Database Users

[Q] Battery life?

I apologize if this was asked before (I did a search of the forums but nothing really came up), but I'm wondering what others' experience with the battery life of the S4 is? This is my first smart phone and coming from a non-smartphone, I'm not sure if my expectations on battery life are unrealistic.
I got the S4 on 4/29 and brought it through one full charge cycle and several part cycles. Battery life is pretty important to me so I put an all black background (since its AMOLED), keep the brightness to below 10%, turn off all the fancy sensor things, turned on power saver mode, turn off wifi and data unless I really need to use it, turn off all sync so it only happens manually, etc. Yesterday, I charged it to 100% to see how long it would last and the stats I got were:
At 6% battery left, I had a total screen on-time of 2 hours and 58 mins and 1 d 2 hr on battery. Then, when I charged it to 100% and took out the charger, after about 5 minutes of it sleeping/screen off, the battery percentage dropped down to 97% with no data, no wifi, no active apps running.
With my pretty battery-friendly settings on my phone (or at least I think so), is this battery stat normal to others with this phone? Or do you think something might be wrong with the battery?

That sound horrible. There must be some rogue apps running/some wakelocks - try using better battery stats and find out.

chriswongdo said:
I apologize if this was asked before (I did a search of the forums but nothing really came up), but I'm wondering what others' experience with the battery life of the S4 is? This is my first smart phone and coming from a non-smartphone, I'm not sure if my expectations on battery life are unrealistic.
I got the S4 on 4/29 and brought it through one full charge cycle and several part cycles. Battery life is pretty important to me so I put an all black background (since its AMOLED), keep the brightness to below 10%, turn off all the fancy sensor things, turned on power saver mode, turn off wifi and data unless I really need to use it, turn off all sync so it only happens manually, etc. Yesterday, I charged it to 100% to see how long it would last and the stats I got were:
At 6% battery left, I had a total screen on-time of 2 hours and 58 mins and 1 d 2 hr on battery. Then, when I charged it to 100% and took out the charger, after about 5 minutes of it sleeping/screen off, the battery percentage dropped down to 97% with no data, no wifi, no active apps running.
With my pretty battery-friendly settings on my phone (or at least I think so), is this battery stat normal to others with this phone? Or do you think something might be wrong with the battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you gotta give samsung a little time to fix the firmware

Good for me 4g/3g om half day wifi Facebook browsing xda
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium

This is what's draining my battery can't turn it of for some reason Google services
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium

chriswongdo said:
I apologize if this was asked before (I did a search of the forums but nothing really came up), but I'm wondering what others' experience with the battery life of the S4 is? This is my first smart phone and coming from a non-smartphone, I'm not sure if my expectations on battery life are unrealistic.
I got the S4 on 4/29 and brought it through one full charge cycle and several part cycles. Battery life is pretty important to me so I put an all black background (since its AMOLED), keep the brightness to below 10%, turn off all the fancy sensor things, turned on power saver mode, turn off wifi and data unless I really need to use it, turn off all sync so it only happens manually, etc. Yesterday, I charged it to 100% to see how long it would last and the stats I got were:
At 6% battery left, I had a total screen on-time of 2 hours and 58 mins and 1 d 2 hr on battery. Then, when I charged it to 100% and took out the charger, after about 5 minutes of it sleeping/screen off, the battery percentage dropped down to 97% with no data, no wifi, no active apps running.
With my pretty battery-friendly settings on my phone (or at least I think so), is this battery stat normal to others with this phone? Or do you think something might be wrong with the battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For a smartphone, an 'all-day' battery is fine, and given that the S4 has so many sensors, large screen and a powerful processor, I am happy with the battery lasting for 12-16 hours. I don't turn off any sensors, why get an S4 to run it on power saver mode and turn everything off? It defeats the purpose, in my opinion. I am trying to use as many features as possible on my S4. Of course, there are a few I don't, but just for personal preference. What you are doing is (no offence) in my opinion like getting a BMW M3 and running it on 4 pistons to save fuel.
Anyway, your battery life will improve after about 10-15 charge cycles, I noticed that with my past phones as well. If you need your battery to last longer, I would suggest getting a spare battery and keep it charged at all times for any emergencies. These are some of the reasons I love Samsung, removable batteries and microSD card slot.

