Honest battery evaluation

**nickf126** · 09-15-2012, 12:03 PM

I am in the market for a GSIII, and I have a question about the battery. In the review AC gives it good marks, but I am interested in real world users.
I live in the NY metro area, and always have LTE. I consider myself a medium user, maybe 5-10 calls per day, 10-20 texts, 25 emails, 10-15 minutes of web surfing, no facebook. Anyone with a similar usage pattern care to share their battery condition?
**Almost forgot to ask--does Foxfi work with the GSIII?
Thanks.

**jbomb11** · 09-15-2012, 02:04 PM

Nick I came from the nexus rooted rommed and loved it at the time. But even after customizing the nexus in my opinion it can't hold a candle to this phone. I'm Rochester ny with constant 4g and I get 12+ hours a day easily. If your looking for great battery life and an awesome phone the s3 is it.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

**Jeremyg729** · 09-15-2012, 03:25 PM

I installed an app called Juice Defender (or something to that effect) and with heavy use, 30+ texts a day receive and send, 10 phone calls minimum, major tweeting/instagram/facebooking, major e-mail usage for work, and internet usage calendar, and music usage get approximately 10/11 hours on 4G

**tech_fan** · 09-15-2012, 06:24 PM

I came from an Iphone which I could stay on for the entire day. I use facebook and send about 3000 texts per month. I am also on the phone periodically. When I first got the phone I thought that the battery life stunk. I then decided to try Juice Defender and saw an improvement. I then decided to download and purchase Juice Defender Ultimate. So far today. I have streamed music for about 30 mins. Sent out about 100 texts. Received about 15 emails and replied to about 5. I was also on a phone call for about 30 minutes and I still have 56% left and I took it off charge about 10 hours ago. Without Juice Defender, it would be in the Red by now.

Actually, about a week ago, I ran into an emergency situation about this time last Saturday. I had used the phone to stream audio for about 30 minutes and was on the phone for about 15 minutes that day. I think I sent and received about 20 texts and I had about 10% left on the phone. I had to quickly plug it into my cars cigarette adapter to charge it. This was before the Juice Defender.

**tony477g** · 09-15-2012, 10:36 PM

Im starting to think either some have defective batteries or theres something up with the phones. My 16 gb version lasted about 6-8 hours before i had to plug it in. And that was with no widgets, brightness all the way down, and not using the phone unless for emergencies. I took and uploaded one picture to facebook. Called and texted one person and pretty much that was it. Now i did not try turning on power saver though. With my 32 gb however, Ive listend to about 2 hours of music. Played about 3-4 games for maybe 30 minutes? Was on 4g for a good while. Texted plenty, called one person. Brightness is on auto. Youtube watched one video. Looked up a couple of things on the internet and play store. I do have the power saver on and it does make the apps a bit laggy but im at 39% with 10 hours and 30 minutes to go. Heres the picture i took with the old phone, ill upload with the new one once ive made it to the same percentage

**Bond32** · 09-15-2012, 10:50 PM

Are you in a low signal area? That is usually the cause of high signal standby. I know when I am in classrooms that are deep in a building my signal decreases significantly and my battery life drops.

**tony477g** · 09-15-2012, 10:54 PM

Originally Posted by Bond32

Are you in a low signal area? That is usually the cause of high signal standby. I know when I am in classrooms that are deep in a building my signal decreases significantly and my battery life drops.

I dont think so, usually at school i have pretty good signal unless im in the auditorium, which i wasnt that day.

**tony477g** · 09-16-2012, 10:45 AM

Heres the newest one

**leroybrute** · 09-16-2012, 01:31 PM

I personally believe some battery issues come with signal strength. I live less than 2 miles from a 4g tower and i have 4 phones to compare signals. 2 SGS3's 1 Razr Maxx, and 1 Rezound. The Rezound db's are -78 to -83, the Maxx -85 to -88, and both the S3's run between -95 to -112 ( S3 jumps around alot). None match the Maxx obviously in the battery department. One thing I have noticed is as long as the S3 is not on twitter, facebook, or the web it gets great battery life. Once we get on the web you can watch the battery drain. I was on twitter lasy night for an hour and it dropped from 100% to 54%, that is 46% in 1 hour. My sons S3 used 39%. My wifes Rezound used 24%. My daughter's Maxx wasn't here so didn't test it, no comparison anyways.
My take is the S3 needs radio update's. Other wise the best smart phone in Verizons lineup in my opinion.

