Develop Bugs

[Q] 4G or WiFi drains more battery?

what wastes more energy? having 4g on or having wifi on? i read the other threads but it had to do with 3g.. they said 3g wastes more power. is this the case with 4g as well?
thanks!

WiFi drains more battery always
that's from personal observation on all the phones i've owned in the past to now
as soon as you use WiFi the battery drains like there's no tomorrow
however this phone seems to handle it quite well

Yeah, 4G is a big battery hog. Wifi doesn't drain as much so long as you are connected to the same one for a while.
EDIT: just saw AllGamer's reply. Wifi really drains that much? I remember seeing the Droid Razr review saying that 4G eats batteries for breakfast. I might be wrong then!
Sent from my SGH-T989D using xda premium

They both drain battery about the same in my opinion.
When ever I can I turn both of them off to save battery.
It's really easy with the toggles that a couple roms have.
This phone is a BEAST!

From my personal experience wifi doesn't drain as much as 4g.
Sent from my SGH-T989 using xda premium

WiFi is far more efficient than the cellular network, and any usage will count against your allocated full speed GB's.. not a good thing.

don't have a sgsII yet but my experience with my vibrant is that wifi if connected uses less battery than hspa. If I'm not connected to a wifi network it drains the battery looking for one.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using xda premium

heygrl said:
WiFi is far more efficient than the cellular network, and any usage will count against your allocated full speed GB's.. not a good thing.
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Forgive my ignorance but how come the usage of Wifi will count against your allocated full speed? My personal experience has been different .

knut150 said:
Forgive my ignorance but how come the usage of Wifi will count against your allocated full speed? My personal experience has been different .
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Click to collapse
I meant not using it will count against your data allotment

lol so there's no unanimous answer. i guess i'll just try to experiment a little and see which one uses more. thanks everyone.

4G uses more battery than WiFi

Definitely 4G... I sit on wifi all day and do not use much battery at all.

skadude66 said:
Yeah, 4G is a big battery hog. Wifi doesn't drain as much so long as you are connected to the same one for a while.
EDIT: just saw AllGamer's reply. Wifi really drains that much? I remember seeing the Droid Razr review saying that 4G eats batteries for breakfast. I might be wrong then!
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Click to collapse
From what I understand, LTE is a bigger battery hog than HSPA+.

jasnmb said:
From what I understand, LTE is a bigger battery hog than HSPA+.
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For sure. And after that I'd say HSPA+ > WiFi in terms of battery draining.

Wait, our phone runs off energy. Please tell me its kinetic?!
Sent from my Juggernaut SGSII or Galaxy Tab 10.1 now "In Paris"

bhowanidin said:
Wait, our phone runs off energy. Please tell me its kinetic?!
Sent from my Juggernaut SGSII or Galaxy Tab 10.1 now "In Paris"
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Click to collapse
Solar backpack maybe ?

ok guys lets keep this topic sane, yeah it's funny, but lets go back on topic
it's a very valid & informative question
my personal experience shows me WiFi is worst, but others here says 3G/4G is even worse, but from personal experience 3G/4G is less than WiFi
so even i find that contradiction very interesting
the thing that could make a difference is the signal strength, perhaps better 3G/4G reception requires less power to maintain the connection?
possibly the same reason why WiFi always seems to do worse for me, because all the Starbucks, Airport, Hotel, Library, and other coffe/restaurant places that offer WiFi it's horrible, very slow, and hard to maintain signal, probably because tooooooooo many people are hogging it or maybe just because too many devices are bumping each other off the Router/WiFi AP on those establishments

Whenever I use wifi I turn my data off and gst better battery that way. If you have a bad data signal or wifi it'll take more battery to try to keep a connection.
In my Bio class I have terrible data signal and my battery will drain really fast with heavy use but if I turn on my wifi and turn off the data my battery iis way better
Sent from my SGH-T989 using XDA App

So after doing testing of my own I have come to the conclusion that 4G drains more battery than wifi. With wifi I can get about 14 hrs, but with 4G I only get 6-8 hrs.
This phone is a BEAST!

