In this article, I mentioned one of the big issues I had once my Nexus S upgraded to ICS was poor battery life. I also said I had fixed that by doing a reset of the phone. Well, the other day, I was looking at settings and think I’ve figured out the real reason for the poor battery life: VoIP.
When we moved overseas, I bought a Nokia e65 because I could run an app called TruPhone on it (VoIP). Combined with Google Voice, it was really convenient. When we were traveling, I could hook the phone up to WiFI (I couldn’t get data service at that time) and we could call people in the states. When I got my Nexus S, I set it up as well. This time, VoIP would ONLY work over wifi–it just wouldn’t connect at any other time.
Last week, I reconfigured the SIP settings on my Nexus S. Wow! It connected straightaway and over 3g to boot. This is really good as I have unlimited data on my phone. I called my parents in the states. There was a delay, but it worked! I went on to game night; however, when I picked my phone up to take a picture, the battery was almost flat. INSANE!
I’ve since gone in and disabled then re-enabled the SIP receive calls setting and think that is the cause of the very poor battery life. When it is enabled, the phone just sucks the battery (but I can’t receive calls that come into my google voice number). When I disable it, batter life is actually better than it was under Android 2.3.2 (what came on it).
Image from deanj via flickr