[Q] S4 battery drains more at work than at home - Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi there,
I'm having a really weird issue. My Galaxy S4 (i9500) is having a serious battery drain issue. As with most people, Google Play Services is the culprit. However, I noticed that it drains at a rate of about 6% per hour while I'm at work, but only 2% per hour when I'm at home.
I have the exact same WiFi access points at work than at home (D-Link 1155), and I honestly have no idea what else could affect it. See the screenshot here:
http://i.imgur.com/8jyGha6.png
You can clearly see the moment I got home, the drain stopped. Yes, my screen has been on less than it was at work, but the screen still wasn't the cause of the battery drain at work.
Literally the ONLY difference I see between home and work, is the strength of the mobile network signal (see screenshot).
Any ideas?

weak mobile network signal can cause the battery to drain much faster

senur3 said:
weak mobile network signal can cause the battery to drain much faster
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Even if WiFi is connected at the same time?
What do I do about that?

Related

Battery Life on Wifi - Outstanding!!

Basically, when I leave wi-fi on my phone has incredible battery life. If someone has already mentioned this feel free to bury this post, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem this has been posted yet.
With wi-fi off and 3g on
- Battery lost 5-6 percent per hour
Wi-fi on
- Battery lost 1-2 percent per hour (sometimes less than 1 percent depending on what your doing)
Right now after having my phone on for 34 hours my battery is still at 70 percent! I'm fairly certain this is because it disables the 3g radio altogether which apparently is a real battery hog. That or maybe my phone is just a fluke. I really don't know.
This also seems to be tied to the htc sense rom (correct me if im wrong) but if i remember correctly battery drainage increased when wifi was enabled in the stock rom. Currently, I'm using the latest htc sense rom from modaco, I'd really enjoy hearing if enabling wifi helps others extend their battery life.
your having better battery life with the Desire ROMs? that odd, my battery life with a Desire ROM was 20-30% worse compared to stock.
amlwaycooljr said:
Basically, when I leave wi-fi on my phone has incredible battery life. If someone has already mentioned this feel free to bury this post, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem this has been posted yet.
With wi-fi off and 3g on
- Battery lost 5-6 percent per hour
Wi-fi on
- Battery lost 1-2 percent per hour (sometimes less than 1 percent depending on what your doing)
Right now after having my phone on for 34 hours my battery is still at 70 percent! I'm fairly certain this is because it disables the 3g radio altogether which apparently is a real battery hog. That or maybe my phone is just a fluke. I really don't know.
This also seems to be tied to the htc sense rom (correct me if im wrong) but if i remember correctly battery drainage increased when wifi was enabled in the stock rom. Currently, I'm using the latest htc sense rom from modaco, I'd really enjoy hearing if enabling wifi helps others extend their battery life.
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Click to collapse
Actually, it's a well known fact that 3G uses more power on most (every?) phones than Wifi... so you're not alone.
Hey when you say WIFI on..do you mean WIFI and EDGE or did you completely disabled the radio?
I never would have thought having wifi on would extend battery life to such a great extent though, in most of the latest cell phone reviews and what not everyone recommends to have wifi off saves battery life but in this case just the opposite is true. I kinda knew the wifi was more efficient but I never expected such a large benefit from leaving wifi on all the time.
@ram130 I haven't actually touched the radios at all so I expect them all to be on or at the very least have edge on, I am able to receive and send calls and txt so I'm assuming at least some cell radio has to be on. All I did was use the htc sense rom and enable wifi.
The cellular radio is still on, but 3G/Edge (data) are disconnected. I don't know how Edge compares to Wifi, but 3G is a battery killer in comparison.
uansari1 said:
The cellular radio is still on, but 3G/Edge (data) are disconnected. I don't know how Edge compares to Wifi, but 3G is a battery killer in comparison.
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amlwaycooljr said:
I never would have thought having wifi on would extend battery life to such a great extent though, in most of the latest cell phone reviews and what not everyone recommends to have wifi off saves battery life but in this case just the opposite is true. I kinda knew the wifi was more efficient but I never expected such a large benefit from leaving wifi on all the time.
@ram130 I haven't actually touched the radios at all so I expect them all to be on or at the very least have edge on, I am able to receive and send calls and txt so I'm assuming at least some cell radio has to be on. All I did was use the htc sense rom and enable wifi.
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In other words you have "use 2G networks" checked right?
I'm gonna try this is now. I'm currently at 3hr 32m unplugged with 80% left. I have wifi enabled and on the stock rom. So I'll post back when I wake in a few a hours and see how it goes.
My only problem:
Wifi seems to disconnect alot during the hour regardless if sleep policy is set to NEVER. My wifi signal is -78dBm to -86dBm in my room and on channel 11(used wifi analyzer). Any suggestions why?
I have the same experience at home, I enable Wifi and leave the phone stay home for a couple of days and battery still 40%, when I go out and wifi is not connected, 3G kicks in and battery drops much faster.