thanks for the replies guys. I'll try the betterbatterystats app out. i'll probably take it back to sprint and see if they'll replace the battery for me. the screen accounts for about 50% of the battery usage in the stats and other apps take up the rest. the battery curve is pretty linear in a downward slope too (except when i don't use it at night, it becomes much flatter, albeit still downward).
haha its funny you say that, because i agree completely. the m3 is my dream car and if i could ever afford one, i would probably baby the crap out of it the reason why i got the s4 (and i also compared it to the htc one as a possible candidate) is because of the removable battery, sd card, nd most importantly: camera. that 13 megapixel shooter + hdr is really great for good photos on the go. speaking of which, i use the camera alot. is the physical use of the camera and the screen use a big power hog?

Ausboy 2011 said:
Good for me 4g/3g om half day wifi Facebook browsing xda
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda premium
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Click to collapse
This is what I expect from S4

Google Services may be Google Now.....unless you use it, you can turn it off........

The phone only takes 1h 57 minutes to charge from flat. It's mad how fast thing thing charges from AC so battery life isn't really a problem. (yes I was sad enough to time it)
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda app-developers app

[Q] Is the battery gone or miscalibrated?

hello everyone, I'm a new note owner, I bought it used and I think it has two years on it, but it is in great shape. I noticed however, that the battery life isn't that amazing as people have told me, this coming from a Galaxy alpha user. I will leave screenshots of today's battery life and I think it isn't that amazing what it got
I've heard about battery miscalibration, is this really a thing? I can try and calibrated but I need to root it, & I wasn't really looking forward to reading it, since its lollipop on stock rom.
The screenshots are bellow of screen on time and total time, you can see that it's not consistent and I charge my phone two times a day.
http://imgur.com/a/ShaLI
I'm using lollipop official rom flashed on Odin via download mode, yes the rom is compatible with my country's frequencies so there's not really a problem there.
I notice however that the battery sort of goes down faster sometimes more than others, sometimes even going as far as draining 10% simply being on stand-by with LTE enabled for 2 hours in my pocket when I'm in class.
Is this normal behavior?

I don't think there is any such thing called miscalibration, I mean I am not sure, but well.
If your phone is 2 years old, then I think the battery has seen its life, time to get a new one mate.

Battery recalibrates itself .
However as the battery is old then Drain the battery to 5% power off charge fully unplug wait one hour top up charge and use .
Next step is new battery Anker brand is good .
Wiping battery stats/ supposed calibration has nothing to do with battery calibration and will make no difference .

Lithium-ion batteries last about 300-500 charging cycles, after that the risk of it dying increases exponentially. Some last 5 years, some 1. It depends on usage and environmental factors.
There is no such thing as recalibrating a modern lithium ion battery. It doesn't have a memory.
New battery costs about 20 quid, it should solve the problem.
Also, did you do a reset after the update? Updates can cause battery drain too, quite often.
Sent From My Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9005 Using Tapatalk

No, I did not do a reset after the update. But I noticed this before updating to lollipop, I had to do some running around before I got home the day I bought it, and it was running KitKat 4.4. I got it with 93% of battery, walked home for a bit and was down to 65, went to the shopping and back, got home with 40 to 35%. (I bought the phone at around 5 pm and finally got home after going to the mall at around 8pm)

MikeTheBlueFox said:
No, I did not do a reset after the update. But I noticed this before updating to lollipop, I had to do some running around before I got home the day I bought it, and it was running KitKat 4.4. I got it with 93% of battery, walked home for a bit and was down to 65, went to the shopping and back, got home with 40 to 35%. (I bought the phone at around 5 pm and finally got home after going to the mall at around 8pm)
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Click to collapse
Then it's the battery, most likely.

