Samsung S21 FE - Battery question

A

Ak2603

Newbie
Jul 24, 2020
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Hey y'all,
I got my new Samsung s21 FE a few days ago, and I have a question-
At 8:00 am I have a full battery.
My phone is my work tool, so I use a lot of Whatsapp time.
I also use a bit of Facebook, Instagram, sometimes Waze for like 20 min.
At 5 pm (after 2 hours nap) I have less than 30% battery.
The data usage marks 18.5% Whatsapp and 6% Launcher Nova, and then other apps.
Is that normal for a new phone's battery? Not to last a whole day?
I understand that my usage is a bit high, nevertheless...
TIA
 
Ak2603 said:
Hey y'all,
I got my new Samsung s21 FE a few days ago, and I have a question-
At 8:00 am I have a full battery.
My phone is my work tool, so I use a lot of Whatsapp time.
I also use a bit of Facebook, Instagram, sometimes Waze for like 20 min.
At 5 pm (after 2 hours nap) I have less than 30% battery.
The data usage marks 18.5% Whatsapp and 6% Launcher Nova, and then other apps.
Is that normal for a new phone's battery? Not to last a whole day?
I understand that my usage is a bit high, nevertheless...
TIA
Click to expand...
new phones will always have not the best battery life at the beginning.....mostly because you are on it more than normal with just playing around and getting to know the device. over time it should get better as not only you adjust, but also the phone to how you use the phone.....so....YRMV. it also may depend on where you are at and moving thru out the day and how your signal strength is and how often you are om wifi.

so do not judge the phone just on a few days. give it a week or more to see how battery life is for you.
 
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You've not told us how much time you spend with the screen on or what brightness level you generally use. The screen is usually the single biggest power drain, so it's impossible to judge what is reasonable without information about this. If the screen has been on for most of the 7 hours you describe (8am - 5pm minus 2 hours nap) and your brightness is not set terribly low then it's not crazy: that would be 70% of charge in 7 hours active screen-on time (which would also be very high usage).

Do you really mean Nova Launcher is contributing 6% of your data usage though? How is that possible - it's a launcher, why would it be using a significant amount of data? In the last week Nova on my phone has used 332B of mobile data (not MB or kB, just B) and 70MB of WiFi data in the last month (higher than I'd expect, but obviously only a tiny fraction of my data usage). I wonder whether the system counts widget data use towards the launcher or something like that?
 
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ocnbrze said:
new phones will always have not the best battery life at the beginning.....mostly because you are on it more than normal with just playing around and getting to know the device. over time it should get better as not only you adjust, but also the phone to how you use the phone.....so....YRMV. it also may depend on where you are at and moving thru out the day and how your signal strength is and how often you are om wifi.

so do not judge the phone just on a few days. give it a week or more to see how battery life is for you.
Click to expand...


Ahhhhh, didn't know that.
Thank you!
 
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Hadron said:
You've not told us how much time you spend with the screen on or what brightness level you generally use. The screen is usually the single biggest power drain, so it's impossible to judge what is reasonable without information about this. If the screen has been on for most of the 7 hours you describe (8am - 5pm minus 2 hours nap) and your brightness is not set terribly low then it's not crazy: that would be 70% of charge in 7 hours active screen-on time (which would also be very high usage).

Do you really mean Nova Launcher is contributing 6% of your data usage though? How is that possible - it's a launcher, why would it be using a significant amount of data? In the last week Nova on my phone has used 332B of mobile data (not MB or kB, just B) and 70MB of WiFi data in the last month (higher than I'd expect, but obviously only a tiny fraction of my data usage). I wonder whether the system counts widget data use towards the launcher or something like that?
Click to expand...


Thank you for answering :)
The screen is on for about 4-5 hours at my activity time.
And the brightness is just a bit above half way of the scale.

About Launcher Nova - yes!!!
I think it drains my battery.
This is why I've mentioned it.
6% is good, sometimes it's even more than that.
Don't know why‍‍♀️
I don't use widgets...
 
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That's odd because I've used Nova since 2013, including on my current Galaxy s21, without any issues. Different apps measure battery usage differently, but it appears as 1-3% in the battery stats from my s21's Settings or about 0.1% according to GSam Battery Monitor, and as I say it's a negligible data user. And that's on an s21, where the system it is interacting with should be fairly similar to your FE, so I don't know why it should be so different.

