Phone (3a) Series Battery Life Discussion

AyushKumar_JZuatP7eh3 · 2025-03-20T12:56:24+00:00

I recently purchased the Nothing Phone 3a and have noticed that the battery drains very quickly during WhatsApp video calls. Even with a full charge, the battery percentage drops significantly within a short period. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Are there any settings or optimizations that could help reduce battery consumption during video calls? Any suggestions would be appreciated!

themountofmint

Updating my battery life. For a whole day it’s impressive I guess. Bluetooth, WiFi/Internet, Location are always on.

At least for me it’s pretty good. As usual I’m gonna charge it when it reaches 5% or less so that’s an extra one or two hours😂 a whole day, wow… I haven’t experienced it for a long time before…

krizxjr

Anonymous931

Hi there, can I ask you something ?

Here is my home screen layout

Is some widgets in the homescreen drawing charge ? Photo ? Atmosphere ? Anything?

Because nothing launcher is up there In power draw in battery usage stats.

Anonymous931

krizxjr Only if you are persistent in deleting cache for Nothing Launcher and for “widgeted apps”, then each time you clean cache it has to be recached again, and to recache the CPU (and GPU to an extent) has to work again to do that. Once it’s cached pretty much the only thing that draws power is data/network traffic to update those widgets but that is so insignificantly small amount that it’s not worth to worry about it. It would take you probably several years to drain battery by using widgets, lol (if it was possible to eliminate any other factor of using battery, naturally).

Of course if you spam the whole screen with Pedometer widget, live location tracking (Strava or whatever, apps of that kind), random music streaming widget that’s always animated as songs play and so on, then there would be some noticeable (but still fairly small) battery usage 🥴

Edit: Btw, Nothing Launcher is an app just like every other, if you removed all widgets altogether it would still use battery as it has to work, because its de facto your proxy to get to any app you want, to start doing anything on your phone. Animations (atmosphere) will use GPU but still that is so insignificantly small amount that it’s not worth to think about it. Well, not worth it unless you spend hours per day watching that cool animation transition 😁 The single biggest “battery eater” is the display itself, so if you are outside under direct sunlight it will max its brightness so it will use more battery juice than if you were using it at night at minimum brightness.

krizxjr

Anonymous931 Only if you are persistent in deleting cache for Nothing Launcher and for “widgeted apps”

No actually I don’t do any of that.

Although, i have been clearing cache of chrome and yt every time I close it ( which I recently stopped).

Mildvex"#p210609

Hmm alr. Thanks man

Another reason could be that my college has a jammer. But I almost consistently get 4g data (I use 4g) although sometimes it will jam the internet. Might that be the sole reason why I lose 20 percent of battery the time inget back to my house (with almost 2 hr of Spotify ?), along with the medium brightness I use ?

Even if that’s the case, I don’t get why I can’t get more than 7 minutes when I am browsing on my mobile data, inside house, using low brightness.

I gotta test it fully from 100 to 0 someday.

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs

I’ve been testing battery performance on my Nothing Phone 3a vs. my old Redmi Note 9S (shown with the circular battery icon in the screenshots).The results are honestly shocking:

Nothing Phone 3a → loses 1% every 3-4 minutes on average.

Redmi Note 9S → loses 1% every ~17 minutes, even though it’s an older device with an older battery.

Looking at my AccuBattery logs:

My Redmi Note 9S can last almost 2 full days on a single charge with moderate usage.

Meanwhile, my Nothing Phone 3a drains 10-12% overnight on standby and struggles to last a full day even with light to moderate use.

This clearly shows there’s something wrong with the optimization on Nothing OS. If a 4-year-old phone can hold charge much better than a brand-new device, then the issue isn’t with the user - it’s with the software.

CMF1_hacker

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs we could help if you could show us which apps are draining the battery?

Nothingcanbeatme

Nothingcanbeatme update to the session

Realising idle battery drain using battery guru

Idle battery drain is 2.2% /h.

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs

CMF1_hacker yesterday I charged my phone to 84% and haven’t touched the phone till 12 am ( cause I had my classes after 12). But still the phone lost 9% battery. Then the phone was mostly used to study lectures. You can see that the idle drain is 1%/h.

CMF1_hacker

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs come on man, it going to be impossible to extract anything out of that data.

Charging it to 100% and measure it overnight, while you sleep.

Also, most the AccuBattery data as it’s harder to interpret form the battery settings.

