[Q] Battery Troubleshooting/Feedback - Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III

I am currently using a Galaxy S3 SCH-I535, stock, unrooted, and have noticed decreased battery performance over-time. I have already viewed many similar threads to try and pinpoint particular issues (wakelocks, troublesome apps, etc.). I was hoping for some perspective whether my battery life is up to snuff.
I have seen many describe their phone life with ~3+ hours of screen time with moderate usage. I use my phone intermittently throughout the work day to chat (Text messages, Hangouts), check e-mail, and browse the internet. I do not use Wi-fi, aside from when I am home in the morning or at night, and make sure to turn it off if not connected to a network. I have sync turned on, but the only accounts I have syncing are Google Now and Gmail. I have location services/GPS/Bluetooth turned off, and run in Power Saving mode with brightness at ~50% and haptic feedback turned on. My reception is subpar, usually about 2 bars and spotty 4g connections at work. I do not stream music, play games, or watch videos during typical use. No facebook, weather apps, etc. that can be culprits some times. At best, with the usage habits described, it is typical that I get 2 hours screen time over a single day (~16 hrs) before I get in the single digit battery %.
I've attached some screen shots I took of battery stats at ~50% drained (I didn't get a screen grab for it but at that battery % I had probably 1:05 to 1:15 hours of screen time). I just started using Wakelock Detector to find any problem apps - after tweaking some apps last week this has been pretty typical behavior. I have even swapped batteries with my wife's S3 to see if it was a battery problem, but did not notice a difference.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Are my expectations for battery life too high? Is this typical, or am I running lower than I should be?

That is pretty good but this comment is by someone who is rooted with a custom ROM and custom kernel since I bought the phone 7 months ago. I can't really say that is the average battery life for the device.

This looks pretty normal to me. You said you had spotty 4g coverage, while your phone is coming in and out of 4g service you'll get decreased battery life. Same happens with your mobile data and Wifi signals if they aren't strong connections.
It looks like your phone is running pretty well. People getting 3+ hours of battery life are either using their phone all the time and hit that threshold in something like 8 hours, have amazing coverage, and/or have no syncing services turned on. A key to run away Wakelocks are having a high battery usage that is coming from something other than your screen, such as media and android system. Other Wakelocks you can't do too much about. There's a thread that is titled the noobs guide to Wakelocks that gives you a pretty good direction trying to isolate Wakelocks and finding fixes for them.
I routinely get about 2-3 hours of battery life in a good coverage area in 16 hours, if I'm in a spotty area my battery will drop much faster. At a friends house with worse coverage I'll be lucky to hit 2 hours. I pretty much use my phone the same way as you.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

Related

What kind of battery life are you getting?

I am getting absolutely horrible battery life on my MT4G. I took it off the charger at 9:30am, I have since made one 5 min phone call and sent maybe 5 texts, and checked a couple emails that i just deleted, other then that screen has been off the whole time, its now 4:40 and im at 35% battery. On my Vibrant with this sort of use I would still be in the 70s.
Under accounts and sync:
facebook updating every hr (just changed it to every 4 hrs)
google syncing just gmail, no contacts or calender
news every 4 hrs
stocks not syncing
t-mobile syncing (tried turning off but it just turns itself on again)
qik video chat syncing
weather every 3 hrs
yahoo syncing
Are you on wifi or 3g? Brightness? Screen timeout? I have an N1 and the battery life is pretty poor so I'm just curious apples to apples in terms of what else you have turned on.
negreenfield said:
Are you on wifi or 3g? Brightness? Screen timeout? I have an N1 and the battery life is pretty poor so I'm just curious apples to apples in terms of what else you have turned on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I leave 3g on but i always left it on on the vibrant as well, brightness is at 20%, screen times out within a couple seconds
wifi, gps and bluetooth off
I get great battery life. Then again I am coming from a Vibrant, my battery was horrible on that device. I take it off the charger at around 8 am and by 6 pm I still have 50%
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
ever thought about turning off 4G? You don't alway have to have it on.
I get around 12-15 hours with heavy usage. My G2 usually gets 15-24 hours.
I saw this article the other day. I was thinking about trying it tomorrow.
http://androidspin.com/2010/11/06/double-your-battery-life-on-htc-droid-incredible-sprint-evo-google-nexus-one-and-possibly-others/
Don't bother with that battery charger hack, it's not going to do anything but waste your time...
