Sprint get's 4.3..... Verizon still nothing!

News on the internets today includes the notice from Sprint that their Galaxy Nexus Variant will be getting 4.3 in the next few days. While, its not the 4.4 Kit Kat release that we are all waiting to hear about later today, its still better than the NOTHING that Verizon has released or even talked about.

Still left waiting....


DnT
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Start the clock...

Today Google officially announced Android 4.3. They stated that the Galaxy Nexus (along with the Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10) would be getting that update, with updates beginning to get pushed out today. So let the "Verizon delay clock" begin....

Here's the Galaxy Nexus update history for comparison.  The 4.2.2 update came fairly quickly in only 36 days (by Verizon standards).  Based on that timeline, I'm hoping for an August 12th "soak test" followed shortly thereafter by a leaked version...and then an official OTA around August 29th.  Only time will tell.




4.0.4: ICS update
------------------------
4.0.4 was pushed by google (GSM) around March 30th.
4.0.4 was soak tested by Verizon on May 1st.
4.0.4 was pushed by Verizon around May 31-June 1

So, right on 60 days to 4.0.4


4.1: Jellybean
------------------------
Google began updating their GSM Nexus to Jelly Bean (4.1) on July 10th.
Verizon's soak test started on August 29, 2012.
An early leak was posted online in the first week of September. (I installed on 9/5)
The full update was rolled out 9/21

So about 73 days to Jelly Bean 4.1.


4.2: JB update
------------------------
The 4.2 update began rolling out on November 13, 2012 to the Domestic GSM variant "takju". 
4.2.1 was pushed out with a bug fix on November 27, 2012.
The Sprint CDMA variant started updating on January 30th, 2013
Verizon NEVER saw 4.2 or 4.2.1


4.2.2: JB update
------------------------
4.2.2 was released on February 11, 2012
4.2.2 hits Verizon testers on March 2, 2013 (only 19 days! That has to be a record)
On March 4, 2013 a leaked version was posted online. (I installed it on 3/5)
4.2.2 begins hitting Verizon Galaxy Nexus phones OTA on March 19th, 2013 (36 days - a Verizon record I'm sure!)

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DnT

Jelly Bean for Verizon (UPDATE!)

While the official Jelly Bean update for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus is still MIA, there is a leaked version (JRO03O) that has been making the rounds on the internet. 

(UPDATED 9/21) The official Verizon update has arrived! Users are reporting the update is now available via Wi-Fi ONLY for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus. Get on Wi-Fi and hit that 'Check For Update' button now! 

I installed the leak on my rooted GN on September 5th and have been running it since. I thought I'd share my impressions here for those who may have grown impatient.

Jelly Bean definitely shows marked improvement in the responsiveness of the phone in terms of swiping, scrolling, and opening apps. Google Now offers some really intriguing features, but at this point for me they offered little value. The updates on sports scores were nice (at least once Google got NFL scores going for week 2!). I imagine people who do a lot of travelling would love the flight updates and travel features, but as I rarely move about the country (and even less about the world), they were of little use to me. Same goes for traffic updates - I work from home so traffic notifications offer me no help. I tried to  activate "places" to get updates on nearby events or businesses but I never had a card show up. Its possible I just hadn't given Now a chance to learn about me before disabling it.  The real issue for me, though, was the seemingly large increase in battery usage attributed to map/location-related programs. Under Better Battery Stats, there were no fewer than 5 different processes responsible for 'waking up' the processor on my phone, some with significant usage. Location services have always seemed to use an excessive amount of background processor time which always bugged me, but the increase I saw with Google Now active was just too much.

(Update: I'm giving Google Now another shot but with limited location features to see if it works any better)

The most obvious other change I saw in Jelly Bean was the device settings page. Instead of the previous "accounts & sync" line, Android 4.1 brings all your accounts to the main list for easier access and modification. I really don't find this to be a valuable addition as I rarely ever find myself adjusting things like app syncing. I usually keep all but the minimum necessities OFF. I feel that this change didn't add anything and just cluttered up the main settings screen and forced me to scroll more to get down to things like 'developer options' and 'about phone'.

