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Help s3 Battery Concerns

olorosooso

olorosooso

Lurker
Hello all, hoping for some advice.

The past few days have been a real test on my phone, the recent severe storms in the DC metro area took out my power for going on 3 days now. I have relied on my new phone for emergency calls (10min or less) and checking the time occasionally. Even with such limited use I can hardly make it through the day. Fully charged at 9am almost dead by 6pm.

I believe ATT's network has been off and on throughout this ordeal so I am hoping this is due to low signals or my phone constantly trying to find a signal. However, prior to the storm my phone would be very close to dying after a day at work with light usage. I haven't even started to load music or video on this thing yet! One or two short calls a text or two and maybe 10 minutes of surfing the net during lunch. I realize this is a beefy phone, but this can't possibly be normal right?

I'm new to Android so maybe someone can give me a heads up of the top 10 or 20 things to do / settings to change to get some decent battery life and help me figure out if I need to exchange or replace this phone. I love everything about it except for the battery! :confused:

Any help would be appreciated, thanks for reading.

-edit

I should mention, I have power saving on, email is being loaded manually. Disabled Svoice, and auto backup in settings. No apps are running in the background, I always manually close before putting phone back to sleep.
 
At&t's Galaxy S 3 has the worst battery life. Ive had it for a few days and couldnt deal with it. Do yourself a favor and get the international version. Sell this one. Best thing i did. Battery lasts almost 20 hours. Assuming of course you dont care about lte
 
There is nothing wrong with your phone. Most likely due to signal problems which can eat a battery very quickly. Best thing to do is go to airplane mode or cut off the phone entirely when not in use.

Before you give up on what is the best phone in the market, wait till you all are back to normal. I feel for you people as it is one thing to have no power but in 100+ degree temps, well that is inhuman!

You can bet our congress is not hanging around without ac.
 
Thanks for the quick replies. Yes it's been terrible here without power, 99 degrees here yesterday. Luckily, my office has had power so I've spent the weekend here.

I will try to test my phone out this week and come to a decision on keeping it. I truly love the styling, the screen and the OS, but my battery problem has hampered all of those great things. I just upgraded from an old iphone 3g so this was a big step up, but even the 4 year old battery in there would last me 2days or more.

If anyone has any more advice, it is welcome.
 
I agree with greggebhardt. Put your phone on airplane mode and it should last a long time. Once the power is back up everywhere around you turn your radio back on and check again. Hopefully by then your signal is better and the phone will not be searching for signal constantly and running down the battery.
 
Yes, thanks, I should have tried that the past few days. I'm sure it would have helped.

Now, I'm more concerned about the few days prior to the storm in which I made it through the day just barely with little use. I am going to continue using the phone this week to see how it performs. I'm not sure though, what other options I can turn off at this point.

Do you all tend to just plug in the phone during the day? Or can you go a whole day from morning to bedtime with just one charge?
 
olorosooso said:
Yes, thanks, I should have tried that the past few days. I'm sure it would have helped.

Now, I'm more concerned about the few days prior to the storm in which I made it through the day just barely with little use. I am going to continue using the phone this week to see how it performs. I'm not sure though, what other options I can turn off at this point.

Do you all tend to just plug in the phone during the day? Or can you go a whole day from morning to bedtime with just one charge?
Click to expand...

Hey, im from the DC area as well.. What a crazy storm that was!! Powers been out for alot of businesses for days. And I realized the morning after that the storm had tremendously affected ATT. At first i thought it was just my phone.
But there is NO DOUBT in my mind that the CONSTANT searching for a signal, going from H+ > Edge,> no signal > Gprs will most definitely assist in the faster draining of our batteries.

Its the exact same when you download a file from a spotty area vs. an area with great coverage. The slow download will eat up a good percent of your battery if your download is moving horrendously slow and your phone is constantly working to find a better signal. In a area with great coverage the download is done in seconds and your battery is in tact.

One thing I would suggest is to go into the settings and default to the EDGE network (just for the time-being until att fixes the problem). Yes, its slow, but this will prevent your phone from constantly switching back and forth. (even though it could still change from no connection > G > Edge). But there will be less flipping back n forth.

But even with all that said, my battery (international version) hasnt been a problem for me when im using my phone lightly as you are. I probably get 4hrs per every 15%. This includes a few texts, snapping a couple photos, syncing email, and running a couple light applications here and there within that 4hr span of time.

Anyways, i hope you get your phone straightened out... and more importantly lets hope ATT gets there **** straightened out!!! This has been ridiculous!
 
Hehe, thanks for the reply. Yeah, it was unfortunate timing. Having just received the phone on Thursday evening. No doubt the spotty coverage the past couple days was the culprit of the HUGE battery drain I experienced.

So far today, it's looking better. Took my phone off charge cable at 6:30 am. I'm currently at 93% at 12:20pm. Have only made a few texts though. This week will give me a better idea of how the battery performs. I'll be testing out a few battery tips I've been reading on these forums as well.

I will update this post with any relevant info I come across. Thanks again everyone for the advice.
 
I live in the Baltimore area and yes, the power disruptions were killing my battery, too. Granted, I'm on Sprint and not AT&T, but no signal simply a battery killer. Turning off mobile data will help in those times, as you're more worried about using it as a phone than an internet device.
 
A quick way to access and turn off things like

wifi, bluetooth, GPS, etc.

Is at the very top of the home screen where it displays the signal strength etc. Use your finger and drag the hidden menu down. You now have access to each of the settings at the top. Scroll to the right and there are more options like airplane mode.

Tap the names of each one and you will turn them on/off.

Also screen brightness dim it down to save on battery life.

Turn on battery safer.

Turn off account sync like emails, etc.

Follow the rest of the advice and you should extend your battery life.

I have ATT&T and have GPS enabled, brightness at 40%, battery safer on. Non 4G LTE area. I check my phone after a 11hour work day. It was down to 85%. That's mainly with the phone in standby with occasionally waking up the home screen to check for new message/time. Battery had only 1 full discharge/recharge cycle at that time.

good luck and please update this thread whenever possible with your results
 
I have the Tmobile S3 and it's been great.

i have wifi on all day at work from 9-5:30 and by the end of the day I still have over 50% left with light to medium usage.
 
sinneronezz said:
At&t's Galaxy S 3 has the worst battery life. Ive had it for a few days and couldnt deal with it. Do yourself a favor and get the international version. Sell this one. Best thing i did. Battery lasts almost 20 hours. Assuming of course you dont care about lte
Click to expand...

"Cough" why not just buy a new battery (international)?
 
Just a quick update:

It's now 5:47 pm (I took my phone off charger at 100% this morning at 6:30am), about to leave work and my battery is showing 89%. I've only sent a few texts and took a short 5 min call, so the usage was extremely light for today. The phone has been on 4g all day, wifi has been off. It would seem you all were right, the extreme drain was the dodgy network after the storms.

I will be trying different settings throughout the week and be using the phone more. Will report back if I notice anything significant.

Thanks again for the help and the tips.
 
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