[Help][50% SOLVED] LTE = random heavy battery drain aka "plummet"

[Barenjager]

First thing: I upgraded to LH9 yesterday and am waiting to see if the "plummet" returns or if they've fixed the issue...fingers crossed.

Secondly, you're not really describing your battery issue to a degree that confirms it's the same as I've mentioned in this thread. Does it normalize after a reboot? Do you see good battery life then suddenly it just starts plummeting for no obvious reason?

Is your battery life just bad 100% of the time? If so I'd try GSAM Battery Monitor to try and pinpoint what's causing it.

Yeah, sorry. I re-read what I hastily typed earlier and I see I wasn't very clear.

I'm not sure if it normalizes after a reboot, since I was leaving the LTE area quickly after finding this thread..more testing tomorrow..

I usually get very good battery life, and today from the moment of connecting to LTE, it started plummeting for no obvious reason. I did nothing different than I did before LTE became available.

BTW, completely stock, unrooted, latest OTA update..

Normal work day BEFORE LTE (which is usually 8 hours, 9-5, 1pm-10pm..), I would get great, great battery life. I would leave work with no less than 60-50%, quick charge on the drive home, and would usually plug my phone in around 12-1 a.m and still have around 30% on average.

This is with average to heavy use, and on HSPA+, no wifi at work. Then at home I would use my wifi.
I'll play with my phone at any given opportunity at work, text messages through out the day, use Pulse, Feedly, Reddit is Fun, Twitter, Instagram, etc. I looked recently and had 16 hrs on one charge, with 30% battery left at 1 am when I was going to bed. Great, right?

Well, I did all those same things I would normally do at work, now with an LTE connection, and today was only a 6 hour work day. I had 20%ish battery when I was leaving. I was at 60% battery after the phone only being on, connected LTE, and unplugged for 2.5 hours. Every time I took it out of my pocket I noticed the battery had dropped 3-5%...(and I clear my open tasks, and really started to clear all open apps once I noticed the battery drop, didn't help.)

Granted, this is only 2 days with having LTE, and I had the LH9 update before LTE ever touched my phone. But it was bad enough to make me do some searches and find this thread.

Like I said, I'm going to do more testing with it tomorrow at work. I'll only be there for 4 hours, but I plan on keeping my phone fully charged, reboot as soon as I get the LTE connection, and not touching it unless necessary. I might actually get some work done...

I'll check it, if I see it plummet, I'll reboot and see if there's a change and report back here tomorrow. If the worst is true, I'm just confirming what you already know. But if it's like you said and happens randomly, who knows. Too bad I don't get LTE at home so I can truly test this.

 

[wowpaw]

First thing: I upgraded to LH9 yesterday and am waiting to see if the "plummet" returns or if they've fixed the issue...fingers crossed.

Secondly, you're not really describing your battery issue to a degree that confirms it's the same as I've mentioned in this thread. Does it normalize after a reboot? Do you see good battery life then suddenly it just starts plummeting for no obvious reason?

Is your battery life just bad 100% of the time? If so I'd try GSAM Battery Monitor to try and pinpoint what's causing it.

Yeah I agree with jefferi. From what it sounds like, yours seems more usage-based than random in terms of drainage. My phone will literally drop 30% (when plummeting) in 30 mins when my phone is just sitting on the table not being in used (no notifications/calls/screen is off/etc)

 

[Barenjager]

So, everything appeared normal today. I didn't touch my phone for 2.5 hours and was at around 95%. Not sure what the heck happened. Certainly wasn't like that yesterday. If it was just a usage problem, then using LTE uses a hell of a lot more battery than hspa. A LOT. I have GSam Battery Monitor and I'm going to keep a watch on anything weird.

I'm curious to find out if the recent OTA update helps you at all, and will be checking this thread to see.

Either way, thanks.

 

[ilifecomputer]

I don't have anything technical to add to this discussion and thank you all for all of this info. I'm just the typical user with strong lte in my bedroom where I get completely random plummets over night. Trying to switch where I lay my phone tonight because last night after the lh9 update, my phone died plummet style.

Getting kind of sad about it and losing faith in my handset as an alarm. Before I found this thread I had also tried an exchange and still see the same issue. I do believe in a potential att lte bug because my friend who lives down the street saw the same thing happen once on her onex. I've seen it twice in one month. Reformatted and everything to no avail.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

 

[jake_09368]

If cell standby is the biggest drain it could be that you have the issue that most SGS3 phones have where there is an error in the reference value. There is a fix for it available however, the value they replace it with isn't 100% accurate as the actual value isn't known (at least that's what I read in other forums). I had that issue and used the fix to see what was really killing my battery and it turned out to be android system. There is apparently a runaway process named gsiff_daemon that constantly keeps the phone awake and uses power. I still haven't been able to find any information about what this process actually does. the process is located in /system/bin folder and simply removing it from the folder will kill the process. So far I've seen a rather noticeable increase in my battery life since then. From what I've read, these are both known issues on all SGS3 devices in the U.S. (not sure about overseas).
Please note that for either fix to be applied, root access is required. If anything, it may be worth looking into. It's a shot in the dark but maybe this will help or point you in A direction. Good luck man.

