Help Terrible Battery Life

[Keel4n]

-Samsung Galaxy S3 4G LTE
-Model # SGH-1747M
-Android version 4.0.4
-Rogers LTE

Unfortunately i cannot post pictures or links yet but:

27% - Discharging
5h 43m 15s

39% - Cell Standby
23% - Screen
18% - Android OS
6% - Android System
4% - Device Idle
4% Chrome
2% Media server
2% FML App
2% Phone
2% Skype

I have had the phone for a couple of weeks. I have Juice defender installed, brightness at 0%. I removed all widget from home screens.

I hold the home button often to end all apps and clear memory every now any then.

Today the phone has sat on my desk and has hardly been used.

I find it a little ridiculous that the battery cannot last a work day it is dead by the time i get home just an 8 hour shift.

Coming from a 9900 blackberry it is frustrating that the phone doesn't last a day when it isn't even being used. If i was using it normal/heavy i would understand the depleted battery life but this is just silly.

I see a lot of people having issues but no real solutions. Even more frustrating is my better half bought the note II and she plays games and stuff all day and will have amazing battery life.

Very disappointed in the battery

 

[Fred G. Vader]

I think you may just have either a defective unit or battery. I just got my S3 last week (coming from the original Galaxy Note) and the battery life on it is awesome! I easily get a full days use out of the battery (I keep my brightness level at 50% if you're wondering).

I also bought a battery charger which came with an additional battery. The battery that came with the charger is kind of wonky though. Its a standard OEM battery but when I pop it into the phone it will immediately drop down to 88% within a 10-15 minute period. It will then sit at 88% for an hour or two and then from there the battery percentage readings are normal. But even the spare battery with all of its crazy percentage readings gives me identical length of life to the battery that came with the phone.

If you can you should take it back and get a new GS3 cause you should definitely be getting better battery life than what you are reporting especially with such low on screen time.

 

[Keel4n]

Yes i think i am going to, hopefully it wont be much hassle. Just FYI the screen time is 1h 14m 32s.

In the time i posted this to now i am at 14% So in 47 minutes, i have lost 13% and i haven't even used it.

 

[Digital Controller]

I agree with Fred, that Cell Standby seems a little high for your device. You might just want to look into getting a new battery, or even Factory Reset the device.

 

[Fred G. Vader]

I was just reading a post in the Galaxy Note forum where one of the guys battery was draining really fast. He narrowed it down to the Photobucket app that was uploading 8GB of photos on a background service. So you might want to ensure that nothing like that is going on.

 

[Keel4n]

I agree with Fred, that Cell Standby seems a little high for your device. You might just want to look into getting a new battery, or even Factory Reset the device.

I was just reading a post in the Galaxy Note forum where one of the guys battery was draining really fast. He narrowed it down to the Photobucket app that was uploading 8GB of photos on a background service. So you might want to ensure that nothing like that is going on.

Hmm i don't really see that i have any apps like that. I think i am going to factory reset my phone then run it for a few days and see how it goes and then slowly add my apps to see which is giving issues. If it is any apps. If all else fails ill call Rogers and get a new one. Thanks guys!

 

[Fred G. Vader]

As stated earlier, up until today I was getting great battery life out of my S3. But just about 30 minutes ago (a little after 11 AM) I noticed that my battery level was already at 69% and I watched it drop to 65% over about a 15 minute span. Normally I'm only at 80% or so by this time of day so I knew something was amiss. Went into Settings --> Battery and sure enough Cell Stand-by was using up more of the battery than the Screen.

I noticed in the status bar the GPS active signal was displaying and I knew that I had turned off my GPS radio once I got to work (using the settings toolbar in the notification window). So I went into Settings --> Location Services and sure enough "Use VZW Services" and "Use Google Services" were both checked. How they got checked is beyond me cause I didn't do it.

Even with all GPS related things turned off the GPS target is still displaying in the status bar (just the GPS inactive target icon though not the active one). Gonna watch it for rest of evening and see if the battery stops draining so quickly with all GPS stuff turned off now.

 

[Fred G. Vader]

I also just found this thread which discusses the same cell stand-by battery drain issue.

http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...alse-cell-standby-report-2-standby-drain.html

 

[Keel4n]

As stated earlier, up until today I was getting great battery life out of my S3. But just about 30 minutes ago (a little after 11 AM) I noticed that my battery level was already at 69% and I watched it drop to 65% over about a 15 minute span. Normally I'm only at 80% or so by this time of day so I knew something was amiss. Went into Settings --> Battery and sure enough Cell Stand-by was using up more of the battery than the Screen.

I noticed in the status bar the GPS active signal was displaying and I knew that I had turned off my GPS radio once I got to work (using the settings toolbar in the notification window). So I went into Settings --> Location Services and sure enough "Use VZW Services" and "Use Google Services" were both checked. How they got checked is beyond me cause I didn't do it.

