How To Improve Your Nexus 5?s Battery Life
Not long ago we offered you tips on how to improve your iPhone 5S? battery life. It is now time for another similar article, this time focused on the Nexus 5. The recently released Nexus 5 comes with a very large display (the largest of any Nexus smartphone so far) capable of a full High Definition resolution (1080p) and many new software features. However, as everybody knows, a large display capable of a full HD resolution drains battery life faster than a smaller display.
LG, Nexus 5’s manufacturer, equipped it with a 2,300 mAh battery which is about 10% more than Nexus 4’s 2,100 mAh battery. This resulted in many Nexus 5 owners complaining about the smartphone’s short battery life. However, there are a few hints that will help you enjoy the latest Andrroid 4.4 KitKat on your Nexus 5 without having to worry about your smartphone’s battery draining too fast. Here are the things you need to do.
Turn off auto brightness and lower the display brightness
In Android 4.4 KitKat go to Settings and from there go to Battery; there you will see a list of all the apps running and how much battery they use. As you will find out, the Neuxs 5 display is the main reason behind battery drain. Of course, this is the case with every smartphone not just the Nexus 5; as a result, the most important thing that you can do to improve battery life is to lower the brightness of your Nexus 5 display.
There is also the automatic brightness setting that helps conserve battery life and keeps brightness at acceptable levels. The automatic brightness setting decreases your Nexus 5 display’s brightness while in poorly lit environments and increases it in conditions of bright light in order to help you easily see and read what is on the Nexus 5’s display. It sounds good on paper, but unfortunately in reality it doesn’t work as well as it keeps the display brighter than it needs to be so in the end it actually drains battery instead of conserving it. That is why we advise you to turn the automatic brightness setting off.
What we recommend you to do is keep your Nexus 5 display’s brightness at about 10% (or a little higher if you need it higher) and you can change you whenever you need to from the notification screen, via the Notification Toggle. Winter is coming so odds are you won’t need the display brightness at over 10%, especially if you won’t use your Nexus 5 in direct sunlight.
If you want improved automatic brightness management than what the Nexus 5 offers, there is another option in the form of a third party app named Lux. The app was met positively by both users and professional reviewers and it comes in two versions: a free, Lite version with limited functionality and a full featured version that costs $3.59. It seems that Lux still needs some optimizing for use with the latest Android version, 4.4 KitKat so you should know that you may encounter a bug or two while using Lux on your Nexus 5.
Turn off WiFi and WiFi scanning
Always turn off WiFi on your Nexus 5, unless you are in range of a WiFi signal that you are about to use. However, when you are at school, home or work and you are in range of a WiFi signal that you are using, the opposite is true: turn on WiFi and turn off your mobile data connection; since WiFi actually drains less battery than mobile networks, this will actually save you a lot of battery life.
In Android 4.3 Google introduced a feature (WiFi scanning) that allows apps and Google Play services to pinpoint your location using WiFi even if your smartphone’s WiFi is turned off. The same option is included in Android 4.4 KitKat and it is turned on by default in your Nexus 5. In order to disable WiFi scanning, go to Settings, then select WiFi and from there tap on the three dots in the bottom right hand corner. Now you should be able to uncheck ?Scanning Always Available?.
On the Nexus 5 Google will scan your location using WiFi for many services, especially Google Now. While unchecking the ?Scanning Always Available? option will save you a lot of battery life, it also means you won’t be able to enjoy the Nexus 5 to its full potential as Google Now is a major feature and very important to the overall experience offered by the Nexus 5.
Turn off Bluetooth and GPS location settings
GPS is a function that you will need rarely on your smartphone and that’s if you don’t already have a GPS in your car. So unless you are driving to an unknown location or you want to avoid heavy traffic and are using Waze, then you don’t really need GPS turned on. GPS drains the battery of your Nexus 5 really fast and it doesn’t improve the overall experience too much, especially since there are dedicated GPS devices for your car. It is the same with Bluetooth – unless you are using a Bluetooth device with your Nexus 5, there is no reason to keep Blueetooth turned on as it drains your Nexus 5’s battery.
Use a standard wallpaper
You may want to use an animated wallpaper since it is more visually appealing but you should know that animated wallpapers drain battery faster than a standard wallpaper. So if you are looking to improve not only battery life but also performance, try a standard wallpaper like the Rocky Mountains, instead of an animated wallpaper like Sun Beam.
Keep your apps up to date without using automatic updates
It is always important to have the latest version of your apps, including the latest Nexus 5 firmware; yo can keep your apps up to date via the Google Play Store. The reason why it is important to have up to date apps is that updates usually fix things like battery draining bugs and also optimize apps so your battery life will be improved if you have the latest version of the apps you are using.
However, you don’t want to leave automatic updates on; the best way to keep all your apps updated is to check the Google Play Store manually form time to time. As we mentioned in the above paragraph, it is in your best interest to have all your apps up to date, but unfortunately, leaving automatic updates on means each app will regularly check for updates and this drains your Nexus 5’s battery, so it’s not really worth having automatic updates on. It is also worth mentioning that if you use any apps that have a free version (usually the free version of most apps displays ads) you are better off just paying for the app if you want to save battery life, as downloading and displaying the ads from the free version of the app drains your smartphone’s battery.
One last very important tip for saving your Nexus 5’s battery life: always turn off vibration – you can turn it off from the notification settings. Vibration drains a lot more battery life than ringing. So you should keep your notifications to a soft beep – it is also more discreet anyway.