 

[jeffreii]

I don't have anything technical to add to this discussion and thank you all for all of this info. I'm just the typical user with strong lte in my bedroom where I get completely random plummets over night. Trying to switch where I lay my phone tonight because last night after the lh9 update, my phone died plummet style.

Getting kind of sad about it and losing faith in my handset as an alarm. Before I found this thread I had also tried an exchange and still see the same issue. I do believe in a potential att lte bug because my friend who lives down the street saw the same thing happen once on her onex. I've seen it twice in one month. Reformatted and everything to no avail.

I'm hoping this update fixes it...I'm at 3 days uptime since updated to LH9 and no plummet yet. The longest I recall going before a plummet was about 5 days...fingers crossed.

Anyways you have the sad option of disabling LTE to avoid the plummet. You can also try doing a reboot right before bed to help prevent it from happening in the near future (before you wake up). I pretty much always have it charging on the table next to my bed but when I'm sleeping somewhere else the reboot seems to do the trick.

If cell standby is the biggest drain it could be that you have the issue that most SGS3 phones have where there is an error in the reference value. There is a fix for it available however, the value they replace it with isn't 100% accurate as the actual value isn't known (at least that's what I read in other forums). I had that issue and used the fix to see what was really killing my battery and it turned out to be android system. There is apparently a runaway process named gsiff_daemon that constantly keeps the phone awake and uses power. I still haven't been able to find any information about what this process actually does. the process is located in /system/bin folder and simply removing it from the folder will kill the process. So far I've seen a rather noticeable increase in my battery life since then. From what I've read, these are both known issues on all SGS3 devices in the U.S. (not sure about overseas).
Please note that for either fix to be applied, root access is required. If anything, it may be worth looking into. It's a shot in the dark but maybe this will help or point you in A direction. Good luck man.

That's all been mentioned a bunch and I can't find any help from researching those issues. My issue is not gsiff_daemon.

 

[wowpaw]

So, everything appeared normal today. I didn't touch my phone for 2.5 hours and was at around 95%. Not sure what the heck happened. Certainly wasn't like that yesterday. If it was just a usage problem, then using LTE uses a hell of a lot more battery than hspa. A LOT. I have GSam Battery Monitor and I'm going to keep a watch on anything weird.

I'm curious to find out if the recent OTA update helps you at all, and will be checking this thread to see.

Either way, thanks.

Then yes, your issue is not the same with this thread. Yours seems like either a rogue app, a sync interval that is too short on an app, or something is running in the background.

The issue we're suffering here is MUCH more dramatic (as I stated earlier, we're talking drops of 30-40% within an hour with NO use - literally, none whatsoever).

I find it strange that there are not much Verizon users having this issue. Seems a majority here are AT&T.

 

[jeffreii]

Day 4 and the plummet struck again today. No luck on a fix in LH9. Quite disappointed.

I am pretty good at working around the issue and making sure it has no impact on me...other than constantly having to babysit it. It would just be nice to be able to forget about it after a fix!

 

[jay_g]

something interesting. When my battery sucks and I restart the phone it seems that 90% of the time I get a app update notification. Maybe its nothing and its just checking for updates at first start up.

 

[jeffreii]

something interesting. When my battery sucks and I restart the phone it seems that 90% of the time I get a app update notification. Maybe its nothing and its just checking for updates at first start up.

I recall someone talking about this before - either here or in my XDA thread. I have seen the plummet happen without app updates waiting, though. It definitely does check for them on reboot so just a coincidence I'd say.

 

[FastInAtl]

I am having the same issue as you and have tried basically all the same steps. Fixed after reboot, then seemingly randomly it will go from making it 12 hours on standby with only a few percent used to barely making it 6 hours, the whole time on standby. This is obviously absolutely unacceptable for any phone, but especially for one that costs this much and is a supposed flagship. Not that you should have to do this with a phone like this, but do you know if people running other ROMs like Cyanogen mod are hitting the same issue?

