• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

The Truth About Your Battery

hmm. thanks. yours looks like it's kinda all over the place too.

I wonder if there's a better app for measuring this stuff in better detail.
 
Hello guys. I'm a noob here and just wanted to say that I have had my s3 for about a month, have downloaded Juice Defender Ultimate, Gsam Battery Monitor and have read every message in this thread and followed the suggestions where/when I could and now average a hair under 27 hours of battery life with moderate use. Am I wrong in thinking this is pretty damn good? Should I strive for even more life? It is not really needed as I live in Houston, Texas and am never away from a charging plug for more than a couple of hours at a time anyway.
 
phil75231 said:
Hello guys. I'm a noob here and just wanted to say that I have had my s3 for about a month, have downloaded Juice Defender Ultimate, Gsam Battery Monitor and have read every message in this thread and followed the suggestions where/when I could and now average a hair under 27 hours of battery life with moderate use. Am I wrong in thinking this is pretty damn good? Should I strive for even more life? It is not really needed as I live in Houston, Texas and am never away from a charging plug for more than a couple of hours at a time anyway.
Click to expand...
I can't respond directly since I haven't done any long-term tests. I like to test the phone overnight when it's not being used. I find that with JDU, the battery drain is in the range of 0.3-0.4 %/h. Basically, I run the test by fully charging the phone then unplugging it and turning off screen. In the morning I start it up and check GSam first thing. I suggest trying that and seeing how you compare. The results are considerably better than running the same test with JDU disabled. As near as I can tell, I don't have any misbehaving apps. I'm using BetterBatteryStats, Watchdog, GSam, and BatteryMix. They all provide useful information.

For purposes of comparison, you might want to describe your JDU configuration
Pete
 
Nothing special on JDU. Just the basic balanced setting. I wanted to test a few times to see how that setting did before I jacked with it.
 
A number of times it's been mentioned here to reduce the amount of times that the apps like Facebook etc... sync. I would love to do that but can't see how!

Sorry for my ignorance but could someone please give me a step>by step>by step please?
 
For Facebook:
- Run Facebook
- Click the Menu button on the lower-left corner of your S3
- Select Settings (gear icon)
- Select Refresh interval
- Select an option
- For maximum battery life, you can choose Never, then each time you run Facebook, pull the screen down for a moment, then release, and you should see your feeds reload.

Many apps follow a similar principle, but they usually call it "sync" and not "refresh".

Another place to look is your phone settings' Accounts and sync:
- Pull down your notification screen (from the top of the phone down)
- Choose the "gear" icon on the upper right
- Scroll down and select Accounts and sync
- This will show you what accounts you have that synch. You can examine those accounts and make any changes you'd like to try out.
 
johnnylighton said:
Another place to look is your phone settings' Accounts and sync:
- Pull down your notification screen (from the top of the phone down)
- Choose the "gear" icon on the upper right
- Scroll down and select Accounts and sync
- This will show you what accounts you have that synch. You can examine those accounts and make any changes you'd like to try out.
Click to expand...

Thanks, sorted it on the Facebook App, but I don't have an Accounts and Sync menu path any more since I updated to JB 4.1.1.

When I go into settings, I scroll down and I now have a section called "Accounts". In that section (but without having to press a button) I can see the apps which I assume require Syncing, pressing the menu button here does nothing so I'm left with going into each app. Unfortunately, a lot of the apps don't have sync options as far as I can see, (e.g. Twitter) so I assume they're just push applications?

Also, I don't see Gmail listed and doing your steps in Gmail doesn't really help me out, so I assume that's a push app too?

Thanks for the advice, hope I'm not hijacking a useful thread, if I am let me know.
 
If you don't see any controls in your Accounts settings, then you can run each individual app and press the phone's Menu button to access that app's settings.

There has been a lot of speculation here that push Gmail is better for your battery than having your email program "poll" the Gmail server periodically.

