Whenever I see articles from people who have a problem with the S6 battery life they quickly blam...

[G+_Leif]

Whenever I see articles from people who have a problem with the S6 battery life they quickly blame the high resolution display just because everyone is saying it -  which is wrong in my opinion. There have been websites like notebook check (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsung-Galaxy-S6-Smartphone-Review.140249.0.html) who measured the real power consumption of the devices and the results are pretty clear..it uses less power than many other devices with 1080p displays. On the HTC M9 for example they measured max 7,5W while the S6 had max 6,8W. 

 

So what's really causing the battery life issues for some people?  In my opinion the main problem are some Google Services that go crazy and need to be fixed by Google. In my case Google Now and especially the Smart lock (trusted place) used my WiFi more than necessary and ruined the idle power consumption. After disabling those two my battery life is more than I could have hoped for from the 2600mah battery. 

 

Sometimes I'm skeptical if it's really good that Google is squeezing so many features into the Google Play Services these days. If one of it's "features" goes crazy they can really ruin the battery life quickly and it's hard to tell what it really is. Maybe they should split them into multiple parts, so if something goes wrong with them its at least easier to figure out whats causing the problem. I would like to see a small package of Play Services for media, one for geo location, one for security updates like web view and so on. 

 

And there are still the people who have the lightly glowing led on the back that doesn't go off. While I can't really believe that a single LED can ruin the battery life for those people it's quite interesting that especially those report battery problems. Maybe there is really a first batch of devices with a hardware issue in the wild. My device doesn't has this problem.

[G+_Joseph Cappellino]

I agree.  Most of my battery woes are from using location services in Google Now.  But, since I use it constantly for location history and the like, I can't turn it off.

[G+_Leif]

What annoys me a bit about Google Now is that I've my GPS always turned on and other apps who make use of my location doesn't ruin the battery life as much as Google Now does. I hope Google can fix it. Sometimes I'm glad that Google Now isn't that functional here outside the US so I don't get addicted to it :)

[G+_Marlon Thompson]

Good post Leif Sikorski I would say that the nexus 6 has a large spread when it comes to battery life and its all down to how you use the device. I don't ever worry as I have an Aukey quick charge  http://www.amazon.com/Aukey-10000mAh-Portable-External-Supported/dp/B00UBDI7EC/ref=pd_sim_sbs_cps_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=18RWAVADQ0B6RGQZYVRB with me all the time as its portable enough and 15 minutes with it is good enough for 3-4 hours. 

[G+_Leif]

I've just tried Intugame - that sold me on Displays with a higher resolution :)

[G+_Jason Howell (raygun01)]

Interesting. I just review the S6 and the battery performance was my biggest complaint. So, you are telling me that if one S6 had a qhd display and one had a 1080p screen, battery performance would be the same or in favor of the qhd display? I don't buy it. But mind you, I don't do diagnostic tests of this stuff. Just real world experience.

 

All I'm saying is: Fact, battery on the s6 is its main weakness. Fact, qhd resolution on a 5.1 display is practically the same to the naked eye as 1080p on the same size display. (Ok maybe that's a bit more opinion than fact but I believe it personally). So, if those points are both true, then give me 1080p and my battery will last longer. Best of both worlds.?

[G+_Leif]

It's more power efficient than the 1080p OLED I had in my S4 (which had the same battery capacity) and from the measurements sites like notebook-check and displaymate did it's also more efficient than many 1080p LCD screens in current devices.

 

So they optimized and improved a lot on OLED technology. Would 720p or 1080p with the same optimizations they did to this screen be more efficient - probably. But would they do so? I don't think so because they want to move forward.

So when the options are a 1080p oled display with 2013/2014 technology or a qhd with 2014/2015 that doesn't use more than the old 1080p I gladly take the update.

 

And I'm not sure if there isn't a difference to see. Most people who see the screen say it's the most beautiful they've seen while many of them complained in previous years about the pentile matrix, max brightness and white levels of OLED displays. Now the pentile matrix is at a much smaller level which "might" have helped the overall quality and the previous problems of OLED doesn't really exist anymore.

 

But to make it short - in my real use I've days where the battery life is fantastic like the screens above and I've had days where it was worse. Even the Verge said in its review - it's unpredictable. If the highres Display would be the problem it would always be bad.

 

Mine got consistently good when I fixed the Google service problem and the ones who have really horrible times with less than 2 hours SoT seem to have the glowing LED problem.

 

Maybe they should have just waited until those problems gets fixes by Google - same with the Android Auto support that didn't worked until a few days ago because of a missing Google update. But at some point they just have to ship I guess. The problems of us early adopters :)

[G+_Jason Howell (raygun01)]

Leif Sikorski Good points all, sir!