[Q] Terrible battery life with screen on - Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

My GT-I9505 has always had a very poor battery life. However, thanks to Greenify and Amplify I managed to reduce the battery drain during deep sleep almost entirely. However, I noticed huge battery drain when the screen is on, it takes half of the battery and just for less than 2 hours of screen on! The brightness is set to minimum, I use Slimkat's Dark UI which it should help the AMOLED screen, but these battery drops keeps staying (even with other ROMs i have the same battery drain)... A friend of mine has got a Galaxy S5 and its battery is absolutely brilliant, screen takes only 20% in the battery stats and he uses it far more than me... Is this a normal attitude on the S4?

mIRChele said:
My GT-I9505 has always had a very poor battery life. However, thanks to Greenify and Amplify I managed to reduce the battery drain during deep sleep almost entirely. However, I noticed huge battery drain when the screen is on, it takes half of the battery and just for less than 2 hours of screen on! The brightness is set to minimum, I use Slimkat's Dark UI which it should help the AMOLED screen, but these battery drops keeps staying (even with other ROMs i have the same battery drain)... A friend of mine has got a Galaxy S5 and its battery is absolutely brilliant, screen takes only 20% in the battery stats and he uses it far more than me... Is this a normal attitude on the S4?
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The S5 does have a bigger battery (bigger in terms of mAh). It also depends on the age of the battery. If the phone is new (therefor has a new battery) it obviously lasts longer. It also depends on what you are doing when the screen is on. Do you play games or what?
I usually read on my S4 and it does not drain so much as to go from 100% to 50% in 2 hours. But I'm running lollipop. I've never had any other rom beside original firmware and lollipop gpe.
Check your settings and governor.

mIRChele said:
My GT-I9505 has always had a very poor battery life. However, thanks to Greenify and Amplify I managed to reduce the battery drain during deep sleep almost entirely. However, I noticed huge battery drain when the screen is on, it takes half of the battery and just for less than 2 hours of screen on! The brightness is set to minimum, I use Slimkat's Dark UI which it should help the AMOLED screen, but these battery drops keeps staying (even with other ROMs i have the same battery drain)... A friend of mine has got a Galaxy S5 and its battery is absolutely brilliant, screen takes only 20% in the battery stats and he uses it far more than me... Is this a normal attitude on the S4?
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Click to collapse
Hi mate
Use an app like BBS let it run when the screen is on to really see what is keeping the phone awake
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

Related

Battery Display always at 45%.....

Whenever I check my battery status, my display is always at 45%. Is this normal? I still get good battery life, I think. For example, I been unplugged for 6h and 18m and I'm just at 70% battery remaining.
I don't know what to tell you; if you aren't doing a lot of CPU intensive tasks, the battery should bbe good for hours.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA Premium App
plmiller0905 said:
Whenever I check my battery status, my display is always at 45%. Is this normal? I still get good battery life, I think. For example, I been unplugged for 6h and 18m and I'm just at 70% battery remaining.
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that's kinda strange, not cuz you are always stuck but because you are showing 45%. I thought the atrix only measures by 10s.
NguyenHuu said:
that's kinda strange, not cuz you are always stuck but because you are showing 45%. I thought the atrix only measures by 10s.
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Click to collapse
That is exactly what I was thinking. I've never seen anything but increments of 10%.
No....I'm not talking about my battery percentage, I'm talking about my display percentage. Its always the higher of the four...wifi, phone idle and cell standby is always low, like in the single digits low. But the display is always high. Like for example I woke up this morning, checked what was consuming battery and the display was at 65%. If the phone was sleep for the past 4-5 hours thus the display not being on, the display shouldn't be consuming that much battery, so I thought.
I still get great battery life. Im just wondering if anyone else display is also consuming a lot battery and what could be causing it.
A-A-A-Atrix!
plmiller0905 said:
No....I'm not talking about my battery percentage, I'm talking about my display percentage. Its always the higher of the four...wifi, phone idle and cell standby is always low, like in the single digits low. But the display is always high. Like for example I woke up this morning, checked what was consuming battery and the display was at 65%. If the phone was sleep for the past 4-5 hours thus the display not being on, the display shouldn't be consuming that much battery, so I thought.
I still get great battery life. Im just wondering if anyone else display is also consuming a lot battery and what could be causing it.
A-A-A-Atrix!
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Click to collapse
Ahhh, ok. I get what you mean now. This is normal for most Android phones with large (4" or bigger), bright screens. As long as you are getting good battery life you are fine. I'm assuming you keep your brightness set to automatic?
plmiller0905 said:
No....I'm not talking about my battery percentage, I'm talking about my display percentage. Its always the higher of the four...wifi, phone idle and cell standby is always low, like in the single digits low. But the display is always high. Like for example I woke up this morning, checked what was consuming battery and the display was at 65%. If the phone was sleep for the past 4-5 hours thus the display not being on, the display shouldn't be consuming that much battery, so I thought.
I still get great battery life. Im just wondering if anyone else display is also consuming a lot battery and what could be causing it.
A-A-A-Atrix!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Considering you are getting good battery life and your display has that high of a percentage after "sleeping" that long is a good thing. That just means the other processes are running efficiently. You should always expect the Display to take up at least 60% of your battery, especially after a full cycle. What really matters is actual runtime.
tekonus said:
Ahhh, ok. I get what you mean now. This is normal for most Android phones with large (4" or bigger), bright screens. As long as you are getting good battery life you are fine. I'm assuming you keep your brightness set to automatic?
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Yup..brightness is set to automatic
live4nyy said:
Considering you are getting good battery life and your display has that high of a percentage after "sleeping" that long is a good thing. That just means the other processes are running efficiently. You should always expect the Display to take up at least 60% of your battery, especially after a full cycle. What really matters is actual runtime.
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Ok...thanks. I was just wondering.

