Operating and battery issues

[Jaiess]

Hey all,
I've had my phone (s3) for ages now and I love it but there's some bugaboos. The main issue is the slow operating of it. Sometimes I'll press the power button and it takes the phone a few seconds to respond. Anything I basically do takes a few seconds to respond which is really irritating in general but especially when I want to answer a call, make a call, take a quick picture (definitely miss the moment every time) and even just the keyboard takes time to appear; you can imagine my frustration. I've tried turning off the animation scale in the developer options, another thread said change it to x5, I bought a memory card to free up phone, I regularly close apps and clear RAM which works for all of 5 seconds. I defo prefer this phone to iPhone, but the iPhone never had general operating issues like this!

That's the main problem, but secondly last couple weeks to make things worse my battery is screwing around with my life. Firstly it doesn't last more than 3/4 of a day and I've read people tweak things to improve this, any ideas? All settings are to low I.e. Brightness, power save mode, etc. And recently it doesn't change! It'll be plugged in at night and I wake up to it only at 40%. I've tried the Android wipe cache thing by holding down the buttons when it's off. I tried rebooting it and changing the battery dump it something by dialing *#9900#, no luck.

I'd really really appreciate any help! Even the slightest improvement would be great! Thank you all

 

[GSDer]

If you've had the phone for as long as you say you have, it's probably time for a new battery. The RAVPower 2250mAh is a great replacement.

As for your slow operation - sounds like it's time for a Factory Reset.

Sent from my rooted, debloated, deodexed Sinclair ZX-80 running CM -0.001 using Tapatalk

 

[Jaiess]

Hey thanks for the reply. I'll look into that battery.

In terms of a factory reset, I'd lose everything on my phone, yeah I could get my pictures etc but Samsung Kies is so rubbish! Is there any other software I can use to back up?

 

[GSDer]

That's funny - I've never had a problem with Kies: I use it all the time, and it's the only solution I've found that restores MMS correctly (there's lots of solutions that handle SMS but I haven't found a single one that does MMS other than Kies).

There are lots of apps out there that handle various pieces (some do contacts; some do SMS; some do call logs; etc) but if you need to backup/restore your Candy Crush Saga game progress then one of the few that doesn't require root access is Helium http://market.android.com/details?id=com.koushikdutta.backup - it has its quirks but it's pretty reliable.

Sent from my rooted, debloated, deodexed Sinclair ZX-80 running CM -0.001 using Tapatalk

 

[GTWalling]

I would try a Cache wipe, and not loose any data before the Factory reset and see if it speeds things up.
1. Turn off the device.
2. Press and hold the Volume Up key, Home key, and Power key at the same time.
3. When the phone vibrates, let go of the Power key but continue to press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key.
4. Press the Volume Down key to move to and highlight wipe cache partition.
5. Press the Power key to select and wipe the cache partition.
6. After the wipe is finished, go back up till reboot system now is highlighted and press the Power key to restart the phone.

 

[Jaiess]

Ah that's odd. Whenever I've attempted to use it it mostly doesn't even pick up my phone being connected and when it rarely does it errors mid backup. I'll give it another go. Thanks for the link as well

 

[Jaiess]

I would try a Cache wipe, and not loose any data before the Factory reset and see if it speeds things up.
1. Turn off the device.
2. Press and hold the Volume Up key, Home key, and Power key at the same time.
3. When the phone vibrates, let go of the Power key but continue to press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key.
4. Press the Volume Down key to move to and highlight wipe cache partition.
5. Press the Power key to select and wipe the cache partition.
6. After the wipe is finished, go back up till reboot system now is highlighted and press the Power key to restart the phone.

Hiya, thanks. I tried this and it hasn't had a lasting effect. The lag is terrible now. Any action takes at least 10 seconds to respond! Would you recommend a factory reset too?

 

[EdwinBos]

A factory reset sounds bad, but is actually not a big deal.

If you are connected to the internet, Google has most likely made a backup of your device in the cloud (when in doubt, you can easily force this). After the factory reset you simply log-in to Google and it restores your settings and apps.

For me this process was really simple and smooth, but did a lot to speed up my phone.

 

[EdwinBos]

Oh, also:
There are battery packs available for the Galaxy S3 that double both the battery life of your phone and its thickness. Several friends of mine have this and they are quite happy with it (even though it does look bulky).

 

[Jaiess]

Hey,

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't know it would save my settings etc as well so I might try that. Do I need to log in to the cloud to force the backup?