Charging and heating... is it actually an issue?

[slim6y]

Hello, I want to start by saying I am a total noob to Android and Samsung, though my daughter had an S4 for 2 years, she now went to iPhone. So I decided to take the S7 for a spin. I am having some difficulty, but this is only day two.

Here is my issues... now I didn't set battery optimisation, but decided to go for a walk. I had the step counter on and I used MapFactor for about 4 or 5 minutes. I took 2 photos. All this in the span of half and hour and 15% of my battery, gone! Just like that. I had WiFi turned off.

The second issue is I notice the phone gets considerably warm, so I turned off fast charging (as suggested on another forum somewhere) and cleared the cache. I am not sure yet if that will make a difference, I am hoping on it.

I was going to transfer photos from my S7 to my computer via USB, and of course the phone begins to charge, so I thought I would let it recharge fully. It was about 77% about 6 hours ago. It is now at 75%. So I removed from the computer and plugged it in instead, still off of fast charge and turned on battery optimisation. About 25 minutes ago it was 75% now it is 73%.

I am curious how a phone, plugged in, charging, says 33 minutes till full charge, has battery optimization running, is actually losing charge?

Am I doing something wrong? What would you suggest I do? The phone is literally out of the box 32(ish) hours ago!

Thanks kindly.

 

[mstrblueskys]

Hello, I want to start by saying I am a total noob to Android and Samsung, though my daughter had an S4 for 2 years, she now went to iPhone. So I decided to take the S7 for a spin. I am having some difficulty, but this is only day two.

Here is my issues... now I didn't set battery optimisation, but decided to go for a walk. I had the step counter on and I used MapFactor for about 4 or 5 minutes. I took 2 photos. All this in the span of half and hour and 15% of my battery, gone! Just like that. I had WiFi turned off.

The second issue is I notice the phone gets considerably warm, so I turned off fast charging (as suggested on another forum somewhere) and cleared the cache. I am not sure yet if that will make a difference, I am hoping on it.

I was going to transfer photos from my S7 to my computer via USB, and of course the phone begins to charge, so I thought I would let it recharge fully. It was about 77% about 6 hours ago. It is now at 75%. So I removed from the computer and plugged it in instead, still off of fast charge and turned on battery optimisation. About 25 minutes ago it was 75% now it is 73%.

I am curious how a phone, plugged in, charging, says 33 minutes till full charge, has battery optimization running, is actually losing charge?

Am I doing something wrong? What would you suggest I do? The phone is literally out of the box 32(ish) hours ago!

Thanks kindly.

Sounds like, at least for the walk, your GPS was probably what was chewing away at your battery. That's a lot of battery to be eaten up in 4-5 minutes though. It depends on how much screen time you were using and a couple of other factors.

If I were you, I'd power cycle the phone a couple of times and see if that fixes something. If not, I'd return the device for a new one. It seems like something is not right if you have all these issues persist.

 

[slim6y]

Yes, I worry it could be an issue. It is on power optimisation now. The cache is clear. I took a screenshot and will look again after 30 minutes has lapsed. If the phone is still discharging, then I think a trip back to the store tomorrow will be something to do.

 

[slim6y]

Will ask their support, didn't realise they had live chat support. Will let you all know

 

[slim6y]

So this is where I am at. I did a full factory reset and I am not installing any third party apps. I removed the "briefing" but have not changed any settings except for include battery optimisation. The phone is charging again now. So I will leave it over night and run it tomorrow for half an hour with no apps and WiFi off to see what percentage it uses then.

This way I can tell if it was an app. But I had all the power optimisation settings on, so I don't see how it could be. If all else fails, return to the store is all I can do.

 

[chanchan05]

You can show the battery stats too. Some Map apps keep screen on while walking, ans I wouldn't be surprised if the screen was on for the whole 1 and half hour you lost 15%. That would seem to be at par if it was.

 

[slim6y]

You can show the battery stats too. Some Map apps keep screen on while walking, ans I wouldn't be surprised if the screen was on for the whole 1 and half hour you lost 15%. That would seem to be at par if it was.

Yeah, that wasn't the case. I was looking at the screen and it was half an hour (30 minutes), definitely not normal.

Anyway, to update. The full factory reset seems to have worked. I really do not know what caused the bug or if any damage was done. I will take the phone for a test run, do the same as yesterday for a fair test and see if it uses 15% in half an hour...

 

[slim6y]

Hopefully, the final update (but please respond if you think the following battery usage is not normal).

I had the phone playing music through headphones using Poweramp Pro for around three hours almost continuously, stopped for 20 minutes only. I ran MapFactor for about 5 minutes and GPS Speedometer for 5 minutes. I took a photo. I checked for WiFi once, though there was nothing and WiFi was off. I moved an app around and used around 30-35% of the battery life.

I think that sounds reasonable for continuous music and the use of some apps.

Would anyone disagree?

I have power optimisation on and still have 62% battery left after that 3 hours. If I had done that yesterday I would have zero battery left.

So, it appears a factory reset worked. Reasoning? I really couldn't answer what went wrong and why it is right now. The only difference, and I realise correlation does not imply causation, but the only difference is I didn't download Swiftkey this time.

All responses welcome, especially if this has happened to you. And if you think the battery usage for 3 hours to be around 30% with pretty much continuous music to be ok?

 

[chanchan05]

I'd much rather check overnight battery drain. Get it to 100% and sleep with the phone unplugged. Hopefully no one will call.

 

[t11rmh]

If you've only had the phone for two days then I'd give it a week. It takes a few charging cycles for the battery life to stabilise.

I got a pink s7 for my other half and straight out of the box setting it up I was killing the battery. It's better on the 2nd day. And I know it will get better over the next few days.

Posted via the Android Central App on a kicking Gold Samsung Galaxy S7

 

[slim6y]

The phone did do the draining thing again, really weirdly, but this time it stopped itself and reverted back to normal. It is really puzzling. This time though it was plugged in to the computer when it began to play up. I just did the classic clear the RAM and stuff like that then switched it on and off and again and it seemed to have worked. Not sure what the story was though.

So, a few days into it, it seems to be getting better. Thankfully.

 

[slim6y]

The one thing I am noticing, to save power I put the location method to GPS only, but it keeps reverting back to all forms of location method. How do you change the button to only locate via GPS? I can keep doing it manually in the Location screen, but the button should remember the preferences.

 

[slim6y]

Ok, after one week, the phone has continued to play up. For the third time in one week I went to charge and the phone discharged instead of charged and got very hot. Clearing the RAM, cache and switching it off and back on again helped, and it charges. So it is definitely a program causing the issue. How do I find the program that is causing the issue and how do I kill that program?

 

[chanchan05]

Well you could check battery stats and see what apps were running during the times it was heating app.

 

[slim6y]

I gave up. I took it back. It just isn't right that a phone on charge is discharging unless you clear the RAM, the cache and switch it on and off again. It is ridiculous to expect to do that every time you ant to charge. So I took it back they swapped for a new one, already on its first charge it has worked and held battery for longer.