Why is my battery life so bad?

[microserfs]

Hi all,

So I caved and recently went out and got the new Samsung Galaxy S6 just under a week ago, but for some reason I've been having a terrible time struggling with battery life. Am loving this phone but the battery is seriously not what I expected! I'd say I'm an medium-heavy user (some phone calls, some social media, photo taking, browsing, occasional video watching) but my battery is being hammered and I'm not sure what by! I'm in the UK with Three and so although there are others who have had success by disabling VoLTE, I don't have that option so I'm wondering what else I can possibly do. I tend to disable location unless I badly need it, and generally use wifi where possible.

Just yesterday my battery hit 40% just after only 1hr38 min screen on time. GSAM battery said 38% sot but 11.9% consumed by Android system. I downloaded CPU spy but I'm not really a tech head so I'm not sure what most of it means but my deep sleep is only at 46% so am not sure if it should be higher or lower??!

However, today I left the phone to its own devices in my room while I did some other things after waking up, and for some reason I lost 10% battery in an hour and a half. Wifi was on, so obviously I had some push notifications coming through occasionally, which might have woke the phone from sleep quite a few times, but I still don't see why theres such a big drop in battery? GSAM is telling me I've lost 7.6% an hr (used 13% in 1hr43 mins) but only used 19 mins of screen on time! Wifi active 13% (could this be the issue?) but app usage is 43% with Android system right at the top... any idea what Android System would be using the battery for when I'm not using the phone?!

Here's some photos of yesterdays use and stats!

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! There have been a number of threads about battery drain with wi-fi on, but this is usually associated with high Cell Standby battery usage (which I don't see in your stats). The temporary solution in those situations is to to turn off wi-fi when you're not actively using it. Even though Cell Standby doesn't seem to be an issue for you, it would be worth turning off wi-fi when you don't need it, and see if that improves your overall battery life.

Android System and OS are usually going to take up a decent chunk of battery percentage (anywhere from 15-25%), especially if you're not doing anything else. If you're not doing anything, then the relative percentage of your active apps or screen will drop. The system is always active to some degree, so its percentage of battery usage will rise.

 

[robinhelenehebert]

Same thing happened to me! It went down from 100% right away and kept dropping without even using it.

 

[Adranalyne]

I can't stress this enough---it's a Lollipop issue that has been affecting other phones for awhile now. I included screen shots from my S6 Edge and from my Nexus 6. My Nexus is affected by the cell standby, even on 5.1. The S6 isn't. Google is more than likely aware of this. When the phone isn't affected by it, however, it's a solid performer.

Posted via Galaxy S6 edge

 

[microserfs]

Seeing as there's been a lot of complaints I guess I'm not the only one having this issue. Sadly, I feel like I'm definitely not getting the 5 and a half hour screen on time everyone else is getting. The max I think I got is 2 and a half hours.. I'd love to know what is killing my battery so much.

Can understand the OS system being awake some of the time, I guess it uses a lot of processes despite being asleep. Can't wait for the next OS upgrade to see whether things improve.

It's gonna be a pain having to turn off the wifi all the time when not using it, but I guess that's the only way I can see myself saving battery for the time being. :/ Hopefully someone will come up with more possible solutions.

As for cell standby, seems the only time I get this issue is when I have absolutely no signal on my phone, which is understandable. Guess I'll just go into flight mode for whenever that happens.

 

[tazman69]

Your held awake time is very high. The phone is not sleeping at all. What apps do you have on your phone? What kind of syncing do you have on? I would look at Google Services apps (which it doesn't appear to be them as their percentage is not that high), Facebook, etc and see what your sync settings are for those apps. You have some app, or apps, which are constantly keeping your phone awake.

 

[microserfs]

Your held awake time is very high. The phone is not sleeping at all. What apps do you have on your phone? What kind of syncing do you have on? I would look at Google Services apps (which it doesn't appear to be them as their percentage is not that high), Facebook, etc and see what your sync settings are for those apps. You have some app, or apps, which are constantly keeping your phone awake.

I imagine Facebook might be one of the issues, as I definitely need to turn the push notifications off for that one. As for other apps that sync often, just HotUKDeals, GSAM Battery, Instagram, Twitter, and Gmail, also Samsung Calendar... I have loads of apps but these are generally the ones that sync the most or push notifications through.

At the moment I've turned the internet completely off on it and these are the stats I'm getting atm:

 

[dwd3885]

my battery life is horrible as well. Getting 1.5 hours screen on. Dead after 6-7 house of being on.

 

[neo905]

It's almost like Google is cutting these OEM's off at the knees with the lack of optimization of the Lollipop software and they don't seem to care. How can a company worth $366 billion dollars with all the resources at their disposal not get this right and in a timely fashion. Just beyond a disgrace.

 

[microserfs]

It's a shame as I absolutely adore this phone. After years of avoiding switching back from iOS to Android, I caved in when I saw how great the Samsung Galaxy S6 is, but the battery life is letting it down so much. If I could just sort that issue, all would be fine!