Awful battery life with any ROM/kernel

Hi, i've a i9505 and my battery life is awful, no matter wich kernel i'm using. I've already bought a new battery (RAV Power) but nothing changed. There's a way to check what causes those incredibile drain/a way to solve my problem? Right now, i lose up to 10% with a 15 minutes video on YouTube...

Search for Better Battery Stats on the forums and install it to check to see if you have a wakelock or other issue keeping your device awake.

Madafacca said:
Hi, i've a i9505 and my battery life is awful, no matter wich kernel i'm using. I've already bought a new battery (RAV Power) but nothing changed. There's a way to check what causes those incredibile drain/a way to solve my problem? Right now, i lose up to 10% with a 15 minutes video on YouTube...
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Click to collapse
Why is that drain? In general you only have battery drain when you lose lot's of battery while screen is off.
You screen uses power. Your cpu uses power. Your gpu uses power. 10% battery when watching 15 minutes on Youtube is perfectly normal.

Lennyz1988 said:
Why is that drain? In general you only have battery drain when you lose lot's of battery while screen is off.
You screen uses power. Your cpu uses power. Your gpu uses power. 10% battery when watching 15 minutes on Youtube is perfectly normal.
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Click to collapse
Not when you've everything off except for Wi-Fi. Also, i'm always with just 15% of brightness and i locked all my cores to 1600 MHz, that's just not normal, my battery life was way better 3-4 months ago.

Lennyz1988 said:
Why is that drain? In general you only have battery drain when you lose lot's of battery while screen is off.
You screen uses power. Your cpu uses power. Your gpu uses power. 10% battery when watching 15 minutes on Youtube is perfectly normal.
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10% per 15 mins extrapolates to 100-0% in 150 mins. Which is 2 hours and 30 minutes of on-screen time. I'd say it's rather bad.
@Madafacca do you have a good signal reception? Bad signal can drain your battery a lot. I'm talking about carrier signal, not wi-fi signal.

Madafacca said:
Hi, i've a i9505 and my battery life is awful, no matter wich kernel i'm using. I've already bought a new battery (RAV Power) but nothing changed. There's a way to check what causes those incredibile drain/a way to solve my problem? Right now, i lose up to 10% with a 15 minutes video on YouTube...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
which rom are you using?
after changing battery you calibrated it?

I tried most of roms/kernel with my s4 and I can only dream of 2hours of screen on, even when it's stock, I use only viber, whatsapp and facebook ( without messenger ) and there is no way, i have 2 batteries, same with any of them... gonna add some money and buy lg g2, had it bout 4 months ago, and i get about 4hours of screen on time with g2, s4 for me is sh*t

NeoDJW said:
I tried most of roms/kernel with my s4 and I can only dream of 2hours of screen on, even when it's stock, I use only viber, whatsapp and facebook ( without messenger ) and there is no way, i have 2 batteries, same with any of them... gonna add some money and buy lg g2, had it bout 4 months ago, and i get about 4hours of screen on time with g2, s4 for me is sh*t
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Click to collapse
Facebook is a resource hog. I haven't seen an app to use so much RAM as facebook does. And it also cripples the performance of the phone.

Everything is disabled in FB app, notifications, refresh, so when i exit it, it doesn't do any background refresh.... you can't say that is because of FB because I had like almost every phone until now ( except 2015 flagships ) and only s4 is so bad at battery, switched from s5 to s4 because I was broke and had to sell it, before s5 I had note 3, lg g2, m7, m8, z2, s4 active, note 2 ( 2nd best battery life after lg g2 )

NeoDJW said:
Everything is disabled in FB app, notifications, refresh, so when i exit it, it doesn't do any background refresh.... you can't say that is because of FB because I had like almost every phone until now ( except 2015 flagships ) and only s4 is so bad at battery, switched from s5 to s4 because I was broke and had to sell it, before s5 I had note 3, lg g2, m7, m8, z2, s4 active, note 2 ( 2nd best battery life after lg g2 )
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Well, I don't know what's wrong with your phone. I can get 100-50% in about 2 hours gaming. I generally don't let it go under 50%. So that should mean about 4 hours total if I were to go 100-1%.

izmaelzx said:
which rom are you using?
after changing battery you calibrated it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Battery calibration is a waste of time. All calibration does is wipe batterystats.bin, which is wiped when the device is fully charged anyway. Thus a waste of time.