I'm using cyanogen 5.0.4.1
Interesting. Did not know this!
I guess I won't feel so bad about leaving my phone on Wifi all day!
Also, does anyone know how much power is used by not having a radio signal and letting it constantly search? That seems to destroy my battery. But sometimes I am in an area with wifi but no radio access (deep within a building).
It's too bad this phone doesn't have UMA - that would make up for T-Mobile's lack of indoor coverage (at times), and probably improve battery life a lot in some cases.
But I have to say that on another phones I've used, especially WinMo devices, using WiFi instead of 3G seemed to always use more battery. But, it could very well be different on this phone...I'm definitely going to give this a try.
im not sure about the percentage but i agree,the battery drain is considerably more when searching for radio.im in a building most of the day and it doesnt take long.miss the UMA i had on my bberry.
Paul22000 said:
Interesting. Did not know this!
I guess I won't feel so bad about leaving my phone on Wifi all day!
Also, does anyone know how much power is used by not having a radio signal and letting it constantly search? That seems to destroy my battery. But sometimes I am in an area with wifi but no radio access (deep within a building).
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I also Get. About 25% better battery on wifi
Well after 10hrs of the phone being on stand by I woke up. It was at 46%!! my god. Anyway I checked my email, read an article all taking around 15mins and guess what? I had 30% left!. I put it back to stand by for 3hrs and took a look at it and had about 16% left...
It is now charging after one hour with just 10min use of downloading apps ..Can ANYONE tell me why my battery is draining so much on wifi? When its on EDGE for the night after 10hr I would have around 70% left from a full charge. Anyone can help me out here?
I shall be getting a replacement battery for free Tuesday.
Stock android.
ram130 said:
Well after 10hrs of the phone being on stand by I woke up. It was at 46%!! my god. Anyway I checked my email, read an article all taking around 15mins and guess what? I had 30% left!. I put it back to stand by for 3hrs and took a look at it and had about 16% left...
It is now charging after one hour with just 10min use of downloading apps ..Can ANYONE tell me why my battery is draining so much on wifi? When its on EDGE for the night after 10hr I would have around 70% left from a full charge. Anyone can help me out here?
I shall be getting a replacement battery for free Tuesday.
Stock android.
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Click to collapse
Did you set your phone to only use 2G networks also? If you're not charging, wifi will probably disable after not being used for a while..so it's probably rolling to 3G if you haven't disabled it.
I'm not saying it's convenient to constantly switch back and forth... but this explains why it may not be a good test of the battery life the way you're running it.
uansari1 said:
Did you set your phone to only use 2G networks also? If you're not charging, wifi will probably disable after not being used for a while..so it's probably rolling to 3G if you haven't disabled it.
I'm not saying it's convenient to constantly switch back and forth... but this explains why it may not be a good test of the battery life the way you're running it.
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Well yes I have it on 2G only. Any thing else could be contributing to it dying so fast?
Well I found a way to use my laptop as an AP. So I connected my N1 to it and getting full bars(-41dBm) in my room now. No wifi disconnects so far!(maybe it was my linksys before ?).. So far the battery is at 86% with some 3D games, been unplug for 1hr 50min now. I'll put it to stand by now and see how it looks after 10hrs.
I'm on a stock firmware(not rooted). 2G only selected.
The way I understand it is as follows:
Phone is on STANDBY:
3g==2g* which are both more efficient then wifi (that's why the default wifi policy turns wifi off if it's not being used)**
Phone is ACTIVE:
wifi is more efficient then 2g/3g because:
1) It's waaay faster and thus causes less battery drain* and
2) The AP (router) is much closer to the phone then the cell tower so in theory it doesn't need to use as much power to talk to the router.
*http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/CodingLifeBatteryLife.html
4:45min into it there is a power usage chart and 3G/EDGE idle power usage is about the same - also somewhere else in the video they talk about wifi vs 3g usage when transferring data.
** http://code.google.com/p/sipdroid/wiki/NewStandbyTechnique
States that 3g standby is more efficient then wifi
drak0 said:
** http://code.google.com/p/sipdroid/wiki/NewStandbyTechnique
States that 3g standby is more efficient then wifi
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Click to collapse
Someone needs to test this ok. ...already testing wifi
Ok I'm at 11hrs 30min on wifi and its at 67% with light usage(checking email, news for 5min)..improvement? kinda, because since turning off my laptop it switched back to getting low signal(-81dBm) from the router in the next room. Weird? I'm still thinking. anyway I'm heading out so gonna use the phone more today, lets see if it gets me through the day.
Still no where near the thread starter 30hrs!! Maybe stock really sucks? bad battery anyone??
@ram130 I'm not sure how my battery is lasting as long as it has so far. I'm up to what would be an insane number, 65 hours 36 percent left .. this battery just wont die. I haven't the slightest idea how it's lasting this long I just leave wifi on all the time and turn wifi standby off. If anyone could explain how leaving wifi on more than quadruples my battery life I'd sure love to know.

