Galaxy Note 2 - Massive battery drain after 4.3 update

[Christos Terzis]

Hello
I have had a massive battery drain problem on my Note 2, a couple of days after the 4.3 update. While being idle during the night it loses 25% to 30% of its battery and while using it I can literally see the percentage drop. I have tried everything that I could find on the net. EVERYTHING! Nothing worked. These included: Factory reset (twice), letting the battery frain completely and then recharging it while the phone was switched off, switching off all sync,disabling bloatware including KNOX components (the actual KNOX app is not installed), installing only a few apps after factory reset, using Gsam, Wakelock detector, Deep sleep battery saver (which could not make my phone sleep), no GPS, no 3G, wifi on only when needed and more besides.
The phone is only one year old, unlocked and unrooted. On 4.1.2 it had a beastly battery performance of almost 1.5 days of normal to heavy use, with 300 apps on it. Now it cannot go for more than a few hours with the same use and a fraction of the apps. Gmail, Email, Google+, Google Newstand, Google music, Google Books and more besides are disabled.
I cannot say for sure but it seems to me that the drain is the same when it is sleeping and when I am using it. Wakelock has given me a 75% awake time even though I only use it for 15-20% of the day at most nowadays. The Android OS seems to be the one keeping the phone awake most times. It is the one thing I have noticed changing after the update.While it was 8-15% noe it is 15-30% of battery usage. Battery settings show eg Screen 35%, Android OS 15-28%, Voice calls 10%, Android system 5-15%, Cell standby 7%, Device idle 4%, Media server 4%. The batttery chart shows a constant steep drop all the time.
The problem started one day when the Media server went mad consuming 50% of the battery. After I did the factory reset it has never again been a problem but the drain still persists.
I have also read that it's a mess up between syncing of Samsung apps and Google services, but I have no way of verifying that.
Can anyone help?
Thanks

 

[jdub1981]

Need

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[jdub1981]

You may need to give it time. Apps usually arent 100% compatible when a new OS comes out. My question to you is that after your second factory reset did you happen to wait before you started reinstalling your stuff? If while on a fresh 4.3 on a full battery with zero personal apps installed your battery still drains as fast then I cant help. However if the battery drains normally then it is an app setting or an app specifically doing the drain.

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[Christos Terzis]

Hello and thanks for the reply. After the third factory reset no personal apps were installed for a while, but still the drain persisted. Wakelock detector showed Google+ to be highly active. I uninstalled the updates and disabled it. The drain vanished. Then I enabled Google+ again to see if the updates were fine now. The drain started again and Wakelock detector showed that Google+ was running like mad. A second disabling didn't do the trick a second time unfortunately. I then followed advice from the internet and went to settings>data usage>restrict background data. The drain again stopped. Once more I enabled Google+ and once more the drain started. I force stopped it, unchecked and checked again the restrict data function and it still persists. Wakelock detector showed that Google+ was not running, but Android system and something called 1013 were. In the details of the Android system it showed Alarm manager to be waking a massive *381 for 60 seconds and Timaservice *54 for 33 seconds. The phone awake time was 55% for the past 7 hours, of which 6 it was not used at all due to nightime. I don't know if this information helps.

 

[Christos Terzis]

As you have noticed I have said third factory reset. I did one more after the other two shortly later.

 

[jdub1981]

Google plus has always been a major problem for me. I remember disabling it way back in 2012. From what I understand it is because Plus is constantly requesting location access. This allows google to give the most upto date and complete informations for your surrounding area however it also is a major battery drain. I thing I gave limited access by changing location access only on wifi. I have no idea what wakelock detector is so cant help you there. Ive only ever need google search and the application and battery manager built in to tell me what is wrong. However your 2 apps that you mention here only add upto 93 seconds of cpu time. Cpu, screen, and any wireless transmitting are the culprits for battery drain.