AllGamer, makes sense. If you have slower networks, your screen will be on for longer as you wait inbetween pages and downloads. Fast downloads => less screen time.
My personal experience with wifi vs THREE-g is that wifi eats my battery quickly (on all previous phones and there have been many, including present BB Torch for work). An d 3G doesn't drain as quickly.
However I agree wifi seems pretty sippy and efficient on the SGH-T989. My battery is learning. I am now getting 1 day and 13 hours of discharge time. Very moderate use. 4G. So yes there well may be a difference between 3 and 4G.
I will test wifi-only as soon as I can in the next few days.
AllGamer said:
ok guys lets keep this topic sane, yeah it's funny, but lets go back on topic
it's a very valid & informative question
my personal experience shows me WiFi is worst, but others here says 3G/4G is even worse, but from personal experience 3G/4G is less than WiFi
so even i find that contradiction very interesting
the thing that could make a difference is the signal strength, perhaps better 3G/4G reception requires less power to maintain the connection?
possibly the same reason why WiFi always seems to do worse for me, because all the Starbucks, Airport, Hotel, Library, and other coffe/restaurant places that offer WiFi it's horrible, very slow, and hard to maintain signal, probably because tooooooooo many people are hogging it or maybe just because too many devices are bumping each other off the Router/WiFi AP on those establishments
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Click to collapse

Constant 4G and battery life

So, I'm fairly certain it's a well-established fact that the constant switching from 4G to 3G drains a lot of battery on our phones since 4G isn't a widespread service yet. I have also heard that 4G is a more efficient antenna and if you have a constant 4G connection, the battery life isn't impacted much. I was wondering how much of this is true- I live in Atlanta, which was one of the first cities to get Verizon's LTE service, and as a result, I have a sold 3-4 bar signal of 4G at all times. I go to school downtown, work in the metro area, and live in the metro area. Since I got the phone, I've just left it on CDMA, as the speeds are fine for me and I typically get 30 hours or so of battery life with data and sync on (and WiFi, when available). Would switching to 4G change that number drastically?
Thanks!
Also, a side question: I leave GPS turned on as that only polls when an application calls for it, but I've left Google's Location Services off. Is there a real need to leave that on? With GPS only, I tend to get an immediate reading with wonderful accuracy.

I'm calling bs. Please post a screenshot of your battery life of 30+ with gps and 3g all day.

rabaker07 said:
I'm calling bs. Please post a screenshot of your battery life of 30+ with gps and 3g all day.
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I'd be happy to post a screenshot the next time I run my phone down. As I said, GPS doesn't drain your battery at all unless you're using Maps constantly, so that isn't really a major factor for me. Also, I DO have the extended battery.
Also, I can't help but note how this doesn't really relate to the content of the thread at all.

rabaker07 said:
I'm calling bs. Please post a screenshot of your battery life of 30+ with gps and 3g all day.
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Not at all what the topic was about but it's easily possible. I've gotten 30 hours on 3G no problem. Right now I'm at 20% after 20 hours with moderately heavy usage. Close to 4 hours of screen on time.
As for the topic, best way to find out is to try it. Couldn't tell you for certain one way or the other.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App

hotleadsingerguy said:
Not at all what the topic was about but it's easily possible. I've gotten 30 hours on 3G no problem. Right now I'm at 20% after 20 hours with moderately heavy usage. Close to 4 hours of screen on time.
As for the topic, best way to find out is to try it. Couldn't tell you for certain one way or the other.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
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Right, I suppose that would be the easiest approach. I just fear starting my day out on 4G and then realizing that my battery is shot when I really need it. Though, I could always just turn data off if I see my battery draining super quick.

Would this be considered good?

In your opinion, would this be considered good battery life?
2 days and 12 hours on battery with a total of almost 2 hours of screen on time.
Picture links attached.
http://img.tapatalk.com/b838cbf0-c7d0-a618.jpg
http://img.tapatalk.com/b838cbf0-c7ec-3191.jpg
http://img.tapatalk.com/b838cbf0-c7fa-2696.jpg

I think it's pretty subjective to be honest.
Are you able to get what you need to do on the phone done without having to worry about the battery?
If you mean in terms of comparison to others, then it is about average. I'd guess you're running a LTE Nexus - with the extra radio, you'll have worse battery life compared to GSM users. Some GSM users have reported 4+ hours of screen on time, which I would assume needs a few of the right tweaks here and there to achieve that. I doubt a LTE Nexus will be hitting those numbers though.

Well a phone like that and using it less than an hour a day for actual use defeats the purpose of having a smartphone.
So it's really impossible to say if it is considered 'good' battery life or not, since 99% of us use it frequently for e-mails, chat, browsing and gaming.

