Galaxy s3 battery life

[Oyeve]

Ive been using my sgs3 pretty much all day long and I am now, at 4:39PM EST, at 69% since unplugging it at 8:00AM. My job sanctioned droid razr having not been used at all is at 70%.

 

[PowerYoga]

Who cares. People don't buy smart phones to use them as pagers only checking them when they get a message. They buy them to use apps, browse web, and listen to music.

Like I said, I have the same usage as him and I get at the very minimum 10 more hours out of the battery life, so his battery life is more than 11 hours. Thanks for the obvious note though.

 

[Connoisseur]

Yeah, I don't want to disable everything on my phone to get the best possible battery life. I just wish the phone were a little smarter at managing the power profile or there were more intuitive options rather than me having to research a bunch to figure out the best way to manage power.

As it is, the past couple of days i've gone about 15 hours unplugged and have had between 50-75% remaining depending on how aggressively i connect the s3 to wifi (my office requires login so there's no auto-connect), my usage, and how often I kill apps. This is pretty solid for me since I could theoretically go 24 hours easily on a charge and I always plug it in at night.

Still, I feel as if this is absolutely one thing they (either Samsung or Google) need to mimic from the iphone. They need to make power management options more intuitive (without having to download a bunch of apps). It sucks that I have to go through multiple apps, research cryptic tasks and play around with different combinations of settings before I can finally say "OK, now my phone lasts a good deal of time and seems competitive with other newer phones."

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Yeah, I don't want to disable everything on my phone to get the best possible battery life. I just wish the phone were a little smarter at managing the power profile or there were more intuitive options rather than me having to research a bunch to figure out the best way to manage power.

As it is, the past couple of days i've gone about 15 hours unplugged and have had between 50-75% remaining depending on how aggressively i connect the s3 to wifi (my office requires login so there's no auto-connect), my usage, and how often I kill apps. This is pretty solid for me since I could theoretically go 24 hours easily on a charge and I always plug it in at night.

Still, I feel as if this is absolutely one thing they (either Samsung or Google) need to mimic from the iphone. They need to make power management options more intuitive (without having to download a bunch of apps). It sucks that I have to go through multiple apps, research cryptic tasks and play around with different combinations of settings before I can finally say "OK, now my phone lasts a good deal of time and seems competitive with other newer phones."

Well you shouldn't have to download a bunch of apps. I think if you manage your apps properly, they should be ok. JuiceDefender and all other stupid apps to me are gimicks. And what's worse is having these apps run in the background sucks RAM and CPU cycles. The question is whether they save more battery than they use.

BetterBatteryStats is more a monitoring and double check to see if you've setup things correctly, or to catch wakelocks when you're first trying to pin down battery life issues, but honestly I never check it now that my phone is setup properly.

 

[Connoisseur]

Well you shouldn't have to download a bunch of apps. I think if you manage your apps properly, they should be ok. JuiceDefender and all other stupid apps to me are gimicks. And what's worse is having these apps run in the background sucks RAM and CPU cycles. The question is whether they save more battery than they use.

BetterBatteryStats is more a monitoring and double check to see if you've setup things correctly, or to catch wakelocks when you're first trying to pin down battery life issues, but honestly I never check it now that my phone is setup properly.

Yeah if I have to download JuiceDefender to increase my battery life to acceptable levels, my phone's battery better be DYING due to age. In that case, i'd consider it a better investment to get a new battery (yay replaceable battery!). I see no other excusable reason to need a third party app to significantly increase battery life unless someone absolutely needs to go 1.5-2 days without plugging in their device.

I think application management is precisely the problem. I wish Google mandated that all anything that uses a radio should all be accessible in one unified menu (syncing options, 3g vs 4g, any streaming services). Maybe it's just the initial nuisance of setup and maybe I'll forget about this rant with a few extra weeks of use but i'm always a little afraid my battery's going to drain before I have a chance to plug it in. That shouldn't happen with this generation of smartphones.

 

[s44]

i'm always a little afraid my battery's going to drain before I have a chance to plug it in

You're doing it wrong. See the removable back cover? Yeah, use it.

 

[Connoisseur]

You're doing it wrong. See the removable back cover? Yeah, use it.

Can't tell if serious...

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Are you saying:
1)I should be carrying a spare battery?
2) I should remove the battery when not in use?
3)I should be resetting the phone?
4) I should be doing something else?

