Phone gets warm, and kills the battery. - Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III

I got this phone about a week ago and I am noticing two major issues with it. First, the phone sometimes gets really warm in my pocket. Second, when it gets warm it starts to kill the battery. Interestingly, last night I unintentionally left it under an unused pillow. The battery was at 100%, but this morning when I got up the battery was down to 1% and the phone was really warm.
As you can see in the attached screenshot there wasn't much running, the phone wasn't awake much, and I had good signal. Any ideas what might be going on here?

I'm just spit-balling here. These are some basic things I'd look at for a start:
A) use cpy spy to see what states the cpu is in
B) See what apps are running while this is going on. Anything weird?
C) check your data usage. It should list apps. Perhaps you have something sending a crap-load of data?
D) Turn off GPS, BT, WiFi, etc all/one at a time.

Thanks, UberSuber.
I was waiting for it to happen again, but it hasn't so far, so I am going to chalk it up as a fluke.

Related

[Q] Losing 30-40% battery overnight

I had this problem once when I first got my captivate, but then it went to normal (lose ~5% overnight). Overnight I keep wifi connected and airplane mode off. I was happy, lasted 10-15 hours daytime depending on how heavy I used it, etc.
I recently ordered a two spare batteries with an extra micro usb cord as well as an external battery charger (charges batteries while not inside the captivate). I use the new microusb cord to charge sometimes too because for some reason it doesn't work with PC to connect micro sd card, and I charge my batteries mostly using the external charger.
I recently started losing 30+% overnight. I don't know when exactly (if it were apps or the new batteries, but it happens with my old battery and the new ones). I installed spareparts and battery history and tried turning off background data but I still lose this much overnight. I don't really know how to read spareparts to try to isolate an app. My daytime battery life is not drastically lower than before (10+ hours), but I think it is a bit lower than before. Does anyone know how to fix this problem?
tl;dr:
- used to lose <5% battery overnight
- got new batteries, now use external charger
- suddenly started losing 30%+ overnight, don't know why
- help please!
thanks!
I personally lose more than that overnight when I have wifi enabled. However when I have it off I lose less than 5%. So I guess I'm in the opposite situation as you.
Since you already have spare parts installed and used to have better life the only thing I can suggest is recalibrating http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=765656. Sorry if you have already done this before. It's just that when you pull the battery and switch it I'm assuming the battery stats file may not adjust accordingly. It's worth a shot.
I seem to be having the same issues as you. I made a thread over at the Q&A section which may be of some help.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=829285
As for losing more than 30%-40% overnight with wifi enabled, there has got to be some lingering issue on your phone if it is losing that much. I don't think any phone, no matter how bad the battery life it has, should lose that much overnight, granted that you don't have a TON of data intensive activities running on your phone.
30-40% WOW!
I get 36-48 hours in between charges on my phone.
Wifi is always on, sync is always on, no live wallpaper, weather and email updates every hour. I'm not on it every minute of every day but enough use for sure.
over night I lose about 5% on average.
Calibrate your battery...but you can't change batteries or you need to calibrate all over again.
Sent from my FroYoed Sprint Hero
As I posted in this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=829285, I did a factory reset and my phone seemed to be working fine as it slept when the screen was off (checked by using *#*#4696#*#*). It was good until approximately 50% when all of a sudden I checked and it wasn't sleeping once again. Checking the partial wakelock "Android System" was taking up an increasing larger amount of this section. I didn't do anything on my phone as I was sleeping and periodically, when I'd wake up, I'd check on my phone status. When I reboot the phone once this happens, it sleeps once again.
Keep in mind, my phone is stock. Didn't install any apps or anything at all since the factory reset. Now I'm not sure if I have a defective phone. Maybe the Android OS is set up to run like this? There's no such thing as a defective OS is there? Can't be anything on my end because I didn't touch the phone nor did I install any bad apps (or any apps at all for that matter). Can it be a battery issue? I can't see how a bad battery can cause the phone not to sleep. Is there something in the Android OS that turns on automatically after a while that may be causing it?
I'll try to recalibrate my battery but I don't know how that would alter if my phone sleeps or not, but I'm willing to try. I'd rather not take this phone back and get another one as that's a hassle.
Mine will loose 40% over an 8 hour window easy with absolutly 0 use if its near the "edge" of either wifi coverage or data coverage.
IE, sit the phone down with a weak att signal and walk away. It'll die on its own unless you airplane mode it within half a day.
I have to religiously turn the phone on airplane and switch to wireless at home, and turn to airplane and turn wireless off at work (can't connect to work VPN with 2.1 !)
If I leave it on full in either location, it's bloody dead next time I touch it.
However, with good home wifi, I can actually get 4 days of email checking, use as alarm clocks, some other sms stuff without plugging in.
This things is helaciously sensitive to wonky radio connections.
hmmm. I guess I'll try it with wifi on tonight. I don't think recalibrating would cause it to have a 10x difference in idle battery usage, but I'll try that if all else fails
I use Setting Profiles app and have it set wireless to Airplane mode from midnight to 6am. Still, I'm finding my battery down by 30-50% at night.
Looking at Battery Usage, my Display, Cell Standby and Phone Idle we all using the majority of the battery power. I'm not sure if these numbers are reset after the phone comes off the charger or how it is calculated.
I just turned off wifi altogether and have seen huge improvements. I don't even use it anymore despite being in my house with a wireless connection. Data usage isn't that much slower so not much of a loss. At least it can sleep.
i only get like 24 hours on my phone :/
fshalor said:
Mine will loose 40% over an 8 hour window easy with absolutly 0 use if its near the "edge" of either wifi coverage or data coverage.
IE, sit the phone down with a weak att signal and walk away. It'll die on its own unless you airplane mode it within half a day.
I have to religiously turn the phone on airplane and switch to wireless at home, and turn to airplane and turn wireless off at work (can't connect to work VPN with 2.1 !)
If I leave it on full in either location, it's bloody dead next time I touch it.
However, with good home wifi, I can actually get 4 days of email checking, use as alarm clocks, some other sms stuff without plugging in.
This things is helaciously sensitive to wonky radio connections.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not just this phone. My wife's iPhone does the same thing, as did my Q9H. The constant switching from 3G to Edge will kill a battery.
SiL3nTKiLL said:
i only get like 24 hours on my phone :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
24 hours is normal.
Sent from my FroYoed Sprint Hero
I turned off wifi and have seen an improvement. It's still not where it was before, though - I used to lose 5-10% with wifi on. I wish I knew what happened.

