S3 Battery Drain Thread - 1) False Cell Standby report 2) Standby Drain

[John P]

Hi,

I have read many battery drain issues on this forum and many other forums, I have also contacted Samsung directly regarding the issue. The battery life is good when I'm using the phone, the problem occurs everytime the phone is in standby mode.

I realise that there are two separate issues going on here;

1) The falsely reported cell standby figure, which is not related to the actual battery drain, only the report percentage used for cell standby. This is important because the false report makes it incredibly difficult to pinpoint the cause of an actual battery drain issue, such as in 2) below.
For the false cell standby issue SUroot has kindly set up a petition to send to Samsung in the sticky section of this forum. Please see a fuller explanation and sign here; http://androidforums.com/samsung-ga...andby-issue-please-sign-petition-samsung.html

2) An actual battery drain whilst in standby mode. I understand this issue does not effect everybody, but it does affect a lot of people.

I have been testing my battery drain each night and the average drop is 6.21% per hour, so 50% drain over the course of an 8 hour period. This is with the phone on my bedside cabinet, whilst in a strong signal area and not using the phone what so ever. So when I am out and about and the signal is rising and falling the drop is even higher.

I know I can turn off features such as data, GPS, Sync, but this is not practical to do every time I put the phone in my pocket. I am only syncing my gmail calender and contacts, nothing else.

When I contacted Samsung regarding the issue, they advised me on optimsed settings, which did not resolve the issue, they followed that up by sending me the following information;

"Dear John,

Thank you for contacting Samsung and I have pleasure in providing the following assistance.

We are sorry about the issue you are experiencing with your Samsung Galaxy S III handset.
We are aware of this issue that is affecting some handsets within the UK. We are currently developing a fix for this issue and we will be rolling it out via a firmware update in due course.
We apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

If you require any further assistance, please contact Samsung again and we will be more than happy to help.

Kind regards,
Online Support Team
SAMSUNG Customer Support Centre"

So there is a fix coming, I hope. This information was received on the 3rd of August and there has not been a fix as yet. Possibly/hopefully it will come with the predicted imminent arrival of Jelly Bean.

I have been offered advice by some helpful members of this forum and advised to download BetterBatteryStats and cpu spy. I am going to do this and will keep this thread updated and ask for advice on the findings.

With the kind help of the members of this forum, I am determined to get to the bottom of this issue.

John

 

[mmmfreewig]

Please keep us updated! This issue started yesterday for me.

 

[Metfanant]

I have been testing my battery drain each night and the average drop is 6.21% per hour, so 50% drain over the course of an 8 hour period.

Christ almighty...no joke...if i take my phone off the charger at 100%...and leave it on my desk and don't touch it...i can come back 3 hours later and be at like 98% this phone has spectacular standby time if running properly...

once the screen turns on however...all bets are off

 

[Serdroid12]

You can download a free XDA version of BBS (BetterBatteryStats) - [APP] [04 Aug - V1.9.2.1] BetterBatteryStats adds battery history back to Android - xda-developers - in the second post; must be registered. Get the first one, not the others - they are beta I believe, and they crash on my S3 when installed.

Check to see if you have a process called Factory Test, or Factory Mode. When BBS is installed, check to see what percentage it is showing.

I downloaded WatchDog Lite app to check what was going on, and it alerted me that Factory Test was using over 45% CPU constantly overnight. My S3 went from 100% to about 66% overnight without ever touching it.

Try that!

 

[DemBones]

I have had the same issue with battery drain in standby (I'm a US user). I'm assuming it is not the false standby issue as the phone promptly cut off when the battery reached 1%. I've used BetterBatteryLife and couldn't really pinpoint anything other than something was keeping the phone awake even when I wasn't using it.

I have tweaked everything, but the only thing that seems to solve the issue is installing JuiceDefender. This has dramatically improved my battery life. I'd rather not have to use it, but I really haven't noticed any impairment in the phone's performance because of this app. One thing I did learn from JuiceDefender was that my phone was attempting to autosync every 4-7 minutes. Interestingly, turning auto-sync off didn't really seem to solve the battery drain issue the way having JD running did.

I love the S3, so glad I traded in my iPhone 4. However (and this may be an Android issue, not just a Samsung issue), there is something not right with the battery management. Again, I'm guessing there is some process that is preventing the phone from going into deep sleep or is constantly waking it up. Hopefully they will release a firmware update soon to apply a permanent fix. In the meantime, I highly recommend JuiceDefender (free in the Play store). My battery drain has dropped from near 10% an hour to 2% (auto-sync off, GPS and Wifi on).

 

[DemBones]

One other thought (and I'm not a tech expert enough to know if this makes any sense), but I live in an area with 4G but no LTE. I wondering if the phone is constantly searching for an LTE connection it's never going to find and that's what's draining the battery in standby.