 

[Alex_NJ]

It's almost like Google is cutting these OEM's off at the knees with the lack of optimization of the Lollipop software and they don't seem to care. How can a company worth $366 billion dollars with all the resources at their disposal not get this right and in a timely fashion. Just beyond a disgrace.

Unfortunately, they have innovation at their core.

They would rather develop a self driving car than slightly improve their OS

 

[neo905]

Unfortunately, they have innovation at their core.

They would rather develop a self driving car than slightly improve their OS

Let me repeat this because it bears repeating. Their market cap is $366 billion dollars. They have 1.2 billion Android devices out in the wild last year. They can devote 0.00001% of their resources to fixing this and make everyone happy. Instead they just half finish everything. That isn't innovation. That is a lack of focus jack of all trades master of none. Unless you count harvesting user data, they've mastered that.

 

[warpdrive]

Turn off VoLTE and always scanning for wifi. See if that helps. No need to fully turn off wifi, just always scanning... And let wifi goto sleep, so don't leave this on too.

This is my results on AT&T with about 3 hours of gaming, 1 hour of YouTube, and light texting. All emails synced. No social media synced.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[microserfs]

Whoa, that's some good battery performance. Sadly I don't have the option to turn off VoLTE on my UK phone. and I already tried turning off the always scanning for wifi. Not sure if its made a difference!

 

[Adranalyne]

Turn off VoLTE and always scanning for wifi. See if that helps. No need to fully turn off wifi, just always scanning... And let wifi goto sleep, so don't leave this on too.

This is my results on AT&T with about 3 hours of gaming, 1 hour of YouTube, and light texting. All emails synced. No social media synced.

//images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/04/15/4f9b0048de1633ef5490d097602eed56.jpg

//images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/04/15/2308be14a4b6c967b856f29f1b7b15b7.jpg

Posted via the Android Central App

You know what I love about these forums? You were worried about Andrew getting 2 and a half hours and you're getting 6 yourself. Which, by the way, is better than my own (though I may sync more). Good stuff. It shows exactly what this phone is capable of when Lollipop isn't handicapping the hell out of it.

Posted via Galaxy S6 edge

 

[nyc_rock]

The reason your battery life is so bad is because this phone doesn't have good battery life. Every review has said it. 2550 is simply too small a battery.

That's it. Its simple. Either you can live with it or not. I can't. Which is why it's going back.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Techno-guy]

The reason your battery life is so bad is because this phone doesn't have good battery life. Every review has said it. 2550 is simply too small a battery.

That's it. Its simple. Either you can live with it or not. I can't. Which is why it's going back.

Posted via the Android Central App

I actually disagree...and this is coming from someone with the Cell Standby drain...I can see the potential of this phone. It needs a software fix from Google! But for those getting 5+ hours of SoT along with 15+ hours of Standby, that's more than acceptable and a great trade-off for a phone that's a reasonable size and with the best screen I've ever seen.

 

[nyc_rock]

They have been saying that since Android was released. Its either google services, or cell standbye or some other battery sucking activity that shows up in our battery usage screen. And I dont care what anybody says, I dont care what results they post. Nobody is getting 5+ SOT with this phone with my kind of usage. I am lucky to get 2 and I dont play a lot of games or stream a ton a video's. If you want great battery life, you need a big battery. My Xperia Z has great battery life as did my Note 4. Both battery's are 25% bigger that what the GS6 has.

 

[Kalvin Kerns]

The reason your battery life is so bad is because this phone doesn't have good battery life. Every review has said it. 2550 is simply too small a battery.

That's it. Its simple. Either you can live with it or not. I can't. Which is why it's going back.

Posted via the Android Central App

Uhm, my Note 3's battery is jealous of my S6... Just sayin'.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[cwise222]

You don’t need a huge battery to get good battery life. Just ask Microsoft and Apple; both of their OS are optimized to hell and back and don’t need massive batteries to get strong battery life. Granted they aren’t as ‘complex’ feature wise as Android is but the point still stands. The M9 has reports of worse battery life then the M8 despite a bigger battery. Boiling it down to ‘must have big battery’ is a simplistic and brute force solution to a more complex issue.

Google seemingly rushed ‘L’ out the door before it was ready because I suppose they wanted Material Design and Project Volta and all these other things out now and pushed out a release that has more bugs and optimization issues then past releases and the new Google Play Services 7.X that Lollipop calls for has a bug stuck in it as well that drains battery life. Instead of pushing ‘L’ back and going with KitKat 4.5 they ran with it and hoped 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 could address the most glaring issues even though they know the Android update cycle is jacked beyond belief at this point.

Even then I can still get a 16 to 20 hour battery cycle with 3 hours SoT in a phone with a Quad HD screen and an Octa Core Processor with TouchWiz running. If you had told someone that a year ago they’d have likely laughed in your face and then slapped you for speaking such blasphemy.

I still prefer Android over iOS and Windows Phone simply because the feature set is so much richer than anything they could ever do. However Google didn’t handle this well and hopefully leaned something for when ‘M’ comes around. Bigger battery is not a solution for poor coding or optimization and OEM’s just slapping a bigger battery into phones to compensate for it does nothing but excuse it and that solves nothing.