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Spinning off from the amazing 30-second charge thread, since I kept forgetting that's where I whined about phone troubles...

I have a Nexus 5, 2 months old, running KitKat 4.4.2

Paging @stienman and @PatrThom

If it's android, force close all the applications, and see if it still charges slowly, or loses charge quickly. Perhaps an app you've loaded recently is running in the background. Particularly a problem if it talks to the internet frequently, or uses the GPS. Some "find friend" or "find people nearby" applications really eat the battery up.

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This would be the FIRST thing I would look for. Especially if it started happening "all of a sudden," it is the most likely cause.

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So, it's definitely not this.

I had been able to get mobile data, and after a couple days on the phone with various Bell (my provider) personnel and techies, one of them asked if I'd be okay doing a factory reset. Minor pain in the butt, but I figure, nothing else has worked, what the hell. 90% of my stuff is on the cloud, boo-hoo I'll lose my progress in Plague, Inc.

So factory reset.

It works! Mobile data hath returned to me.

But now my battery dies in no time, and the phone takes ages to charge. Off the charger, 4 hours of no use, and the battery will be at 58%.

There are no apps, etc, to force-close, really, since its back to its factory defaults, and I've only downloaded one thing (twicca) that runs only when I'm using it. Not to mention this wasn't happening before the reset.

Formerly, if my phone was dead-or-near-dead and I shut it off, charging it to full was a 2 or 3 hour process. If I plug it in now at that 58% mark - so from 12-4 at work, it MIGHT be at 70%.

And yes, I have the company's charger/cable, or I charge it at my computer.

Charge it up to 100%, put it into airplane mode overnight, see if the battery is still dead by morning.
If it's still fine, then it's a data/network/runaway app problem.
If it still dies in airplane mode, it might still be a runaway app problem.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Charge it up to 100%, put it into airplane mode overnight, see if the battery is still dead by morning.
If it's still fine, then it's a data/network/runaway app problem.
If it still dies in airplane mode, it might still be a runaway app problem.

--Patrick

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But what app? There's only twicca which has never caused me problems, and the stock Google apps

Chad Sexington said:

But what app?

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Worry about that later. Right now we're just trying to determine if it is internal to the phone, or external.

--Patrick

The Nexus 5 has a known bug where sometime when you use the camera it causes the CPU to max out and drains the battery life and the only fix is to reboot when it happens. They are working on a fix and it should (hopefully) be available soon.

Also, take the battery out and look at it. Is it flat? It should be. If it's convex and bulged out in the middle, even just a little, then you likely have a failed battery.

You might not have downloaded any apps yet, but there's plenty of stock android bits that can suck battery. If you check the battery under settings, it should give you a breakdown of what is using how much of the battery. In particular, look for things (like google maps, which comes standard, natch) which use the GPS. I've had my things before get the GPS "stuck" on doing location services, and that will drain the battery like crazy.

tech at the store described my battery as "bubbling" - it was also hot, very very very hot to the touch despite being off for hours. Now it doesn't charge at all.

Sending it in will be two weeks, just for them to swap a battery! But they don't do battery swaps in-store for warranty work. Only if you are out of warranty and pay $80.

Whatever, might as well get it done for free. It's a huge pain in my ass though; especially with two-step authentication for email and the like.

Oy.

Does that model have an internal battery? My galaxy just has a regular old battery that can be swapped out.

Bowielee said:

Does that model have an internal battery? My galaxy just has a regular old battery that can be swapped out.

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No, it can easily be swapped out. In fact, when I was having my mobile data issue originally, they told me to open it up and take the battery out and put it back in.

It seems absolutely ludicrous that you can't just get a different battery, then.

I thought the Nexus 5 was not meant to be opened for battery swap (same with Nexus 4), it's a minor issue that has me hesitating to upgrade to the Nexus 5. I went from the Nexus 1 to Galaxy Nexus. My two year old Galaxy Nexus was down to around 16 hours of battery life, so I bought an OEM battery on ebay, because even Samsung no longer supports it. The new battery still only gives me around 18 hours, so I wonder if the new battery is faulty, because the original battery used to last around 36 hours in the beginning.

klew said:

I wonder if the new battery is faulty, because the original battery used to last around 36 hours in the beginning.

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Just an FYI, you can only truly compare battery life if the versions of system software are the same. Otherwise, there's a good chance that the increased battery drain may be caused by the additional processes/features brought by the new OS.

--Patrick

Bowielee said:

It seems absolutely ludicrous that you can't just get a different battery, then.

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Right? Right?! "Policy."

POLICYYY