Pixel 7 (w/ GOS) - worst battery life of all my phones in the past 20 years

Kryptos

Shendai I run the lower resolution display on my P7 Pro as it may conserve battery a bit. Unlikely to discern the visual difference either.

vvdn

warnod I sold my pixel 7 because of battery drain. Bought myself a used pixel 4a and it doesn't have this problem. I might be wrong, but after troubleshooting a bit and checking google's issuetracker i came to a conclusion that it's because of exynos and no update will fix it (hence the selling). Will hope google releases something better or gos moves to another hardware in this short year of support i have lol

alex_herrero

vvdn What do you mean with "Exynos"? Neither of those Pixels have an Exynos processor AFAIK...

Oggyo

alex_herrero
vvdn might meant Tensor chips, developed by Samsung and produced in their facilities. Tensor chips have one of the worse power efficiency among the modern chips AFAIK.

nrt

With 5g enabled? Try LTE only mode and check battery drain again.

mythodical

nrt I'm on a 3G/LTE-only carrier and haven't noticed any difference when changing connection prefs.

mythodical

@alex_herrero @Oggyo they were referring to the Exynos 5300g modem used in both of the Pixel 7s.

ve3jlg

Purely anecdotal, but I am getting well over 1 day battery life out of my month-old P7P. running GrapheneOS since I first powered it up and went through the initial unlocking.

My cellular modem (in 4G/LTE) has been off the vast majority of time (airplane mode; I've been working at home) but wifi has been on 100%. GPS/Location has been mostly off - I already know I'm at home :-)

But I have watched hours of YT and (website) reading daily using the Vanadium browser. And my screen has always been on the full resolution / highest refresh rate since day 1.

If there is a problem it could be wifi modem related as it is not affecting me. I've actually been really impressed with the battery life for my use anyway.

Similarly, my old iphone will lose very, very little power in airplane mode and the screen off. everything is sleeping them of course.

You might want to check [https://reddit.com/r/googlepixel]. I have seen many favourable battery reports about the P7s there compared to earlier models.

doffactory

ve3jlg same here, P7, first pixel of my life, battery is slightly over 24h, coming from Oneplus and LOS and that was a bit under 24h

warnod

Alright, so I did some more testing and research. The culprit is indeed the connection to the mobile network. Both, G5 and LTE only (seemingly slightly less so) drain about 2%/h in standby (meaning display off, phone laying there idle). On airplane mode on wifi the number drops to <1%/h - way more reasonable!

This all is unfortunate; maybe something can be done on OS level to reduce mobile energy expenditure?! The phone even appears to be ever so slightly luke warm having G5 turned on.

Besides all that I looked into battery life and charge-cycle behaviour on li-ion batteries. The best regimen I came up with is to maintain a relatively low depth of discharge and avoiding high charge voltages. Unfortunately GrapheneOS devs discarded the idea of implementing battery saving charging behaviours (https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/1089). Their reasoning is that the battery controller and firmware take care of it. Well, I am sure they do, but in the best interest of Google and not the user, who may not want to burn through their battery in 1.5 years on a 5yrs LTS phone.

cheers.

katemason

warnod

My Pixel 7 Pro with GrapheneOS can last for more than 2 days on 4G and WiFi connectivity with "always on" VPN. With a very heavy usage of NewPipe (YouTube private client), mixed use of MS Teams and Signal video calls the battery will still last a full day. I hope you can resolve your issue in full soon.

spl4tt

I feel the same here. My P7P has the worst battery I've had in a long time.

Connection and heat is better than on my old P6P, but damn. I never had to charge a phone that much

applesbana

spl4tt

It’s things like this that make it challenging to recommend the pixels over iPhones. I know there is a large price difference, but this just seems like they can’t get the basics right.

No knock on graphene as this appears to all be hardware related, but between the battery life, warm phone and absolutely atrocious unusable fingerprint reader, the pixel 7 is one of the worst phones I’ve had in the last decade.

spl4tt

applesbana

TBH, I hated my P6P much more. It used to slow down after 5mins of just browsing because it got so damn hot. The reason wasn't even the CPU, but the stupid modem.

The P7P fixed almost all my issues from the P6P, even the fingerprint is totally fine now, but the battery life got worse. Honestly though, if battery life is the only problem now, that's fine for me.

applesbana

spl4tt

Yeah, it’s the inconsistency that I’m referring to that is so frustrating. You only got hit with one issue while I seem to have won the pixel lottery and got a triple whammy lemon..

spl4tt

applesbana
True. The Pixel lottery is indeed real..

f13a-6c3a

No, I'm living in a swiss city with full LTE (or even 5G connection if I wanted).

f13a-6c3a

I'm having simply fantastic battery usage on P7P - simply outstanding. Could go 2 days without charging and still have some left.

For those experiencing high battery drain related to mobile network - could it be your location or distance to the nearest cell tower? Recent changes on that tower or around it? Construction? Maybe try switching to LTE only if 5G in your area is weak or inconsistent.

applesbana

f13a-6c3a

I don’t know the distance to my cell tower. However, I can say that with other phones I haven’t experienced the same battery drain (and fingerprint reader and warm/hot phone) problem despite living in the same place so I’d imagine it has something to do with the pixel 7.

f13a-6c3a

spl4tt No

No as in there was no changes on the cell towers? No construction? Or no, I dont whant switch to LTE only? Or no, LTE is consistent?
My point is - you dont know answers to those questions and any of them could affect the signal, quality, and consistency which could possibly be reflected in your phone battery performance. We also dont know what you have installed on your phone or what other configuration changes were made to it.
What I'm trying to say is that if majority users are ok but some experiencing an anomaly, the troubleshooting should start NOT with the OS, but examining use cases of those experiencing the issue. Do a factory reset and run for a few days to establish a base line, then go from there adding variables.
Best of luck

spl4tt

f13a-6c3a

I have 5g disabled, but I'm not on 4g only. You think that would help? 4g is indeed really consistent here. and even if some antennas would change, that wouldn't wreck my battery life for multiple months, right? :P
I also don't think it's a fault of the OS, but a modem issue as with last gen Pixels. The P6P just got warm and had bad connection, while the P7P now has worse battery life, eh. I don't think we can do much

f13a-6c3a

spl4tt You think that would help?

If I were in your shoes, I would definitely start there and if no help sigh factory reset

spl4tt The P6P just got warm and had bad connection, while the P7P now has worse battery life, eh. I don't think we can do much

Yeah, 6 was an abomination in many regards, but 7, 7P in particular, for me is great in everything, including signal, VPN, and battery life.