My trusted i9305 has done me proud over the past couple of years but over the course of the past year I've noticed a drop off in the battery life. My post comes in 3 parts, but if you think it's better I could break it up and post separately?
#1. Poor battery life.
I'm running the German 4.3 Stock ROM (I9305XXUEMK1) with the factory bootloader and the phone's rooted. Because I flashed the 4.3 ROM I can no longer use the OTA update option and in general I've been happy with keeping things super stable.
I'm using Nobloat to get rid of the bloatware, Allinonetoolbox to keep the number of apps that start on boot to a minimum and Greenify to keep the number of apps ticking over in the background to a minimum.
I have the stock battery, 4 Anker replacements and a cheap Samsung copy and swap between the batteries, charging using an Anker external wall charger from this pack Anker Batteries/charger
I've done a factory reset but that made no noticeable difference. When I check my battery stats there are no rogue apps draining the battery, its the screen that is always the most power hungry. I've run Wakelock detector and there seems nothing untoward there either.
I guess I could look at flashing the ROM again, but if I were to do this, does anyone have a suggestion of an alternative factory ROM? I'm not too worried about upgrading to Kitkat as I read lots about issues with battery life and with otg and sd cards, but I guess by now the latter issues should be resolved.
#2. Check battery capacity
I've been wanting to check the actually capacity of my remaining S3 batteries but the only thing I can find that seems suitable is Nova Battery Tester, but that's no longer on the play store and the only links I can find come from websites that I don't like the look of - does anyone know where I could get the APK from or something similar that I could use. I know the batteries that I have will have a lower capacity now, but I'm wondering how low.
#3. Buying replacement batteries in the UK
I had 4 batteries die on me whilst traveling India for 5 months. They all had the tell-tale bulge so were disposed of. I don't know if it was an issue with the wall charger, the rather unstable power over there or the heat, or a combination of all 3! But now I'm down to just one Anker and one Samsung battery so if I'm to continue with my S3 I'd like to pick up another one or two replacements. I'd happily buy a genuine Samsung one if the price was right but I'm put off by all the Chinese copies out there. The only other option I've found are the Anker ones - I can't find Mugen batteries over here.
If I were to switch between the old batteries and a new one, would I benefit from from deleting the battery stats and sticking with the new one or will the phone be fine switching between them?
Okay, thanks for ploughing through that guys. Any help would be greatly received
#1. Poor battery life.
I'm running the German 4.3 Stock ROM (I9305XXUEMK1) with the factory bootloader and the phone's rooted. Because I flashed the 4.3 ROM I can no longer use the OTA update option and in general I've been happy with keeping things super stable.
I'm using Nobloat to get rid of the bloatware, Allinonetoolbox to keep the number of apps that start on boot to a minimum and Greenify to keep the number of apps ticking over in the background to a minimum.
I have the stock battery, 4 Anker replacements and a cheap Samsung copy and swap between the batteries, charging using an Anker external wall charger from this pack Anker Batteries/charger
I've done a factory reset but that made no noticeable difference. When I check my battery stats there are no rogue apps draining the battery, its the screen that is always the most power hungry. I've run Wakelock detector and there seems nothing untoward there either.
I guess I could look at flashing the ROM again, but if I were to do this, does anyone have a suggestion of an alternative factory ROM? I'm not too worried about upgrading to Kitkat as I read lots about issues with battery life and with otg and sd cards, but I guess by now the latter issues should be resolved.
#2. Check battery capacity
I've been wanting to check the actually capacity of my remaining S3 batteries but the only thing I can find that seems suitable is Nova Battery Tester, but that's no longer on the play store and the only links I can find come from websites that I don't like the look of - does anyone know where I could get the APK from or something similar that I could use. I know the batteries that I have will have a lower capacity now, but I'm wondering how low.
#3. Buying replacement batteries in the UK
I had 4 batteries die on me whilst traveling India for 5 months. They all had the tell-tale bulge so were disposed of. I don't know if it was an issue with the wall charger, the rather unstable power over there or the heat, or a combination of all 3! But now I'm down to just one Anker and one Samsung battery so if I'm to continue with my S3 I'd like to pick up another one or two replacements. I'd happily buy a genuine Samsung one if the price was right but I'm put off by all the Chinese copies out there. The only other option I've found are the Anker ones - I can't find Mugen batteries over here.
If I were to switch between the old batteries and a new one, would I benefit from from deleting the battery stats and sticking with the new one or will the phone be fine switching between them?
Okay, thanks for ploughing through that guys. Any help would be greatly received
