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Help Battery issues. Help!

Talal5897

Member
Jan 21, 2013
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Hey, guys. My S4 battery seems to be draining surprisingly fast. I've looked at settings> more> battery, and one time, I saw Dead Trigger hogging 24% and Asphalt 7 using 15% of my battery even though I stopped playing them hours ago. Is this is normal? And could this be a reason for the rapid drain? Whenever i check, i find a few applications using battery that i stopped using a long time ago. And is there any way to stop this? As in, stop the application after you finish using it, so that it doesn't run in the background. Any other advice to save battery life would be Very, very appreciated! Thanks, people! :D
 
I know about that, the Task Manager. I do that regularly. End all my running applications, clear the RAM memory. I do that obsessively, in fact. Still no dice. It barely lasts me a full day of usage. It was 91% when i left home at 10AM. 8 hours later, it was 2%, and I had to keep it on Flight mode for a while too. I listened to about 45 minutes of music, played a few games, WhatsApp, and that's it. That all i did today, and it drained this much.
 
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I've looked at settings> more> battery, and one time, I saw Dead Trigger hogging 24% and Asphalt 7 using 15% of my battery even though I stopped playing them hours ago. Is this is normal?

That will just show you how much of the battery each program/item used. It doesn't mean that the program is still running.

So, in this case Dead Trigger had used 24% of your battery. Which is a lot. But games do use a lot of battery. How much is too much? I don't know.

Has your battery always been quick to discharge since day 1 or is it only after you started installing and using a lot of games/apps?

You could have a weak battery...the battery that came with my phone was terrible...when I got a replacement it was like a new phone and now I have great battery life.

This is a post I made in another thread about battery life:

When I first got my GS4 my battery life was terrible and charging took forever. I took it back to the Sprint store where I bought it and they have a battery load tester to test batteries. They tested my battery, found it was bad and opened a brand new GS4 box and gave me the battery out of that box. No problems since and I have actually been impressed with the battery life compared to previous smart phones.

Take it back to where you bought it from and see if they can help you out.
 
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It charges fairly well, I do not know average charging times so I cannot compare. But It drains like hell. What is your average stand by time?
And you actually got your battery replaced? That's nice. Over here, in India, it's a huge achievement getting something replaced, haha. What did you tell the retailers when you wanted it replaced?
 
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And you actually got your battery replaced? That's nice. Over here, in India, it's a huge achievement getting something replaced, haha. What did you tell the retailers when you wanted it replaced?

I just told them it was a bad battery. They load tested the battery, saw it was bad. They opened a brand new GS4 box and gave the battery out of it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...it pays to buy your phones locally instead of mail order just for the customer service. You pay a little more...but if customer service is important to you, establish a rapport with a local store and they will tend to help you out.
 
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I know about that, the Task Manager. I do that regularly. End all my running applications...
You shouldn't do this, it will make matters worse.

Your phone will use more power restarting applications you have closed than you will ever save by killing them. It's a long time since this has been a good idea and task killers have bitten the dust for this reason. This topic has been discussed at great length on xda-developers if you're interested in the pointy-headed detail.

It probably won't make a lot of difference but leaving Android to make its own decisions about which apps to keep in memory will save you some battery life.
 
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I know about that, the Task Manager. I do that regularly. End all my running applications...
You shouldn't do this, it will make matters worse.

Your phone will use more power restarting applications you have closed than you will ever save by killing them. It's a long time since this has been a good idea and task killers have bitten the dust for this reason.
Is this always always always true?

I ask because I had a theory that stupid Candy Crush Saga was sucking my battery dry, as I've seen a vast change in battery draining behavior over the past week, which coincided with my use of said app.

I googled the theory, and discovered this Verizon Support page, which lists some apps that suck the life out of your battery. It includes Candy Crush Saga and, as it happens, Asphalt 7, which was named by the OP as a possible culprit as well. Verizon says that both of these apps, when left running, will "keep the device from going into sleep mode" and that, if you leave the device untouched with the app running, the battery will drain 2.6 (Candy Crush) or 2.7 (Asphalt 7) times faster than normal. VZW recommends closing the game when done playing.

I also read -- although I can't recall where -- something strongly suggesting that developers should stop releasing apps that do this, and that the public won't stand for what is basically a flaw in their coding. Which I interpreted to mean: OK, yes, generally you shouldn't use a task manager because Android is designed to properly allocate resources among running apps, but sometimes you should close stuff yourself when the people making your apps did not design them to run properly in an Android environment.

