7 ms·

Galaxy Nexus Power Analysis: Why chargers can't keep up with navigation

119 points by there 15y ago

potatolicious 15y ago
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.
- mitchty 15y ago
  I thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Charging_ports http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Charging_ports was the plan for making usb charging aware. It looks more like all of the radios on at once is just more draw than even USB in charging mode can provide. Or do you mean we get another standard that provides even more power? I'll argue that our phones need to draw less power in their worst case modes personally.
- toomuchtodo 15y ago
  I think the problem is that no one is going to step forward to provide the open standard for high power/current DC power transmission for these devices. USB is amazingly ubiquitous, as is DC power in cars via the cigarette lighter adapters. Its a lot of momentum to fight against; the solution is going to need to be extremely compelling to compete against the existing USB/vehicle DC power solutions.
  - cbsmith 15y ago
    I think the IEEE folks are putting their money on PoE for this. Seems like a viable choice, though to make it work for hones we'd need a standard ulti-slim connector. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet
    - justincormack 15y ago
      And homes would have to be wired for ethernet, which seems unlikely.
      - cbsmith 15y ago
        Newly constructed homes tend to have ethernet jacks in them. Of course, older homes is a whole different matter.
  - mbell 15y ago
    It isn't about the power that can be provided, you can easily pull several amps (10-15w+) through a standard USB cable and there is already a standard for determining if your connected to a computer port or a "USB Charger" port provided by the USB group. Rather, the issue is that what is going on inside the phone. In most modern phones the input voltage is fed into a monolithic power management IC which provides the numerous voltages required to run the device, handles power on timings, and often contains the batter charger. The unit in the GN is linked below [0]. There are various ways to hook these up, but a popular method is to only supply the device power rails from the battery. If you've ever ran your phone completely dry, plugged it in tried to power it on, and watched it only start up for a couple seconds and die again, its because the battery didn't have enough charge to get through boot up, which uses a lot of power. In other words, even when your phone is plugged into the wall, its probably still running on the battery. For the same reason, most newer smart phones can't be powered on without a battery in them. Its also why a phone using a lot of power while plugged in gets very warm around the battery, you are pouring power into the battery just to remove it again, the inefficiencies in the process = heat. Thus, what it really comes down to is the ability of the phone to discharge its battery faster than it can be charged. The limit of how fast you can charge the battery can be caused by limited power (computer USB port), limits in the charger or simply by the physics of charging a li-ion without causing damage to the battery or the user. In this case, without doing the math on it, ~5W is probably about the limit of the charging IC linked below, depending on charging mode. Just a guess though, it could also be the limit of the batteries ability to charge. I have seen phones that can really switch to running on actual input power, but these seem to be less common now. It requires addition components in the form of a power switch and often a regulator. More importantly it takes board space and costs money. [0] http://www.ti.com/product/twl6030 http://www.ti.com/product/twl6030
- fr0sty 15y ago
  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.
  - rmjb 15y ago
    He's talking about using a dedicated charging port instead of using the USB port for charging. 10.5 watts (2.1 amps) at 5 volts probably wouldn't be enough to support usage while charging for the larger tablets.
  - unwind 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      This is why car chargers have a 5V regulator in them.
  - Symmetry 15y ago
    Well, a firewire/1394 connection can put out 1.5 Amps at 30 Volts, for a total of 45 Watts of charging. And while those aren't as common as USB ports, you'll find them on lots of computers.
- cjdavis 15y ago
  IEC 62684, Interoperability specifications of common external power supply (EPS) for use with data-enabled mobile telephones, is an international standard - and is basically micro USB. Even Apple is supporting it. Some quick looking doesn't show any details of the max power rating unless you buy a copy of the spec for 45 Swiss francs.
jbellis 15y ago
I've drained my Evo using Maps while plugged in to the car adapter, as well. Frustrating.
- bconway 15y ago
  Did you have it positioned in the sun/on the dash?
andybak 15y ago
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.
- shimon_e 15y ago
  Like what Apple does? Guess some of the Chinese iPhone copycats using Android are following this model to some extent.
  - Terretta 15y ago
    Unlike the phone in the link, iPhone 4 can charge twice as fast as the nav GPS + 3D mapping + cellular voice or data usage + bright screen can use, as long as you're using a supported 2 AMP / 10 W charger.
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    I think you missed his point. He wants a device off the shelf to do what it's capable off without dying.
    - mike-cardwell 15y ago
      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 https://grepular.com/Extended_Life_Phone_Batteries
jamesaguilar 15y ago
I would be interested in knowing whether the iPhone has this issue when it is navigating.
- Mavrik 15y ago
  Depending on the charger really. My car charger for example also couldn't keep up with the 3GS's power draw when using Navigon - even when it was connected to the charger, the battery was losing power by ~5% per hour.
- tptacek 15y ago
  No.
  - cloudwalking 15y ago
    That being said, navigation is a lot less complex (fewer features)--no turn-by-turn, no voice, no "3D" map.
    - aneisf 15y ago
      The iPhone doesn't have these problems when using fuller-featured 3rd party apps either.
    - Terretta 15y ago
      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.
  - JoelSutherland 15y ago
    Yes. My relatives frequently drive from Chicago to Omaha to visit family. Presumably because of poorer reception in Iowa they cannot use Google Maps even when plugged in because the phone still discharges.
moylan 15y ago
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.
jscore 15y ago
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 15y ago
  You are aware that the 4S has been bedeviled by issues of poor battery life due to iOS5, no?
  - lindvall 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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.
  - bni 15y ago
    You are aware that there is a difference between software bugs hitting a subset of users, and a deliberately putting in features that the battery cant support, like gigantic screens and LTE, no?
tomflack 15y ago
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 15y ago
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.
gst 15y ago
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 15y ago
  The international version has HSPA+ which is similar. I get 8.9Mb downloads on mine which presumably eats power.
  - gst 15y ago
    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.
michaelcampbell 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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
  - oldstrangers 15y ago
    That charger actually provides more amps. The real problem is the shitty generic chargers carriers are providing for cars. But apple people will love to make more of this than it warrants.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
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.
aaronharnly 15y ago
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?)
ypcx 15y ago
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.

