Is my battery drain normal for standby?

[shodoc]

The actual battery drain I notice in standby with
-Wifi- on
- location services on - on
-screen- auto
- cell signal- 3 bars

Standby after 1 hour, the battery drains about 2-3 percent/hour... does this sound normal?

How much battery drain should be considered to be normal?thx

 

[sreum]

Yeah it can be normal. I've had instances like that.

 

[electricpete]

When you say standby I assume that means screen off? So screen auto shouldn't matter.

With screen off I get 1-2% / hr on my phone fwiw.

It might be interesting to look at with an app like Gsam to see if there are any obvious power suckers lurking

 

[lotus49]

I have never measured mine exactly but this does not sound abnormal to me. 2% an hour means a standby time of more than two days. I have never expected a smartphone to last more than 24 hours and have always charged them overnight. None of my phones has lasted more than about a day and a half even with very light use and the S4 is no exception so this sounds fairly typical to me.

 

[RajCaj]

I've actually noticed a significant increase in my power usage in stand-by mode lately.

In some cases, it's drained 50%-60% overnight.....waking up to a dead phone (and no alarm!)

Not sure if there was a recent update pushed through, but something has changed.

Anyone else experiencing this?

 

[TheBigKahuna]

I've only had one day where my phone drained a "lot" during standbye. Yesterday, it stayed in my pocket for 4 hours while I was doing an observation in an x-ray lab. It's very likely that I hit the button on the side more than once, but that would have only turned the screen on for a few seconds. I assume most of the drain was caused by being in a large building, well shielded from a strong signal. When they fish for a signal in a weak cell, they will drain a battery very quickly. In many years of working in large concrete buildings with poor cell signal, nothing drains a battery faster than a week signal in my opinion.

After I left this office yesterday, I charged on the way home. Phone drained from 99% to 64% in that 4 hours. I charged it to about 80% and used it the rest of the day with no major battery loss.

I think for me, it's safe to assume standing behind a lead lined wall for a majority of my 4 hours in that building, drained my battery.

 

[BigRedGonzo]

I accidentally tested my stand-by drain the other day. I was in a hurry and left the office with my phone on my desk. I was half way home when I realized it, so I just left it at the office overnight. The battery was at 52% at 4:00pm when I last looked at the phone. The next morning at 7:15am, the phone was at 44% when I got to work. That is roughly 15 hours on stand-by with WiFi on and I get a signal strength in the office of around 3 bars. WiFi reception in the office sucks, usually 1 to 2 bars on the WiFi icon. That is very roughly 1/2% per hour.

I only posted this for information. Typically, as stated above, a weak signal can cause excessive battery drain in standby mode. You can also have an app that is frequently hitting the net to "check-in" that can also cause this behavior. In order to do a real test of stand-by life, you could reboot the phone into safe mode and put it to sleep. For something like this, you really need to allow it be in standby for a decent amount of time. I wouldn't want to do this with less than 4 hours of standby. Anyway, I have said nothing of value, just blathered.

 

[itsallgood]

It does sound normal, depending on how much you have apps checking for updates and your cell signal strength. For me, I can use between 1 to 2% battery life in standby mode. You can always check the battery stats in settings to see what and how much apps are draining the battery.