would have returned it aswell, prices was indeed €1400 here. I lived 2 years with it charging it every step, at home, in car, and batterybank on the go lol.

Battery life is notoriously bad on the Pixel 7. Lower mAh than the P6, P8, and P9

As It has already been said, the problem is the inefficient implementation of push services from some of the apps that you have installed.

Try setting up the same system but with sandboxed play services and you will see the difference for yourself.

valaka I'm having this experience and I used to use the regular Android OS

r134a i could be wrong here, purely mentioning this as i had a samsung note 20 ultra in the past (exynos variant), and battery was utterly trash out of the box. After then researching possible causes, it seemed it was inherent to exynos variant note 20's, compared to qualcom versions. In that specific phone exynos variants efficiency was lacking far behind that of qualcom variants.

I think this is spot on. My Pixel 8 battery life is great on Wifi and horrible on mobile Internet, even if I don't use the phone (screen off).

valaka Wouldn't it be possible to solve this by a unified push?

You could use Molly for Unified Push. But also Signal 7.8.5 (newest beta version you can download from Github) has made some improvements to the battery use when using their own push notification implementation.

My bet is your refurbed unit is equiped with a shady battery, or other hardware issues. Forget about reviews. These websites are all marketplace aggregators of different mostly non customer facing businesses with varying degrees of quality control. Essentially a gamble. Some may be alright, others may perform fast repairs with cheap parts for a fast sale, despite advertising as OEM.

While my p7a got better battery life on GOS, these tensor chips seem power hungry indeed.

I get 1 day and a half or 2 days with play services without account, tutanota, proton mail and molly on my always running profile. The rest of the social/feed/banking apps are in non running profiles. Airplane mode, no location, no wi-fi scanning, no bluetooth, explicitly restrict background app usage.

I still haven't stick in a SIM card, I'll have to see how it goes then.

trilogy6202

You're battery life sounds amazing. I have a P7. My battery life lasts on average 3hrs, from 80% down to 20% battery each and every day. My battery charge cycle is 708 (at this writing). Not sure why it only lasts a bloody 3hrs when used and only on cell service. when I don't use it at all, battery last approx 6 hrs. got the device Aug 2023. not sure to keep or trade in on Aug 2025.

I have zero google anything. run Molly, ntfy, syncthing, breezer, fedilab, inviziblepro (24/7 vpn). I recharge between 10% and 20% typically. battery recalibrated (charged Upton 100%) a couple of times last 2 weeks now.

tomz Yeah that doesn't sound good. As I wrote above, my experience is that by battery last significantly longer if I use mainly WiFi - especially if your cellular coverage is not amazing. Another note is that 2 says of battery is only if I go from 100 % to 10-15%, and not with Charging optimization enabled.

Have you looked into how many apps have unrestricted battery access and what apps are actually consuming the majority of your battery?

I think there's a way to get information on your battery health but I don't know how myself - maybe somebody else know? - but with the battery life you mention it would make sense to look into it as you might have a near-dead battery in which case it would make sense to get it fixed if/while your phone is still under warranty.