Galaxy s3 battery life

[grkM3]

You were on the phone for only 1 hour, and "Voice calls" represent 40% of your battery usage?
What the hell?

Is this another bug?
My "voice calls" battery statistics are not anywhere near that usage and I talk to people in UK for hours on end with Google Voice.

Its a messed up % and it doesn't even show apps that I use like YouTube .

 

[Wyndru]

Juice defender makes a huge difference on my RAZR, but i customized it quite a bit to get it to be effective. The built in profiles kinda suck.

 

[Wyndru]

The idea of setting my phone to check emails only once every hour(or whatever polling time frame you want to use) and not the moment they are received is quite foolish.

I actually love the polling time frame feature, I set it to 15 mins and now I only need to charge my battery nightly, before it was 2 times a day. I don't need to be staring at my phone every minute of the day and I prefer getting batches of messages rather than the alerts going off all day long. Even with work emails, there isn't anything that can't wait 15 mins, and they can always call if it's an emergency.

 

[Connoisseur]

After having using my phone in different circumstances and with the updates I made a week ago, I think battery life is pretty good now. People weren't kidding about Wifi! With a constant wifi connection, my phone only drained about 15% over about 14 hours with light usage! On average over a 14 hour day, it ends up anywhere between 50 ad 65% which is pretty solid. I can't complain with that battery life since it easily lasts me from 8am till bedtime without charging.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The phone does a lot of background tasks and caches files etc. After a while it settles in. One trick I found on XDA Developers forum for the battery is to drain it down a bit then turn off media storage in the application manager and restart the device. Charge it up and enable media storage again.

For some reason this helps (you only need do it once). If you get a lot of draw from android system in your battery meter, disable hardware overlays in the developer options too.

 

[KentState]

Well, I had my third run-in with the dreaded Android System process today. The phone was fine until I left for work today and suddenly it got really warm and started draining the battery. If you look below, you can see how the system was awake for about an hour before I did a reboot.

I really hope they find the root of this. The phone has been great besides this random and odd bug.

 

[Zaap]

^ Why doesn't your Battery view show the percentage discharging?

 

[KentState]

^ Why doesn't your Battery view show the percentage discharging?

Not sure. I can't even picture what the graph looks like on past phones. I just go by the the 10% increments on the left.

 

[Oyeve]

My SGS2 is on its 12th day on battery with 20% left. Of course its in airplane mode but still, pretty damn good. My SGS3 needs a charge every day and a half.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I actually love the polling time frame feature, I set it to 15 mins and now I only need to charge my battery nightly, before it was 2 times a day. I don't need to be staring at my phone every minute of the day and I prefer getting batches of messages rather than the alerts going off all day long. Even with work emails, there isn't anything that can't wait 15 mins, and they can always call if it's an emergency.

Then you can wait 15 minutes to power on your phone to check. It should still buzz on its own.

Your solution is like saying your phone calls come only every 15 minutes and all at once. The solution I say is that phones are real time, and you choose whether or not you want the calls to go to voicemail or not.

You shouldn't have to charge your phone nightly because you are checking work email. Unless of course you're getting 500+ messages a day and you spend 3 hours composing emails on your phone, but even then having a 15 minute poll wouldn't change anything.

What I'm saying is apps like Juicedefender compromise the point of having a smartphone in the first place, and that means real time access to data. If you're comfortable with waiting, you might as well not setup email on your phone and wait til you return to your desk to check email on your computer. Furthermore, no smartphone is designed such that you need to recharge twice a day unless you have some extra heavy use.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Well, I had my third run-in with the dreaded Android System process today. The phone was fine until I left for work today and suddenly it got really warm and started draining the battery. If you look below, you can see how the system was awake for about an hour before I did a reboot.

I really hope they find the root of this. The phone has been great besides this random and odd bug.

Ive been dealing with android battery issues on and off for as long as ive owned one.

I thought everything was good with my SGS2 running AOKP with only essential apps, until this saturday.

