Samsung Galaxy S4 Battery Life

[monsieurms]

Sorry for a silly question guys but I am a complete newb to this phone. Where do I access these settings/stats?
.

The key areas are:

First, hit the MENU button, to the left of the home bar. It doesn't light up until touch the area. Choose Settings.

Second, From any screen Samsung has a cool toolbar feature that makes this really simple. (Plain vanilla...you sure? )
Just pull down by swiping from the top of the screen and you can see the toolbar icons. You can access the settings window from there, too, by clicking the sprocket icon, or if you click the square you get a table of the full set of System icons available for quick access (see post #114 for a photo of this). (From THAT window, if you click the pencil icon, you can also choose which icons go where)

 

[torndownunit]

The key areas are:

First, hit the MENU button, to the left of the home bar. It doesn't light up until touch the area. Choose Settings.

Second, From any screen Samsung has a cool toolbar feature that makes this really simple. (Plain vanilla...you sure? )
Just pull down by swiping from the top of the screen and you can see the toolbar icons. You can access the settings window from there, too, by clicking the sprocket icon, or if you click the square you get a table of the full set of System icons available for quick access (see post #114 for a photo of this). (From THAT window, if you click the pencil icon, you can also choose which icons go where)

TO clarify, I know how to access settings. I just didn't know where to access those usage history settings. Asking where settings are wouldn't classify as a silly question, it would classify as a ridiculous question lol. Googling, I can't find info on those specific usage 'history' settings though shown in post 110. Thanks.

 

[STARGATE]

TO clarify, I know how to access settings. I just didn't know where to access those usage history settings. Asking where settings are wouldn't classify as a silly question, it would classify as a ridiculous question lol. Googling, I can't find info on those specific usage 'history' settings though shown in post 110. Thanks.

Ok, go to Settings, choose More


Then choose Battery.



Touch the time on battery, below History Details.



Sent From a Galaxy S4 Away!

 

[torndownunit]

Great, thanks!

 

[STARGATE]

Great, thanks!

No problem :thumbup:

Sent From a Galaxy S4 Away!

 

[Almeuit]

Ok, I been testing with sync off and airplane mode on. My battery goes down 9-10 % during the night!

Sent From a Galaxy S4 Away!

I can't have my phone ever in airplane.. I want it always on and ready to go .

Sent from my T-Mobile HTC One using AC Forums.

 

[Joe_Perone]

I can't have my phone ever in airplane.. I want it always on and ready to go .

Sent from my T-Mobile HTC One using AC Forums.

I agree with this poster here. I leave my phone on overnight, without airplane mode, and with both Sync and wi-fi, and I only go down 1-2%. I'm unrooted and don't have any battery saver apps installed. I don't know what's causing this is some phones and not in others.

 

[Rob Lochard]

I guess it is me. I just picked up my gs4 upgraded from gs2 and fully charged last night. Took off the charger at 6am. By 12pm today down to 10percent battery. Maybe it's the apps that I use but I use them all sadly. I consider myself a heavy user but 6hrs of batter is sad same as my gs2

 

[garublador]

Have you tried looking into what's using your battery? I had an app go "rogue" after the last firmware update and use way more battery than normal. Since then I've uninstalled the app, did a factory reset (I didn't get all of the features I was supposed to in the OTA update) and reinstalled it and haven't seen the same behavior.

 

[monsieurms]

I've looked many times. Overnight it is usually Google services and phone idle, but nothing seems to be taking a lot since I uninstalled a rogue app(Samsung link)

I would add, I had it routinely down to 8-12%, which was acceptable. Then I switched batteries--for some reason that seems to set it off. This week it is running about 30% down overnight on average. This, by the way, was a battery that worked fine. There is no evidence of a defect. Last time, it was changing FROM this battery that caused the problem.

I bet if I keep shutting it off overnight, eventually it will return to normal. It's quirky. At home, it's frankly not such a big deal. If I were traveling, I would be concerned.

 

[STARGATE]

I used to have my phone on all the time. At night I would just lower the volume but never checked the battery drainage.

I will test that today and post here tomorrow.

Sent From a Galaxy S4 Away!

 

[lupusanimus]

I get 14-17 hours of straight use. I.e, I lose about forty to fifty percent of my battery in a twelve hour day.

 

[jettie1767]

I switched to the S4 last Friday from the One. I love the phone but I think it has worst battery life than the One? For example, I just unplugged the phone around 6:45 am today. Had texted back and forth for the last 45 mins and checked email twice. Battery is now at 94%. I think it's draining faster than it should. I'm on wifi and GPS is turned off. I installed Snapdragon Guru last night and I hope I see some benefit after it is done with learning in a few days.

 

[STARGATE]

So, this is last night's test; I went to sleep at 1 in the morning and my phone was at 70% I woke up at 7:40 am and the phone was at 62%. Everything on except GPS.

Is not much but setting it on airplane mode saves a lot more battery, at least in my case. Anyway, I don't need everything on when I'm asleep.

Sent From a Galaxy S4 Away!

 

[garublador]

With all of the Maps, Play and firmware updates that have been flying around lately it's getting super difficult to really nail down what's using your battery. I've found that installing or uninstalling updates to things like Maps and Play can either get location services working right or stop it from working which can have a pretty large effect on battery usage. If you have Location history enabled you can check that and see if it's actually tracking you or not, otherwise it's really difficult to tell if it's working. Unless you set something up yourself (which I did) you can't really tell how often your location is being checked. In another thread I found that some settings appear to have very little effect on how often Google checks your location and some have a pretty large effect.

I'll also reiterate that if the only problem is that the phone is draining at night then the simple solution is to plug it in. It's a good way to guarantee uniform usage (you don't use it at all compared to using it slightly differently every day) so tracking down what's using your battery is probably a bit easier, but there isn't a real good reason not to charge it at night otherwise.

 

[STARGATE]

But, isn't bad for the battery life to over charge the phone?

Sent From a Galaxy S4 Away!

 

[Almeuit]

But, isn't bad for the battery life to over charge the phone?

Sent From a Galaxy S4 Away!

If the phone is at 100% the battery stops itself from charging and the phone just uses the AC power it's plugged into. The battery is then used once the plug is removed.. But unlike the old days the phone battery won't keep trying to charge since it knows that it is full.

Sent from my T-Mobile HTC One using AC Forums.

 

[torndownunit]

What is driving me a little nutty with my S4 is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the battery life. I can't say it's 'bad', because sometimes it's quite good. But in seemingly the exact same scenarios another day, I can practically watch the battery drain. I have had the phone for about 3 weeks now, there are things I am loving and things I am not.

 

[asanatheist]

What is driving me a little nutty with my S4 is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the battery life. I can't say it's 'bad', because sometimes it's quite good. But in seemingly the exact same scenarios another day, I can practically watch the battery drain. I have had the phone for about 3 weeks now, there are things I am loving and things I am not.

Turn off auto update from the samsung/google stores if you haven't. These can really impact your battery life.

 

[torndownunit]

Turn off auto update from the samsung/google stores if you haven't. These can really impact your battery life.

Thanks, I have implemented a bunch of tips I have found online, but haven't done that one. I will give it a shot.