11 things to do after unboxing samsung galaxy s3 and other mobiles

I let my battery on my eris die once, and it resulted in weeks of the phone not holding a charge, I will never repeat that ever. the way i had to fix it was thankfully I had a rooted phone was to erase the battery info and leave it on the charger, use it a few min here and there, put it back on charger. deep cycle, worst suggestion ever.

lunatic59 said:

Let your phone discharge completely, keep it on until you are warned about low battery and then just let it run out. Most phone will shut down automatically around 5%.

Plug the phone into the original a/c charger, not the usb cable. Let it charge to full uninterrupted.

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Is it ok that I turned the phone on while charging?

lunatic59 said:

Actually, many phones will turn on when you plug them in. It should be fine as long as it's a continuous charge. Try not to use it too much because if the drain exceeds the charge, it could throw off the stats.

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Yep it was continuous, and didn't do much aside from checking messages. Also, I only did this not when the phone just got out of the box but after I already had it for a while. Is this fine too?

DRURFAN said:

Yes it is fine ut what exactly you mean by regularly?

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Sorry let me rephrase that. I meant most of the time.

I don't sweat about charging much, how often, deplete.. or anything about the battery. Replacement batteries are cheap. Unlike iPhones, we can take out the battery and replace one without sending the device back to Samsung. Suck on that Apple!

LunchBB said:

I don't sweat about charging much, how often, deplete.. or anything about the battery. Replacement batteries are cheap. Unlike iPhones, we can take out the battery and replace one without sending the device back to Samsung. Suck on that Apple!

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Oh yeahh.. haha

Well, it took me a while to read through all the posts, but have always been very confused about the dos and don'ts about batteries...

Bottom line, I've always been told never to let a device fully discharge as it can in the long term, hurt the battery life..

I don't know, but so far it's worked for me..

I think the longest battery life I've ever seen on a smart phone has been that of the blackberry 8350i.. It would last me about 3 days without charging, with average daily use, emails, texts, calls, etc..

lunatic59 said:

I wouldn't make a habit of it, but letting it drain completely every now and then should be a problem. Be advised that when I say "completely" I mean until the phone shuts itself off. When it does this there is usually 5% charge left. If you let the device sit in this state for a few days and let the battery drain to 0%, you run the risk of causing damage to the battery up to having it no longer able to charge at all.

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Thanks. I mean, I wasn't able to do those things you said when the phone (battery) was new. Only did it after having it for a while. Is that alright?

matttye said:

That is completely false. I'm not sure where you're getting your information or if you've tried it yourself, but I regularly completely discharge and recharge the battery in my S2 and I still get good life out of it.

Do a search for "battery calibration" - most sites advise that you discharge the battery completely, recharge completely with phone on, then turn the phone off and charge it further.

Manufacturers wouldn't let you deplete the battery below 20% if it was harmful to the battery (more harmful than ordinary use anyway).

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Battery advice is like a religion and Russian roulette. One is "This is what I wish were true" and the second is "It never killed me so it's also good for you". My religion will not permit me to completely deplete a lithium-ion battery, and I keep it topped off whenever possible. I never played Russian roulette and never intend too.

lunatic59 said:

Android saves battery statistics from the first time you turn it on, so if you had a few weeks of incremental charges and the phone reported a quick discharge, it will take a little longer for the stats to average out and give you a more accurate picture of your real battery life. It's better to get this data on a newer phone for better averaging, but you're okay doing it later, too.

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I see. Well, I think I'm still safe. Only had a phone for less than 2 weeks, so it's relatively new imo

lunatic59 said:

The primary rule in voicing differing opinions is attack issues, not each other. Please do not make this personal because it distracts from getting important information to the rest of the members. We have Jerry Springer and Maury Povich if people wish to be entertained by meaningless conflict.

Now, to the issue of the battery.

In fact, you are both right. Li-Ion batteries do not suffer from the memory effect and do not need to be conditioned. And deeply discharging a li-ion battery frequently can damage it and letting it discharge completely and stay that way for a long time can render it unchargable.

That said, the ops advice is also sound. Android needs to be taught exactly what a full charge represents so that it can manage power appropriately.

One of the things I recommend all new phone owners to do is to perform a deep power cycle.

Let your phone discharge completely, keep it on until you are warned about low battery and then just let it run out. Most phone will shut down automatically around 5%.

Plug the phone into the original a/c charger, not the usb cable. Let it charge to full uninterrupted.

When the phone says full, unplug the phone from the charge and reboot. Once the phone is completely restarted, plug it back into the charger and shut the phone off. Even if it says fully charged, let it charge for at least one more hour.

Unplug the charger and reboot the phone one more time. Now you should start seeing (possibly significantly) longer charge times.

Without a deep power cycle, it doesn't know the true capacity of the battery. You should only need to do this once as regularly deep cycling the battery can harm it. Li-Ion batteries perform better and last longer with incremental charges.

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Thanks for the advice everyone. I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 and I'm experiencing very frustrating battery life since purchase. I know the battery is performing way below what should be expected as it doesn't even come close to living up to my old iPhone. I currently lose about 10% battery life per hour regardless of usage. If anything, it appears to drain faster when the phone is not in use! I am in a good service area so no problems with reception. I've tried all the advice I can find online - disabled all of the major apps with potential for battery drain, turned off sync, turned off push email, no bluetooth, wifi only when available etc etc. No success!

lunatic59, after reading your post, and others, I thought it might have something to do with the battery condition. Some of the advice on this forum, although there is a lot of conflicting advice, suggests first charge should be for up to 12hrs and you should not use it at the same time. When I received my phone I immediately started to charge it but I did use it at the same time. I therefore thought this may have contributed to damaging the battery? So, I have now tried deep cycling as recommended by lunatic59, but unfortunately this does not appear to have helped! luncatic59 - How many times am I supposed to charge, reboot, then charge again?

Extremely frustrating ... From reading the forums online, I can see that there seems to be widespread battery issues with the international variant of the phone. In which case, might this be a fault with the firmware and am I best off waiting for Samsung to release a fix?

Does anyone else have any thoughts or suggestions please? Getting rather desperate and would really appreciate your help.

I've resorted to ordering a new battery just in case that's the problem, but I suspect it's not.

Thanks

Deep cycle as suggested by lunatic unfortunately did not work. Any other suggestions please?

That whole post seems somewhat outdated. I didn't do any of this except #1. Once you sign into Google, it will autmatically sync contacts and calendar. I then installed Amazon MP3 app and downloaded whatever songs I wanted from Amazon's Cloud. Same process with Audible content, Evernote, etc. I also use Documents To Go and it's matching desktop so that's an easy sync as well. I am yet to be convinced of the merits of an antivirus on a cell phone. Feel free to state your case.

Tips 11 things to do after unboxing samsung galaxy s3 and other mobiles

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1) Throw the instructions in the bin then, when you can't figure out how to do something, post a question starting with "HELP ME!" on the Android Forums.

Sing Hallelujah!
At least... that's what I did

DRURFAN said:

8.If you have mobile net, then set the data limit as per your subscription. Go to setting-->data usage--> make it on and set the monthly data limit to avoid overpayment

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What if you have unlimited data surfing?

lunatic59 said:

Android saves battery statistics from the first time you turn it on, so if you had a few weeks of incremental charges and the phone reported a quick discharge, it will take a little longer for the stats to average out and give you a more accurate picture of your real battery life. It's better to get this data on a newer phone for better averaging, but you're okay doing it later, too.

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Thanks. I wish I saw your post before I had my phone. Anyway, the battery life on my phone seems to have gotten better now. And I'm quite satisfied with it.