Charts

• Boxplot of SOT on stock vs. GOS
• Complete visualization of SOT on stock vs. GOS
• GOS SOT over a month
• Stock SOT over a month

Conclusion

• On my Pixel 8, stock seems to offer better battery life compared to GrapheneOS, with a mean SOT of 06:51 on stock, versus a mean SOT of 06:03 on GOS.
• I can't be sure where the difference in battery life is coming from, but it may be due to stock's adaptive battery function that is not available on GOS.
• However, the slight increase in battery life on stock is not worth the amazing privacy and security benefits that GOS provides over stock, so I will be sticking to GOS.

Context

• I wrote a similar post to this one based on the tracking and analysis I did while I tested out stock Android before switching to GrapheneOS (Lemmy), and I wanted to complete my battery tracking by also seeing how GOS battery life compares to stock Android.
• Similar to my testing while on stock, I used my phone as normal on GOS, with the below configurations:
  • LTE only (I don't have a 5G plan)
  • 120hz refresh rate
  • Owner user, with separate work profile managed by Shelter
  • Sandboxed Google Play Services enabled for both main profile and work profile on the owner account
  • 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 started including the screenshots for the per-systems screen after seeing that the SYSTEM (IDLE) stats would be useful to track, but since I only have these datapoints for 11 charging cycles on GOS, I've excluded them from the analysis, although I am including the per-systems battery usage screen for reference.

Personal usage patterns & use-case

• I try to achieve a balance between privacy and convenience, so I am using Sandboxed Google Play Services and only use one user. However, I minimize unnecessary permissions and try to install only FOSS apps on my main profile while installing as many proprietary apps into my work profile as possible.
• The way I used my phone across stock Android and GOS was quite similar, although I did try to take advantage of GOS features whenever possible, such as enabling memory tagging, toggling off network permissions for apps that don't need them, etc.
• Depending on your privacy threat model, you can use a more strict setup without sandboxed Google Play Services, which may actually decrease battery life due to constantly active web sockets, or you may use multiple users to compartmentalize different apps into different profiles, which may save more battery versus my compartmentalization via Shelter.

Notable observations

• Although I got less SOT in general using GOS, I was still able to push the SOT past 9 hours with an idle time of 26:58 on my heaviest day (link), which is amazing battery life.
• Streaming music on Spotify seems to be a huge battery hog, and other Pixel users have noticed the same (link). The worst SOT I got, which was 02:13, seems to be largely due to at least an hour of music streaming on Spotify.
• On a related note, the background time tracking of Spotify is unreliable, as there were days when I was streaming music for about an hour (link), which led to a 10% battery decrease, but the battery usage screen says Spotify was active in the background for less than a minute (link).

Data & screenshots

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 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 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 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. 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