
Galaxy Nexus Power Analysis: Why chargers can't keep up with navigation - there
http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/nystt/galaxy_nexus_power_analysis_why_chargers_cant/
======
andybak
Dear phone manufacturers,

Please stop selling us features or bigger screens or faster CPU's until you've
made a phone that isn't rendered unusable by virtue of a flat battery whenever
you use any of its glorious features.

Dear consumers,

Stop buying hardware that has exactly the same flaws time and time again
because it has a few new gimmicks.

~~~
mike-cardwell
You can buy extended life batteries for most phones, which double the life of
the battery. They come with a replacement cover; the normal battery cover
can't be used, because the batteries are about twice as thick and stick out of
the phone.

It makes the phone thicker, but that's a price worth paying. I have one in my
HTC Desire Z, and I had one in my G1 before that. They're surprisingly cheap.
On the scale of about $15. I had three of them for my G1, so I had no problems
going camping for a week, and not having access to a charger.

~~~
jscore
I think you missed his point. He wants a device off the shelf to do what it's
capable off without dying.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I did not miss the point. Most people don't seem to realise that extended life
batteries exist, so thought there would be some value in mentioning them. If
anyone is interested, there is a picture of my HTC Desire Z with an extended
battery fitted in a blog post I just wrote here:

<https://grepular.com/Extended_Life_Phone_Batteries>

------
moylan
i don't think there is going to be a single solution.

* the early usb portable hard disks i got often had a triple ended usb cable; one end for hard disk, one end for data connection and an extra end to draw extra power for the hard disk. could this be done for charging phones?

* offline maps would reduce the power required for navigation as sucking down data on 3g is power intensive. you can always turn off 3g and use slower 2g for lower power consumtion. perhaps even an option that if they are using voice to turn off the screen completely.

* somehow convince the manufacturers that many don't want a superslim phone. if it's twice as thick with twice or more the battery life then i am really interested! even if it's only as an extra option then a certain amount of people will pay.

* removable batteries. designing for removable batteries makes models bigger and bulkier but they are more useful when you can get and carry spare batteries.

* some form of standard batteries that persisted between makes and models so that people could invest in extra batteries and know that they will work with the next generation?

in 94 i could get a week from a psion pda with 2 aa batteries with no effort
getting 40 hours of use.

in 04 i could get 2-3 days from a symbian device pushing it to it's limits.

in 09 i could drain an iphone 3g to zero in about 2 hours.

it just seems we are going in the wrong direction.

------
gst
This article seems to refer to the CDMA version of the Galaxy Nexus, which
uses lots more power than the international version due to the power-hungry 4G
chipset. So it might be possible that those issues don't apply to the
international version of the Galaxy Nexus.

~~~
justincormack
The international version has HSPA+ which is similar. I get 8.9Mb downloads on
mine which presumably eats power.

~~~
gst
Power consumption of HSPA chips isn't that bad in comparison to LTE. That's
also the reason why the international Galaxy Nexus version has a smaller
battery than the US version.

------
aaronharnly
Reminds me of an old comic: A gas station attendant is filling up a 70s-era
gas-guzzler; he yells to the driver: "Better shut off the engine! She's
gaining on us!"

(I've spent the last 10 minutes searching google images and the New Yorker
cartoon bank for this, but can't find it anywhere – does it ring a bell with
anyone?)

------
michaelcampbell
I must have a magic GNex, or the internal battery meter is wrong. Mine gains
power while using navigation, with 4G, on my no-brand 1A car charger. Not
much, and certainly much slower than when NOT doing all that.

~~~
monitron
I have the same experience; something doesn't add up about this article. My
Verizon Galaxy Nexus will charge (albeit slowly) as long as I'm using a
charger that supports the USB dedicated charging specification (One example is
the Palm Vehicle Charger you can grab from sellers at Amazon).

I can run the screen at full brightness, 4G and all other radios firing, using
Navigation while playing music streamed over 4G onto Bluetooth, and it still
charges. I guess the CPU probably isn't pegged at 100% in my scenario but how
often does that happen realistically?

~~~
michaelcampbell
I don't know how it is on the GNex, but I did a quick unscientific test with
the original Droid and it _rarely_ used more than half of the CPU while using
Google's Nav app. I was actually quite shocked at how little CPU it used.

~~~
monitron
Well, all the pathfinding and at least some of the map rendering is being done
server-side, and the 3D drawing is mostly offloaded to the GPU. So I would
actually be surprised if the CPU was working hard for Nav.

My guess is that a lot of the power suck during navigation comes from: \-
Keeping the screen on \- Constantly reading the GPS \- Loading new map tiles,
traffic data, etc over the radio \- GPU rendering at 30fps or so

------
potatolicious
Ouch. With tablets and phones being so ludicrously powered these days, I wish
there was a dedicated charging standard (as opposed to hijacking a primarily
data-transmission standard) that supported higher power draws.

It's pretty awful carrying around power bricks for portable hard drives, even
though your laptop can easily supply the load if needed. Ditto phones and
tablets.

And maybe we can all stop using cigarette lighters as DC sources and move to
something a little more sophisticated.