**nickf126** · 09-16-2012, 03:57 PM

Originally Posted by tony477g

Heres the newest one

Is that on LTE?

**Bond32** · 09-16-2012, 04:05 PM

Originally Posted by leroybrute

My take is the S3 needs radio update's. Other wise the best smart phone in Verizons lineup in my opinion.

This. I agree. I actually had signal issues in the gym here on my campus where I had zero issues with the droid razr. I was pretty let down as I was hoping (and in denial) that Samsung had improved on their radios. I was wrong. In identical places where I never had issues texting, not using data, the S3 seemed to loose signal completely and texts would fail. I returned to the store to get another one promptly.
Now here is something interesting, and I can post a picture when I get back to my apartment. I noticed on my first S3 purchased from the store just the basic, blue box. On the one I got yesterday I noticed a small sticker on the outside and inside in the bottom corner that says "updated". My first thought was maybe they have updated the software to that latest update that removed the universal search, but when I was setting the phone up it started to update itself. So my theory and thinking is the possibility of a small hardware revision? With my newest S3 I haven't had any signal issues, knock on wood, but I will be able to evaluate it better this week when I am in the class rooms.

Not to get off topic, those times I lost cell signal My battery would DRASTICALLY plummet. I was very surprised considering how stoked I am with the battery life. Those times I lost signal I would check the usage and cell standby was always highest which makes me think it is having issues getting a strong signal. To the OP, you say you live in NYC so the low cell signal will likely not be an issue. With your posted usage I'm sure you will have no issues at all getting more than a full days use out of it. Also FoxFi does work, rather well I might add. You can even get a switch widget from the market (most all work) to turn on the hotspot and that also works. I still use FoxFi but just something to play with if you're interested.

**anthony1117** · 09-16-2012, 04:10 PM

I live in Albany Ny. 4G all the time and I do quite a bit of tweeting and Facebook checking. Web browsing. Lots of texts and music listening. Easily get a day out of this. phone. The battery life is amazing!!

---------- Post Merged at 05:10 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 05:10 PM ----------

I live in Albany Ny. 4G all the time and I do quite a bit of tweeting and Facebook checking. Web browsing. Lots of texts and music listening. Easily get a day out of this. phone. The battery life is amazing!!

**Bond32** · 09-16-2012, 04:16 PM

Depending on how the S3 performs in identical conditions as last week, I may consider dropping it to 3G or using wifi to see if that corrects this issue. I think since the texts were failing that the data connection is irrelevant. Regardless I will give it a try and post back here if anyone is interested.

I see a lot of people commenting on battery life, but there are so many variables. I think it is important to keep as many things constant as possible. To me this is a good test considering I sit in the exact same spot M-F and I know very well how the Droid RAZR performed.

**leroybrute** · 09-16-2012, 05:09 PM

That is why it's nice to have several phones to test against. I am confident that if the signal on my S3 was as strong as the signal on my Maxx and my Rezound I would have great battery life.

**davidnc** · 09-16-2012, 05:17 PM

I get great battery life on the S3. I dont get as many calls as the OP does but I get more SMS,emails and web surf more. I also use tweetcaster,and tapatalk though the day. I am mainly on WiFi's ,my battery life avg for the S3 is 30 hrs. I live in a good 4g area but my work place is not in a strong 4g area.But as mentioned I am mainly on WiFi especially when in the work area.

edit:
I do keep my brightness kinda low but not so low I have to struggle seeing .
I also have the browser sett on a lower brightness settings , by default the browser brightness setting is different then the brightness settings on the phone.I had overlooked that feature,its a seperate setting in the browser you can adjust.

**Bond32** · 09-16-2012, 05:23 PM

I should also note that my S3 is stock unrooted. The droid razr was rooted but on stock OTA. When you start changing roms/kernels that becomes another variable that for purposes of finding the solution for the best battery life, isn't ideal.