The most useful change in Jelly Bean is the notification bar. Aside from the font style and color change, the notifications are far more useful. Instead of a very limited listing of your notifications, Jelly Bean provides you with a very detailed list of what's waiting for you including the content of SMS messages and an extended amount of info from received gmails, not to mention the ability to call contacts directly from missed call notifications.  It really makes the notification bar so much more useful.

As far as functionality goes, the radios did not appear to offer me any improvements over the prior versions, but then again, I never had major problems despite being in a borderline 3G/4G area.

[Note: If you were rooted on ICS and flashed the Jellybean update, you probably lost root and don't even know it. To regain root, copy this updated SU zip file to your sdcard and then install the zip through cockwork recovery.]

-DnT

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Where are those Jelly Beans?

As most Android addicts on Verizon Wireless know, Verizon is a bit slow to push updates. We suffer through it because they have the best speed and best coverage... and best customer service.

Anyway, as many people are aware, Google released their most recent version of the Android OS 4.1 codenamed "Jelly Bean" back in early July. Owners of the direct-from-google GSM variant of the Galaxy Nexus were treated to that update starting on July 10th.

So what does that mean for those of us on Verizon Wireless?  Let's see what happened with the 4.0.4 update to Ice Cream Sandwich.....

4.0.4 was pushed to Google's GSM variant around March 30th.
4.0.4 was soak tested by Verizon on May 1st (Which I immediately flashed to my phone!)
4.0.4 was finally pushed by Verizon around May 31-June 1

So, right on 60 days basically.

Google began updating their GSM Nexus to Jelly Bean on July 10th.
Based on the ICS timetable, I'd expect a Verizon soak test in Mid August.... which is now-ish.... followed by a full push in early September.

I guess we can only wait and see....



-DnT

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Black Wallpapers - for the extreme power saver!

So, with an AMOLED screen, colors are generated by illuminating individual LED's. Black is 'created' by NOT illuminating LEDs. Needless to say, dark screen = less power (unfortunately black is not zero, but its as close as we can get). As a result, some of the more serious battery power conservationists out there run black or very dark wallpapers to minimize power usage.  I just thought I'd share a handful of my favorites. I didn't make them, I just like them!

All Black - The name says it all.

 Blocks - What would you call it?

 Black Steel

Carbon Fiber

Carbon Fiber 2

Verizon finally rolling out 4.0.4 to the masses...

It only took them a month or 2.... but Verizon finally started pushing the 4.0.4 update to its Galaxy Nexus users yesterday. The rollout seems to be going gradually, with some reports that Verizon plans to spread it out over 10 days.... which seems ridiculous yet on par with how they've handled everything about this phone.

That said, if you can't wait, there's always rooting and flashing the update yourself. I've been enjoying it for a month now.

Good Luck!


DnT

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How much screen on time can I get? A test.

Doing nothing else. Just a static Google browser screen.

At 70% screen brightness
15 minutes equals a ~7% drop = ~28%/hr or less than 4hrs of screen time available.

At 30% screen brightness
15 minutes equals a ~5% drop = ~20%/hr or approx. 5hrs of screen time available.

At 10% screen brightness
15 minutes equals a ~4% drop = ~16%/hr or just over 6hrs of screen time available



Obviously all these numbers are relative to my other usage and are really just estimates as battery meters are far from precise (your phone is really guessing). Plus, they don't do decimals so I don't know if the drop was from 31.9% to 25.0% or 31.0% to 25.9% - hence my approximations.

But its still good to know and helps answer the questions "What's killing my battery?" and "Is this normal?"



-DnT

Must Have Apps for your Galaxy Nexus

I don't play many games so don't expect to find any listed here! These are in no particular order other than the order I notice them on my phone...which is basically alphabetical.

