Battery Life - This Can't Be Normal

[BJDeriso]

It seems there's always a lot of concern about battery life when a carrier pushes an update, and until now, I haven't given it much thought. But a few days ago, I got the EL29 push, and I could SWEAR my battery life has plummeted. I'm hoping someone else can share their own *tested* results here.

According to Samsung, this phone should pull about 8 hours of talk time, with standby time rated in DAYS. They also describe "standby" as "display off, not servicing calls". I'm paraphrasing, but they are at least that vague about it.

I just performed a factory reset, set the unit to Airplane mode, and fully charged it. When the battery reached 100%, I unplugged it, turned off the display, and left it on my counter for exactly two hours. At the end of those two hours, I was down to 80%. At that rate, the battery would be empty in ten hours -a far cry from several "days".

Again, that's on airplane mode, with a completely fresh wipe, and all background syncs disabled (I didn't even configure my Google account yet). When I checked the graphs, it was all "Android OS 100%". All the other items were blank -phone signal, wi-fi, awake, and screen on.

What am I missing??

 

[cjones]

Time to root and put on a custom ROM. I'm running Culkin (sp) and I get all day life with average use. Custom ROMs just seem to work better.

JMHO

 

[Murphy5111]

That's strange. Even after the update I probably only lose 1-2% an hour with phone left on but not using it. Probably closer to 1%.

 

[BJDeriso]

Jeez. I knew it.

I just went through the app manager, killing resident and cached background processes. Even after all that, I still dropped another 10% in one hour of sitting on my coffee table.

This really cheeses me off.

 

[JayWill]

Take your phone off airplane mode, update profile and PRL, and charge to full and report back. Your phone may be trying to access the data network even though you haven't set up any services yet.

And no its definitely not normal.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk

 

[briandearing]

No, that sounds about right.....

 

[androidpirate]

download betterbatterystats, it's available on xda and Android Market. It'll tell you what process has been using up the battery.

 

[MattN03]

Mine goes All day without any problems.

 

[JayWill]

No, that sounds about right.....

10% per hour sitting idle? I think not.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk

 

[qfnol31]

I use the battery widget with Widgetlocker and have noticed some strange things recently. My battery will read a certain percentage, then if I leave my phone completely alone for a time, I'll go back and see that the percentage has gone up and not down. It makes me wonder if the phones aren't reading the correct battery status after this update.

 

[heyiminkcmo]

After the recent update, my battery life seems better!

 

[acasalin]

I have a Seidio 3200 battery which was giving me almost 2 days of moderate use . Immediately, and I mean immediately, after the OTA my battery drain almost doubled according to my stats... I read XDA on the subject, and did a HARD factory reset witth DATA wipe.....no help. Thought maybe the battery was failing..so I ordered a 3800 Trexcell from EBAY. Then read the problem might be from a looping background app or a stuck radio....pulled the battery...waited 5 minutes...put te battery back and now I'm back to normal (if not better) battery drain....It appears some of us who had OTA got a screwed-up install which affected background apps or radios, while some of us had a normal install...in either case... I'm happy to get my battery use back !

 

[BJDeriso]

That has been my experience to the letter.

After all that dorking around, I stopped just short of having my Sprint store roll it back. I was getting on a plane in less than 24 hours, and I'd rather have a short-lived charge than none at all.

Long story short, it seems to have sorted itself out, and now I'm getting much better drainage. Sure wish I knew what was hosed and how it resolved itself :-/

Sent from my Epic Touch 4G using Tapatalk

 

[joshrocker]

I've had some weird battery drain on occasion since the latest update. I think my problem was the GPS. It looks like my phone kept trying to locate something and was unable to get a GPS read. After I turned off my GPS I've been getting excellent battery life.

 

[Gator352]

Widget locker (after an update it had) seemed to bork my batt life on both my Photon and E4GT. After uninstalling/re-installing, batt life went back to normal.

FWIW, After the EL29 update, my E4GT's batt life seemed to plummet to about half of what it was. All I did was a 5 minute batt pull and I swear, my batt life increased at least 10% from what it was beforethe update. I couldn't be happier.

 

[pixielee22]

I dunno but mine is doing the same thing, i barely doing a few texts, checking a tweet here and there, during they day while at work, and everyday get at least 15 hours, last few days Im dead in about 6