Has Anyone Found A Solution To Android OS and Android System Draining Battery on the Note 3?

[music_man185]

I have the note 3 on Verizon, and while on jelly bean, I had incredible battery life. Even with features like location and Bluetooth left on all day. But ever since the kitkat Ota update, my battery will not even last a day with extremely light use. It has gotten to the point that I have turned nearly every feature off and turn it on airplane mode and connect to wifi for 8 hours while at work. Even then, my battery is around 40-50% when I leave work with maybe 30 minutes of screen time. If I use my phone at all in the evening after work, it dies before I go to bed. Android system and Android OS are always at the top of the list of battery usage, usually accounting for about 25% each. I have always regularly checked my battery usage, and these 2 services were never on the list while running jelly bean. The same thing has happened to my girlfriends s4. Are there any solutions? At first I thought verizon or Samsung would have another update to fix these issues, but after about 6 months, I've given up.

 

[Aquila]

Those and "phone idle" will be the top items when the device is not being used much. The main reason they are higher on the list now (for everyone) is that they re-categorized what items fall into those, which slims down the list and gets rid of lots of processes with names that people question because they don't understand what they're for. That being said, a device with very little screen on time and syncing is going to have the majority of it's battery drain go to the base processes and to idle.

What have you tried so far to troubleshoot? Was this a clean OTA?

 

[Javier P]

Wiping the cache partition improves battery life for most people. Easy process and you won't lose your data.

Check your sync and upload settings and when possible select to do that only trough WiFi and when the phone is charging.

 

[music_man185]

after a few weeks of dramatically reduced battery life, i performed a factory reset. i couldn't tell a difference at all. i also wipe the cache partition at least once a month, which i also can't tell a difference doing. i know i'm not alone in this because i have read many threads of people experiencing the same thing with kitkat.

i dont understand why immediately after the ota, 2 different phones (my girlfriend's and mine) both experienced this battery loss with no changes in settings or apps. i dont let any app sync more frequently than about 4 hours. i realize that while idling, android processes will use more resources. but it seems ridiculous to me that my phone is dying with less than an hour of screen time and airplane mode for the majority of the day. as i mentioned earlier, i used to get incredible battery life with many features left on all day. now i leave all of them off in hopes of just making it a day on a charge with little use.

 

[Javier P]

Android OS using a lot of battery generally means background processes (sync, upload, updates, ads downloads ...). But as you say, with just one hour SOT it's normal to have a high percentage. Have you noticed in the battery stats if the data used by OS is high?

Sometimes an app doesn't show the whole amount of battery it uses, and part of it is hidden in the Android OS percentage.

It seems you've done anything in the book. Tricky. Just guesses trying to help.

 

[music_man185]

I've never paid much attention to the data usage. I just now checked, and it said data received and sent both on network and wifi were 1mb or less for all of them

 

[Javier P]

Yep, that's normal for your use. I think there's nothing wrong with OS. High number just because the screen is off most of the time. To give you an idea. These are my numbers right now:

Battery 34%, screen 61%, OS 5‰ SOT 5:26h. With 1 hour of SOT, OS could be higher than 25% most likely.

And what about the battery itself. Can you replace it? Try to recalibrate it.

 

[music_man185]

I could try to recalibrate it if that would help.
But again, just seems weird that I was having great battery life on jelly bean, and kitkat killed it. Same exact story with the girlfriends s4

 

[Javier P]

I read something in xda about 4.4.2. not recognising the real capacity of the battery. Have a look. Gotta go now. Good luck.

 

[music_man185]

Thanks for the tip. I've never considered recalibrating the battery. Hopefully that does the trick

 

[mactruck]

Only getting 8 hours of battery life? Screen brightness all the way down.

Used to get much more than this back when I first got it last year.

Thoughts?