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Couple of battery saving tricks I stumbled upon

S

svensett

Android Enthusiast
While looking at some other (newer) device threads, I stumbled upon a couple of tricks that may help with battery life on the S3.

The first should work with any S3 running 4.3 (not sure about older versions). If you go to Settings>System Settings>Wi-Fi(tap to left of on/off toggle), then tap Settings button again and choose Advanced there is a setting called "Always allow scanning". Unchecking this will completely disable WiFi when it is normally set to off. Apparently even when disabled normally it still scans in the background as part of the location services. If you use Google Now or other location based apps you may not want to do this, but if you only use WiFi in certain places or not at all this should gain considerable battery life. Today was my first "normal" work usage day and I'm at 71% with about 12hr 30min time off charger compared to usually being 50-60% by now on normal days and between 30-40% on higher use days...

The other item will only work on US carrier phones (dual core Snapdragon processors) as far as I know. There is an app created by Qualcomm called "Snapdragon BatteryGuru" in the play store. It supposedly monitors your usage for a day or so and then adapts power management in the background to your needs. I installed it and it is still in learning mode for another 8 hours so no feedback on how/if it works yet.

I'll update after a few days of use with the new setting.
 
Today was the first full day of BatteryGuru running in active mode instead of learning mode. It's right at 16hrs since coming off the charger and at 50% battery left. Normally by now I would be anywhere from 30% down to 5% depending on usage. I probably should have baselined the WiFi trick for a few days first to try to gauge which is doing the most for battery life.

It will be interesting to see if it continues to improve or if it will level off.
 
Thanks for the info. I'm trying to find the advanced settings for WiFi. I can't find it. I'm on ATT if that makes a difference.
 
artbytes said:
Thanks for the info. I'm trying to find the advanced settings for WiFi. I can't find it. I'm on ATT if that makes a difference.
Click to expand...

Make sure you are connected to a wireless network first. Then it is Settings->Wifi->Menu Button->Advanced.
 
Thanks. I found it. I hope it helps. I'm trying the battery app too. My battery life needs serious help.
 
Try this and you will see huge battery improvements. But then it disables few things, like the find my Android feature, which is why I don't use it.

From Home Screen, Click Settings, then Go to Data Usage under Connection tab. And then on the screen where you see the graph, hit menu button again and Check the "Restrict Background Data".

It will give you some warning that some apps will work only on Wifi and it takes few seconds after you hit OK to return back to the screen you were on.

When you look at the graph in Battery Usage, it tells half the story. There are several apps that keep pinging and connecting to their servers in the background and that consumes a lot of battery. Restricting background data stops all of that.

Another thing I noticed from the Battery Usage screen is sometimes my GPS was showing ON in that screen, even though under settings it was OFF. I had to restart my phone to stop showing it as ON under that Battery Usage info screen, otherwise it was consuming battery at 10 to 15% an hour.

svensett said:
While looking at some other (newer) device threads, I stumbled upon a couple of tricks that may help with battery life on the S3.

The first should work with any S3 running 4.3 (not sure about older versions). If you go to Settings>System Settings>Wi-Fi(tap to left of on/off toggle), then tap Settings button again and choose Advanced there is a setting called "Always allow scanning". Unchecking this will completely disable WiFi when it is normally set to off. Apparently even when disabled normally it still scans in the background as part of the location services. If you use Google Now or other location based apps you may not want to do this, but if you only use WiFi in certain places or not at all this should gain considerable battery life. Today was my first "normal" work usage day and I'm at 71% with about 12hr 30min time off charger compared to usually being 50-60% by now on normal days and between 30-40% on higher use days...

The other item will only work on US carrier phones (dual core Snapdragon processors) as far as I know. There is an app created by Qualcomm called "Snapdragon BatteryGuru" in the play store. It supposedly monitors your usage for a day or so and then adapts power management in the background to your needs. I installed it and it is still in learning mode for another 8 hours so no feedback on how/if it works yet.

I'll update after a few days of use with the new setting.
Click to expand...
 
My phone always goes on the charger at night so I start the day with a full charge, and for my normal usage where I'm at with battery life works. During the week I generally don't have issues running low and have only had a few times where it got to the point of shutting it down until I could charge it. Now, I have plenty of buffer if if have a long day/late night.

I'm currently at 56% after almost 12hrs off charger. Yesterday I was at 40% or so after 16hrs off charger. I may leave it off the charger tonight just to see what it does overnight.
 
One last update unless someone has questions...

Battery performance has stayed pretty constant. BatteryGuru lives in the background and stays pretty transparent. It has "learned" when I am near a known WiFi connection and will activate it even with WiFi toggled off. Last night I stayed up a little later than normal, and it prompted me that I normally plug in the charger and told me how long the battery would last without charging which wasn't something I expected.

All in all, I would say disabling the background WiFi scanning was the biggest improvement and BatteryGuru might be helping some, but definitely isn't hurting performance. Its WiFi management could be helpful for someone that doesn't have unlimited data and is watching data usage.
 
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