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Battery Life without extra features?

Although I've had my G4 for some time now, I continue to be impressed with the incredibly long battery life I get. Being an admitted smartphone addict, I've got a lot of different new models.

Until I bought this S4, my favorite was my Nexus 4 with a close second being my Note 2. Then I bought this S4 I'm composing this post on. Suddenly I have a new favorite, Samsung made some terrific improvements in TouchWiz.

Having owned every Galaxy S since the original it's been fun watching the progress Samsung has made. In the S and S2 TouchWiz was rather mediocre, but those days are over. Normally I root my phones right away, but this version of TouchWiz is so good that I'm still using it.

The more I use this S4 the more I am amazed at just how good it is.
 
Lately I've noticed that my battery seems to be draining more quickly than it had in the past.
I can't seem to figure out why.
When I woke up this morning I had found that the battery had dropped 11% while I was sleeping. (which was only 6 hours)
I don't have any 3rd party apps running to my knowledge.
Wifi,Bluetooth, GPS, Sync, were all off.
I don't use any of those S features other than 'quick glance', so all that stuff is off as well.
I basically have it stripped down to bare bones, especially at night.


The only thing I messed with recently was I tried out Google Now,
didn't really seem very essential to my needs, so I shut it off and cleared the data.
I also tried out WeatherBug.
I thought that might have been the culprit, so I uninstalled it last night before bed.
Turns out ....it wasn't.

Any ideas or suggestions?
 
What tasks are running? Hold down the Home button and select active applications. Additionally, you may want to go into the settings of your apps to set the correct sync schedule/notifications etc.
I tried out "Easy Battery Saver" app yesterday and have noticed a nice difference. Phone usually dropped about 10% over night, and it was only 4% last night. I tried JuiceDefender before this, and didn't notice the ease of use or savings.
 
The GS4 has a generous battery, but also has MORE than generous features, most of which are not needed and somewhat gimmicky. If you disable most of the whiz-bang features your batt life will improve dramatically.

I can't speak to T-Mo but Sprint is getting ready to roll out a MR to help improve battery life (even more) as well as a few other features and improvements. I'm testing the MR and so far I've seen better battery life so I've gone from very pleased with batter life to AMAZED by battery life. YMMV on other carriers and when they release the same fixes.
 
BLACKTOOTHGRIN said:
Lately I've noticed that my battery seems to be draining more quickly than it had in the past.
I can't seem to figure out why.
When I woke up this morning I had found that the battery had dropped 11% while I was sleeping. (which was only 6 hours)
I don't have any 3rd party apps running to my knowledge.
Wifi,Bluetooth, GPS, Sync, were all off.
I don't use any of those S features other than 'quick glance', so all that stuff is off as well.
I basically have it stripped down to bare bones, especially at night.


The only thing I messed with recently was I tried out Google Now,
didn't really seem very essential to my needs, so I shut it off and cleared the data.
I also tried out WeatherBug.
I thought that might have been the culprit, so I uninstalled it last night before bed.
Turns out ....it wasn't.

Any ideas or suggestions?
Click to expand...


I've had this happened with a few of my devices. My NEXUS 7, for example, suddenly started emptying the battery every night.

This is almost always some widget or program that is hitting the web and/or GPS signals for constant data updates. On my Nexus, I think the problem is probably due to the stock/weather widgets I rely on.
 
tytlyf said:
What tasks are running? Hold down the Home button and select active applications. Additionally, you may want to go into the settings of your apps to set the correct sync schedule/notifications etc.
I tried out "Easy Battery Saver" app yesterday and have noticed a nice difference. Phone usually dropped about 10% over night, and it was only 4% last night. I tried JuiceDefender before this, and didn't notice the ease of use or savings.
Click to expand...

I clear all tasks on a regular basis, especially before bed, so I know it isn't that. The only thing I have syncing is my email, and sync was off. Maybe I'll give easy battery saver a look. Thanks.

CzechPleez said:
The GS4 has a generous battery, but also has MORE than generous features, most of which are not needed and somewhat gimmicky. If you disable most of the whiz-bang features your batt life will improve dramatically.

I can't speak to T-Mo but Sprint is getting ready to roll out a MR to help improve battery life (even more) as well as a few other features and improvements. I'm testing the MR and so far I've seen better battery life so I've gone from very pleased with batter life to AMAZED by battery life. YMMV on other carriers and when they release the same fixes.
Click to expand...

Yep.
I don't even use the fancy features other than quick glance...so that's not it.
Hopefully an update will help, but I'd still like to narrow this down in the meantime.

WalkaboutDavid said:
I've had this happened with a few of my devices. My NEXUS 7, for example, suddenly started emptying the battery every night.

This is almost always some widget or program that is hitting the web and/or GPS signals for constant data updates. On my Nexus, I think the problem is probably due to the stock/weather widgets I rely on.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm thinking too but I can't pinpoint anything.
I don't really use anything that needs constant updating and haven't installed anything new other than the Weatherbug like I had said before and Google Now.
I uninstalled Weatherbug and stopped Google Now.

I'm stumped.
 
The 1 sec it impacts me with the turning on the wifi on wake up just takes soooo much time out of the day. I need that wifi on in my pocket at all times! And being unassailed by emails every 15 minutes (average delay 7.5 mins) brings my life to a standstill. JD Doesn't impact BT or SMS at all, that I can see. And when forgetting to plug it in at night after beating it to death the day before and waking up to 60% charged is such a pain. I really hate having all those power saving things like screen brightness, haptic, vibrate, etc turned up to full so I can take advantage of what the phone was designed to do. Those folks that run JD probably haven't toggled anything off except sound when they go to church. If one wants to fiddle/toggle with phone all the time, and have all power settings set to "creep along" will just hate JD. Those that have JD Ultimate, forget they have it. Best $5 I've spent on an app. These battery related hand wringing sessions seem so silly.
 
Juice defender goes in my "sucker app" category. I've been on android since the OG droid, and have never needed anything like jd. If your battery is draining, its a rogue app or a hardware defect. If you're waking up in the morning and have 60% battery left, you weren't "beating it to death" the day before. Not that i'm complaining about those who buy useless apps, those devs gotta eat too right?
 
With most things turned off on my galaxy s4 I was getting around 15 -16 hours of battery with around 3 hours of screen on times. I just bought an extended ZeroLemon 7500 mAh battery and get 2 days of use. The galaxy s4 has a removable battery so if you kill it you can buy another stock battery but if you don't care about how thick the phone is you could buy an extended battery. If you decide in a HTC ONE or IPhone 5 the only draw back is the non-removable battery. Yes you could buy something like a mobi juice pack but they are over priced. A galaxy s4 extra battery cost $30 where a a mobi juice pack that has a little smaller battery cost $100.
 
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