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Help Periods of High Battery Usage for Nothing

martonic

Newbie
Jan 13, 2010
43
1
No. Cal.
Hi - stock Galaxy S3 - about once every week or two it runs hot and burns through the battery very quickly while doing, apparently, nothing useful.

This morning it went from 100% down to 55% in 3 hours and when I checked "battery usage" is says "telephone - 31%" HOWEVER I neither made nor received any phone calls during this time.

In fact, I did not do ANYTHING with the phone for those three hours, and nothing got updated.

Why does the phone burn through the battery like this?
 
Being in an area with a weak signal can chew through battery at an alarming rate. When I'm working in a certain building at work I have to have my phone plugged in for most of the day, otherwise the battery would be dead in only a few hours

Thank you tensazan. We are in an area with a weak signal; however, we have both WiFi and "AirRave" (a Sprint repeater) installed and operating in the house, and the phone was connected to both during the period of inexplicable high usage this morning.

However, it's possible that Comcast was dodgy this morning, making the WiFi slow, which made the AirRave slow, which made the S3 burn the "telephone" radio looking for the signal - this may be the most likely explanation...
 
Upvote 0
Also, if you're connected to Wi-Fi, I would suggest turning off you're mobile data.
Your phone may be trying to search for a 3g or 4g signal even though you're connected to Wi-Fi. I started turning mobile data off on my phone while at work and my battery life had increased quite a bit. It may be worth a shot to try that and see if it helps your heat issue as well.


Even though you have a repeater, coming from my brother who had to drop Sprint due to the inability to make calls even with a repeater, it may not work enough to provide a strong enough signal to do what it wants.

Also, if you turn mobile data off, you may want to toggle it back on every few hours (or set up a tasker profile to do so) in order to see if you've received any mms messages
 
Upvote 0
Also, if you're connected to Wi-Fi, I would suggest turning off you're mobile data.
Your phone may be trying to search for a 3g or 4g signal even though you're connected to Wi-Fi. I started turning mobile data off on my phone while at work and my battery life had increased quite a bit. It may be worth a shot to try that and see if it helps your heat issue as well.



Even though you have a repeater, coming from my brother who had to drop Sprint due to the inability to make calls even with a repeater, it may not work enough to provide a strong enough signal to do what it wants.

Also, if you turn mobile data off, you may want to toggle it back on every few hours (or set up a tasker profile to do so) in order to see if you've received any mms messages

Glad you mentioned this.

This is the biggest battery consumer that I have found.

I have done a couple of tests, and found that whilst at home, using wifi and switching the mobile data off uses much less battery.
I was sceptical at first as I regularly saw wifi being the main battery chomper.
 
Upvote 0

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