The following is a summary of my experience with the Samsung Galaxy S6 on AT&T: I purchased the S6 in June of 2015. This is my first smartphone, so I was afraid that the battery life would be terrible, compared to the regular phone I was using. The battery life was great for the first 3 months and I loved the phone. In late September, I began to experience battery issues, seemingly after I updated to 5.1.1. At the time, the cell standby and Android System would be as high as 40-50%. In mid October, I took it to the AT&T service center. I was offered a refurbished device because the camera makes an audible noise when focusing, but I declined, going with the option to do a factory reset and reflash the software. The camera doesn't make this noise as often anymore, and it is the least of my worries. AT&T's reset and reflash didn't help, and then things took a turn for the worse. By December, the battery drain was occurring while I slept. In an 8 hour span, the batter would drain by around 50%! I would go to bed with my phone at 40% and when I woke up, it would be dead. Here is a screenshot, you can see that cell standby is no longer a high percentage.
This is when I decided to ship it to Samsung in Texas, as I did not want to settle for a refurbished phone from AT&T. They stated the problem as "WON'T DOWNLOAD SW/PRL " and the solution as "S/W UPDATED". I was excited to get my phone back, hopefully functioning as it was in the first 3 months that I had the device. Unfortunately, that did not work. After spending hours reading through many forums on this site and others, I have tried many things on my own, including: Turning off location, turning off NFC, wipe cache partition, turning off always allow WiFi scanning, setting Keep WiFi on When Sleeping to only when plugged in, unchecked Enhanced 4G LTE services (I almost always keep my data off), disabled all Google syncing, except Photos, which only occurs when charging. I currently don't use any email services, and have very few 3rd party apps. My cell signal and WiFi connection seems pretty good. This problem isn't isolated to my home, it happens anywhere I use WiFi, including my apartment and my university.
Temporary solution: I have found that I have a tolerable battery life when I keep my WiFi off. And last night I set my phone to airplane mode with WiFi off before going to bed, and experienced no battery drain whatsoever. This is why I am concluding that it is an issue with the WiFi, although I could be wrong. I don't want to keep my WiFi off though, as that defeats the purpose of having a smartphone, in my opinion. Here are screen shots of yesterday's use (keeping WiFi off for the most part) as well as overnight, when I turned on airplane mode, with WiFi off. Looking at GSam Battery Monitor, its seems that Android System could be the culprit.
From This morning:
From last night. You can see an increase in slope occurring around 6PM, which is when I turned on WiFi to observe changes:
Ultimately, I don't want to disable a bunch of features in order to get a tolerable battery life. The battery life was perfect in the first few months of having the phone. I apologize for making this comparison, but my girlfriend got the iPhone 6 the same day I got the S6, and to this day the battery life of her phone is amazing, with no features disabled, and she is a much heavier user than I am. She sent me a screen shot yesterday, the phone was at 22% with over 7 hours of usage and 23 hours of standby since the last charge.
With all of this being said, here are some questions:
Should I just wait until the 6.0 update comes to the S6, in hopes that it will resolve my battery issues?
Is exchanging this phone for a refurbished S6 from AT&T a bad idea? I have until June to make this decision, as its a 1 year warranty. My reluctance to do this comes from AT&T and Samsung not resolving my issue when I sent it in, and in 2011 I got a refurbished iPhone 3 from RadioShack, and it would randomly make a very loud noise, I returned it in a week and went back to using a regular phone for another 4 years.
This is when I decided to ship it to Samsung in Texas, as I did not want to settle for a refurbished phone from AT&T. They stated the problem as "WON'T DOWNLOAD SW/PRL " and the solution as "S/W UPDATED". I was excited to get my phone back, hopefully functioning as it was in the first 3 months that I had the device. Unfortunately, that did not work. After spending hours reading through many forums on this site and others, I have tried many things on my own, including: Turning off location, turning off NFC, wipe cache partition, turning off always allow WiFi scanning, setting Keep WiFi on When Sleeping to only when plugged in, unchecked Enhanced 4G LTE services (I almost always keep my data off), disabled all Google syncing, except Photos, which only occurs when charging. I currently don't use any email services, and have very few 3rd party apps. My cell signal and WiFi connection seems pretty good. This problem isn't isolated to my home, it happens anywhere I use WiFi, including my apartment and my university.
Temporary solution: I have found that I have a tolerable battery life when I keep my WiFi off. And last night I set my phone to airplane mode with WiFi off before going to bed, and experienced no battery drain whatsoever. This is why I am concluding that it is an issue with the WiFi, although I could be wrong. I don't want to keep my WiFi off though, as that defeats the purpose of having a smartphone, in my opinion. Here are screen shots of yesterday's use (keeping WiFi off for the most part) as well as overnight, when I turned on airplane mode, with WiFi off. Looking at GSam Battery Monitor, its seems that Android System could be the culprit.
From This morning:
From last night. You can see an increase in slope occurring around 6PM, which is when I turned on WiFi to observe changes:
Ultimately, I don't want to disable a bunch of features in order to get a tolerable battery life. The battery life was perfect in the first few months of having the phone. I apologize for making this comparison, but my girlfriend got the iPhone 6 the same day I got the S6, and to this day the battery life of her phone is amazing, with no features disabled, and she is a much heavier user than I am. She sent me a screen shot yesterday, the phone was at 22% with over 7 hours of usage and 23 hours of standby since the last charge.
With all of this being said, here are some questions:
Should I just wait until the 6.0 update comes to the S6, in hopes that it will resolve my battery issues?
Is exchanging this phone for a refurbished S6 from AT&T a bad idea? I have until June to make this decision, as its a 1 year warranty. My reluctance to do this comes from AT&T and Samsung not resolving my issue when I sent it in, and in 2011 I got a refurbished iPhone 3 from RadioShack, and it would randomly make a very loud noise, I returned it in a week and went back to using a regular phone for another 4 years.
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