Samsung Galaxy s3 battery sucks

bealtine

Just got one of these and I'm really disappointed in the battery performance...

It takes longer to charge it up than it lasts on battery.

Takes 5 hours to charge and it lasts about 5/6 hours on battery, just means I'm tied to my charging station, this is supposed to be a mobile phone but I can barely go anywhere because it'll be flat in no time.

I had a wildfire before this and it lasted for nearly two days after flashing with cynanogenmod 7

PogMoThoin

You new to Android? There is a learning curve as to how to manage things, what eats battery etc. The screen is the biggest killer, set the brightness to as low as you can bare and get a power control widget that has brightness adjustment and turn it up only when you need it. Avoid widgets that continually update, these eat battery. Turn off wifi when you're out and about, it's probing every few seconds.

You need to get a custom rom on there, I can easily get 2 days without the Samsung crap.

PogMoThoin

Also, you do realise it takes a few cycles for the battery to get to full capacity?

bealtine

PogMoThoin wrote: »

You new to Android? There is a learning curve as to how to manage things, what eats battery etc. The screen is the biggest killer, set the brightness to as low as you can bare and get a power control widget that has brightness adjustment and turn it up only when you need it. Avoid widgets that continually update, these eat battery. Turn off wifi when you're out and about, it's probing every few seconds.

You need to get a custom rom on there, I can easily get 2 days without the Samsung crap.

Not new to Android as such I've had a Wildfire before...which I flashed

Turned off everything I could see, brightness to 10% or so, uninstalled all the widgets. With CM7 there's an option to turn on wifi when screen is on

That's what I feared all those crappy Samsung services seem to eat up battery.

What's a good custom ROM as cyanogenmod doesn't seem to be official as yet and what about the flash counter? Does triangleaway work ok?

bealtine

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Also, you do realise it takes a few cycles for the battery to get to full capacity?

Discharge fully and charge fully cycles?

smcelhinney

Mine's fine? Lasts up to a day and a half if used prudently (wifi and data off when not in use, auto brightness, etc)..

zarquon

You need to charge via the wall socket adapter. You'll only get 500ma from a usb connection to your PC meaning the larger 2100mah battery will take approx. 4 hours to charge. The 1amp wall charger will mean a charge time of 2 hours. Battery is great for me, so make sure you are not running too much bloatware in the background or some battery draining app. This phone has the best battery i've ever had on a phone. Gets 2 days heavy usage on a charge.

I recommend you use Omega Rom with the bloatware removed.

PogMoThoin

bealtine wrote: »

Discharge fully and charge fully cycles?

Yes, it takes a few cycles. Batteries ship half full and improve over the first few full cycles.

I custom Rom'd mine within a few days

There are a few options for Roms, there's CheckRom which is the Samsung ICS firmware with all the Samsung crap removed (what's needed can be re-installed with the kitchen app). It still has Samsung Touchwiz, but runs much better than stock. It's what I'd recommend until some of the kinks have been ironed out of JellyBean. Triangle away works with it.

There are a few versions of JellyBean available but it's early days. I'm running Supernexus JB AOSP myself, it's based on vanilla JB from the Galaxy Nexus. It's what I like, but all JB Roms have a nasty memory leak that requires me to reboot once a day. The official Samsung JB only leaked yesterday but I'm not wanting Touchwiz.

MaceFace

Errh, before looking for custom ROMs, maybe have a look at what is consuming your battery (assuming you can get by the Cell Standby reporting bug prevelant on many SG3s).

You should be getting at least 24 hours out of it unless you have it on all the time and then probably with GPS.
Something is sucking you battery that does not sound right. Figure that out first.

bealtine

I'll try charging/discharging it a few times and see how it goes..

It's pretty stock, gapps and samsung apps but something is chewing through the battery. I tend to suspect all the crud that samsung install

MarkR

Have you checked to see is gps on?

You can get an app called llama that you can use to tell your phone to automatically do certain things, depending on where you are. For example, at home you can tell it to turn on wifi, turn off data, disable bluetooth or whatever. Works by knowing what signal tower you are connected to. Handy way to set up what's working at any time.

bealtine

MarkR wrote: »

Have you checked to see is gps on?

You can get an app called llama that you can use to tell your phone to automatically do certain things, depending on where you are. For example, at home you can tell it to turn on wifi, turn off data, disable bluetooth or whatever. Works by knowing what signal tower you are connected to. Handy way to set up what's working at any time.

GPS is off ,bluetooth is off but wifi is on ( I miss cm7:) )
I downloaded llama earlier still working through it

PogMoThoin

The phone is much better when you get a ROM without all the Samsung crap, S-Voice, Allshare and others are running all the time in the background, stop them and they start right away again.

I never disable GPS btw, Wifi and BT yes, but never GPS

dlm

bealtine wrote: »

What's a good custom ROM as cyanogenmod doesn't seem to be official as yet and what about the flash counter? Does triangleaway work ok?

Just fyi, CM is officially supporting your phone. They released a stable CM9 on the 10th of this month

http://get.cm/?device=i9300

Erper

PogMoThoin wrote: »

You new to Android? There is a learning curve as to how to manage things, what eats battery etc. The screen is the biggest killer, set the brightness to as low as you can bare and get a power control widget that has brightness adjustment and turn it up only when you need it. Avoid widgets that continually update, these eat battery. Turn off wifi when you're out and about, it's probing every few seconds.

You need to get a custom rom on there, I can easily get 2 days without the Samsung crap.

as ive noticed wifi does eat battery alot..
i had a small test with sgs2 and sgs3 battery..
ive charged them fully and turned on wifi...
in the morning...
sgs2 was on 70% and sgs3 was on 80%...

also what ive noticed is that when you are using network internet that your battery actually drain slower than in wifi...

for example...
i went to work with network data on and battery fully charged...
after 2h it only droped for 5%

as for screen, it is true, it does eat battery alot but i dont care as i have to charge battery every night...

and one more idea for you guys
vodafone is selling a small packet (forgot the price but i think guy said €29) that contains 2 rubber covers + 1 flip one + small stand and cable for charging the EXTRA BATTERY you get...

so its not bad deal if you decide to go for it...

Jarren

Well , you can always check battery stats.

PogMoThoin

Erper wrote: »

also what ive noticed is that when you are using network internet that your battery actually drain slower than in wifi...

This is only true if you have a good signal or are staying connected to the same mast. Out and about hopping from mast to mast and from 2G to 3G will eat a battery very quickly.