FWIW, I started closing out Candy Crush via Task Manager -- it's only been a day, but my battery life appears to have returned to normal.
 
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"always always always?" - I'm going to go with 'no'. I think it's true 95% of the time.
Especially with those apps that just keep starting when you kill them, let them be 'cause you're wasting your time (and battery) re-killing them however many times per day.
Apps that you KNOW you've used, and that you're done with, and that you know don't automatically restart - go ahead and kill those, it may help, it can't do harm. :)
 
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I just told them it was a bad battery. They load tested the battery, saw it was bad. They opened a brand new GS4 box and gave the battery out of it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...it pays to buy your phones locally instead of mail order just for the customer service. You pay a little more...but if customer service is important to you, establish a rapport with a local store and they will tend to help you out.

What do you mean by load testing?
 
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You shouldn't do this, it will make matters worse.

Your phone will use more power restarting applications you have closed than you will ever save by killing them. It's a long time since this has been a good idea and task killers have bitten the dust for this reason. This topic has been discussed at great length on xda-developers if you're interested in the pointy-headed detail.

It probably won't make a lot of difference but leaving Android to make its own decisions about which apps to keep in memory will save you some battery life.

Hmm, Thanks a lot, man. So should I try and get my battery replaced then?
 
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I'm getting well over a day, with what I would consider moderate use for me. My SII Skyrocket under similar conditions, would be well-below 30% by early evening.

With the S4, I'm 79%, after 12 hrs unplugged.

With moderate usage, after 12 hours, I'll be below 20%.
And I'm just confirming, What do you classify as "Moderate usage"?
 
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What do you mean by load testing?

Load testing is basically a fancy battery tester. It puts a load on the battery and measures voltage and/or conductance to determine if the battery is able to match its rating. There is a device you put the battery into and it tests the battery and tells you if the battery is good or bad. They make one specifically for these small phone batteries.
 
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Load testing is basically a fancy battery tester. It puts a load on the battery and measures voltage and/or conductance to determine if the battery is able to match its rating. There is a device you put the battery into and it tests the battery and tells you if the battery is good or bad. They make one specifically for these small phone batteries.

Ah, I see. Thanks very much. Are the devices used to test the battery common to retailers worldwide? If so, I'll ask my retailer to test mine.
 
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Regarding the battery life, I find mine seems significantly affected by leaving location services on. OTOH, there are multiple apps that need location services running in order to function properly. So I enable location services briefly until a particular app is satisfied then turn it off.

Question: what is the difference between holding the home button down and bringing up the list of running apps... and swiping them closed vs using the Active Apps manager and closing running apps (which also allows the option to clear RAM too)?

I know that Android is supposed to do a great job managing memory, but on my old S720C (Galaxy Proclaim) running 2.3.6, I used to see occasional lags of 10 seconds or so until/unless I cleared RAM/running apps.
 
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Is this always always always true?
Almost always but not "always always always" :).

In general it won't help to use a task killer for the vast majority of apps but it is possible for badly coded apps to suck up a lot of juice even after you have stopped using it. It is rare though but Candy Crush Saga (with which I am not familiar) may be such an app.
 
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Hmm, Thanks a lot, man. So should I try and get my battery replaced then?
It's worth a go but we would probably need a bit more information as to how you are using your phone and what's turned on to be able to make a proper assessment.

The fact is that modern smartphones do use a lot of power. I always carry a spare charged battery with me because my S4, like my S2 before it, will not last a full day of heavy use. If I spend a lot of time on the train (as I frequently do), 4 or 5 hours of constant use will always result in my having to swap batteries before the end of the day.

The fact that it's possible to swap batteries is one of the big selling points of the S4 in my view. I cannot do that with my iPhone 5.
 
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It's worth a go but we would probably need a bit more information as to how you are using your phone and what's turned on to be able to make a proper assessment.

The fact is that modern smartphones do use a lot of power. I always carry a spare charged battery with me because my S4, like my S2 before it, will not last a full day of heavy use. If I spend a lot of time on the train (as I frequently do), 4 or 5 hours of constant use will always result in my having to swap batteries before the end of the day.

The fact that it's possible to swap batteries is one of the big selling points of the S4 in my view. I cannot do that with my iPhone 5.

What information would you require, then?
Today, I listened to 15 minutes of music, which resulted in a 4% drain. That doesn't seem normal. Hold up. Let me attach some screenshots.
 
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