Note 5 Battery life thread

[MikeekiM]

I picked up my phone from the charger this morning at 6am and have purposely kept it away from the charger all day long...

With light/moderate use, my battery is now at 61% (it is 4pm now...10 hours later). Admittedly, I have not used the phone much today...

I am optimistic that with the Adaptive Charging, that the Note 5 will largely meet my needs. Supposedly the adaptive charging goes from 0%-50% in 30 minutes, and to 100% in a little over an hour... That means that if you stop by a coffee shop or a restaurant for lunch, and they have an AC outlet available, you can be at 50%-100% while you eat or have you cup of coffee... Not bad, right?

My main issue is that I like to use my phone as my main (and only) camera...when I am on a personal or business trip, I sometimes take 100 photos in the span of 30-60 minutes. With that use case, the battery burns down pretty quickly, and usually I am not near an AC outlet in those situations... I'll need to get a portable battery that supports adaptive charging. Samsung has one, but it's pretty pricey...their website shows it as going for $69.99 when it releases...

I am at 12 hours now, and my battery is at 56%... Again, admittedly it is a light usage day... I'll need to do the same test with a moderate and heavy usage... Based on other reviews, I have heard that the "screen on time" is more like 4 hours...

One more update before I turn in for the evening... It's nearly 11pm here, my Note 5 has been running for nearly 17 hours and my battery level reads 38%. As mentioned earlier, I am going to need to do a similar test on a moderate or heavy use day... But this test has proven to me that this phone will likely go 24 hours on a single charge with light use...

 

[m3lover1]

Kelly, do you also have greenify or only shutapp?

 

[getbretweir]

I know about Doze, but can somebody tell me if Permissions will affect battery life once M is released? I assume if Twitter, Facebook, etc isn't granted permissions, there will be less things running in the background, thus improving performance and battery life.

Is that assumption accurate, or is there something I'm missing? I'm not expecting anybody to quantify it, but curious if that will positively impact battery life specifically.

 

[TheMatrix31]

The less you lose while sleeping, is an indication the phone goes into a deep sleep when it is not being used. That is good on battery. My N4 can lose only about 1% maybe 2% and I joke it doesn't sleep, but goes into a coma. It is an exception.

Now as far as the charger, you are fine leaving it overnight. When it gets "full" it will stop charging and won't kick in and start charging again unless you lose a certain amount of battery. So there are points that it is on the charger and it isn't really charging. To see how much your phone is sleeping, it would be good to charge it right before you go to sleep, take it off the charger and then see what you lose at night. Let's see if it is going into a deep sleep and of something is waking the phone. Your phone can wake without the phone screen coming on. Your phone not going into a deep sleep can be the thing that will eat up your battery.

I'll have to try that if I ever regress and have issues. Right now I'm pretty good. Had a pretty light use day. No driving to work streaming music or baseball or anything. Used 59% in 13 hours thus far. Screen ontime is 2:10 and has accounted for 19% of use according to GSam. Phone Radio and WiFi active are both the same as my total battery use. I've had my wifi on all day and have been home for the vast majority, but I have "Keep Wifi on During Sleep" only when plugged in which it hasn't been for 13 hours. Is there a setting for deep sleep that I need to set so the Wifi Active isn't as high as the total battery or am I not reading that stat properly?

Weird thing I've been noticing is how much % Swiftkey has used. According to the App Usage panel on Gsam, Swiftkey accounts for 2.6% of my use. That's more than Google Services, Gogle App, Twitter, Textra, etc. It's only behind Android System (18.6%), Kernel (7.9%" and System Media Server (3.1%). That's peculiar, no?

 

[need4spd]

Okay I did some real comparison.

My test:
Note 3 1.5 years old
Note 5 1 week or so old been through 5 full recharges
Both phone same minimal apps nothing running in background
Both phones connected to wifi and cellular service
Both phones next to each other full time
Both phones at the closest brightness my eyes could match. Note 3 was at 75% brightness scale. Note 5 was at 50%.
Both phones did the exact same procedures
Both phones did 30 mins of youtube, a few hours of twitch.tv streaming, a few hours web surfing. Same sites same videos.

I took periodic screenshots of each. I might post later.

Conclusion Note 5 battery died out first and went into auto shutdown. Meanwhile Note 3 was still at 15%. Note 5 died at 5 hours and i think 5 minutes off the top of my head.

 

[jdhooghe]

You guys are so crazy in this thread, installing, uninstalling, resetting, disabling, etc... You shouldn't have to do that with a brand new phone to get decent battery life. You didn't spend $800-1000 on a new phone to sit with everything off and the brightness to minimum. On my Note 3 I could pull 1-3 days depending on my usage but I would always finish the day at like 50% with heavy use. Now from a friend who has it and what I have read from others this phone barely pulls a full day of usage from a charge! And don't say, well you can charge it with quick charge! You shouldn't have to fill up your car every few hours so why would you want to fill up your phone the same way? Samsung needs to rethink it's priorities and re-do the next generation of Samsung phones.

Dude. That is the nature of Android which you WELL know. Google likes to run crap in the background which is not needed. For one, why is Google Music running in the background when it isn't on? That isn't the phone manufacturer. That is Android. The same OS by the way, you use.

Next. Not all phones are identical. Anyone with the barest understanding of physics should know this. The physical aspect as well as the software aspect. Sometimes the software just sticks better but that isn't Samsung's fault.

Throwing a bigger battery at a problem is not the answer. You seem, to think it is, but it isn't. Android has never been and probably will never be battery efficient. Every app developer seems to think it is ok to take all the resources it wants and allow crap to run in the background regardless of if I am using that app and have chosen no notifications.

