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

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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.

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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
Image used with permission by copyright holder

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.

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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.

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Jason Hahn
Jason Hahn
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jason Hahn is a part-time freelance writer based in New Jersey. He earned his master's degree in journalism at Northwestern…
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