Note 3: Interesting discovery regarding battery drain...

FBA

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I have 2 Note 3's; both had great battery life, once upon a time. Now, battery life is far worse, on both. I went nuts for months trying to figure out what the issue was - installing Wakelock detector, and Gsam Battery monitor. I couldn't see anything unusual in either app, until I looked a bit more carefully.

Gasm reports battery drain from screen usage in wake and sleep states. I noticed yesterday that the screen OFF state reported the screen draining battery at a rate of more than screen ON. It was like 18% vs 12% screen OFF /screen ON. That gave me a clue -

To test, I set my home and lock screen to one of the Samsung stock wallpapers. It weighs in at about 30K at exactly 1080 x 1920 pixels. My overnight drain in night mode went from 15% to 1% (WiFi OFF, Mobile data OFF, Bluetooth OFF, GPS OFF, Sync OFF, Phone radio ON)

My previous wallpaper was a black homemade wallpaper, which I made by covering the camera lens and snapping a picture (fast and easy). That weighed in at 2.3 MB and 13 megapixels, with a screen size much, much larger than 1080 x 1920. It was killing my battery, creating wake states with the screen off and eating even more battery with the screen on. I had no clue.

I opened Windows Paint, created a simple black screen using the fill tool and made it exactly 1080 x 1920. It weighs in at 30K. It now drains like the stock Samsung wallpaper does.

I believe that many people use the camera to take pictures and use those pictures as home and lock screens. There are also a number of people reporting poor battery life on their Note 3's. I wonder if those people are having the same issues as I had, not realizing why?
 
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anon(7481370)

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Re: Interesting discovery regarding battery drain...

Wow, nice find. I will try this out and see of it increases my battery life.

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steve short

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Re: Interesting discovery regarding battery drain...

Just tried it and your right. My wallpaper was a whopping 11mb. Nice find. This should be stickied.

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nizmoz

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Re: Interesting discovery regarding battery drain...

Why would wallpaper that is not live cause this?

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anote3fan

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Re: Interesting discovery regarding battery drain...

I agree.

My previous wallpaper was the Ultra HD Live Planet.. and it sucked the battery like crazy.
 

Alain_A

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Re: Interesting discovery regarding battery drain...

I have 2 Note 3's; both had great battery life, once upon a time. Now, battery life is far worse, on both. I went nuts for months trying to figure out what the issue was - installing Wakelock detector, and Gsam Battery monitor. I couldn't see anything unusual in either app, until I looked a bit more carefully.

Gasm reports battery drain from screen usage in wake and sleep states. I noticed yesterday that the screen OFF state reported the screen draining battery at a rate of more than screen ON. It was like 18% vs 12% screen OFF /screen ON. That gave me a clue -

To test, I set my home and lock screen to one of the Samsung stock wallpapers. It weighs in at about 30K at exactly 1080 x 1920 pixels. My overnight drain in night mode went from 15% to 1% (WiFi OFF, Mobile data OFF, Bluetooth OFF, GPS OFF, Sync OFF, Phone radio ON)

My previous wallpaper was a black homemade wallpaper, which I made by covering the camera lens and snapping a picture (fast and easy). That weighed in at 2.3 MB and 13 megapixels, with a screen size much, much larger than 1080 x 1920. It was killing my battery, creating wake states with the screen off and eating even more battery with the screen on. I had no clue.

I opened Windows Paint, created a simple black screen using the fill tool and made it exactly 1080 x 1920. It weighs in at 30K. It now drains like the stock Samsung wallpaper does.

I believe that many people use the camera to take pictures and use those pictures as home and lock screens. There are also a number of people reporting poor battery life on their Note 3's. I wonder if those people are having the same issues as I had, not realizing why?


Can you post a snapshop of this???
 

FBA

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Re: Interesting discovery regarding battery drain...

Why would wallpaper that is not live cause this?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
I think it's probably because of the weight of the file - also, I just decided today to move the file to device storage instead of SD card storage, because I think when you specify wallpaper, it doesn't actually copy the file to the device, but just goes and gets it from the location you specified, meaning it has to work harder each time to go get it off the card; just a theory, but if I'm right, that will reduce battery consumption as well.

Next thing I did today was remove the Clock widget from my home screen. Although I didn't see any CPU useage from it, it's possible that it's one of the things causing Gsam to show battery drain from screen while the screen is off.

I don't know exactly why it changed; all I know is what I see in Gsam - and it shows that the wallpaper I was using was eating battery while the screen was off. When I changed to the stock wallpaper, battery improved dramatically. I didn't change anything else until just now.

