[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] jordache16:
I have had terrible battery life with my Verizon Nexus since I bought it back in August. I came from the Thunderbolt so I was somewhat used to it. I had 2 spare batteries for my TB that I would always switch between. I bought the 2150 mAh extended battery for my Nexus and that helped a 'little'. With my normal day to day usage the short battery life doesn't affect me a bit because I have the pogo pin desktop dock which I use to charge my phone every day at work. When I get home for the day I have a fully charged phone that lasts me all night, so I don't even plug it in over night like most people.

Well I have been doing a lot of traveling due to the holidays and vacationing lately so I have been out of my normal routine of things. I finally decided that I needed to do something about the battery life on this thing. While driving on long trips I have noticed that my phone gets quite warm and that the battery will actually drain when the phone is idle (i.e. no navigation or anything running on the phone) even when it is plugged into a car charger. Looking at my battery usage during this time I see the maps app is taking up way more battery than anything else (including the screen). So I did some googling and found that there are some location settings that you need to turn off within the maps app so that it doesn't constantly update your location in the background. I am guessing what is happening here is that when you are moving your GPS location is constantly changing and then your phone is therefore constantly sending your location data over your mobile data connection. I don't think its so much the GPS that is causing the battery drain, it is the mobile data usage that is causing it. The only thing I find strange with all of this is that I had GPS turned off this whole time so I would think that the maps app wouldn't actually use GPS to determine my location. My guess is maybe it was using cell towers to get a rough idea of my location. Either that or it was still using GPS even though I had it turned off. Either way, all I know is that after changing these location settings I immediately noticed a difference in battery life while driving and my phone now charges when plugged in to the car charger, and it doesn't get warm like it used to.

So this was step 1 of attempting to improve battery life and it definitely helped especially for long car rides. Next I took things one step further and downloaded a notification bar switch for quickly turning off mobile data altogether. This is where I have really gained battery life on weekends and what not. When I'm not using mobile data or don't care if I don't get emails pushed to me immediately I just turn off the mobile data connection. I have wifi at home and at work and my commute is only a few minutes so I could easily turn off mobile data for the entire work week if I wanted. However I wouldn't gain much here b/c that is not where I have problems with battery life; it is on weekends and while traveling. Previously with a fully charged phone after a 3 hour car ride with the phone not being used at all it would be down below 50% battery. Now after all the changes it only drops a percentage point or two (and my phone actually charges now if I have it plugged in). The second benefit I get with turning off mobile data when I don't want to use it is this will save on my monthly mobile data usage. I recently renewed my contract with Verizon so I had to forgo unlimited data (I only used on average 1.3GB a month anyways so I wasn't too disappointed to see it go).

Lastly, I just purchased a wall charger so I can charge the original battery while I am using the extended battery. Verizon doesn't give you a standalone battery charger when you buy the extended battery which is kind of annoying as I will more often than not find my spare battery dead or almost dead when I go to use it. I am hoping after these few changes I won't have to worry about battery life as much anymore; I suppose time will tell.