[Help][50% SOLVED] LTE = random heavy battery drain aka "plummet"

[KreepyKen]

It was like the second I took my phone off the charger, it went down hill fast. Today I haven't gotten great battery, just about 9 hours, but I've also been in a lot of bad signal area today and I have removed the PIN and the commander case.

Here is my battery graph for the plummet.

Looks like the glitch happened before you unplugged it and it started draining immediately. Bad signal will drain it faster, but RF signal is not a constant...it moves around and the strength rises and falls throughout the day. So I'd expect if this drain was due to bad signal, it wouldn't be such a constant drop, but it would level off a bit every now and then as the signal improved. [Edit: Whoops. Didn't see the second picture before...that is how I would expect it to look with bad signal, so it could be either problem, or a combination of both.]

Was this a one-time event? Did you try recharging and restarting the phone to see if it acts differently? And the Commander is plastic, isn't it? That shouldn't affect RF propagation at all. Metal will, but plastic won't (which is why I prefer plastic phones over metal ones like the iPhone).

Let us know how your phone fares with the changes.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Mine is with wifi off, I rarely use wifi, just a short time today and my plummet was a night, no wifi on or anything, but I'm in an LTE area.

 

[KreepyKen]

Mine is with wifi off, I rarely use wifi, just a short time today and my plummet was a night, no wifi on or anything, but I'm in an LTE area.

Yours might be a bad battery, then. Do you ever experience the plummet at some point AFTER you stop charging it? With mine, I unplug it from the car when I get to work at 6:30, walk into the office, connect to wifi, then put my phone down. I often work in another part of the building (where cell phones are not allowed), so I stop back every once in a while to check for email and whatnot. For me, battery life will be great until around 10 or 11 am, then starts falling fast. Have you had something like that happen with WiFi OFF?

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Looks like the glitch happened before you unplugged it and it started draining immediately. Bad signal will drain it faster, but RF signal is not a constant...it moves around and the strength rises and falls throughout the day. So I'd expect if this drain was due to bad signal, it wouldn't be such a constant drop, but it would level off a bit every now and then as the signal improved.

Was this a one-time event? Did you try recharging and restarting the phone to see if it acts differently? And the Commander is plastic, isn't it? That shouldn't affect RF propagation at all. Metal will, but plastic won't (which is why I prefer plastic phones over metal ones like the iPhone).

Let us know how your phone fares with the changes.

Yeah the case is a plastic one and also my signal at home isn't great, 2-3 bars, but I have still been getting about 18-19 hours at home with about 6 hours of screen time. Today when I had charged last night, my charge never got to "100%" only 99% but I'm also thinking there is an issue with the cord that came with my phone, it takes forever to charge my phone, HOURS. I switched just the cord and am using my Captivate cord and the S3 plug and that charges it quickly.

Also, twice last week, with the cord that came with the box, I was playing a game that drains the battery, it beeped, I plugged up my phone and continued playing and my phone still went dead after about 30 mins of play after it told me my battery was getting low.

 

[KreepyKen]

Yeah the case is a plastic one and also my signal at home isn't great, 2-3 bars, but I have still been getting about 18-19 hours at home with about 6 hours of screen time. Today when I had charged last night, my charge never got to "100%" only 99% but I'm also thinking there is an issue with the cord that came with my phone, it takes forever to charge my phone, HOURS. I switched just the cord and am using my Captivate cord and the S3 plug and that charges it quickly.

Also, twice last week, with the cord that came with the box, I was playing a game that drains the battery, it beeped, I plugged up my phone and continued playing and my phone still went dead after about 30 mins of play after it told me my battery was getting low.

Yeah, that sounds more like a problem with the battery or the charger. I think the fastest battery draining app I have is Hex Defense, and if I plug in the phone while playing, it still charges. And my phone never takes more than 1.5 to 2 hours to charge fully.

I can't wait until they start rolling out the wireless charging where you only have to be close, not touching. Get a bunch of the chargers and put them everywhere so the phone is always charging.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Yours might be a bad battery, then. Do you ever experience the plummet at some point AFTER you stop charging it? With mine, I unplug it from the car when I get to work at 6:30, walk into the office, connect to wifi, then put my phone down. I often work in another part of the building (where cell phones are not allowed), so I stop back every once in a while to check for email and whatnot. For me, battery life will be great until around 10 or 11 am, then starts falling fast. Have you had something like that happen with WiFi OFF?

