Galaxy s4 battery life

[radiocaf]

Hi guys, I'm hoping you can help me with this, rather than me start a new thread.

My last Android phone was a HTC Desire HD, and I couldn't see half a day until it died unless I turned Mobile Data (3G) off. Anyway, I am being super sensitive with my new Samsung GS4 and have noticed that my battery is being eaten by "mediaserver". I am to understand that this is to do with an SD Card, but I do not have an SD card in. I'm wondering if my GS4 is perhaps searching constantly for an SD Card, and that is draining the battery? If so, is there a way to turn it off? Here's some screenshots of my battery info:

I would also ask if this battery life is normal but some of you are posting over a day of battery with huge amounts of usage... Hopefully I will get there some day!

 

[dwight spencer]

radiocaf - i've not seen media server using any noticeable amount of battery on mine.

As of right now, my phone's been on battery for 15h12m, and my battery is at 67%. That's not bad, but i'd hoped for better. Major users are screen & device idle with 32% and 26% respectively. My battery was getting annihilated when I had google+ enabled, and possibly location services. If you have those on, try disabling them, and see if you get better usage. Agreed, one would think we'd be able to leave these services on, and that'll eventually be the case, but if we're troubleshooting, i think we're going to have to accept playing with some of the settings and then giving feedback on our experiences.

dfogel - i'd suggest you do the same. On my older galaxy nexus, when using gps nav, it was fairly heavy on battery. I wonder location services is activating the gps radio on the s4/android 4.2.2, and causing the drain. Try disabling those services and see how you make out.

 

[dwight spencer]

So over the last few days, i've left anything gps/location related as disabled. My battery drain still seems higher than it should be, but it's useable. I would think with a larger battery I should still have 70ish percent left at the end of the day (9am->10pm) if i'm not actively using the phone. However after about 13 hours of standby, i'm often down to 50% battery left. This, I think, is worse battery life than my galaxy nexus. Sure, this is a faster phone, but i didnt' think i'd be going down in battery life.

 

[Spartacus MD]

Wow. I thought I had average battery life but I'm getting down to 30% after 10 hours and 2 hour screen time....

Posted via Android Central App

 

[fishepa]

I took my S4 off the charger at 6:30 this morning and I'm at 68% life left. I have an hour of on screen time. Pretty average I would suppose.

 

[radiocaf]

Thanks for the tips Dwight Spencer.

The best battery life I got was yesterday, my phone managed not far over 1 day, 13 hours and 10 minutes before dying. This was with a screen on time of 2 hours and 43 minutes. The main drain was "device idle" at 14%, other than the screen (which took 52%) which was the main drain. My settings, in case anyone is interested are Air View, Smart Scroll, Bluetooth and GPS off. Everything else (Wi-Fi, Smart Screen, Air Gesture, etc) was on and not switched off at all. My screen was set for auto brightness for the most of that time too, but now I have it manually set to just over half brightness.

The mediaserver process I found to be eating a sizable chunk of my battery has now stopped, but I don't know how or why it was stopped, it just happened. It tends to take a lot of battery for around 3 minutes after you boot up the phone, and then it doesn't seem to operate at all. I did disable Google Play Music though, but this was a couple of days before I noticed mediaserver no longer eating at my battery, CPU Spy told me that a lot of the processes of mediaserver are "audioout" and "audioin" so maybe this is how the phone outputs and inputs sound?. Maps was a bad one too, even with GPS off, it would still use a lot of battery, I had to physically open Maps and turn off the setting that kept your location up to date constantly (its near the top in the settings menu in Maps.) Now it doesn't show on my battery information screen.

Right now, my battery is at 46%, with an uptime of 19 hours 48 minutes, and my screen has been on for 1 hour 15 minutes. So I guess it's all down to how much you use your phone. I know my habits have changed, I'm not so much a power user any more, as I try to consciously conserve battery life, unlike when I had my iPhone 4. I'll still use it for all that I want, but for not as long as I used to with my iPhone. I use MightyText to SMS (of which I do A LOT) to save screen on time when I am able to be on the laptop, and my facebook/internet/etc scrolling is as minimal as possible. It's a shame, the phone is possibly the best I've ever had (and I've had a lot), but I fear using it in case my battery ends up limping or dying by the time I get home and charge it again.

