I’ve had to move to a Pixel 7a as a surprise replacement. I’m content enough with it, performance is acceptable, but battery life is worse than I’d like. How do people get by with a 7a? Buy a bunch of wireless chargers? Buy a magsafe case? I don’t see any battery cases so I imagine that’s not an option. Any recommendations would be great, thanks.
I’m not sure if you are running any custom ROMs but doing so should improve battery life as there is less bloat ware and programs running in the background. If you are not you could still try to debloat your phone as much as possible either by just deleting apps or using ADB commands.
Other than that you can have the battery saver on at all times, in settings you can configure it so that it practically never turns off.
You can go to every application and change the battery optimization to restricted (this will break some applications so you would have to put it back on optimized).
You could also turn off notifications for as many apps as possible, disable 5G if that is not a deal breaker for you, and turn off wifi/bluetooth when you are not connected to anything so it stops pinging constantly.
You could also turn off auto brightness adjustment and manually adjust it leaving it dark enough to see but not at max brightness. You should also change your phone to dark theme from light theme if you have not already done so, and change all applications to dark theme as well.
These should all marginally improve the battery life.
Another advice I can give is if you want your battery to be healthy for a long period of time, like 3 years, never charge your phone overnight where it maxes out to 100% charge. Try to keep it between 20-80%, and if possible this is controversial avoid using fast charging and especially wireless charging as much as possible. They stress the battery out a lot more than traditional charging which isn’t good for your battery health in the long run.
The 80% and wireless charging is where I draw the line. That’s way too much convenience to lose for me.
I’d just rather have batteries replaced every 2-3 years, which I’ve never actually found myself doing anyway. By the time the battery is going, the phone tends to be on its last legs as well.
You’re wrong with the part about custom ROMS.Google actually optimized their software pretty well… because they wrote the operating system. You actually get a better battery life on stock firmware. You get a worse battery life on something like GrapheneOS or LineageOS.
Interesting. I have been pretty content with the battery life on my Pixel 7 running GrapheneOS so far
This actually isn’t only true for Google. On most devices you get better battery life on Stock software.
You can search for “GrapheneOS battery life” and see lots of people say it’s worse than on stock, but also some that say it’s better. It might depend on if you’re using Sandboxed Google play or not.
But battery life on LineageOS definitifly is an issue and always has been. It’s probably mostly because it’s kernel isn’t really optimized for the device
I do not have sandboxed Google Play. It is bare bones GrapheneOS. I wonder how much of a difference that makes.
Thanks. I’ve done basically all battery saving tricks already. No 5g, careful with Bluetooth and WiFi, brightness, 60hz display, WiFi background scanning, all pure black apps and wallpaper etc. I’ve really combed though every possibility without touching features I really would prefer to keep. I do smart charging (the slow overnight charging) or whatever it’s called, but if I’m not happy with battery at 100%, I don’t know how I’d be happier with it starting at 80%.
Aaaaand it’s still pretty disappointing coming from a Galaxy A52 5G. I’d love any reccos. I haven’t heard about wireless charging giving battery health issues but I’ll check that out.
I’m not sure if the same can be said for the 7a, but a close friend of mine was having awful battery experiences on his 7. I saw a lot of people saying their battery was vastly improved on the Android 14 Beta so I told him to try it and he’s said it’s a night and day difference. May be worth a shot.
Ooo thank you. I’d be surprised if there weren’t similar results, they’re very similar. I just haven’t worried about my phone battery for years and find myself obsessively looking for battery improvement tips so I’d looove it if it gave a serious improvement. Thanks again!
I don’t know how bad is the battery for you. But start checking the (partially useful) battery menu and change app battery usage from Optimized to Restricted to apps that you can afford having to wait for a notification to appear. Mainly do it on apps that appear there and you barely use it.
Thanks. Restricted a few. I try to keep my phone clean of non essentials but there were a few I could.
Just to add to this, the latest public beta is an absolute game changer for battery life. Fingers crossed it doesn’t nose dive in the final release but I don’t have my hopes up tbh.
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Yeah, getting a Pixel and flashing custom is a hard pill to swallow.
