I've found my battery killer

[Bodestone]

I see many posts saying that the Note battery does not last very long where I get, erm, got a couple of days.

It had to be usage or a particular app or apps I thought, to be echoed by many of the replies.

I have twice now had an issue where, if the phone had not been rebooted for a month or 2, it would discharge overnight. I still don't know the cause of this but assume it is a software issue rather than specific to the Note.

I have now found my battery killer however: Draw Something.

With the brightness all the way up (but locking the phone when not in use of course) I can actually leave my phone on charge (PC USB, not mains) for 8 hours and it still does not fill up if I play a few rounds of DS through the day.

Though the screen previously dominated battery usage it was around 45%. It is now 78% and DS comes in at a good 9%, higher than anything else.

I have the version without ads.

This has been a public service announcement to all those who have installed and used the game right from the start of using the Note and think that it's the Note itself that has poor battery.

I did test it for a day or 2 with the screen dimmed and I dropped back to charging every day / day and a half rather than all day.

 

[ifb-online]

You leave your screen on overnight? If so you are inviting both screen burn and premature OLED life expiration.

Ian

 

[Bodestone]

No, the overnight thing is has been a once in a blue moon glitch I have noticed that is rectified by a reboot where something drains the battery while on standby, locked, screen off. It is connected to wi-fi while at home but I don't have auto-sync.

 

[salla43]

good to know about these rogue apps.

I have had both WHATSAPP and SKYPE kill my battery on occasion. Skype went into some kind of sync mode which lasted until i shut it down, it was taking 70% of the battery.

Whatsapp decided to play silly for a while too. Seems to be pretty random.

Just be on the look out for sudden battery drain; with ICS i can easily see which apps are draining the battery which is neat.

 

[GiggityGiggity]

I use the paid version of Draw Something and it doesn't cause me any problems whatsoever battery wise. If I play for 20 minutes then yes the battery drops a few percent but that's expected because I'm using wifi and screen together. I haven't found it any worse than any other program that uses screen and wifi.

 

[yegon]

Worst culprit for me has been, occasionally, Dolphin HD. Maybe it's not necessarily Dolphins fault, and specific websites instead, but I've sometimes seen it using 50% CPU when backgrounded, and I have flash disabled before anyone blames that. Experienced the same with Dolphin Mini which I tried for a bit. I realise quite soon when this is happening even without using task manager, as the phone gets REALLY hot!

This is why I'm gagging for ICS, not a great fan of any of the android browsers, I've tried them all pretty much, and I'm hoping Chrome will be the one to rule them all. Fairly new to Android, I was aghast when I realised Chrome wasn't available on GB, pretty bizarre omission on Googles part in my opinion.

 

[colnago]

You leave your screen on overnight? If so you are inviting both screen burn and premature OLED life expiration.

Ian

The problem, with my LTE version at least, is that when I charge the phone, at it reaches capacity, the lock screen turns on, and stays on. I however leave brightness set at 0% at all times, windoors, but not being able to change this behavior concerns me. I really do not understand the lack of LED notification, the typical method for confirming a full battery, for such a prominent device.

 

[droidcentric]

I had a battery drain issue due to forgetting to close a Flashlight app. The LED was off but apparently just the app itself running is a battery vampire. Considering how small it is i'd assume most apps are thirsty in general.

 

[mpw]

.

 

[Reidydog]

How do you stop DS running in the background? I close all my apps and turn off wifi on a night but my battery is drained in the morning. Checking the battery status is says my Android OS is using 77%

 

[GiggityGiggity]

Once you've finished playing just kill it with the task manager if it's still active. I never have to do that with the paid version as once I exit it it's not running in the background.

 

[droidcentric]

I think some apps while running, even if only in the background/screen off, they're still connecting to change the advert.

Well the data usage is not moving much but you could be right. I'll have to figure out how to start blocking those networks. I do notice some of those ad delivery systems bog down some apps too. Even when the ads are not being displayed they remain loaded in memory which slowly eats away resources.