Android Marshmallow reportedly almost triples Nexus 5 standby time

Android M, now revealed as 6.0 Marshmallow, could lead to much healthier standby battery life on your favorite smartphone according to some testing done by German blog Computerbase. Taking two Nexus 5 smartphones (one running Lollipop, the other Android M), the site ran side-by-side standby time tests and discovered that the Marshmallow-flavored Nexus achieved standby time nearly three times as long as its Lollipop-powered counterpart.

It’s a case of Android 5.1.1 versus the very first Dev Preview of Android M, and the latter’s standby time is significantly improved over the former. After 24 hours of leaving both devices on standby, the Nexus running Lollipop was down 12% while the M-powered Nexus was down just 4.5%. It was similar after 48 hours with the phone running 5.1.1 down by 24% and the Android M device down by only 9%. Using some basic arithmetic the site calculated that the Nexus 5 running Android Lollipop could last a maximum of 200 hours on standby while the Nexus running Android M could go a total of 533 hours. Rounding up, that’s 2.7 times longer.

It’s worth repeating, this is a test done on a phone running the first developer preview of Android M. Since then, we’ve seen two more previews and expect that battery life is even better following further testing and refinement of Google’s upcoming OS refresh.

Of course, this doesn’t give us a full picture of what battery life looks like when you’ve been sending and receiving texts, emails and Snapchats all day. However, with Android M’s ability to better shut-off processes during periods of no activity, we’d suspect that any device running Android Marshmallow will be able to go longer between charges. I haven’t done any testing personally to verify my thoughts, but my Nexus 6 definitely seems to last longer than it used to, before I loaded Android M on to it.

It is worth noting, that just because a device running stock Android can go nearly three times longer with Android M, your Galaxy S6 might not. Custom software loaded on to devices by Samsung and other Android OEMs will still have an effect on overall battery life even with Google’s own software smarts installed.