"I shouldn't have to refill my car" what kind of car do you have? Seriously I want one. I want a car that doesn't need to be refilled or lose gas because I have a turbo V8 engine in it. I want a car that can leak gas and still not need a refill like you have. Please, tell me what car you have.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

You guys are so crazy in this thread, installing, uninstalling, resetting, disabling, etc... You shouldn't have to do that with a brand new phone to get decent battery life. You didn't spend $800-1000 on a new phone to sit with everything off and the brightness to minimum. On my Note 3 I could pull 1-3 days depending on my usage but I would always finish the day at like 50% with heavy use. Now from a friend who has it and what I have read from others this phone barely pulls a full day of usage from a charge! And don't say, well you can charge it with quick charge! You shouldn't have to fill up your car every few hours so why would you want to fill up your phone the same way? Samsung needs to rethink it's priorities and re-do the next generation of Samsung phones.

Every phone I have owned, I have deleted bloatware. Some carriers add more than other carriers.

As far as several in this thread, many are coming from iOS and haven't had to set up anything on their phone

But thanks for your help!

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Does anyone have any idea how to fix Android OS drain?

Android OS can pop up if you have been idle a lot. Has your phone been idle a lot today?

Most of the time, with moderate to heavy use, my highest is screen. When my screen is high and my Android OS or System pops up high (it happens on occasion) I generally will do a hard reset (hold down power and volume down) until the phone reboots, sometimes I will do a cache wipe if it doesn't settle down. If your phone is idle for a long time, having your Android OS pop up high isn't all that abnormal.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Man Wifi makes this phone battery go down noticeably faster than on LTE...it's crazy to me... Might as well never go on WiFi

Sent from my Galaxy Note 5!

Do you have scanning turned off on your WiFi and do you have it set to turn off when sleeping? There are apps that you don't even use that will send location data to Google when the phone is sleeping and WiFi isn't off. I never turn my WiFi off, but it disconnects from WiFi when my screen is off.

Open WiFi, tap on More at the top, the advanced.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Kelly, do you also have greenify or only shutapp?

I'm just using ShutApp right now. I still have Greenify on my phone, not in use, I haven't tried them together.

Now they might work just fine together, they might work better together or they might fight each other. It is going to take just testing it and seeing what happens.

 

[realadrianisen]

This is interesting news! Something I've wanted to clarify all this time.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

I know about Doze, but can somebody tell me if Permissions will affect battery life once M is released? I assume if Twitter, Facebook, etc isn't granted permissions, there will be less things running in the background, thus improving performance and battery life.

Is that assumption accurate, or is there something I'm missing? I'm not expecting anybody to quantify it, but curious if that will positively impact battery life specifically.

Some people are using the preview version of M on their Nexus devices. From watching IO 2015 and what was said about permissions, the top thing of course, was what apps are allowed access to. In theory, depending on what the app was allowed access to and what it was doing with that access, it could help battery some.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

I'll have to try that if I ever regress and have issues. Right now I'm pretty good. Had a pretty light use day. No driving to work streaming music or baseball or anything. Used 59% in 13 hours thus far. Screen ontime is 2:10 and has accounted for 19% of use according to GSam. Phone Radio and WiFi active are both the same as my total battery use. I've had my wifi on all day and have been home for the vast majority, but I have "Keep Wifi on During Sleep" only when plugged in which it hasn't been for 13 hours. Is there a setting for deep sleep that I need to set so the Wifi Active isn't as high as the total battery or am I not reading that stat properly?

Weird thing I've been noticing is how much % Swiftkey has used. According to the App Usage panel on Gsam, Swiftkey accounts for 2.6% of my use. That's more than Google Services, Gogle App, Twitter, Textra, etc. It's only behind Android System (18.6%), Kernel (7.9%" and System Media Server (3.1%). That's peculiar, no?

If I have a lot of use, my SwiftKey gets around there. Also check your settings in SwiftKey. I'm syncing things to the cloud, etc.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

This is interesting news! Something I've wanted to clarify all this time.

Which part?

 

[erasat]

For those of you using Doze, there was an update yesterday, so after you update it be sure to restart the services by pressing Quit Doze and then turn it on again. Now you'll really notice that is working.

 

[jdhooghe]

For those of you using Foxes, there was an update yesterday, so after you update it be sure to restart the services by pressing Quit Doze and then turn it on again. Now you'll really notice that is working.

Oh wow, that's awesome!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[smooth4lyfe]

Do you have scanning turned off on your WiFi and do you have it set to turn off when sleeping? There are apps that you don't even use that will send location data to Google when the phone is sleeping and WiFi isn't off. I never turn my WiFi off, but it disconnects from WiFi when my screen is off.

Open WiFi, tap on More at the top, the advanced.

I'm gonna try this and see... I think this would help

Sent from my Galaxy Note 5!

 

[Kelly Kearns]

I'm gonna try this and see... I think this would help

Sent from my Galaxy Note 5!

I've done that since probably my Note 3. I noticed it was showing my WiFi active all night and I had a lot if wake locks and then high accuracy location tells you that some apps will send location to Google through WiFi even when the phone is asleep if the WiFi is on. It stopped waking my phone at night.

It doesn't have to be open apps or even apps you use or have used. If you have unused apps on your phone, they can do this.

 

[anon(153966)]

Honestly, where is the button to show "on screen time"? I could have sworn I've seen it before...

 

[mhunter6378]

Honestly, where is the button to show "on screen time"? I could have sworn I've seen it before...

When you see "Screen" listed in your usage percentage details, just tap it and the resulting screen will show you screen on time.