How to solve Note 5 battery life issues

[AC Question]

I have had my note 5 for almost a year and the battery life has dropped a lot. I am now aware that using fast charge drains the battery life. I wish I knew that when I got it bc I have been using fast charge setting to charge only. I have stopped using fast charge. How else do I improve battery performance? I really wish the battery was not built in. Once the battery perfomance drops how long until the phone goes out completely?

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Well my Note 5, when running correctly, gets about 5 hours SOT and about 16 hours average life.

I'm also bad not to close Chrome tabs, sometimes the number of my tabs is a plus sign. That equals more than 99

 

[B. Diddy]

Keeping the Apps. suspended in memory I can't imagine that would be a big battery drain but keeping them active in memory could very well be a drain on battery.

Wouldn't that depend on whether or not the app was designed to run a background service? My understanding is that a properly coded app that doesn't run in the background is supposed to suspended. So only an app that's running a background service (or one that is malfunctioning or poorly coded) would be draining battery when it's not in the foreground.

I'm actually asking this out of curiosity myself, because my understanding of how apps and services work is still relatively basic.

 

[GRIMWALD]

All good questions and normally I would side with Ms.Kearns but I am no longer as current as I once was.
The note 5 has had questionable memory practices from the start. When it first was introduced, the Note was invariably compared to the vegetable phone. The note 5 came up lacking because it would only suspend a limited number of Aps. before it began dropping them. They have since corrected the issue but I don't remember if they ever released how they fixed the Ram memory loss.
This is why I feel it falls into a gray area.
Are the Apps. being suspended and still active or have they done something different?
I don't know the answers but there were definite differences in battery life before and after.

GRIM

 

[mru007]

Fast charging should not be having any direct impact on the battery as you think. I am using fast charging mode since more than a year now on my Note 4, but battery life has not degraded at all.

Let's try to rectify your Note 5 battery issue:

First, check for any rogue app via battery usage stats that may be consuming battery of your phone. Uninstall these apps (obviously).
If you have installed any apps other than those from the Play Store, watch out for these too.

Secondly, perform a 'Wipe Cache Partition' from Recovery menu.

After this, go for a complete battery calibration cycle. For this, switch off the 'Fast charge' mode. Visit the following link to know the exact steps for battery calibration. (It is not recommended to do this often, but try this once on your Note 5 in 'normal charge' mode):

https://www.androidpit.com/how-to-calibrate-the-battery-on-your-android-device

 

[Kelly Kearns]

All good questions and normally I would side with Ms.Kearns but I am no longer as current as I once was.
The note 5 has had questionable memory practices from the start. When it first was introduced, the Note was invariably compared to the vegetable phone. The note 5 came up lacking because it would only suspend a limited number of Aps. before it began dropping them. They have since corrected the issue but I don't remember if they ever released how they fixed the Ram memory loss.
This is why I feel it falls into a gray area.
Are the Apps. being suspended and still active or have they done something different?
I don't know the answers but there were definite differences in battery life before and after.

GRIM

I do know that many of my apps will reload when I go back to them, not always but a lot. Samsung kicks stuff out of memory a lot, that is their over aggressive RAM management. It is irritating sometimes but one reason I never worry about my RAM these days.

Now back in my Note 2 and S3 days.. Oh yeah, I was having to clean out my RAM and close all apps all the time. I had a widget to clean out my RAM.

The thing with apps, some work in the background a lot even if not open. Facebook is one, especially for me, since I'm on the beta. I can not open it and it will be high on my battery. Long ago I got Greenify to deal with those apps. I hibernate them again after I'm done. They do the same open or closed because they do a lot in the background now.

 

[B. Diddy]

The thing with apps, some work in the background a lot even if not open. Facebook is one, especially for me

I consider Facebook part of the "poorly coded" group that I mentioned above.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

I consider Facebook part of the "poorly coded" group that I mentioned above.

Yeah it can do a lot, especially the beta. I was alpha testing for a while, that is only for those not faint of heart.. I lasted two weeks.

But normally, it doesn't eat up a lot of my battery, unless it is a new update and something is really messed up.