Conclusion
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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%.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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).
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The graph and the data table below are the results of my tracking.
Personal usage patterns & use-case
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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 | link |
| 2024-02-24 | 06:59 | link | - |
| 2024-02-26 | 05:07 | link | - |
| 2024-02-28 | 05:22 | link | link |
| 2024-03-02 | 03:56 | link | - |
| 2024-03-04 | 05:10 | link | - |
| 2024-03-05 | 07:16 | link | link |
| 2024-03-06 | 04:56 | link | link |
| 2024-03-02 | 04:31 | link | link |
| 2024-03-09 | 05:26 | link | link |
| 2024-03-11 | 08:06 | link | link |
| 2024-03-12 | 10:24 | link | album |
| 2024-03-14 | 02:33 | link | link |
| 2024-03-16 | 04:28 | link | link |
| 2024-03-18 | 03:55 | link | link |
| 2024-03-20 | 06:34 | link | link |
| 2024-03-22 | 05:41 | link | link |
| 2024-03-23 | 07:35 | link | link |
| average | 05:51 | - | - |
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Applause for the analysis! 👏
I’m using a Pixel 8 Pro and my observations are similar. I let AccuBattery gather the stats you gathered and my numbers look similar. I’m also a Shelter user. I decrease my refresh rate to 60Hz and resolution to 1080p. The battery life is truly the best of any Android I’ve had so far.
Thanks! Yeah, I’m very happy with the battery life on my P8.
It’s initially quite jarring to go back to a 60hz screen after getting used to 120hz, but your eyes adjust pretty quickly. The battery life on my P8 is good enough that I don’t need to make any display sacrifices to get great battery life, which I’m happy with.
I have a Motorola pro and I’m very pleased it also lasts me around 2 days easily.
I had a pixel 6 before this one, which I bought as a temp phone and costs 250$ IIRC. That lost 30% battery over night …
Not having to charge your phone on a daily basis is super chill !
I heard the battery life on the P6 is not so great. A 2 day phone is fantastic, and glad your Motorola is one.
Indeed it is not! Yup. Multi day phones are great!
I charged mine Friday at 8-8.30. it’s currently at 50%.
I don’t have the stats like you do though. And I think I likely have less screentime. So the pixel8 boasts impressive battery as well for your usage!
Let’s hope it lasts! ( I have had this one for about 4 months ).
One weird thing on the pixel 6. One day, randomly, battery life improved by a lot. I assumed it was some kind of update. A few weeks later it reverted to the precious behavior.
The Shelter app is great. I just moved all my work stuff into a separate account and disabled it for a weekend. Thank you.
Shelter is indeed fantastic, but you technically don’t need it if your main purpose is to isolate your work-related apps and snooze them for the weekend. You should be able to just use your phone’s existing Work profile without using Shelter.
The main value add of Shelter is that on top of isolating your apps to a separate sandbox, it allows you to freeze apps you don’t want running in the background and harvesting your data.
I’m crying salty tears on my S22 that gets me 2.5 hours of SOT on a good day, 1.5h on a not so good day.
I feel your pain 1000%. There was a lot to love about the S22, but the battery life alone made the entire device unusable.
The battery anxiety I had when using the phone was terrible.
Yeah, it really is a shame. Apart from the battery it’s a really nice phone, but the battery issue completely ruins the experience. I’m going to replace mine as soon as my current contract ends in July so I can get a good deal for a device with a new plan. I even dropped it and shattered the screen back in October but didn’t bother to have it repaired because I didn’t want to put more money into this device. I’m annoyed by the cracks every single day, but it just feels too wrong to pay more money for it. I’ll be so happy when I finally have a new phone.
Looks like the Pixel 8 would be a good option. I don’t think I can wait until the Pixel 9 comes out. I’m also keeping an eye on the Pixel Fold 2, hope it’ll be released in May.
I charge my P8Pro once every two days. It’s magical.
What do you think of Graphene OS? I understood from your post that it was a bit of a driving factor in you choosing the pixel, do you think you would make the same choice based on that particular OS again?
I haven’t switched to it yet, but yes, it’s the biggest reason I got a Pixel 8. Even if I end up not liking the OS (which I doubt), I love all the custom OS options that I have with Pixel phones, so I’ll probably stick to them going forward.