I just installed SetCPU on my phone just for fun and have found that it recognizes a few lower clock cycles...I added a profile to lower the CPU when the screen is off otherwise at 1024-245 On Demand and I'm still plugging away at 20% battery when I would normaly be on the charger by now...could be a fluke, but so far so good...I'll keep this for a few days to see how it does.
oh, one other note, my battery life has continued to improve with every charge...the first few days I couldn't get through a full day and now I have battrey to spare...just had to get it conditioned with a few charges I guess.
I let the phone completely die last night and then charged it and at midnight I unplugged it. At 8:30 this morning when I left for work it was at 94% which was great but from 8:30 until now it has dropped to 83% and ive had one 3 min phone call and deleted some text messages, no browsing web, no listening to music, nothing. It seems like the phone will go through the 100-95% slowly but after that its in a marathon to get to 0%
I don't know how you guys are getting so many hours daily on heavy use. I get 7-8 hours on heavy texting, some web browsing and about an hour plus on the phone almost every night. 9 hours would stretch it and it would be on 10%.
I have my brightness all the way down and all the way down is just 11. Screen times out in 2 minutes and I have power saving on. I did the battery thing 3 times where I would let it go down to less then 14% or so then charge it fully without taking it off charge. Hopefully it improves as days go by, I'm just tired of carrying my charger to work.
myTouch4G (Glacier)
Down to 69% now at 11:15, have made no phone calls or texts since then, have just downloaded opera mobile but havent even played with it...lol this is riduculous
I can recommend that you guys take a look at what might be pinging the CPU. Watchdog (Lite) is great for this task. You can have it alert you when an app exceeds a preset threshold for CPU usage. Some apps just go rogue on you like Palin from time to time.
I've also noticed that there's wide variability in terms of how apps go into either idle or background states. Some apps will go into idle only if you hit the back key to go back to the home screen and will enter a background state (more active) if you hit the home instead. I've also noticed that the free, ad-supported apps require more CPU time. That's right. Hitting Google's ad servers, at least for some apps, and scrolling those ads, requires more CPU time than other apps, which do the same. I don't know whether to fault the devs in this case when coding for the ad retrievals or not. Just some things to consider.
I just got mine. I came from a Blackberry 8900 and an old 2g iPhone. Battery life on both of those was significantly better. I could talk for 8 hours a day on the BB and it would last until midnight-1am or so. The iPhone would only last until 10pm.
Using the MT4G, my battery life is REALLY bad compared to these other two devices. I can get about 5.5 hours of continuous talk time, tested yesterday on a conference call for work. But even with only calling for about an hour and some basic email checking, I can't go past 6pm without putting the phone on the charger.
Wifi is off, screen at 50%. Someone please make a big fat 2800mah battery for this thing. I use this thing for work, and I make over 4000 mins a month of phone calls. It's really annoying to have to plug it in whenever I have the chance.
im getting roughly about 15-17 hours and im using it (camera, blogging, facebook uploading)
this destroys the EVO i had
Heavy usage, I'll get around there, 7-8 hours...regular usage gets me around 20 hours..I'm using setcpu w/ profiles..
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
did you have similar battery problems with your old phone while at work?
i notice my nexus 1's battery is significantly worse when i'm at work since getting a signal is a bit spotty (35th floor) so it keeps searching around. when i'm at home the battery lasts literally twice as long while idle.
dinan said:
did you have similar battery problems with your old phone while at work?
i notice my nexus 1's battery is significantly worse when i'm at work since getting a signal is a bit spotty (35th floor) so it keeps searching around. when i'm at home the battery lasts literally twice as long while idle.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes definitely right about that. I have better battery usage when I'm off work. My department at work is in the basement. So the signal switches on and off the whole time I'm there.
myTouch4G (Glacier)
dinan said:
did you have similar battery problems with your old phone while at work?
i notice my nexus 1's battery is significantly worse when i'm at work since getting a signal is a bit spotty (35th floor) so it keeps searching around. when i'm at home the battery lasts literally twice as long while idle.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think I only brought my G2 into work a couple times so cant really comment on that but in the 3 months ive owned the vibrant, if i used the phone a lot during the day....i mean play games, texts, web, etc..id leave with percentage in the 50s, normally in the 70s, at 4 today i was in the 30s with the mytouch with barely doing anything, since i want it to last until the night i just threw it on the charger. it shows I have full signal (4th floor by window)
My wife just got an mt4g (I have a nexus one). I've noticed that her battery life seems to be just over half what mine is, and I actually use mine more!
When I looked at her Battery Usage display, Android OS was near the top with almost 2h CPU time after being unplugged for 6h. For comparison, on my nexus one, CPU time for Android OS is 4m13s after almost 8h.