Night before last was the first plummet I had and then today, my battery use wasn't great, but it looks like I started a fast drop when I was getting bad signal, which is normal and then a fast drop again the short time I had wifi on and was connected to wifi.

My battery status reports "good" with dialing *#*#4636#*#* but it might be "good" as in "good enough" so they are sending me another battery and said if that doesn't help then take it to a AT&T tech store and have them flash it and if that doesn't work, then I'll trade the phone in.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Look at the menus under *#*#4636#*#* under "Device" and there is a "turn on LTE ram dump" listed. Wonder what that is?

 

[jeffreii]

This issue isn't about poor battery performance. There is a sudden rapid decrease in battery % that gets triggered by something, but no one can figure out what that trigger is. I think what we can all agree on is that it always happens in an LTE area when Wifi is turned on & connected. On the surface, this doesn't make sense. If you connect to wifi, the phone will automatically turn off mobile data. But this plummet doesn't happen in non-LTE areas. The phone should be ignoring the LTE, but it only happens when LTE is present. So I believe that some process kicks in and the phone gets confused on whether it should be using Wifi or LTE. I think it's trying to access/find the LTE tower, but since mobile data is turned off, it won't find it...so it just sits there spinning away looking for something it will never find...draining the battery in the process.

The problem is not with the battery, as I've had it happen with both my batteries (one of which was brand new). There are a number of screenshots in this thread that will show you what the plummet looks like. It's got to be a glitch of some sort. Another thing to point out is that when the plummet does not happen, either screen or standby is the #1 battery user. But when the plummet occurs, it's the Android System (kernel). So the kernel is freaking out about something related to LTE + WiFi. Other than that, no one can figure out what causes it.

Mine started suddenly after about 3 months of flawless operation. I'm going to try switching my lock screen from PIN back to Pattern and see if that makes a difference.

FYI my original testing found the plummet occurred even with WIFI disabled the entire time.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

I'm turning my LTE off and after this charge is done, going to see if that makes a difference.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Turned off LTE and now at about 7 mins on battery, this is what I have - 100% and it is never at 100% that long. Also, I'm getting "green" in my signal bar.

 

[jeffreii]

Turned off LTE and now at about 7 mins on battery, this is what I have - 100% and it is never at 100% that long. Also, I'm getting "green" in my signal bar.

Haha 7 minutes is a bit small of a sample size but good start!

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Oh it usually drops at least 1% right away and I never had green in my signal bar, but I have 6 hours later lol.

 

[jeffreii]

Oh it usually drops at least 1% right away and I never had green in my signal bar, but I have 6 hours later lol.

Yeah the mobile network signal bar has long been a mystery to me. It doesn't make much sense at all with LTE enabled...as if the phone cannot track it properly. I tried to find some correlation between the randomness of that bar and the plummet occurring but never made any connections.

FYI when your phone charges, it stops somewhere around 97-100% to prevent over-charging. That's why you see it drop immediately when you unplug it...it shows you 100% because it's done charging, but it actually rarely gets to 100%. If you really want a strong charge you can unplug it and then plug it back in and wait until it says it's charged again. Then you'll really be at 100% though it might not be best for your battery...but hardly a problem every now and then. I do this before traveling or long days etc.

 

[Doug Fitton]

Anyone who can help diagnose the cause of this would be my hero. Please read carefully the evidence I already have.

Scenario:
Battery life is great for awhile and then suddenly it will start plummeting for no good reason. It will continue to do so, even if the screen is off and the phone is unused with all tasks closed. It will not stop dropping fast unless I reboot it. Then battery life returns to normal/excellent..a day or so later it starts dropping fast again.

Things I've tried:
-Factory reset - reinstall only most common apps
-Exchanged the device at AT&T - same result
-Monitored with GSAM (Badass) Battery Monitor and Better Battery Stats. No culprit found.

