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I think I solved the ICS fast battery drain... simple solution

Mike P

Lurker
Aug 12, 2010
7
11
I have a Galaxy Note and updated to ICS about a month ago....

Like many of you I also experienced fast battery drain, around 10% or more per hour, without usage. even more when I use it. 5 hours with moderate usage.

I am on unlimited data plan so 4G is always on.

I also tried fully charging the phone before going to bed at 11pm, woke up at 6am and battery already at 20+%, that's when I was sleeping, no use at all.

For a month, I have been charging my phone 2x a day!
I was very frustrated and wanted to go back to GB.

I was researching for weeks for the solution (also, checking for ICS updates almost everyday, waiting to see if Android had found a solution already), no one seemed to have a concrete solution, some suggest resetting, formatting etc.
These were so complicated for me I didn't even dream of doing them.

3 days ago, I accidentally switched off my 4G connection.
I didn't realize that the connection was off..
I was happy to see my battery charge was still at 98% after an hour, after 2 hours, light usage 95%.

"What's happening?"

Then I saw that my 4G was off.

Now, I was thinking 4G connection was the culprit... but I wanted to explore more and see if there was an app that could be causing this....

I checked my apps that used data and nothing was on, then I checked my sync settings, This is where I found out that I had so many accounts that had SYNC ON! Twitter, facebook, gmail, samsung e-mail etc.

So, I tried an experiment.... I stopped SYNCING everything.

It worked!

For one day, maybe 12hrs. (light usage with 4G connection on, just light usage, I checked my gmail by using the refresh button) 75% left on the battery!!! Wow!!

Then I thought "come on...gmail and android? Same owner/company right? I'm going to try to turn ON the GMAIL SYNC, I'm sure there won't be a problem"

I was right!!!

Now on my second day with 4G connection ON, Sync Gmail ON, medium usage, maybe 20-30min of phone calls, 30 or more texts, email and around 10 minutes of internet surfing.
9 hours unplugged and battery only at 70%!!!

I am very happy!

Oh, last night, I think only about 8-10% of battery was used (6 or 7 hours of sleep only 8-10% used....) nice!

For those who have not tried it yet... please try it... I hope it also works for you.

I just wanted to share my experience and hopefully help others that are, i'm sure, also already so frustrated with ICS.

I apologize for the long post.

Cheers!
 
SOLVED!

Okay... similar initial poor battery experience after getting my Galaxy S3. Background, I am in Canada using Telus LTE service. After I get the phone set up, the battery was draining about 8% per hour with very minimal use or just on standby during the day. I was losing close to 30% over night with the phone not doing anything at all. That was mind boggling so I searched high and wide for a solution.

The solution for cell standby percentage calculation only resolves the reporting of the usage NOT the draining of the battery. It drains like crazy without any serious usage at all. I would be lucky to get 4 to 5 hours of normal use.

I checked the LTE battery consumption suspect, and it does help the battery greatly to turn it off, but I wanted LTE. What's the point with turning it off. That was one of the main reason to go with this phone on Telus in Canada.

Anyway, I also tried some power saving technique WITHOUT turning on power savings. Again, I am thinking why should I cripple my phone because of a poor battery. I did, however, turned off touch sounds, S voice wake on command, and motion detection. It barely made a dent in the battery life with LTE back on.

Finally, stumbled on this thread. Thanks to Mike, I simply turned off sync accounts, and only turned back on my gmail account and my exchange work mail account. I turned off facebook, whatsapp, samsung canada account, and other email accounts that I can manually fetch when I want to as they are not my main emails and seldom receive messages.

Bingo! Battery life now only drops 5% overnight. During the day standby only loses 1% to 2% with my LTE still on the whole time. I am on 10 hours, 7m unplugged with 73% battery life remaining. Wow!!!!

Thanks again, Mike. I am shocked the syncing on the Galaxy S3 is so taxing on the battery. Now, I know.

Good luck to others.
 
Upvote 0
I get the impression that people here are charging their phones before going to bed? Wouldn't it be more sensible to charge while you're asleep so you have a full charge in the morning?

I only switch mobile data on when I need it - I have a widget on my default home screen to switch it on and off. Same for wifi, bluetooth, gps, etc. Syncing restarts as soon as the data is re-enabled. I can run between charges easily for 2-3 days with my typical usage.

Ian
 
Upvote 0
Mike, thanks from Sydney, you're a legend, I will give that a try

I just ordered a 5000 thingy battery on ebay today, as I got about 3 hrs on a 100% down to 0% on a HK ebay spare battery, and was about to blow away and do a clean install

Will see how this goes
ifb-online, what widget do you use for mobile data turning on/off?

Do you guys find the power management tools work ok? I use Go Power Master, like the settings options but didn't make much difference in the past - hopefully the above tips will change that though
 
Upvote 0
Dumb question #843: How are you turning sync on or off for individual accounts or components?

When I go into Settings > Accounts and Sync, there is only one overall setting at the top for ALL accounts. I can one-time manually sync individual accounts or items within accounts, but I cannot see where to turn sync on for something but not others.

What am I missing?
 
Upvote 0
Dumb question #843: How are you turning sync on or off for individual accounts or components?

When I go into Settings > Accounts and Sync, there is only one overall setting at the top for ALL accounts. I can one-time manually sync individual accounts or items within accounts, but I cannot see where to turn sync on for something but not others.

What am I missing?