Krijs said:
I think it's pretty subjective to be honest.
Are you able to get what you need to do on the phone done without having to worry about the battery?
If you mean in terms of comparison to others, then it is about average. I'd guess you're running a LTE Nexus - with the extra radio, you'll have worse battery life compared to GSM users. Some GSM users have reported 4+ hours of screen on time, which I would assume needs a few of the right tweaks here and there to achieve that. I doubt a LTE Nexus will be hitting those numbers though.
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I keep LTE disabled most of the time even though LTE is plentiful in my area. I get 250 kilobytes per second on Verizon's 3G 95% of the time and that's plenty for browsing webpages or streaming music.
Another thing I should mention is that I am on GummyNexus 0.7.0 with LeanKernel 1.7.1 and I wanted to test how long I could make the phone last, with light to very moderate usage while on Wi-Fi. Brightness was at 50%.
I have made it to 3 hours and 50 minutes of screen-on time before when I had brightness at 25% with LTE disabled and connected to 3G.
I am aware that LTE drains battery, and the only reason I'd need to use it is if I wanted to download a large file. I get anywhere between 10-to-20mbps download and 8-to-10mbps upload, which is faster than my aunt's AT&T HSPA+ connection. She has trouble hitting 6mbps download and 2mbps upload.

kristovaher said:
Well a phone like that and using it less than an hour a day for actual use defeats the purpose of having a smartphone.
So it's really impossible to say if it is considered 'good' battery life or not, since 99% of us use it frequently for e-mails, chat, browsing and gaming.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how he uses his phone is his thing.
to the OP:
did you get all the use out of it you wanted in a days time without having to charge it? if so, then you're good to go.

Improving Battery Life & Signal on the Verizon GNex

Hello everyone.
So I bought this phone this past Friday and been having a blast with it. I bought the 2100mah verizon/samsung extended battery yesterday to have a bit better battery life with it. I have patience with battery life, so I'm ready to try anything.
Here's part 1 of my post (radio): So I'm on 4.0.4. I have the radio that comes with it. I noticed I can only get 1-2 bars (rarely 3) of signal at times. I read that the best way to post about this is in dBm so here are mines: -100 to -120 80% of the time. This is on 3g/4g/wifi. And it's rarely on 4g, it is always jumping to 3g. My mom has a thunderbolt and to test, I saw the thunderbolt had better dBm and always had a 4g signal, 3-4 bars constant, rarely 3g. I'm in Miami, Florida if it matters, which is a strong 4g area. When it's on 3g it gets very good signal, 3-4 bars and -80 dBm. Though sometimes I noticed my wi-fi gets 4 bars for like 10 minutes and returns back to 2 bars.
Anything I can do as far as the Radio, some people have fixed it with a new sim card but before I go get one (are they free?) let's see what I can try? Perphaps a new radio?
Part 2: Alright now as for the battery life. Here are my phone "stats": (screenshots are posted at the bottom of post for battery)
-4.0.4 Stock ROM nothing changed, just an unlocked bootloader.
-WiFi on when at home, off when using 3g/4g.
-NFC On.
-No syncing, everything updates when I open app (twitter, weather)
-Gmail is set to push, atleast I think so. It notifies me of a new email every time.
-48% Screen Brightness
-Signed OFF from Google+
That's it I believe, if anything else is needed let me know.
I have the XDA version of BetteryBatteryStats, so I guess I have the tool to fix it just need to pinpoint what the problem is. I'm draining at 2%-3% per hour with wi-fi, and no usage, just idle. Again this is with 4.0.4 update. I'm seeing people's battery life becoming awesome with some tweaking, so would like assistance on that.
Here are my screenshots:
Day 1 with ext battery on 4.0.4:
Day 2 with ext battery on 4.0.4:

Have you confirmed that you have the new radios installed?
I515.09 V.FA02 / I515.FA02 (or could show as I515.10 V.FA02 / I515.FA02)
You probably did that, but just wanted to be sure.

I have: I515.09 V.FA02 / I5I5.FA02
I appreciate the help!