Any good way to break that number down more and find out the source of this crazy battery usage?

[Q] Battery life?

How is the battery life on the MT? If it's poor (stock), have you found a good utility app to help it last longer?
I usually get about 24 hours of battery life on mine. I have gps turned off most of the time and I'm on wifi a lot with light to moderate usage. I did notice that if I have the GPS on, that the battery does go down much quicker. I assume that's because it keeps trying to get a location even when I'm indoors and it's having a hard time.
Although, I've read a lot of people complain about poor battery life so YMMV.
It depends greatly on whether data is working or not. Usually, I'll have around 90% battery 2 hours into the day. But if data isn't working, like today, I'll go down to 80% in as little as 20 minutes.
Usually, I'll have around 20% after 12 hours. Been giving it a charge in the afternoon, and it hasn't been an issue.
I use Juice defender, and it does wonders for my battery life.
I've found battery life to be comparable to other Android devices; with effective battery management, mine gets me through the work day. My wife has the Optimus V and I have coworkers, one with a Droid X, the other with an Evo; my battery life is no better and no worse than any of those devices. With any smartphone you're going to have to turn off unused radios and turn down screen brightness if you're going to be away from a charger for a long period of time.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using Tapatalk
Heavy use is the real killer on the Triumph. With just the screen on (minimal brightness) and network on (bad coverage), I can drain the battery by about 1% every minute. And that's no exaggeration -- Battery Indicator Pro keeps track for me. I'm working on a spreadsheet to help chart battery drain during different scenarios.
Thanks for all the replies. Basically what I was expecting, but like to have confirmation
Now to find a good place to buy one. Will probably hit Bestbuy due to return convenience and policies.
Edit: Purchased at Bestbuy, and actually ran into Sprint rep who had one I could look at. We exchanged a few geek tips.
One thing I noticed: I have an LG brand microUSB charger, and the phone would not charge from it when turned on, tho it would charge when turned off. I had an older Motorola microUSB charger and it works fine either phone on or off.
I am getting a whole day of battery life with heavy use. I turned off the background data and turned off all sync. Using the email client with one hour pull with imap instead of the gmail client... Couldn't be happier with the phone...
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using Tapatalk
Yeah, I have also found that turning off sync can get you through the day with less battery used.
Depending on how much I use the Triumph, I can run the battery down in about 2-3 hours (with constant use) or have it run all day long and in to the next day (if I only use it for 1 or 2 short calls during the day.)
My motorola Triumph's Battery Life
I have waited months to post my reviews. I had a Virgin Mobile Intercept and upgraded to this the day after it came out.
Battery life is HORRENDOUS. Not sure how anyone can possibly say its "OK". Sure if you are sitting at home or in the office all day, You can continually have it plugged in and charged. My lighter socket doesn't work in my car ATM so thank GOD I don't drive a lot, and for long periods, I would be SCREWED.
Essentially yes if you turn off GPS, Wi-Fi, Syncing your emails and such, etc etc, then your battery will last longer. But what good is the phone then? I have owned many other androids and they worked for almost a full day with moderate usage with ALL of those things turned on and sync'ing (including Latitude and automatic check-ins). I have lost all of that. I have google talk catching up for hours-old conversations whenever I hit a wifi spot that's saved in my phone.
Juice Defender was my "solution" But it has rendered my phone practically useless for anything besides just having a phone handy when needed. No apps, no moe use of all the bells and whistles that I loved about android in the first place!
I am dealing with it. It just sucks. Sure there are other smartphones with similar issues, and poor battery life, but this has to be possibly the worst or one of the worst. It just is highly unfortunate that this is the case.
Also: Bluetooth syncing works 50% of the time. Constantly have to turn it off and on to get my jawbone(s) to sync. God forbid you answer a call and want to switch over to bluetooth. In those cases it works about 20% of the time.
This is not a good phone for people who are out and about all day or drivers of any sort, unless you have it plugged in the entire day. Forget about using it as a GPS unless its plugged in either, that will drain you battery to 0% in less than an hour.
People say this is due to poor design and rushed to market with crappy signal reception and GPS reception, same with bluetooth antennae. This might be the case, I ALSO have mine suddenly have NO BARS for no reason and I have to power off and on the phone to get a signal back.
ALSO half the time I am out and about and need data connection over 3G, even with bars I get NOTHING. It's very frustrating not to be able to use the phone for what I want to use it for.
I will be getting rid of this puppy as soon as possible and I would do it sooner if I didn't want to avoid a 2year contract.
The good part about the phone is it is MUCH faster and responsive than the Intercept and Optimus. Much better camera (has a flash - FINALLY!) and HD video. Front facing camera is nice to have but of course weaksauce in the resolution dept. Overall A+ for effort, D- in execution.
kneel said:
I have waited months to post my reviews. I had a Virgin Mobile Intercept and upgraded to this the day after it came out.
Battery life is HORRENDOUS. Not sure how anyone can possibly say its "OK". Sure if you are sitting at home or in the office all day, You can continually have it plugged in and charged. My lighter socket doesn't work in my car ATM so thank GOD I don't drive a lot, and for long periods, I would be SCREWED.
Essentially yes if you turn off GPS, Wi-Fi, Syncing your emails and such, etc etc, then your battery will last longer. But what good is the phone then? I have owned many other androids and they worked for almost a full day with moderate usage with ALL of those things turned on and sync'ing (including Latitude and automatic check-ins). I have lost all of that. I have google talk catching up for hours-old conversations whenever I hit a wifi spot that's saved in my phone.
Juice Defender was my "solution" But it has rendered my phone practically useless for anything besides just having a phone handy when needed. No apps, no moe use of all the bells and whistles that I loved about android in the first place!
I am dealing with it. It just sucks. Sure there are other smartphones with similar issues, and poor battery life, but this has to be possibly the worst or one of the worst. It just is highly unfortunate that this is the case.
Also: Bluetooth syncing works 50% of the time. Constantly have to turn it off and on to get my jawbone(s) to sync. God forbid you answer a call and want to switch over to bluetooth. In those cases it works about 20% of the time.
This is not a good phone for people who are out and about all day or drivers of any sort, unless you have it plugged in the entire day. Forget about using it as a GPS unless its plugged in either, that will drain you battery to 0% in less than an hour.
People say this is due to poor design and rushed to market with crappy signal reception and GPS reception, same with bluetooth antennae. This might be the case, I ALSO have mine suddenly have NO BARS for no reason and I have to power off and on the phone to get a signal back.
ALSO half the time I am out and about and need data connection over 3G, even with bars I get NOTHING. It's very frustrating not to be able to use the phone for what I want to use it for.
I will be getting rid of this puppy as soon as possible and I would do it sooner if I didn't want to avoid a 2year contract.
The good part about the phone is it is MUCH faster and responsive than the Intercept and Optimus. Much better camera (has a flash - FINALLY!) and HD video. Front facing camera is nice to have but of course weaksauce in the resolution dept. Overall A+ for effort, D- in execution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This post is harsh. But I agree with most of it. Overall, the Triumph fits with a prepaid phone reputation: niggly bugs, poor battery life, poor service quality when compared to a higher end device.
The main problem here is that you'll be totally dependent on the community for real bug fixes. Every phone has bugs. But the bugs on the Triumph affect core usability and are on a totally different level. I would not count on Motorola to fix these bugs. If you're the tinkering type and a patient person, this may be worth it. But anyone who thinks that they are getting "something for free" is sadly mistaken. You are paying $25 a month for cell phone service, which is great . But all these bugs will make you pay with your time. How? Time looking for new roms, apps to fix bad battery life, time wondering why the touchscreen response is poor, time working around the bugs in every day life. If that is fun to you (and it may be for most people on this forum), fine. But you are paying with your time. Lesson learned is not to be so quick to fall for the specs. The company offering the phone and their track record of pushing out updates should play a large part in my decision next time.
I usually have WiFi turned on all day, and sync. I use the phone on my breaks and at lunch. When I get home I troll forums heavily and watch netflix occasionally. Not to mention Pandora for at least an hour per day. The battery will last if I dont plug it in until the next morning. Bottom line is that a lot of these issues can be fixed with quality software, and a battery cycle of 18-24 hours is something I can definitly live with. Compared to my Ascend, the Triumph is soooo much better in battery dept.
Sent from my rooted Moto Triumph
Battery issues
I am not sure why a lot of people have issues with battery, I unplugged my phone over 7 hrs ago and right now have 57% battery left, now before you hang your head at this look at my usage:
-Over 1 hour of talktime out of 7 hours.
-50+ texts back and forth
-10+ emails back and forth
-5-10 youtube videos
-5-10 pages of web browsing
-dl and install apps
-facebook at least 2-3 times every hour
And some more fiddling around so basically I have been on the phone non stop for 7 hours and its lost only 43%
That said, most of that usage came from the first 4 hours where it lost 36%(1+ hour of talktime, youtube videos im not really shocked there)
6th hour i texted and browsed etc only 5% battery used.
7th hour I just sent back and forth a couple of texts and only 2% battery used.
All this when i dont use any applications like task killers etc..i just let them run the way they want. Also no wifi, everything over 3g.
so imo if it gives that kind of battery its good enough for me. I was really scared when i bought cuz people were complaining so much about its battery but im fairly surprised. One factor that could be though is that I am not running the GPS, no need for it yet, when I do ill update what kind of usage i got.
I get 23 hours battery life with HEAVY usage and 30 if mostly idle. Many may disagree but if you live or work in a Wifi zone, keeping wifi on and setting it to never sleep greatly INCREASES battery life. 3G radio uses more juice especially if low signal or always searching. If you click on Battery Use and see your "time without a signal" is anything over 20% then you will most certainly see increase on battery life if you leave wifi locked on while in a wifi zone.
Also, side note: I have a 1500mah Anker battery that also increases juice time I recommend it!
Sent from my Rooted MOTWX435KT using XDA App
23 hrs with heavy usage? Unless yours came with a 2300ma battery and not the paltry 1380ma battery, there's NO WAY you're getting 23 hours under heave usage.
I'm using a 1500mah calibrated battery and yep, its true I leave wifi on and set to never sleep when I'm at home or work. If not, 3G absolutely murders my battery. My phone drops between 3% and 5% per hour.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using XDA App
Well today I am having less luck with battery life. I watched two movies on Netflix and constant Facebook. I unplugged at 10:30am and it is now 4:48pm and I am at 52%.. still using 1500mah battery.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using XDA App
troll somewhere else
I just came from a Samsung Epic 4G. I have to say battery life it at least the same but probably better on the Triumph. The battery is also quicker to swap out on the Triumph. Between the already better battery life and ability to quickly swap, I'm more than happy.
garrmack said:
I just came from a Samsung Epic 4G. I have to say battery life it at least the same but probably better on the Triumph. The battery is also quicker to swap out on the Triumph. Between the already better battery life and ability to quickly swap, I'm more than happy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As horrible as the Triumph batt life is then I'd hate to think how bad the Epic 4g's life was...wow!

Am I the only one with poor battery life?

I can't get through half the day.
could you be more specific as to what you do on your phone? is your phone the international version or the USA T-mobile version.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using xda premium
Tmobile, stock everything and I had the battery issue on my first HOS. I just got my replacement and Im running the same apps, same calls, same eveything as the first phone but i get a significant more battery life. The battery on the replacement HOS lasted me the entire day, but I still carry a charger around just incase.
Superbattery?
My TMo One S battery life recently went through the roof for some reason. I can only attribute it to one of the following or perhaps luck:
I've been charging it at end of day regardless of charge but I finally let the charge get below 25% -- I think it got to 15%. Then I powered it down and let it charge 12 hours overnight.
I disabled all Facebook related apps.
Other than that I can't recall anything I did recently that might account for my new super battery. But I'm at 1d 4h 25m on battery -- most of that on WiFi granted -- and still have 42% juice. I'll take it!
I always have my charger because I'm a twitter whore. I recommend disabling any bloat ware or duplicate app like Facebook For HTC or Twitter For HTC. And make sure you change settings for each app you use and don't use.
Sent from the (problematic?) One S.
Anyone use Juicedefender? My battery is excellent but if it can be improved then even better..
I'm using my phone very much, with Facebook and games and such, and I still get through the day without hesitate! I think it's wonderful
my battery life was poor on stock rom aswell. went trough a day only. had to charge every day. but now with noble v3 rom and being tiny bit more careful with use i have battery for 2 days
Battery life on this phone is better than most and I give it that. The only problem I have is the quick drop from 100% to 92% in a hour from little to light usage.
Sent from my HTC VLE_U using XDA
I'm on stock Tmo US and have been getting amazing battery life. I took it off the charger when I left for work at 7:30am and I'm at 75% at 8:50pm.
That's with quite a bit of texting, pics taken at work, and 45 minutes of web browsing while I was on lunch. Granted, I don't do Facebook, so that may help.
This is the first phone I've been lazy about rooting because it's worked so well so far.
ptweasel said:
I'm on stock Tmo US and have been getting amazing battery life. I took it off the charger when I left for work at 7:30am and I'm at 75% at 8:50pm.
That's with quite a bit of texting, pics taken at work, and 45 minutes of web browsing while I was on lunch. Granted, I don't do Facebook, so that may help.
This is the first phone I've been lazy about rooting because it's worked so well so far.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get decent battery life as well, but how do you manage only a 25% drop with over 12 hours of on time whic included a bunch of texting which keeps the screen on while u text and 45 min of browsing. Seems too good
I just got my One S less than a week ago. Love ICS. Battery life has been about 10 to 12 hours with medium amount of use. Facebook is disabled. I'm using active sync to sync to my exchange server and push frequency. (that continually goes out but that's for a different thread I guess).
I charge over night as I've done with my Dinc2, original Dinc, and all flavors of blackberry.
Last night I used a digital clock app while it was charging and in the morning at 8:30 where I unplugged, it had 100%. It's now just past 11 in the morning and with email, one short phone call and some light surfing, I'm already down to 62%.
I have noticed the phone is hot which means it's working hard to do something.
I have WiFi off and GPS off as well as location services. Should I return it for a new handset? Should I just go back to Verizon and get an iPhone?? Ugh.
ptweasel said:
I'm on stock Tmo US and have been getting amazing battery life. I took it off the charger when I left for work at 7:30am and I'm at 75% at 8:50pm.
That's with quite a bit of texting, pics taken at work, and 45 minutes of web browsing while I was on lunch. Granted, I don't do Facebook, so that may help.
This is the first phone I've been lazy about rooting because it's worked so well so far.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What's your "screen on" time? Have you changed any connectivity settings, that may have increased your battery life a lot?
If the phone is hot then something is running in the background you should probably figure out what that is and disable it before you do anything. Now with exchange servers set up on your phone they do tend to eat some battery. That's universal though. Sounds like to do have a rogue app though. As for me this past Monday I took the phone off the charger at 430am and didn't have to return it to the charger til 11pm mostly because I was going to bed. I watched netflix, text, phone calls, Web surfed.... Love this device.
Posted with my HTC One S (US)
mikea3000 said:
I get decent battery life as well, but how do you manage only a 25% drop with over 12 hours of on time whic included a bunch of texting which keeps the screen on while u text and 45 min of browsing. Seems too good
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To you and the other person that asked, I think it really has to do with cell signal strength.
I posted those numbers after coming home from work where I have awesome cell coverage.
Today I've been home all day, and even though I'm on WiFi all day, my cell signal is horrible here. WiFi or not, it's still searching for a signal constantly so I've lost 30% in 6 hours with moderate use.
Now, as I said before, I don't use facebook or friendstream, but I think a lot of it is the radio constantly searching for a better signal.
I also think that either bad signal or just 3G takes a lot of battery.
I switched to 2G only just as an experiment, where I get a good signal almost constantly. This extended my battery life quite a lot. Where I usually had 10-20% left after a full day, I had 50% left with only 2G. I have also been using WiFi where available.
Can this be a software bug since there is such a big difference? I've noticed before that phone calls suck a lot of juice...
cawith said:
I also think that either bad signal or just 3G takes a lot of battery.
I switched to 2G only just as an experiment, where I get a good signal almost constantly. This extended my battery life quite a lot. Where I usually had 10-20% left after a full day, I had 50% left with only 2G. I have also been using WiFi where available.
Can this be a software bug since there is such a big difference? I've noticed before that phone calls suck a lot of juice...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2G is known to use much less battery life in every phone you check it.
Take a look at GSMarena on phone specifications in the bottom and you'll see the great difference.
BTW, looking on the battery test GSMArena did for the One S, it's quite in good place for the 3G calling and Video playback but uses a lot of battery on WEB browsing, see here
Might be that we the ones with low battery are more surfing than the others...
I get about 24 hours.
2 hour screen use. No FB or twitter, only gmail sync
Some text, 5mins of calls, <2% no signal
When idle i get battery drain of <10mA using:
http://www.3c71.com
Battery Monitor Widget. Logging current consumption is the only way to get to the bottom of the problem.
I'm talking with the author to get the kinks worked out of the One S logging.
*but* for some reasons something is keeping the phone awake at times. current drain is then 70-80mA constant. Not been able to find the culprit, but a reboot helps.
Hopefully this was useful.
I had the same issue-downloaded 2x battery from the market and it is much better. ( I have syncing with twitter, fb, gmail, mobile life all enabled)
I could barely get through the day. Seems the phone does a lot when syncing etc and this stops that, or at least limits it to the interval of your choice. every 10 I believe with the free version.