[Q] 9hrs unplugged, 44min display, 3hrs run time, 40% battery left

I have been having problems with my battery life pretty much since I have had this phone. I downloaded spare parts app to give me some insight because I have also noticed several times phone seems warm even when screen has been off for some time.
As of right now today, to give an example, my phone has been unplugged for the last 10hours and I only have 44% battery left. Says display is responsible for 71% of battery use yet screen has only been on for 44min of that time (and I have the brightness turned all the way down). According to spare parts "other usage" my "running" time is cause for 35% of batter use at over 3hours.
With these things in consideration I feel that there is something that is stopping the phone from properly sleeping due to the phone being warm at times display has been off for a while and the contrast between screen on and running time. Partial wake usage doesn't show much running under it as most listed items have only a sliver of a bar showing.
Can someone please lend me some guidance on how to further troubleshoot this problem?
i mean that type of battery consumption doesnt seem irregular to me...im at close to 10 hours for the day and have 59% left.
Are you in a shaky signal area? Thats one reason my phone gets warm. especially if its a fringe area where it cant decide between a 3G signal or 4G signal.
In spare parts there is a option for partial wake lock. If something is stuck at 100%, then you know you yuo have a rogue app thats causing your phone not to sleep
But can you confirm it being normal to see 34% time running under other usage settings for spare parts? Partial wake usage as said doesn't show much keeping a wake lock going.
As for signal, not too sure, very rarely if ever see a 3g change over. Is usually at 4g and occassionally hitting edge.
WOW, you get that good of battery out of yours? that seems epic haha, i get 3-4 hours tops.. i mean i abuse it, but still..
I charge mine at night. Ran it from 7am to 12am and it was at 34%.
Yeah see...7am to 12am and 34% remaining? No way I get that.
If it werent for the results I'm posting regarding "running" percentage from spare parts other usage and the screen on time I would just accept it as a phone deemed to have bad battery life, but it seems to me like something is going on and I guess I'm looking for someone to confirm or dismiss my suspicions.
Maybe I'm also a little spoiled coming off my G2 that was rooted running CM Rom and CPU ramping/cut down which in combination gave me, under the same amount of use, a situation where I was getting home at night and still having 40-50% battery left in comparison to the 15% I commonly see now.
adambowersva said:
Yeah see...7am to 12am and 34% remaining? No way I get that.
If it werent for the results I'm posting regarding "running" percentage from spare parts other usage and the screen on time I would just accept it as a phone deemed to have bad battery life, but it seems to me like something is going on and I guess I'm looking for someone to confirm or dismiss my suspicions.
Maybe I'm also a little spoiled coming off my G2 that was rooted running CM Rom and CPU ramping/cut down which in combination gave me, under the same amount of use, a situation where I was getting home at night and still having 40-50% battery left in comparison to the 15% I commonly see now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
once some custom kernels come out that let you uv/uc/oc then i would say you can expect the same type of results..i just went on a trip with a friend who has a g2 and he was constantly crying about his battery dying, (stock), where as I only had to charge mine on average 1.5 times a day with moderate to heavy usage. I find this battery phenomenal compared to all the other android devices ive owned and tested
damn!
i charge mine every other day.. hehehe i dont abuse it or anything though.. just regular internet every few minutes or so.. i have the BETA juicedefender installed guess that helps a lot. data is off when the screen is off, set it to agressive..
here is the app hope it helps...
I noticed the same problem,i brought this phone on saturday and was very impressed with the battery until yesterday night I noticed the same thing, my phone was at 50% and I had it sleeping then I get the battery low notification 10 minutes later and the back of the phone was real hot. This can't be normal cuz I have the same apps installed from 2 days ago and I was using the phone heavily even using mobile ap and still didn't have this problem, if you guys find a solution please share it with me.

Instantaneous battery % drop - from 80% to 10%

This is one thing thing that just recently started to happen in the past two days that's kinda creeping me out.
Sometimes the phone starts to overheat and immediately I get a low battery notification.
The overheating is usually caused by something that caused the system to go haywire, such as:
(1) when in the stock launcher and using HDMI mirroring, tilting the phone into landscape. The phone loses the connection with the monitor, and it shuts off. Once this happens the phone is usually super hot. I turn the phone back on, and find out that the battery has dropped somewhere around 50-60% in an INSTANT.
(2) I was using bloat freezer to freeze "my account," which caused a continuous force close screen. When I try to close those screens, I can tell that the phone is heating up again. Low and behold, not soon after, my charge that was sitting at 80% dropped down to the teens.
I've only been off the charger for a couple hours in each case, so I know that I was really at around 80% in both situations.
The only thing I'm really worried about is overcharging the battery. If android thinks that the battery is at 15% when it is actually not that empty, would it overcharge it?
*Edit - Ok, I just figured it out. Whenever this happens, don't let your phone recharge itself when the phone is on. I noticed that when I turn my phone off to charge, it'll know that the charge isn't that low, so the battery charging indicator will start off with a higher charged capacity and fill up to full much faster than when the phone is actually empty.
As for the plunge in battery within Android, I don't know what's going on.
Request a new battery. If they say no say fine give me a new phone. Its in warranty.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA Premium App

[Q] Go Launcher Ex?

Does this program drain battery? Had it on, and my battery was draining. Just want to make sure. I really like it to replacement stock launcher, but if it's going to kill the battery, might as well not keep it.
I use go launcher on both my phones and it doesn't use any more power than any of the other launchers do
Damnit, eerywhere I go Reg, your there to tell me that nothing I use is effecting my battery:/ this is my 3rd phone, I have no idea what I should do, factory reset?
my battery life sucked too when i first got the phone. i had been lurking this section since day one before i got the phone so i was aware of all the battery issues and possible fixes. so when i finally brought the phone home the first thing i did was made sure i did the setup wizard and immediately after i did a factory reset. then after doing the wizard again i restored all my apps and started using the phone. quickly noticed my battery life wasnt great so i downloaded the battery monitor widget and saw that the phone was constantly using 100+mA at all times. It was then that I decided to factory reset AGAIN. After doing that and reloading all my apps everything was fine. my phone uses 2mA at idle and fluctuates sometimes into the hundred but it always goes back down as it should. I also charged my phone to 100% then booted into clockworkrecoverymod and deleted the battery stats to insure the phone is reading the battery capacity accurately. No need to drain the battery and recharge it, thats just a waste of time. Now my battery is awesome. I lose 2-3% per hour idling and 1% every 10 minutes or so in actual use (assuming im not doing anything thats constantly using data connection).
Moral of the story... You prolly need to factory reset more than once because it didnt work for me till the second one.
Just for the sake of comparison.. My Vibrant loses 10% per hour idle and 1% every 2-3 minutes in use. So the battery like on the G2x is double if not more. Unless you have a defective phone or battery I dont see why the factory reset would only work for some people.
Okay, I think I'm going to do the factory reset, I won't lose my superuser functionalities or root right? Or BloatFreezer apps etc.?
You wont lose root. All your apps will be gone though so make sure you back them up with either titanium backup or mybackup pro. if i were you id install battery monitor widget and monitor that for an hour or 2 letting it idle to see if its still sucking juice for no reason and also use it for a good amount of time to make sure the mA go back down when you let it idle. that way you dont restore your stuff only to find the reset didnt work.
Sounds good, thanks for the advice man, will try this tomorrow!
So far it's not bad, it's at 1ma really when I'm idle, but as soon as I walked into my school building, I got 20ma, wtf? Is it maybe because my connection in school sucks? The cell standby went from 48% to 78%, can this be why?!
Mikeglongo said:
So far it's not bad, it's at 1ma really when I'm idle, but as soon as I walked into my school building, I got 20ma, wtf? Is it maybe because my connection in school sucks? The cell standby went from 48% to 78%, can this be why?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. Weaker signals will make your phone poll for a better signal more often. It'll be searching for other towers more frequently.
Correct. So dont pay it too much mind. The phones power useage will fluctuate. What's important is that it's not consistantly using 100+ mA. All the time. I've seen my mA usage go up to 40-50 while idle yet when I checked back moments later it was back down to 1. This is normal behavior.
via LG G2x
Okay, good well right now it's constant at around 10-15 ma, woke up at around 9 with 97% and now at 93% at 11:30 with a few text messages and browsing, I actually think that's a lot better than the past few days. Let's hope it stays that way
Consider your battery drain fixed then. I should note that my idling at 1-2mA is when connected to strong wifi. Your slightly higher consumption is more than likely due to less than great signal strength. Never the less.. you should find that your battery life increases dramatically. Even with 3 bars of 3g here at work I only lost 5% in 3 hours of idling.
via LG G2x
Kudos, I will report if anything changes, because it is only 2 hours into the day