I don't. I block data usage by switching off 3G/mobile data and wifi unless I need it. When I switch mobile date or wifi back on everything then catches up on synchronisations.

Ian
 
Upvote 0
I'm having the same actual battery drain problem in Canada on Telus, although it occurs once in a while and randomly fixes itself. But it is not due to syncing:

The battery would drain from full to ~30% in 8 hours overnight without use and the phone itself is very warm in the morning. Checking the battery usage detail, it's pretty much a straight line drop from when I disconnect from the charger. The problem seems to be that there is no mobile network signal (entire horizontal bar is black, as opposed to green/pukey green).
All battery saving options are applied with syncing, BT and wifi off, the only thing on is LTE. I live in an area with excellent reception so that is not the issue. Making a phone call actually improves the battery, which makes sense as signal is acquired by the phone. I've found that turning on and off airplane mode might have something to do with this.

Has anyone else experienced this? Droid Prize?

SOLVED!

Okay... similar initial poor battery experience after getting my Galaxy S3. Background, I am in Canada using Telus LTE service. After I get the phone set up, the battery was draining about 8% per hour with very minimal use or just on standby during the day. I was losing close to 30% over night with the phone not doing anything at all. That was mind boggling so I searched high and wide for a solution.

The solution for cell standby percentage calculation only resolves the reporting of the usage NOT the draining of the battery. It drains like crazy without any serious usage at all. I would be lucky to get 4 to 5 hours of normal use.

I checked the LTE battery consumption suspect, and it does help the battery greatly to turn it off, but I wanted LTE. What's the point with turning it off. That was one of the main reason to go with this phone on Telus in Canada.

Anyway, I also tried some power saving technique WITHOUT turning on power savings. Again, I am thinking why should I cripple my phone because of a poor battery. I did, however, turned off touch sounds, S voice wake on command, and motion detection. It barely made a dent in the battery life with LTE back on.

Finally, stumbled on this thread. Thanks to Mike, I simply turned off sync accounts, and only turned back on my gmail account and my exchange work mail account. I turned off facebook, whatsapp, samsung canada account, and other email accounts that I can manually fetch when I want to as they are not my main emails and seldom receive messages.

Bingo! Battery life now only drops 5% overnight. During the day standby only loses 1% to 2% with my LTE still on the whole time. I am on 10 hours, 7m unplugged with 73% battery life remaining. Wow!!!!

Thanks again, Mike. I am shocked the syncing on the Galaxy S3 is so taxing on the battery. Now, I know.

Good luck to others.
 
Upvote 0
I'm experiencing the same problem...or maybe multiple problems. Some blogs/forums are talking about a cell standby issue that is simply reporting high cell standby battery usage. I am experiencing this issue.

In addition to the cell standby issue, my phone, when fully charged, only lasts 8-10 hours on standby. For a phone that's supposed to have 300 hrs standby, that's pretty poor.

Is this a cell reception issue, a OS/firmware issue, or an app issue? I've only had my phone for 6 days. I love it, but I'm considering taking it back because of the battery issues.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated. I just started using Juice Defender, but I hate the thought of it. When you pay good money for a phone like this, you should have to use apps to fix drainage issues.
 
Upvote 0
I get the impression that people here are charging their phones before going to bed? Wouldn't it be more sensible to charge while you're asleep so you have a full charge in the morning?

I only switch mobile data on when I need it - I have a widget on my default home screen to switch it on and off. Same for wifi, bluetooth, gps, etc. Syncing restarts as soon as the data is re-enabled. I can run between charges easily for 2-3 days with my typical usage.

Ian


I fully agree but i have to charge every night. How high is your activity to recharge only every 2-3 days?
 
Upvote 0
Hi Baz can you tell me what this does e.g. Will it affect normal operation of the phone?

Do NOT do it, otherwise you end up with a Nokia device! Setting [Background process limit] to [No background] makes your GN reloads a process/service every time you switch to it from another process/service which is a performance disaster. Means, if you open Gmail the OS will shut down the home screen service. When you get back to home screen, the OS will reload it again, this takes times and processing resources and impacts the performance very badly.
 
Upvote 0
ok guys just a quickie from me

settings/Developer options/Background process limit/set to No background processes.

this method has increased my battery life imensely (stills runs down fast when on wifi) but normal away from home wifi network use has increased battery life :)

regards

Baz

Wow! I did as Baz suggested above, and my phone now has 55% battery left after a full day's use. Previously I would be down to 25% (ish) at that stage of the day. Thank you Baz.;)
 
Upvote 0
i was also experiencing fast battery drain issues, i tried a bunch of advice from a number of forums and it worked for me, using my phone regularly i now get about 2 days from my battery, i was down to less than 24 hours. First i took the battery out of the phone for a couple of minutes, and then re-installed it, at first it didn't seem to do anything but over the past 10 days my battery life has totally improved and it charges faster. Second i installed Juice Defender, so that when im on the cell network it uses less battery while on cell stand-by, all this has worked for me
 
Upvote 0
my battery problems are 100% caused by using the crappy mail app with an exchange server as my work phone. Its the worst piece of junk ever for corporate email. I recently went to vegas and turned my phone to flight mode, it lasted for 6 days, during this time I watched at least 5-6 hours of movies, I recorded around 30 minutes of video, plus internet surfing over wifi for a few hours.

I have had a S2 and a note and this email issue is present on both phones, luckily the note has a bigger battery to get me through the day.
 
Upvote 0

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