Regardless, I think all those options are silly. only people with a very specific and extreme need for being away from a charger for extended periods of time should be carrying spare batteries. Resetting the phone (even if it's "every once in a while") or removing the battery are also fairly ludicrous solutions in my book.

At this point, I would deride my S3 significantly if I didn't love everything else about it. If I could somehow get that POS Good working on a rooted machine, I would be rocking a clean JB install.

 

[s44]

1)I should be carrying a spare battery?

Yes. Being *completely* free from battery drain worries (even if you use it nonstop and tether for hours) is amazingly liberating.

 

[PowerYoga]

Just a note: If you're in an area that doesn't have good signal your phone's battery life will be significantly lower. This is true for all phones and is not specific to the galaxy s3.

 

[Connoisseur]

Yes. Being *completely* free from battery drain worries (even if you use it nonstop and tether for hours) is amazingly liberating.

For me, being realistically free from battery worries is being able to go an entire day without charging with moderate/average usage without getting into the red. here are my definitions for those terms
:
1) Entire day: Let's say 9am-1am on weekdays and 9am-4am on weekends; yes i'm a late sleeper.
2) Moderate/Average use - 30-40 minutes streaming music; about 30-40 minutes of internet (including facebook and whatnot); 1-2 hours of phone calls (i use my phone for work); checking emails; probably 70% 4G and 30% wiFi
3) "the red" - 20% or less of battery life (ideally 30% or less) noting that a full drain on batteries causes loss of battery capacity over time.

So far with some of the tweaks and looking at betterbatterystats, I think i'm accomplishing this goal so it's just a matter of habit now that i'm constantly checking battery life. i really want to run with these settings for at least a week to be fully satisfied.

As an example, my girlfriend can go through a full day of moderate use on her Iphone 4 and still have at least 60% battery left. This includes constantly checking email/facebook, 1-2 hours of phone calls and constant texting. Now I know it's a little bit of an apples to oranges comparison (since the s3 has a bigger/nicer screen, LTE and faster processor) but I think samsung can do better with some usage tweaks and management options in TouchWiz.

 

[Connoisseur]

Just a note: If you're in an area that doesn't have good signal your phone's battery life will be significantly lower. This is true for all phones and is not specific to the galaxy s3.

My office is in the middle of Times Square and I live in Manhattan. Times Square sucks for phone calls (get dropped calls a bunch) but I get mostly full bars for data. My company also has free guest wifi which I log into from the s3. Reception isn't an issue as far as I know. Now if I were in Chicago for example, i'd understand.

 

[PowerYoga]

My office is in the middle of Times Square and I live in Manhattan. Times Square sucks for phone calls (get dropped calls a bunch) but I get mostly full bars for data. My company also has free guest wifi which I log into from the s3. Reception isn't an issue as far as I know. Now if I were in Chicago for example, i'd understand.

Funny thing though: I am in chicago in the smack middle of down town (next to the chicago river) and have 3-5 full bars of 4g all the time. I know AT&T has problems with signal in office buildings here in Chicago and my work phone (on AT&T) is all but unusable indoors.

I'd get some sort of signal monitor, I use GSAM battery monitor and it also measures phone signal in a nice graph.

 

[Connoisseur]

Funny thing though: I am in chicago in the smack middle of down town (next to the chicago river) and have 3-5 full bars of 4g all the time. I know AT&T has problems with signal in office buildings here in Chicago and my work phone (on AT&T) is all but unusable indoors.

I'd get some sort of signal monitor, I use GSAM battery monitor and it also measures phone signal in a nice graph.

Yeah I go to Chicago fairly frequently for work and the office is in the loop just a couple of blocks away from the river. I get HORRIBLE reception there. Even in places where i'm supposedly getting full bars, I frequently get NOTHING for data. It's an extremely frustrating city to be in for smartphone usage. Otherwise, it's beautiful in the summer

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

My office is in the middle of Times Square and I live in Manhattan. Times Square sucks for phone calls (get dropped calls a bunch) but I get mostly full bars for data. My company also has free guest wifi which I log into from the s3. Reception isn't an issue as far as I know. Now if I were in Chicago for example, i'd understand.

Shrug. I can at least post photos in times square, but some places like Vegas = joke unless I'm on 2G.