4.3 came with a nifty built in widget that shows currently running process and which ones are draining your battery

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[1812dave]

ages ago, the media process suddenly starting killing my note's battery. I had to do a reset. NOTICE i DIDN'T WRITE "MEDIA SERVER". JUST "MEDIA". the reset fixed it, permanently. I HATE doing resets!!

my old thread http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-note-2/678206-darn-media-service-killing-battery.html

 

[jdub1981]

Here is a screen shot of todays usage for me on 4.3. I didnt use my phone as much as usual but you can the idea. 4.3 is not the enemy. Its almost always an unoptimized app or seting that draining your battery.

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[Aleksandar Nedyalkov]

I had the same problem and it did not resolve immediately after the factory reset, but a couple of days later it did. But yet again for several days now, i have had the feeling that it has come up again. I do not want to do a factory again and hope that it will magically disappear. Just to let you know you are not alone.

 

[hammey22]

Yes, definitely not alone. I have tried many of the things mentioned and none seem to help. I get the feeling that we're going to need an update from Sammy / carrier to sort most of this out. The sad thing is I have found most of the battery drain on mine to be Android / Google services as well, and not third party apps I have installed. Far and away the biggest offender has been the Android System processes. I don't ever remember that one being higher than maybe 12% and now I have had it as high as 34% which seems to crush my battery. I am hoping for a silver bullet, but haven't found it yet.

 

[NeoGrandizer]

Yes, definitely not alone. I have tried many of the things mentioned and none seem to help. I get the feeling that we're going to need an update from Sammy / carrier to sort most of this out. The sad thing is I have found most of the battery drain on mine to be Android / Google services as well, and not third party apps I have installed. Far and away the biggest offender has been the Android System processes. I don't ever remember that one being higher than maybe 12% and now I have had it as high as 34% which seems to crush my battery. I am hoping for a silver bullet, but haven't found it yet.

Same thing with me where Android System goes rogue and chews up the battery. I found doing a full charge and a full shutdown and boot clears it up. But it eventually comes back at a random time to mess things up again. No real resolution to this at user's end. Maybe a bugged tweak Samsung made to increase performance.

When it behaves, battery life is on par with 4.1.2 under light to no use. But moderate to heavy usage tanks the battery much more quickly than with 4.1.2.

 

[yian the man]

Hi All!

I created an account on this website just so i could share how I improved my Note 2's battery (quite drastically) after the update.

Below is a list of the settings I changed on my phone and everything else I did. I stopped charging it at 8.30 this morning, its now 10pm and I still have 61% charge!



Settings - (Connections) - make sure NFC, S Beam, and Nearby Devices are off
- (My device) - S Pen - Air view - battery saving on
- Smartscreen - smart stay off
- Motion - should be off
- Display - auto adjust screen tone on
- (More) - location services - access my location off

Apps - (samsung apps) - home key to get settings pop up - auto updates off
- push notifications off
- app update notifications off

(google settings) - location - access location off
ads - opt out of interest-based ads ticked

(play store) - home key to get settings - notifications unchecked
- auto-update apps ( do not auto-update)
- auto-add widgets unchecked

Go on the home screen, press the apps thing, then at the top go to widgets. Add 'active apps manager' to your homescreen somewhere. On this you can close down all apps. Every once in a while, go on it and press 'RAM - clear memory.' This will help save battery.

I also turned my phone off for a good 20 minutes when it was on low battery (around 15%). Apparently this helps if you haven't turned your phone off since the update.



I hope this helps! I don't use this website so I can't promise I'll reply to any questions, but hope this helps someone!

 

[jdub1981]

I didnt realize this wasnt exclusive att post. Yes I believe early versions of 4.3 had issues that require updating. Att update came out around Dec 17th. One of last to update. So maybe they got it fixed before release

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[NeoGrandizer]

Lucky you. I'm in Canada and got the unfortunate task of testing this update. Hubs failed to work. Past purchases lost because of this early botch job. Photo editor crashed. They since fixed these issues. But I was not happy being used as a guinea pig during its first release.

 

[ohcanada1]

I'm noticing the same thing when it comes to the Android system being that high mine used to be like 8% now its getting in between 20 and 30 percent. Is there anything that I can do that can help reduce this back to my normal percentage that it would normally be at? My battery at first when I did the update its only been the past 2 weeks where my battery is taking a beating where its draining through the night like I've been on it. The Android System seems to be the only thing that has gone crazy since the update, and assume this is my problem to my battery life issues.

 

[serkansancak]

The one to blame is the Samsung Knox that comes with 4.3. It just works as a new user on your phone and can do all the things you can do and even more. It is the one that keeps waking other apps and not letting the phone go into deep sleep mode. Actually you have an icon of knox that says install when you click. Unfortunately some part of it is already installed and can not be uninstalled. In some forums they tell how to uninstall it but to use that method you need to install it first, and after the uninstall process you are at the beginning again, where some part of it still installed. If you check settings>more>battery you don't see that this program is running!!! If you check settings>more>applications you don't see even that it is installed!!! But it is there using your battery and probably spying on you (because it has that privilege). However you can use 3. party applications to catch it. Just check:
Samsung KNOX Software is Spying on you and Draining Your Battery - YouTube
This is why we have the same problem since the 4.3 update. I tried everything to get rid of it but it is imposible at the moment. I just void my warranty to get rid of it but failed again. I will not try anything else until someone really find a solution. There are some solutions that some says it worked for them but it is to late for me, because those methods need a rooted device and some apps like supersu. And the method used a backdoor of knox which kept open at the begining. 4.3 distributed at the end of 2013 in Turkey, and I updated. After few days a popup says my phone needs a security update about android and I click yes! Now that backdoor was closed for knox! NO WAY TO GET RID OF IT at the moment. The suggestions above are good but they are good for any device anyway. Not the direct solution for our problem. I installed Battery doctor which seems to improve my battery life but this is also a temporary solution. I want knox to gone for good! Battery doctor keeps closing some apps but they keep geting active again. Besides knox decides everything therefor a bunch of other applications I tried had failed because knox says "an unauthorized attempt has been detected..." etc etc. and don't allow these applications to do their job to save on my cpu and battery. I wish I never get this update "present" for the new year. 4.1.2 was much much much better!

 

[mfaranhassan]

Dear friend, this problem is with the poor code of android 4.3 used by samsung and it has plagued almost all galaxy and note devices.

There is no full time solution for it but here is how you can control the drain.

1. Disable all the extra tools like NFC, GPS,Bluetooth, reading mode, air gesture, sbeam etc.
2. Turn off all your location services from settings.
3. Avoid google+.
4. Install whatever applications you want after resetting the device fully.
5. Install wake lock detector.
6. Keep an eye on Kernel wake locks which you can approach after opening the advanced settings of wake lock detector.
7. Following 3 wake locks are mainly the culprits for battery drain. So whenever you see them working extra time use the mitigation as suggested below
A. WLAN Rx wake........ Switch off the wifi and reconnect it after 10 seconds. Wake lock will stop consuming the battery but it may come into action again if you change between different wifi connections.
B. Power manager service wake lock.........restart your device and it will stop eating the battery. No other solution.
C.alarm manager wake lock.............restart your device. No other solution.

Let me know if this helps or not.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

The battery drain is a Google location bug, Samsung told me about it a few weeks ago and said Google was working on a fix. I saw today a fix has been done and they are starting to release a new version of Google Play. They are taking about 4.4 Android in this article, but our Google play should be updated also. Google addresses the battery drain.

http://m.androidauthority.com/google-play-services-4-1-update-332922/

 

[jSlim12]

Ugh. I have the same problem. Not only that though. Are any of you having a problem with camera quality also from this update? I'm really upset I updated to version 4.3. I have not had a good experience.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Ugh. I have the same problem. Not only that though. Are any of you having a problem with camera quality also from this update? I'm really upset I updated to version 4.3. I have not had a good experience.

Have you done a reset?