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Help Battery is draining faster than it should (VZW)

I'm on sprint... but download watchdog lite and let it sit for an hour or 2 while monitoring it. Also get juice defender. Both are great apps. My battery was dying too fast and I found the problem with watchdog... and juicedefender really helps when your phone is idle.

Tweak it to the settings ur comfortable with and report back to see how it went.

As for me, there was some Factory Test running in background eating up 45% of my CPU. Killed the program and hasn't appeared since.

Also if your LTE is running... that'll kill your battery as well.

Sent from my Galaxy S III using Tapatalk 2
 
Serdroid12 said:
As for me, there was some Factory Test running in background eating up 45% of my CPU. Killed the program and hasn't appeared since.
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Can you elaborate on this? Was it from some app you downloaded, or was it something that a stock app started that just became a runaway process?
 
Oarsman05 said:
The only non-stock apps on the phone are Chrome, Badass Battery Monitor, and now CPU Spy.
I am in wifi coverage for ~95% of my day (work and home, only the short drive in between is not covered), so that is why I've kept it on. I thought that keeping it active even during sleep was supposed to be better than having it reactivate on wakeup?
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I suggest you remove GSam battery monitor (Badass is older version), CPU Spy to see if they were culprit for big drain. I tried GSam battery monitor recently and found that app itself is source of big battery drain overnight, at least the free version.

Also keep WiFi on with setting always on while sleeping for the minimum drain overnight. Basically you need to minimize the time it's using 3G or 4G data at night.
 
Sandroidfan said:
I suggest you remove GSam battery monitor (Badass is older version), CPU Spy to see if they were culprit for big drain. I tried GSam battery monitor recently and found that app itself is source of big battery drain overnight, at least the free version.

Also keep WiFi on with setting always on while sleeping for the minimum drain overnight. Basically you need to minimize the time it's using 3G or 4G data at night.
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I will remove them for my next power cycle, and turn off autosync for good measure.
 
If you are seeing time without signal then I am 99% sure the battery issue is reception related. If it was something else it'd be showing up in the stats.

Your options are:

A) Move someplace with better coverage
B) Get your phone company to give you one of those cell / internet access points
C) Keep your phone plugged in over night
 
I also find that it sometimes helps to remove all your recent apps from the built-in task switcher. Unfortunately I think you have to swipe them all one-by-one, but that removes their persistent state. I've noticed that if you exit apps that use GPS (e.g. Maps, Flixster, etc) they'll continue using it if you exit via the Home button rather than the Back button.
 
Tim K said:
If you are seeing time without signal then I am 99% sure the battery issue is reception related. If it was something else it'd be showing up in the stats.

Your options are:

A) Move someplace with better coverage
B) Get your phone company to give you one of those cell / internet access points
C) Keep your phone plugged in over night
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he's seeing basically no time where his phone is in red, if you look at the signal chart
 
quickaudi said:
he's seeing basically no time where his phone is in red, if you look at the signal chart
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1. Red doesn't always show up when you lose signal. I have lightflow setup to notify me of signal drops. I hear it all the time but almost never see red.

2. Bright Yellow is often displayed with "no signal" and also a signal weak enough to trigger yellow is enough to cause substantial battery drain.

3. Yes, actually if you look at this chart you will see he gets a number of REDS.

38003d1345643128t-battery-draining-faster-than-should-vzw-screenshot_2012-08-21-21-18-25.png


Any time spent looking for any other cause of this battery drain is time wasted. "phone idle" and "cell standby" should never be draining that much battery... and if they are its a signal issue NOT an app or background sync issue.
 
Tim K said:
1. Red doesn't always show up when you lose signal. I have lightflow setup to notify me of signal drops. I hear it all the time but almost never see red.

2. Bright Yellow is often displayed with "no signal" and also a signal weak enough to trigger yellow is enough to cause substantial battery drain.