Very high screen-on battery drain?

I'm using AOKP (4.1.2) and I really love the rom itself, but I got the feeling that my battery is drained more when screen is on than usual.
With screen off I get good battery life - like 0.5 - 1% battery loss per hour with the standard samsung battery.
But when I surf over wifi for like 15 minutes the battery is drained like 10%. (I always use lowest brightness setting)
I know that the screen really eats through the battery, but this still seems rather high, doesn't it?
zroice said:
I'm using AOKP (4.1.2) and I really love the rom itself, but I got the feeling that my battery is drained more when screen is on than usual.
With screen off I get good battery life - like 0.5 - 1% battery loss per hour with the standard samsung battery.
But when I surf over wifi for like 15 minutes the battery is drained like 10%. (I always use lowest brightness setting)
I know that the screen really eats through the battery, but this still seems rather high, doesn't it?
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Same here
I am on stock german xxlsz and i have same problem
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=31352080
Also you should post in Q&A not general
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy SIV using Tapatalk 3
Welcome to Jelly Bean. :highfive:
That could be it - so far all jellybean roms I tested seemed to drain more power with screen on than ics or gb ever did.
And my problem is not related to no deep sleep or something keeping cpu alive - when screen is off everything feels normal.
I have reverted to rocket rom v12 cause that... JB is nice but this battery leak is not acceptable for me. Rr v12 is best solution definitelly.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda app-developers app
What I found out so far: auto-rotate on is a battery drainer - with it on system_server constantly stays at like 5-10% cpu usage, android.system.ui also uses more CPU % with auto-rotate on, CONSTANTLY.
I've read this is due to a too short polling interval for the location sensors, if someone knows how to change that please let me know, but I'm also trying myself.
Use BetterBatteryStats, my friend, to check if there's a wakelock with some app.
battery drain
i am watching this thread, because i also encountered battery drain on JB. thought battery is gone. hence bought a new one. slightly better but still drains a lot. i think the battery drain is because of smart stay. smart stay uses front camera to decide whether you are looking at screen. so when screen is on, front camera is also on and hence the double drain. at least for last four hours, battery drain is in check, after i turned off smart stay. hope this is right and help all of you.
I have the same issue.. Infact I believe this damaged my Battery.. it was working fine until I was on Stock ICS. After I flashed JB LSZ, I noticed heavy battery drain as well as wierd battery status indications..
Just today I noticed that the battery is slightly bulged..
it might just be the wrong time, or something with the ROM..
my phone is just 15 months old now.
Well to be honest my battery life is "ok" - I do get like 1-2 days depending on usage. As I already said, when the phone is in standby mode it drains very few power like it should. (I do have flight mode on almost all the time too, because I don't use it as a phone, just for data when I need it)
But I got this feeling that the battery drains alot faster than I was used to on screen on time since I'm on jellybean. The thing is, that I've checked almost anything, with BetterBatterystats, BatteryMonitor Widget and Powertutor.
The drainers when screen is on are #1 the Screen and #2 Android-System using the CPU. I've already deactivated auto-rotate and the media-scanner, this helped a bit. The only process that's really showing up in System Load is "android.system.ui" at like 2-5% CPU.
Is this jellybean-wide or could this be due to the additional AOKP tweaks?
How can I break it further down to find what really causes the load? (beside Screen taking more energy on JB which would make no sense from a physical viewpoint, the cpu-usage of android.system.ui can only be the other cause of the battery drain right?)