[Q] Crazy high cell standby killing my battery life?

Help!
I'm running the 81xx firmware on a direct-from-dell unlocked Streak.
My battery life has so far been abysmal, and looking at the battery usage screen, my cell standby is usually over 60% while idle is less than 20%, everything else like 2%. This isn't from weak signal, though; I am in a well-covered 3g-only area and my phone has reported only being disconnected about 4% of the time.
Another strange thing is, my data indicator is constantly switching between the H symbol and the 3g symbol.
Anybody know what's going on?
It might be that while you are well covered for 3g, you are marginal for HSDPA and that constant switching back and forth is using your battery. I have not tried it but have a look and see if you can disable HSDPA in settings somewhere and see if that helps.
i'm usually around 40% cell standby.. do u have any task killer apps installed? although people think those are useful they usually do more harm then good.
I have the same problem, and I used another Android phone in the same location (hence same cell coverage) with no such problems. I just took my phone off the charger and had the display on since then non-stop. Cell standby used as much battery as the display!! There's no way that is appropriate.
I'm running build 8102, but it was the same with 6941 before. Can't tell about 1.6 as I bought my streak used with 6941 on it.
What Android version are you guys running? Maybe we can find common denominators.. :/
Edit: here's a screen shot of the battery usage after a while off the charger with the screen on constantly:
http://i.imgur.com/3OrqZ.png
You must be Australian W0nk0
Do you think your antenna might be loose or defective?
I can't imagine the antenna to be loose really - but who knows, I bought mine used. If so, I think there is a signal strength value in " about phone" somewhere, no?
What signal strength are others getting? I'll post mine later, I'm on airplane mode right now so that I get some battery life.. :/
For signal strength, I am getting -75 to -95, and 9 to 12 for the two values while riding the train (not subway).
It also appears my battery life is quite good when my phone is in standby and not doing anything... the problem seems to come from net browsing or anything else that uses an active connection... Just browsng XDA is taking about 2% a minute!
Oh and my android is the 81xx 2.1 version with the modaco tweaks
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App
I had really high cell stand-by too. then i installed juicedefender, now my cell standby is down to about 29%.
I think the main thing is that it disables data connections while your screen is off and only turns it back on when the screen is on and unlocked. It also has a setting where it enables data connection periodically to allow background syncs and whatnot.
I'd recommend you guys give it a go, it had almost doubled my battery life!!
Mine shows,
cell stand by 50%
phone idle 44%
it seems quite common on the streak as I read in all the forums. I am on 2.1 stock rom? what's 1.6 like?