Apps:
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1. 4G Toggle (Free) - OK its not really an app, its more like a widget, but its really just a shortcut. And it doesn't even do what we all wish it would.... but if you are the owner of an LTE Galaxy Nexus and live or travel in iffy 4G areas. You need this widget. Its really just a shortcut to the screen that lets you switch between CDMA and LTE modes.... but it saves you about 3 steps going through the menus.

2. AirDroid (Free) - Forget the USB cable. Airdroid makes transferring files over wifi the way to go. Its not drag and drop but its easy enough to use and it works.

3. Better Battery Stats ($2.89) - If you are like MANY Galaxy Nexus users and find yourself running short on battery life, this app is a valuable tool for finding out why. I wrote an earlier post about the app and how to use it so I won't go into more detail here. I believe BBS is also available free for XDA members.

4. ES File Explorer (Free) - It is what it is. A file manager. It is simple, works well, works with Root, and its free. What more do you want?

5. Light Flow ($1.99) / Light Flow Lite (Free) - Take advantage of the multicolor LED notification light by assigning different colors for all your app notifications. The free version supports most basic stock notifications but if you want to set notifications for 3rd party apps like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. you'll need to shell out for the full version.

6. Nova Launcher (Free) - Just like the stock launcher/homescreen, only way better. Fast, stable, and lots of options missing from stock. Some of the best features are 360 degree screen rotation, fully customize-able dock and dock icons, adjustable # of homescreens, ability to change animation when flipping between homescreens. There is Nova Launcher Prime ($4.00) which adds some more features like gestures and the ability to hide icons in the app drawer - which is nice if you have icon packs and other things that you don't ever want visible in your app drawer. The base version is good enough for me. I'd love to hide icons but not for $4.

7. Titanium Backup (Free) / Titanium Backup Pro ($6.58) - If you root and rom your device you cannot live without this app in my opinion. Titanium is the go-to app for backing up and restoring all your apps and data for users who wipe their device and install new roms. $6+ seems pricey for the pro version, but its worth it after the first time you try to manually re-install your apps one by one! The pro version allows you to install your apps/data all at once instead of going through one by one and hitting "ok".

8. TripIt (Free) - Trip it is a great app / site for keeping track of your travel plans. Its really useful for even the occasional traveler. You basically forward your confirmation emails from airlines, hotels, cruises, car rentals, etc. to Trip It, and automagically, the information appears in your account. Its visibile via the web or in app and is really nice to have every piece of information readily available in one place....from the price of your airline ticket to the phone number of the hotel you are staying at, to the departure time of your return flight. Its all there and easy to use. There is a "pro" service offered by TripIt that runs $49/yr and adds instant flight updates, tracks travel rewards, helps find alternate flights, and more. I don't travel much so the free service is plenty for me.

9. Volume+ ($1.99) - Speaker on your phone too quiet? Fix it with Volume+. This enables you to boost the volumes on just about all the audio outputs from speaker to headset. I think you can download it free from the developer's website too.

10. Wifi Tether (Free) - Need to tether that Touchpad you got in the firesale? Well, Wifi Tether is what I've been using since the days of my "OG Droid". I rarely am away from Wifi so I rarely need to tether, but its a great option to have. Requires Root - available on XDA Forums.

Widgets:
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1. Beautiful Widgets ($2.79) - its one of the few apps I paid for but it is worth it. So many widgets, clocks, weather, and totally customize-able with downloaded skins. You can even make your own skin.

2. CalWidget (Free) - I like the stock calendar widget but it still doesn't display all day events.... which makes it worthless. There are lots of 3rd party calendar widgets, but I just like the options CalWidget has to offer....from widget size to background color and opacity, it just does what I want.

3. Circle Battery Widget (Free) - A minimalist, but customize-able battery meter. Change the color and size to match any theme.

