• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Battery Draining Quickly/Phone Getting Hot

What is ICS?

Is a battery saver good or not? I'm getting mixed information.

By the way, I have to say that this new phone/battery is much better than the last.

I've used it about 3-4 hours (of fairly constant use), and it's at 7% power now.

So, if I can use it for about 4 hours (of heavy use, mainly just surfing applications), I guess that charge should last me a full day (or close to that).
 
Dankees said:
What is ICS?

Is a battery saver good or not? I'm getting mixed information.

By the way, I have to say that this new phone/battery is much better than the last.

I've used it about 3-4 hours (of fairly constant use), and it's at 7% power now.

So, if I can use it for about 4 hours (of heavy use, mainly just surfing applications), I guess that charge should last me a full day (or close to that).
Click to expand...

ICS is Ice Cream Sandwich aka Android 4.0 aka your phones's operating system.

Battery savers can save battery, but in my opinion they cripple the phone too much for them to be useful. For example, when your phone is asleep they can turn off data which will save battery but make it so that you don't get any emails until you wake it up. Turning off things like GPS and Bluetooth and LTE when you don't need them works better imho.
 
I didnt read everything but I had an issue with my phone getting hot and sucking the battery dry. Removed facebook and everything got better. There is some kind of bug that randomly happens in it and they havent fixed it.
 
In my experience on Android, use WiFi whenever possible. 3g and especially 4g quickly drain your battery. The worst is if you're on 3g or 4g in a horrible service area. If no Wifi is available, be prepared. Your battery is going to drop like crazy unless you just turn your phone off.
 
How come sometimes the icons are grey and sometimes blue?

What are the letters in the icons?
 
I believe Blue means connected, grey means not currently connected - or connected but no data. For example, when Verizon had its 4G outages, the antenna signal was grey.

I don't know what letters you mean, (I think 3G and 4G are obvious), maybe you are talking about the symbols? There are UP and DOWN arrows indicating there is data transferring and in what direction.
 
-skype, facebook, etc. eat up lots of energy.
-some service providers put a little process in there to monitor you. Drains battery.
-I stopped all unnecessary processes running in background. Check running apps as some free ones have "floatware"? I think thats what its called, and allow processes to run in background.
-Downloaded cool black wallpapers (not live)
-Use battery saver once at 40%, will give you 1.6x battery life while on. Operates sync, gps, wifi, and 4g for you. Turns them off when not being used.
-Got a data switch to switch between 4g and 3g, only use if I'm worried about phone dying before I get home, or to my car.
-turn brightness down unless bright outside.
-now that my battery is broken in it lasts all day/night till I get home, and the screen uses 40% or less of the power, down from 80%.
-still may upgrade eventually to larger battery.
 
Does the battery stop charging at 99% while off? My phone did this last night, as did my wife's phone. When i turned on the phone, it was at 99% and it said it wasn't charging. Then, it switched to "charging."
 
The battery issue is here. You can either get an extended, or a super extended battery. Each comes with a suitable back cover. Or, you can get an extra battery and it's charger. Or just keep it on the charger when ever possible.
This battery issue is one of the biggest issues. It was anticipated, that is the reason for the lip at the bottom back. We accept these imperfections because this phone is still awesome. The first phone designed for ICS. There is NO better option... Yet
 
Dankees said:
Does the battery stop charging at 99% while off? My phone did this last night, as did my wife's phone. When i turned on the phone, it was at 99% and it said it wasn't charging. Then, it switched to "charging."
Click to expand...

It doesn't always seem to report 100%, or at least I'm not around to see it. Basically, as soon as it hits 100% it stops charging. It will then tick back to about 98% before it starts trickle charging back to 100% and then down to 98% etc. That's why a lot of times in the AM you will find your phone at 98% on the charger. Its normal and done to preserve battery longevity.
 
Guys,

Guess what? I also experienced this problem yesterday! My phone got extremely hot (not warm!) and I started worrying like you do. So, like most of you, I took out the battery, rebooted, and did that several times and the battery was still burning!

Luckily, I found a free app called Watchdog Lite. It's a task manager that shows the CPU usage. So, I downloaded it, and found out there is this Bloomberg app that I recently updated two days ago was running my CPU at over 55%!! At first, I thought it was normal (even Watchdog kept on prompting me) because I didn't have a clue what is a "normal" CPU usage for an app -- especially when I have Bloomberg installed on my Galaxy Note for months without problem!

But then, this morning, the phone got hot as hell again, and the battery dropped 5% within 5-10 mins! So, I fired up Watchdog, found out all other Apps are only using 0.x% whilst Bloomberg was still over 50%, I knew the culprit was that Bloomberg recent update.

So, I uninstalled that crap, and my phone is now back to normal!

Hope this helps!


Best,

Michael
 
Just out of curiosity what phone did you have before the GNex?

I bought this phone and the 2100mah extended battery but didn't activate, used it on my wifi connection for a week before I decided I wanted to use it as my main phone. I heard how bad the battery life was so I downloaded the two apps I have to have on my phone. Facebook and The Weather Channel, I setup my Gmail account and that was it. I charged the phone over night, got up at 7am for work, took the phone off the charger but didn't touch it. I let it sit from 7am till I got home around 5:15. The battery was at 70% when I got home. The screen was never turned on, it wasn't connected to the VZW network. It was just using WiFi and updating facebook and my gmail and I lost 30% battery life. The phone I was using at the time was a iphone 4 and I was still at 80% battery life on that and I used it a few times during the day. Go figure.

I've come to the conclusion that you can either worry about your battery life or just use the phone and charge it when you can. I've had a few Android phones and have always had crappy battery life with them. Its just how android is. I love the phone and Android but the OS is horrible when it comes to battery management.

People have suggested turing off 4G, don't let facebook sync or any other of your app sync, turn down your brightness and a few other tips and tricks that will save some battery but my whats the point of having a phone that can run 4G and do all this stuff if you can't use it?

My suggestion, buy a car charger and bring your charging cord to work with you and charge this thing whenever you get the chance. Otherwise your going to be pulling your hair out trying to figure out the secret to saving battery life.
 
I hope it's not bad for me responding to this older thread here, but my experience thus far has been that the battery sucks really bad. But I like the phone so much that I am fine with simply having a spare battery on charge at all times. A battery lasts 4-5 hours with my heavy use. So I change batteries 3-4 times a day. But I don't have to have my phone plugged in the whole day. Change it in 20 seconds, back in business. I
may get a third battery when I open my new business, so no worries. :-)
 
Here's what happened to me yesterday. The phone was charging and shut off. I couldn't turn it on, so I pulled the battery. Then, later in the day, it happened again. This time, the notification light was flashing, but it wouldn't turn on without a battery pull. Explain that.
 
Dear all,

I have some kind of horror story for you...

Last July I, my wife and daughter went on a holiday to the USA.

We left from Amsterdam and flew to Washintgton for the first two days. Right after we landed I switched on my Samsung Note N7000

Why I post this message, is because also in my case my phone became really hot and also the battery meter tells me that the display is causing it... 4 hours and the battery was empty...

I tried to switch off everything what I could, set the screen at 5% backlight and so on. After 1 or 2 recharges, I even throw away any email profile which I had...

Still same story; empty in 4 hours... I switched off whatever I could because walking in the city and maybe accidently lose my wife would be problematic if I couldn't call her...

No resolution found, we flew from Washington towards Orlando... After we left the airplane, same story... Hot phone and empty in 4 hours...

After 7 days we moved on towards Cocoa Beach. From that moment on my phone managed 15-24 hours on one recharge. This behaviour I also have in Holland...

Being electronics/radio tech/intenet tech I quickly realized it had something to do with the location where I was...

When we flew back to Holland, I was already quite suspicious about my phone bill from Vodafone... And yes, surprise! A real "Bill Shock" of 2.500,00 euro's...

After that I received the invoices from July and August I started to analyze the traffic and related dates... In total 200+ MB had been running and all was switched off!!! I even had changed into GSM mode only...

I found out that switching off everything didn't also meant that there was no traffic. The "H" was coming up all the time even in everything closed and deleted apps mode... I had my laptop with me and I even reflashed him...

Today I spent some time again to analyze what were my findings. Again, being technical for all of my life I googled up the AT&T network and looked at 4G/LTE.

It turns out that Washington and Orlando is 4G/LTE and Cocoa Beach is 3G...

Also - to be expected - in Cocoa Beach traffic is 3G/GPRS...

My wife had a NOKIA N8 with her and her traffic with Exchange activesinc was 5% of the total bill. Logic, because that phone doesn't support 4G/LTE...

I think we have a bug here... Probably some parameter tells you it is off, but in reality it isn't...

If there are some people which like to know if I can reproduce the same situation; YES I CAN!!!

Fred
 
So, Fred, what do you suggest I do?

Does anyone know?

I really don't want to fully reset my phone (as you can imagine).
 
Dankees said:
So, Fred, what do you suggest I do?

Does anyone know?

I really don't want to fully reset my phone (as you can imagine).
Click to expand...

Hi Dankees,

We here in Holland don't have 4G/LTE operational yet. Here the behaviour is quite normal. I am dealing with my "Bill Shock" as we speak with Vodafone...

I checked out with some guys from Vodafone technical dept. and in our area they have 1 4G/LTE cell active. So we will do some testing...

It is all too coincidental when it comes to the fact that clearly you can see that inside 4G/LTE cells the phone gets to hot to put in my pocket...

Like I said, I am technical all my life and I am a certified 2Mtr band radio amateur also... So I should know some things about radio transmission...

Checking out with Samsung and not getting further than a helpdesk person also doesn't work... I will use my own channels to see if I can wake them up...

But it could also be something Andoid/Google related... I will check out another brand of phone also when we will conduct the test...

It looks all too obvious and since it is easy to find out that Washington and Orlando have 4G/LTE and Cocoa is not makes things clear I think... And all of Holland also 3G...

I will post any results as soon as I have them...

Reflashing would probably not help...
 
Dankees said:
I only have my phone set to CDMA, not CDMA/LTE.
Click to expand...

Hi Dankees,

like I said before; Switched off all services and to GSM only and still the "H" came up quite frequently... When the "H" comes up, you are handshaking and authenticating which means there is traffic and your semiconductors get hot...

And opening a browser or trying to refresh email was not possible telling me data was all switched off...

Today we found a double setting in an Iphone also. You can switch off 4G/LTE but then again deeper into another menu is written 4G/LTE always on (Yes/No)

Fred
 
Dankees said:
What can I do? You are wise.
Click to expand...

:) Thanks for the compliment... In the early 60's I was already building my own Crystal radio when I was 8 years old... Never really left electronics behind me...

You should check these things:

First of all, is your operator AT&T, T-Mobile or???

Then check out their network on internet like I did with AT&T. Are you in any of the cities living where 4G/LTE coverage is available?

If not, that rules out that you are having the same problem what I discovered. If that is the case, I guess some heavy apps can cause this if they refresh often. Permanent on line like with push email usually doesn't require so much power as frequently (re)initiating a connection. An app can cause this...

If you look at internet, things like "bing bar" like to follow where you are surfing. They log all movement which requires them to have open connections between them and you. An app can cause the same behaviour... On mobile phones that also means (more expensive) traffic...

That is why I really don't like apps... and bing bar for that matter...

Looking at how many times this "Hot" subject returns in Google, I guess that for most of you that situation of 4G/LTE is true... Already some people feel it has something to do with 4G/LTE...

If you type in Google:

Samsung hot battery or
iPhone hot battery

you see the same complaint. Check this post out also: iPhone 4 is running hot and battery draining faster than normal - Neowin Forums

This guy was just near the border of Mexico and he experienced a lot of phone registerring also... There goes the battery...

I quote: "* Yesterday I was around the border and my phone kept connecting to a Mexico cell tower. And it was like...stuck on that damn tower even when I was quite a ways away and should have been well within range of a state side AT&T tower. I kept my phone off hoping to avoid roaming data charges (I suspect I'll be calling AT&T on that one). It was peculiar all the same. Kept connecting to "movistar". Maybe my phone got hacked by a drug cartel." :)

Again the simple word is transmission networks...

Cells for mobile is still cheapest to build, but with high density networks in cities the cells get closer together and handovers between one and the other cell makes your phone do a lot of "useless talking".

Much better are satellite networks. Just 32 of them to cover every corner of the planet. And you have a direct line of sight. Nothing blocks the signal...

It is never the screen or something else which drains the battery; it is transmission which does it...

Operators have a big challange on their hands. All of us are walking with one phone and some of them carry a batallion with them... All these phones want to register at a cell. Cells have a limitation on the number of registerred phones.

Fortunately you phone can cover some distance to a neighboring cell... But the power of your phone needs to dynamically "pump up the wattage" to be able to register at a nearby cell...

All this directly influences the duration on batteries...

Complicated matter, this radio technology...

If you are in a 4G/LTE cell, just check what happens if you make a daytrip out of that region towards a 3G area...

Fred
 
I live in New York in a heavily populated area, so that can't be the issue. It must be some application. How do I know which one it is?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom