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How's the battery life on my device?

TarekElsakka

Well-Known Member
Oct 28, 2012
230
79
32
Cairo, Egypt
Hey there

I recently received a brand new Galaxy S3 after owning a HTC One X for a while. I loved the One X and I think HTC makes some very good quality devices, but the lack of updates was truly annoying. I mean I sold it a couple of weeks ago, and until then I have not even officially received Jelly Bean on it yet!

The S3 came with JellyBean 4.2.1 and there aren't any more updates available as of yet.

I have been using it for a couple of weeks now and it's been great. I just love the responsiveness, screen quality, and features; the whole Motion idea is amazing, too!

One of my beefs with the device is the battery life, though. Granted, it's actually much better than the One X's battery life which was just horrendous, it's still not as good as I had hoped. I have read a lot online about the battery life of the S3 and how it isn't very good, especially for mild to heavy users, but at least it can last a day.

I downloaded that GSam application as recommended by a post on this forum a couple of days ago and here are the results:

Screenshot_2013-03-12-20-12-40_zpsc6501276.png


I am not a 'heavy user' by any means, I usually just use WhatsApp or make phone calls (not a lot). Also ever since I read the awesome sticky thread here regarding battery life and the difference in consumption between using 3G (data) or Wi-Fi, I have been using Wi-Fi whenever I am at home or at the university, so that I would consume less battery life.

What do you guys think of the statstics? If you want more detailed ones, I can take more screen shots. I almost always leave the brightness level set to Auto, but sometimes in the morning and I am wearing sunglasses I set it to 'brightest' until I am in-doors or just away from the sunlight.

Any information or tips are appreciated, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for your time.
 
Well, Better battery Stats it's not as fancy as GSAM in terms of how it looks, but it provides information such as "Partial Wakelocks", "Kernel Wakelocks", "CPU States" (and more) which are very useful when trying to find out the reasons of the drain. For example, I recently found out Viber as the main cause of a major drain issue. What helped me was a good hour of investigation, the wakelocks shown on Better Battery Stats and the CPU States.
 
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Yeah i was gona say that Mayer mate.. how long have u been running Gsam though op? EDIT a couple of days probably isnt enough for Gsam to give a good average.
How long does your battery usualy last?
Ps. Do u mean 4.1.2, not 4.2.1?
A screenshot of the stock battery use app would be helpful too mate and remember, when u tap on the bottom half of the graph, it gives more details :thumbup:

Ive had Gsam for ages n it says my average life is 8hrs22mins lol but im a heavy user lately. My data use is nearly 50Gb so far this month :)
 
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I think that the battery monitoring apps are great when it comes to analysing what is draining the battery, but less good at telling you what the drain is when the device is idle and not being used. I downloaded a different app (to use in conjunction with GSam) which simply logs a time stamp every time the battery drops by 1%, and it uses this info to derive a series of results in the form of battery drain % per hour.

My S3 shows an idle consumption of 0.2%/hr when I have wi-fi and mobile data switched off, but you need to leave your phone overnight (obviously not on charge!) to get this sort of reading because it takes at least 5 hours to drain 1%.

My view is that if you get the idle power consumption sorted, everything else will pretty well certainly be directly due to apps and processes running legitimately when the phone is in use.

Here's a link to the (free) app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...iY29tLldhemFCZS5hbmRyb2lkLkJhdHRlcnlEcmFpbiJd
 
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I think that the battery monitoring apps are great when it comes to analysing what is draining the battery, but less good at telling you what the drain is when the device is idle and not being used. I downloaded a different app (to use in conjunction with GSam) which simply logs a time stamp every time the battery drops by 1%, and it uses this info to derive a series of results in the form of battery drain % per hour.

My S3 shows an idle consumption of 0.2%/hr when I have wi-fi and mobile data switched off, but you need to leave your phone overnight (obviously not on charge!) to get this sort of reading because it takes at least 5 hours to drain 1%.

My view is that if you get the idle power consumption sorted, everything else will pretty well certainly be directly due to apps and processes running legitimately when the phone is in use.

Here's a link to the (free) app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...iY29tLldhemFCZS5hbmRyb2lkLkJhdHRlcnlEcmFpbiJd

Just look at this app. Don't see it helping very much. From Google Play listing. "WARNING: this app does not and will never display which app drains your battery."
The Apps mentioned above will list what is using the battery so you can make changes to stop the drain. Just saying.
 
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I'm sorry to criticize; I just love this site and read it every day. Buuut why do all of you obsess about battery stats? I have a charger at home and in my car and use them whenever the charge goes below 50% or thereabouts. Never had a problem and there seems a simple solution to battery problems: use the charger.

JM

I think if you were to ask 10 heavy users of the S3 what one thing would you like to change if you could, most of them would say "Better battery life". On a phone that seems to do most everything else fairly well, the battery seems like the achilles heel in an otherwise great device.

I keep chargers in various places too, but I'd rather not have to think about that as much as I do. It's not always very convenient to stop and plug in.
 
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