4. Widgetsoid (Free) - Like the stock power control widget? Then you'll love Widgetsoid. There's almost nothing you can't control with these fully customize-able controls. From Wifi Toggle to CPU meter, to flashlight, to airplane mode. You can create a stock looking row off toggles and readouts. The options and colors are fully user configureable to fit with any theme.

That's it for apps and widgets. Hope you enjoyed my list.


- DnT

4.0.4 where are you?

So, two days ago Google started rolling out some updated Ice Cream Sandwiches. Namely for the GSM Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus S. So where's the love for the LTE Galaxy Nexus?

Well, according to Google, the reason is that they no longer consider ANY CDMA devices to qualify as "developer phones". Now, lots of people read this as "Google no longer supports this device" but that is simply untrue. They are still developing and building the Roms for these devices, the difference is that they cannot push it directly to the phone, nor release it for users to install. The reason, according to Google, is that the technology behind CDMA devices (used by Sprint and VZW) require the carriers to "sign a key" that enables telephony functions. Because Google cannot DIRECTLY update these devices, they no longer consider them "supported developer devices". But rest assured, they should still receive timely updates like their GSM cousins. "Should" being the key word as we all have grown to distrust carriers, especially when it comes to timely updates. Nevertheless, its only been about 48 hours since the 4.0.4 Rom was released so I'm willing to be patient. If VZW hasn't pushed out the update by next Friday, I'll start steaming....if its not out by the following Friday I'll be leading the angry mob!

Relevant links:
Phandroid - CMDA Nexus support

Android Dev Dan Morril's explanation

- DnT

My new best day(s) ever.

So, when I say that WiFi is the be all end all of power conservation, here's what I mean. This is my battery usage after 15 hours on WiFi only with an hour of screen time and a couple of minutes of voice calls.

But that was just half the story.... or more accurately, 1/3 of the story. In the end, my battery lasted until Monday morning. That's a full 48hrs. Of that, 41hrs was spent on WiFi and about 7hrs was spent on 3G. Granted, it was only 1:45 of Screen time and 7 minutes of talk time, but it says a lot about WiFi and the battery's "standby capacity'.

- DnT

Its been 4 months....what happened to 'faster' updates???

Anyone who regularly visits 'Galaxy Nexus' forums has certainly seen this comment multiple times when complaining about the lack of updates from Google on this "Nexus" phone. Well, there are two points those people are missing, and they are usually quickly addressed by the more savvy GN users.

1. This phone received an update within seconds of being unboxed.

2. Faster doesn't mean more often. It means faster than non-Nexus devices. Now, it will be a little different for the GSM Nexus and the Verizon LTE Nexus, but for the most part these updates will be much sooner than updates for every other phone by every other manufacture. Because the GN is a 'vanilla' version of Ice Cream Sandwich, we don't have to sit around and wait for the manufacturer to apply their custom skins and bloatware. That is a process that often takes months. Look at the Droid Razr, it still has no ICS update and ICS has been released since the end of 2011.

Also, it is assumed that Google had some issues with the 4.0.3 version of ICS when they tried their test rollout on the Nexus S - which caused them to not roll it out en masse and head back to the drawing board. I think that is why we are now rumored to be getting a more advanced/tuned 4.0.5.

So, be patient. 4.0.5 is on its way in the next few weeks.



- DnT

WiFi vs 4G

[Originally posted over at Androidforums.com]


Since there is a lot of talk about how much better WiFi is than 4G or even 3G, I thought I'd run a little test just to show it....

On day 1 I ran my phone on mobile data all day, no WiFi, a mix mostly 4G and some 3G. On day 2 I ran my phone in typical fashion. That is WiFi almost all day - 13hrs out of 15hrs - with 2 hours on 4G. Both days had strikingly similar usage, almost exactly 1hr of screen time, no streaming. The only usage difference was that on day 2 I had about 40min of voice calls, whereas on day 1 it was only 20min. Obviously a pretty mild day usage-wise. Take a look at these charts and then imagine what the 4G would have been like had I spent a couple of hours streaming!

15 hours on 4G = 3% remaining
13 hours on WiFi, 2 hours on 4G = 43% remaining

The moral of the story is, obviously, use WiFi whenever you possibly can! 

- DnT

BetterBatteryStats

If you really want to find out what is keeping your phone's processor awake and chewing through your battery, look no further than BetterBatteryStats available for $2.89 in the Google Play Store. Install it. Run it.

When you open the app, you'll see a screen like this

Select "Partial Wakelocks" from the first dropbox and leave the second one set to "Since charged". This will display for you a list of every app and process that has been causing your processor to run in the background.
If you are seeing a lot of overnight activity or want to view what is happening during a specific time period, BBS includes an option to address this. Go to Menu > More > Set Custom Ref. This creates a Reference point in time for BBS to track from. Then, when you are ready to check stats, instead of choosing "since charged" you can choose "since custom ref." and it will display all the activity since you set the reference point.

Once you've chosen which stats to view, they are displayed in decreasing order from the most time "awake" to the least. As I mentioned before, most of these are necessary and harmless. Others may be draining your battery. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that currently the biggest cause of partial wakelocks is "Airdroid". Airdroid is an app that lets you transfer files wireless between PC and phone. I happened to have forgotten I left it on, and as you can see it was running for half an hour. That's not a terrible drain on battery, but I don't want to leave it on anyway. What you are really looking for is processes that use excessive CPU - it will probably appear near the top of the list and may have a red line extending much of the way across the screen. Unfortunately I don't have a screenshot, but previously I found that the Google Backup "feature" was stuck in some kind of sync and kept my processor awake for 11 Hours! Needless to say, I disabled that feature. I haven't seen other people reporting that same problem so it could have just been a fluke, but by using BetterBatteryStats I was able to identify the cause of my poor battery life. Note that if you are streaming a lot of audio you will see certain "audio processes" reporting a lot of partial wakelocks. This is perfectly normal. You may also want to take note of the "count" of different processes as this actually tells you how many times that process caused a partial wakelock. You may notice that things like "syncs" and "Gtalk" cause a lot of partial wakelocks as they are constantly checking for updates/changes. That's why in my previous post I recommended eliminating any syncs you do NEED.

Next up.... WiFi vs 4G



- DnT

Finding your battery drain!

As I mentioned in my first post, there are a lot of obvious causes of poor battery life. Unfortunately, there are many other causes of battery drain that are not so obvious. In this post I'll talk about finding those problems and addressing them.

1. Battery Stats are your friends and the graphs provided in Ice Cream Sandwich are quite useful once you know how to use them.

Main Battery Screen - This screen shows you the estimated charge remaining (80% here), the time on battery (5h 34m 34s), and then breaks down the biggest users of the battery by percentage. Typically you will find Screen and Android OS at the top of the list.

Battery Graph - If you click on the picture of the graph itself, it will bring up another screen that offers you a more detailed look at the phone's discharging process. Mobile Network Signal gives you an idea of the signal strength throughout the day thus far. Green is strong, then bright yellow, dim yellow/grey and red. You may notice on your phone that the battery discharges more quickly with a poor signal as the phone tries to boost power to maintain the connection. The next two lines I am going to focus on are really critical to battery life. "Awake" and "Screen on". Awake refers to times when the phone's CPU is operating (ie awake) and Screen on refers to times when the screen is turned on (obviously). What is really important here is to watch out for periods of time where the phone is Awake but the Screen is NOT on. This indicates some background process running that is draining battery while you aren't using the phone actively. This is pretty normal, so long as its not excessive. If you are seeing lots of awake time that doesn't correspond to Screen on time you may have an issue. Streaming music and receiving emails/texts etc are perfectly normal background processes. In my next post I will focus on using some free apps to help identify what processes/apps are hogging your battery in the background.

Here's a closeup of the Awake and Screen On lines. You can see how almost all the awake time lines up with times the screen is on. This is what you want.

Android OS - Android OS simply tells you how long the CPU has been running (in total) since you unplugged and how much time it has been "kept awake". As you may notice, Keep awake time tends to exceed total - yes, it seems an odd way to report usage but that's what we have. Its perfectly 'normal', at least according to what many users are seeing, to have several hours of Keep Awake time. I regularly see 2-3 hours after 16 hours unplugged. If you are seeing WAY more than that, you may have an issue. Again, we'll focus on that in the next post.

Hope this has been helpful so far.



- DnT

My Battery life

As I mentioned in my first post today, my battery life ranges anywhere from 20-30 hours. For most people that probably sounds great, and quite frankly I think it is. I also think that for many users, those numbers are achievable. However, there are certainly going to be power users and others who will never get close, and for them, having a charger or second battery handy is going to be necessary. If you don't have access to WiFi during the day, do a lot of streaming, or keep your phone's screen on for 5 hours a day, you are probably going to fall into that category.


First, lets talk about 'typical usage'. For me, a day starts with my phone coming off the charger at about 7am. 


Usually its showing about 98%. That is not unusual and nothing is wrong with your phone if it never seems to reach 100%. These devices are smart and designed to prolong the life of the battery by not overcharging. Once the phone hits 100% it actually stops charging and will slowly drain to 94% before trickling back and forth at around 92-96%. Chances are, when you pick up your phone in the morning its not going to read 100%. And even if it does, its not really at 100%! Also, if you've ever noticed how the first 10% seems to drop off really quickly, you might want to take a look at this article which explains why, or tune in to Dianne Hackborn's Google+ feed where she notes that 

Dianne HackbornJan 13, 2012

+1

Once you get above 90%, I would stop worrying about it. I think most if not all devices need to go through charge/discharge cycles while fully charged to keep the battery life good, so when it is "charged" it will actually be ramping up and down to do that. How this is shown to the user varies across manufacturers, and there is really no clearly right solution -- if you show them the actual changes in level they start complaining and getting concerned about their battery not being at 100%, so it is good to just show it at 100% at this point but then you are giving a little white lie about the actual level.

My day usually lasts about 16 hours before I plug back in.  For me, 85% of the day I spend connected to WiFi with only about 2 hours on 4G. This is really the key to my long battery life. The more time you spend on 4G or even 3G, the faster your battery drains. As for my normal usage, I would say that I average about 2 - 2 1/2 hours of screen on time, <20 minutes of talk time. I rarely stream videos and occasionally listen to a couple of hours of Sirius radio (screen off).  I think its fair to describe my usage as 'moderate' or fairly standard. 


So, that's a typical day for me, but I thought I would also include some stats on my "best day" and "worst day".


Best Day Ever! - I ran over 29 hours on the stock battery, stock ROM, stock kernel. 29 1/2 hours on battery. about 27hrs on wifi, 2hrs on 3g/4g. 2hrs 45min screen on time. about 5 minutes talk time. No streaming. Brightness at 10% except brief periods in direct sunlight.

Worst Day ever! - Only got 14.5 hours. 2:45 screen on. 2:00 streaming Sirius via 4G. 0:45 of talk time. I really hit on all most of the big drains that day!

So that's it for my day, in my next post I'll focus on finding battery drains and solving battery issues.



- DnT

Samsung Galaxy Nexus Battery Life

Read any forum about the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and you are bound to find 85 trillion posts bemoaning the lackluster battery life of Google's latest "Flagship Device". You will also find 73 Billion responses recommending that the original poster "Root and ROM" their phone for optimal battery life. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for a lot of people as they fear the unknown of Root and ROMS.


I'm here to say that its not necessary.


