Brand new phone, fast battery drain for no reason (screen?), please help

[zero182]

Hello.

Just got a brand new samsung galaxy s 4 with verizon the other day. The battery is either pretty atrocious, somehow worse than my 2.5 year old smartphone (samsung galaxy s) before this. I know there are some other threads about this, but as far as I can tell my issue seems to be a bit different.

I have all of the advanced functions, gestures, eye tracking etc. turned off. location services off. Ive disabled most of the bloatware that came on the phone. Here is whats happened so far today since I unplugged the phone at 100% charge.

The battery has gone down to 87% in about 1.2 hours. during that time I used the phone for about 29 minutes doing very light web browsing and texting. The battery meter shows that the screen is using 50% of the battery usage. followed by android system at 21%, android os at %7 and a few other things at 4 or 5% each. I have the screens brightness turned down to only about 20% Yesterday, with the same settings, the battery barely made it through the day and the only thing I used it for was moderate texting on whatsapp and web browsing. Probly for less than 3 hours of total screen on time. The screen was the biggest power draw again here. Is the battery for this phone just ****? Or is something about this off? Ive read a lot about battery problems, it just seems weird that the battery meter says its almost half my screen draining the power so fast. When Im web browsing lightly or looking through the play store the percentage drops by 1% every 2 minutes or so...when no other apps are running...

Please help? Thanks for any replies

 

[Golfdriver97]

Welcome to Android Central. I replied to the AAQ thread. My answer: I would give it another day. The battery may still be in a break in period.

To elaborate, I would wait the one more day, and if it still seems to be draining fast, you can post some screenshots of the battery stats.

 

[zero182]

Thanks for your reply!! Im sorry about posting twice, I was not trying to spam my question or anything. At first I clicked the ask a question button thinking it would ask a question on this forum where I was reading. Once I realized I was mistaken I tried to delete it to repost here but couldnt because I had not made an account yet. I will monitor the battery over the next few days to see if it improves. Thank you

 

[Golfdriver97]

Thanks for your reply!! Im sorry about posting twice, I was not trying to spam my question or anything. At first I clicked the ask a question button thinking it would ask a question on this forum where I was reading. Once I realized I was mistaken I tried to delete it to repost here but couldnt because I had not made an account yet. I will monitor the battery over the next few days to see if it improves. Thank you

No worries about the double post. I took care of it. Please just be more careful in the future, but I also understand you are new, and probably unfamiliar with how forums operate.

To your question....your battery should show some improvement probably tomorrow. If in another 48 hours, you don't see better battery life, take it back and explain what is going on. You may have a unit with a bad battery.

 

[Topdown77027]

I own a Samsung Note 8.0 and your problem sounds familiar. I have to keep mine charging most of the time just to get a little bit of use out of it. Battery saver apps tell me the battery is fine. My statistics look a lot like yours in terms of battery utilization. No amount of manipulation really improves it, fortunately I have an ipad for travel and non-work activities, so I have an expensive 8 inch format tablet that I keep close to the charger in my office for work-related tasks. Battery saving apps provide occasional help, but not much. Playing games is quick death for the battery.

Not sure what you can do with a phone like that. If battery replacement is supported by the device, you could try that, my unit doesn't easily replace batteries like the phones support and see if it was just the battery or something about the phone. I've tried hard resets, etc with only marginal success so I suspect these may be batteries that read healthy but are in fact not.

 

[Rukbat]

And then there's my normal reply to a new phone not working properly - bring it back and get it replaced.

 

[zero182]

Well, Ive been pretty sick for the past few weeks so I wasnt able to get back on here.

However, after giving the first battery a week of testing incase it needed to be broken in, and then doing the same with a second brand new battery, the problem is still very much here

The battery drain is quite fast, and the phone barely lasts a day with all advanced features turned off. Right now for the day the battery usage lists:

screen 44%
android system 22%
android os 11%
followed by 2 smaller programs i used and then device idle and another android system thing, all a few percent.

What the hell is going on? Im barely using the phone Please help?

Thanks for any replies

edIt: I unplugged my phone 50 minutes ago when it was at 100% charge and it is already down to 90% the only thing I have used it for is some texting via whatsapp...