yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] BonesHopkins:
I just got and activated my S3 on Wednesday and am having the exact same problem. I'm also on ATT and am coming from an iphone 3GS. First day I had the S3 I barely got 8 hours out of it, most of that time in standby mode and with nothing but the stock apps installed. Yesterday I cycled the battery and drained it to completely dead to where the phone wouldn't even try to turn on. I then charged it to 100% with the phone turned off. I then unplugged it to see how much battery life it would drain on standby overnight. In about 6 hours while I was asleep it went from 100% to 93%. Then I left home and between that time and now, 7.5 hours, with minimal use which included less than 20 minutes of phone calls, downloading 3 apps, syncing email a couple of times, etc.. no games, no videos, no music, no internet browsing, nothing....

Battery is now down to 24%

Screen - 1h 42m 26%

Android OS - 10m 7%

voice calls - 17m 5%

and the rest of the stuff at about 5% or less,

basically, in 7.5 hours of doing almost nothing, with power saving mode turned on and juice defender also active, my phone has gone from 93% to 24%.

Before I got the phone I read several reviews that said the battery life on these phones was supposed to be excellent. I can't imagine that this is what would be considered excellent. My iphone, which I replaced because the battery was dying, would easily last twice as long as this and that's with heavy use including games, pandora, youtube, and internet browsing.

Aside from the short battery life I'm also experiencing horrible wifi issues. On my wifi at work it will constantly disconnect and reconnect over and over. I had my iphone sitting next to the S3 and the connection was rock solid.

I contacted samsung and ATT and they did not have any suggestions or solutions but the guy from ATT did suggest taking the phone to an ATT store and they would give me another battery to try and if that didn't work I could exchange the phone.

I hate running around exchanging stuff but I'm very disappointed with this phone so far. Half the battery life of my iphone and horrible wifi connectivity isn't what I'd expect from a phone which has been touted as being significantly better than the iphone 4S and possibly even the iphone5 when that's released.

Any suggestions? I'm really trying to love this phone but so far...meh....not so much..... I love the screen, the interface is very cool, it's lighter than my iphone, but if I can't get more than a couple of hours of very light usage and no solid wifi connectivity, I don't know.... Once I get these problems ironed out I have a couple of other total newb questions about things I need to do with it but first things first...if I can't solve these problems, this phone won't work for me. Hope you guys can help! :good:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
I'm glad (but not glad) to hear I'm not alone. It really is frustrating. I've been in the process of charging my phone which is taking a long time in and of itself (although I am connected to USB on my PC). It's been plugged in for 2 hours and gone up 24% eh.

I'll probably take it to the AT&T store and talk to them about it. If I can't get is solved I'll probably exchange it, but that exchange would have to be a guarantee that I'd either get the iPhone 5 when it comes out without having to pay full price, or perhaps the HTC One X, but I hear that isn't much better either. I have a friend who has the HTC One X (or the variant of it on Sprint) and he get's two days of battery life with some gaming even.

I do not want the 4S since IMO it's a worthless upgrade from the 4.

I'm located in the suburbs of Chicago so I have 4g LTE just about everywhere, granted my signal is a bit weak in my building... by a window.

If you come up with anything let me know and vice versa.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] BonesHopkins:
Yeah, you're definitely not alone. I've read some other posts on this and other forums of people complaining about the same thing. I have 30 days to return it so I really want to see if I can figure out how to make it work. If not, I'm going to do the same thing you're thinking of -- take it back and hopefully they'll let me go back to using my old iphone until the iphone 5 comes out, then get that one at the new contract price. Like you, I have zero interest in the iphone 4S.

I have to say, this is really frustrating and disappointing. I was expecting an "iphone killer" and instead I've wound up with a phone that with light to normal usage is pretty much dead by 3 in the afternoon. I can't work like this.

And like you've noticed, it does charge very slowly. Even through usb my iphone would charge very fast. 20 minutes in my car would give it about 15% more charge. The S3 goes up maybe 2 or 3% in the same time. I can live with this but not with the battery life or wifi problems.

btw, I'm trying another full discharge cycle tonight to see if that helps any. I really hope I can get this resolved. When I got the phone I started shopping for accessories like a car dock, screen protector/case, etc.. and was ready to order some but held off when I saw how crappy the battery life was.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] SlimJ87D:
No one has said this yet, but you are using a different version of SGS3 from us. You should go over to the ATT LTE boards and get help.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] joshnichols189:
I am also in the Chicago area :D weak signal will destroy your battery so that could have a LOT to do with it. The sprint One X also is 3G only for the time being, so it doesn't have those life-sucking "4G" issues.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] clockcycle:
Almost 2 hours of Screen On, is not bearly doing nothing. It's nearly a 5" light bulb you're leaving on.

