Battery life??

[k1ngr4t]

Well your cell standby is so high because it's been on standby most of those 10 hours. Even so, 86% charge after what I'm guessing is about 9ish hours of standby, is pretty good. It's when Android System is high that something is happening. What, however, is still a mystery...

[squeekybigfoot]

Best I've had

[k1ngr4t]

Ok so I've been experiencing the android.system drain since my first GS3 around August 5thish. I had to replace that one, but it still happens on the new device. With both phones I had amazing battery life the first few days, even with a bunch of apps installed. With the second, it did start after I restored most of my apps with Titanium Backup, though not immediately. This lead me to believe it was an app. So I went through, uninstalling random apps that I thought might be culprits, battery pull, nothing helped. So I gave up, started researching, then...out of nowhere, it's gone. And I'm back to amazing battery life. This carried over for a few days, without me not doing anything different or installing anything, and suddenly...it's back. Long story short, I don't think it's an app anymore, so much as a system setting, because the app "evidence" is so inconsistent, as evidenced by all these threads on it. Certain apps might "trigger" it, but the problem is deeper. So I messed with everything from GPS to wifi, using a live wall paper, even changing settings in both apps and stock...no change. But again...suddenly gone. Basically I couldn't pinpoint a common denominator except it happened randomly. Or so it seemed...

It happened again on Sunday night, and so I decided to see what happened. Only thing that really changed app wise were updates from the store. No change after those. Then I fell asleep Monday night without plugging my phone in, and android.system drained my battery to 3% from maybe 40ish%. I charge it for the 45 minutes I had before work, got it to like 49%, android.system still close to 25% in Gsam. Watchdog still showed nothing. Used a co-workers charger for a bit at work to make it through the night, finally drained it completely, did a battery pull, charged it to 100% while off, turned it on this morning...no problem. Been opening all kinds of apps today, changing settings...android.system is still around 4%, as opposed to being up to 50%. I found the gsiff_daemon solution, and I did have it at the top of the list, so I renamed it. No change. Deleted it. No change. Definitely gone though.

So now I think it's a battery issue. For those of you who experience it, did you happen to have unusual charging patterns around the time it started? Charging it for a few minutes here and there? Or draining it completely? So I'm thinking it has something to do with how the phone uses the right amount of power for what it's doing. When it's locked, it for some reason still thinks the phone is on and so is taking more power. And remember, as many changes as I could think of didn't help. So maybe it's happening in the hardware (however a phone determines power from a battery ) moreso than the software?

And sorry this post is so long, the idea was to show you I've already tried everything suggested and more (short of a FDR). One common denominator is all threads on the issue have the same suggestions and identical screen shots


Here are some screenshots I just took of what it SHOULD look like:

[SteveSchweer]

I had the same experience. I tried to tie the problem to a particular app or battery charging procedure.... No connection. I finally decided that it is an operating system bug. Somehow, on the SIII (but not the SI that I used before this) I think that as apps call for op system services, like GPS for instance, the op system doesn't always get the "stand down" order. This causes what I call "GPS runaway" or the phone to be "held awake" for long periods of time. I can usually tell when this is happening by the phone heating up in my pocket. I think the best thing to do in these situations is to re-boot (turn off and on) the phone.

[MailboxHead]

I too am starting to get this Android OS battery kiss of death. Usually when I restart the phone it "fixes" itself. However, if I use the GPS on the phone it starts running wild again, even though I turn GPS off. I love this phone, but I'm pretty disappointed that every time I use GPS I will have to restart the phone or risk crappy battery until I do. I realize that it restarts pretty quickly (good heavens, my TBolt took like 10 minutes), but I also feel like it's ridiculous that I should have to constantly be restarting my $600 phone.

Looking back, this problem didn't start until I started using my phone for GPS so I'm convinced that in my case GPS is triggering this problem. I really don't want to root - I'm a lazy coward, but that might be the only option left to me. Sad frownies, because this phone is so fantastic in every other way.

[k1ngr4t]

With my first phone, when it started happening, all I did was turn off 2 of the 3 GPS points and it went away for awhile. Then it came back randomly after a week or two, even with GPS settings the same. Also it went away for awhile after last time, then started again today when I played a game that I don't believe uses GPS, but is always running, even on boot. Maybe we can identify a common permission among certain trigger apps. This "Birthday" app seems like a good place to start.

[Shadez]

Yea try not using Verizon as one of the sources for location and see if that helps..

[SteveSchweer]

I think they're working around the edges of the problem. In the previous version of OS software, I turned all GPS off but the battery monitor graph showed that GPS was still used about every 30 minutes for a brief while. The current software version doesn't do this... You turn it off.. It stays off. Also, I don't think that you have to forego the use of GPS. I have been using Maps and Navigation quite a lot recently and haven't had too many OP System "runaway" problems. I say again, I think this is an Op System bug... There is nothing that we can do about it from the user side of things. We just have to wait till it is recognized and fixed...... Are you listening Google/Samsung/Verizon????

[k1ngr4t]

Well it's definitely not GPS nor is it app or permission specific. Did some MORE experimenting the last few days. I tried to make each day as identical as possible. Thursday I opened an online/MMOish app called Blood Brothers around 65% and after I closed it I noticed Android System was up from 4% to 20% and battery was about 53%. So I thought that might be it. Checked permissions of this app and others. Waited a day, trying other things to get rid of it. Reboots or battery pulls don't work for me. The only thing that does is draining it till it turns off, then charging to 100%. So I did this that night. Sure enough it was gone the next day (yesterday). Only thing I changed was turning on all 3 of the GPS instead of just 1, so I opened Blood Brothers around 65%, played about the same amount, maybe longer, closed it, checked Gsam, Android System is at 4.2%, battery is at 62%. Damnit! Another two possible links shattered. So I ended up playing a bunch of games last night with those 3 GPS's on, did some internet surfing on 3 different browsers....nothing. Here were my stats at the end of the night, prepare to be amazed...



That's right. 16 hours on, almost 2 hours of screen use, probably 40ish minutes of which was games, and 20-30 browser. That is undoubtedly pushing heavy usage, and I'm only at 50%. Any other phone or with Android System acting up I'd probably be at 20%, at most. I think these two screens are plenty of proof the battery in this thing has potential to be amazing. Total War and Heroes call are at the top of that list, which are easily huge games and mega drainers. I also use a live wallpaper on my home and lock screen.

[rjeatkrconley]

Not sure if this has already been discussed, if so, my apologies. A guy I go to school with has the sg3 and has also been having battery issues. If I remember correctly, he is on AT&T. He had read on another forum that there is a wifi setting that needs to be changed. There is a setting for the wifi going to sleep when the phone goes to sleep. Change the setting to never. He claims that his battery life has been much better. Hope this helps. If more info is needed, I can ask him Monday night at school.