119 points by there 15y ago

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.

mitchty 15y ago
I thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Charging_ports http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Charging_ports was the plan for making usb charging aware. It looks more like all of the radios on at once is just more draw than even USB in charging mode can provide. Or do you mean we get another standard that provides even more power? I'll argue that our phones need to draw less power in their worst case modes personally.
toomuchtodo 15y ago
I think the problem is that no one is going to step forward to provide the open standard for high power/current DC power transmission for these devices. USB is amazingly ubiquitous, as is DC power in cars via the cigarette lighter adapters. Its a lot of momentum to fight against; the solution is going to need to be extremely compelling to compete against the existing USB/vehicle DC power solutions.
- cbsmith 15y ago
  I think the IEEE folks are putting their money on PoE for this. Seems like a viable choice, though to make it work for hones we'd need a standard ulti-slim connector. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet
  - justincormack 15y ago
    And homes would have to be wired for ethernet, which seems unlikely.
    - cbsmith 15y ago
      Newly constructed homes tend to have ethernet jacks in them. Of course, older homes is a whole different matter.
- mbell 15y ago
  It isn't about the power that can be provided, you can easily pull several amps (10-15w+) through a standard USB cable and there is already a standard for determining if your connected to a computer port or a "USB Charger" port provided by the USB group. Rather, the issue is that what is going on inside the phone. In most modern phones the input voltage is fed into a monolithic power management IC which provides the numerous voltages required to run the device, handles power on timings, and often contains the batter charger. The unit in the GN is linked below [0]. There are various ways to hook these up, but a popular method is to only supply the device power rails from the battery. If you've ever ran your phone completely dry, plugged it in tried to power it on, and watched it only start up for a couple seconds and die again, its because the battery didn't have enough charge to get through boot up, which uses a lot of power. In other words, even when your phone is plugged into the wall, its probably still running on the battery. For the same reason, most newer smart phones can't be powered on without a battery in them. Its also why a phone using a lot of power while plugged in gets very warm around the battery, you are pouring power into the battery just to remove it again, the inefficiencies in the process = heat. Thus, what it really comes down to is the ability of the phone to discharge its battery faster than it can be charged. The limit of how fast you can charge the battery can be caused by limited power (computer USB port), limits in the charger or simply by the physics of charging a li-ion without causing damage to the battery or the user. In this case, without doing the math on it, ~5W is probably about the limit of the charging IC linked below, depending on charging mode. Just a guess though, it could also be the limit of the batteries ability to charge. I have seen phones that can really switch to running on actual input power, but these seem to be less common now. It requires addition components in the form of a power switch and often a regulator. More importantly it takes board space and costs money. [0] http://www.ti.com/product/twl6030 http://www.ti.com/product/twl6030
fr0sty 15y ago
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.
- rmjb 15y ago
  He's talking about using a dedicated charging port instead of using the USB port for charging. 10.5 watts (2.1 amps) at 5 volts probably wouldn't be enough to support usage while charging for the larger tablets.
- unwind 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    This is why car chargers have a 5V regulator in them.
- Symmetry 15y ago
  Well, a firewire/1394 connection can put out 1.5 Amps at 30 Volts, for a total of 45 Watts of charging. And while those aren't as common as USB ports, you'll find them on lots of computers.
cjdavis 15y ago
IEC 62684, Interoperability specifications of common external power supply (EPS) for use with data-enabled mobile telephones, is an international standard - and is basically micro USB. Even Apple is supporting it. Some quick looking doesn't show any details of the max power rating unless you buy a copy of the spec for 45 Swiss francs.

