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Help Battery Drain - Screen causing over 60% drain

datism

Lurker
Aug 13, 2012
4
0
Hey guys,

I recently purchased a Samsung galaxy s4 on Bell Mobility in canada. I'm in power saving mode, my screen brightness is about 40% and I've had the phone off charge for 6h5mins and my battery is at 76%. Not terrible but pretty bad considering my screen has only been on for 49m 54seconds. Yesterday the screen was ranging between 70 and 80% of my battery consumption.

Is anybody else experiencing this issue? I remember when the S3 first came out there was a problem similar to this where a fix was released soon after. Has anyone heard if this issue was being addressed?

Thanks in advance
 
It is a little high, typically its in the upper 40s for me and the S2, S3 were the same. To be honest it seems thats about where its been most of the time I've been on Android on any phone but I say that with the obvious caveat that this would be highly usage dependent. Still this is not too bad for power savings where the phone uses a higher percentage of its power on the screen than it does when not in power savings mode.
 
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I'm having a similar issue my screen is 50% and really doesn't seem on that much. The other issue i'm having is the phone near the ear piece feels like its on fire. Whenever I play a game or i'm using multiple apps the phone feels like its going to burn up in my hand. Took it to sprint and was told its because of the quad core. Doesn't make sense to me, I goggled the problem and i guess its a known issue. Samsung is suppsedly sending out updates for this issue....???
 
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Updates have already rolled out for most international versions and here in the states, AT&T. Possibly others but these are the ones I've read about. Whether this seems to fix anything heat related seems all over the map based on the reports I've read.

Regardless 50% is very much into the normal range for a high end smartphone with a large screen. Remember that no matter what you do outside of actual voice calls where the screen will usually be off the screen is otherwise always on. How else would you interact with the phone? This ends up playing out that you do this and that and those things will each contribute a share of the total battery used but the thing is while doing both this and that there was a shared common denominator in that the screen was on. Honestly 40% is probably somewhere near bottom because I'm an old man and probably spend more time making voice calls than most of you younger folks yet I have never been below that and often end up in the upper forties. Its very easy for me to see a person who spent less time making calls and more time doing things where the screen was on to end up at 50% or higher.

As to the heat I have no educated guess. I have met a number of people who were concerned about the heat their phone was putting out only to check it out and find out that I've had phones that ran hotter but never had an issue. This is something however that experience should be telling you is normal or not. High end smartphones can get hot. If you have had others you would know that this one is out of the norm or not.

Can you comment on whether that is the case?
 
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Battery life is also great on mine. I been getting almost 2 days unless I go wild playing a game or watching videos.

If you look at the top left corner, you can see I also have Skype and another app running 24/7.

The screen is the biggest drain.
 

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I don't have a case on mine, I'm coming from the S3 where the phone would get hot but it was from playing a lot of intense gaming. The S4 gets hot if i'm multitasking or even looking at youtube videos. I've had android for a very long time and i've never experienced this to this extend for the slightest thing.

I did get an update from sprint a few days ago but I didn't see a difference. Only when i basically dont touch the phone the battery will last a day.
 
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I am using a samsung note 3. I have the same problem. Could somebody please help me to reduce the battery drain due to screen.

I think you have about two choices
1) lower the brightness setting on the screen
2) turn off the phone :)

Seriously, if you're USING your phone the screen should be the major power drain, especially if you have the brightness turned up.
 
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Have you tried running a power-usage analyzing app such as PowerTutor? It accumulates and displays analysis data on all of your phone's processes while it runs in the background (it uses VERY little resources). It might help you determine what the REAL cause of the power drop is. It's not your screen... if it were, we'd ALL have this issue.

Huh? Just about everyone above agreed it was normal. If you're doing activities that will have the screen on the large screen will suck a lot of power.
 
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with all of the points given to "screen" issue, does that mean, even when the phone is off, still, the screen is running?? . . .all the while i thought is on hibernate mode. . .

since i got this s4, my s2 is now being my back up unit. . .(just using this every night for facebook) meaning the whole day, the phone is OFF.. but NOT SHUTDOWN. .. as per experience, my s2 reaches 5-6 days standby time. . .
 
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But the OP was seeing 25% usage in 6 hours. I'd say that was about normal (depending on what he/she was doing - since we didn't see the screen-shot we can only guess). It suggests that if that usage were continued the OP would get a full 24 hours from the unit - given that the screen is likely to be completely off for the duration of their sleep we can expect a little more.

Percentages are misleading since all they tell us is the proportion of the battery used by each component. If the drain is normal then ignore the percentages.
 
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