Poor battery life

[Android Central Question]

Samsung note 9. I got this phone in part because of the top rated battery life, and at first it was. I could go a day and a half before getting low.

Now, the battery life drops like a rock tossed over a cliff. I did admittedly use the phone for a period of about a couple months streaming a LOT of videos, bcuz i had no other device to watch on. When i watched a lot of videos, the battery drained quickly, as expected. But now, the phone can be sitting in my pocket all day with the occasional Facebook or email check, texting, maybe a few youtube vids here and there, battery still drops like a rock. It lasts maybe half a day compared to the day and a half when it was new. Phone has no physical damage, no major drops or shattering (I have a heavy duty case) no water damage, hasn't been wet.

Things I've tried:
All the online advice.
Screen brightness is set below 25%.

Medium power save mode on. Battery optimized.

Every battery sucking app restricted to run in background, set to put to sleep when not in use.

I've gone thru apps and deleted anything suspicious or unnecessary.

Ran multiple virus scans with multiple different AV apps.

Restarted phone.

Downloaded any updates i can find.

Turned dark theme on wherever i can.

Probably a few more things i can't remember.

Things I have not tried:

Factory rest (which i absolutely dread and will only try as an absolute last resort)

Disabling mobile data. The phone is on wifi 95% of the time unless i leave to go somewhere, which generally doesn't take more than an hour or two. It was never a factor when the phone was brand new but suppose i could try airplane mode.

I've tried everything i can find on forums or google searches, short of factory reset. Could the battery life have been degraded this much from a couple months of running videos hard? The phone is not even a year old, probably 9 months, the battery life is cut in half and that's WITH all the steps I have taken above.

Is there something I'm missing? Anything else I can try not listed above? Could charging with the case on cause the battery life to take that much of a hit that quickly? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[Rkill5935]

I should probably explain more thoroughly. When I say battery drains fast, I don't mean a few hours and the phone is dead. What I mean is, for roughly about the same amount of use and taxation on the battery, it only seems to last about half as long as it did out of the box. It will last most of the day, which is still pretty good battery life. But when i first got the phone, i could go all day, wake up the next day and still have 30% left. Now, I'm running dead having to charge by late afternoon/evening, and that's with power save mode, screen brightness turned down, apps restricted to run in background, etc etc. Battery just doesn't seem to last nearly as long as it used to. Maybe this is normal as the battery ages and is charged many times, I dunno. Insted of poor battery life, I should've said poor battery life compared to what it used to be. Hopefully that gives a better understanding of what I mean by battery draining fast

 

[ManiacJoe]

When you are viewing the battery usage screen, does the 3-dot menu have something like "view all" or "include system" ?

 

[Rkill5935]

Negative ghost rider. It has "hide os and system apps"

Don't know if you had a chance to read my earlier posts or if it's relevant but i had a period of maybe a couple months where i was very heavily streaming videos. Maybe 6 hours a day or more. Right after that is when i noticed the difference in battery life. Don't know if it has anything to do with it but that's exactly when it started. (I'm not streaming videos like that anymore, just using phone normally)

 

[Rkill5935]

Had an extended period where i was very heavily taxing the battery, having to recharge often. Ever since then battery hasn't seemed the same. wondering if it could be related or if the timing is just coincidental

 

[Kawar]

Its also worth noting Bluetooth and location suck a lot of power even in this day and age.

What you can try is do what I do with every new phone. remove/disable any stock app your never going to use or install a force uninstaller app and force the app to remove it self.

that little bit helps a lot with battery. also you need to understand the chip in that phone is not as good with battery as they say it is and the screen sucks a lot as well.

 

[Kawar]

if its 3% drop in lets say 2mins to write a message then you should mail it in to samsung and get the bat replaced theres a chance it may be bad or not as good as it should have been from the start.

 

[mustang7757]

Negative ghost rider. It has "hide os and system apps"

Don't know if you had a chance to read my earlier posts or if it's relevant but i had a period of maybe a couple months where i was very heavily streaming videos. Maybe 6 hours a day or more. Right after that is when i noticed the difference in battery life. Don't know if it has anything to do with it but that's exactly when it started. (I'm not streaming videos like that anymore, just using phone normally)

It could also be from recent software update that it's not lasting as long .

 

[Rkill5935]

Ok. So just to be clear, to everyone's knowledge the repeated heavy taxing of the battery should have had no major impact on battery life?

 

[Rkill5935]

That was actually something i read in my google searching, that a samsung update could have major impact on battery life... is the only solution factory resetting and not allowing the update?

 

[mustang7757]

That was actually something i read in my google searching, that a samsung update could have major impact on battery life... is the only solution factory resetting and not allowing the update?

Factory reset might help, but it will still stay on the same software, you would need flash back with Odin and not update.

 

[mustang7757]

Clearing cache in recovery could help also

 

[Rkill5935]

yeah think I'll give that a try. not really tryin to get into flashin the firmware tho. Ok thanks everybody much appreciated

 

[ManiacJoe]

Ok. So just to be clear, to everyone's knowledge the repeated heavy taxing of the battery should have had no major impact on battery life?

That could easily be a factor.
The question is how often did you let the battery drop below 30% ?
Lithium batteries do NOT like to be drained all the way down.