 

[andrdfanwannab]

You can download a free XDA version of BBS (BetterBatteryStats) - [APP] [04 Aug - V1.9.2.1] BetterBatteryStats adds battery history back to Android - xda-developers - in the second post; must be registered. Get the first one, not the others - they are beta I believe, and they crash on my S3 when installed.

Check to see if you have a process called Factory Test, or Factory Mode. When BBS is installed, check to see what percentage it is showing.

I downloaded WatchDog Lite app to check what was going on, and it alerted me that Factory Test was using over 45% CPU constantly overnight. My S3 went from 100% to about 66% overnight without ever touching it.

Try that!

Have you ever tried the system panel app? I do have a Factory Mode app running but according to system panel, the app is only reporting a 0% average cpu consumption.
Was wondering if Watchdog and System panel reports different results.

 

[bucknasty]

I have the Vz s3. knew it would be a battery hog when I bought it so I got the below battery and now get 3-4 days if I really stretch it.

Amazon.com: Hyperion Samsung Galaxy SIII 4200mAh Extended Battery + White Back Cover (Compatible with Samsung Galaxy S III GT-i9300, AT&T Samsung Galaxy S3 Samsung i747, Verizon Samsung Galaxy S3 Samsung i535, T-mobile Samsung Galaxy S3 Samsung T999,

 

[John P]

Thanks for all the help and replies.
I have been away for the weekend so haven't done anything more on this, as I think to be a fair test the phone needs to be in the same place, with same signal strength etc.
Now I'm back, I have just downloaded cpu spy and betterbatterystats, so I will leave my phone in the same place on my bedside cabinet, with all the same settings as previously reported and will post up the findings of those two apps tomorrow.

I will definitely need help with the results though as I have just looked through the programs and even if there is something glaringly obvious thats causing the drain, all the statistics look so complicated I doubt I will understand them properly

John

 

[krypt23g]

Set your display brightness manually and switch off automatic adjustment (untick from drop down menu)...improved my battery life significantly. Automatic brightness keeps analyzing room light condition all the time draining battery life

 

[John P]

Set your display brightness manually and switch off automatic adjustment (untick from drop down menu)...improved my battery life significantly. Automatic brightness keeps analyzing room light condition all the time draining battery life

The problem is not whilst using the phone though, the battery life is good whilst its in use, the problem is the drain whilst its in standby mode when the screen is off.

I will post up the results from cpuspy and betterbatterystats in the morning.
Which section of better battery stats do I need to pay most attention to? There's other, kernel wakelock, partial wakelocks, alarms, network, cpu states & process, I will post up the screen shots in the morning and hopefully somebody can make sense of them. Which screen shots of which section above, should I take?

John

 

[John P]

Morning all

So I did the same again last night, fully charged by battery, then unplugged it and left it all night without touching it. In a 10 hour period it drained from 100% to 33%, so a 6.7% drop per hour without being used at all.

Here is the screen shot, showing that there was no screen usage what so ever.

As previously said, I used cpuspy and betterbatterystats this time to hopefully find a culprit for the excessive standby drain. I took lots of screenshots of all the information, but I'm not quite sure which section of betterbatterystats is relevant, so I will post up those that I think are, but if anyone needs another section of batterystats to analyse then please let me know.

Section: Other. (Seems from the 10 hour period it was awake for 9 hours 50 minutes and only in deep sleep for 10 mins.)

Kernel Wakelock: (I seem to have accidentally scrolled down the screen slightly and cut off the heading to the top stat whilst taking the screenshot, this heading was called "suspend_backoff"

Partial Wakelock: K9 mail seems to be causing most partial wakelocks, I only have three email addresses though so not sure what the reason would be for this, perhaps to do with settings? Wouls this be draining the battery to the excess of 6.7% per hour?

The sections called 'Alarms' and 'Network' showed nothing.



CPU States:

Process: Again, large amount used by K9 mail

So there it is, the finger seems to be pointing to K9 mail, although I just dont no if it would cause a 6.7% per hour drain? Im also not sure what the difference is between the blue and red bars.
If any of the experienced members on this site are able to look over the results for me and offer me any help and advice as to if/whether any of the above information would be causing the excessive standby drain I would be very very grateful.

Many thanks, John

 

[wolflet27]

alarms should not be much issue since your alarm manager wakelock is meagre. network would have helped since multipdp is associated to network use. i googled suspend_backoff and one of the possible culprits could be wifi triggering the phone awake and asleep frequently. if your phone is not in wifi range, the phone will keep searching for a signal thus sucking up alot of juice, try to turn off wifi when not in range.

regarding k9, i don't use it so i dunno how it works. if the settings allow it, set it to sync less frequently eg. hourly. or turn off auto sync altogether and sync only when u need it. for me i use an app called tasker to help me turn on and off auto sync periodically to save battery.

my s3's battery drain is 11% over 10 hours

 

[John P]

alarms should not be much issue since your alarm manager wakelock is meagre. network would have helped since multipdp is associated to network use.

