[Q] S3 Battery drain - Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hello! I bet you have seen this a heap of times. Well guess what, so have I. Alas, nothing has been found - I checked Android Central, the T-Mobile and AT&T websites and all sorts of other techy places but to no avail. So here I am, scavenging information, doing stuff to my phone - I am finally to the end point - writing a post myself.
So, heres my problem: awful battery and when I charge while using the phone, the battery goes DOWN!
Lets start with this
What I have done:
Factory reset
Cleared cache
Deleted every program (app)
Airplane mode
No sim card
Downgrade to 4.1.2
Rooted and calibrated battery
Full discharge to full charge
Now please check the eye candy down below in the attachments..
So.. What else?! It isn't a hardware problem because when it is turned off and charging, it seems to be fine.
Some system specs:
Galaxy S3
International
OmniRom 4.4 (btw, this ALSO has drain, I install hoping it wouldn't)

Wrong section just post in q& a section...
Install BBS and see what's eating your battery..
Sent from my GT-I9300

Go into Google Settings and Turn Location Reporting Off. If you want a more agressive power saving go into WiFi settings and turn Always Scanning Off.

Clean
I had this problem of the phone discharging while charging (no pun intended) and the only solution I found was to clean the phone's USB charging port with an Contacts cleaner Spray (the one that has a "pipe/tube", let it dry out and clean the usb plug likewise. That solved my problem. But mind you: my problem was phone discharging while charging

Gold_Diesel said:
Go into Google Settings and Turn Location Reporting Off. If you want a more agressive power saving go into WiFi settings and turn Always Scanning Off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info. I did both, yet, noticing a little less awaking, it still drains when charging and rather abnormally when not and just using it. The only thing waking my phone up now seems to be Google Search? (in wake lock detector) Cant anyone explain that?

Install an app disable services and disable Google services which are active in background... But disable then one by one as it may affect your play store functionality...
Sent from my GT-I9300

kunal1540 said:
Install an app disable services and disable Google services which are active in background... But disable then one by one as it may affect your play store functionality...
Sent from my GT-I9300
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
using wake lock detector I noticed the apps name (google search) was com.google.android.googlequicksearch... but, using a service disabling app, I couldn't find that name under the system app ''google search'' tab?
*EDIT: I tracked all the wakelocks (ALL of them) and they lead to location services! Simply turning it off gives me no more wake locks. Not a permanent solution as I am completely unsatisfied, but a temporary one nonetheless. Going to keep monitoring battery as it seems to be fine, but I haven't nailed down the discharg while charging problem yet...

Related

Sudden Battery Drainage

I understand all these battery drain issues that the prime has been having but haven't actually had them, until now. I used to lose about 2-3% overnight but suddenly I am losing around 15% because it won't sleep. I go into the battery setting and it shows it been awake the whole time. Now I am sure if I looked around I may find a fix but it just seems a bit odd that it has just suddenly occurred. And its not a wifi drainage issue as I usually put it to sleep at power saving mode and wifi off. Just asking why?
Thanks,
I think it could be the Asus weather widget which I had set at 1 hour refresh rate.
if this just recently occured out the blue, likely a rougue app or something you recently installed. an app running in background or sync is likely the culprit.
Just put Skype on it but that's not signed in most of the time
every android tablet and phone i have does this occasionally, and those occasions are when i either play video or music. some of these media players employ a wakelock that will not disable after you put your device to sleep. sometimes a reboot will work, sometimes not. most of the times the reboot keeps it from draining. even force quitting all my media apps wouldn't work.
so basically i reboot every time i use any type media player so i don't get the drain - netflix doesn't require it, dice and just about every music player does. i'm not sure it this may be your problem, but it may be a possible solution.
I find that making sure to check the last two settings under Asus Customized Settings helps this. I was waking up in the morning to find my dock dead everyday before I checked those two settings. The only down side is when I turn the screen on and wake it up, it takes about 5-10 seconds to connect to the wifi. No biggie.
Use better battery stats and see what is causing it. I have read that skype does drain battery pretty bad. And even if you're not connected it still runs in the background at start up. Another app I would recommend is Autostarts. It allows you to disable apps at start up. I know system tuner is free and has the same functionality but I find Autostarts better. With ST, you just disable the app at start up, with Autostarts you can disable it at start up, shutdown(which some apps fire when the tab is being shut down and other system events), also other events. Like some apps fire up when you get a text, or when your connection changes etc.. I just think Autostarts has more options.
Also dev Entropy has a thread in the GS2 forums about know battery drainers. Some of it applies specifically to the GS2 but there are a bunch of general battery killers listed
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1308030
If you go to setting and battery it should show you which is using the most battery. The first one on top. If its android system, you can click on it and it will show you a list of whats been using your battery which may point you to the culprit. In my case, media was the only thing in the list. And I know if an SDcard is inside my dock it will drain battery. So after removing it the drainage went away. Havent had the drain issue since. Again yours might be different so check the battery usage.
Thanks for the feedback guys, the first thing i am gonna do is charge it up after it fell flat right up to 100% then try some suggestions. I am thinking a reboot could help it.