Can a router cause battery drain?

I noticed that my battery is draining faster when I'm at work than when I'm at home. Both have wi-fi.
Here's a screenshot on which you can clearly see the moment I get home. Is it possible my work-router is sucking the life out of my battery?
drdionysius said:
I noticed that my battery is draining faster when I'm at work than when I'm at home. Both have wi-fi.
Here's a screenshot on which you can clearly see the moment I get home. Is it possible my work-router is sucking the life out of my battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to look at you battery stats on the previous screen and see if anything stands out there, mine are like this from this morning and I have a 48 mile drive to and from work, no WiFi use at work only 4G but I tend to forget to turn WiFi off so its on a lot but not connected, I would guess something else is draining the battery though, if you don'e see anything in the battery usage just try a day with your WiFi off whilst at work.
Turning off wi-fi at work saves battery too (although not as much as using wi-fi at home).

Cell standby / bluetooth battery drain?

I keep seeing a huge battery drain from "cell standby" and "bluetooth".
I have wi-fi on all the time, I use bluetooth only when driving (no streaming), and I tried Greenify with no improvement.
Are there any known bugs with this? I am running 6.0.1 on T-Mobile.
priapism said:
I keep seeing a huge battery drain from "cell standby" and "bluetooth".
I have wi-fi on all the time, I use bluetooth only when driving (no streaming), and I tried Greenify with no improvement.
Are there any known bugs with this? I am running 6.0.1 on T-Mobile.
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Click to collapse
I rarely use bluetooth but I do have high cell standby like yours. I also have no idea why since it happened to other androids out there even on nexuses and it seems started since lollipop. my guess is, it happened in previous android versions but not displayed until lollipop. I don't care much about it now since I'm getting around 6 hours of SOT within 2 days of usage which is great, at least for me.
I get about 2.5 hrs SOT and have to top up in the evenings pretty often. For a 48-hour rated phone, I feel like something's not right.
What kind of bike is that?
priapism said:
I get about 2.5 hrs SOT and have to top up in the evenings pretty often. For a 48-hour rated phone, I feel like something's not right.
What kind of bike is that?
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Judging from your screenshot, it looks like the phone was struggling with cell signal strength. This is one of the main battery drainer other than gps and playing games. When the signal strength is low, the phone increases the radio power to get better reception, thus draining battery faster.
it's a suzuki gsx650f
Same issue with mine as well, battery drains like hell from this bug but tower is always full. I use vodafone.
This did happen to me in the last one week. I got only 3.5 hrs screen on time, however my phone went three days without charge (I didn't use it much anyway, was busy with work). Checked BetterBatteryStats on my phone and it showed the poor mobile signal to be one of the major battery drainers. It's weird because until 10 days back I never had this poor mobile signal reception.
3.5 hours SOT within 3 days is considered great already. Some phones barely last a day with that amount of SOT.
i've also had this problem since i bought this phone. My mobile standby is always over 10-15% when the signal is always full and there is never a single bar drop. I've tried switching to 2g/3g/4g but problem persists every time. I've also tried many custom roms but this problem remains. I think this has to do something with hardware of this phone. I cant even get it replaced or repaired at service centre since i've rooted and unlocked boot loader. If anybody finds a solution please post. It will be much appreciated.
I also had this problem initially.To get rid of this problem put your phone in airplane mode for few minutes,then turn your mobile network on.For the bluetooth issue,go to settings - location - three dots top right - scanning - uncheck WiFi and Bluetooth.
effingbadluck said:
I also had this problem initially.To get rid of this problem put your phone in airplane mode for few minutes,then turn your mobile network on.For the bluetooth issue,go to settings - location - three dots top right - scanning - uncheck WiFi and Bluetooth.
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Click to collapse
thanks a lot man. this actually solved the problem, I would have never though the solution was so easy, although I have to repeat the procedure with every reboot but its still better than nothing. I do hope devs come up with a permanent solution to this issue.