[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?
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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

Screen battery drain

I'm curious if anyone else is having an insane battery drain just from Using the screen. this is my first Android device after switching from an iPhone so I'm not sure if it's normal but with auto brightness I still get 60-80 percent battery drain. I have a Us AT&T version of the S4.
Having a 5 inch 1080p screen will be the biggest battery drainer on the phone currently im getting 3-4 hour screen on time which imo is amazing
krump2buck said:
I'm curious if anyone else is having an insane battery drain just from Using the screen. this is my first Android device after switching from an iPhone so I'm not sure if it's normal but with auto brightness I still get 60-80 percent battery drain. I have a Us AT&T version of the S4.
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Click to collapse
If you're looking in the battery stats then yes, the screen always consumes the most battery out of everything.
Its when an app consumes more battery then your screen you've got some problems.
Its really not insane battery drain, its normal if your screen is on all the time. think of a laptop that s not plugged in it will go for days or hours sitting closed with the screen off but still on but with the screen on it draws a lot of power and your battery life soon goes down to 4 hours.
The percentage it is telling you is also misinterpreted. Its not telling you that 60%-80% of your battery is consumed by the screen
Basically if your battery is at 80% and its saying 80% of the battery is used by the screen its telling you that so far out of the 20% currently used of the battery 80% was by the screen and 2% by facebook and 6% by browser ect.
krump2buck said:
I'm curious if anyone else is having an insane battery drain just from Using the screen. this is my first Android device after switching from an iPhone so I'm not sure if it's normal but with auto brightness I still get 60-80 percent battery drain. I have a Us AT&T version of the S4.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Screens have always been the biggest drain on a mobile device (laptops included). If you want to minimize this (even though it is absolutely normal) you can try going to the Power Saver settings and enabling the "use low power Screen" or something along those lines. I've set that on mine, noticed a bit of a life increase, haven't seen any difference in the screen... so seems like a win-win situation.

Fast battery drain when screen is on

Hi,
I have an LG G2 (for more than 18 months) which I really like (and still can't find a compact 5-5.2" smartphone to replace it with) but it seems that lately the battery drains quite fast when having the screen on.
Brightness is set at Auto + 50%, as always. The drain seems to be around 1% per 2 minutes. Screen is reported to consume about 50% of the battery. I don't think it would last more than 1.5-2 hours untill the battery drains completely. I noticed others getting like 4-6 hours of screen time.
I performed a factory reset and things look better overall but as soon as I use the screen the accelerated battery drain starts. I am using the 30b lollipop update, phone is 100% stock, no root.
Is this considered normal ? Should I attempt to replace the battery ? Is 18 month too much for it ?
Thanks !
Turn off the wifi when you are not using it. Whenever my wifi is on and connected my battery drains like crazy.
And i am rooted with exposed and power nap.
After i turn off my wifi my battery isnt draining at all.
Cheers
gocegi said:
Turn off the wifi when you are not using it. Whenever my wifi is on and connected my battery drains like crazy.
And i am rooted with exposed and power nap.
After i turn off my wifi my battery isnt draining at all.
Cheers
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Click to collapse
Thanks, but I always thought that Wi-Fi is much less battery intensive compared to the GSM data connection...strange.
Yeah it supposed to be like that, but our driver for wifi on lollipop is garbage
I'd recommend replacing the battery as well.
A healthy battery should produce the results you see others enjoy.
How is your performance with kit Kat and jelly bean?

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