Sure, my phone is unlocked and rooted, but I am running the stock Android 4.0.2 ROM and kernel. I'm not using any special task managers, battery controllers, power savers, etc.  Its simply a matter of understanding what uses the most juice and making the most out of what you've got. I typically have my phone off the charger for about 16 hours a day and when I plug it back in I usually have about 30% left. On my best day I've gotten over 29 hours.


So let's look at battery hogs...


1. The big beautiful screen - Its the biggest phone screen on the market (unless you count the Galaxy Note as a phone, I think its more of a Tablone.) Its HD and packed with pixels. It uses a lot of power when its turned on. The best thing you can do for battery life is reduce the brightness as much as possible. I keep mine at 10% unless I am outside or in a brightly lit room. Its plenty bright for me to read 90% of the time. I use a power control widget, widgetsoid specifically, on my home screen to give me quick access to adjust the brightness. I find Auto Brightness unreliable and I think it tends to set brightness higher than needed.


2. 4G data - That's right, all those G's come at a price. With the current 1st generation 4G chips comes some inefficiency. While 4G should technically be faster and more efficient than 3G, only the former is true. Until we start seeing some of the newer 'Hybrid' 3G/4G chips, we'll have to deal with the inefficiency of running multiple chips.


So, what to do?


USE WIFI. As much as possible. In terms of battery usage WiFi < 3G < 4G. So turn it on and use it whenever you can. If you are in a weak 4G area or have no 4G where you are, turn it off. (settings > more > mobile networks > network mode > CDMA). If you go in and out of 4G areas and want quick access to these settings, your best bet is a widget called 4G Toggle which can be downloaded from the Marke....sorry, the Google Play Market.


3. Talk Time - Yup, in the world of email, Facebook, texts and IM's people tend to even forget that their phone can make calls. And in fact, voice calls require quite a bit of power. I'm not trying to discourage actually speaking to other human beings, rather just letting you know that it does drain your battery fairly quickly when you do.


4. Sync - WHAT? What's the point of a smartphone if it doesn't sync? That's true, just be smart about what you choose to sync. Every sync wakes up the CPU and uses your data connection and thus some power. The less you sync the better your battery life. So let's talk about what you NEED to sync. Personally, I sync Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Browser and 1 pop email account every 30 minutes. No Twitter, no Facebook and no Google+. Firstly, Google+ is a known sync hog and would sync constantly causing a noticeable battery drain. Second of all, do you really NEED to sync things like Twitter, Facebook and Google+? Do you NEED updates constantly? Not really. When you open each of their apps within seconds you've got all your feeds updated. Get your social media updates as needed not as posted and you'll save yourself some juice. Oh, and I'm pretty sure syncing your photos tends to be a drain too but most people probably use that feature and can live with it, but I thought I'd point it out anyway. Some people report problems with Google Talk, but I've had it on and running since December with no impact on battery life.


5. Streaming - It should be obvious, but in case it wasn't, streaming uses data. Data uses power. Therefore streaming drains your battery. If you listen to Sirius or Pandora, or if you watch a lot of YouTube or Netflix videos, expect to see your battery drain quickly. Especially for videos since you've got the double whammy of data and screen on.


6. GPS - While receiving GPS signals alone doesn't take much power, note that Google Maps/Nav has to be connected to data to work. So it will maintain a constant connection to identify your location and track you on the map....even if your screen is off. If you could cache your route and the maps offline and run without data it'd be fine, but until Google implements that you are SOL. GPS Navigation is a HUGE power drain especially if you have the screen on. Many users report that their car charger cannot even maintain a steady charge while using GPS. This is not unique to the Galaxy Nexus but is a 'feature' of the way Google Maps/Navigation works. This won't change so long as Google Nav works online.

So, now that you know what uses up all your precious power, you can start getting the most out of your phone. In my next post I'll talk more about my battery life and later, tips on solving any battery drains you may have.

Good luck!



- DnT