Samsung galaxy s3 battery drain fast!

[Junior Smith1]

I think the best fix for the Samsung battery problem is to throw the phone in the trash and get an LG. Samsung has had this battery draining issue for some time. The battery is NOT the problem. And Samsung has dropped the ball. Besides. LG is way better anyway. GOODBYE SAMSUNG.

 

[jsm1963]

I'm having the same problem too and I've had my battery for over a year. I don't think it's a coincidence that we're having this problem at the same time. I think our phones are just getting outdated and an app we're both using is too sophisticated for our phones. I don't know about you, but my phone is also getting very warm lately when I'm not doing anything with it. A week or so ago something like 55 apps were updated. It's been happening ever since.

 

[Matchez22]

sooooo I've had a serious draining issue on my Samsung S3 for about 3 days now. I had issues with the battery taking forever to charge .. and when it did it only reached to about 50% -56% then stopped for some reason. The phone itself functioned fine ...just the battery was giving problems.The problem seemed to start up pretty randomly .. i may have installed an app called Airdroid a couple days prior to the drainage happening.
Anyways..

Went threw a ton of cord - wall charger combinations, tried lifting up the little tab in the usb port of the phone and nothing worked. I checked out some app that are supposed to calibrate your battery.... didn't seem to do too much. I did a factory reset and still did not work for me. even disassembled the phone to see if something could be visibly burn/broken/not touching/etc. didn't catch anything .......

MY SOLUTION

what did do to get my phone back to normal though was that about 2 days ago i got a new battery( naturally i at first thought that the battery that was in my phone was bad or sumthing). I bought it from "The Source" for $45 ....i don't think its a cheap knockoff, but that's not relevant really...... the same things occurred with the new battery.... sooo it was not until yesterday that i started playing with the batteries (switching them around) while the phone was plugged in (kinda out of frustration i admit) .... but i realized that you can actually switch the battery if your quick whilst the phone is still plugged in without it turning off...after doing this ..the screen give a gave me a little notification at the bottom "blah blah blah = success" (it looks like the lil gray box that comes up to say "battery saving enabled" then fades away) .... and since that moment everything went back to normal.... i didn't get a good look at exactly what it said but yeah..

now honestly... i have no idea if this will have any negative lasting effect on the phone, but it did fix the charging problem that I faced.

 

[Anthony MENAGE]

last year like matchez22 i got also problems with a very poor battery, changing it solved the problem.

in the last week I have observed a severe battery drain for my galaxy s3 i9305, far more than it used to be (usually i manage to charge every 36 hours)
it was even discharging very much at night in plane mode, without activity...
but last night, it was not the case. did the recent updates of many apps in the last 48h fixed something ? maybe...
so I list them, just in case : (list obtained with superbackup, sort by install date)

Messenger 29.0.0.44.279, facebook 35.0.0.48.273
App google 4.7.13.16 arm
google play store 5.6.8. google docs 1.4.232.11.34
air droid 3.1.3
Flipboard 3.3.2, WhatsApp 2.12.124

second axis of improvement that I've just found today and that may help some of you :
in settings/more/Battery you can see battery stats. clicking the graphic shows it in full screen, and you see time frames when wifi/gps is really used.

even when wifi was off, i was seeing that it was actually used...despite i had disabled 'locating using wifi networks' in gps settings.
what did I forgot ? the wifi setting 'scanning always available' that is in.... advanced wifi settings, google this page 'How to Disable Google Location Wi-Fi Scanning on Android'

and now the battery graphic does not show wifi usage all day long, I can already see with battery monitor that the current discharge will last more time than this morning.

usually, to save my battery, i activate gps, 3g and wifi only when needed. some tools automatically switch them off when screen switches off.
i also use juicedefender that detects hungry apps.
using the standard samsung rom and not a custom one like cyanogen, i use a combo that puts my phone automatically in plane mode during nights : gravitybox+jellybean 4.x airplane mode helper

hope it will help some of you

 

[Myesha Shipman]

So I just bought a new galaxy s3 and after three days my battery dies like crazy and then my phone powers off at 50 percent like? And when I put on the charger trying to use it the batery still dyies

 

[bob-123]

I had exactly the same problem as described with my S3 and larger battery. Found a UTube video two days ago that described a solution and it actually worked and allowed me to go back to my original battery. The video suggested that I uncheck the sync box on my email account. I made no other changes and the difference was remarkable. As example, my phone has been on for 4 hours and charge has dropped only to 97% and it has been used. All I can say is thanks to the gent who posted that video./

 

[Nguyen Dang1]

Hey what I found out is that you might have to reflash your device it could be out of line take it to a best buy store as long one phone hasnt rooted will have service upon threw samsung for free as long it a oringal OS hope that help I am using a Samsung Galaxy s 3 on Sprint I reflash with odin software but if dont know how to used it take to best buy to geek squad

 

[Zhammy]

To all the hundreds and thousands of people who are having battery draining issues with your S3's, I too, am having the same issue.

This issue is not caused by "too many apps."
This issue is not caused by using your WiFi, Bluetooth, or GPS.
This issue is not caused by faulty batteries.
This issue IS caused by Samsung.

With the OTA update to Android version 4.3, Knox was installed, as was an updated firmware for the boot loader and the radio (WiFi, mobile data, GPS, et cetera).

The radio firmware is the culprit. It was intentionally engineered by Samsung to cause this issue in an attempt to coerce S3 users to upgrade to upcoming S5 (since the sales of the S4 were way under projections due to customers being happy with their S3's).

That is why Knox was includes in that update, to prevent the firmwares from being rolled back to a previously usable state.

I fought with my S3 for about 18 months, eventually rooting and wiping all Samsung apps, and trying many different versions of Cyanogen and Paranoid Android. I even bricked it by trying to roll the firmware back, but luckily I was able to debrick it. It IS the radio firmware that is the cause.

About 18 months ago I snagged a OnePlus One and couldn't have been happier. This phone has been problem free for me from say one.

I've held onto this phone all this time in the hopes that either Samsung would fix this, or someone would find a way to roll back to the 4.2 versions of the firmware, thus, making the phone actually useable again. So far, no one has been able to solve this problem.

This is exactly the same thing that Apple did with the iPhone 3 and IOS 4. Intentionally cripple existing hardware to increase sales. It's why I personally will never use another Apple or Samsung product period. I even took out all Samsung monitors out of my office at work.

I refuse to give a business that does this another dime of my money.

 

[Chinly Lee]

I had the same feeling. As I download more apps and use longer, the phone runs slower and the battery run fast. Then I download an app called PURIFY to manage my phone, it is much better now!

 

[lanijoka]

My S3 continues to have fluctuations in battery percentage. When it reaches 15% it wants me to connect charger and if I don't it shuts down. I know it is not the battery since after it shuts down, I can pull the battery out and install it in my wifes S3 and it show 90% + on her phone and will continue to work fine. I put it into safe mode and it still fluctuates. In safe mode today at 9:30am it was showing 3%, 11:00am 33%, 1:30pm 48%,
2:40pm 51%, 3:20pm 57%, 3:25pm 100%. Unplugged from charger and it dropped to 56%. At 3.31pm it was back to 100%, 3:38pm 82%, 3:40pm
77%, 3:45pm 68%, 3:51pm 58%, 4:00pm 53%, 4:11pm 68%, 4:21pm 78%, 4:32 85%. 4:50 93% and 5:00pm 81%. Anytime during this test, I could have pulled the battery and put it in my wifes phone and it would have read 100%. Do you think a factory reset would help? Why does my wifes phone have the 4.4.2 ver. and has no problems at all?