Pie update on Samsung S3 killing battery when in airplane mode

[monsieurms]

Sigh. First, not sure if this should be here or with the Samsung fora, but of course, move it if need be.

So, a few days ago got the update of Android 9 on my S3 Tablet. The battery seems to work just fine when the tablet is in normal operation (although I have not had a lot of time to test that).

My nighttime operation mode is to put it in airplane mode. That usually prevented the battery from draining much overnight (plus, I like to disable certain alerts, like messenger). There would typically be a 1 to 3% drain in airplane mode overnight. If I left the tablet completely on, it could be double or triple that on a given night.

Then, the update changed everything. Now, when I go into airplane mode overnight disaster occurs. The first night--drained the battery to 1%. That's TO 1% not BY 1%. I rebooted. I uninstalled the app that seemed to be taking the most battery power (a battery widget) and tried again. I wasn't hopeful--because the battery widget app wasn't in fact taking very much power according to Device Care/Battery, but I gave it a whirl.

Then, I tried it first with wi-fi on, not invoking airplane mode as a test. It was fine and normal the next day. But that wasn't the issue, of course. Tried it again with my more usual mode of airplane mode ON. I also turned location services on Google off, thinking that maybe it would be looking and couldn't find something. Just in case.

Still...after all that....Drained the battery to 54% overnight. Not as bad as 1%, but still notable and unacceptable. (Maybe I should try it again with Location ON.)

I don't see a whole lot of clues here. Under Device Care/Battery, the app taking the most power overnight was only the Anti Virus App (AVG), reported to be active for most of that time, but only responsible for 3.7% of battery usage. Nothing else was anywhere close to that and only a handful were over 1%.

So, I don't get what is causing this. FWIIW, shortly before the update I cleaned out some unused files, apps, etc, using All in One Toolbox, in order to make a little more space. I can't see how that would have caused this. I then downloaded a couple of movies from Prime and Netflix to my external card. Again, don't see how that would cause anything, and the battery usage stat shows no significant hit overnight from those apps. But I just thought I'd report recent changes in the interest of thoroughness.

So, there we have it. Any ideas would be welcome.

 

[Rukbat]

You could send feedback to Samsung (Settings - then search feedback. Airplane mode is supposed to turn all radios off, which would save battery - but it;s not supposed to be doing anything else. (Of course Samsung can modify AOSP, so there's no telling what it's doing in the update you're running.)

You could try to download the ROM and reflash it (meaning that you'd have to back everything up), in case the update glitched somehow (although software normally doesn't do that - if it's not working, the modem wouldn't work at all). Also try a cache clear from Recovery.

 

[monsieurms]

Thanks. I am going to hunt around before I take those steps on ROM, which are kind of drastic. I think I will ask Samsung if they have any clues, however.