I went to the rutgers game this Saturday, and in the 14 hours i was away from home (6 hours on the road, 8 at and around the stadium), i used over 150% of battery (brought and extra full battery in case i stayed overnight - good thing i did)

I used GPS for the beginning of the trip, and after exiting nav, and shutting off GPS, my phone continued to drain at the same rate the whole day. The phone just decides to go beserk, and nothing can calm it down. Luckily, once i got home and did a full charge, it was ok the next day for whatever reason.

After ruling out almost everything, im beginning to think maybe its ATT's fault. I tried a straight talk plan on this phone for a few days and got about double battery life (when its working good on att it would be 70% after like 8 hours, with straight talk it was 85%) But ATT's normal drain isnt the problem, im thinking something happens that makes the phone go nuts, hasnt happened with straight talk yet.

Theres also a small part of me that thinks they are doing it to people that have unlimited plans and they are trying to get those people to somehow lose their unlimited plans (by either getting them to upgrade to a new phone with "4g" and buying into shared data, or just leaving ATT altogether.

Yes i realize how dumb that sounds, but I know how long these phones can last when they dont have a sim in/have straight talk's sim card in. Could this actually be possible?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

when you see unreasonable drain, you should at least reboot your phone to make sure it's not some idiotic rogue app.... I can't believe you let it drain 150% without doing some debugging.

My SGS2 is on its 12th day on battery with 20% left. Of course its in airplane mode but still, pretty damn good. My SGS3 needs a charge every day and a half.

492 hours later my Nexus S is at 42% lol

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

when you see unreasonable drain, you should at least reboot your phone to make sure it's not some idiotic rogue app.... I can't believe you let it drain 150% without doing some debugging.

and your assuming i didnt? How would it be possible for me to switch to a different battery without turning the phone off?

Not only did i restart, but i battery pulled, turned off all connections, killed all apps, tried restarting with no sim, and then again with the sim back in, etc. The phone was just hell bent on going nuts, and the only thing im left to blame is ATT.

heres my drain from that day before switching out the battery:

as opposed to today:

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

the first image has wifi use in the earlier part, the second image has wifi use practically all day.

the second one has very limited screen on time for 1 day, whereas the 7 hour one has a good chunk of screen on time. something's keeping your phone awake.

If I see a 10% drop in 1 hr with little use I would've rebooted immediately on that. Anyway, what I'm saying is I read battery complaints all day long on XDA, and 98% of them are PEBKAC issues. Furthermore it's difficult to diagnose without the battery use breakdown from Android and a BBS screenshot.

also, if you turned off connections how could it be AT&T's fault at that point? more like a rogue app that keeps your phone awake.

 

[lothar]

People here really need to start using BetterBatteryStats to monitor for rogue apps.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

the first image has wifi use in the earlier part, the second image has wifi use practically all day.

the second one has very limited screen on time for 1 day, whereas the 7 hour one has a good chunk of screen on time. something's keeping your phone awake.

If I see a 10% drop in 1 hr with little use I would've rebooted immediately on that. Anyway, what I'm saying is I read battery complaints all day long on XDA, and 98% of them are PEBKAC issues. Furthermore it's difficult to diagnose without the battery use breakdown from Android and a BBS screenshot.

also, if you turned off connections how could it be AT&T's fault at that point? more like a rogue app that keeps your phone awake.

jesus christ, here we go again. Bring up any battery issues with android and people automatically jump to conclusions (again).

wifi was on in the first image, but not connected, either way it has nothing to do with the drain. Wifi does impact battery, but not in the amount that the battery was draining in this case.

Agreed, something is keeping my phone awake.

Like i said, i did the first battery pull and did some troubleshooting once i noticed it was at about 85% - no difference. Did it multiple times throughout the day, no difference. Ive had this happen enough times to know nothing can stop it. I can promise you this isnt a PEBKAC issue, as ive battled this crap for two years now with no solution. I have BBS, but didnt do a dump on saturday - not like its been any help in the past.

