S22 Ultra Battery Disappointment

[BlackZeppelin]

I'm very happy with the battery life of my S22 Ultra. Actual on screen use I'm extremely happy with. Playing videos, listening to Spotify, browsing the internet, streaming movies etc. About15% of battery use lasts me literally hours of continuous on screen use. And in a few mins that 15% battery recharges really quickly and good to go again for hours of use again. With very little compromise. Dark mode on phone, dark mode on browsers/YouTube, FHD display and 60 Hz refresh rate. I challenge anyone to tell the difference between FHD and WQHD. And 60 Hz is so smooth I don't bother using extra battery for the 120 Hz adaptive refresh rate.

2 instances where the battery drains a bit. Standby drain is ok but not great. I don't complain about it though. And using the camera, especially the video and zooming with the periscope lens.

As regarding standby drain, you can make it really good by using bixby routines. You can schedule a time at night to automatically turn off wi-fi, location, mobile data, AOD and bluetooth. And schedule a time to turn these on in the morning. I have experimented and if you do this, overnight drain is absolute minimal. A couple of % in battery drain overnight.

I personally do something similar but manually. I have a manual bixby widget so at the end of the night I press it and everything turns off. In the morning I press it again and everything turns on. I also use a bixby routines for even faster charging. When the phone is charging, bixby turns off AOD, mobile data, location and bluetooth.

I'm overall very happy with the battery performance of the S22 Ultra, especially coupled with the really quick charging.

 

[Morty2264]

How long have you had the device, OP? Sometimes it'll take a few weeks for the device and battery to learn your usage patterns and adjust itself accordingly.

That being said, iPhones are notorious for battery performance. My husband's iPhone SE was stellar at staying alive when the battery was low on power!

 

[anon(40376)]

No need for Bixby Routines, you can use DO NOT DISTURB. It will shut everything down and you can still allow phone calls from the contact list to come through for possible emergencies. I've used it for years, and when I had the S22, one of the first things I set up. You can give it a set time to start / stop for each day of the week, or turn it on / off manually.

 

[BlackZeppelin]

No need for Bixby Routines, you can use DO NOT DISTURB. It will shut everything down and you can still allow phone calls from the contact list to come through for possible emergencies. I've used it for years, and when I had the S22, one of the first things I set up. You can give it a set time to start / stop for each day of the week, or turn it on / off manually.

I'll have to try that as an alternative to bixby routines. Thanks.

Just one thing. What is the difference between allowing messages but not conversations? I'm not sure what is the difference between messages and conversations?

 

[Go0gle]

One more thing I forgot to mention that helps battery life - put every single app into a deep sleep that doesn't need to do anything until you open it. A "deep sleep" basically just shuts down any possibility of background activity until you run it. For example banking, weather, probably most social media, news apps, reddit, amazon, Skip The Dishes, uber, etc. etc. do not need to be running until you open them in most instances. Almost all my apps are on the "deep sleep" list and I've never noticed anything different other than better battery life.

 

[tivoboy]

I have to say, for people who say "its okay if i turn of 120hz, and put it in Dark Mode and turn off background updates and shut of 5G and leave it on 3g/LTE, then it is fine" doesn't really inspire confidence in how this phone should behave at this point?

for those who have done a FULL RESTORE and not a BACKUP, I wonder how subjective this TOO might be.. I mean after ALL that effort most humans don't want to feel all their effort and trouble has been for naught. Truly, OBJECTIVELY, is it lasting much long after full wipe and start from NEW?

 

[dov1978]

I have to say, for people who say "its okay if i turn of 120hz, and put it in Dark Mode and turn off background updates and shut of 5G and leave it on 3g/LTE, then it is fine" doesn't really inspire confidence in how this phone should behave at this point?

for those who have done a FULL RESTORE and not a BACKUP, I wonder how subjective this TOO might be.. I mean after ALL that effort most humans don't want to feel all their effort and trouble has been for naught. Truly, OBJECTIVELY, is it lasting much long after full wipe and start from NEW?

For me personally the difference after a full reset is night and day. Doing a factory reset is my worst nightmare and I wouldn't do that unless I felt I'd exhausted all other options. I wanted to return it and get something else but agreed with my wife that I'd begrudgingly try a reset 1st as Samsung Repair would insist I tried that anyway. The 1st 2 weeks my Ultra had worse performance than the S20 FE I had last year and the battery would drain away equally as fast. I set mine up recovering only 'Settings' and 'Home Screen Layouts' from a previous backup so thought that would be safe enough. But as the days went by my phone got laggier and hotter and I'd have to keep topping up the battery throughout the day. I thought the huge March update would have fixed it but it kept getting worse. After a factory reset it performs perfectly, doesn't lag or get hot now, and this week I forgot to take my car charger to work which would normally be a disaster but I spent all day with Google Maps open for navigating, streaming online music to my Bluetooth Galaxy Buds Live and it was really sunny so screen brightness was always high. I made it home with some battery to spare. That was over 6 hrs Screen On Time with battery hogs like GPS, mobile data, bright screen running constantly. It's not quite the iPhone 12 Pro Max endurance I had before it but it was close and I've been a huge critic of the Ultra since I got mine and had all my issues. I really wonder if Samsung has shipped these with some nasty bugs? After my reset I even had different versions of apps pre loaded? The Samsung version of Google Messages was there this time when it was Samsung Messages there the 1st time

 

[YankInDaSouth]

For me, after a reset I'm averaging about 10+ hours with 4+ hours SOT (don't this I've reach 5 hours SOT). Hate using SOT as a standard because there's way too many variables, but it seems when it comes to battery life talks that's all folks want to hear.