Cell standby killing the battery

recently i encountered a lot of battery drain even without using my phone ( galaxy s8 dual sim ) i noticed that cell standby is using a lot of battery sometimes as much as if not greater than the screen it self which is weird because my signal is ok i dont think ian losing signal
anybody having this problem ??
alaa96 said:
recently i encountered a lot of battery drain even without using my phone ( galaxy s8 dual sim ) i noticed that cell standby is using a lot of battery sometimes as much as if not greater than the screen it self which is weird because my signal is ok i dont think ian losing signal
anybody having this problem ??
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Click to collapse
The image shows the phone was without signal for some time which was about 32% and it will consume power. Don't know the reason behind this, but if phone really had no signal for a long time, then be in another place where there is a good signal and test there. I have seen few times with my old Moto X, that sometimes after using internet via mobile network(without wifi), the connecting would somehow still be open and it would consume battery and the way to fix this, I had to restart the phone.
Charkatak said:
The image shows the phone was without signal for some time which was about 32% and it will consume power. Don't know the reason behind this, but if phone really had no signal for a long time, then be in another place where there is a good signal and test there. I have seen few times with my old Moto X, that sometimes after using internet via mobile network(without wifi), the connecting would somehow still be open and it would consume battery and the way to fix this, I had to restart the phone.
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Click to collapse
this is ridiculous ! i never had an issue like this with any of my older phones
best bet do a factory reset and see if it still persists
Same happens to me too. Yesterday I went outside my house and traveling in the city - my battery went from 100% to 43% in 6h40min. I had SOT only 1h. I am wondering if something related to GPS is killing the battery as it always drain very fast if i am moving - but in the other hand it seems that phone radio is draining also the battery a lot. Any advices what could I do?
varun.gid said:
best bet do a factory reset and see if it still persists
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Click to collapse
i already did it but no good i think this problem happened after an update
nixun said:
Same happens to me too. Yesterday I went outside my house and traveling in the city - my battery went from 100% to 43% in 6h40min. I had SOT only 1h. I am wondering if something related to GPS is killing the battery as it always drain very fast if i am moving - but in the other hand it seems that phone radio is draining also the battery a lot. Any advices what could I do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cell standby is not related to gps and location services i dont think so at least iam pretty sure it is mainly phone network related
Cell standby drains too much battery
I'm using Galaxy S8 Exynos Version (Dual Sim). Facing this cell standby extreme battery drain issue recently. I have tried several options like- reset network settings, restart / power off-on, factory reset and wipe cache partition to see if the problem goes away or not. These things can solve the problem only for 2-3 days. Then after that same cell standby battery drain occurs again. The only thing left is to hard reset. But I don't think this will solve the problem either. These are not the permanent solution. When I first got the phone this problem was not there. For the last 2-3 weeks I have been facing this issue and it is bothering me a lot coz my battery drains too much even when i'm not using my phone. I really need a solid solution for this. Can anybody help? And I hope Samsung will address this issue and solve it asap.
I think cell standby is the worst problem in the S8. It really kills battery. It can make your phone drop 2% per hour.
Same issue here. Didn't have this issue before the latest two updates. Before I had 6-7 SoT and now barely 2-3 hours.
yes, this issue was not pronounced before the latest updates (one or two as mentioned)
Same thing here. After the last update there is a battery problem with standby. Hope they fix it with next release.
same with my s8+ dual exynos

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