 

[deputc26]

On vzw and having crappy bat life too, it will never quite last a full day with fairly light usage, can anyone confirm that the reported cell standby stats are incorrect?

iPad can't post screenshot or it would be included

 

[God Mode]

I had my first inexplicably bad battery life day today. Like 83% by the time I got into work.

Hope it doesn't continue.

Background updating?

 

[zerogear]

For me there is heavy drain when the phone is constantly searching for signal (bad signal area, one bar or lower). I usually just turn on airplane mode when that happens. Around average, I think I drop to 43-48% after being unplugged for 12 hours out and about, and using it regularly, on screen time is probably 2.5 hours or so.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

not sure if this makes any difference for the s3, but i just had the same thing happen with my gs2.

It would last about 18 hours with MINIMAL use, so even if i didn't even turn the screen on, it would drain 5% per hour. Flashed to the newest AOKP and now its great.

Fell asleep last night with the phone at 50%, woke up and it was at 45%.

 

[tvdang7]

How about we start posting how long your screen on time is. I have a galaxy nexus and i can get about 2-3 hours of screen time total(2.5 seems right) before its almost dead and the screen is on auto. After about a 8-9 hour shift I have about 50% battery on hspa+(wifi is on but it is not used until i get back home) facebooking texting but no calls.

Here is mine from today 26% left all 4g no wifi so my screen time is pretty low.

 

[Connoisseur]

not sure if this makes any difference for the s3, but i just had the same thing happen with my gs2.

It would last about 18 hours with MINIMAL use, so even if i didn't even turn the screen on, it would drain 5% per hour. Flashed to the newest AOKP and now its great.

Fell asleep last night with the phone at 50%, woke up and it was at 45%.

I wish I could get a JB rom in this to see how it'd run but Good doesn't run on rooted devices. If I get root keeper can I unroot the device after the custom rom install and still have the phone running flawlessly or do these roms require constant root?

 

[Connoisseur]

One thing I don't like is how different apps just like to randomly use up the cpu. Just found out the Nike plus app accelerometer was running in the background even though finished the run and I closed the app earlier after my run. Wtf? Why does it still do that?

 

[Connoisseur]

Did some more benchmarking today. Battery went about 1 hour and 40 minutes with very minimal usage (3-4 minutes of internet usage, 1 minute of FF scores checking, 2-3 minutes of Good for Enterprise email checking) and the battery dropped down to 7%. Here are some screenshots:
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/connoisseur/Screenshot_2012-09-24-09-48-16.png
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/connoisseur/Screenshot_2012-09-24-09-53-21.png
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/connoisseur/Screenshot_2012-09-24-09-49-24.png

Any thoughts on the drain? After reading about people leaving their phone on overnight with only 5% battery drain, it's kind of annoying to see it drop 7% in 1:45 with minimal use.

::EDIT:: This is with Wifi ON (connected to home wifi for 1 hour 20 min and 25 min on LTE). NOT using Wifi for location, syncing ONLY email and calendar entries for 2 email accounts. Good for Enterprise syncing email.

 

[slag]

I think i'm close to your battery life given almost the same workload (i only listen to streaming music about 30-40 minutes a day during my commute). What's all this talk about 100's of hours of standby time? Is that pretty much putting the damn thing in airplane mode?

I wish I could root. I would've gotten JB on there so fast... unfortunately, Good for Enterprise won't work on rooted phones and i'm not aware of any workaround. The REAL problem is that my company uses Lotus Notes. W...T...F...

Is this an SGS3 only thing or what?> I use good for enterprise on my rooted and custom rom'd EVO 4G.

 

[Phokus]

My SGS3 battery life is incredible... i think there's something wrong with your particular phone or there's a rogue app screwing you up:

67% after using the camera a bunch/an hour of screen time after 15+ hours.

 

[Connoisseur]

Is this an SGS3 only thing or what?> I use good for enterprise on my rooted and custom rom'd EVO 4G.

It's a retarded corporate policy. While they allow me to get my own phone from any major carrier, they restrict you to Good (unless you're on blackberry). I'm ASSUMING they restrict access to Rooted devices to prevent any potential hacking or data theft. I suppose there might be a way for a thief to get access to my Good emails if they can get root on my machine? I don't know. it's dumb and i'm sorta bitter about it.