We Really Have to Talk About the Pixel 6 Battery!

There’s been a lot of discussion about the Pixel 6 having bad battery life.
MKBHD in his review stated that he was only able to get 3-4 hours of battery life.
My goal of this video is to discuss why that might be and how to more accurately measure battery life.
Google in their advertising of the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6 pro say on their website that the phone has all day battery.
I will preface this by saying that right off the bat the iPhone 13 Pro Max has better battery life, they have a more mature and efficient chip in those phones.
Now from seeing other reviews and talking to people on social media many have been getting anywhere from 5-8 hours of screen on time on the Pixel 6 Pro.
5-8 hours of screen time is more than plenty for the average to semi-power user.
I personally do not feel this is a good metric to measure battery life on these phones, let me explain why.
When you are using your phone throughout the day there are many things that contribute to battery loss outside of the screen.
Things like listening to music and podcasts, using apps in the background and even how strong your cell/wifi signal is.
Out of the box the Pixel 6 Pro comes with 5G enabled which while faster is kind of a mess right now.
I live in an area where millimeter wave 5g is offered but is spotty at best.
And because of that I noticed my phone constantly hunting for a 5g signal which requires additional battery.
If your circumstances are similar to mine then you’ll notice more battery drain just trying to maintain a signal compared to someone else who may live in an area where 5g coverage is better.
The solution is turn off 5g if you really don't need it, to be honest I really could not tell much of a difference when using it in my area anyway.
Also it takes a bit of power when listening to content or using bluetooth. Even more so when listening at higher volumes.
These two things I mentioned while a normal part of battery drain when using a phone, do not usually use screen on time when operating. So they won’t show up under screen time even though battery life is still being consumed.
This year Google released Android 12 and with it, changes to the battery usage screen.
You used to be able to see screen on time since your last charge whereas now Android 12 shows you statistics for the last 24 hours.
They’ve also made screen time harder to find burying it deeper in the settings menus.
The more I think about it, this may have been on purpose,
If you want a more accurate description of what your battery is doing throughout the day download something like AccuBattery.
Just remember that even though screen on time is a part of battery usage I think we tend to look at it as the end all be all, and we shouldn't.
Then depending on what else you are doing on the device like shooting 4k video and or gaming, then that will just eat up your battery even faster as it takes more power to do these things.
Overall when looking at battery life I think we should take into account all of these factors into consideration
Instead of looking at screen on time we should ask the question: Is the phone able to do everything the average person may need and still make it comfortably through the day?
If the answer is yes then that’s good battery life to me.
I don't want to excuse Google completely, This phone is marketed for the Android enthusiast and has Pro in the name. It also has a 5000ma battery so we shouldn't be having this discussion really at all.
Hopefully Google can improve this even more with software updates in the future
Overall for most people the battery life is just fine.
Those are just a few of my thoughts on the battery life of the Pixel 6 Pro, stay tuned as I continue to work on my full review.