Important notes:
-As per attached screenshot*, I have tested ways to stop the drain without a reboot. Turning off wifi does nothing. Turning off mobile data does nothing. Turning off the radio (airplane mode) is the only way to stop it - but once I turn airplane mode off, it continues to drop quickly. Only a reboot is a working temporary fix.
-The phone itself is reporting the "cell standby" as the major culprit. I am not sure if this is inflated due to the known bug in reporting that data.
-There is something quirky with the "mobile network signal" bar - I am in Miami where signal is strong almost everywhere. The steep decline occurs even at my apartment where I always have 4 or 5 bars of LTE signal. I am almost never in any area where there is no signal, despite what the line indicates.

Attached screenshots:
1 & 2) good battery life followed by a sudden and steep decline
3) the subsequent "test" listed in note # 1 above with the resulting plateau achieved by turning on airplane mode with the drop continuing when airplane mode was disabled
4 & 5) I then charged the device to full overnight and unplugged it in the morning. I let it sit unused for about 2 hours and the battery dropped 25%.
6 & 7) these screenshots are from normal excellent battery life scenario where the "plummeting" battery did not occur

Thank you so much for any help.

I bought a back up battery like i always do and i have yet to use it

 

[Archienj7]

This issue isn't about poor battery performance. There is a sudden rapid decrease in battery % that gets triggered by something, but no one can figure out what that trigger is. I think what we can all agree on is that it always happens in an LTE area when Wifi is turned on & connected. On the surface, this doesn't make sense. If you connect to wifi, the phone will automatically turn off mobile data. But this plummet doesn't happen in non-LTE areas. The phone should be ignoring the LTE, but it only happens when LTE is present. So I believe that some process kicks in and the phone gets confused on whether it should be using Wifi or LTE. I think it's trying to access/find the LTE tower, but since mobile data is turned off, it won't find it...so it just sits there spinning away looking for something it will never find...draining the battery in the process.

The problem is not with the battery, as I've had it happen with both my batteries (one of which was brand new). There are a number of screenshots in this thread that will show you what the plummet looks like. It's got to be a glitch of some sort. Another thing to point out is that when the plummet does not happen, either screen or standby is the #1 battery user. But when the plummet occurs, it's the Android System (kernel). So the kernel is freaking out about something related to LTE + WiFi. Other than that, no one can figure out what causes it.

Mine started suddenly after about 3 months of flawless operation. I'm going to try switching my lock screen from PIN back to Pattern and see if that makes a difference.

I'm lucky/unlucky enough to not have LTE here so I haven't encountered it yet. My bad.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

So I added another APN and turned LTE on when I was out with a good LTE signal today and have had it on at home also tonight. My battery is doing well, so I'm wondering if there was a problem out here. There was a problem last week, I reported low speeds and they did find a problem and corrected it. So now I'm wondering if the problem acted up again the other night. Not a lot of screen time this time, only about an hour, but I still have 37% battery and I've been on battery 21 hours.

 

[Alex Franco]

5 JANUARY 2013 UPDATE
Subsequent to my original reply below, I have since been able to confirm that I have the same issue as is being discussed here and it was not a hardware problem as I originally thought. I have updated my postings in the thread below accordingly.

ORIGINAL REPLY
I?ve experienced idle battery drain issues similar to those being discussed here, and in my case the problem turned out to be tied to the phone hardware itself. I simultaneously ran two identically configured Galaxy S3s and one exhibited battery ?plummet? a majority of the time while the other exhibited it very rarely. If you?re constantly haunted by battery plummet on an idle phone, check out my post and let me know if you?re experiencing the same symptoms:

Galaxy S3 Idle Battery Drain of 6% Per Hour Should Be 1% Per Hour

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Got my new battery, in fact they sent me 2

This is my new battery usage, have LTE on and about 5 hours of screen time.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Another thing I did, took my phone to an AT&T Device Support Center and had them just flash JB in my phone., They did a reset and flashed the new software and battery is back to normal and I'm not turning LTE off anymore.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Android Central Forums

 

[meenas9]

Also experiencing similar issues with my ATT GS3. Gets really hot (96F), and battery has been draining much faster than normal. (ie. Went from 50% to 30% in just over an hour, while in my pocket...no apps running in task manager...nearly burnt my leg it was so hot!!)
Had this phone since July, battery has always been inferior to my bb...but this last one week has been unexplainable!!

I have not rooted this device, nor have I upgraded to JB.
I will try a new battery. But any other input would be appreciated!



Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Android Central Forums