Help! Battery draining at exceptionally fast rate

[ralgrl]

Hey all,
I need help. I've noticed over the past couple of weeks that my S3's battery is draining exceptionally fast.

Here's some details:
- I charge the battery overnight and in the morning between the time I unplug it and the time I get to work (a 30 min drive) I'm below 90%. That's just not normal for my phone. But read on, it gets worse
- Very recently I've had to charge the phone during the day else it can't make it until dinner time
- I bought a new battery thinking perhaps the original battery went bad. Same thing happens with the new battery
- today was a great test: my fiance and I both have an S3 on Verizon. Obviously we have different apps installed. We went on a day trip today to a lake that doesn't have consistent reception. By 4pm his phone was down to 78% battery and mine was down to 42%. On the drive up I uninstalled a lot of apps that I just don't use. I also looked at the currently running apps and stopped quite a few. I then restarted the phone. Didn't seem to help
- at 6:30pm today I switched batteries to one that was 100% charged. Now, 4.5 hours later the battery is down to 23% -- in these 4.5 hours I have barely been using the phone. I've checked FB a couple of time and read one email. That's it. I haven't even had the screen turned on for more than a few minutes at a time.
- I don't have any new apps on the phone than going back several weeks when I didn't have this problem.
- I'm not rooted
- wi-fi is off, GPS is off, location services are off, bluetooth is off.

So what's causing this issue? It seems to be all of a sudden. I've attached a screenshot of the running apps taken a few mins ago. That will show you the battery percentage and a first glance of what's running.

Help! This is a huge problem. When I started typing this post the battery was at 26% and now it's at 20%. WTF?!??!!


Thanks!!

 

[dezymond]

Try downloading a battery monitor widget, I personally use Gsam battery monitor. It also breaks down how many wakelocks your phone is doing and what apps are taking up the most battery. Install it and let it run for a day or two, and see what results show up. You could be dealing with a rogue app.

If you have any apps that autorefresh, check their intervals.

 

[newbroot83]

Can you upload a pic of the battery graph? And I see you checked your running processes, but I would still give gsam a shot.

Thanks

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2

 

[ralgrl]

Thanks for the advice. I'll download that app.

Here's a screenshot of the battery graph.

 

[newbroot83]

Thanks for the advice. I'll download that app.

Here's a screenshot of the battery graph.

View attachment 65016

What kind of media have you been downloading? 88% for downloads is alot. That will def put a hurt on the battery. ....

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2

 

[ralgrl]

What kind of media have you been downloading? 88% for downloads is alot. That will def put a hurt on the battery. ....

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2

I'm not entirely sure. I haven't been actively doing anything. I don't know which app on my phone is downloading media. Any ideas?

 

[k1ngr4t]

Go to the Play Store and go to "My Apps" in the settings, then go to "All" and uninstall any apps you installed since it started. If that still doesn't help, try turning on airplane mode for an hour or two, like in the morning when you wake up and drive to work etc etc, and see if it helps. And if NOT, then I'd be willing to bet it was an app that was updated recently and for whatever reason, something went wrong is now causing problems. In which case usually the only thing that helps is a factory data reset. Try the first two things though and if you can post that Gsam list!

 

[prime]

Grab GSam https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gsamlabs.bbm and it will pinpoint the source of your battery drain.

 

[Tonik]

It's the latest update for Google maps. My note 2 did it, wife's s3 did it as did my secretaries. I fixed them all the same way. Go into apps then maps and clear cache then data. Uninstall updates, then let it update. Worked every time.

 

[k1ngr4t]

Great suggestion Tonik. Only thing I'd recommend is to uninstall updates and THEN clear cache and data and then restart the phone for good measure. Do it this way and if it still doesn't work then we'll know FOR SURE it's something deeper.

 

[Tonik]

Also double check all your location services. The last update turned some of them on by default.

 

[k1ngr4t]

Location services really shouldn't affect battery too much. It used to, but at this point if they really do cause a noticeable drain in battery it's likely something else GPS related. Though really the only one you do need on is Google's.