Google galaxy Nexus HSPA+ Review - Part 3

I solved some of the battery life problems,  I think.   I found that the "Google play magazines" app was consuming 40% of the battery.   I don't use that app and I cant uninstall it,   but I can stop it and DISABLE it.  That made a significant difference in battery life that I saw for the rest of the day.  I ended the night with crossing the 30% battery left threshold at 9:30pm and no warnings about asking to be plugged in or any radios disabled.   I also spent about 2 hours that day on the phone talking.    This morning I also found one of my apps is misbehaving.   the Crestron control app will sit there sucking up battery when not in use, so I did a force stop and saw a drop in battery use instantly.   So be warned, some apps are poorly written and will stay running eating the battery while idle.

I really like the JellyBean bandwidth control functions.   the phone will now  warn me when I cross threshold #1 and then cut off Cellular data if I cross threshold #3.   this eliminates the need for an app to do this.  and it does it better than most apps I have seen.

One thing I noticed is the case is a bit "flimsy", specifically the back/ battery door,  it is very thin and only snaps on.   The stock JellyBean launcher forces a Google search bar at the top of all pages,  I don't like that as I honestly don't have the need to search instantly at all times.   Holo Launcher is going to be installed soon.

Signal strength still is fantastic,  even in the stores I lose calls on all the time I was able to hold a conversation the entire time.   I am very pleased with how the phone handles calls.

Yes disabling the magazines app has made a huge difference,  after being off the charger from 6:30am to 10:30pm and about 3 hours of talk time with 4 panorama photos taken and uploaded to face book and about another 2 hours of generally screwing around with the phone.  Put it on the charger with 35% remaining.  taking panorama shots makes the camera heat up significantly,  that camera uses a HUGE amount of power.  after 4 of them the camera and the surrounding area was very hot and took a while to cool down.  looking at the power use graph you can see that there was a significant power draw during that time and it flattened out once I was done.


It's not bad,  not fantastic, but not bad.  I am certain it uses the video camera mode to do this and then assemble the stream of video into a panorama photo.



Battery Update : today is even better,   7:00am until 6:00pm I still have 70% of the battery.  I did a lot of random surfing at lunch, but the bigest difference was that I had 5 "bars" of signal all day long.  this phone really sips power if you are in a good coverage area.

Overall after more than 1 week of living with the phone I am very happy with it.   IT does what you expect and does it fast.  No garbage apps installed by verizon,sprint,at&t..  no features disabled, just 100% pure Jelly Bean and it works great.

If you really want the best Android phone, you need to buy a nexus from google directly.

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