And you see that blank space in mobile network signal on the first screenshot where the battery didnt drain like crazy? Thats where i enabled airplane mode.

As far as having a crappy app installed, i dont care about apps, and i always just install the basic ones - especially if im monitoring any battery problems i revert to this:

apps installed:
nova prime
aldiko
barcode scanner
betterbatterystats
chrome
cpuspy
doggcatcher – podcast player
all settings set for manual updates/downloads
dropbox
dropsync – pro purchased
one folder set to two-way sync (genesis saves)(autosync, 1hr interval, 10min retry delay, instant upload)
gensoid – genesis emulator
maps – with street view
oi file manager
Pandora
Google play music
Sixaxis controller
Tapatalk – notifications OFF
Titanium backup
Google voice
Youtube
-Stock clock widget
-Dogcatcher widget (play button basically)

 

[PowerYoga]

In regions with bad reception your phone will go nuts trying to find 3g/4g networks. I get about 8-9 hours of battery with bad reception, more than 20 with good reception.

 

[KentState]

In regions with bad reception your phone will go nuts trying to find 3g/4g networks. I get about 8-9 hours of battery with bad reception, more than 20 with good reception.

Sometimes the phone just goes nuts and gets warm to the touch. Doesn't have to do anything with reception.

 

[Wyndru]

Then you can wait 15 minutes to power on your phone to check. It should still buzz on its own.

Your solution is like saying your phone calls come only every 15 minutes and all at once. The solution I say is that phones are real time, and you choose whether or not you want the calls to go to voicemail or not.

I'm not sure you understand fully what JD is doing in the background, unless I misunderstood your post (or you are comparing to voice which to me is not really related and if so, ignore the next few sentences). It has nothing to do with phone calls, they still come in normally regardless of how JD is configured. I don't know what app you are talking about, but I've never seen an option in Juice Defender to disable phone communication. All it does is disconnect the data polling (both 3/4g and wifi) until it hits that 15 minute polling time, then it enables it, does any data syncing it needs to do, then waits for data to go below a certain threshold (which I define) and turns it off once it is quiet again. This is what I meant by getting my emails in batches.

You shouldn't have to charge your phone nightly because you are checking work email. Unless of course you're getting 500+ messages a day and you spend 3 hours composing emails on your phone, but even then having a 15 minute poll wouldn't change anything.

Furthermore, no smartphone is designed such that you need to recharge twice a day unless you have some extra heavy use.

The Droid Razr would like to have a word with you . They are notorious for their bad battery life. I definitely have to charge my phone 2 times a day when wifi and data is enabled all day (just because I'm not checking my emails 500 times a day doesn't mean it's not polling for data connection all day). The other day my phone was dead by 2pm, and I was wondering what happened, and I realized it's because I had turned off juice defender. It makes a huge difference on this phone. Even my wife who hardly uses her razr has to charge at least nightly, and the people at Verizon and Motorola know this is an issue, which is why they improved the battery in the Maxx.

The wifi learning might be snake oil though, I don't know. It's fully trained on most of my access points at the schools I work in, and the 2 access points I have at home, so it supposedly knows when to shut the wifi down based on range, but sometimes I still have to wait until I'm really far out of range to disable it or switch to 3/4g.

What I'm saying is apps like Juicedefender compromise the point of having a smartphone in the first place, and that means real time access to data. If you're comfortable with waiting, you might as well not setup email on your phone and wait til you return to your desk to check email on your computer.

It's only a 15 minute waiting period, and it more than doubles my battery life, so yeah...I'm ok with waiting. Also, there are many times that I'm away from my desk for a few hours at a time. And like I said before, if people have an emergency, they can call or text me, email/google talk isn't the only way to get in touch with me, and anyone that would have an emergency for me knows this.

If it's going to save a ton of battery life and not leave me stranded with a dead phone halfway through the day then I am definitely not considering juice defender a compromise to my phone. Maybe once I get a phone that I can use the wifi and 4g lte data on all day without having to plug it in I'll reconsider, but for now it's a huge hassle saver for me.