Battery life??

Ok so I just got my Galaxy 6 days ago and my battery life is atrocious! My battery says it's been on for 5 hrs 47 mins and it only has 6 hrs 9 mins left. I will most likely have to charge it around 7 or 8 oclock tonight, as I have had to do every other night I have had this phone.

Based on what I am reading here, this seems like a really bad battery life and I should be able to get at least 16-20 hrs without having to recharge. Mind you, I do not use my phone heavily. Most of the day it just sits on my desk at work without being used unless I am answering a text or call on it. At night, when i get home, I occasionally browse for maybe an hour TOPS. So far, this has not even come close to my Droid X in terms of battery life.

If I knew how to do a screencap, I would post pics.

Please help!

thanks
 
DannyGlover said:
Ok so I just got my Galaxy 6 days ago and my battery life is atrocious! My battery says it's been on for 5 hrs 47 mins and it only has 6 hrs 9 mins left. I will most likely have to charge it around 7 or 8 oclock tonight, as I have had to do every other night I have had this phone.

Based on what I am reading here, this seems like a really bad battery life and I should be able to get at least 16-20 hrs without having to recharge. Mind you, I do not use my phone heavily. Most of the day it just sits on my desk at work without being used unless I am answering a text or call on it. At night, when i get home, I occasionally browse for maybe an hour TOPS. So far, this has not even come close to my Droid X in terms of battery life.

If I knew how to do a screencap, I would post pics.

Please help!

thanks
Click to expand...

What do you mean it only has 6hrs 9mins left? How did you determine that?

See the steps I suggested here to diagnose your issue. Probably a wakelock issue somewhere.

Edit: to screenshot on the GS3, hold down the power and home button at the same time.
 
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sbenson said:
What do you mean it only has 6hrs 9mins left? How did you determine that?

See the steps I suggested here.
Click to expand...

that's what it says under the battery settings. Unless that number is how long i have had it on, which would make sense too. Either way, I am consistently unplugging my phone at 7:30 AM and by 8 PM, I have to recharge. I am not using it throughout the day hardly at all.

I will look at your steps. Thanks for the advice.
 
OK So after I followed your steps with the 2 apps you suggested, I found nothing suspect. I did, however, format my sd card that was taken from my Droid X and that seems to have fixed it. My battery life is being drained much slower now since doing that.

Thanks for your help, fellas (or ladies)
 
DannyGlover said:
OK So after I followed your steps with the 2 apps you suggested, I found nothing suspect. I did, however, format my sd card that was taken from my Droid X and that seems to have fixed it. My battery life is being drained much slower now since doing that.

Thanks for your help, fellas (or ladies)
Click to expand...

Awesome, glad that worked. It seemed to help my situation also.

Unfortunately, I've found that an app I use quite regularly uses up a big chunk of battery - BeyondPod. I use this to download podcasts and subscribe to feeds, but it really hits the battery hard, whether I'm downloading episodes (during which a battery drain is expected on 4G) or just listening to download episodes, which surprised me. Has anyone else used this app? I may need to find an alternative.
 
So I let the battery drain the other night to about 38% (wanted to drain to 15% but went to bed) and shut the phone off and charged overnight to 100%. The phone was taken off the charger around 7 am (?) Wednesday morning, and put on the charger (15% remaining) earlier this morning once at work.

View attachment 53160

WiFi on all time (only connects at home), zero network toggling, no powersave features enabled.

I'm pleased with the battery life so far. I will have to really put it through one day when I can mess with it for an extended period of time.
 
howdy folks, first post! got my first droid, the S3, last week. upgraded from a blackberry. it is a great phone, but I think I do have an issue with my battery. I have done all the regular tweaks to help the battery life, but I don't think it has really helped.

power saver on, auto brightness, disable data/gps/etc when not in use. limited syncing to email only.

for instance today i unplugged from the charger at 100%. 2hrs later, of minimal to no use (data off, gps off, wifi off) i was at 84%. Every 20 minutes or so I would check to see if I had a text message, but instead just notice the battery draining.

i download and bought betterbatterytest - gonna take some screenshots of the findings.
 
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nopantsdan said:
howdy folks, first post! got my first droid, the S3, last week. upgraded from a blackberry. it is a great phone, but I think I do have an issue with my battery. I have done all the regular tweaks to help the battery life, but I don't think it has really helped.

power saver on, auto brightness, disable data/gps/etc when not in use. limited syncing to email only.

for instance today i unplugged from the charger at 100%. 2hrs later, of minimal to no use (data off, gps off, wifi off) i was at 84%. Every 20 minutes or so I would check to see if I had a text message, but instead just notice the battery draining.

i download and bought betterbatterytest - gonna take some screenshots of the findings.
Click to expand...

See my earlier post. Check for a wake lock issue by using the two apps I described.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
 
nopantsdan said:
thanks for quick response! i will follow your suggestions over the next few hours. here are the screen shots i promised from betterbattery

View attachment 53166View attachment 53165
Click to expand...

I don't know anything about that app but just from looking at the second image, you can see that you have no wake lock issues. Your device has been in deep sleep for 40 of the 47 minutes its been running. That's what you want ideally.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
 
Do you have poor 4g service where you are?

If not, I would change all your default settings back to normal. That means auto brightness on, power saver off, GPS on, WiFi on and run it that way for a few days. Turning all that stuff off is really unnecessary and no one should ever be forced to use their phone in that manner.

There's no reason aside from poor 4g service that you shouldn't be able to average 18+ hours per day out of your GS3 under normal usage based on what I've seen so far.

If battery continues to be an issue you should take it back to Verizon and exchange it.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
 
sbenson said:
Do you have poor 4g service where you are?

If not, I would change all your default settings back to normal. That means auto brightness on, power saver off, GPS on, WiFi on and run it that way for a few days. Turning all that stuff off is really unnecessary and no one should ever be forced to use their phone in that manner.

There's no reason aside from poor 4g service that you shouldn't be able to average 18+ hours per day out of your GS3 under normal usage based on what I've seen so far.

If battery continues to be an issue you should take it back to Verizon and exchange it.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...

Based on what u see do u think it's an issue. Or am I just crazy? I'm still within my 14 days from activation period. I don't wanna make a snuff outta this but I don't think it's right.

If so do u think it's a phone or battery issue?
 
Alright, I've arrived at where I think is the appropriate place to discuss this. Sbenson, you seem to be the local expert on batteries, so I deliver these questions to you, or anyone else willing to share some knowledge or advice. :hail:

My problem is, as many of you have also experienced, the poor battery performance of my brand new Verizon GSIII :mad:

Now, I'd consider myself a pretty knowledgable guy when it comes to batteries :blink:. I get that lithium-ions don't have a memory, but rather need to be "calibrated". So being that this is a new phone and new battery, the first few charges/discharges, I let it drain fully or very close, then plug it in and charge it until it says.

However, that hasn't changed anything. I've already taken the liberty of installing the apps that member sbenson recommended to others. I performed to stat-gathering experiements which I'll detail below.

:icon_ cry: First Experiement
I charged the phone fully at the start of the day. The device had died the night before, so I just waited until I got to work to charge it. I left it off while it charged. Once it was fully charged, I turned it on and used it lightly. You can see the breakdown of my "light" usage in the screenshots attached. Essentially, the phone lasted about 7:30 hours before the battery had drained to 11% capacity.

This seems conclusive enough for me to want to exchange the phone. But I suppose you could argue that an App might be to blame, since you can see in the screenshot it says "App Usage" was 66% of the battery drain. That brings me to my next experiement.

:sad: Second Experiement
I wanted to capture something that was irrefutable. So, I charged my phone to 100%, the green light came on, and I unplugged the phone. This was around 4:20AM in the middle of the night, so once I unplugged it, the screen would be off, no apps would be used, and whatever drain the battery experienced would be completely void of user interference.

As it turns out, the "Phone Radio" might be the culprit. After 3:44 hours, the battery was already down to 64% capacity. That's just unforgivable :icon_ nono2:. I lose 36% just by having the phone sit here with the screen off, unused entirely.

(Screenshots for this experiement can be found in the post immediately following this one)

You're probably thinking, he must live in an area with horrible network coverage. The poor phone is just trying desperately to acquire a decent signal. Wrong :icon_ nono:. The Phone Radio detail page shows that 100% of the time the phone was on, it was in Signal Strength 4 (on a 1-5 scale).

So...
Is something I'm doing causing the radio to act this way? I will note, even with WiFi on, the battery has the same fate, though I don't have any empirical evidence :mellow:

Is the phone radio bad? Will they exchange the phone for this?


Thanks in advance!
Ryan

:icon_ banana:
 
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