Being the latest Nexus device, the LG Nexus 4 has been
burdened by a lot of expectations. As our review pointed out, it’s not
only a handsome device, but also quite powerful. What’s been left
unanswered (so far) is how good its battery is at keeping the whole
thing running.
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus launched exactly a year ago posted terrible battery results due to an unfortunate combination of a relatively small battery capacity of 1750mAh, large high-res screen and not the terribly efficient TI OMAP 4460 chip. In comparison, the LG Nexus 4 features a 2000mAh battery and a 28nm Qualcomm chip, so let’s see how it did.
First up is our talk time test. With the four 1.5GHz Krait cores idle during calls, the ample battery was made to count and the Nexus 4 posted a very good time of 14:17h. Strangely enough, though, it came more than an hour short of the Optimus G achievement.
When we subjected the Galaxy Nexus to our browsing test last year it
scored what’s still the worst score we have seen. It wasn’t too
difficult for the LG Nexus 4 to beat the result of its predecessor, and
it did surviving for 4 hours and 34 minutes on a single charge. However,
when you look at the big picture, that score is still rather poor,
being more than two times lower than that of the Apple iPhone 5.
The video playback test brought more disappointment to the LG Nexus
4. The Google purebred took a freshly charged battery to 10% in 4 hours
and 55 minutes. Even, the Galaxy Nexus fared a lot better taking
advantage of the superior efficiency of its Super AMOLED screen when
watching movies.
The Google Nexus 4 ended our test with the rather mediocre 32h
endurance rating. That means you will need to charge the smartphone
every 32 hours if you do an hour each of talking, browsing and watching
videos per day. Just to remind you, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus managed just 1 hour less, so Google is hardly making too great progress here.
You might get better endurance if you mostly use your smartphone for talking, but that’s hardly what the Nexus 4 was made for. We can’t help but wonder, with battery life obviously not the Nexus 4 element, why Google and LG decided to drop the user-replaceable battery. At least Galaxy Nexus owners have the option to always carry a spare battery with them and get twice the endurance.
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus launched exactly a year ago posted terrible battery results due to an unfortunate combination of a relatively small battery capacity of 1750mAh, large high-res screen and not the terribly efficient TI OMAP 4460 chip. In comparison, the LG Nexus 4 features a 2000mAh battery and a 28nm Qualcomm chip, so let’s see how it did.
First up is our talk time test. With the four 1.5GHz Krait cores idle during calls, the ample battery was made to count and the Nexus 4 posted a very good time of 14:17h. Strangely enough, though, it came more than an hour short of the Optimus G achievement.
Talk time
- Motorola RAZR MAXX (ICS) 21:18
- Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100 16:57
- LG Optimus G 15:30
- Google Nexus 4 14:17
- HTC One X+ 13:31
- Huawei Ascend P1 12:30
- Pantech Burst 4:46
Web browsing
- Apple iPhone 5 9:56
- Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos 4:45
- Meizu MX 4:35
- Google Nexus 4 4:34
- Nokia N9 4:33
- Acer CloudMobile S500 4:32
- Samsung Galaxy Nexus 3:01
Video playback
- Motorola RAZR MAXX (ICS) 16:35
- BlackBerry Curve 9380 5:09
- HTC Rezound 5:03
- Google Nexus 4 4:55
- Samsung Galaxy S Duos 4:30
- Sony Xperia P 4:30
- Nokia Lumia 710 3:27
You might get better endurance if you mostly use your smartphone for talking, but that’s hardly what the Nexus 4 was made for. We can’t help but wonder, with battery life obviously not the Nexus 4 element, why Google and LG decided to drop the user-replaceable battery. At least Galaxy Nexus owners have the option to always carry a spare battery with them and get twice the endurance.
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