3. Yes, actually if you look at this chart you will see he gets a number of REDS.

38003d1345643128t-battery-draining-faster-than-should-vzw-screenshot_2012-08-21-21-18-25.png


Any time spent looking for any other cause of this battery drain is time wasted. "phone idle" and "cell standby" should never be draining that much battery... and if they are its a signal issue NOT an app or background sync issue.
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only saw the other picture that had like one red bar in it, and he went 34 hours on that charge - I think we agree in that he has a 3G signal issue
 
Yeah, I skipped a lot of the pics too! I just happened to click on that one which made up my mind for me.
 
Removed all extraneous apps and did one more overnight comparison between my phone and my wife's Mine went from 88% to dead, hers dropped maybe 20%. Mine is staying awake all night, hers is behaving as it should. They're about 6" away from each other at night, so their signal reception should be similar. Looks like I have a faulty hardware unit after all.

(Note: The gap in my graph is from turning on airplane mode between charging and bedtime to make sure I had enough power to start an overnight test.)
 

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Wow. That's really bizarre. What kind of signal strength are the phone's displaying? (settings> about phone > status)

Its weird that yours throws some red lines and hers is just sold grey/yellow.... and even when yours is the same grey-yellow it still drops like a brick. I wonder if its a reception problem, or a SIM card issue..... or it may be something of a connection issue where even when you have reception the device is having trouble communicating.

Keep us up to date!
 
I have heard from posters on other boards that this may be SIM card related. May go to Verizon again before exchanging the handset.
 
Oarsman05 said:
I have heard from posters on other boards that this may be SIM card related. May go to Verizon again before exchanging the handset.
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Yeah. Since you pretty much checked software side of things (apps, syncs), it's probably hardware issue, SIM, battery or phone.
 
The Verizon store wanted $25 for a new SIM card, so I just exchanged both the handset and the card at Best Buy. I will keep track of it over the next few charge cycles.
 
i suffer no hardships doing this -

Battery Tips for Android

1. Toggle off LTE, WIFI, GPS, BT, NFC, Hotspot. Toggle on as needed.
2. Display Brightness - Turn off Auto Brightness and Reduce Setting Bar to Minimum.
3. Sign out of Google Latitude, GTalk, G+, Google Now, and Messenger. Disable Location Reporting/History.
4. Beware of constantly syncing Apps and Bloatware like Facebook, Twitter, News, Non-Push Email, etc. Set Sync interval for every 1 hour or more.
5. Turn off keyboard haptic feedback.
6. Don't use Live Wallpaper. Use dark wallpaper if possible.
7. Set Display Sleep Setting to 2 Minutes or Less.
8. Set WIFI to Always stay on during Sleep if you regularly use WIFI.
9. Turn off vibrate for Emails.
10. Be careful of using too many live widgets.
11. Sync Exchange Emails 30 Days or less.
12. Do NOT use a Task Killer App.
 
Oarsman05 said:
The Verizon store wanted $25 for a new SIM card, so I just exchanged both the handset and the card at Best Buy. I will keep track of it over the next few charge cycles.
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Sounds like it might have been a franchise store. Last I knew, they weren't charging for SIMs, but glad you got it swapped. Keeping an eye on the thread, because I've seen some other people with battery issues and I'd like to know places to point them to for trying things :)
 
After two charging cycles, it looks like this was definitely a hardware issue. The first time I got just over 2 days, with the battery's starting at about 80%. Next time (still on this charge as of posting) I hit 15% after about 1d:17.5hr, which included 2 hours of work conference calls. Big improvement from ~9 hours!

Unfortunately, since I swapped out the handset and SIM card at the same time, I can't say for sure which one was bad. However, it was clearly one of them.

Since Best Buy is still running the free phone promotion, I'm thinking there are probably a lot of new Galaxy Nexus owners out there. So, if you are seeing this kind of battery drain and you are within your return/exchange period, swap it out ASAP!

Thanks to everybody who helped out with suggestions!
 

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I can't find the thread, but get the free battery from Sprint. All you pay is shipping for a 2100 mAh battery. Yay
 
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