icemanjs4

I'd like to thank the people over at XDA. I think they may have found the culprit for the horrible battery performance some of us are seeing. There are two threads of interest over there:
[Q] Time without signal > 50% - xda-developers
Wow battery from 100 to 10 in 3 hours - xda-developers

The short of it is that the 3G signals don't stay locked and the phone keeps hunting. If you go under the battery life settings and click on "Cell Standby" there's a field for "Time Without Service". Mine and many others were hover around 50%. This is constantly draining battery even while you do nothing.

So the temporary quick fix is to turn on Airplane mode, then turn it right back off. This fixes some incorrect setting. On my phone, Time Without Service dropped from 52% last night to 0% today. And my battery only dropped about 9-10% idling over night. This is MUCH better than the 30% draining overnight I was seeing over the past few days.

So if your battery life is really bad, try this trick. This also explains why some people are getting better battery life using 4G than 3G.

Good luck everyone!

<=U=L=T=R=A=>

Will try it out..thanks for sharing this tip!!

BigD562

Thanks... Battery issue wasn't that bad, but 21% drain for hunting for a signal.

Last edited by BigD562; September 5th, 2010 at 12:59 PM.

Bakrauf

Ity actually says this on the phone. It says "switch to Airplane mode in areas without service". I had this happen yesterday. sucks allthe life out searching for service.

icemanjs4

The problem is that it's happening in areas WITH service too.

Kelmar

Noooooo......!

This is one of the reasons I switched from the Hero and Evo. This thread was posted while I was out picking up the Epic.

__________________
Typos or odd wording??? I blame Swype for the Swypo's!

In use: (2) Nexus 4, (1) Nexus 7, (1) Galaxy Tab 10.1
Recently retired: (2) Droid Razr, (2) Droid Charge, (1) Samsung Epic 4G, (1) HTC Evo, (1) HTC Hero

Bmerz

Did this too, showed 21%, then dropped down to 5%. Actually 21% is not bad as some are sowing at 50% or more. Good tip, thx for sharing.

Shane112358

I was at 50%...I tried the hint and and will report back if it helps. Edit: It did help quite a bit, thanks OP!

Last edited by Shane112358; September 7th, 2010 at 08:07 AM.

DILands

St00pid N00b Question - Where's battery Life Settings?

thanks

Legato1983

I can confirm also that this works, as my wife's phone was draining juice terribly and now works like a charm without going drain crazy.

All you have to do is hold in your power button, turn on airplane mode, and then do the same thing only turning it off the second time. As long as you don't reboot your phone, it should stay corrected forever.

If you need to reboot your phone for whatever reason, you'll have to do this again. It's a simple and quick temporary fix until Samsung/Sprint does something to fix it permanently.

DILands

I actually figured out the airplane mode - I wanted to see the "before number".

DILands

wow - only 17% - now - time for the "after!

NIUJager

Wow, where do you all live? I am at 4%

Blaznlow

im at 2%

Kelmar

Menu > Settings > About Phone > Battery Use

CLICK on Cell Standby to see Time without signal

pablo.station

im only at 9%

gme109

Mine was at 50%. Will see what happens. How long before it drops?

Thanks

DILands

UMM - you rock. I was looking at Cell Standby - which is now @ 15%. Time without a signal 0%

pflol

Right on, I'm already down to 10% from 81% lol. Thanks

ratchetjaw

Mine was at 53% will try this out

Mr. Ed

You guys might also try updating your prl and data profile if you have not already

pflol

3 hours later I'm at 90% still, this is nice .

1.5 hours of texting/browsing and a couple phone calls.
1.5 hours of GBA emulator games.

neomedic

How do I go about doing that? Thanks.

pflol

Settings -> About Phone -> System Updates -> Update Profile / PRL

jsanta11

I was at 48% and dropped to 35% quick .. Thanks for the tip ....

gme109

I did it almost 5 hrs. ago, and I've only dropped from 50% to 37%. I don't quite understand it though, I haven't been without signal in the last 5 hrs., or at all today. So why is it telling me I've been without signal for 37% of the time?

Toast95135

Until today my time without signal was 0%, it's was 50% when I was driving and then 2% for a while. It's been 50% since this evening, I updated the PRL and its gone down some since. Hopefully that was all...

icemanjs4

It's not about being without signal. It's about the phone losing the signal in an area where it should be connected well, then constantly trying to reconnect. This drains the battery.

I'm glad this helped everyone.

Time for my results. Granted this is a new phone, but it had TWS of 52% yesterday before fix.
I unplugged my fully charged phone last night before bed.
It's now been 21 hours since I unplugged it and I'm still at 30%.
TWS is still at 0%.
It's AMAZING how well this fix worked.

The question is - what do we do about it now? Samsung needs to find out that there's a bug. How do we file that with them? This seems pretty serious to me.

Hope the fix works for everyone in the mean time!!!

5Strong

I checked my phone and I am showing 2%.

gme109

Time for everyone to call Sprint and report this to their higher level tech support. They better get Samsung to fix this before my 30 day trial is up.

daddyd302

So was mine.... I was wondering why the hell my old Evo had better battery life then my Epic. Now hopefully we found out why the battery has been horrible on the Epic.

Everyone who has bad battery life, and tried this and it works, PLEASE contact both Sprint and Samsung and let them know of this bug!!!