 

[dwight spencer]

thanks Radiocaf, good feedback.

Got about a 23 hour run with a charge, with 10% left on the battery, very little on screen time. Google Services is back as the primary battery user. I'll give your suggestion about disabling the maps/location/latitude a try, to see if that reduces usage. I think I did re-enable location services, which may be why google services came back. I had also logged out of google now, which i'm starting to miss.

here's a few screen shots of my battery usage. I wonder, should we pushing this information back to samsung or google somehow?

oops, excuse the overlay of the volume control!

 

[VinDeezhoez]

Question how did u get ur android os that low to 16% mine is at 35% cant figure out how to get it lower

 

[dwight spencer]

Question how did u get ur android os that low to 16% mine is at 35% cant figure out how to get it lower

hi vin ..

the percent usage is going to be affected by other processes that are using your battery. Others would be at 16% if they were running other services that were consuming more battery. Yours at 35% just would mean that you weren't doing much else.

radiocaf - I've found that 'device idle' can sometimes increase usage if the phone is switching data modes - lte/4g/3g, etc. When your phone is sitting at home, idle, do you have it connected to wifi, or stay on the mobile data network? Does it have good signal strength? Where I am, if my phone is at the back of my house (opposite large windows & the nearest tower), it can sometimes use a bit more power. When I leave wifi on at home, it uses less.

I turned off locations services, including "maps / location updating" that someone else mentioned in another post. My phone right now 24% left, after about 24 hours of on time. Google Services is -still- the highest user, and i still don't know what the cause is. A friend suggested i try a factory reset of the phone, and while I hate to do that - spent the last couple weeks getting it configured as i want, I may give it a try. google+ is still set to sync up, so i might try disabling that, i suppose.

here's a couple more screen captures:

 

[fantom305]

Hi guys, I'm hoping you can help me with this, rather than me start a new thread.

My last Android phone was a HTC Desire HD, and I couldn't see half a day until it died unless I turned Mobile Data (3G) off. Anyway, I am being super sensitive with my new Samsung GS4 and have noticed that my battery is being eaten by "mediaserver". I am to understand that this is to do with an SD Card, but I do not have an SD card in. I'm wondering if my GS4 is perhaps searching constantly for an SD Card, and that is draining the battery? If so, is there a way to turn it off? Here's some screenshots of my battery info:

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/4416/hdhg.jpg http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/4227/kcl7.jpg http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/4642/r5k2.jpg

I would also ask if this battery life is normal but some of you are posting over a day of battery with huge amounts of usage... Hopefully I will get there some day!

I would get rid of Power saving .....NFC........and SYNC.........

 

[dwight spencer]

Are you doing any media streaming with your phone, such as bluetooth streaming audio, or sending audio to another device? Not sure what normally "media server" represents. perhaps google music sync, though I would think that would show up as google music or google services.

 

[tytlyf]

I would look into each and every application that you use and checking out the settings. Making sure each one is tweaked to sync how you want it and the right intervals. I've been tinkering with some changes and recently got 5 hours screen time and 2 days total life. This was with auto brightness and sync on all the time. I think it would save a lot of juice to disable sync before going to bed. And additionally to manually set your screen brightness based on your location with the most use (light).
My next trial is setting the screen brightness to manual (lowest at home) and determining the best manual brightness in light. For outdoors I set the brightness slider (in the pull down) to the middle of the second 'quick square above.'
So far I'm at 8hr on bat. w/ 85% left

 

[Angelo Hoffmann]

This is a very good battery life but to make it longer hold the home button for long and then swipe on e everything until there is nothing

 

[Angelo Hoffmann]

Also turn off your Bluetooth that helps

 

[ihbsbA]

Thanks for the tips Dwight Spencer.