Help wanted Battery drain identification

Hello to all and thanks for your time.
First of all i did search about such a thread and could not find any which seemed to help including the stickies.
My problem is something on my room is misbehaving and chews trough the battery like hell.i need help identifying it.
To id my system :I'm on 9100xxlpw stock rooted no additional battery managers.
to describe the problem. I charged the phone to 100% and 5 hours later it was 50%.(i was sleeping so they're was no usage)
CPU spy reports 30 min of deep sleep rest 200mghz.
I'll add battery stats later.but basically Android system is chewing the batt. System appears to sleep but doesn't go deep sleep
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA
Install BetterBatteryStats. That should give you some clues as to what's causing the drain.
MistahBungle said:
Install BetterBatteryStats. That should give you some clues as to what's causing the drain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Added Screen shots, please ignore media player and usb. I took screen shots as soon as I notice strange stuff but somehow system showed the screen shots duplicated so I deleted duplicates. Later I noticed I deleted the originals (most probably there was one c to begin with but gallery showed me duplicates, which is strange ).
New ones are taken after apprx. 1 hour of XDA browsing & listening to music.
emk2z said:
Added Screen shots, please ignore media player and usb. I took screen shots as soon as I notice strange stuff but somehow system showed the screen shots duplicated so I deleted duplicates. Later I noticed I deleted the originals (most probably there was one c to begin with but gallery showed me duplicates, which is strange ).
New ones are taken after apprx. 1 hour of XDA browsing & listening to music.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
open BBS app then press soft menu key ones then select more and in that press Dump to file
then u see the log file in ur internal sdcard, post the same so that it can be checked to determine the wakelocks causing batt drain
Sun90 said:
open BBS app then press soft menu key ones then select more and in that press Dump to file
then u see the log file in ur internal sdcard, post the same so that it can be checked to determine the wakelocks causing batt drain
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gladly....
I think I have a possible culprit while searching for suspend_backoff
I found this http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1697899 the phone model is different but I decided to turn wifi off to test and my battery consumption is almost like flat line when I'm not using the phone now (Data & synch is still enabled ). I do not know what causes this but I am not trough yet. I'd appreciate anyone to ID the source of the problem and how to overcome it (other than keeping wifi off) or should I switch to another rom
I have the same problem as you, but I think it is related to the (known and not yet solved) problem of the "dirty WiFi network", as it happens only with my office WiFi and not with my home one...
However in my case the problem is intermittent, while I always have the same high drain under the office WiFi, the major source of drainage changes, sometimes is suspend_backoff, other times it's deleted_wake_locks...
The_Flatline said:
I have the same problem as you, but I think it is related to the (known and not yet solved) problem of the "dirty WiFi network", as it happens only with my office WiFi and not with my home one...
However in my case the problem is intermittent, while I always have the same high drain under the office WiFi, the major source of drainage changes, sometimes is suspend_backoff, other times it's deleted_wake_locks...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also had a feeling it might be wifi. I'm not sure what you mean by dirty wifi but. My home network seems to be suffering from dns problems. Also when I go to work one of my customers has a proxy while other has a unprotected wifi with web login. in both cases phone is able to connect to wifi but not to internet.
I also considered this might create some drain but it is too severe. I even thought my phone battery to be dead.

