Help Battery Life - Typical?

[crashnburn85]

I am currently using a Verizon Galaxy S3 SCH-I535, stock, unrooted, V 4.1.2 and have noticed what I think to be lower than expected battery performance. I have already viewed many similar threads to try and pinpoint particular issues (wakelocks, troublesome apps, etc.). I was hoping for some perspective whether my battery life is up to snuff.

I have seen many describe their phone life with ~3+ hours of screen time with moderate usage. I use my phone intermittently throughout the work day to chat (Text messages, Hangouts), check e-mail, and browse the internet. I do not use Wi-fi, aside from when I am home in the morning or at night, and make sure to turn it off if not connected to a network. I have sync turned on, but the only accounts I have syncing are Google Now and Gmail. I have location services/GPS/Bluetooth turned off, and run in Power Saving mode with brightness at ~50% and haptic feedback turned on. My reception is subpar, usually about 2 bars and spotty 4g connections at work. I do not stream music, play games, or watch videos during typical use. No facebook, weather apps, etc. that can be culprits some times. At best, with the usage habits described, it is typical that I get 2 hours screen time over a single day (~16 hrs) before I get in the single digit battery %.

I've attached some screen shots I took of battery stats at ~50% drained (I didn't get a screen grab for it but at that battery % I had probably 1:05 hours of screen time). I just started using Wakelock Detector to find any problem apps - after tweaking some apps last week this has been pretty typical behavior. I have even swapped batteries with my wife's S3 to see if it was a battery problem, but did not notice a difference.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Are my expectations for battery life too high? Is this typical, or am I running lower than I should be?

 

[funkylogik]

Look at my screen on time today and im still at 43%. You should definately be getting more. Cant think of anything im doing differently other than that i have my brightness at about 25%. Ive been indoors since unplugging though so 25 is fine :thumbup:

 

[funkylogik]

Forgot the screenshot lol

Looking at your pic again, it could be that constant weak network signal thats causing the drain. Mine is green where yours is amber. Maybe try turning mobile data off while not using the phone and see if it helps :thumbup:

 

[iTzKPanda]

I have sync turned on, but the only accounts I have syncing are Google Now and Gmail ... and run in Power Saving mode with brightness at ~50% and haptic feedback turned on. My reception is subpar, usually about 2 bars and spotty 4g connections at work.

I'd say those are the culprits.

Bad reception uses up a lot of battery because your phone tries to continue to search for better signal - usually to no avail unless you go into an area with good reception.
If you have 4G on all the time, that might be a battery consumer as well.
50% brightness is a bit high, so that might also cause a lot of battery drain. I even have friends with the "super-long-lasting-ultra-long-battery-life-iphone" that put their brightness down to ~20%. I tend to keep mine at a constant 20-30%.

But even then, I think you should be getting a little bit more battery life out of your phone.

An app that I'd recommend is DS Battery Saver.

DS Battery Saver puts your phone into deepsleep mode once you turn your phone off.
During deepsleep mode, Wifi, 3G are turned off, background apps are stopped. Therefore, most apps are not working, including Facebook, Google Service, etc,. It then occasionally wakes up in order to download email, sync Facebook status, etc,. It's defined by deepsleep frequency and woke up duration

It has helped me with my battery life quite a bit. Try it and see if it helps your battery life increase.

 

[funkylogik]

Yeah an app that disables data while screen is off could be good. I wouldnt recommend having it set to kill apps though :thumbup:

 

[funkylogik]

Thats me now at 5% :thumbup:
P.s, my CPU has been set to 1.7GHz max since unplugging so a phone that isnt overclocked or is underclocked with Power Saving mode should last a bit longer
Also, the wakelocks you can see are caused by facebook