Hello, I have just recently started using GrapheneOS and this is my first pixel. I have noticed that the battery seems to be draining a bit faster than I would expect. I, admittedly, use my phone quite a bit; mainly listening to podcasts or music, but it is draining faster than my old Motorola by a surprising margin. Additionally it drained a remarkable amount (around 50%) over 8 hours of very minimal usage while I was at a Thanksgiving party. This could have been due to not having it set to "only LTE" which I have now done.

For my situation specifically, my Owner profile does not have play services installed. It has Signal installed and I am using a VPN, both of which I understand to often be battery drains. I also use OLauncher instead of the Graphene launcher. The only apps with unrestricted battery usage (other than the stock ones for Graphene) are Signal, Syncthing, and Your Local Weather. But each of these apps has a rather low percentage of usage in the battery usage section. I can't do a great analysis because the section stopped updating for a full day when I was trying to figure this out. More or less the biggest battery users were InnerTune (music), NewPipe (Youtube frontend), and "System apps".

I have separate profiles, but I end their sessions as soon as I am done and spend very little time in them. I am mainly looking for tips on how I can improve the battery life of my device. For example, should I restrict the battery usage of all apps I do not need to function in the background? Should I set the kill all activities developer option? Is there some way I can configure my media playing to reduce it's battery usage? Any advice would be appreciated, thank you!

Unfortunately, Google Pixels are no battery wonders, as I have already discovered.

In my case, I was able to improve the runtime:

  • NFC, Bluetooth, activate location only when needed (good side effect: privacy)
  • Use dark design
  • Deactivate Smooth Display
  • Activate Adaptive Brightness
  • Activate screen timeout after XX seconds
  • occasionally check all apps for their battery consumption (Settings>Battery>Battery usage> view by apps/view by systems) - maybe you can find an app here that consumes an unusually large amount of battery.

I don't do this, but it could also help:

  • Reduce screen resolution
  • disable 5G (if you have a contract that doesn't support it anyway)

    Murcielago
    I do most of these things. I don't use dark mode because I like light mode myself, but will switch if battery life continues to be an issue. I will keep checking the battery consumption in the settings menu and see if I can find anything of note. I would prefer not to decrease screen resolution, but will if I have to. Thank you for the list.

    Themble
    Yes this seems to have helped a lot for me when I was out of the house today. I didn't burn through battery like crazy.

    The battery seems to drain faster when I have opened multiple apps recently. As if the activities waiting in the background are using a lot of battery. But if that isn't the case for others I could be wrong. I heard that battery life can improve after initial usage of the device, at least with the stock OS. Is that also true with Graphene?