Skip to main content

It’s official: Nexus 5 battery life is worse with Android 5.0 Lollipop, according to tests

Nexus 5
If you own a Nexus 5 and upgraded to Android 5.0 Lollipop anticipating improved battery life thanks to Project Volta, you may have the bitter taste of disappointment in your mouth. Now there’s data to support your displeasure. A recent series of benchmark tests for the Samsung Galaxy S5, LG G3, HTC One (M8) and Nexus 5 looked at battery life before and after Android 5.0 Lollipop on each of the flagship smartphones. The results are consistently disappointing for the Nexus 5.

To get an in-depth look at Android 5.0’s impact on battery life, GSMArena ran a series of four tests for endurance, talk time, Web browsing and video playback. The tests compared results for each phone with itself – that is, they compared battery life on the previous version of Android (4.4 KitKat) with battery life on Android 5.0.

When it comes to endurance, the Samsung Galaxy S5 has 83 hours of standby time on Lollipop, up 11 hours from the 72 hours of standby time on KitKat. The HTC One (M8) received a six-hour boost from the update, as its standby time rose from 71 hours on KitKat to 77 hours on Lollipop. However, the LG G3 saw its standby time drop six hours, from 69 on KitKat to 63 on Lollipop. The Nexus 5 saw its standby time dip two hours, from 40 hours on KitKat to 38 hours on Lollipop.

Android 5.0 Lollipop battery endurance

The Samsung Galaxy S5 also got a nice six-hour boost in talk time, going from 21:20 (hours:minutes) on KitKat to 27:37 on Lollipop. The LG G3 saw a small decline, going from 25:54 on KitKat to 25:38 on Lollipop. However, the HTC One (M8) and the Nexus 5 each lost about six hours of talk time after the update to Lollipop.

The HTC One (M8) was the only one of the four flagships in GSMArena’s test to see a significant boost in Web browsing time, going from 9:06 to 12:29. The other devices saw minor changes.

For the video playback test, GSMArena observed the Samsung Galaxy S5’s battery life remain nearly unchanged, while the other smartphones in the test lost about an hour of playback time.

“The battery life after the update from 4.4 KitKat to 5.0 Lollipop is a mixed bag,” according to Peter at GSMArena. While the Samsung Galaxy S5 reaps the most benefits from Project Volta’s promised improvements to battery life, the other smartphones in this series of tests are still waiting for more of the magic to kick in. Nexus 5 owners, meanwhile, are left reminiscing about the good old days of KitKat battery life for their notoriously quick-to-zero phones.

Editors' Recommendations

Jason Hahn
Jason Hahn is a part-time freelance writer based in New Jersey. He earned his master's degree in journalism at Northwestern…
Swarm 5.0 could be the 21st-century version of your childhood diary
swarm 5 redesign simplified version screen shot 2017 08 09 at 9 12 58 am

You may have put away your padlocked diaries and turned away from journal-writing (at least by hand), but the latest redesign from Swarm could be giving denizens of the 21st century a new way to log their memories. Meet Swarm 5.0, perhaps the most stripped-down version of the app yet. Rather than attempting to gamify your travels or site and restaurant visits, the "lifelog" version of Swarm simply wants you to remember where you've been. So go ahead, create a memory, and if you'd like, return to it at a later date.

“We want to remember our experiences: Not for others, but for ourselves,” Swarm noted in a blog post announcement. It's a rather bold statement to make in the world of Instagram and Snapchat, two hugely popular social media apps that are all about sharing with an audience. But this is by no means the first time that Swarm has taken a risk. After all, the app itself was spun out of Foursquare back in 2014, embarking upon a journey all its own while its parent company focused on local discovery.

Read more
Android O should make it easier to monitor your phone’s battery life
smartphone battery

Over the years, Google has introduced a range of features intended to limit battery consumption by apps in Android. One of the more major features released in the last several years was Doze, introduced in version 6.0 Marshmallow, which allowed the system to override background processes in apps that were draining power too frequently.

In spite of these enhancements, however, the battery settings menu has remained mostly unchanged, delivering the same basic information it always has. Fortunately, with Android O, Google is looking to change this.

Read more
Get the best from EMUI 5.0 on your Huawei Mate 9, P9, or Honor phone with these 10 great tips
Huawei P9

Until now, Huawei hasn’t had the software to match its excellent hardware. That all changed with EMUI 5.0, the latest edition of its proprietary user interface, which is placed over the top of Android 7.0 Nougat. It was first released on the Huawei Mate 9, but will soon be available as a free update on the Huawei P9, P9 Lite, Nova, Nova Plus, Honor 8, and the Honor 6X.

If you’ve ever held off buying a Huawei phone because of the software, there’s no need to do so anymore. EMUI 5.0 is great, and here’s how to make the most of it, regardless of what Huawei phone you’re currently using. So if you're looking for Huawei Mate 9 tips, P9 tips, or tips for another Huawei phone running EMUI 5.0, these tips will work.

Read more