Help Poor battery life after 4.3 update (VZW)

[Colchicine]

After having 2 HTC phones, I haven't been happier with the battery life with a stock battery than I have with the S4.
I am a light to moderate user, and it wasn't unusual for me to go plug it in at night with >50% of the battery remaining with Power Save Mode ON.

After the 4.3 update, I am routinely down at 30% and sometimes down around 15%. Again, with light to moderate use.

I'm surprised to see no other threads on here about this topic. I'm trying to avoid a factory reset. Any ideas?

 

[Goodspike]

Are you sure all your chargers are working? The S4 is much more picky about the charger now. Neither of my car setups worked, so even though plugged in it wasn't charging.

 

[Colchicine]

If I saw anything less than 100% when I unplugged it in the morning, I would be immediately alerted to the root problem.

I think I'm just going to uninstall one particular app I downloaded shortly after the update.

 

[Goodspike]

I was thinking more if you plug your phone in to your car during the trip to work type of thing. My wife was the one that first noticed the charging problem, because she was navigating in the car a lot, but when we saw the low battery the initial thought was something had used the battery up, not that it wasn't charging in the car.

 

[marine one]

I've actually experienced a noticeable improvement in battery life since the 4.3 update on verizon. I am currently sitting at 93% after being unplugged for 9 hours with light use. Since the update I have turned the GPS on [prior to update it was always off unless I specifically turned it on for some reason] and the battery life is still better than before the 4.3 update. Coming from an OG Droid and a Bionic, the battery life on this phone is truly outstanding.

 

[backdoc77]

Have you tried a simple hard boot? Power the s4 off then turn it back on. I had a similar issue a few weeks ago and restarting the phone fixed it.

 

[Colchicine]

Although I'll need another couple of days to be sure, I'm certain the problem was with a caller ID app I had installed. As much as I like the app, the battery drain isn't worth it.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.webascender.callerid&hl=en

 

[manderle]

I saw the same issue with the built in caller ID app. Turned it off and battery life improved some

 

[Colchicine]

Update: I put it off long enough, but I finally did a factory reset to combat my battery life problems after the 4.3 update.

 

[Podivin]

How did it work out for you?

 

[gnosisjunky]

Android comes out of the box with so many ways to customize your experience with your phone. All of which love to drain your battery.

Besides the normal turn everything off that you are not using theory there are even more ways that you can reduce the drain on your battery no matter what version of android you use.

Believe it or not this is my home screen...

Pretty dull right? Yea maybe, but hear me out here.

From this screen I can launch anything I want as fast as I want and at the same time prevent would be snoopers from knowing what the heck to do with this thing as well as drastically improve battery consumption by the screen itself.

The secret? Gesture controls. One swype and I'm in my app drawer. A different swipe I'm in my phone app. Double tap and there's facebook. You can customize these any way you want and it is made possible by an app called Nova launcher.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.launcher

This also allows you to change things that slow your phone down like scroll effects, scroll speed, transition effects and others that do nothing other than look pretty but destroy your overall experience and battery life.

On top of that it also gives you options to speed things up even more while at the same time reducing the overall strain on the processor by disabling un-needed animations and allowing you to set up customized commands for nearly anything you want.

You don't have to take the extreme minimalist approach that I have to see improved battery life with this app. While my battery does last a very very long time, up to two days under normal use (excluding graphic intense gaming) you can at the very least speed up your device and get more time out of your battery than you did before.

Hope this helps.

On a side note.....Widgets are the bane of your battery. They access the internet, they lag your phone by updating all the time, They cause the screen to use more battery than needed, and while it is nice to have these updates at a glance you might be surprised how easy it is to get that info another way and how much you really won't miss it when you don't have to plug your phone in constantly.

Happy customizing!!

 

[Deleted User]

The secret? Gesture controls. One swype and I'm in my app drawer. A different swipe I'm in my phone app. Double tap and there's facebook. You can customize these any way you want and it is made possible by an app called Nova launcher.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoilsw.launcher

Nova is a great $4 spent. Personally I use my double tap setting to open Chrome to Google homepage.

 

[Zurkster]

In part I agree with you on the choice of home screen picture. I noticed a sharp drop in display power consumption when I started using an all black home screen, remember that unlike LCD backlights, AMOLED displays use less power to display darker tones, the most power draining colour is white at a high brightness setting. Using a good battery optimise like FREE Comodo Battery saver (my favourite) or (paid) Juice Defender ultimate, both will ensure you get the best performance from each charge.