Your signal may also not be as good as on your iphone in the same areas. But both of you seem to be on par. Yes android devices don't last as long as an iphone. There's more to do and more do on an Android than an iphone. You're also in your honeymoon stage..
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
Did some research found this link to force hspa so it disables lte or wont connect to it. Going to try that. Not sure if this disables the antenna and you'd still get the battery drain.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1338109
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] joshnichols189:
No you will not experience the battery drain if you disable LTE in this way.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] BonesHopkins:
If I'm understanding you correctly, are you saying that the ATT S3s are different than the other S3s and are expected to get less battery life? :confused:

btw, where are the ATT LTE boards you're talking about?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] joshnichols189:
Nowhere did he say less battery life.. but the AT&T S3 has a different processor, GPU, and hardware/software radios than ours. They are towards the bottom of XDA.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] BonesHopkins:
Thanks! I had no idea I was on the wrong subforum for a different build of S3. Just took a look over there and it does seem that more people there are reporting similar battery life to what I'm getting....which is not all that great.

Anyway, I'll head over there with my questions. Sorry for posting on the wrong forum but thanks for pointing me in the right direction! :good:
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] joshnichols189:
No need to be sorry ;) we try to help everyone
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] tehsprayer:
How's my battery?

4

4 hours 48 minutes of the awake being on a fair bit and mobile signal on almost all of the time WiFi not on that much good or bad?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
Bit of an update.

I've recently installed Tasker and set-up several battery saving profiles. I was able to get 2 days out of my battery (turned it off at night), with minimal user use. I'm much happier with this result. Granted listening to spotify (offline mode) and constant websurfing does hurt the battery. I'll be watching it closely today to see the results and i'll post a screenshot.

The tasker app itself would make me want to keep the phone regardless of battery life in and of itself. It is really cool and I've been running the test version and will probably buy it.

I'm hoping the next couple of days I'll get good battery life and justify making some more purchases.

Here is where I'm at for today.

It appears that this phone has an issue keeping connection to the mobile network while I'm driving? There is a large black spot for mobile connection and that is about the time when I was driving to work. (is this the normal connection for receiving calls and sms?) - If it is that sucks.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] barondebxl:
Thats what think i love about the international version, it runs as cool as a fridge.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] clockcycle:
This is a direct link to the other s3 forums; http://xdaforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1667

Have you checked to see if the AT&T version has "fast dormancy" (I think it's called) where it automatically sets it's self to slower data and bumps it up when needed?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
From what I've gotten from posts on these forums and others is that AT&T forces the user to use LTE and only drops down to HSPA+ or GSM if there is no signal. Not sure if this is what you meant. If not, would you mind elaborating? While I'm quite technological and understand quite a bit when it comes to how devices work, I'm not quite there yet when it comes to cell phone data transfer.

Thanks everyone so far.

Here are some more screen shots, these have me a bit sad.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
Hmm, looks like my images stopped showing up... perhaps I hit the bandwidth cap for google.

Basically Cell Standby time is killing my battery. About 60% of the battery is used for it just keeping signal.

I'm at 30% right now, with just over 9 hours on the batter. I've used the screen for just under 40 minutes. The device has been idle for 8.5 hours and it's been in a "deep sleep" for 8 hours. Waking up roughly once an hour to connect mobile data to download emails or mms.

Mobile, wifi, blutooth, gps are all off while the screen is off (minus turning on mobile data once an hour for emails).

I don't have the best signal (2-3 bars), but it could be a lot worse. Seems kind of weak to me. Perhaps I have a faulty phone? I think I'll have to first contact AT&T, and then maybe Samsung, but I doubt I'll have much luck.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] nodstuff:
Cell standby is reporting incorrectly.

Don't worry about it, its not using that much battery.

Its a known bug in the way the cell standby stats are reported in the battery stats.

Sent via some sort of internet thing
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
Then why would my battery be just about dead (9%) with 43 minutes of screen time? Plus, I thought the cell standby was only the international version. My battery is quite warm to touch (perhaps normal - usually have cases on my phone).
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
Today is better so far. After a full discharge it seems to be performing better. I'm at 94% and it's been there for some time. I wonder if the battery I have is faulty? Odd that it performs this much better after a full discharge then charge.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] naturefreak85:
There are many things that can factor into poor battery life. Applications, cell signal and more. In my area my phone keeps switching between LTE and HSPA. Kills my battery. It is a shame LTE can't be turned off since AT&T has not announced LTE in my area so it is poorly implemented right now but such is life.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] naturefreak85:
Could be an application you have running in the background. Not all show up in the battery stats. Install CPU spy and better battery stats. See if your phone is going into deep sleep. If it isn't you have an errant application. Better Battery stats shows more than the built in Battery Graph.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
On page 3 there are some screen shots of my better battery stats. You can see the phone has been unplugged for just under 6 hours. Deep sleep was about 5 hours 15 minutes. So 45 minutes of actual activity (checking email, me using my phone etc - nothing intensive no games maybe little web surfing). After 6 hours of basically no activity my battery was at 62%.