70% in 4-5 hours screen on is a little higher power usage than I'd get, but my brightness is usually a little below half-way unless I'm outdoors, and as @ocnbrze says it's a new phone so probably not up to full capacity and optimisation yet. Also it does depend on what you are doing: reading stuff won't take much power, while constantly interacting with the screen, or transmitting, will use more. Do you set the screen refresh rate to high (120 Hz) or standard (60Hz)? Samsung call this "motion smoothness", and High will definitely use more power. Personally I use 60Hz, because while I can tell the difference I don't feel it's something that's worth trading off battery life for.
 
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I really thank you for the time you take in answering me in such elaboration.
My screen is on a lot, especially on WhatsApp - reading and writing messages.
I lowered the ''motion smoothness'' to 60 according to your advice.
Hope this will help.
I would love to ask another question -
You must have understood from the way I phrase my questions, that English is not my native language...
My cell phone is set to a different language, and Instagram keeps coming back to my native language, even though I set it to English.
Is there a way to fix this?
 
Ak2603 said:
Hey y'all,
I got my new Samsung s21 FE a few days ago, and I have a question-
At 8:00 am I have a full battery.
My phone is my work tool, so I use a lot of Whatsapp time.
I also use a bit of Facebook, Instagram, sometimes Waze for like 20 min.
At 5 pm (after 2 hours nap) I have less than 30% battery.
The data usage marks 18.5% Whatsapp and 6% Launcher Nova, and then other apps.
Is that normal for a new phone's battery? Not to last a whole day?
I understand that my usage is a bit high, nevertheless...
TIA
Click to expand...


Are you using the FB app? Because that has frequently been reported on AF, as a greedy bloated power and storage hog. Maybe same for the Instagram app as well

Suggest try using the FB Lite app, or use it in a browser instead.

I don't use Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, and the battery on my Note20, lasts all day with some to spare. Any messaging I do is via Telegram or WeChat.
 
Last edited:
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mikedt said:
Are you using the FB app? Because that has frequently been reported on AF, as a greedy bloated power and storage hog. Maybe same for the Instagram app as well

Suggest try using the FB Lite app, or use it in a browser instead.

I don't use Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, and the battery on my Note20, lasts all day with some to spare. Any messaging I do is via Telegram or WeChat.
Click to expand...


Hey, thank you for answering :)
I do use those apps, not a lot, but yes.
FB & Instagram takes a lot, you're right.
I'll try the lite version.
Thank you!
 
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Ak2603 said:
Hey, thank you for answering :)
I do use those apps, not a lot, but yes.
FB & Instagram takes a lot, you're right.
I'll try the lite version.
Thank you!
Click to expand...

The standard (and the Lite, to a lesser extent) of these apps use data even when you are not using them.

Also, any apps that give notifications- those notifications use power, especially if you don't dismiss them promptly.

Did you get Nova from the Play Store?
If so, the 'abnormal' amount of activity from that app may very well be some Google analytics or such that is often embedded in apps from that appstore.
 
Last edited:
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puppykickr said:
The standard (and the Lite, to a lesser extent) of these apps use data even when you are not using them.

Also, any apps that give notifications- those notifications use power, especially if you don't dismiss them promptly.

Did you get Nova from the Pkay Store?
If so, the 'abnormal' amount of activity from that app may very well be some Google analytics or such that is often embedded in apps from that appstore.
Click to expand...


Thank you :)
I got the Launcher Nova from Google Play store not from Pkay...
 
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Hadron said:
Though my Nova is from the Play Store and has no such problems.
Click to expand...


Actually it's the same with other launchers I've tried, even with One Ui...
And it happend on my previous phone (S10 lite) as well ‍♀️
 
I'm looking at the Greenify app and would like to ask a quick question.
I have a S21fe and have a habit of closing apps when I'm finished with them.
This habit comes from having battery life problems with an older phone and found this helped.
Does Greenity do a similar thing?
 
Hadron said:
Which really does make me wonder whether there is something else whose data usage is being counted as the launcher?
Click to expand...
Hadron said:
Which really does make me wonder whether there is something else whose data usage is being counted as the launcher?
Click to expand...


Do you have any idea what could couse it?
I've erased the Nova Launcher and dowloaded it again, not using the backup.
But it didn't fix the problem
 
Greenify will force stop apps that are running.

I use it on my devices.

The pro version allows you to control system apps as well.

Some system aps will not be able to be controlled, or will automatically restart.
 

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