Was your Battery Good out of the Box?

[sean76]

We'll I got my new Pebble Blue GS3 on Tuesday and absolutely love it! What I don't love is the battery life...

OK so I'm 3 days in and I'm seeing alot of drain, more then usual, I'm pretty schooled in Android with closing apps and having stuff set for the max when it comes to syncing and all that jazz, anotherwords my phone is set up right.

However, I'm curious to know if peoples batteries have been great out of the box, or had to go through a few days of charging cycles and then dramatically got better after about 4 or 5 days?

 

[zemerick]

We'll I got my new Pebble Blue GS3 on Tuesday and absolutely love it! What I don't love is the battery life...

OK so I'm 3 days in and I'm seeing alot of drain, more then usual, I'm pretty schooled in Android with closing apps and having stuff set for the max when it comes to syncing and all that jazz, anotherwords my phone is set up right.

However, I'm curious to know if peoples batteries have been great out of the box, or had to go through a few days of charging cycles and then dramatically got better after about 4 or 5 days?

I had great battery life out of the box. That being said, I made sure to fully discharge the battery the first time, and fully charge with the phone off to get a good calibration from the beginning.

You might need to check some of the things that seem more specific to the S3. Some people have had an issue with wifi that caused massive drain. Your phone could also constantly be searching for 4G signal. Sprint versions Ive heard need to set to cdma only. Also compare your screen on and wake bars in the battery status ( click on the graph) as you might have a wakelock.

Just what kind of usage and battery life are you getting?

 

[treb1797]

The original battery I got w/ my S3 was not good at all ( used for about 2 weeks ). I ordered another OEM battery just to have as a backup & figured I'd use it for a day or two just to make sure it worked properly & I didn't need to send it back. It was so much better from the get go I just left it in. They are both the same exact battery ( Samsung OEM 2100 mAh ) so I guess its just the luck of the draw so to speak.

 

[rushmore]

The key I notice is signal reception. If good, good battery life and opposite if bad.

This assumes medium to heavy use of radios, of course.

 

[sean76]

I'm seeing the screen has used 55% with the phone off.

Very odd

 

[Rolo42]

You can't use the battery gauge until it has been calibrated. If you swap batteries, you have to reset battery stats and recalibrate.

The only real way to assess battery capacity is to completely drain it and look at the metrics afterwards.

 

[treb1797]

Sean,
Why didn't you just keep the battery you were using w/ your white ? Since it was already "broken in." Surely, they would have let you just swap them out.

 

[sean76]

OK just bought a new Battery, lets see how this one does.

 

[sean76]

Sean,
Why didn't you just keep the battery you were using w/ your white ? Since it was already "broken in." Surely, they would have let you just swap them out.

I know...been a long week brother! Dawned on me that night...lol

 

[jws86]

Mine was good...I have since rooted removed bloat and now flashed rom/kernel and its alot better

 

[zemerick]

I'm seeing the screen has used 55% with the phone off.

Very odd

Remember that is the percentage of the amount that was used. It also does not count natural discharge, so the stats only reflect whatever amount of time the phone was actually on. From there, it's pretty easy to imagine that the screen was responsible for 55% of the drain. Not sure how exactly you did it, but if you unplug the phone from the charger, the screen will pop on. From there you shut it down. During that time before you got it shut down, the screen was on for roughly 100% of the time the phone was awake, so it is going to have a very high percentage of the battery used ( because the screen on the S3 is by far the biggest drain. ) Also, if the phone was turned off before unplugging, there's still the boot up time which has the screen on, as well as the time it takes for you to get into the battery stats window. So, again, 100% of the time the phone has been awake and monitoring the battery drain, the screen has been on. This would again lead to a very high percentage of the drain having come from the screen being on.

In short: Seems normal to me.

Pretty much the only way to get screen to be lower than something else, is to never turn the screen on for the entire day. Cell Standby would pass it up then. To do this though, the phone does have to be on so that cell standby has time to drain some of the battery.