Today, I'm at 92% after about the same amount of time (24 minutes of screen time), I've done nothing different, except my phone did a full discharge last night (full recharge occurred while phone was off), where as the charge before that I plugged it in at some point less than 15% (phone was on during recharge).

I sleep while my phone charges so I'm definitely not taking it off when it hits 100%. Not sure if this matters or not. I would think / hope it wouldn't.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] S3owner:
I hope you guys did the initial "full discharge, full charge" cycle a few times when you first got the phone. I was instructed to do so and my batterry life seems pretty solid on this phone.

SGH-I747M
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] theraffman:
It's a bummer that you are experiencing this, when I switched from my iPhone 4, battery life was the most obvious drawback (however I always had poor battery life regardless, I use my phone constantly for business) anyways, on the s3 I get very good battery life, much better than my infuse and my 3g, 3gs and 4. I disable Google backup (that's a battery hog from my experience) and have been running power save mode when I'm doing anything besides games (which I don't play often) my average nightly battery drain is between 4 and 5. That will get better when I root and debloat. I have found that media server still sometimes go rampant but I don't know why.

Keep working at it, especially since you are coming from an iPhone... iPhone are more or less struck with how apple wants It to be and there in lies their strength and weakness. With android you are free to do everything exactly as you want it, this will create a bit of a hurdle for most people unfamiliar with android but it will all be clear soon... keep at it, keep asking questions and before you know it the, only question you'll have is why it took you so long to make the switch. This is a great phone to break the ice too, keep at it and I know you will love it.

Also, battery swapping is not a bad idea, I was against it when I made the switch but now I couldn't imagine being forced to plug my phone in for hours to charge... just charge individual batteries and swap them out as needed... there's nothing like going from 5% to 100% in less than a minute.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
That's the main reason I made the switch... openness! I always would jailbreak my iPhone and I do love the phone, just trying to figure out the battery issue. If I used my phone consistently throughout the day I'd be ok with that, but when I literally used it less than an hour and the battery was dead, it was disappointing. Perhaps my batter is faulty? I'm going to bring it in and have them take a look at it. I'll also probably get a back up battery as well.

Thanks for the encouragement.

Also, I'll definitely root the device. Is there any specific places I should look for research. I read a lot about nandroid back ups but I'm having a hard time locating a decent how to.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] J00ky:
Unlike NiCad batteries, lithium-ion batteries do not have a charge memory. That means deep-discharge cycles are not required. In fact, it’s better for the battery to use partial-discharge cycles. Additionally, you should really avoid completely discharging the battery in your phone as it will shorten its usable lifespan.

http://xdaforums.com/archive/index.php/t-1169979.html
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] BonesHopkins:
I suppose it could just be my imagination but I'm pretty sure my battery life improved after a couple of full discharge/charge cycles.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] theraffman:
It may be worth going to a suite and swapping they battery for a new one. I have heard of faulty batteries in the past.

Also, did a quick charge test, charged 12% in 20 minutes and I was on xda for a few minutes and sent some text messages. This is in my truck, cheap cable and car charger.

I have experienced the quickest charging periods on the s3 compared to any other phone I have owned.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] thatg:
try this, maybe itll stop trying to mess with the radios

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/0...how-disable-4g-lte-use-hspa-conserve-battery/
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] jasvncnt1:
My battery life is OK I guess, but not great. Can go about 2 days but that's with only hitting 2 hours screen on. Have some big waklocks.

Bam_dmux is killing me.

Can't wait for some kernels and modems to drop.

Zepp's V6 SuperCharger...I put that **** on everything
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] TheJesus:
Alright, well, I have a friend with the AT&T S3. He also comes from an iPhone so he's been disappointed by battery.

I'm very familiar with Android and battery life, so I'm working with him to try and nail down what's ruining this.

We've gone through 2-3 cycles (something I've always done, even if not necessary). The life is improving a bit.

However, the primary thing you'll want to do is open Task Manager (long hold home button, click option at bottom) and switch to the RAM tab. Then hit Clear Memory. This will take out a bunch of rampant background processes you don't need. This has been increasing his battery life a lot. Also, restarting your phone at the beginning of the day is another good strategy as it clears everything out. Turn off Wi-Fi and GPS if they aren't needed, also enable Power Saving mode as you won't really notice any difference unless you're gaming.