**tony477g** · 09-16-2012, 10:25 PM

Originally Posted by nickf126

Is that on LTE?

Partial of the day it was.

**DrPreeth** · 09-17-2012, 05:05 PM

Originally Posted by nickf126

I am in the market for a GSIII, and I have a question about the battery. In the review AC gives it good marks, but I am interested in real world users.
I live in the NY metro area, and always have LTE. I consider myself a medium user, maybe 5-10 calls per day, 10-20 texts, 25 emails, 10-15 minutes of web surfing, no facebook. Anyone with a similar usage pattern care to share their battery condition?
**Almost forgot to ask--does Foxfi work with the GSIII?
Thanks.

I did this over the course of two days pretty much..no calls though..and i managed to get nearly 48 hours of battery life

. Although this was on wifi with some hours being on 3G/LTE. I am gonna run another test starting today with just LTE being on all the time.

**tony477g** · 09-17-2012, 05:12 PM

After 9 hours and 30 minutes my phone is about to die. I did realize I had almost no service today, about 2 bars for most of the day. I hardly even used it today. The radio definitely wastes a lot of the battery

**Bond32** · 09-17-2012, 05:23 PM

Originally Posted by tony477g

After 9 hours and 30 minutes my phone is about to die. I did realize I had almost no service today, about 2 bars for most of the day. I hardly even used it today. The radio definitely wastes a lot of the battery

Have you tried juice defender? It will turn the data radios off when the screen is off which may be just what you need.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

**tony477g** · 09-17-2012, 05:28 PM

Originally Posted by Bond32

Have you tried juice defender? It will turn the data radios off when the screen is off which may be just what you need.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

Ive been testing, When im in good serviced spots it really doesnt matter, today i tested with juice defender off, tomorrow ill turn it on and see what happens

**HalizDad** · 09-17-2012, 05:28 PM

I just got mine...did a full charge on it, and am currently trying to kill it. Surfing, downloading apps, streaming audio via Pandora and watching clips on NFL Mobile...5 hrs in and at 68%. I AM on Wifi though. I would have murdered it 3 times by now using the Nexus I ditched at 10am MST.

**tony477g** · 09-17-2012, 05:34 PM

Originally Posted by HalizDad

I just got mine...did a full charge on it, and am currently trying to kill it. Surfing, downloading apps, streaming audio via Pandora and watching clips on NFL Mobile...5 hrs in and at 68%. I AM on Wifi though. I would have murdered it 3 times by now using the Nexus I ditched at 10am MST.

If you use wifi and have good service the battery will last you a long time. The other day I tried killing it and right when i stopped using it the phone lost little to no battery.

**HalizDad** · 09-17-2012, 05:54 PM

I'm seriously amazed...this is like my OG EVO4G with an extended battery...I've been off and on from wifi and 4G thanks to a downloaded toggle also...just wanted to throw that out there.

**frankles42** · 09-17-2012, 06:16 PM

i was in manhattan for three months this summer when i got my s3, and i have to say the battery is top notch. before i got the s3 i was using a droid charge and i would have to constantly toggle the data connection on and off whenever i got on a subway just to make sure i would get to 6pm for the train ride home, since going underground into a subway station would kill my signal and have the phone start scrambling for something to connect to. i usually had a lte signal when i was in manhattan, but on the 48th floor of my office in LIC i would usually get stuck to 3g and it was still fine.

with the s3 i was free to leave it alone and would consistently get back to my apartment at midnight and still have at least some juice left.

i did have problems with my battery when i started to sync exchange with the touchdown email client, where my battery would be close to dead by 5-6pm usually, but i uninstalled the app and it seems to have gone back to normal, and i easily get a working day out of it. i'm back in atlanta now and i usually have a lte signal unless im in the auditorium at school, where it drops to 3g most of the time.

i will say that both my wife and i (she also has a s3) have some odd dead spots for reception in our apartment (including dropped calls and everything), where as with the old phones (charge and fascinate) we had none at all. reception is top notch everywhere else though.