Why is my battery draining so quickly?

[RkoViper81]

Hi there everyone I am new to Android coming from an iPhone 5. So I have had my S3 a couple weeks now & well I do like the phone there are certain things that are making me regret the decision of switching from my iPhone 5 to the S3. The biggest issue I have is battery life & the way this phones battery will just drain down doing NOTHING I have to charge this phone every single day which is very annoying on my iPhone 5 I could go without charging it most of the time 2 days sometimes 3. Last night I charged the phone & like a min after unplugging the phone it drops to 99%. Also when I go to bed lets say the battery is at 68% by the time I wake up its dropped down to 48% how on earth does the phone drop 20% overnight sitting there its very frustrating. Hopefully someone here can help me out give me some answers.

TIA

 

[trucky]

While you're sleeping it's working. There are always things going on with sync, signal, deep thinking, etc. Put it on the charger every night. It's a fast processor with a huge screen and all that cool stuff takes a lot of juice. The less you look at it the longer it lasts.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Hi there everyone I am new to Android coming from an iPhone 5. So I have had my S3 a couple weeks now & well I do like the phone there are certain things that are making me regret the decision of switching from my iPhone 5 to the S3. The biggest issue I have is battery life & the way this phones battery will just drain down doing NOTHING I have to charge this phone every single day which is very annoying on my iPhone 5 I could go without charging it most of the time 2 days sometimes 3. Last night I charged the phone & like a min after unplugging the phone it drops to 99%. Also when I go to bed lets say the battery is at 68% by the time I wake up its dropped down to 48% how on earth does the phone drop 20% overnight sitting there its very frustrating. Hopefully someone here can help me out give me some answers.

TIA

We need some screenshots. Can you get a screenshot of your battery page and then click on the grey area of the chart on your battery page, go to the history and get a screenshot of that?

 

[anon(522296)]

the trick with android is in your settings. Only sync or push mail, turn off all other google products you don't use so its not looking for them (photos, browser, picasa etc), turn off face book sync (notifications are ok), twitter sync, any messenger syncs, as they will all update when you open them and you will see a tremendous jump in battery life. These apps run amuck in the background and really burn up the battery. I'm running over 20 hours with mine and 4 hours of screen time with google now and latitude on, its just how you set it up.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

These are the ones I'm talking about. Hmmm..I'm not having a great battery day myself lol



Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747

 

[RkoViper81]

Where can you turn off all the stuff Syncing or see whats on?

the trick with android is in your settings. Only sync or push mail, turn off all other google products you don't use so its not looking for them (photos, browser, picasa etc), turn off face book sync (notifications are ok), twitter sync, any messenger syncs, as they will all update when you open them and you will see a tremendous jump in battery life. These apps run amuck in the background and really burn up the battery. I'm running over 20 hours with mine and 4 hours of screen time with google now and latitude on, its just how you set it up.

 

[RkoViper81]

Here are those screen shots

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Hmmm...and you have really good signal and your phone isn't going crazy with being awake, I've seen much worse on being awake. One thing I do notice right away, your chrome is using a lot of battery. I've been using chrome on my phone since I had it and then just recently, it started eating up a lot of battery and I took it off.

Do you have power saving mode set?

Also, go to each app you have that gets notifications, twitter, facebook, etc, go into the apps settings and then turn down your "check for new" etc. I really now have mine "not refreshing" especially on my facebook, but still have notifications set and my phone still notifies me if there is a notification.

Also, that big dip you have at the beginning, your screen was on for a while..remember what you were doing then?

And one more thing...have you pulled out the battery and left it out for 120 seconds, yet?

 

[crester]

Going nearly 15 hours and having 35% battery life left is actually pretty good battery life...

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Going nearly 15 hours and having 35% battery life left is actually pretty good battery life...

Yes that is, didn't notice the 15 hours for some reason..all these battery threads are starting to run together.

I get what I think is really good battery time and using my phone heavily, I generally get 18-19 hours.

 

[RkoViper81]

Hmmm...and you have really good signal and your phone isn't going crazy with being awake, I've seen much worse on being awake. One thing I do notice right away, your chrome is using a lot of battery. I've been using chrome on my phone since I had it and then just recently, it started eating up a lot of battery and I took it off.

Do you have power saving mode set?

Also, go to each app you have that gets notifications, twitter, facebook, etc, go into the apps settings and then turn down your "check for new" etc. I really now have mine "not refreshing" especially on my facebook, but still have notifications set and my phone still notifies me if there is a notification.

Also, that big dip you have at the beginning, your screen was on for a while..remember what you were doing then?

And one more thing...have you pulled out the battery and left it out for 120 seconds, yet?

I think I was maybe reading some things online. I haven't pulled out the battery for 120 seconds should I & I am using power saving mode although I don't really think it makes much of a differance

 

[meyerweb#CB]

A few thoughts:

1. The GS3 is never going to match the iPhone in battery life. It just isn't. The screen is way bigger and uses more power, and it does much more multi-tasking. If going 2 or 3 days on a charge is super important to you, then take the Galaxy back and stick with Apple. I don't find plugging the phone in every night while I sleep to be an issue at all.

