Nexus 4 Flicker and Battery??

[HostileDonut]

I just got a Nexus 4 8Gb about a week ago. Everything seemed to be going well, until my screen started having a slight flicker at the bottom where ads generally come up. I look online and found many people had this issue and that disabling hardware overlay in developer options fixes the problem. I did that and that seems to be fine so far, except every so often I get a very quick flicker on my back, home, and all tabs buttons. Sometimes it only happens on the home button. I was wondering if anyone has had this same problem on the icons at the bottom or if I should even worry about it. I am not sure what to think as this is my first smartphone.

Now for the battery issue. I plugged my charger into my phone when it was at 31% I believe. My phone was instantly "charged". I waited for it to drain to 91%, then plugged it back in, and bam, instantly "charged" again. I then waited for it to drain to 73% I think, and then powered the phone down completely to restart it and see if I could get a proper charge. I could not power on the phone. I plugged the phone into the charger, powered on the phone, and realized that my battery had completely drained upon power down the phone. I let the phone charge until it was at 20%, took it off the charger to go get dinner, played a bit a mini golf match up until it was down to about 15%, and then turned on the game Battle Bears for about 2-3 minutes and my battery had drained all the way down to 1%! Now the phone seems to be working just fine, but I would like to know is this common for smart phones or if anyone here has a Nexus 4, is it common for this particular phone or should I be concerned?

Thanks for reading, sorry it's so long.

 

[Apanzee]

The flickering issue could be caused by a faulty display driver. Hook it up to your PC and back everything up, then do a factory reset to see if it fixes the issue.

To do this, ensure the phone is plugged in to a power source, but turned off. Hold the volume down button + the power button until it turns on and displays a menu. If that doesn't work, try volume up. Next, navigate through the menu by using the volume keys to go up and down the list, and the power button to make selections. Find the option for factory reset and confirm that's what you want to do. It should only take about ten minutes. If it still doesn't work, take it to a local repair center.


For the battery issue, try all of the following to try and narrow down the cause of the problem.

Try a friends charger, rated to the same voltage. The voltage rating is on the part that plugs into the wall.
Try a friends battery. Watch the first five minutes of this video to see how to remove it.
Try putting your battery in your friends phone.
Get a volt meter, and test your battery as well as your friends to see whether or not yours carries an irregular voltage.

Lithium-ion batteries are only good for so long, and can only be charged so many times or take so much abuse. Eventually they lose the ability to hold a charge at all. Some are manufactured better than others, and with this in mind - yours may have been made very cheaply and has bit the dust. Testing it in this manner will tell you whether the issue is with the phone itself, or the battery.

***~~~***~~~DISCLAIMER~~~***~~~***
I, nor Toms Hardware, take absolutely no responsibility for any damage done to your phone. Taking it apart voids your warranty and any damage caused during the procedure will not be covered by your carrier, Google, or LG. If you are not willing to absolve that risk, do NOT try and take the phone apart to test the battery. Simply take it in for repairs.

 

[HostileDonut]

Thanks! For the responce! The flicker seems to be gone after changing that setting and the battery has worked well today. With 9 hours of battery life with quite a bit of use. I don't want to void my warranty and I don't have voltage meters, but does the rest of what I just explained sound right? Thank you

 

[HostileDonut]

Okay so my phone died at 8 hours and 52 minutes. Everything worked well, expect my last 10% drained really quickly. Is this regular?

 

[Apanzee]

9 hours of use is a pretty decent battery life, my phone is roughly 3 years old now and the battery only lasts about half that. Standby it can go for a couple days, easy, but texting and music along with web browsing kill it off ridiculously fast.

The last 10% draining quickly is to be expected, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. If it starts charging improperly/dying at odd times like it was before you changed the settings, I'd take it in and have it looked at.

 

[HostileDonut]

Alright thanks this is great to hear! How quickly does the last bit of battery generally drain for your phones? Because this just seems very fast, but like I said I have never owned a smartphone before so I wouldn't know. Would you like a screen shot to see how quickly it drops? (It gives a graph of the battery and how it drops etc.)

*EDIT* I didn't use the phone for 9 hours of screen time, but it lasted about 9 hours with a decent amount of screen time.

 

[Apanzee]

It's hard to answer that because I've never timed it or paid a lot of attention to it. It does die very fast when it's below the 15% threshold though. At 15% it prompts me to plug it in, and it dies shortly after if I'm using it. It lasts a couple hours when not in use at all.

This is a review from Tech Radar, based on a brand new Nexus 4 out of the box. You could read that for comparison, to see how your phone should be performing battery-wise.

By the time we got home at 5pm, the Nexus 4 had told us the charge was hitting 15% but then we managed to keep it going with minimal use until we went to bed at 9pm.

With minimum to no use, that seems reasonable. How were you using your phone during the last 10-15% of the charge?

 

[HostileDonut]

Well I was using it to check Facebook and reply to this forum I believe. I may have used it for a game for a second but I can't remember. And it ran out within about 5 minutes.

 

[Apanzee]

Browsing on a smart phone will kill the battery pretty darn fast, though that's a tad ridiculous.

You should go ahead and turn the phone off, then plug it in over night. When you wake up in the morning with a full charge, download and install "Easy Battery Saver" from PlayStore, it has an Android logo with a lightning bolt on his chest and a red circle above his head.

Once installed, open the app up and put it on "Intelligent Mode."

If it doesn't drastically improve from tomorrow on, let me know.

 

[HostileDonut]

Okay thanks I'll give that a go. But does that mean my phone is broken but this will hwlpvavlittle? Cause if it's broken I would rather send it back. Also, for some reason it only charges to 99% overnight until I take it out of sleep mode, then it charges to full. That didn't happen the first few times I charged bit but now it does. ???

 

[Apanzee]

It should help a lot, most people report their battery life increasing by 50% or more.

If it's easier than troubleshooting though, I'd say just take the phone back and get a replacement.

Also I wouldn't worry much about it only charging to 99%. In order to not over charge the battery, most devices will charge it up to 100% but maintain it at around 98-99. If you really want that extra 1%, just unplug it then plug it back in for a minute.

 

[HostileDonut]

Okay then I think I will send it back. The battery app says I will get 60% higher battery life, but to be honest it feels like it is running out even faster than normal... thanks for all the help though!

 

[Apanzee]

No problem, sorry I couldn't do more for you.

Do you plan to get a replacement or a different phone? The Galaxy S4 is a beast, but likely out of your price range if you don't plan on signing a contract. Alternatively, the S3 has admirable specs and you could probably get a refurbished one for close to the same price as the Nexus 4.

 

[HostileDonut]

It's totally okay, there wasn't much you could do for a broken battery but thanks for helping! Good to know there is a place I can go for support!

I plan on getting another Nexus 4 as the other phones are out of my price range and from what reviews I have seen the Nexus is supposed to be better. Also, a couple of my friends own S3's and I am not a big fan. They don't seem quite as smooth as the Nexus.

 

[Apanzee]

Toms is most certainly here in the future if you need anything else.

Well, good luck with the exchange process, and hopefully you get one with better performance this time.

Post again when you get it and let me know how you're coming along.

 

[HostileDonut]

Alright thank you I certainly will if I have any more questions!

And yeah sure thing! You should hear back from me within a week then!

 

[HostileDonut]

So I got my new phone back and I've only had it for today but it seems to be better with the battery. I have only plugged the charger in twice so I can't speak too much on it insta-charging but it hasn't so far.

 

[Apanzee]

That was fast. Good to hear though, hopefully the issue doesn't arise with this one. If it does, I'd be having some harsh words with Google over it if I were you