Nexus 6 Performance With Android 5.1

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Does the Android 5.1 update bring performance and battery life improvements to the Nexus 6?

Battery Life

The changes discussed above will also affect battery life. Disabling the thread migration boost feature should provide a net power savings. Having all four cores active means less CPU pressure, so the governor can keep individual core frequencies lower on average, again reducing dynamic CPU power. Of course keeping those extra two cores online will increase static power draw due to leakage, offsetting some of the battery life gains.

Battery Benchmarks

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BenchmarkNexus 6Android 5.0Nexus 6Android 5.1Difference
GFXBench 3.0Performance19.5 fps21.0 fps7.40%
Lifetime181 min175.5 min-3.04%
PCMarkWork Battery Life329 min354 min7.45%

Battery life is generally difficult to quantify due to the huge variation in potential workloads, and becomes even more difficult when trying to assess the impact of the specific changes included in the 5.1 update. The best test we have for this is PCMark, which performs a few common tasks instead of purely synthetic loops. Here we see more than a 7% gain in battery life, which equates to a noticeable 25 minutes of runtime.

10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ZolaIII
    Just to point out how CPU clocking logic effect busses on Qualcomm SoCs. For instance if 1 core CPU frequency fell down under the minimum frequently than is tied to max bus frequency it will narrow & memory bandwidth & this will impact GPU performance badly under GPU intensive tasks. For me it looks like that on-demand scheduler is working more as it should under 5.1. Including patch sets from Linux kernel 3.12~3.21 (on demand to use more mid frequencies) should be just enough to address performance regressions still savings (even litle more) juice. They should really disable file encryption on any ARM V7 build. Switching to last stable GCC should increase user experience greatly, it's funny they still use 4.6. To address possible fluctuations & determine real impact of changes do the tests again with performance governor & disable MP decision (hot plug) for GPU tests.
    Reply
  • zodiacfml
    Ouch. Glad I bought the N5 last year.
    Reply
  • endeavour37a
    I have an old LG G2 and it does not even have filters :(
    Reply
  • theusual
    Be sure to upgrade 'Android System WebView' through Google Play as well as for me it didn't upgrade automatically and was causing app issues.
    Reply
  • Plyro109
    Sorry. Browser seems to be autofilling and submitting in every comment thread I visit.
    Reply
  • Tracy Kohler
    Get that stupid bar off the top of my screen please! It takes up a whole INCH of screen space (and vertical space is LIMITED already on this wide CRAP they call monitors today).

    I guess I'll have to come up with a way to kill it and still be able to navigate, other than scrolling. Go back to pages with a bar at top or bottom for index. While your at it FIRE the guy/gal who decided an inch of real estate on a monitor is OK to block all day. He/she will only piss off users over and over (hired from win8 team?...LOL).
    Reply
  • Senecaz
    TL, DR : Lollipop s*cks! next update please...
    Reply
  • musical marv
    15881932 said:
    TL, DR : Lollipop s*cks! next update please...
    Why do you say Loliipop sucks?

    Reply
  • musical marv
    15881932 said:
    TL, DR : Lollipop s*cks! next update please...
    Back Up what you post here and do not ignore it.

    Reply
  • endeavour37a
    I thought Tom's was a place we could have opinions and points of view we could share and express freely, how does one back up what they like and don't like? I sort of like 5.0 but it's just fine if some else does not, I ignore a lot of stuff myself.
    Reply