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.

  • @Metallibus@lemmy.world
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    911 months ago

    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.

    • @ElkendersOP
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      311 months ago

      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!

      • @amenotef@lemmy.world
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        311 months ago

        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.

        • @ElkendersOP
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          311 months ago

          Thanks. Restricted a few. I try to keep my phone clean of non essentials but there were a few I could.

    • @amenotef@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I think android 13 had a great battery life on day 1. But now it feels much worse to me. Right before android 14 is released.

      So I wonder if 14 will just restore the battery life once it’s released. Or will actually surpass it.

    • @Sheltac@lemmy.world
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      711 months ago

      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.

    • newIdentity
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      411 months ago

      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.

        • newIdentity
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          11 months ago

          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

    • @ElkendersOP
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      311 months ago

      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.

      • @amenotef@lemmy.world
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        211 months ago

        It’s horrible when you start going this path…

        I think there are some ways to improve the battery. But you have to start disabling some of these intelligent fancy options.

        Now I’m trying to run android with a few tweaks and see if I can get back my 72 hours of battery life (with light usage) that I used to have in the P5 when I got it.

  • @ElkendersOP
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    311 months ago

    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.

  • @shapis@lemmy.ml
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    211 months ago

    any custom ROMs but doing so should improve battery

    Is this really the case these days? Last time I used custom roms, many years ago, they unambiguously made stand by time worse.

    • @ElkendersOP
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, getting a Pixel and flashing custom is a hard pill to swallow.