Hi thanks for your reply. As I said above, alarms and network had nothing to show, but here they are anyway if they are any use;

i googled suspend_backoff and one of the possible culprits could be wifi triggering the phone awake and asleep frequently. if your phone is not in wifi range, the phone will keep searching for a signal thus sucking up alot of juice, try to turn off wifi when not in range.

I should have said, Wifi was turned off.

regarding k9, i don't use it so i dunno how it works. if the settings allow it, set it to sync less frequently eg. hourly. or turn off auto sync altogether and sync only when u need it. for me i use an app called tasker to help me turn on and off auto sync periodically to save battery.

Thanks, I will check it now how often it is syncing, also have a look at tasker, I wont turn auto sync off altogether though as I need my business emails to come through, I will forget if I have to check manually.

my s3's battery drain is 11% over 10 hours

I can only dream of such low figures at the moment, but at least hearing peoples lower standby figures makes me know it is possible on gs3

Thanks, John

 

[wolflet27]

im assuming your phone is not rooted? as you need root to access network and alarms. its turned off by default, so if your phone is rooted, turn them on in the settings

 

[John P]

Oh I see, no my phone is not routed, so that explains why they are blank .

I have just checked my K9 settings and all three of the accounts are imap accounts so the emails are pushed to my phone, rather than syncing periodically with the server. My poll frequency is set to 'Never'.
I read here that push email shouldn't use much battery http://androidforums.com/android-applications/217875-k9-email-check-frequency-settings-help.html
With that in mind this drain issue is really baffling me, from the results do you think its still emails that are the issue or is there anything else that stands out?
I could try removing all my emails this evening and try the test again.

John
http://androidforums.com/android-applications/217875-k9-email-check-frequency-settings-help.html

 

[wolflet27]

from the looks of it, the main culprit seems to be k9 mail. did it set it to sync all mail from the beginning of time, maybe thats why its taking so long and probably alot of data. maybe just set it to 10/20 days or something.

 

[John P]

Ah ha, yes. All three of the accounts were set to sync messages from; Anytime - No limit.
I have now just changed that to 1 week so be interesting to see if that makes a difference. Will post up the results again tomorrow morning.
Thanks for your help.

John

 

[ddamitav]

Hi,

My samsung s3 takes more than 12 hrs to charge. Most of the time even after 12 hrs of constant charging it shows only 24% to 30 % charging.

I do not know what is the problem, cany you please help me.

Regards,
Amitav

 

[wolflet27]

u charging with ac or usb? even with usb, 12 hrs for 24% sounds wrong

 

[bigchiefw]

Hmm I'm finding this thread very interesting. Had an s3 since June and it has been brilliant. I don't really hammer it often so an average day is reading emails, a little surfing and the odd text MSG. With that in mind, I easily get at least 48 hours from a charge. I do have wifi, gps and Bluetooth turned off permanently but have sync and mobile data on.

In the last 2 days I have been getting the problem the OP has. Battery drains within a day with no use, somewhere around 8% an hour in standby. Battery usage shows this to be Cell Standby.

As far as I can work out I haven't changed anything. My apps have been updated and i have installed a couple of new apps but deleted those (adobe air and sky sports centre) with no luck. The only app I can definetly recall has updated was light flow lite but turning that off completely does nothing to improve it.

Running android version 4.0.4 at the moment in the uk. I don't have K9 mail installed (I think?) and have made no changes to how my email clients work. Very frustrated with this. I turned the phone onto airplane mode and it went back to normal, I turned off the sync option on the drop down menu and it still drained quickly so seems to be something to do with the signal perhaps?

Been loving using my s3, want it back to how it was!

 

[John P]

Ok, I did the same again last night and it has still drained. Has anyone any more ideas what the drain could be caused by? Please help, I'm completely at an end with this lol.

John

 

[ddamitav]

yesterday at 9 Pm i put my s3 on charging it was completely drained. and i constaly monitoor the progress of charging till 2 am and it ws 30 % and when in the morning i checked it was only charged 45%.

 

[John P]

Well seems as all the fingers are pointing towards K9 mail, I have got rid of that and have downloaded maildroid instead so will test that out tonight and see if the drain has improved at all.

If anyone can think of any other possible reasons from looking at the BBS screen shots, please let me know.

John

 

[wolflet27]

the high cell standby seems to be a misreporting problem with the software which falsely reports excessively high battery usage during standby. try to use betterbatterystats and see which apps are misbehaving and keeping your phone up