Even with all GPS related things turned off the GPS target is still displaying in the status bar (just the GPS inactive target icon though not the active one). Gonna watch it for rest of evening and see if the battery stops draining so quickly with all GPS stuff turned off now.

So after my factory reset i did a day with no apps what so ever and had excellent battery life (30% for 17 hours). Today i still have it stock standard but it has been worse today though better than before i reset my phone. 50% 7 hr 45 mins. But again cell standby 45%, screen 17%, android os 16% etc etc. I understand by cell phone isn't doing anything so this should be the highest consumption, but really my phone isn't doing anything and has ate 50% of my battery life. Does not seem very good at all to me.

I also just found this thread which discusses the same cell stand-by battery drain issue.

http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...alse-cell-standby-report-2-standby-drain.html

Even though it is a false reading i don't think it is false that you battery is low? If this was fixed would my battery be e.g. 70% rather than 30%? Or is my battery still draining but the false reading would just be a less %?

 

[Fred G. Vader]

look at post #70 by John P on that thread, basically he disabled a bunch of the pre-installed Samsung Apps and this fixed the problem for him. Gonna try it myself and see if it helps.

 

[Keel4n]

look at post #70 by John P on that thread, basically he disabled a bunch of the pre-installed Samsung Apps and this fixed the problem for him. Gonna try it myself and see if it helps.

Ye I saw that. I have disabled them. I don't want to speak to soon but so far it seems to be better. I will report back after the next full day.

Thanks for your help

 

[Fred G. Vader]

I disabled all the Samsung apps and it seems to be working for me so far.

 

[Lloyd Cardwell]

Has anybody disabled the Google apps? Play TV, Books, etc? I just did that (Along with the weather apps and Yahoo! Finance etc) so I hoping there will not be horrible repercussions.

In general, there seems to be a lot of stuff on there that I'd never use, or cannot even identify.

 

[outerub]

Basically, disabling all automatic update and background functions but the ones that really matter to you is what you need to do .... Samsung bloatware, Facebook, Google Locations, animations, bright coloured backgrounds.... it ALL sucks up juice!

I've tweeked my GS3 to suit my habits and I'm getting 3+ days out of my Hyperion 4200 battery.

 

[chubbler108]

I just got a new Galaxy S3 on Rogers last week and experienced this problem. I found the solution to the problem!

If anyone is using the Rogers Visual Voicemail app, DISABLE IT!

When I got the phone I was using this app, and my phone would be dead in a matter of hours because the app syncs all day. Once I disabled it, I can now get roughly 4 hours of use (without playing games). I am averaging 3 hours and 50 minutes of screen time with under 10 minutes of voice calls, or around 2 hours of screen time with 2 hours of voice calls.

Be careful that once you disable the app it doesn't reactivate automatically, because for me it did. I found two solutions to this problem:

• Do a factory reset of your phone, do not update the visual voicemail app. It will not let you use visual voicemail unless you update the app, and therefore the app will not run (this is what I did).
• Call Rogers and tell them you do not want the visual voicemail service anymore.

One other thing I noticed if you disable the app, is that anytime I turned on GPS it would activate visual voicemail. I found it was best if I just didn't have the most updated version.

Hope this helps!

 

[Keel4n]

So though I saw minor improvements after disabling certain apps. Nothing has compared to the jelly bean update I got pushed to me the other day by rogers. Battery life is now excellent and the cell standby issue is a thing of the past.

 

[Zero216]

I'm just about ready to go back to an iPhone. My Galaxy S3, while I love it, is completely unusable. I've sent 3 texts today, the rest of the time my phone is on standby, and in 3 hours I'm at 60% battery (from 100%). In a few hours, it'll be under 20%. When I have work and I'm actually using my phone, I have to charge it about 3x per day. I've done a factory reset, and only have a couple of apps installed (FaceBook, Twitter, and a couple others). I have everything turned off, power saving on, screen brightness almost 0, and no notifications from anything.

Can someone please help me before I just go back to Apple?

 

[Fred G. Vader]

@Zero216 -- have you tried disabling all of the samsung apps? That was the trick for me. Go into Settings --> Application Manager --> Tap on the All tab. And then find all of the apps that start with Samsung and disable them.

On a separate note Samsung has acknowledged the problem of the battery losing life during standby and have promised a fix with the Jelly Bean update (which is already out for all carriers except Verizon - and hopefully it should hit Verizon in the next couple of weeks). Keel4n has stated that he has seen significant battery life improvement with his Jelly Bean update. Good luck!