Problem with S3 Battery

When i fall asleep i just place my phone nearby the bed and its on airplane mode,wifi closed,data closed and generally no apps running(i think so).The battery is level (ex)50% and when i wake up,about 7 hours later its always about 15-20%.why this happen?
I checked the battery manager just after i waked up and the first was screen(56%) and after that adobe reader(10%)
Start with Better Battery Stats and read the ten million battery posts on XDA .
jje
chaos748 said:
When i fall asleep i just place my phone nearby the bed and its on airplane mode,wifi closed,data closed and generally no apps running(i think so).The battery is level (ex)50% and when i wake up,about 7 hours later its always about 15-20%.why this happen?
I checked the battery manager just after i waked up and the first was screen(56%) and after that adobe reader(10%)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine drops about 1.5% every hour whenever it's on standby.
JJEgan said:
Start with Better Battery Stats and read the ten million battery posts on XDA .
jje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Better battery stats does not work.dont know why.and i made my own post cause i cannot find the solution of the problem on other posts.try to be more polite to your answers
have you tried downloading the xda version of the better battery stats? if not here it is
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809
Is your phone rooted? Like others said, try to install the xda-forum version of BBS but it's weird because I did install the one from GPlay.
One of the first lead is the WiFi? Is it always turned on? There's a bug with it. Go into the advanced WiFi settings and set it to 'only if activated' (I don't know the exact spell in English but it's something like that).
But you better have to dl BBS & check the wakelocks.
Sent from my Galaxy S3 with Omega ROM v27.2 / Phenomenal Extreme 4.0 kernel
which rom are you using?
that should be solved flashing another kernel, try it.
dont use a rom...my phone is just rooted
Deleted.
JJEgan said:
Deleted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what?
Underclock when you're not using your phone.
That will save battery.
If ur using stock TW. Put on power saving mode
PM Me if u want to know more.
Try using an app called easy battery saver and only use the cable and plug that came with your galaxy s3 it works for me, today I had eight hours after charge and using internet with 3g nearly continuously.
You would get much more by leaving it on standby.
Also restrict your background data, turn off your automatic updates at play store andturn off WiFi while screen is asleep.
Follow all these for better battery.
Use any battery investigation apk/widget (I'd recommend battery monitor widget) and look what is causing the drain...
may I guess: cell standby or gpsd?
guys i remember you that the cell phone is on flight mode with wifi,gps and data turned off
and, if you have a soft which contains a bug - you'll have such processes running.
It is up to you to install any apk which will contain more detailed statistics what actually is consuming so much juice.
If you do not want - no one would force you.
chaos748 said:
When i fall asleep i just place my phone nearby the bed and its on airplane mode,wifi closed,data closed and generally no apps running(i think so).The battery is level (ex)50% and when i wake up,about 7 hours later its always about 15-20%.why this happen?
I checked the battery manager just after i waked up and the first was screen(56%) and after that adobe reader(10%)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the exactly same problem,30% drain overnight.That happens after updating to 4.1.1 JellyBean.With ICS never happened.
Go into the battery page, click on the graph and then post a screenshot of the detailed graph here. It is usually an app or process not letting the phone go into standby. Happened to me when I had my phone on ICS out of the box. I fixed that all up through the individual app settings and all was sweet. Then when I went from ICS to JB, the issue came up again and I had to go through the apps again to change the settings back. It seems that by updating from ICS to JB, certain settings get set back to default, which then does not allow the phone to go into standby.
Culprits that I have found are:
Facebook - set to manual refresh interval
Weather (or any weather widget) - manual refresh interval
Google play store - Turn off Google AdMob Ads
Any form of newsreader (I was using Pulse) - Turn off notification when there are new stories
Wifi advanced settings - Set Keep Wifi on during sleep to "Always"
Samsung account - Turn off sync
Samsung app store - Turn off Update Notification, turn off push notification, turn off ad preferences.
chaos748 said:
When i fall asleep i just place my phone nearby the bed and its on airplane mode,wifi closed,data closed and generally no apps running(i think so).The battery is level (ex)50% and when i wake up,about 7 hours later its always about 15-20%.why this happen?
I checked the battery manager just after i waked up and the first was screen(56%) and after that adobe reader(10%)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe some apps running in background if you are using *viber* delete it
It makes proximity sensor always on.
Try delete apps like that
Thanks
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app
Guys please keep in mind that keeping the stock os without any custom kernel might be not as effective than using an adequate custom rom...
In addition remember, cooler temperatures cause ur battery to lose its charge faster...
So if ur phone is placed on the window shelf and its getting cold during the night it might cause ur battery to drop fast..
I made this observation with my sgs plus....
Hope i helped.

Help with disabling all functions of phone to reduce sleep drain.