How far off are you on strength from the T-Bolt? I think it's the 4.0.4 radios and I'll get into why I think that. Note that the following isn't scientific and I haven't really tested it, so don't spread this like it's fact. I live in a really strong 4G area, so in general I haven't noticed a difference with any of the various modems (I've tried them all). I will say that I worked for a week once in an area with poor Verizon coverage, and I noticed that the 4.0.2 radios worked better for me than the 4.0.3. Like, no coverage with 4.0.3 after upgrading to it, so I whipped my laptop out and pushed the 4.0.2 radios and got from zero bars w/ coverage to 1 bar. I don't know how the 4.0.2 radios compare to 4.0.4, but you might give that a whirl.
In general, I think that radio hype is just that, hype, and there's a reason why a slew of radios never make the final cut, but with Verizon trying to patch 3G/4G connectivity, I do think it's worth trying some other radio's out to see what they do in your area.
I hesitate to say the following because I have NOT paid that much attention or done significant testing on our radios, which is something I've done with previous devices. So do NOT take this as gospel, rather with a healthy dose of salt.
In my limited observation with 4.0.4, at least in my neighborhood/area of Birmingham (I have an LTE tower practically in my back yard), the 4.0.4 radios ARE weaker. With 4.0.2 radios for example, I want to say I got -70dBm on CDMA/1X in the house and usually -72dBm to -75dBm on LTE in the house. Right now, typing this thread on 4.0.4 with the phone showing 5 bars, I just checked my strength on LTE and it was registering -94dBm here at the house when I rolled onto CDMA, it showed -75dBm. When I rolled back onto LTE, it showed -75dBm (displaying 5 bars the entire time) then went to -87dBm a few minutes later. This is with the phone sitting on it's normal spot on my desk.
Random, first thoughts with 4.0.4:
1) We know that Verizon requested "updated" display bars for 4.0.4
2) There could be an issue in 4.0.4 with dBm updating/display. I haven't been at the house all day, I have roamed around, but I doubt very seriously that my real signal strength on LTE was really -94dBm here at home. When I say I have an LTE tower in my backyard, I'm literally talking about 1/4 of a mile away, on top of a hill.
3) 4.0.4 is not always registering/reading signal strength correctly, which is causing devices in a weak area to fall off of 4G and onto 3G when the issue isn't really with the tower, physical hardware, or the modem package, but on the way 4.0.4 is interpreting the signal information it's pulling in (based SOLELY on watching the signal range I just observed on LTE). That said, it easily could just be the tower this afternoon. AGAIN, take it all with a grain of salt.
I recommend trying the 4.0.2 radios, at a minimum. I would list them, but I don't know our radios off the top of my head yet (too much Vibrant info is still in my brain). Search for them, they're easy to find. BE SURE to push the CDMA/LTE radios paired together. Like, the 4.0.2 radios together, 4.0.3 radios together. Do NOT mix and match.
Generally speaking for people in good LTE areas, I think the 4.0.4 radio package is GREAT. I've noticed zero slow down. Yeah, -87dBm (which is what I normally see here at the house) IS "weak" and it SUCKS to have wrong bars displayed but I haven't noticed any slow down on the network. I think slightly scaling down LTE strength is what has helped improve battery life. CDMA radio strength does not appear to have been affected, which is what you're gonna be on in rural areas anyway so unless you're on the fringe of LTE signal like the OP, I don't think this radio package is anything to complain or be worried about.
---------- Post added at 03:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:06 PM ----------
Also, in my experience as someone that travels all over for work, the only time that "weak" signal drains battery is when you're on the fringe of no connection and the OS is boosting power to the cell antenna's. On the old/real signal indicator, this was when you had a connection to Verizon with 0 bars and it was boosting you to 1 bar. I'm not comfortable stating a -dBm range because I can't remember what I observed and I didn't write it down. If you already have 1 or 2 bars (again, on the "old" signal indicator) you really don't see a boost given to the radios. By "boost", I mean you can click on the battery graph and see where signal strength went up and battery consumption did too, while your phone sat in the same place. I have a screen shot of this that I will try to find, and update this post with.
Looking at your screen shots, I don't see that affect. In general terms, your battery life looks "fine" "normal", whatever we want to call it. Bear in mind that our LTE GNex's don't get the same life as our GSM counterparts.
Edit:
Found the screen shot I was talking about. This was on stock 4.0.2 in my hotel room one night in a rural area. The night before I had data/sync on and noticed that when I woke up my battery was about dead. I knew it was due to signal strength since I was used to losing about 8% over night. So the following night I turned off data/sync and let it run over night, not wasting the opportunity to watch what would happen to battery life with and extra boost to the radio to get improved signal strength along with removing app/data activity from the battery consumption mix by keeping data/sync off. If I remember correctly, I went to bed @ 100% and woke up 7 hours 44 minutes later with something like 72% battery. Not only did the phone boost the power to the cellular antenna, but this activity also kept the phone from sleeping properly. I'm GLAD smart phone's can do this, but at a minimum, it turned a roughly 8% battery drain over X period of time into a 28% battery drain.
I hope my info/experiences haven't confused things further for you.