jbellis 15y ago

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

bconway 15y ago
Did you have it positioned in the sun/on the dash?

andybak 15y ago

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.

shimon_e 15y ago
Like what Apple does? Guess some of the Chinese iPhone copycats using Android are following this model to some extent.
- Terretta 15y ago
  Unlike the phone in the link, iPhone 4 can charge twice as fast as the nav GPS + 3D mapping + cellular voice or data usage + bright screen can use, as long as you're using a supported 2 AMP / 10 W charger.
mike-cardwell 15y ago
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 15y ago
  I think you missed his point. He wants a device off the shelf to do what it's capable off without dying.
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    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 https://grepular.com/Extended_Life_Phone_Batteries

jamesaguilar 15y ago

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

Mavrik 15y ago
Depending on the charger really. My car charger for example also couldn't keep up with the 3GS's power draw when using Navigon - even when it was connected to the charger, the battery was losing power by ~5% per hour.
tptacek 15y ago
No.
- cloudwalking 15y ago
  That being said, navigation is a lot less complex (fewer features)--no turn-by-turn, no voice, no "3D" map.
  - aneisf 15y ago
    The iPhone doesn't have these problems when using fuller-featured 3rd party apps either.
  - Terretta 15y ago
    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.
- JoelSutherland 15y ago
  Yes. My relatives frequently drive from Chicago to Omaha to visit family. Presumably because of poorer reception in Iowa they cannot use Google Maps even when plugged in because the phone still discharges.

moylan 15y ago

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.

jscore 15y ago

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 15y ago
You are aware that the 4S has been bedeviled by issues of poor battery life due to iOS5, no?
- lindvall 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
- bni 15y ago
  You are aware that there is a difference between software bugs hitting a subset of users, and a deliberately putting in features that the battery cant support, like gigantic screens and LTE, no?

tomflack 15y ago

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 15y ago

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.

gst 15y ago

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 15y ago
The international version has HSPA+ which is similar. I get 8.9Mb downloads on mine which presumably eats power.
- gst 15y ago
  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.

michaelcampbell 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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
- oldstrangers 15y ago
  That charger actually provides more amps. The real problem is the shitty generic chargers carriers are providing for cars. But apple people will love to make more of this than it warrants.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

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.

aaronharnly 15y ago

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?)

ypcx 15y ago

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.