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs I get 0.3%/h without a SIM card and WiFi only and around 1.0%/h over night with SIM bouncing between towers as they’re all over subscribed and WiFI and about 1.5%/h with SIM/WiFi and two watches connected with continuous BT.

I’m OK with that consumption as it’s never over 10-12% overnight if I get 8h of sleep which I often down.

Anonymous931

Idle here over night, (3a) also, 1%:

But nothing is eating my battery in the background while I’m sleeping…

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs

Anonymous931 Then what am I doing wrong? Should I uninstall YouTube and all the social media apps and use their browser version?

Anonymous931

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs Find out what’s background-heavy and start with just force stopping that (no reason to uninstall or disable). YouTube has no reason to have a lot of minutes of background data if the screen is off and nothing is playing. Same applies for most other apps, not all so don’t just force stop everything 😁 I left Instagram open (fell asleep while scrolling) thus why there’s this large amount of background activity, other than that it would be as minimal as almost everything else:

Also your WhatsApp is being active A LOT in the background relative to its screen time. Here is mine:

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs

Anonymous931 how can I stop the background activity of WhatsApp?

Anonymous931

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs I don’t really recommend that if you need WhatsApp, as it will stop notifications, synchronization and everything else unless the app is open, but here it is:

What I would recommend is to go into WhatsApp settings > chats > chat backup and set automatic backups to “only when I tap back up”. If that doesn’t help force stop the app and reboot your phone just in case.

CMF1_hacker

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs below is good advice.

However, if like me you need WhatsApp, Teams, Messenger, Google Chats, etc… it’s wise to just leave them on and take the hits. If you have family, colleagues in different timezones globally, you might want instant updates.

It is, in the end a communications device.

GalibHossain_EuIYRZpoTs

CMF1_hacker but the standby drain is too much, I have to carry charger with me all the time.

IbnaRatul

Hello everyone,

I’m facing an issue with my Nothing Phone 3a and its charging speed.

When I first bought the phone along with the official Nothing 45W charger, it was working perfectly fine — fast charging for about the first month. After that, the problem started. Now, the phone still charges, but not with fast charging.

My Phone 3a supports 50W charging.

With the Nothing 45W official charger, the charging speed drops to around 6W max.

I thought maybe my charger was the problem, so I bought an 87W charger that supports the Nothing charging protocol. But the result is the same: max 6W.

I tested both chargers with other phones, and they work properly. So the chargers are fine.

I also tried cleaning the charging port with a small brush (like for keyboards), but the issue remains.

I don’t play games or use my phone heavily while charging.

⚠️ The problem seems to be only with my Phone 3a.

👉 What should I do now? Is this a software issue, a hardware problem with the charging port, or should I contact service?

I’m from Bangladesh, so official service options are limited here.

Any advice would be really helpful. Thanks!

Henu

Dear Nothing Support Team,

I am using a Nothing Phone (3a), White, 8GB/256GB variant, and I have observed some unusual charging and battery discharge behaviors depending on the charger and cable combination I use. I would like your guidance on whether this is expected behavior, a software issue, or a possible hardware concern.

Here are my observations:

When using the Apple Original 20W Type-C adapter with the Nothing Phone (3a) original Type-C to C cable, the phone charges relatively fast, but the battery also discharges somewhat quickly.

When using the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Original 18W Type-A adapter with the Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G Original Type-C to A cable, the charging speed is slightly slower, but the battery discharge is also noticeably slower. (Best Result 1)

When using the Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G Original 33W Type-A adapter with the Xiaomi 11 Lite NE 5G Original Type-C to A cable, the charging speed is slightly slower, but the battery discharge is also slower. (Best Result 2)

When using the Motorola Edge 60 Pro Original 90W Type-C adapter with the Motorola Edge 60 Pro Original Type-C to C cable, the phone charges very quickly, but the battery also discharges very quickly.

When using the Vivo Original 44W Type-A adapter with the Vivo Original Type-C to A cable, the phone charges very quickly, but again, the battery discharges very quickly.

Please note:

All cables and adapters mentioned above are in perfect working condition.

The Type-C port of my Nothing Phone (3a) is also in good condition.

My questions:

Is this behavior related to software optimization or a hardware issue?

Can this be resolved through a future software update to improve charging and battery management?

I would greatly appreciate your guidance and support in resolving this issue.

Best regards,

[Henal Patel]

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