Awful battery life.. this can't be right?

[Lisa Boyd]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 that I bought recently (I got it Monday just gone) and I have noticed that the battery life is really not good. It drains really quickly even though i'm not doing a whole lot, and I just got done charging it and it dropped down to 99% within minutes of taking it off the charger, and all i'd done is call Telstra to check my prepaid credit balance.

I have air gestures and all of that stuff turned off, and I am obsessive about closing apps as soon as i'm done with them. Anything I don't need (and the phone doesn't need) is disabled, and I really don't do a whole lot with it compared to some people I know who are on their phones constantly. I play games from time to time (candy crush and 4pics 1word mainly) and I have snapchat installed, but other than that I don't do much. When i'm playing games the battery will drop an easy 20% in 5-10 minutes. Is that normal?

I just checked the battery thing before and it said I had 23 minutes 59 seconds left on 99% battery. That seems absurd to me! Here is a screenshot:



I have Juice Defender Ultimate installed on it in an attempt to save some battery life, and it has helped but not as well as it should, I don't think. Is there something i'm missing? Or should I just buy a new battery?

Thanks in advance for any insight you guys might have!

 

[Golfdriver97]

Welcome to the forums. You are actually reading the graph incorrectly. It has been 23 minutes since you unplugged the device, and in that time you have used 1% of the battery. Which depending on how long you had the screen on, probably isn't that bad.

Check this out for more info: http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...how-s/441906-how-read-your-battery-stats.html

 

[Lisa Boyd]

-facepalm- Now I feel really stupid LOL! I am a total android newbie, I just switched from an iPhone 5 to the Galaxy S4 haha so i'm still figuring all of this out. Thank you for not making me feel like a total moron LOL! And thank you for the link!

 

[Golfdriver97]

After I posted, I was really hoping you would take it in the nicest way possible.

Your battery should be getting better about today...it usually takes a few days for the battery to find its groove and a new OS to settle down. So really, you kinda had 2 strikes on battery life.

From an AOSP M8
Android Central Ambassador Team Leader

 

[Lisa Boyd]

Yeah I have noticed that it's definitely a lot better than it has been over the past few days. It didn't really occur to me that the battery needs time to find its groove and settle into its own pattern, so thank you for that as well. I did order a new battery but i'll just keep it on hand as a spare (one thing I LOVE about this over the iphone; ability to change the battery!).

This is probably in a sticky somewhere but i'll ask anyway; is there a particular way I should be charging it to help battery life? I let it charge fully when I got it (it was SO SLOW but I put that down to being brand new and it's a lot faster to charge now) before I did anything with it, and now I just throw it on the charger if it gets down below 20% or if i'm planning on going somewhere and need some decent charge on it. Other than that I let it charge 100% over night. I have read that these newer batteries don't need "training" like the old batteries (like in my old nokia 3315) and letting it charge fully and drain fully to make it recoginize its potential isn't an issue, which makes sense with the way people use their phones these days, but if there's anything specific I should be doing please don't hesitate to point it out.

Thank you again for your help!