GummyCharged and battery Drain Issue

I know this has been discussed in the Gummycharge thread, but its buried pretty deep.
I know kej said that it has to do with the gallery, but I have uninstalled the Gallery3D.apk using the toolbox and I still seem to be losing about 10% per hour with the phone sitting idle on my desk.
Is there something we can use to quantify the appropriate battery drain rate? We all use our phones differently, so we need a way to standardize the battery drain so we can discuss it.
I saw someone mentioned that they were only losing 2% per hour while idle.
Currently, If i unplug the phone, and leave it sit for an hour (after a full charge) with only wifi on (gps, and bluetooth off) I lose about 10% per hour. If i use the phone at all, for example, When i wake up in the morning after a full charge and read the latest XDA posts, or some news articles, I can go from 100% to 85% in about 20 min.
this doesnt seem right.
Can we consolidate the battery drain issue to this post and post fixes and discuss reasons here?
This should have been posted in General first off.
Also, do you have SpareParts installed? If so, use that to check if your phone is entering sleep mode. You may have an app that is preventing your phone from sleeping, which will cause excessive battery drain like you are experiencing. My battery drain is <<1%/hr in airplane mode (I lose 1-2% over 8-9hrs in airplane mode) and when not in airplane mode, I'd say I loose at most 2-3%/hr if the phone is only sitting idle and I'm not using it.
imnuts said:
This should have been posted in General first off.
Also, do you have SpareParts installed? If so, use that to check if your phone is entering sleep mode. You may have an app that is preventing your phone from sleeping, which will cause excessive battery drain like you are experiencing. My battery drain is <<1%/hr in airplane mode (I lose 1-2% over 8-9hrs in airplane mode) and when not in airplane mode, I'd say I loose at most 2-3%/hr if the phone is only sitting idle and I'm not using it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK cool, I wasnt sure if this was a general issue or not. Can a Mod move it? Or should I just delete and Remake?
Ive looked in spare parts and Im not sure where it would give that information, under battery history ive got running at 38.2%, screen on 25.2% phone on 14.5% and wifi on 100%
nothing mentions sleep mode
imnuts said:
This should have been posted in General first off.
Also, do you have SpareParts installed? If so, use that to check if your phone is entering sleep mode. You may have an app that is preventing your phone from sleeping, which will cause excessive battery drain like you are experiencing. My battery drain is <<1%/hr in airplane mode (I lose 1-2% over 8-9hrs in airplane mode) and when not in airplane mode, I'd say I loose at most 2-3%/hr if the phone is only sitting idle and I'm not using it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get a drain of about 3-4% an hour if mine sits. However I leave it on LTE and at the office there is no LTE service yet. Yeah I'm just lazy......lol.
Curious on your SpareParts thing tho. I've never used it much really. Where does it show/display whether or not it is going into sleep mode. now I'm kinda curiosu if mine is correctly or not. Not that I'm very concerned about 4% and hr as I make it threw a full day fine. TIA
msticlaru said:
OK cool, I wasnt sure if this was a general issue or not. Can a Mod move it? Or should I just delete and Remake?
Ive looked in spare parts and Im not sure where it would give that information, under battery history ive got running at 38.2%, screen on 25.2% phone on 14.5% and wifi on 100%
nothing mentions sleep mode
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it's not running, it's sleeping. You're battery drain is likely caused by wifi being one 100%. If you are leaving the cell radio on, LTE, and also wifi, that is 3 radios on all at once, draining power.
imnuts said:
If it's not running, it's sleeping. You're battery drain is likely caused by wifi being one 100%. If you are leaving the cell radio on, LTE, and also wifi, that is 3 radios on all at once, draining power.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is that just an issue with the charge? with my Incredible, leaving wifi on saved battery as it did not need to talk to the cell tower and try to get a 3g signal. Also, Before I flashed, I was able to sit all day in school and still be at %80ish power.
