Sprint Galaxy S8 What Happened to my battery life ?

[uncreativeartist]

Hello all, been some time since I have frequented these forums. Life hasn't been so kind as of late. With no computer I found it too much to try and get on forums through my phone so I just gave up. Well I am back at least for this new issue. My battery life on my S8+ has tanked over the past few months.

So only a few months ago I was still getting about a day or so of battery life with my phone. Out of nowhere I am lucky to get a few hours of battery life with my phone. It has to do with an update, whether it was Android, Samsung or Sprint one of them has put through an update that kills battery life.

Why this conclusion? Because I have not put any new apps on my phone in nearly 6 months. I do not use my phone any less or more than I did previously. Just last night before I went to sleep I had went and optimized the phone through settings. My phone was at 36%, I had gotten woken up about 4 hours later and while I was awake I took a quick look at my phone, it was down to 2%. Only a few months ago that 36% would have maybe gone down to 30% by morning and I would still be using my phone half way through my work day before I decided to charge it at 12%-15% where I normally will plug in my phone for charging.

I know the rotten fruit people were putting through battery drain and power drops with older phones to force people to buy their latest and greatest. So now I have to worry about this with Android/Samsung?

Is there anyway to revert back Android 6 months without losing any of my info? Will the phone just keep forcing Android to update? Is this a new issue I just haven't read about yet, since I haven't really researched it?

With all the issues I have had with this phone and sprint I am going to be jumping carriers come contract end and probably going to the Pixel phones.

 

[chanchan05]

Hello all, been some time since I have frequented these forums. Life hasn't been so kind as of late. With no computer I found it too much to try and get on forums through my phone so I just gave up. Well I am back at least for this new issue. My battery life on my S8+ has tanked over the past few months.

So only a few months ago I was still getting about a day or so of battery life with my phone. Out of nowhere I am lucky to get a few hours of battery life with my phone. It has to do with an update, whether it was Android, Samsung or Sprint one of them has put through an update that kills battery life.

Why this conclusion? Because I have not put any new apps on my phone in nearly 6 months. I do not use my phone any less or more than I did previously. Just last night before I went to sleep I had went and optimized the phone through settings. My phone was at 36%, I had gotten woken up about 4 hours later and while I was awake I took a quick look at my phone, it was down to 2%. Only a few months ago that 36% would have maybe gone down to 30% by morning and I would still be using my phone half way through my work day before I decided to charge it at 12%-15% where I normally will plug in my phone for charging.

I know the rotten fruit people were putting through battery drain and power drops with older phones to force people to buy their latest and greatest. So now I have to worry about this with Android/Samsung?

Is there anyway to revert back Android 6 months without losing any of my info? Will the phone just keep forcing Android to update? Is this a new issue I just haven't read about yet, since I haven't really researched it?

With all the issues I have had with this phone and sprint I am going to be jumping carriers come contract end and probably going to the Pixel phones.

Actually the fruit was trying to avoid stutters and sudden lag with the slow down. They were throttling the phones, not making sudden power drops.

We can't tell the health of your battery, we don't know your exact usage or the temps the battery is exposed to. But constantly letting the phone go down to 12-15% has detrimental effects on battery health and may have contributed to its early demise. It is actually optimal to plug in at above 40%. Battery degradation also is not always gradual. It can be a sudden drop as well.

Also, saying that no new app has updated does not mean it is caused by an update. Could simply mean an app has gone rogue.

Also, if this is indeed battery degradation, not even reverting to Android 6 will help you. But no, to revert to Android 6 means to reflash and erase everything on the phone.

 

[uncreativeartist]

Actually the fruit was trying to avoid stutters and sudden lag with the slow down. They were throttling the phones, not making sudden power drops.

We can't tell the health of your battery, we don't know your exact usage or the temps the battery is exposed to. But constantly letting the phone go down to 12-15% has detrimental effects on battery health and may have contributed to its early demise. It is actually optimal to plug in at above 40%. Battery degradation also is not always gradual. It can be a sudden drop as well.

Also, saying that no new app has updated does not mean it is caused by an update. Could simply mean an app has gone rogue.

Also, if this is indeed battery degradation, not even reverting to Android 6 will help you. But no, to revert to Android 6 means to reflash and erase everything on the phone.

So temps are just normal, East Coast temps. Typically the phone is in my pants pocket and when home it sits on a stand on my desk. For the battery life thing I have read to let the battery drain to 10% to never let it get under 50%. I have always let my phones go to about 15% or so with no obvious issues.

This is a sudden thing too, it has almost happened overnight so to speak. I noticed the battery drain a few weeks ago, something didn't seem right I felt I was charging my phone earlier than I used to. Now I find I am charging two to three times a day with no extra use.

I never have apps running in the background. I also just deleted a bunch of apps I hardly use. I will see how the battery does today and tomorrow. If I am still having issues I am just going to delete all the apps I can and see how the battery life is. And if I notice an improvement I will slowly keep adding apps to see which app(s) are causing the issues. I still think it was a recent Android/Samsung/Sprint update since those were the only downloads/updates I have had in the past few weeks.

 

[chanchan05]

You can try clearing system cache. That works wonders for batteries after updates. Some conflicting left over files sometimes are retained.