Try it-I am sure it will help. (I also turn the brightness down as I am mostly indoors-and put it on auto outside-but that is just me)
kickstarter said:
I had the same issue-downloaded 2x battery from the market and it is much better. ( I have syncing with twitter, fb, gmail, mobile life all enabled)
I could barely get through the day. Seems the phone does a lot when syncing etc and this stops that, or at least limits it to the interval of your choice. every 10 I believe with the free version.
Try it-I am sure it will help. (I also turn the brightness down as I am mostly indoors-and put it on auto outside-but that is just me)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, due to the fact that every time I check the usage of battery screen is in top place (with Auto brightness all the time) and the fact I'm syncing with FB, Gmail, Exchange server and more, I guess the best thing to do is to lower Screen brightness...

Shocked at the great battery life on my ATT S4

I have to say I am very very impressed with the battery life I am getting out of my brand new S4 from ATT.
I bought it Monday, and Tuesday was my first full day using it, these were my stats at 9:00pm, after being unplugged off the charger from the morning. 15h 44m with 42% battery left, and 3h 22m On Screen time. That just blows me away, and I was not expecting that whatsoever. I am coming from a Nexus 4 that was rooted with a battery friendly kernel, and that phone would maybe do 4h On Screen time, and be dead in 12 to 14 hours. based off these result, I can expect maybe 5.5h to 6h On Screen time total ?
We'll see how today goes, because I just can't believe those stats above, seems like a freak one time thing to get such good battery life.
All I did was Root the phone, and kept the stock OS on it. Rooting allowed me to install Greenify and DroidWall, Root Explorer and AdAway, my favorite apps. Greenify I used to stop a lot of functions from running in the background, DroidWall lets me pick which apps to never connect over WiFi and 3G/4G network, and AdAway stops the adds of course
I also have sync off on my most things, and any apps refreshing set longer, to like 3hour refresh. I keep screen locked at 50% brightness, and 30 second time off. GPS and Bluetooth off, location finder off.
I also used Root Explorer to delete a sh!t ton of ATT and Samsung .apk's in the system file. I couldn't believe how many items I deleted using Root Explorer, maybe too many LOL Seriously must have been like 30 or 40 .apk's I deleted.
So is it this phone, just much better on battery than I thought, or a combination of the way I set my phone up, by deleting lots of .apk's, and using Greenify and Droidwall ?
Now 3 full days with the phone, each night after 15 hours off the charger, I still have 35% to 40% battery left, and typically used 3.5h On Screen time at that point. And majority of it on the 4G network, just a few hours out of 15 on WiFi.
I am shocked getting this kind of battery life, totally unexpected.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda app-developers app
Thanks for the feedback!
I would say this is pretty good battery life . I should be able to get 5.5h to 6h On Screen time on this phone. That's nearly 50% better than my Nexus 4. No way I would trade this phone in for the Nexus 5 only having a fixed 2,300mAh battery.
Only other phone coming out I would upgrade to is the Galaxy S5 due out in 4 months in February, with metal body like the HTC One and iPhone...the next gen Snapdragon 1,000 processor...a 2,800-3,000mAh battery...4GB RAM...all new screen technology, no longer AMOLED...and redesigned Touchwiz, based off Android 4.4 Kit Kat.
I was on the 4G LTE network majority of the time, only on WiFi a few hours.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda app-developers app
that's Pretty good battery life I must say myself,but by turning off all those features you're defeating the whole purpose
of having a smartphone. with all those features not being usable you might as well own a razer flip phone
I have bt,location,and all those fun gadgets on and still get a good 12 hrs up time and I use my phone too
I'd like to know what you get with your phone loaded up with all the features enabled,thanks
I just swapped batteries after 51 hours. Over 3 hours of screen time, 90% of which was while using LTE. Other than that there was about 10 hours of LTE standby, 2.5 hours of Airplane mode and the rest WIFI. I use Greenify like the OP, but I use Tasker to enable Bluetooth and GPS when I leave my house and disable it when I return home. I leave my brightness on auto and sync on.
When I was connected to WIFI at home I would get crushed by WIFI related wakelocks, but using a network logger I was able to eliminate the causes, most of them were related to my iMac constantly sending out random packets to everything on my network. Other than that I found Google Now was a huge cause of background web traffic, while still keeping location services on, I turned off location history and reporting in Google Now and that cut down drastically on the amount of background web traffic Google Now uses, but I can still use Google Now for what I need it for. I also found apps that have no reason to access the internet like GSam Battery monitor among others were doing so. With a combination of Greenify and removing internet access permission using App Settings (Xposed framework module) I was able to get those under control.
