Samsung s4 battery draining a little fast for me

[Sammy Diab]

I know that you guys get these questions a lot, so I'm gonna make it easier by saying I did the whole disable-what-you-don't-need method and I'm left to 2 options:either root my phone and save battery by manipulating stuff in advanced mode like my cpu OR just buy a new battery since my phone is a year old. Here's my battery summary pic (this is with battery doctor which helped save my battery a little)

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[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! It would help if we saw a little more info.

Charge up to 100%, then let it drain to 20-30% with normal usage, without charging in between. Then show us:

1. The main Settings>Battery screen.
2. The fullscreen battery graph screen (which shows Awake time and Cell Signal Strength).
3. The Screen category (to see total Screen On time).
4. The Cell Standby category, if present (to see Time Without Signal).

 

[NellieRose]

Periodically over the last 2 months I have experienced sudden & quick battery drains and also have had 2 occasions where the back of the phone was burning hot while not in use nor charging and 1 occasion with a warning on the screen that the phone needed to be shutdown b/c it was overheating. Never found the cause but I am beginning to wonder if this is somehow related to the device no longer downloading email on 1 of 4 accounts. Maybe it has been trying to synch over and over and failing causing an overheat. I don't have FB but do have Dropbox which I didn't think was the problem.

 

[Sammy Diab]

Okay here are updated pictures. I'm not sure if you meant idle time when you said Cell Standby so I screenshotted that.

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[B. Diddy]

Ok, that's a start. It would still be better if you let it go from 100% to about 20-30% with normal usage, then show us those screens. This will give us a better idea of what is using battery over the span of a single charge, rather than just a small fraction of that charge.

 

[Sammy Diab]

Ohhh, ha I read your reply as "let it drain about 20-30%". Okay I will !

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[Sammy Diab]

Okay NOW I'm ready

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[Sammy Diab]

.

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[B. Diddy]

That does seem relatively short battery life. The cell signal doesn't always look great, so that might be part of it. I think the S4 should get around 4-5 hours of total screen-on time per charge, depending on usage, and you're not on track for that. Otherwise, nothing else really stands out. The Android OS and Android System percent usage seems normal to me.

This probably won't help much, but it won't hurt--wipe the system cache partition, which doesn't erase any personal data: Reset: Samsung Galaxy S 4 | T-Mobile Support

If that doesn't do anything to help, then it'd probably be best to try a new battery.

 

[Sammy Diab]

You mean a factory reset? I've done that multiple times before

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[B. Diddy]

No, a cache partition wipe isn't as drastic, and is achieved through the Recovery Menu (see that link I included above). It won't hurt to try it, but I think a factory reset would have also wiped the cache as well.

 

[Sammy Diab]

Okay, I did that. I still think I need a new battery so I wanted to ask you this:how do I know I'm buying the best battery on eBay when it comes to OEM, amps and other small details?

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[B. Diddy]

It's tough to know for sure. The best bet is to buy from a known retailer, like Best Buy, or directly from Amazon (not the Amazon Marketplace). So if it's defective, it's easy to return. Random sellers from eBay might not be so cooperative.

It's always best to get an official OEM battery, but there are plenty of 3rd party battery companies that are respectable. One that comes to mind is Seidio, but there are others as well.

Make sure that it lists your exact​ phone model in its compatibility list. This is important with Samsung devices, since there are so many variants.