CDMA Input
So what have others found about CDMA battery life?? Mine is poor no matter what ROM or Kernel I seem to try to run. I also have attempted under voltages in SetCPU to see if that helps. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Peace.

photolarry said:
So what have others found about CDMA battery life?? Mine is poor no matter what ROM or Kernel I seem to try to run. I also have attempted under voltages in SetCPU to see if that helps. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Peace.
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Click to collapse
You need to define "poor". Everyone's use is different as are their apps. If you truly have poor battery life no matter what, look at the three things that are always probably the same. 1) Your physical battery. Is it defective? 2) The apps you use. Perhaps you have an app that is acting up and syncing like crazy or wasting CPU cycles. 3) The area you live in. Do you have poor signal strength?
The biggest drain on your battery is ALWAYS going to be your screen, and data/sync. In my personal use, my biggest drain is: Screen Brightness 100%, Netflix running, Audio 100% through the speaker. This equals about 30% per hour with the Verizon Extended Battery depending on what all else syncs in the background...with a live wallpaper.
Undervolting is a misleading thing. People will disagree with me, but when you look at power consumption tables, undervolting does very little. When our phones display battery % remaining, it's not based on the actual juice left in the battery. It's a calculation based on charts that the phone manufacturer (probably Google in our case) took from the hardware manufacturer and put into play that basically says that at this Processor Speed (X), this Level of Power Consumption Occurred (Y). It happened for this Amount of Time (Z) and then it compiles that data and solves for an amount of power used giving us a percentage of remaining battery life. In general, this is VERY accurate. However, there are no values programed in to account for undervolting...or OVER clocking for that matter. For example, if you're overclocked to 1350MHz, then Android is going to use the values for 1200MHz. If you put a timer on your battery life, you'll see a longer run if you run your phone until it shuts itself off. But it's not THAT big of a difference. All the while when your watching how quickly your battery bar drops with your use, you can't see a a measurable difference.
In my experience with undervolting, doing so got me maybe an extra 5% boost in battery life. I can't equate that to a time because again, usage is different. In general, a 5% swing in a charge cycle can be easily accounted for by other things. Does your processor use more juice @ 1200MHz with normal volting compared to 1200MHz undervolted? Absolutely, but undervolting isn't going to get someone hours of extra battery life, especially when our screens usually account for 60%+ of our battery consumption. All said and done, undervolting results in gaining us very few percentage points in terms of what percentage of battery life our processors consumed.

Seems like the kernel and rom do make some difference not just apps. I use AutoStarts to prevent a mess of them starting upon boot. I am sure the screen takes a ton of it. But I am convinced that it depends on voltages and kernels too. Since I notice differences.

I recommend trying the 4.0.2 radios, at a minimum. I would list them, but I don't know our radios off the top of my head yet (too much Vibrant info is still in my brain). Search for them, they're easy to find. BE SURE to push the CDMA/LTE radios paired together. Like, the 4.0.2 radios together, 4.0.3 radios together. Do NOT mix and match.
Generally speaking for people in good LTE areas, I think the 4.0.4 radio package is GREAT. I've noticed zero slow down. Yeah, -87dBm (which is what I normally see here at the house) IS "weak" and it SUCKS to have wrong bars displayed but I haven't noticed any slow down on the network. I think slightly scaling down LTE strength is what has helped improve battery life. CDMA radio strength does not appear to have been affected, which is what you're gonna be on in rural areas anyway so unless you're on the fringe of LTE signal like the OP, I don't think this radio package is anything to complain or be worried about.
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Ok KWK, but there's a trade off here. If I try the 4.0.2 radios, that some people reported bad battery life on, it's just because it had a bad trade off for SOME
people right? So that means 4.0.2 radios could be good for me and result in better battery? Can I be on 4.0.4 and have the 4.0.2 radios?
Anyone know where to find these 4.0.2 radios and how to flash?
As for the battery life part of my post, what do you guys think I should try doing in betterbatterystats? A recent thread on here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1483829&page=3 (Go to page 3 and last post) He got his life fixed. So that's nice to know there's tweaks that can be done. Any suggestions? Look at the http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1488680&page=6 thread too. "draining at 1% per hour in sleep mode & how are you doing it?"

I disagee with your comment about old 4.0.2 radios since 4.0.4 (FA02) radios have improved signal reception. It is possible that maybe it affects battery, but I kind of doubt it. Based on all the research so far, seems mostly screen eats it a lot as well as how you use all the apps on the phone as mentioned above. I mean isnt this a matter of some electrical engineering info (ie voltages etc) and how to tweak such things? I have CS degree but admit my hardware knowledge is not greatest.

Ugh, I'm in a mess now, lol. I called Verizon yesterday and followed their usual "signal solution" got me to 4 bars of 4g. Turned on WiFi - 2 bars, turned it off, back to 1-2 bar 4g that last for 30 seconds.
I'm starting to think it's the sim card.
Any suggestions for battery life? Seems my phone can't sleep. It's down to 83% after 5 hours. And all I've done is send 2-3 text messages. Do I turn off NFC for a start?
edit: Now I'm at 4 bars wifi. Goddam radios, they are so random, we'll assume the phone is trolling and continue to the solution.

bump for the night scary how fast it got to page 2.
let's get these issues fixed!

If your phone is searching for signal, then your battery life is already sucking it up. A "stronger" radio that uses a little more juice won't cause more drain than your phone will cause by throwing everything it can at the phone antenna. Just look at my screen shot from before...28% battery drained in 8 hours...an additional 20% due to the phone trying to keep a signal.
Like I said about your original screen shots, your battery life doesn't seem to be that "off to me". Just push different radios, and try them for at least a day.

Okay will do. Where can I find these other radios and how do I flash them?
Lastly, anyone here an expert on fixing phone isn't sleeping? Seems to be my major idle battery drain.

Icey34 said:
Okay will do. Where can I find these other radios and how do I flash them?
Lastly, anyone here an expert on fixing phone isn't sleeping? Seems to be my major idle battery drain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can find the radios here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1481095
If you have the 4.0.2 radios, you can flash that ZIP in Clockwork Recovery Mod.
It will take a few minutes so leave it be and don't do a battery pull.

Well I have the 4.0.4 radios, does that change anything?
edit: after looking at that link you provided, are those even radios only? Seems like a bootloader & radio update from 4.0.2 -> 4.0.4. And I'm already on 4.0.4. But with horrid signal.

I have had the best results with the 4.0.4 radios but you mention you are already on them.
You can try flashing some older radios but I am not sure that will help your signal issues.
As far as finding out why you are having deep sleep issues, you can use Better Battery Stats to narrow down wakelocks.
With that said, if the phone is constantly in an area with poor signal, that will cause unnecessary battery drain as well.

Where can I find these older radios?
edit: I'd like to try the 4.0.2 radio.

Update 1: So today I powered it on after having it off from 7:00 AM to 2:45 PM. It's been idle, checked email for replies on this post and this is my battery:
Something is eating up it's idle time.
I noticed on the way back to my House it picked up a strong 4G signal for 5 minutes or so. Still looking to find where the 4.0.2 radios are. Noticing a stronger WiFi signal though, and the usual 4bar 3g. All I can find is the post from adranalyne about the radios from 4.0.2 -> 4.0.4. Something I was thinking about: If I flash 4.0.2 radios, say they are bad and I need to go back to 4.0.4 would that require a whole new flash of 4.0.4 or are there seperate radios?
Here are the betterbattery screenshots: (I have for last unplugged and charged not sure where it needs to be)

I too have an LTE Galaxy Nexus and have been switching from franco's and lean kernel in an attempt to gain battery life. I have a feeling you're not going to get much better battery life with LTE turned on. I've turned off sync and LTE overnight and the best I've gotten in deep sleep is about 1-1.5% an hour. That's all after hunting down all my unnecessary wakelocks and shutting them down (GTALK_asnyc, etc) and keeping my running programs to a minimum (email, lightflow, and weather1 are the only ones ever running besides stock apps with sync on weather1 on a 6 hour cycle)
All of the two day battery life posts I've seen all seem to be GSM phones, and typically I've been getting a full day pretty comfortably...
8 hours while sleeping + 8-13 hours of light to moderate usage (1-3 hours of screen time generally)..all with about 10-25% remaining at the end of my long days

That's excellent. But one problems: (1) I can't even get a 4g signal, at most for 5 minutes in an area that I regularly get it. I have a thunderbolt next to me running 3-4 bars. I know the GNex has a bad radio, but sheesh I atleast want to have SOME 4g.
Been trying to find a radio, can't find one though, if you can link one that'd be appreciated.
Anything you see there in betterybatterystats I should shut down, and do they start backup after boot? I see the GTALK thing you were talking about on mines too, how do I get rid of it?
edit: just a few hours after my first post today:

[LTE]New GNexus owner - thoughts and (battery) issues

Coming from AT&T and a carrier branded GSII (i777) followed by an international note (N7000), I'm evaluating Verizon and the galaxy note. If the service is better, I'll jump from AT&T... otherwise, I'll go back to AT&T and my note.
However, this isn't about the service - but about the phone. I understand that some of this stuff might be CDMA/LTE specific (hence the reason for the title)
The biggest thing I see as an issue with this phone (so far) is the (stock) battery life. It completely sucks. 6% battery drain an hour with the screen on only 3 minutes? That's beyond horrible. I don't have anything loaded on here thats a "known" wakelock issue (such as skype, facebook, etc.) As a matter of fact, it's configured (mostly) the same as my GSII and GNote, so it's easy to notice the horrid battery drain. In the same 1 hour period, syncing the exact same exchange server (push email) account, but with 10 minutes display on time, the gnote drained 1%. (I realize that the note has a much larger battery [and display to drain it], but it's useful to compare anyway.)
If I actually use the gnote (display on), the battery drops much faster. With actual light usage (such as for reading email), I get about 6-8 hours of battery life total. If I use it heavily, I'll be recharging so often I might as well hard wire to a wall outlet.
I'm using the AOKP (m4) firmware - first with the kernel it comes with, and I installed the latest STABLE "lean" kernel last night hoping to resolve the battery drain (so far, it's not.)
BetterBatteryStats isn't showing me anything unusual other than a "modem_usb_suspend_block" kernel wakelock (5 min of 1 hour)
Is this what verizon galaxy nexus users typically deal with? Is the battery life on this device really THAT horrible?
Did I miss a "FABQ" (frequently asked battery questions) thread somewhere? Surely the "google experience" isn't only a quickie...
Thanks
Gary

Battery drain while off should be between 1-5% per hour (From what I have noticed). Try enabling AOKP battery saver which will drop from 4G to 3G while the screen is off which should help with the screen off battery.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA

disable LTE, and you'll watch your battery life double.
Or just return the Verizon version and buy the GSM version instead.

miketoasty said:
Battery drain while off should be between 1-5% per hour (From what I have noticed). Try enabling AOKP battery saver which will drop from 4G to 3G while the screen is off which should help with the screen off battery.
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Click to collapse
Drain should be 1-5/hr with 4G enabled or disabled?
I'm kind of in shock at the battery drain on this thing. I'm pretty fluent with android devices, and I generally avoid any of the normal battery blackholes (such as social networking, skype, etc) I also know how to PROPERLY configure exchange so it doesn't drain battery/data. (make sure the IP number of the exchange server doesn't change when switching to/from internal wifi networks.)
However, this is my first experience with using a verizon android device - and first with LTE. My SGSII (GSM) could get 2days on a charge (2%/hr was normal when not on wifi.) and the Note (international version) could go for 3 days on a single charge.
With the LTE GNexus, 6%/hr drain with nearly no usage would give me about 15 hours of usage before 10% turn off. If I actually want to read my email messages or make a phone call (it IS a phone, you know), I might drop to less than 12 hours. I can't imagine that this is normal - or that google, verizon and samsung would endorse something like that.
(Okay, maybe samsung would... they seem to be going downhill lately.)
Surely I'm doing something wrong and the phone doesn't suck this badly. (I really hope I'm doing something wrong, as it will completely destroy my opinion of google if a "google experience" is a phone that lasts only 15 hours/charge when just left in standby.)
Thanks
Gary

the problem with battery life is LTE... its a double edged sword: you get insane speeds at the cost of battery life. every CDMA phone takes a huge hit when LTE is enabled which i think is the reason that apple has been reluctant to release an LTE enabled iphone thus far until the tech matures. im using a GSM gnex (i9250) and i can use the phone all day and still be over 30-40% at the end of the day

even with franco kernel 121 on my miui gn, i still need to charge 3 times a day... this is android.

zeke1988 said:
even with franco kernel 121 on my miui gn, i still need to charge 3 times a day... this is android.
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Click to collapse
its not android, its LTE.. as you can see both of you are on verizon
my older HTC sensation actually got over 2 days of constant use easily (dual core snapdragon running ICS) since it was GSM.. my galaxy nexus while not getting 2 days, easily gets 1 day no problem on GSM
AFAIK there is no LTE iphone which is why you see on average the insane battery life on those devices

norazi said:
the problem with battery life is LTE... its a double edged sword: you get insane speeds at the cost of battery life. every CDMA phone takes a huge hit when LTE is enabled which i think is the reason that apple has been reluctant to release an LTE enabled iphone thus far until the tech matures. im using a GSM gnex (i9250) and i can use the phone all day and still be over 30-40% at the end of the day
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Click to collapse
I've made the change mentioned in another reply (turn off LTE when the screen turns off.) I'm charging the phone back up and will see how things go then.
With both wifi and LTE disabled, I won't be happy with drain higher than 2%/hr (assuming the screen stays off and I don't get a massive influx of email.)
For the person who said that's just the android is, you are VERY wrong. As I mentioned earlier, I'd get 2 days on a AT&T branded galaxy SII (i777) and I get 3 days on my galaxy note (international version.)