Here's what I see now - look at "Discharge while off"

Before I made the change two days ago, I was seeing the opposite - in other words, I saw like 12% with screen on and 18% with screen OFF. Now I see 15% with screen ON and only 6% with screen OFF. That's a huge difference; enough to kill battery quicker than now.


Screenshot_2014-02-07-19-54-07.jpg

Can you post a snapshop of this???

Here's the snapshot --
 

Alain_A

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Re: Interesting discovery regarding battery drain...

I think it's probably because of the weight of the file - also, I just decided today to move the file to device storage instead of SD card storage, because I think when you specify wallpaper, it doesn't actually copy the file to the device, but just goes and gets it from the location you specified, meaning it has to work harder each time to go get it off the card; just a theory, but if I'm right, that will reduce battery consumption as well.

Next thing I did today was remove the Clock widget from my home screen. Although I didn't see any CPU useage from it, it's possible that it's one of the things causing Gsam to show battery drain from screen while the screen is off.

I don't know exactly why it changed; all I know is what I see in Gsam - and it shows that the wallpaper I was using was eating battery while the screen was off. When I changed to the stock wallpaper, battery improved dramatically. I didn't change anything else until just now.

Here's what I see now - look at "Discharge while off"

Before I made the change two days ago, I was seeing the opposite - in other words, I saw like 12% with screen on and 18% with screen OFF. Now I see 15% with screen ON and only 6% with screen OFF. That's a huge difference; enough to kill battery quicker than now.


View attachment 103863



Here's the snapshot --

even with the stock wall paper mine says on at 11% and off at 17%
 

Alain_A

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Now last night I use the back theme (photo shot) I was at 65% 6 hrs later the phone was at 56%.

Here what is on my phone




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Alain_A

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According to this it seems not that bad on battery


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FBA

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Last night, I went from 70% to 69% after 7 hours overnight. I had WiFi OFF, Mobile Data OFF and Sync OFF, but radio ON. I use timed profiles that does all that for me automatically. I had removed the clock widget and that made a big difference as well. I do not have any widgets running at all and I am now using a black wallpaper that I created in Windows Paint. It weighs only 30k.

If you had WiFi/ Mobile data ON and Sync ON, your drop in battery would be about what I would expect. If the wallpaper you're using was a picture that was taken with your camera, it's eating your battery.

I see you're using the AC forums app; I removed it because it was draining battery - because it's always on and running, waiting for notifications, even when you close it. Battery drain went down after that as well.

I see you're using TWN. Make sure you close it after use, because it will constantly update itself in background. It's also a badly written app and it eats battery. I use it, but I remove if from memory after each use.
 

Alain_A

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Twn is closed after each used.

Look at this one. I wonder if the 35/36 (or vice versa) has something to do as a % for the phone from 100% charged to 20% remaining battery state. What if that % is the sum of use for a battery cycle?
When I first look yesterday morning those number were pretty low


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cootiesboy

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@Alain

Maybe you should try turning off wifi when you're not using it and close all apps by holding on the home button before you go to sleep.
I'm using a note 2 and I have a live wallpaper running but I only lose about 1-2% overnight and sometimes I don't lose any!
 

thegame161

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@Alain

Maybe you should try turning off wifi when you're not using it and close all apps by holding on the home button before you go to sleep.
I'm using a note 2 and I have a live wallpaper running but I only lose about 1-2% overnight and sometimes I don't lose any!

1-2%? the least I've lost overnight is about 6%

I for example lost about 13% in 6 hours overnight last night...wouldn't of thought switching wifi off made much difference considering 3G takes more battery than wifi.

currently 2 hours, 15 minutes screen time
20 hours, 30 minutes

with 17% left

my normaly usage is about 4 hours screen time with 1 day total normally the average...but if i'm at home alot more than i can get between 4-5.30 screen time.

I have a weather widget on page 1
about 2 widgets on lockscreen
google widget
CBS sports scores widget on page and lockscreen
eurosport widget
walking mate widget
exercise mate widget
flipboard widget
calendar widget
 

zmann

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If the wallpaper is indeed draining the battery then that's a great find. I myself don't use pictures I take for wallpapers.. Anyway I won't start turning everything off,, turn my smartphone into a dumb phone to save battery. I charge at night and if I need to during the day I pop a fresh battery in.. Usually after 12 hours I need to. Still, good to know certain wallpapers may drain battery. Definitely a vary useful find.

THE BEAST,,NOTE 3. SIZE IS EVERYTHING!!!
 

Alain_A

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@Alain

Maybe you should try turning off wifi when you're not using it and close all apps by holding on the home button before you go to sleep.
I'm using a note 2 and I have a live wallpaper running but I only lose about 1-2% overnight and sometimes I don't lose any!

right... home button before to go to bed....I'll have to paid attention to that and see if I do it
 

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