Battery Issue with galaxy s3

[Worochc]

so I just got my galaxy s3 on friday and already I'm having issues with it, I use to have an Iphone 4 and boyfriend still does. When i asked about the galaxy they said the battery is better then the iphone which is proving to not be true at all. My phone ( with barely any use at all, I literally had my data off for days) went down 77% and I repeat I barely used it. I used it in total maybe 2 hours. So it was all stand by and i had taken every advice online to turn the power saving modes on. Now, I personally think its unreasonable that when you buy a phone and it comes with LTE and I use WIFI at home that I have to keep turning it off just to have it work like a regular phone. The first time I charged my phone it took 2 hoursish. Now when I charge it I'm looking at 5-6 hours. That is absolutely insane!!! I'm plugging it in with the charger i got with the phone and I even turned my LTE off while it was charging, and I downloaded an app that someone recommended me called Battery Booster and it hasn't helped in fact I now get spam because of the app. I love the phone and whatnot but this is a huge deal breaker for me because the combination of having it die. I mean if i had to use it quite a bit someday I don't have time to charge it after 3 hours of use and have it sit and be plugged in for 5-6 hours. Does it sound like there is something wrong with the actual phone versus just normal behaviour? Cause quite frankly everyone i talked to about the phone said the battery life is great and this is worst then my iphone 4, and kind of the reason I wanted a different phone.

 

[crester]

I don't think the battery on the Galaxy S3 lasts longer than the iPhone... but it is better than most Android phones. Either way your battery life does not sound normal at all.

First things that come to mind is that either you have a poor cell signal... or there is some app that is active in the background and consuming a bunch of your battery. Best thing to do is look at the "Battery Screen" and see what is using your battery. Also take a screen shot of that screen and post it in this thread so others can see.

 

[Joltcola1234]

It could be a problem with the battery itself holding a charge if it is taking you 6 hours to charge the phone. I have a brand new GS3 and it takes me an hour if that to charge from almost 0 to 100% with the wall charger. Taking 5 or 6 hours to charge is definitely NOT normal.

 

[hossman12]

It could be a problem with the battery itself holding a charge if it is taking you 6 hours to charge the phone. I have a brand new GS3 and it takes me an hour if that to charge from almost 0 to 100% with the wall charger. Taking 5 or 6 hours to charge is definitely NOT normal.

For one thing, your phone does not charge from dead to full in less than 60 minutes.

Sent from my MetroPCS GS3

 

[Uncle Reemus]

It takes me roughly 2 hours to charge my S3 (never timed it, just an estimate) but I would suggest downloading GSAM to see what's going on with the battery. Also installing Juice Defender will help battery life a ton...
I run JD along with Advanced Mobile Care and usually get about 20 hours or so and about 3 1/2 - 4 screen time (that usually takes me to about 30-35%) which is where I usually charge at.

JD, GSAM and Advanced will NOT spam your phone
Sent from my GT-P3113 using Android Central Forums

 

[gmiterek]

You should try easy battery saver and easy task killer. I installed it approximately 5 days ago and I'm getting almost double the battery life than before and I'm using intelligent saver mode . The task killer can be automated to close task that keep opening for no reason. The only time there are ads is when you are in the app making changes. I tried also juice defender but all the features that are in easy battery saver for free you need to pay in juice defender.

But you are right. The iPhone does last longer in stand by mode. I used to get maybe 3 to 3-1/2 days on 1 charge. But if you use it continually I found that I couldn't last more than 20 hours on 1 charge. Also one thing to note is that I do all my news reading on my S3 and I never did it on the iPhone as the screen was too small.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Android Central Forums

 

[Joltcola1234]

For one thing, your phone does not charge from dead to full in less than 60 minutes.

Sent from my MetroPCS GS3

I underestimated by saying less then 60 mins, but it certainly took me less then 120 mins to charge from about 10% to 100%, I'm positive of that.

Point being: 5-6 hours means something is wrong with either a) the battery, b) the usb charging slot on the phone, c) the charger itself, or d) your outlet in the wall.

 

[Ramblingman]

With a completely drained battery yesterday it took me close to two hours .... I placed it on the charger about 10 pm and it was finished about 11:45 ...