GDReaper said:
10% per 15 mins extrapolates to 100-0% in 150 mins. Which is 2 hours and 30 minutes of on-screen time. I'd say it's rather bad.
@Madafacca do you have a good signal reception? Bad signal can drain your battery a lot. I'm talking about carrier signal, not wi-fi signal.
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Click to collapse
In general I never get more then 2,5 hours of screen on time if I even make it.
It depends on how you use it I guess and the state of your battery.

NeoDJW said:
Everything is disabled in FB app, notifications, refresh, so when i exit it, it doesn't do any background refresh.... you can't say that is because of FB because I had like almost every phone until now ( except 2015 flagships ) and only s4 is so bad at battery, switched from s5 to s4 because I was broke and had to sell it, before s5 I had note 3, lg g2, m7, m8, z2, s4 active, note 2 ( 2nd best battery life after lg g2 )
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Click to collapse
I'm hating this phone right now, i think i'll switch to the 1+2 asap. Battery life is just too bad, i can't handle it.

Madafacca said:
I'm hating this phone right now, i think i'll switch to the 1+2 asap. Battery life is just too bad, i can't handle it.
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Click to collapse
Well, something is obviously draining your battery. 100-0% in 2 hours is just too much. In 2 hours I go from 100-50% when gaming. Of course, no wifi, lowest screen brightness, no bluetooth and no useless app's (like facebook app) running in the background thanks to greenify.
Put your phone in airplane mode and see how much drain you get. In airplane mode there should be practically no drain, since keeping the device connected to the network eats battery.

Yes there is but until we get some data from him we're basically tossing darts blindfolded. I recommended in post 2 that he install Better Battery Stats from the forums. If he runs it and posts its output, that should be of assistance in pinpointing where his battery drain is coming from.
OP, help us help you. Get the app, run it, and save a log of its data before your battery dies.

super hight temperature and battery drain in 30 min

hey everybody
i have nexus 4 and 2 months ago the battery life was so bad and stay for max 3 hours on wifi so i bought a new one and the issue still the same and after few weeks the battery size increased and broke the back glass so i used the original one again.
by days the battery life kept going less and less and now only 30 min of usage and it turns off and when i try to turn it on i see optimizing app every time and the phone temperature is getting so high where i cant event touch it from above.
please i need help and is this software or hardware problem ?

mostafa.slevin said:
hey everybody
i have nexus 4 and 2 months ago the battery life was so bad and stay for max 3 hours on wifi so i bought a new one and the issue still the same and after few weeks the battery size increased and broke the back glass so i used the original one again.
by days the battery life kept going less and less and now only 30 min of usage and it turns off and when i try to turn it on i see optimizing app every time and the phone temperature is getting so high where i cant event touch it from above.
please i need help and is this software or hardware problem ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If a second battery did the same thing, it could be software... something could be keeping the device from sleeping, use GSAM, BetterBatteryStats, or Wakelock Detector to see what is keeping the device awake and draining the battery. If nothing looks out of wack, you could have a bad main board or charging port short. But before I wrote it off as bad, I would factory default or reload the factory images to make sure it isn't a software issue.

