Pixel 6 users report wildly varying battery life — here could be some reasons why

Why does seemingly everyone have a different opinion about the Pixel 6's battery life?

The wide range in reported battery life for Google’s new Pixel 6 series have some of our readers concerned as they shop for a new phone. Why are different reviews and different people getting wildly varying numbers? One person says it’s got “good” battery life, another says it’s “bad” — which can you trust? Well, sadly, they’re both probably true.

I can’t give you a precise explanation for the different numbers being thrown around, but based on our experiences here at Android Police, reviews at other venues, and anecdotal reports, we think we know at least a little bit about why there’s such a big difference in experiences out there.

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Google kind of ruined how Android 12 measures battery life, which complicates things further.

To start, part of the variety has to do with use cases, and even we at Android Police observed a big difference in battery life depending on what we were doing, as many other reviews note. In day-to-day use, I’m not especially hard on my devices (Slack, Gmail, Twitter, and apps like that aren’t particularly demanding), and I usually see higher-than-average numbers across all my reviews. But even just a few minutes of intense camera use were able to outright destroy my battery — I believe I saw it fall about a percent a minute at peak. And recent reports that battery life has started to “settle in” resulting in better numbers for some folks could be tied to that as reviewers ease into less demanding habits.

This is probably a little inside-baseball for our readers, but when you’re reviewing a phone, you’re not just using it “normally” the whole time. In part, you’re also supposed to be testing all the new or existing features to see how they’d perform, whether or not they’re things you use all the time yourself. For example, I’m probably never going to remember to use Magic Eraser, and I don’t take a lot of ultra-wide photos, but these are things I need to be familiar with and test to make a qualified assessment on our readers’ behalf — their requests even influence my focus as I make sure to test things they care about. So, during that review period, reviewers are testing phones a little harder and in more varied ways than they might typically use them. Folks that set aside time during the review specifically for their own “normal” use to measure battery life (like me) will probably see better numbers as a result.

Another potential explanation is the Pixel’s adaptive battery settings — added in Android 9 Pie and enabled by default. The short version is that your Pixel can fine-tune how apps run in the background, putting them in buckets with slightly different behaviors. It takes some time for the system to learn your habits, but the feature ultimately changes how often your apps wake up or sync in the background, and that can affect battery life over time. This could also account for the “settling in” behavior some have observed.

There’s at least one other big explanation, though, divined recently in Andrei Frumusanu’s deep dive over at Anandtech. It turns out, Google’s new custom chip isn’t actually that custom, and while it’s pretty efficient when it comes to machine learning — arguably the reason why Google made its own SoC to begin with — it’s not that efficient at, well, basically everything else. That’s due to a shared design with Samsung’s infamous Exynos chips, a dated and less efficient “big” Cortex-A76 core design, and a throttle-prone GPU. Many UI-related workloads rely on those less efficient cores in Frumusanu’s testing, and overall baseline power consumption for the Pixel 6 Pro was higher than expected (though the 6 Pro’s screen could account for that).

There’s also speculation that the Exynos modem or 5G connectivity could be to blame. The Pixel 6 series is the first time a non-Qualcomm mmWave 5G device has come to US carriers, and some have speculated that the modem or something else related to 5G connectivity could be negatively impacting battery life. The Tensor chip has an external (read: not on-die) modem, and historically that can mean reduced battery life when using mobile data. Reviewers that spent more time at home or on Wi-Fi (as many of us are these days) could have seen better numbers. Personally, I didn’t notice any major issues out and about when on mobile data, but I live in a small town that only has limited low- and mid-band T-Mobile 5G — certain carriers or frequencies could perform worse.

It’s also important to stress that even among the staff at Android Police, we have had different experiences. While both the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro get legitimately good battery life for me, Taylor Kerns considers his “firmly in ‘fine’” territory. “Unless I'm taking a ton of photos, I don't feel like I need to think about battery life at all. These are all-day phones for me, sometimes a little better.” Daniel Bader’s numbers don’t match mine either. He claims he’s “getting a full day, but barely — like 5-10% by midnight.”

We reached out to Google for more information about precisely why the Pixel 6 seems to have such a wide variety of battery life reports, but the company understandably couldn’t provide us with an explanation or any confirmation for the above theories. Admittedly, reports for battery life in reviews usually vary at least a little, but it's not often that we see them cover such a wide range of experiences, with some reviews (like ours) praising it, while others outright note it as a drawback.

Odds are someone will be able to dive more deeply into the software and hardware to get a proper explanation — whether Tensor is just another Exynos chip with bad efficiency, if 5G is to blame, or maybe even something else. In the meantime, here are all the different battery life reports we’ve seen in reviews for the Pixel 6 Pro so far, with related quotes and our summary of the review’s overall battery life assessment to help make your own choice. We should point out that most of the reviews we’ve seen have been positive in regards to battery life, but those with standardized testing suites that may not reflect real-world use seem to have a negative impression more often.

Rounding up the Pixel 6 Pro results

Android Police: “6-7 hours of screen-on time over two days” Good

The Verge: “a full day of use… most nights I went to bed with 35-40 percent battery remaining” Good

Ars Technica: “battery life is excellent, and it easily lasts all day” Good

MrMobile (No review yet): "Impressive" Good

PC Mag: “With moderate daily use, you can easily get two days between charges” Good

Android Authority: “Screen-on time averaged about six and a half hours” Good

9to5Google: “solid endurance” Good

TheUnlockr: “pretty good” Good

Wired: “more than a day of battery life” Good

Engadget: “among the longest-lasting phones we've tested all year” Good

Android Central: “ 5-6 hours of screen on time… with double-digits left” Good

Cnet: “good -- certainly above average -- but not great” Good

Phone Arena: “way better than average” Good

Gizmodo: “the second best time we’ve seen from any phone this year” Good

MKBHD: “three and a half to four and a half hours of screen-on time” Average

XDA Developers: “I’m getting around five hours of screen on time daily” Average

Droid Life: “probably going to be fine for most people” Average

GSM Arena: “did not reach our expectations” Poor

Toms Guide: "incredibly poor battery life result" Poor

Laptop Mag: “potentially middling… more stress testing of the battery over the coming weeks” Not immediately clear (or poor)

Input: “battery life also got better” Not immediately clear

About The Author

Ryne Hager (2833 Articles Published)

Ostensibly a senior editor, in reality just some verbose dude who digs on tech, loves Android, and hates anticompetitive practices. His only regret is that he didn't buy a Nokia N9 in 2012. Email tips or corrections to ryne at androidpolice dot com.

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