~~~
fr0sty
Why do we need a "more sophisticated" source of DC power? What would that even
look like? 12VDC is 12VDC. Are current 120VAC (or whatever your mains voltage)
similarly unsophisticated?

Besides, with an install base that numbers in the hundreds of millions and
most of which have well over a decade of useful life.

~~~
unwind
As far as I know, cigarette lighter connections in cars are quite "low-level";
i.e. they're not a source of clean, well-behaved 12 volt DC that you can treat
like e.g. the 12 V rail of a computer's PSU.

Instead, the voltage can vary depending on the state of the car's engine, the
car's battery, whether or not you're currently hooking up a _second_ battery
in order to jump-start your car, and so on.

It's not very sophisticated when considered as a source of 12 V DC, since it
has these other parameters that are not something you'd generally expect a
clean and simple power source to have.

~~~
bdonlan
This is why car chargers have a 5V regulator in them.

------
ypcx
I have the european Galaxy Nexus and the battery consumption is disastrous. We
are lucky that Ice Cream Sandwich provides somewhat detailed battery usage
logging. Thanks to it, the native Facebook app was the first thing I deleted,
because it was running battery-expensive background services even with all
notifications turned off. Also what's up with the horribly jittery scrolling
in some Android apps, one of them being the native Google Reader? I'm coming
from iPhone 3GS and I never had issues with battery nor scrolling. That said,
Galaxy Nexus is still better.

------
tomflack
He never tested the power draw when using the three golden contacts on the
side of the phone - the contacts designed for this kind of situation when the
phone is docked in a car mount. He says:

"I'd love to test the side charging pins but I don't know the pinout or if it
needs to communicate to draw full power."

------
dazzla
I have a nexus one that while charging in the car and using navigation it
would overheat and would not keep up either. Turned out to be a faulty battery
and was just fine with any other battery.

I have not had much chance to test this on my GSM galaxy nexus but I have not
noticed this problem so far.

------
jscore
I'll probably get down voted for saying this but that's one of the reasons I'm
jumping off the Android ship this year, and, no, I'm no aApple fanboy.

I've had the original Nexus, Nexus One, Nexus S and wanted to buy the G Nexus
but if google/samsung are willing to put a device that can't function under
normal operating environment, then they shouldn't have done at it all.

See, with the iPhone (4S), I know Apple would never put out a device like
this. It might not have things like a notification LED that blinks when u have
a message, but the thing is bullet proof -- it just works.

The mentality is certainly different. I want a finished product, and not be a
beta tester for a company.

It's no accident Apple sticks to their time-proven design: small 3.5" screen,
no LTE, etc.

And as I get more busy with my life (business, etc), I could careless about
the "openness" of the Android platform--it's not like I'll be compiling ROMs
all day.

I just want something that works and won't let me down in the 11th hour and
with Apple I know that won't happen.

~~~
zmmmmm
You are aware that the 4S has been bedeviled by issues of poor battery life
due to iOS5, no?

~~~
lindvall
Can you elaborate on the 4S battery life issue?

I've only had my iPhone 4S for a week, but I haven't noticed anything
drastically worse than my iPhone 4.

It certainly hasn't ran out of power during the course of a day yet.

~~~
baddox
I just got a 4S, and it seems noticeably worse than my 4 (which I only had for
a few months after its initial release). It might just be that I've been
playing with it more in the first week of owning it (coming off a year and a
half with no smartphone), but the battery has consistently been down to 5%
after 12 hours.

------
jbellis
I've drained my Evo using Maps while plugged in to the car adapter, as well.
Frustrating.

~~~
bconway
Did you have it positioned in the sun/on the dash?

------
jamesaguilar
I would be interested in knowing whether the iPhone has this issue when it is
navigating.

~~~
tptacek
No.

~~~
cloudwalking
That being said, navigation is a lot less complex (fewer features)--no turn-
by-turn, no voice, no "3D" map.

~~~
Terretta
Anyone with any legitimate navigation need gets a third party app with offline
maps, like the above mentioned Navigon, which supports all your mentioned
features and more, such as live traffic based re-routing (which works
extremely well) and the full Zagat guide for finding nearest decent food.

While running a full blown GPS app, talking on a conference call with
Bluetooth, and using live traffic so the data connection is running as well,
the iPhone 4 gains about 1% charge per minute with a 2 AMP charger.

------
drivebyacct2
As others are noting both here and there, I do not experience this problem. My
GN charges slightly or at least stays at the same battery level.