I have the Sprint S3, going on 4.5 hours 50%, but I've been doing a ton of texting and just maxed out the brightness on the screen to try and kill my phone before I go to sleep to do a full cycle.

Once we get more ROMs and kernels out for these phones, we'll start seeing some really great battery life. Hell, the T-Mobile guys with the OC Kernel at 1.89GHz aren't complaining about battery life...
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] nitra:
I moved from the SGS2 X, same model as the tmo Hercules, I thought I was alone in the battery issue until I read this thread.

I'm running the Telus i-747m, exact same issues mentioned in this thread, exact same battery life as the op.

Yesterday I went back to my store, showed them the issue, they exchanged the battery agreed that something was up with my current one, they said try the new one for a few days and if it's still an issue next week, they'll give me a new phone.

As a note; my roommate and I both got the S3 at the same time, same model, same carrier, his doesn't have this issue, or at least not to the same noticeable degree.

What made me go back to the store, yesterday my phone was on the charger at 100%, I got an incoming call, was on the phone for 15 seconds, hung up, 30 minutes later, I left the house with the phone in my pocket, 10 minutes later, turned on the phone, it was down to 93%, there were no active applications, and nothing using ram but the android system.

I've had several phones, this really doesn't seem normal.

I'll report back once I get 2-3 days on the new battery.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] TadMorose:
Having the same problems with battery life as described by others in this thread. BTW, thanks for the tip about the task manager and clearing RAM. :good: This will definitely help a lot. I also installed Better Battery Stats. Will see what else could be causing this.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] polish_pat:
LTE is a battery hog, switch to 4G (H+) if you dont really need lte. I get a day and a half, a full 36 hours when using 4G and this is with no restrictions, a lot of FB twitter, sms emails browsing, i usually get 2.5-3.5h of screen on. Havent even started using JD yet. pretty impressed actually. you can compare this beast with an iphone. that would be like complaining a lamborghini drinks more gas than a BMW
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] neyenlives:
for those of you in the US when he says "switch to 4G" he is referring to 3G (CDMA/GSM) data, not 4G LTE

as far as battery goes, stop worrying about it, go buy the Mugen desktop dock and a second battery and never worry about a battery again! Tell your former iPhone buddies there is a good reason the battery is removable. It's part of having nicer hardware.

Also you guys are in your first week of use. ......everyone's battery life sucks in their first week of use because they don't leave it alone
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] nk_blu:
Running aggressive settings on juice defender ultimate. So far the cell standby is still "shown" (or calculated) around 26 to 33%. Soooo even not having data connection 80+% of the time has zero effect on radio power usage. After few more days of testing ill post some details.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Diviance:
Have you installed the cell standby fix? It is currently bugged.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Diviance:
Bad. This is bad advice. Well, the task manager thing anyway.

If you must, only manually kill the ones actually using cpu cycles. RAM usage means almost nothing for batter life, the only things hurting your battery life are cpu cycles and the like.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] MCKang25:
I've also noticed that my battery life has been going up with some more discharge cycles which is interesting.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] nitra:
UPDATE: Full day on new battery, issues resolved.

Left home at 10am, went about my day normally, at 4pm, I was at 80% still.

By the time I got home, 8:00PM, I was at 48%.

I didn't use the phone on my way to work, but screen was on for nearly an hour and a half throughout the day and trip home.

Before charging (43%) I sat in bed playing with it for 45 minutes.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] vince24L:
What did you do?
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] extreme11191986:
That seems very odd. I use mine light to moderately and it lasts 1 day and 12 hours or so to get down to around 10 to 15% battery remaining. Charge it every other day unless using it a lot, then it needs once a day. I have power saving turned on but I have it so it does not limit the processor speed. Brightness is around 60%.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] patmann03:
Mine was not like that. Mine would die before the day ended with light usage.

I did a full discharge and recharge. This time the battery lasted a full day with moderate usage. Was at 50%. I went ahead and charged it (charged it Tuesday Night). I went through the whole day on Wednesday ending with ~70% battery. I turned the phone off at night since I didn't want to charge it at that. I turned it on this morning and have used it lightly since while at work. I'm at 62% which is great. I'm quite happy with it. I'm just curious as to why I had some days with awful battery power and others where it was a lot better.
[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] AndroidLonghorn:
I am having this same issue where some days it works great. Some days it is dying by noon. The only way I have found to help reduce the battery drain is by turning off mobile data. If I don't do that, the phone stays warm to the touch even without using it.