So far it dropped to 40% and then 18% a few minutes later. I hope this works... Does anyone know if we have to keep doing this airplane mode step over and over???


EDIT: I was just thinking.... Today and yesterday, I was taking my Epic out of my pocket to make a few calls, I looked at the signal strength, there was none!!! This was outside, in a area I knew gave me 5 bars at least.

It never occurred to me until now. I was wondering why I wasn't getting any bars without thinking about it. Then just like that[1 second later] all 5 bars showed up. It seems the Epic is losing the signal and picking it up again, all outside.

Last edited by daddyd302; September 6th, 2010 at 02:39 AM.

gme109

Just got off the phone with Sprint and Samsung tier 2 tech support, and neither one of them is aware of this glitch.

Everyone should call Samsung directly and and tell them about this.

Here is the direct line for the Galaxy S phone. 1-877-392-4252

idamann

my TWS is showing 0%

my battery life has been VERY bad since I got the phone last week Wednesday, but has been getting better day by day.

at the moment I charged it overnight and unplugged it at 8am, it's now 1pm and I've been playing with it all day and I'm looking at 66% battery, but I'm using the "Battery Status Pro", not really sure how accurate it is.

I moved from the touch pro, so a short battery life is something I'm used to ;-)

Arkansawyer

Fantastic tip. And thanks for all the details on how to get to the right spots to change it. In less than two hours, mine went from 39% to 5%! woo-hoo!

KoukiFC3S

What a bug. I got the 2nd battery so I gotta do this all the time.

__________________
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daddyd302

It seemed to have helped a bit. Saturday from 3pm til 12am, my phone went from 100% to 20%, with about 30 calls, all lasting less then a minute.

Today with about the same thing over, from 4pm til 1am, it was at 45%, so an improvement.

This is about at par with my old Evo. I cannot understand how people are raving how great the battery life is and how much better it is when I don't see any difference. They either got a bad Evo or a great Epic.......

Last edited by daddyd302; September 7th, 2010 at 01:49 AM.

sleipner

I had 0% time without signal, but still had the same terrible battery life. I tried switching airplane mode on & off, but didn't notice a difference. I got Quick Settings from the market and turned off 'mobile data' which dropped the 3G icon from the notification bar.

before I did this - 5 hours straight off the charger, no use, no TWS - 77% battery remaining

after doing this - went to bed with phone at 35%, woke up 8 hours later and it was at 33%

I'm thinking of trying juice defender, I think it can do scheduling of data downtime and allow individual apps automatic use of 3G.

jsanta11

Well before the fix I would be dead by 8hrs of moderate use for me, yesterday I made it to 10hr58mins @ 10% left before I plugged it in , So am happy as hell ... Thanks

60 text
25 emails
1hr Kindle usage
Nexus Mod Live wallpaper pro enable
Screen brightness set to auto
Juice defender set
Couple of calls more then 10mins each
Played angry birds
Uploaded pics to facebook

Last edited by jsanta11; September 7th, 2010 at 10:45 AM.

rmingee

Hmm, I'll try again later, but both of these failed for me (and it told me to try again later )

My TWOS was 50%, so I just did the toggle of airplane mode, hopefully it'll help. I was golfing in an area of low signal yesterday, and definitely noticed my battery draining faster. The Pre had that problem as well until a software fix got pushed.

-- robert

Mac Man

Glad I saw this. Turns out, I was at 51%

gtl408

Done, here's to hoping the update will fix this annoyance and maybe fix the hopping signal indicator, too.

rmingee

8 hours later, and my TWOS has basically been 0 since the toggle, with much less of the battery being used for standby. Hard to say if it's made a big difference in battery life since I've been using it a lot, but I can't see how it couldn't help. Thanks for the tip!

I still cannot update my profile - not sure if I ought to be concerned about that or not. the error it returns is simply "Internal Error".

-- robert

antmon

good to know.... though mine is at 4% so i think it's ok (i hope) for now...

SBT

I don't get what the point in turning on flight mode is though, seeing as how you can't use your phone for texts, emails or calls in this setting.

peaxie

Its primary use is when you're "In Flight." When you're on an airplane they ask you to turn off your cell phones so you don't cause RF interference with their signals. However, if you still want to listen to your music or play games on your phone you just put it into flight mode.

gme109

You place your phone in airplane mode, then take it right back out. Some how or another this fixes your phone from looking for service while in standby. This is only a temporary, you'll need to do it every time you turn your phone on. Hopefully Samsung will permanently fix this battery drain problem.

Othan1

heh. That's actually very good battery life.

Try going off the charger at 5:30AM and you're down to 54% by 7:00AM with very little to no use.

At least with this fix I can go from 5:30AM to 7:30AM and have 83% left after texting several times, 30 minutes of music player, playing angry birds for 15 minutes, downloading about 5MB of files...hey, now that I think about it, this is pretty good. )

forddna

Okay, I toggled airplane mode on and off. And I did the "update prl" and "update profile" thing someone mentioned. Whatever the hell those are. *shrug*

My TWS is 56% right now. I will report back in the morning.



(note, I am just doing this out of my own curiosity on the TWS thing as I have very good battery life)

forddna

Update. I am currently:

9hr 33m straight, signal on

0% without.

redguardian

What I did was use the app "Tasker" to turn on then off "Airplane" mode automatically every three hours. Im curious to see how long the battery will last. I had 12% before.