I will see what turning wifi off does.. but to be perfectly honest. that seems a little inefficient, that would mean every time i turn on the phone to use it, i would have to turn on wifi and sync, then turn it back off again.
For example, since I wrote this post, my battery has gone from 87% to 70%. 17% in 66 min even with wifi on, that cant be "normal drain". And All i have done is looked at 2 text messages.
Please do not get me wrong, I am not complaining at all. but I would like to get to the bottom of this.
I was on my way to the store to return the charge I hated it so much, but after flashing gummy and your kernel, I love the thing more than any phone ive ever had. So please do not mis-judge my intentions here. I simply want to know if this is normal. In my experience with sell phones (Droid Incredible for over a year, Wife has htc thunderbolt, and now the charge both stock and now custom rom) It is draining much much faster than any phone I have used before.
If this is normal, then I will just deal with it.
I am going to put it in airplane mode for the next hour and see what happens
It is def something in connectivity. Still at 75% after 1 hour in airplane mode. going go turn on 3g only and check again in 30 min.
I was going through battery stats and saw that wifi ON was at 100% and Wifi running was also at 100%..
seems like maybe somethign is using my data. so if that is true, it should try while on 3g and I should get huge battery drain.
will report back
Dude you are NOT alone. my phone drains like a siv, when its nt even being used. I always have LTE off, unless i tether wifi and I always plug it in when i tether so i dont drain. Itll just sit and be idle with NO use and lose 30%. i have gps, wifi and bluetooth off..... wth? this phone is looking ro get returned if i cant sort it out. i cant sit on a charger all the time.
If you are running Gummy, the gallery thing should not be an issue anymore (he fixed it a few versions ago).
When you go into spare parts, go to battery history and change to sensor usage. That will tell you immediately if you have some app that is draining your battery (ie the Gallery).
For the most part the battery killer for people is network searching. 3G,4G and WiFi are all in the same boat in that they will kill your battery if your phone has to constantly scan for them. To my knowledge using WiFi is better on power than 3/4G, but that is only if you are connected to a good signal and your phone doesn't have to search.
Also, I have noticed that the WiFi antenna on my charge isn't all that good, so you may want to keep an eye on it during your day. You may find that it is losing WiFi and scanning without you realizing.
The LTE radio in the Charge can be a huge hog. Especially if your in an area that likes to switch between 4G and 3G. Both my work and my home switch between 3G and 4G a lot and its not uncommon to see my phone drain almost 10% in an hour. On a good day it will be 5% an hour with LTE enabled. With mobile data and wifi off it can go down 0-2% per hour.
As far as I know, this is most likely just a sign of the Charge's battery. I'm not sure what Engadget was smoking in their review, but my Charge gets pretty horrendous battery life, especially in areas with dodgy signal (think constant switching between 3G and 4G). This is the first phone I've bought extra cables for charging in the car and office, but honestly, with these things getting as crazy as they are, I think this might be the norm in the future, what with battery technology lagging behind so much.
Some tips I've learned: turn the Wi-Fi radio off when not in use, and if you're in a really low-coverage area, consider even turning data off (you'll still be able to receive calls).
I live in NY, which is absolutely blanketed by 4g. I get better 4g reception than 3g in some places. I am getting horrific battery life. I just wiped, then mounted each partition individually and wiped and then reinstalled gummy 1.8.5 and per imnuts' recommendation, not install the reboot options. I had a custom rom on this phone within an hour of purchasing this phone, so I can't compare stock to a custom rom's battery life. I just know over the few days I've had this phone, my battery has been terrible. I shudder to think what the Thunderbolt must be like.
Your battery may be draining fast the first boot. Just reboot it. If that doesn't work then it didnt flash properly. Just reflash everything and remember to clear data, cache... hope it helps.
You can download an overclocking app and reduce battery use IF you already solved the battery drain problem.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA App

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