Something I am not too happy with the Nexus 5 about is the battery life. At 2300 mAh, it's pretty poor. It would be fine for an occasional or normal user but the Nexus 5 really is the sort of phone that a serious smartphone user would have, so for it is certainly disappointing. If I were getting another phone now the benchmark would be at least 3000 mAh, and that is what you find in the OnePlus One and the Sony Xperia Z2.
Nonetheless, I fixed this problem simply by buying a qi wireless charger off eBay for only about $13. I have it at work and this allows me to charge my phone at work simply by laying the phone onto the charging mat. It is incredible how convenient inbuilt wireless charging is. It should be standard across all phones.
The qi wireless charger allowed me to have full power by the time I leave work and even after using the phone on the commute home and at home, I can charge the phone again overnight via micro-USB and then come back to work again and keep charging it. I effectively charge the phone twice in a day. It's a little bit of overkill, but more power is better than no power.
Of course, the only problem is if I don't go to work at all. For example, sometimes in the holidays I go out somewhere and I am gone for the whole day. For example, recently I went to a wedding. The ceremony was at lunch, which means I commuted in the morning, and the reception was in the evening and went on into the night. I was taking photos on the phone like a madman and at around 8pm the phone was dead in spite of my best attempts to keep brightness down and turn off data.
My friends at the wedding with iPhones and therefore even smaller batteries also had low batteries but at least many of them seemed to have power banks on them and they recharged their phones by plugging it into a power bank. I thought this was a brilliant idea, so I resolved to get one for myself.
I looked on eBay and found some for pretty cheap, around $20. However, everyone who used power banks at the wedding were females and they had handbags and purses in which to carry their power banks. I am a man and therefore a bag is beneath me. I need to travel light. Where would I store the power bank? I decided to look for slim power banks with similar dimensions to smart phones so that I can carry them in one of my other pockets. But then I remembered that the power bank is more than the battery itself. You need to carry around a USB to micro-USB cable (or USB to Lightning cable for iPhone) around with you as well. I then looked at buying a wireless power bank given that my phone had a wireless charger, but wireless charging is actually much slower than charging with wire and because much energy is lost via heat with wireless charging, the power banks need to be bigger than normal power banks. Wireless power banks were also note expensive, reaching about $50.
Then I realized, why bother buying a smartphone size power bank with a cable on me when, if I know I am going to use my phone a lot during a day, I can just being along my spare phone? If my Nexus 5 has low battery, I can just take out my spare phone from my other pocket or play games or read books offline on my spare phone, and if I am desperate for internet I can set a hotspot. Everyone should have a spare phone lying around when they upgrade. It is necessary because your main phone might break or get stolen. Instead of carrying around a power bank, it is much easier to just carry around two phones and use the other one instantly when low on battery.
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