2. It's brand new. You're probably playing with it a lot more than you did your iPhone, which means that big, bright screen is on a lot. Looking at your screen prints, I can see that's true. Once you settle down and start just using it normally, battery life should improve.

3. As others have suggested, turn off or reduce the frequency of syncing. In settings, scroll down to the accounts section, and open each account, and see what the sync settings are. There's a whole bunch of Google cr*p you can turn off.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

I think I was maybe reading some things online. I haven't pulled out the battery for 120 seconds should I & I am using power saving mode although I don't really think it makes much of a differance

Well if I'm not using my phone, I can get a couple days plus out of my battery.

At home is your signal good?

Do a screen shot before you put it down for the night and it is charged up then when you get up in the AM, do the screen shots of both screens again and let's see what the stats day then, but go ahead and do the battery pull before you charge it up. The dropping to 99% when you unplug is not abnormal.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747

 

[RkoViper81]

Well if I'm not using my phone, I can get a couple days plus out of my battery.

At home is your signal good?

Do a screen shot before you put it down for the night and it is charged up then when you get up in the AM, do the screen shots of both screens again and let's see what the stats day then, but go ahead and do the battery pull before you charge it up. The dropping to 99% when you unplug is not abnormal.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747

Yeah my signal is always good at home & alright i will

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Yeah my signal is always good at home & alright i will

Let's look at the two from right after it is charged and down for the night and then when you get up, see what it is doing when you are asleep and it should be also

Just looked at a screenshot of one right below this thread and that one, the phone is almost always awake and the first screen shot looked "ok" as far as things running, but that 2nd detailed one of the graph, showed a different story.

 

[Hikmat abdoollayev]

Did anyone mention about Utilities to detect reason for battery draining?
I recommend to try app Wakelock Detector

In android there is a technical feature called "wakelock", Apps can keep your phone sleepless by using it.
The above app helps you to detect those apps which drain your battery,
Good luck!

 

[meyerweb#CB]

I downloaded WLD, out of curiosity, and when I try to run it the app tells me my device (Sprint GS3) doesn't support battery statistics. Not too helpful.

 

[jaltman]

You might also turn your screen brightness down as far as comfortable. Indoor room lighting allows a much lower level than outdoor sunshine. Over the period of a day I average about 2% per hour. On a day of heavy usage it may average as high as 3% per hour. I usually charge overnight, but have two batteries and the external charger. That way if I can not charge overnight I can swap batteries in the morning, or if I have a bad day planned can carry the spare.

There are nights I am on-call overnight so the spare battery keeps going no matter what happens.

 

[MrDoh]

A few thoughts:

1. The GS3 is never going to match the iPhone in battery life. It just isn't. The screen is way bigger and uses more power, and it does much more multi-tasking. If going 2 or 3 days on a charge is super important to you, then take the Galaxy back and stick with Apple. I don't find plugging the phone in every night while I sleep to be an issue at all.
.

Well, what I see is that the S3 uses about twice as much battery when I'm not using it. No syncing, notifications, etc., no background apps that I am aware of, just the usual OS and cell phone stuff going on when the phone is not being used. But the S3 uses at least 1% of battery per hour (or more sometimes) when just sitting around doing nothing. This is with S3 WiFi off (only connects when sleeping when plugged in), and mobile data is off. The iPhone used to use about .5%/hour when sitting around doing nothing (again, no syncing, notifications, etc.).

In this case, the screen is not a factor. I'm very curious about how Apple gets such low standby battery usage, and Samsung (or Android?) cannot get there. And the overall battery usage of the S3 starts there, with higher standby usage, and goes up. That is, you can add the larger display to the higher standby battery usage, and turn on mobile data, and so on, and the battery usage picture just gets worse.

This is obviously not of overwhelming importance to me since I charged my iPhone every night and do the same with the S3, nor do I expect that the above poster has an answer to this, but I keep seeing this theme repeated, the power of the S3 causing more battery usage. Not buying it.

 

[meyerweb#CB]

Well, it's easily possible to figure out what's using the battery on your phone. It's possible something may be wrong. Take screen shots, as many others have done, and post them here. But understand there are ALWAYS background tasks running in a multi-tasking OS. the OS itself has lots of tasks that are running. iOS, with it's much less conprehensive multi-tasking, doesn't do nearly as much background processing, I suspect.

I don't pretend to know everything that's going on behind the scenes in Android. And I don't really care. My first statement is true: The GS3 will never match the iPhone in battery life. The extra capabilities make it well worth it to me. On days when I'm on WiFi most of the day, I routinely get 14-15 hours and still have 30% or more battery left. And that's using the phone, not letting it sit idle all day. With background syncing of email and appointments.