 

[adrdfanwannab]

Yep, same here. Plummeting after the latest OTA.
Im starting to wonder if it is actually a hardware issue, and were are just that unlucky to exchange it for one with the same defect. Because i cant think if any reason why my brother and sisters s3 in the same house running the same version has not seen this problem since we upgraded 2 months ago. (They have the red and blue model, i have the white)
I guess our next hope is to see if jellybean has a fix. This is getting to thw point where the phone is becoming unreliable for morning tasks (phonecalls from work, alarm, etc.)
And switching off lte would be a waste since were paying good money for it.
Maybe a crude fix can be to use an app to schedule an auto restart at the most common drain hours

 

[ilifecomputer]

Just woke up to a dead phone for the third time in September. I think that does it for me; I'm moving on to a new device. I'm so mad at this issue. I don't understand how people here will have patience to wait for possible fixes. This is mission critical.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

 

[jeffreii]

Yep, same here. Plummeting after the latest OTA.
Im starting to wonder if it is actually a hardware issue, and were are just that unlucky to exchange it for one with the same defect. Because i cant think if any reason why my brother and sisters s3 in the same house running the same version has not seen this problem since we upgraded 2 months ago. (They have the red and blue model, i have the white)
I guess our next hope is to see if jellybean has a fix. This is getting to thw point where the phone is becoming unreliable for morning tasks (phonecalls from work, alarm, etc.)
And switching off lte would be a waste since were paying good money for it.
Maybe a crude fix can be to use an app to schedule an auto restart at the most common drain hours

That is rather mind-boggling that 3 people in your household have the same phone - but not the same issue. Did you exchange your device as well? I can statistically accept that it's remotely possible I got a second defective device...but the chance that we BOTH exchanged and received equally defective devices is hard to swallow!

Just woke up to a dead phone for the third time in September. I think that does it for me; I'm moving on to a new device. I'm so mad at this issue. I don't understand how people here will have patience to wait for possible fixes. This is mission critical.

I have not had a problem since I learned to reboot before bed (especially if not plugging it into the charger which I do 99% of the time). It still sucks though.

 

[FastInAtl]

I have not had a problem since I learned to reboot before bed (especially if not plugging it into the charger which I do 99% of the time). It still sucks though.

Is that really what we should be expecting of flagship phones costing hundreds of dollars? I wouldn't put up with that from a $2 watch, why the heck should we be dealing with that for a $xxx phone?

I'm assuming that since you show as running CWM that this issue doesn't go away with a different ROM than stock. That sucks since I loved CWM and was thinking switching would fix this issue and give me more customization back.

 

[dmlcs]

I'm having a similar problem, although my battery life doesn't plummet so much as drains steadily, and won't charge to 100% unless I power down completely. I think it's a problem with the location services or some app that uses location services, that updated in the last month or so. I leave my GPS off and have unchecked all the location services except the e911, which can't be turned off, but I still have the "location" logo (the one that looks like a map's directional rose) in my top bar. This is an HTC Thunderbolt, about 18 months old, so there's no common hardware issue with the other's problems. Circumstantial evidence says it was something in the update? Any way to turn off Maps or Places?

 

[ilifecomputer]

We should make sure ATT/Sammy know about it by keeping this thread very alive and active:

Samsung Galaxy S3 Battery Drain (sudden drop) - AT&T Community Support

 

[jeffreii]

Is that really what we should be expecting of flagship phones costing hundreds of dollars? I wouldn't put up with that from a $2 watch, why the heck should we be dealing with that for a $xxx phone?

I'm assuming that since you show as running CWM that this issue doesn't go away with a different ROM than stock. That sucks since I loved CWM and was thinking switching would fix this issue and give me more customization back.

I am stock and though I am rooted and using CWM, I have never tried any ROMs so I cannot confirm whether this is fixed with a new ROM/kernel or not.

 

[midlman]

I've been experiencing this same problem fairly infrequently. But for me it's not the LTE.
In my case I've traced the problem to the Samsung Push Service. I've had my battery go from over 50% charge down to 5% in a matter of hours while that service is running.

How can I be sure? Well first, I looked at the battery meter for the sharp drop, just to confirm that I've lost charge rapidly in the last few hours.
Second, I checked my running apps in the app manager and looked at the times that each app has been running. If the phone has been sitting idle, most of the apps will have been running for hours or even days depending on when it was last rebooted. But in the instances where my battery has plummetted like this I'll find that the Samsung Push Service has been running for only a matter of a few hours.

In the most recent instance - just this evening - all apps on my phone have been running anywhere between 15 hours and 38 hours. The one exception to this: Samsung Push Service started up only a mere 2.5 hours ago. And in that 2.5 hours my battery has gone from 50% charge to 5% charge.

I've poked around to see if there's a way to disable the service. You can stop the service manually, of course. But other users have reported that even if you uninstall the service, it will get reinstalled automatically if you run certain applications. There doesn't seem to be any surefire way to disable or remove it.

 

[saintforlife]

I had the same battery plummet problem after installing the OTA. A factory reset restored the battery life for me. I kept all the AT&T bloatware and didn't bother disabling any of them. Neither did I install Juice Defender this time around. I wanted to keep the phone as stock as possible. The phone lasted two days on a single charge after the factory reset. So I am pretty happy. But I will continue to keep an eye on it.