 

[Keel4n]

I'm just about ready to go back to an iPhone. My Galaxy S3, while I love it, is completely unusable. I've sent 3 texts today, the rest of the time my phone is on standby, and in 3 hours I'm at 60% battery (from 100%). In a few hours, it'll be under 20%. When I have work and I'm actually using my phone, I have to charge it about 3x per day. I've done a factory reset, and only have a couple of apps installed (FaceBook, Twitter, and a couple others). I have everything turned off, power saving on, screen brightness almost 0, and no notifications from anything.

Can someone please help me before I just go back to Apple?

@Zero216 -- have you tried disabling all of the samsung apps? That was the trick for me. Go into Settings --> Application Manager --> Tap on the All tab. And then find all of the apps that start with Samsung and disable them.

On a separate note Samsung has acknowledged the problem of the battery losing life during standby and have promised a fix with the Jelly Bean update (which is already out for all carriers except Verizon - and hopefully it should hit Verizon in the next couple of weeks). Keel4n has stated that he has seen significant battery life improvement with his Jelly Bean update. Good luck!

Yes and if you haven't got the Jelly Bean update yet, try Samsung Kies. The update was out but wouldn't connect to the server over wifi so Samsung kies will download it and install it.

 

[Zero216]

@Zero216 -- have you tried disabling all of the samsung apps? That was the trick for me. Go into Settings --> Application Manager --> Tap on the All tab. And then find all of the apps that start with Samsung and disable them.

On a separate note Samsung has acknowledged the problem of the battery losing life during standby and have promised a fix with the Jelly Bean update (which is already out for all carriers except Verizon - and hopefully it should hit Verizon in the next couple of weeks). Keel4n has stated that he has seen significant battery life improvement with his Jelly Bean update. Good luck!

Thanks for the advice; I'll try it out and let you know if it works!


Also when I try to update it says "Access to the software update service is provided to users in the order in which they request it. Try later" - so I guess I have to wait?

 

[Zero216]

OK I disabled the Samsung apps. 6 hours of usage, 20% battery left. My phone has been on standby for most of the time, and when it's not I've been texting only.

 

[fourgee]

Coming from the power hungry EVO my opinion may be a bit biased but I am AMAZED by the battery life in my new S3.
I’m running live wallpaper (because I like it!) and played with my new S3 all day (ok, about 4-5 hours) surfing the net, installing all my favorite apps and the NEXT DAY I still had 23% on my battery.
I have the "Auto Brightness" shut off & have my screen cranked up to full. I’m also in a fairly poor coverage area so my S3’s transmitter is working overtime to keep connected.
Again, I may just be conditioned to the lousy battery life of the EVO but… DAMN!!

 

[Zero216]

OK I got the new JellyBean update, and it looks like it may have fixed the issue. 5 hours, and 20% battery used. Granted this is still with the screen brightness at 0 and FaceBook notifications off. My cell standby went from about 35% to 6% of battery usage, so there it is. Oddly enough though my gallery battery usage went from less than 5% to about 28%, and I haven't been taking pictures or anything. Anyways, still better than before with this update!

 

[EarlyMon]

You might try GSAM Battery Monitor at this point to see if anything is keeping your phone alive (not sleeping when screen off). It's free and pretty good.

 

[nycpigeon]

-Samsung Galaxy S3 4G LTE
-Model # SGH-1747M
-Android version 4.0.4
-Rogers LTE

Unfortunately i cannot post pictures or links yet but:

27% - Discharging
5h 43m 15s

39% - Cell Standby
23% - Screen
18% - Android OS
6% - Android System
4% - Device Idle
4% Chrome
2% Media server
2% FML App
2% Phone
2% Skype

I have had the phone for a couple of weeks. I have Juice defender installed, brightness at 0%. I removed all widget from home screens.

I hold the home button often to end all apps and clear memory every now any then.

Today the phone has sat on my desk and has hardly been used.

I find it a little ridiculous that the battery cannot last a work day it is dead by the time i get home just an 8 hour shift.

Coming from a 9900 blackberry it is frustrating that the phone doesn't last a day when it isn't even being used. If i was using it normal/heavy i would understand the depleted battery life but this is just silly.

I see a lot of people having issues but no real solutions. Even more frustrating is my better half bought the note II and she plays games and stuff all day and will have amazing battery life.

Very disappointed in the battery

do you have a jellybean update yet?
i had similar issues so i rooted my phone to a much "lighter" version.
when jellybean came out (AT&T) recently, i unrooted to give it a shot and my battery life improved by almost 100%...
i can go through 13 hours and still have 30/40 percent left...
you should check to see if jellybean is available and if it is, update it (you won't lose any apps or settings).
after the update, give it a day or two and if the battery life still hasn't improved, you can send it in for warranty as a defective item. whether you have insurance with your carrier or not, samsung has a 1 year warranty for any purchases.