All this was a lot of trial and error, and it took me a while I figure out a good combination of conditions and applications to use to control the amount of background web traffic (causing WIFI related wakelocks). But now I get great battery life and really no loss of functionality. I think Google needs to do a better job of policing developers when it comes to this sort of stuff, the average person isn't going to go through all this.
Side note, has anyone else notices that at around 40% the battery tends to drop a bit more rapidly than the preceding 60%? If I was able to get 3 hours screen on time over the first 50% I'll probably on get 2 hours on the next last 50%. Its clear as day when you graph battery life vs screen on time after 40%. I have 2 official Samsung batteries I use and it happens on both.
I was on my S4 pretty hard today, all day and night long, surfing the web, reading XDA, watching YouTube, sending tons of texts, keeping up with the sports scores on my favorite teams playing today, using Sportstacular a lot.
I think almost 6h On Screen time is really good, and blows away my Nexus 4, which was getting around 3.5h to 4h On Screen time. Wonder how well the Nexus 5 will do On Screen time when hammering on the phone all day and night ?
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Evita Battery Life w/ Data Connection

So I've been tinkering with my phone for about 5 months now, searching forum after forum in hopes of getting some decent battery life out of my Evita. The best I'm ever able to get having mobile data and WiFi on throughout the day is about 9 hours. That's with light to moderate use (an hour of streaming music, 2-3 hours of screen time, only mail and calendar sync for Google, 0-20% screen brightness, no games, and being around WiFi for about 70% of the time). That benchmark was reached with CM 10.2, boosted kernel, sweep to wake enabled, and GPS on for about 1.5 hours. I can get about 16 hours if I disable all sync, underclock the kernel, disable all internet connections except when I use them (about 2 hours of the 16 on a normal day of checking email, reading news, syncing accounts and such. No heavy stuff such as streaming video etc.), and disabled GPS. However, I figure what's the point of having a smartphone with data connectivity if being connected means I can't even make it through a very light use work day? I've had my phone replaced once by AT&T because 8 hours was the best life I could get on stock period. That was with data and WiFi off (about 3 hours with internet on). I considered buying an external battery case to get a more normal battery life but can't justify dropping $100 bucks when that's what I paid for the phone with a contract in the first place.
Anyway, is this battery life normal? And if not, is there anything I can do to increase my battery life and maintain mobile data connectivity/WiFi? I would also love to be able to keep my GPS on as it's frustrating to wait 5 minutes for my GPS to find my location so I can find my way around. Whenever I need to use my maps. Anyway, it doesn't seem like this is a normal smartphone experience I'm having but I could be entirely wrong.
Thanks in advance.
The battery life you're experiencing looks fairly normal to me for the usage you describe. Sync kills battery, mobile data kills battery, GPS kills battery. All in all, HTC did put an underpowered battery in this device, which certainly doesn't help but there are steps you can take to combat this problem.
You say you want to leave the GPS on because you don't like waiting for it to connect, but if you do that the thing is going to try to connect constantly, even when indoors, which will drain your battery massively. My GPS connects in seconds, try using an app called Faster GPS.
Leaving mobile data switched on has the same result, why not switch it off when it isn't in use? You can use a quick settings tile to easily switch on and off as required and it will save a heap of battery.
Think about it like this, you don't leave the car running when it's in your garage, you don't leave all your lights on when you're not home, you don't keep the clothes dryer going when there are no clothes in it. Why? Because it's a waste to have all those things operating when not actually in use.
Use an app called Greenify to hibernate apps when they're not in use, you'd be surprised at how often apps run in the background when you're not even using them.
These are just some practices you can adopt to get better life our of your battery. I think people have pretty unrealistic expectations of how long a smartphone battery should last, considering all the things we ask to get out of them at the same time.
Sent from my Evita
Hey Timaa, always appreciate your input. I'll try working in those ideas and see what battery life I get. Also, I believe I found a fix. I installed the 4.4.2 version of beanstalk and enabled the conservative governor and I'm pulling between 15 and 20 hours with Wi-Fi, mobile data, and GPS all enabled all day. The 13 hour cycle is on the moderate use side (2-3 hours of audio streaming, 4-5 hours of screen time, a couple games, internet browsing, Google Now enabled) and I have the pocket wake feature on. But an average day for me gets about 17 hours. More than enough to get me through my day. I've never even approached this kind of battery life with this device and I must say, I'm blown away! My battery now easily performs my old iPhone 4 which is really saying something. Couldn't be happier.
Sent from my One X using xda app-developers app

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