I'm not loving the battery life on this phone, if I'm being honest but I'm also not hating it. While I work my phone stays in my pocket due to using a work issued phone ... the standby drain, to me, seems very high while it does nothing besides hangout in my pocket. With that being said, I have it always paired to my Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, 5G on, 120hz on, WQHD on, AOD on, location services on, etc. If I want it on, it's on. I didn't buy a Lamborghini only to treat it like a Honda Civic LOL.

I am getting similar battery life as I was on my Pixel 6 Pro ... which I wasn't too keen on either. But for me the saving grace with the S22U is how stupid fast this thing charges! In a matter of 15-30 minutes on the charger it's topped off to an amount that'll typically last me until I can charge to full (this is with the Google 30 watt charger I purchased when I got my 6 Pro). Now, does Sammy get a pass from me on what I'd consider mediocre battery life? Not at all! I am hoping battery life improves with updates. But I can take the trade offs ... For now

 

[GrooveRite]

Did anyone try the Good Guardians app and run the Galaxy App Booster before doing a factory reset??

 

[Go0gle]

I have to say, for people who say "its okay if i turn of 120hz, and put it in Dark Mode and turn off background updates and shut of 5G and leave it on 3g/LTE, then it is fine" doesn't really inspire confidence in how this phone should behave at this point?

for those who have done a FULL RESTORE and not a BACKUP, I wonder how subjective this TOO might be.. I mean after ALL that effort most humans don't want to feel all their effort and trouble has been for naught. Truly, OBJECTIVELY, is it lasting much long after full wipe and start from NEW?

I can't see the 120Hz mode affecting battery life too much unless you're gaming, which is already horrible for battery life on any device. The S22U display is LTPO which allows it to variably select 1Hz to 120Hz. In theory, this should give the average user even better battery life than constant 60Hz because if I am looking at a static image/page, the phone can drop to 1Hz. If you are slowly scrolling a news feed or something, it shouldn't be at 120Hz either.

For me, dark mode is preference, it just happens to help out battery life due to the nature of how OLED panels work. I use dark mode on all my Apple/iOS devices as well, even the ones without OLED displays.

Limiting background activity and disabling certain apps also helps out battery life on Apple devices, that is not unique to Android. The difference is Apple gives you far less control over that, so you have fewer options. Android gives you granular control over notifications, data, and background usage for every single individual app.

Regarding 5G, I personally don't even use a 5G SIM. Nothing I do requires that kind of bandwidth and I am on WiFi 95% of the time anyway. Unless you're downloading huge files or using a hotspot something over a cellular network, I can't even think of why you might need speeds like that. Battery life suffers on 5G on Apple devices as well. It's just like your home internet - whether you have 100Mbps or 1,000Mbps, it doesn't matter if all you ever do with it is stream Netflix and surf the web because you will never even come close to maxing out your bandwidth. Our cellular plans here in Canada all suck though, and any 'unlimited' data plan is not truly unlimited, so I could see 5G being much more useful in other countries where cellular plans are both reasonably priced and have better data plans.

Just my $0.02, YMMV.

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

I'm getting a solid days worth of battery out of my S22U. Pretty happy with it so far.

 

[Mike Dee]

I have no battery complaints and I'm not gimping any features.

 

[mustang7757]

I have no battery complaints and I'm not gimping any features.

Agree

 

[BlackZeppelin]

As I said, I'm extremely happy with battery life on my S22 Ultra. Standby drain is ok to fair only whilst the heaviest drain is using the camera in video and zoom modes. But browsing, YouTube etc I get hours from just a bit over 10% battery use and that takes literally a few mins to recharge.

Regarding using the camera, I have an idea. I haven't yet tried it. I noticed in the which panel layout there is a "bedtime" icon that turns on 'do not disturb', (which you can change the settings of), and turns the whole screen to black and white.

This would be perfect when you're out and about using the camera. You can take all your photos and videos using a black and white display which I imagine would save battery life considerably. I'll have to try it myself to see how much the battery is extended when viewing in black and white.

 

[jlangner]

My battery life has greatly improved since day 1. Guess just takes time to learn.

 

[Venom0642]

Wow battery life is outstanding at 42% over 7hrs SOT , as you can see used some apps over and hour. Definitely this phone is a super beast. AT&T S22 Ultra 5G Snapdragon 512GB

 

[GrooveRite]

I have no battery complaints and I'm not gimping any features.

Same here. I just got my phone a week ago. I'm starting to think that either there are some units that are faulty or user error.

 

[NIZMOZ44]

Been great battery life for me too. Probably can get 7 to 8 hours.

 

[Venom0642]

Definitely outstanding over 10 SOT AT&T S22 Ultra 5G Snapdragon 512GB