The best battery life I got was yesterday, my phone managed not far over 1 day, 13 hours and 10 minutes before dying. This was with a screen on time of 2 hours and 43 minutes. The main drain was "device idle" at 14%, other than the screen (which took 52%) which was the main drain. My settings, in case anyone is interested are Air View, Smart Scroll, Bluetooth and GPS off. Everything else (Wi-Fi, Smart Screen, Air Gesture, etc) was on and not switched off at all. My screen was set for auto brightness for the most of that time too, but now I have it manually set to just over half brightness.

The mediaserver process I found to be eating a sizable chunk of my battery has now stopped, but I don't know how or why it was stopped, it just happened. It tends to take a lot of battery for around 3 minutes after you boot up the phone, and then it doesn't seem to operate at all. I did disable Google Play Music though, but this was a couple of days before I noticed mediaserver no longer eating at my battery, CPU Spy told me that a lot of the processes of mediaserver are "audioout" and "audioin" so maybe this is how the phone outputs and inputs sound?. Maps was a bad one too, even with GPS off, it would still use a lot of battery, I had to physically open Maps and turn off the setting that kept your location up to date constantly (its near the top in the settings menu in Maps.) Now it doesn't show on my battery information screen.

Right now, my battery is at 46%, with an uptime of 19 hours 48 minutes, and my screen has been on for 1 hour 15 minutes. So I guess it's all down to how much you use your phone. I know my habits have changed, I'm not so much a power user any more, as I try to consciously conserve battery life, unlike when I had my iPhone 4. I'll still use it for all that I want, but for not as long as I used to with my iPhone. I use MightyText to SMS (of which I do A LOT) to save screen on time when I am able to be on the laptop, and my facebook/internet/etc scrolling is as minimal as possible. It's a shame, the phone is possibly the best I've ever had (and I've had a lot), but I fear using it in case my battery ends up limping or dying by the time I get home and charge it again.

Get an extra battery or a power pack and use your phone how you want. The battery is removable for a reason.

?Sent from my Sprint GS4 using Tapatalk ?
?? Formerly "Evo_girl"

 

[Almeuit]

hi vin ..

the percent usage is going to be affected by other processes that are using your battery. Others would be at 16% if they were running other services that were consuming more battery. Yours at 35% just would mean that you weren't doing much else.

radiocaf - I've found that 'device idle' can sometimes increase usage if the phone is switching data modes - lte/4g/3g, etc. When your phone is sitting at home, idle, do you have it connected to wifi, or stay on the mobile data network? Does it have good signal strength? Where I am, if my phone is at the back of my house (opposite large windows & the nearest tower), it can sometimes use a bit more power. When I leave wifi on at home, it uses less.

I turned off locations services, including "maps / location updating" that someone else mentioned in another post. My phone right now 24% left, after about 24 hours of on time. Google Services is -still- the highest user, and i still don't know what the cause is. A friend suggested i try a factory reset of the phone, and while I hate to do that - spent the last couple weeks getting it configured as i want, I may give it a try. google+ is still set to sync up, so i might try disabling that, i suppose.

here's a couple more screen captures:

Do you have syncs on? It looks like you barley picked the phone up since the screen time is slow... So it would make sense that the biggest above all drain was the few syncs since nothing else was draining the battery.

Sent from my Sprint HTC One using AC forums.

 

[Beno4]

Do you drain your battery below 3% ever?

If I drain the phone so much that it turns off will the battery calibrate or something? looking forward to your answer

 

[Christopher Congdon]

Galaxy s4 extended battery life terrible?

I just got an extended 5200mah battery but it seems it's doing terrible. Not sure tho. Attached some screens from total usage yesterday. And today I'm already down to 92 percent after being on for 25

 

[fishepa]

Re: Galaxy s4 extended battery life terrible?

Almost 7 hours of on screen time is pretty good.

 

[Christopher Congdon]

Re: Galaxy s4 extended battery life terrible?

This is not stock battery tho. Is this acceptable for an extended 5200mah battery?