My Sprint G2 is used as a media player to mirror to an Appradio 3 head unit in the car using a slimport cable that allows charging and hdmi passthrough. I have stock rom using Dorimanx kernel. Froze and uninstalled a lot of apps. Uninstalled messaging and phone since it has a bad esn and no need for it. Used Disable Service to disable some Play services that were always running like Google analytics service, Nlplocation, Location is off, Google Now is off, etc.
Things I need while on are Google Play, Soundcloud, Spotify, BT, WIFI, Play Store, Search, Tasker, Arunchained, Yav1 (allows mock locations with head unit gps), Torque, Chrome, HD Widgets, Waze, Facebook, Twitter. Everything else is non-essential. I use Tasker to automate the shutdown of all apps and wifi, I have airplane mode on and when i'm not connected to the cable and go to bed and wake up, I have 100%.
The issue i'm having is when I leave the phone plugged into charge cable overnight even though it's not charging with all essential apps not running, after 10 hours I get in the car to go to work with 35% battery left. I have 45% after an 8 hr. work day.
Any ideas what rogue process is causing this that I've missed?
I do have auto sync off, but phone backup is on. I'm thinking it has to do with the cable being plugged. I can't disable anything related to the functionality of the Appradio Unchained Reloaded app that allows mirroring through the cable though. Tasker is set to open the app upon charging detection when I turn on the car so the app will initialize the mirroring to the head unit.
Can anyone help with any idea of other services or apps I can disable?
EMINENT1 said:
The issue i'm having is when I leave the phone plugged into charge cable overnight even though it's not charging with all essential apps not running, after 10 hours I get in the car to go to work with 35% battery left. I have 45% after an 8 hr. work day.
Any ideas what rogue process is causing this that I've missed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why would the phone not charge overnight? Is that your Q?
How do u goto work with 35% and after 8 hours end with 45%¿
I'm missing something here...
Do u have ur phone charging at work? Or do u remove phone from charger before going to work, have it charge in car?
This is confusing
Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk
How can we possibly guess? Use Better Battery Stats, look at the built-in battery statistics, maybe GSam, etc...
mazroui said:
Why would the phone not charge overnight? Is that your Q?
How do u goto work with 35% and after 8 hours end with 45%¿
I'm missing something here...
Do u have ur phone charging at work? Or do u remove phone from charger before going to work, have it charge in car?
This is confusing
Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't need the phone to charge overnight. I need it to not drain while still connected to the cable when it's not charging.
The phone is connected in the glove box via slimport hdmi/charge cable to my head unit. Turning on the car starts the charging on the phone. Turning off the car stops the charging, but it's still connected. This is when it drains. I need to find what's causing the drain during deep sleep. I already have Tasker automate shutdown of all running apps after charging is off. Battery battery stats doesn't give me much. I get some wakeups under the alarms and com.location.sparkle., but don't know what to disable to prevent them. I've disable phone and alarms, location services, everything above.
EMINENT1 said:
The phone is connected in the glove box via slimport hdmi/charge cable to my head unit. Turning on the car starts the charging on the phone. Turning off the car stops the charging, but it's still connected. This is when it drains. I need to find what's causing the drain during deep sleep. I already have Tasker automate shutdown of all running apps after charging is off. Battery battery stats doesn't give me much. I get some wakeups under the alarms and com.location.sparkle., but don't know what to disable to prevent them. I've disable phone and alarms, location services, everything above.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK now I get it...
Well do u think its that big of a deal if that's how u use it?
For now ur handling it all pretty well, r u sure your head unit isn't requesting location when its all off?
What car do u drive? Jap/American? does your head unit go completely off when the car is off? Is sparkle a GPS app on the phone or the head unit? Can u have tasker restart the phone and not start any apps after the phone stops charging? Probably a rouge app not stopped properly is what I'm thinking..
Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk
mazroui said:
OK now I get it...
Well do u think its that big of a deal if that's how u use it?
For now ur handling it all pretty well, r u sure your head unit isn't requesting location when its all off?
What car do u drive? Jap/American? does your head unit go completely off when the car is off? Is sparkle a GPS app on the phone or the head unit? Can u have tasker restart the phone and not start any apps after the phone stops charging? Probably a rouge app not stopped properly is what I'm thinking..
Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The car is an 06 Corvette. The head unit shuts off completely.
I did a search for Spark or sparkle and it's something with Sprint and location services. The only apps that use location are Waze, search and Yav1 but they all allow mock locations using the GPS on the head unit. So location is off on the phone. With those shut down and the head unit off. I didn't think they'd have a way to run in the background. Location service is still in the list of apps though twice in Titanium Backup. I don't know if that should be disabled or if they're needed when the phone is on to use search and stuff.
Location service.. 2???
I'd recommend a modded stock ROM without all the sprint bloat... That way u know u don't have any bloatware to mess with..
1 of those 2 is needed for sure.. So try n freeze 1 or the other n check your GPS/location for functionality..
Nice car BTW
Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk
---------- Post added at 02:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:04 AM ----------
EMINENT1 said:
The car is an 06 Corvette. The head unit shuts off completely.
I did a search for Spark or sparkle and it's something with Sprint and location services. The only apps that use location are Waze, search and Yav1 but they all allow mock locations using the GPS on the head unit. So location is off on the phone. With those shut down and the head unit off. I didn't think they'd have a way to run in the background. Location service is still in the list of apps though twice in Titanium Backup. I don't know if that should be disabled or if they're needed when the phone is on to use search and stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
u tried clearing the other alarms wakelocks ?
mazroui said:
Location service.. 2???
I'd recommend a modded stock ROM without all the sprint bloat... That way u know u don't have any bloatware to mess with..
1 of those 2 is needed for sure.. So try n freeze 1 or the other n check your GPS/location for functionality..
Nice car BTW
Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk
---------- Post added at 02:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:04 AM ----------
u tried clearing the other alarms wakelocks ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The play store has something to help fix google play services battery drain
Try that too
not really... i tried some wakelock blocking apps that only resulted in more bad wakelocks... u need to solve the wakelocks 1 at a time... try posting a BBS on the xda thread... people there r pretty friendly and will help u find answers to nasty/known wakelocks
might wanna try the nlp unbounce or is it called tamer now for location... search xda for it (its an exposed framework module)
mazroui said:
not really... i tried some wakelock blocking apps that only resulted in more bad wakelocks... u need to solve the wakelocks 1 at a time... try posting a BBS on the xda thread... people there r pretty friendly and will help u find answers to nasty/known wakelocks
might wanna try the nlp unbounce or is it called tamer now for location... search xda for it (its an exposed framework module)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried Lion Tamer/Unbounce and it only gives so much info for certain things that are same. Most things have no description so I don't know what i'm taming or how they might affect the system.
EMINENT1 said:
I tried Lion Tamer/Unbounce and it only gives so much info for certain things that are same. Most things have no description so I don't know what i'm taming or how they might affect the system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well my friend this is where u do your part of looking at high wakelock causes and googling about them...
Even if it's not safe to tame them it's not like u can't un~tame them ? So no harm done... Experiment with them n good luck with your findings
Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk

Device is always awake and WiFi is always on

Hi,
I'm having battery issues with OPX again, first it was a faulty battery, but now it looks like the there's something wrong with the settings. The device loses about a third of it's battery overnight, but when I look at the stats I can see that WiFi is always on and the device is always awake!
I have installed naptime as well and told it to ignore sensors (not that it matters as the device is not moving overnight) and to sleep even if connected to a charger etc. No matter what I try the device is always awake.
Is there a way to find out what is keeping it awake?
When I look at usage since last full charge there's nothing unusual there, just regular apps and single digit percentage numbers.
Thanks for your help!
System version?
I'm on Android Marshmallow, using Resurrection Remix ROM.
I'm not quite sure how to use the wakelock blocker, but I just installed Wakelock detector and it shows TripAdvisor as #1 on the list. I have it blocked in notifications, but I can't find anything related to TripAdvisor in wakelock blocker.
Is there any way to prevent apps from keeping the system awake, or should I just unintall TripAdvisor completely?
Not sure if I'm on the right track, but something is keeping the system awake and I need to find out what
OS3 with google back up turned off I get zero drain. Maybe 2-3℅ max over night. Also turned off automatic updates playstore. With just those two things off dont see drain anymore might just be lucky.
Well I think I'm back on normal drain. I uninstalled TripAdvisor, not using it except when I'm on holidays. I disabled the option to keep WiFi on even during sleep.
I used wakeblocker to block all weather/facebook entries, and I have two gmail accounts, one which is use a lot and one which I don't - so I blocked all wakelocks from syncing the account I don't use often.
Battery history confirms device is now correctly going to sleep and turning off WiFi. Automatic updates are still on.
I probably blocked too much, but I don't care anymore, I have 30% more battery every morning and that's good enough for me
crótach said:
Hi,
I'm having battery issues with OPX again, first it was a faulty battery, but now it looks like the there's something wrong with the settings. The device loses about a third of it's battery overnight, but when I look at the stats I can see that WiFi is always on and the device is always awake!
I have installed naptime as well and told it to ignore sensors (not that it matters as the device is not moving overnight) and to sleep even if connected to a charger etc. No matter what I try the device is always awake.
Is there a way to find out what is keeping it awake?
When I look at usage since last full charge there's nothing unusual there, just regular apps and single digit percentage numbers.
Thanks for your help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which ROM and recovery do you use?

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