Help with new s7 edge PLEASE

Hello,
After reading alot of reviews about the s7 edge battery life i decided to get it. so i got 2 days ago and was really excited about it. the problem the battery is draining so fast and thats really confusing
ive seen screenshots with 50 hours and 60 hours with estimated time. mine barely shows 7 hours. today for example i left the house at 8 with 92% and now im back wth 36% left screen was on auto with wifi
and 3g and sometime gps on. is this normal? am i being paranoid? is it true that the battery will get better with more days of use?
Please tell me what should i do im really worried that its faulty or something.
PS: i did a factory reset before i use it.

Yes, it will take a couple of days for the battery to level out. Do you have the Exynos or Snapdragon processor? What apps are reporting high battery use? Have you disabled any apps?
Sorry for the barrage of questions, but all of these things play a role in your battery life. I recommend GSAM battery monitor and Greenify with aggressive doze, but I will say that 50-60 hours is ambitious. I can usually get 25-30 hours with about 5 hours of SOT. That is with a combination of wifi, 4g, gps and Bluetooth on (android wear), some gaming and facebook, instagram, etc.

neezy13 said:
Yes, it will take a couple of days for the battery to level out. Do you have the Exynos or Snapdragon processor? What apps are reporting high battery use? Have you disabled any apps?
Sorry for the barrage of questions, but all of these things play a role in your battery life. I recommend GSAM battery monitor and Greenify with aggressive doze, but I will say that 50-60 hours is ambitious. I can usually get 25-30 hours with about 5 hours of SOT. That is with a combination of wifi, 4g, gps and Bluetooth on (android wear), some gaming and facebook, instagram, etc.
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Click to collapse
Hi thanks for the reply, yeah its my fault i forgot to mention some information
I am using the Exynos model in Netherlands. the screen is always on the top of the list of the battery usage. im using gsam to monitor the battery and i dont think there is anything unusual there android system on the top using 25% or something. im really scared of using anything so it wont die on me outside today i was only navigating and doing some whatsapp calls on the 3g network "not even 4g". i only disabled facebook and using nova launcher and the AOD is off also. im not sure if i should send it back... how many days are we talking about for the battery to get better? i only want somehow a good battery not worse than my old grand prime. as i said i got it wendesday's evening and now its friday and its still bad

lollimolly said:
Hi thanks for the reply, yeah its my fault i forgot to mention some information
I am using the Exynos model in Netherlands. the screen is always on the top of the list of the battery usage. im using gsam to monitor the battery and i dont think there is anything unusual there android system on the top using 25% or something. im really scared of using anything so it wont die on me outside today i was only navigating and doing some whatsapp calls on the 3g network "not even 4g". i only disabled facebook and using nova launcher and the AOD is off also. im not sure if i should send it back... how many days are we talking about for the battery to get better? i only want somehow a good battery not worse than my old grand prime. as i said i got it wendesday's evening and now its friday and its still bad
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I'm reading correctly, you are losing about 60% in 5 hours? If so, that is definitely excessive even during the first 2 or 3 days unless the screen was on and the phone active the entire time. Can you post screen shots of you battery stats? Maybe some app is causing the problem, but is not being reported as using too much battery.
Some folks say that the different firmwares have different battery usage. Has yours updated?

neezy13 said:
If I'm reading correctly, you are losing about 60% in 5 hours? If so, that is definitely excessive even during the first 2 or 3 days unless the screen was on and the phone active the entire time. Can you post screen shots of you battery stats? Maybe some app is causing the problem, but is not being reported as using too much battery.
Some folks say that the different firmwares have different battery usage. Has yours updated?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok someone told me to turn it off and charge to 100% so i dont have enough data now. but im doing a test now with pokemon go lol
the screen is on about 70% brightness wifi and gps are on and radio is off (i have low cell signal now) and music app playing in the background and now after 50 minutes i am at 89% with screen on all the time. do you think this is good or bad?
i just noticed something in most of the screen shots from other people gsam shows about 3.80v near the temperature but mine show 4.07v does this makes any difference?

That sounds normal for an hour of paying Pokemon Go. It's pretty battery intensive. That voltage is just the current battery charge. It'll drop as your battery percent drops.
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