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G play services sucks phone battery

That's completely true, on my previous phone (Nexus 4), as soon as I used Android Stock, without Google Play Services, my battery life increased by around 30%!

I have my Nexus 4 still until my Pixel XL arrives sometime mid March. It has gotten unbearably slow lately (navigation taking literally 1 min. or more to open up.

I tried to narrow down the cause via battery usage and OS Monitor but since all the tracking and ad related stuff apps use goes through Google Play Services I can't identify the culprit.

I assume routing ad and tracking related stuff and core functionality through there was so Google could lock down their open garden and prevent ad blockers from really blocking them. Bummer that iOS notifications are unusable for me.

It can be simply internal storage wear.

I actually don't use my phone much, and not at all for entertainment. Consequently my battery usually lasts three or four days. (Motorola G4).

Vaguely within the last week or two, no change in behavior, no new apps, that's been cut at least in half. One day it lasted less than a day.

I've got things like location and bluetooth turned off. I haven't been able to track it down. I'm wondering if it's a recent google or other app update. It's pissing me off.

Have you looked under Settings then Battery? Tells you which things are using the battery (%) and approx how much time you have left.

I usually get 3 days from a Nexus 6, and the biggest battery user is "Mobile standby" (5%).

it could also come from the hardware.

Possible, sure. You mean like the battery getting old? Capacitors getting arthritis? It's less than six months old. And it was a vaguely sudden change.

Even high end devices often have batteries issues. Battery tech is just not that great.

Usually they arrive at the one year date though.

Otherwise, you should be able to track the culprit with the battery historian (unless it is hiding behind play services ..)

They'd be a lot better if they just made the phone 1mm thicker ;-)

that would help a lot for sure. Batteries would still lose roughly half of their maximum capacity over time though, afaik battery tech has not solved that yet.

Welcome to the world where smartphones from cheap Chinese company like Lenovo are planned to be obsolete by a year.

Lenovo also makes not-cheap ThinkPads and not-cheap Motorola smartphones for Google ;-)

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