I tracked SOT on my Pixel 8 for a month - Lemmy.World
# Conclusion * For my use cases, the Pixel 8 has phenomenal battery life,
comfortably lasting me over 2 days and sometimes even 3 days, with an average
SOT of 05:51 from the 18 charging cycles I’ve tracked from 100% to 20%. * I’m
extremely happy with the Pixel 8’s battery life, and I look forward to getting
even better battery life once I switch to GrapheneOS, as there should be even
less battery consumption due to system apps such as Play Services not being part
of the OS. # Context * I got my Pixel 8 from the Google Japan store (Obsidian,
256GB) on 2024-02-21, upgrading from a Samsung Galaxy S22 (Exynos), which I had
pre-ordered. I was overall happy with the S22 except for one major complaint:
the battery life. The Exynos chipset was so inefficient and had such terrible
idle drain that after my battery woes didn’t get solved even after getting my
first unit replaced by Samsung, I became unhealthily obsessed with my phone’s
battery life. * My obsession led me to write multiple posts such as this one
[https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/ub4nj3/i_tracked_the_battery_usage_of_my_exynos_s22_for/]
in a desperate attempt to have a usable phone, but I eventually concluded that
the only way for me to have a phone that comfortably lasts me the full day was
to get a new phone altogether. I decided to get the Pixel 8 mainly because I
want to use GrapheneOS [https://grapheneos.org/] for maximum privacy and
security, and the OS is only available for Pixel devices. * When I got my Pixel
8, I decided to test the Pixel 8’s battery life on stock for a month, from 100%
to 20%, with the below phone settings: * LTE only (I don’t have a 5G plan) *
120hz refresh rate * Dark mode * Bluetooth on, always connected to my Galaxy
Watch 6 Classic and very often connected to other BT audio devices * With the
above configurations, I used the phone normally, then took screenshots once I
got the low battery warning notification at 20%. I always took screenshots of
the main battery usage screen, but I didn’t always take full screenshots of the
entire usage detail screen, since I couldn’t figure out how to take full-screen
screenshots while including the status bar with the battery percentage (Later
learned that it’s not possible with Pixel devices). * The graph and the data
table below are the results of my tracking. #Personal usage patterns & use-case
* I’m on my phone pretty often, but I rarely run intensive tasks on it such as
video rendering, gaming, and so on. I also don’t use any socials except reddit,
and as a digital privacy advocate, I mostly use FOSS apps directly downloaded
from Github or from F-droid, while I keep most of my proprietary apps from the
Play Store frozen and sandboxed via Shelter
[https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter] that I unfreeze and use only when I need
to use them. * This means very few processes are running on my phone at any
given time, and the processes that are running on my phone are usually
lightweight and locally-run processes and processes from proprietary apps simply
stop running when I freeze the apps. * I am fully aware that this is not how
most people use their phones, but I am making this post NOT to make a sweeping
statement that the Pixel 8 has universally amazing battery life, but to share
the Pixel 8’s battery life performance when used with my usage patterns &
use-case. # Notable observations * On 2024-03-14, I got the worst SOT of 02:33
over 2 days, but this was when I was having issues updating the software of my
Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. The phone was having trouble updating my watch’s
firmware for some reason, and the Galaxy Watch6 Manager used up 35% of battery
during the 02:33 I was using the phone [https://imgur.com/bPxUf7f]. This hasn’t
happened since, but for context, SOT of around 2.5 hours was the average SOT I
would get over a single day from 100% to 15% on my S22, so I wasn’t very alarmed
at this figure. * On 2024-03-12, I got a whopping SOT of 10:24 over 2 full days,
which absolutely blew me away. You can verify from the album I made showing each
day’s detailed usage screen which shows that I didn’t charge my phone at all
since I took it off from the charger. # Data & screenshots | date | SOT (h) |
main_screenshot | full_usage_screenshot | |—|—|—|—| | 2024-02-21 | 07:26 | link
[https://imgur.com/K6yFBON] | link [https://imgur.com/9YPrVbh] | | 2024-02-24 |
06:59 | link [https://imgur.com/dKM3Azv] | - | | 2024-02-26 | 05:07 | link
[https://imgur.com/05HgrdL] | - | | 2024-02-28 | 05:22 | link
[https://imgur.com/nEBcpy5] | link [https://imgur.com/ngfe5vz] | | 2024-03-02 |
03:56 | link [https://imgur.com/9UPIGCq] | - | | 2024-03-04 | 05:10 | link
[https://imgur.com/RbbFkwb] | - | | 2024-03-05 | 07:16 | link
[https://imgur.com/YVQEAIj] | link [https://imgur.com/LBde5mb] | | 2024-03-06 |
04:56 | link [https://imgur.com/jPNJWgH] | link [https://imgur.com/lZpLM2R] | |
2024-03-02 | 04:31 | link [https://imgur.com/NuJMenX] | link
[https://imgur.com/AfK8N84] | | 2024-03-09 | 05:26 | link
[https://imgur.com/3Fqkbf9] | link [https://imgur.com/JNQxVqq] | | 2024-03-11 |
08:06 | link [https://imgur.com/wMoPX64] | link [https://imgur.com/JmwYy1q] | |
2024-03-12 | 10:24 | link [https://imgur.com/NLSbnYf] | album
[https://imgur.com/a/gqfAadR] | | 2024-03-14 | 02:33 | link
[https://imgur.com/GsosWTZ] | link [https://imgur.com/bPxUf7f] | | 2024-03-16 |
04:28 | link [https://imgur.com/dkUD7yj] | link [https://imgur.com/lpB8GYK] | |
2024-03-18 | 03:55 | link [https://imgur.com/YAK6bn1] | link
[https://imgur.com/SfJjR1i] | | 2024-03-20 | 06:34 | link
[https://imgur.com/xR661KQ] | link [https://imgur.com/sOg58v6] | | 2024-03-22 |
05:41 | link [https://imgur.com/cmaAiRL] | link [https://imgur.com/ExU5F5R] | |
2024-03-23 | 07:35 | link [https://imgur.com/P1qwngM] | link
[https://imgur.com/Pi7iPuA] | | average | 05:51 | - | - |