 

[Creaulx]

Tried Juice Defender on a previous phone and found it had little effect other than draining the battery itself. To the OP - I'm sure your "Power Saving Mode" is enabled, and all the boxes checked. This helps quite a bit in my experience - more than any app I've tried. Still not sure if running the battery to 20% or less will improve battery life, but I try to do exactly that.
Also make sure your Bluetooth and GPS are off when not in use, standard stuff but easy to overlook. Nickel metal hydride batteries do take a while to get "conditioned" for lack of a better word, but your experience is a little out of the ordinary. You may indeed have a bum battery...

Keep us updated.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

so I just got my galaxy s3 on friday and already I'm having issues with it, I use to have an Iphone 4 and boyfriend still does. When i asked about the galaxy they said the battery is better then the iphone which is proving to not be true at all. My phone ( with barely any use at all, I literally had my data off for days) went down 77% and I repeat I barely used it. I used it in total maybe 2 hours. So it was all stand by and i had taken every advice online to turn the power saving modes on. Now, I personally think its unreasonable that when you buy a phone and it comes with LTE and I use WIFI at home that I have to keep turning it off just to have it work like a regular phone. The first time I charged my phone it took 2 hoursish. Now when I charge it I'm looking at 5-6 hours. That is absolutely insane!!! I'm plugging it in with the charger i got with the phone and I even turned my LTE off while it was charging, and I downloaded an app that someone recommended me called Battery Booster and it hasn't helped in fact I now get spam because of the app. I love the phone and whatnot but this is a huge deal breaker for me because the combination of having it die. I mean if i had to use it quite a bit someday I don't have time to charge it after 3 hours of use and have it sit and be plugged in for 5-6 hours. Does it sound like there is something wrong with the actual phone versus just normal behaviour? Cause quite frankly everyone i talked to about the phone said the battery life is great and this is worst then my iphone 4, and kind of the reason I wanted a different phone.

OK, there's a lot going on here. Instead of quoting every post in this thread, I'll just address this to everybody: 9+ times out of 10, task killing and "battery saving" apps really just to more harm than good. Not only do they generally only provide minimal actual battery life savings, but if you're a heavy user of your device, it can actually make things worse because your phone has to constantly restart apps that the task managers shut down...which takes more power than if they had just been left to be managed by Android as intended. These apps used to be almost 100% necessary, but honestly have been nothing but counterproductive since Gingerbread. I'm not going to bash every single product out there, because if you know what you're doing and the app is well written, I'm sure it is possible to optimize power consumption -- the point remains however that what the OP is experiencing is not normal, and to simply suggest installing power saver and task manager apps is (at best) only putting a band aid on a more serious issue. The OP is not asking "how can I improve the battery life of my phone?", but rather indicating that his/her phone is operating well below normal performance levels when it comes to battery life.

Now, to the OP's original question(s): I see it's been a while, so your problem may be solved, but a little more info may help...when you say it "went down 77%", what period of time are we talking about? When you're turning data off, it is mobile data, wifi, airplane mode?
Let's say that your phone is just idle, but all data is turned on and nothing is disabled, about how long does the battery last? Does it drop several %/hour even when doing nothing?

Also, what do you mean by, "...that when you buy a phone and it comes with LTE and I use WIFI at home that I have to keep turning it off just to have it work like a regular phone"? which are you turning off, wifi or LTE...and why?!? What doesn't work if you do not do this? You shouldn't have to turn off any data streams for stuff to work right.

Are you sure you're using the charger that came with the phone? Same plug and cable? 2 hours is probably about right if you're charging from a low battery, but I agree that 5-6 hours is way too long, and not normal.

For me, I never turn on any power saving features, keep data turned on all the time (but will use WIFI at home when I can), and usually when idle I lose anywhere from 2-5% per hour, which seems pretty normal. You shouldn't have to cripple your phone for it to work right. I have several friends with iPhones, and my S3 battery usually does outlast theirs, FWIW. If you're not going to be using the phone and REALLY want to keep it from draining power, just toggle on airplane mode.

If you can provide any additional info, we may be able to better pinpoint what's going on here, but either way, the first things I would do are (1) test other chargers to rule out hardware failure, (2), grab a battery monitor app to see if you can track down what's eating your power and see what kind of amps you're drawing while charging, and (3), as much of a pain in the @$$ as it can be, you find want to do a factory reset. If you have apps or system processes that have gone rogue and are eating up battery, a factory reset will usually take care of that.

Oh, and get rid of Battery Booster and any other task killer apps you have installed. If, once you get your device working normally, you want to try some out to see if they'll improve things for you, then fine, but until you figure out what's wrong, I would definitely not recommend running any of them.