 

[uncreativeartist]

You can try clearing system cache. That works wonders for batteries after updates. Some conflicting left over files sometimes are retained.

I will give this a try, thank you.

 

[chanchan05]

I will give this a try, thank you.

Do this from the recovery menu. See this vid.

https://youtu.be/uGfU6HL8Vw0

 

[mcaspe1]

I was having issues also. I looked into the bixby apps. I never used bixby but found that in the background was using a lot of battery. I disabled what I could and seems to be better now. give it a shot.

 

[Rico H]

I've done this and it hasn't helped at all. My battery life is nowhere near what anyone else is claiming

 

[Centerman66]

Hello all, been some time since I have frequented these forums. Life hasn't been so kind as of late. With no computer I found it too much to try and get on forums through my phone so I just gave up. Well I am back at least for this new issue. My battery life on my S8+ has tanked over the past few months.

So only a few months ago I was still getting about a day or so of battery life with my phone. Out of nowhere I am lucky to get a few hours of battery life with my phone. It has to do with an update, whether it was Android, Samsung or Sprint one of them has put through an update that kills battery life.

Why this conclusion? Because I have not put any new apps on my phone in nearly 6 months. I do not use my phone any less or more than I did previously. Just last night before I went to sleep I had went and optimized the phone through settings. My phone was at 36%, I had gotten woken up about 4 hours later and while I was awake I took a quick look at my phone, it was down to 2%. Only a few months ago that 36% would have maybe gone down to 30% by morning and I would still be using my phone half way through my work day before I decided to charge it at 12%-15% where I normally will plug in my phone for charging.

I know the rotten fruit people were putting through battery drain and power drops with older phones to force people to buy their latest and greatest. So now I have to worry about this with Android/Samsung?

Is there anyway to revert back Android 6 months without losing any of my info? Will the phone just keep forcing Android to update? Is this a new issue I just haven't read about yet, since I haven't really researched it?

With all the issues I have had with this phone and sprint I am going to be jumping carriers come contract end and probably going to the Pixel phones.

It's all in how you have it setup (like screen brightness), what apps you run, and whether you are using cell or wifi most of the time. I'm on wifi all day at work and at home. I get between 8-10 hours of SOT. I suspect my heavy wifi usage is the biggest contributor to my good SOT.

 

[4ndros]

I have the same problem and i don't think the battery is "worn out". I have 2 phones (Samsung Galaxy S8) for about 6 months now (me and my wife) and after the last system update, like 1 week ago, the battery life dropped drastically, on both phones. Most of the battery is used by the android system and device idle and i have to ad that there is no new apps installed and i don't do anything different from what i use to do.

 

[shadowsjc]

i am in the same boat. My phone will now barely last 8 hours. If i check the battery stats using the built in "Battery Usage" setting, it doesn't tell me anything out of the ordinary. #1 is screen (usually around 3 hours on time), then after that is android system.

Is there a better app that will give more detailed battery stats?

 

[THEPRFCT10]

At me to the every growing list of unhappy campers with a significant degradation of battery life after Oreo

 

[tuckertje01]

I haven't updated to Oreo yet, and reading all these complaints I probably won't until the problems are rectified.

 

[chanchan05]

i am in the same boat. My phone will now barely last 8 hours. If i check the battery stats using the built in "Battery Usage" setting, it doesn't tell me anything out of the ordinary. #1 is screen (usually around 3 hours on time), then after that is android system.

Is there a better app that will give more detailed battery stats?

I use GSAM. But you'll need to use ADB Commands to make it work properly without root. It's pretty easy anyway, the app walks you through the procedure, if you've never used ADB Commands before.

 

[Centerman66]

Accubattery works well too.

 

[4ndros]

So i take it that nobody has no idea if there is a fix for the problem or if Android developers see this as a problem.
One would expect a moderator or a forum admin to say something.

 

[anon(123856)]

So i take it that nobody has no idea if there is a fix for the problem or if Android developers see this as a problem.
One would expect a moderator or a forum admin to say something.

I'm not a mod or an admin just an experienced user.

The "fix" might be to backup and reset your phone. From what I can gather very few of the people having battery issues have tried a reset.

I reset my S8+ after getting Oreo and it's working very well. My battery life isn't quite as good as it was on Nougat but it's not bad at all.

Make certain you backup your data first! You should already have some sort of backup plan anyway.

Try other measures if you think they can help but a reset might be the answer.

 

[chanchan05]

So i take it that nobody has no idea if there is a fix for the problem or if Android developers see this as a problem.
One would expect a moderator or a forum admin to say something.

First of all, this is just a user forum. No one here is linked to Android development directly. Not even the admin or mods. They may have no idea on what the issue really is if there is a problem with the code.

Second, it is really ideal to factory reset after major updates and start the app installation and setup from scratch. The changes in the code are under the hood, and any previous customization the user made using older app versions may conflict.

 

[datum9]

You can try clearing system cache. That works wonders for batteries after updates. Some conflicting left over files sometimes are retained.

Where do you access it from, the settings menu? which option?

 

[chanchan05]

Where do you access it from, the settings menu? which option?

Nope. It's in the recovery menu. I posted a video on how to access it two posts below the one you quoted.