I don't know, it has to be something with your apps or your signal. I mean, 6% is fairly high in my opinion, even on LTE. I never turn LTE off unless I'm out of town (which is hardly ever). I usually get anywhere between a total of 15-20 hours of total time, and 2-3 hours of screen-on time. This is with auto brightness enabled, no GPS, no BT, just LTE. All my notifications are push as well. Make sure your signal is always a light yellow-green color (in the battery settings menu), otherwise that will definitely be the big battery eater. May I suggest trying different radios, or flashing a 4.0.4 rom? I think the new radios/4.0.4 roms have substantially increased my total and screen on time.

garyd9 said:
I've made the change mentioned in another reply (turn off LTE when the screen turns off.) I'm charging the phone back up and will see how things go then.
With both wifi and LTE disabled, I won't be happy with drain higher than 2%/hr (assuming the screen stays off and I don't get a massive influx of email.)
For the person who said that's just the android is, you are VERY wrong. As I mentioned earlier, I'd get 2 days on a AT&T branded galaxy SII (i777) and I get 3 days on my galaxy note (international version.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definitely not just Android as my girlfriend on her Droid 2 with 2.3.3 easily get's a days use out of her phone with tons of Facebook/Twitter/Etc (On Stock Motoblur/Rooted).

Llama
If you use llama to configure auto actions for areas and screen off time, I get a whole day out the the lte version. Like 6am to 1 am.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...t#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5rZWJhYi5MbGFtYSJd

I have LTE Galaxy nexus and I get 1 day 20 hours of battery life normally. About 3-4 hours of screen on time. I am using AOKP Beta 31 and have all syncing off. I have a weather widget that syncs every 2 hrs.

He I use JuiceDefender ...
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using xda premium

theherodrownd said:
I have LTE Galaxy nexus and I get 1 day 20 hours of battery life normally. About 3-4 hours of screen on time. I am using AOKP Beta 31 and have all syncing off. I have a weather widget that syncs every 2 hrs.
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What size battery?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA

theherodrownd said:
I have LTE Galaxy nexus and I get 1 day 20 hours of battery life normally. About 3-4 hours of screen on time. I am using AOKP Beta 31 and have all syncing off. I have a weather widget that syncs every 2 hrs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which kernel are you using? Which radios?
I just updated my radios to use the 4.0.2 for CDMA and 4.0.3 for LTE. Not sure if that will help battery life, but my LTE d/l speeds jumped from about 6mbps to 24mbps (as reported by the speedtest.net app.)
Gary

kbohinski said:
If you use llama to configure auto actions for areas and screen off time, I get a whole day out the the lte version. Like 6am to 1 am.
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Click to collapse
I'm very familiar with llama, but I hope you realize that your message is kind of useless with more information. Perhaps if you tell us what types of auto actions you are configuring...
Thanks
Gary

garyd9 said:
Which kernel are you using? Which radios?
I just updated my radios to use the 4.0.2 for CDMA and 4.0.3 for LTE. Not sure if that will help battery life, but my LTE d/l speeds jumped from about 6mbps to 24mbps (as reported by the speedtest.net app.)
Gary
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Imoseyon lean kernel 3.1.0 (I have used JameBond Kernel with similar results). I have the stock 4.0.4 radios (I515 V.FA02). Stock battery.
I also keep my screen brightness pretty low.

anton2009 said:
I don't know, it has to be something with your apps or your signal. I mean, 6% is fairly high in my opinion, even on LTE. I never turn LTE off unless I'm out of town (which is hardly ever). I usually get anywhere between a total of 15-20 hours of total time, and 2-3 hours of screen-on time. This is with auto brightness enabled, no GPS, no BT, just LTE. All my notifications are push as well. Make sure your signal is always a light yellow-green color (in the battery settings menu), otherwise that will definitely be the big battery eater. May I suggest trying different radios, or flashing a 4.0.4 rom? I think the new radios/4.0.4 roms have substantially increased my total and screen on time.
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Click to collapse
No reason to turn your GPS off. It only gets used when needed so will not hurt you battery.

On lte with everything else disabled, sync disabled, cm9 with lean kernel 3.1.0exp1, I get just about a day of usage with about 2 .5 hours of screen life, I think it is possible o get decent battery life on lte.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA

removing the "my verizon" app (and the associated "data usage" widget) seems to have helped the battery a bit. Now at about 4%/hr on LTE with BT/Wifi off, GPS on (but unused.) Perhaps changing the LTE radio to 4.0.3 also helped. Using that same "lean" kernel that seems to be popular in this thread... whatever he has flagged as "stable" as of this post.
The only thing that runs beyond exchange syncing is beautiful widgets (home screen with hourly weather and time.) No other widgets, weather turned off in AOKP.
Take care
Gary