Saving Battery Life on Galaxy Note 3

[wendy5001]

Here are the three most important tips I have for good battery on the GN3:

Reboot daily, and do it when the phone is fully charged AND STILL ON THE CHARGER! Let it sit on the charger for a good five minutes so it goes through the whole boot process without taking any battery usage. Rebooting cleans out caches, closes down programs, apps and widgets that might be running that you don't know about.

Screen brightness - find the best (lowest) screen brightness you can live with and set that as your fixed screen brightness. Using Auto-brightness is NOT a good battery saver and can be annoying as it changes your screen brightness as it feels like it with often annoying results. I use a free app called Brightness Level Disc that comes with a free widget that I put on my front screen. I run my screen at around 49% and get great battery results with that. If I need brighter or dimmer depending on ambient light, the disc has a neat four button switch to select brighter or dimmer with the press of a button on the front screen (or wherever you want it).

Last, but not least, your GN3 came with a neat little widget called Active Apps Manager. I also put this right on the front screen. It's a little number inside a circle. The number is for how many apps are currently running in your phone's memory. The circle around the number turns colors from green to orange to red. If it's red then at least one of your running apps is using the cpu and therefore battery. If it's green then the apps are idle and not using much battery. You can press the button and it will show you what apps are open and what percentage of cpu is being used.

This little widget is invaluable in telling you which apps are notorious for using the cpu (and battery) even though you are not actively using them. It helps you understand which apps you need to kill off each time you use them. For instance I have found that almost all my news apps that have notifications activated will continued to run and eat battery. Also, my chess app, Chess.com. So now I just know to kill them off after I'm done using them.

I do not turn off any of the other things suggested at the beginning of this thread. I leave on wifi, bluetooth, gps, 4G, syncing - you name it. I do not use live wallpapers as they do eat battery and I find them silly anyway!

Try these three things and you will be surprised how much better your batter life will be. If you do all three and your battery is still eating then you likely have a bad battery. I use my phone ALL day, texting, skype, phone calls, stream music for hours, chess moves, facebook, and I still have usually 20%, give or take 10%, at the end of each full day.

Had no clue about the app widget lol thanks! I also downloaded the screen brightness app as I've been doing it manually, auto drives me insane. Thanks for this!!!!!

 

[John Jason]

My Note 3 had terrific battery life until the Kit Kat update. Afterwards it was awful, although I improved it dramatically by disabling Lookout. And now it is back to terrific - this afternoon after coming home I found that my battery had not been on a charger for four days, 12+ hours, and it was down to only 39%. I could have gone a couple more days without bothering to charge it. Admittedly, I'm a light user, but I'm pretty impressed with the battery life in the Note 3.

 

[OneZeoN]

My Note 3 had terrific battery life until the Kit Kat update. Afterwards it was awful, although I improved it dramatically by disabling Lookout. And now it is back to terrific - this afternoon after coming home I found that my battery had not been on a charger for four days, 12+ hours, and it was down to only 39%. I could have gone a couple more days without bothering to charge it. Admittedly, I'm a light user, but I'm pretty impressed with the battery life in the Note 3.

How do you disable Lookout??

Edit - I can't even see lookout on my application management screen....

 

[Roymus]

People often suggest removing live wallpapers to save your battery, but personally I love them...they're one of the many things that differentiate Android phones from iPhones. As far as I know they only use your battery if you're sitting there staring at your wallpaper for many minutes at a time...who does that?

I honestly don't see the sense in paying for a premium phone like the GN3 and then disabling 90% of the functionality that makes it a premium phone...but maybe that's just me. Like most people on here, I usually can get through a day of moderate to heavy use without recharging, and in those cases where I do go overboard I have chargers in the car and at work, plus I have spare batteries in case of emergencies (another Samsung/Android benefit).

 

[TomAGibb]

Like I've said before in several other threads, if you are concerned about battery life and your usage model, then invest in an 'Extended' battery like the ZeroLemon 10000 MAh battery and get rid of the worry. There are several others, I just happen to have and use the ZL and I'm extremely happy with the 2 days that I can get with moderate usage and only be at about 50%.

 

[John Jason]

How do you disable Lookout??
Edit - I can't even see lookout on my application management screen....

Go into the Play Store and search for Lookout. When it comes up it will have a Disable option.