There's an excellent, free app called Gsam Battery Monitor. It will give you a breakdown of what components of your phone used your battery since you pulled it off the charger (or you can put in a new starting point manually). If you run that, you'll see what apps are really using your juice. It will say something like App Usage...56%, and if you touch App Usage it will show you a breakdown by app. If you see an app near the top of the list that you haven't been using that day, you'll know it's been syncing. :)

But I don't know if the opposite is also true. I.e., is is possible for an app to use the phone radio for syncing but not show up high in the App Usage list as having used a lot of battery? Maybe others can address that point.
 
phil75231 said:
Nothing special on JDU. Just the basic balanced setting. I wanted to test a few times to see how that setting did before I jacked with it.
Click to expand...
That's fine. The beauty of running the test described above is that you eliminate variability caused by things such as screen, phone calls, etc, but highlight any misbehaving apps. In other words, it provides more of an apples-to-apples comparison.
Pete
 
Cool, my battery is pretty good to be fair, about 25 hours. I had Gsam but I'm only after realising that I could go to the App Sucker and click on the top right drop down to see where my wake locks were coming from. Turns out eBay (which I promptly uninstalled) and my maps (because I have location based services turned on) were draining my battery the most, I'm happy enough leaving on my location based services. So that's cool. Thanks!
 
Hi Guys,

I have installed GSam battery monitor.
I notice that "Phone Radio" uses over 80% of the battery.
What is that Phone Radio?
Is it possible to close that process?
Please let me know how to reduce Phone Radio's Battery usage.

Take a look at the screenshot below,

9sb9c9.png
 
mpadhu, click on Phone Radio and it will take you to a breakdown of how strong your signal strength has been.

If you have a weak cell signal, your phone will use lots of battery to stay connected. You can try turning off mobile data on the pull-down settings screen when you are in an area with very weak signal to see if that helps with your battery life, but you won't be able to receive text messages or use Internet functions unless you're on wifi.
 
Ok, thanks for the correction. What's the best way to deal with a weak cell signal's effect on the battery while still being able to be connected to wifi?
 
As mentioned a few times, the GS3 has the best battery life of the many phones I have tested with medium to good signal. The bad thing is it easily has the worst battery life with a weak signal.

It gets so bad in weak areas it would be nice if there were an app that would dynamically turn off the data radio at a certain signal strength threshold.

It is a great device, but has gosh awful power draw in weak signal areas. As example, the Incredible, DX2, Droid 3 and Razr also drained more with weak signal, but the GS3 is in it's league of bad compared to them.
 
I've heard that the GS3 power drain/cell standy issue is fixed in JB 4.1 but obviously I cannot confirm yet. But yes the GS3 has serious cell standby problems.
 
I have had my phone for three days and battery life has been awful.

Today, I have used less than five hours off a fully charged battery and I'm down to 80% with little usage.

My battery shows 38% from android and 33% from screen. I have the screen set at 15%.

I live in Maui and have everything from decent to bad reception. I'm wondering if my battery drain is because of reception issues.

Very frustrated and discouraged.
 
noahj1102 said:
I have had my phone for three days and battery life has been awful.

Today, I have used less than five hours off a fully charged battery and I'm down to 80% with little usage.

My battery shows 38% from android and 33% from screen. I have the screen set at 15%.

I live in Maui and have everything from decent to bad reception. I'm wondering if my battery drain is because of reception issues.

Very frustrated and discouraged.
Click to expand...

If your average reception area is weak, that is a big chunk of the issue. Turn data off just to test if true or not.
 
noahj1102 said:
I have had my phone for three days and battery life has been awful.

Today, I have used less than five hours off a fully charged battery and I'm down to 80% with little usage.

My battery shows 38% from android and 33% from screen. I have the screen set at 15%.

I live in Maui and have everything from decent to bad reception. I'm wondering if my battery drain is because of reception issues.

Very frustrated and discouraged.
Click to expand...

Dude that is not that bad. You probably have something running in the background.
 
I'll run the battery monitoring app when I get home and see what is happening.

But while I'm typing I have lost 1%.
 
Ever since I updated to JB, the "Media" is using up to 40% of the battery. Any ideas? I have a feeling Google Music is the culprit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom