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Since I got this device in mid November to now, I have had great battery life usually lasting almost two full days and never having a problem for one day unless I'd been using it excessively. Suddenly yesterday I started losing power and the device is dead in just about 8 hours, with the graph of battery loss showing only Skype and Android OS. I haven't used Skype at all and don't know why it would even show up on this graph, but Android OS usually hadn't been showing up as more than about 5-15% of my total battery usage, much less overshadowing everything else. I uninstalled Skype thinking it may have updated and have noticed no difference at all.

I've started looking for solutions online, and found forums for "android OS bug fixes" but nothing that detailed anything similar to this situation. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1135033

I have had Gingerbread 2.3.3 since I got this phone (annoyingly.. where is ICS Samsung??) I'm pretty sure and have had no battery drain problems such as this at all until just recently. I had not made any changes to the system nor any applications or widgets and see no reason why suddenly the OS would start to consume my battery erroneously.

I don't have WiFi on typically unless I'm in a zone where I do have it and sketchy service such as at work sometimes (I am a student and only work about 15 hours a week on top of classes) and at home if I'm updating apps or using my phone a lot and want the quicker service. GPS and Bluetooth are always off, along with 4G unless I will be currently using it a lot in a 4G zone.

Basically, I see no reason why my battery life should suddenly become awful when I had been having such a wonderful experience with this phone for months. What could have caused this and how can I reverse it?? Thanks!

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  • Have you tried recalibrating your battery?
    – Irfan
    May 21, 2012 at 12:10

3 Answers 3

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Are any apps showing suspiciously high cpu use? You can check with Seepu, or with 'top' command at the terminal or adb-shell.

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THE SOLUTION:

OK here is the deal...I researched this as it happened to me just that way a few days ago....but first, some background.

I bought the Samsung Galaxy 3 from radio Shack-My carrier is Sprint. The device has NOT been rooted. Had pretty good luck with the Samsung Epic (Galaxy S).

Installed: Juice Defender Pro-Almost DOUBLED my battery life until....

4 days ago, I awoke at about 6 am to see that the battery had been charged, so i disconnected the charger. Went back to sleep, and about 8am, was horrified to see that the battery had SOMEHOW drained to 23%...It had drained 3/4 of its capacity in just under 2 hours!

Well that aint happening. After some very tedious research, I was left with a few possibilities: 1) bad battery or device (no kidding) (2) Make some setting changes (i did that...I set my display to minimum and NOT to auto, and made a few other changes) But the thing that did the trick was uninstalling some apps that I just installed. Once that was done, the phone ran fine.

The problem is that some applications, especially third party ones, will not always work properly, and/or can drain the battery. The only way to know for sure is to uninstall them...wait to see if it helps, and if it does, then install them again, and see if the problem returns. i elected to NOT reinstall the applications. I figure that i can try others, and today, I only install one app at a time, and if the phone behaves properly, then it stays.

There are MANY things one can do to extend battery life. I LOVE Juice Defender Pro. It does what it says it will do, and was worth every dime I paid. There are other things you can do like Use airplane mode when listening to mp3's. I went on a motorcycle ride, listened to music for 3 hours, and only used about 8% of my battery life to do it.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Try getting rid of apps that were most recently installed before the issue occurred. It was the solution's for me.

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  • Your Galaxy 3 (GT-I5800) still runs Android 2.1. Recent Android versions play a more active role against battery consuming apps. E.g. Google describes in Android 2.3's changelog: Improved power management. The Android system takes a more active role in managing apps that are keeping the device awake for too long or that are consuming CPU while running in the background. By managing such apps — closing them if appropriate — the system helps ensure best possible performance and maximum battery life.
    – ce4
    Oct 19, 2012 at 0:40
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I'm having precisely the same issue. I was comfortably getting 18ish hours, and now roughly 9. Android OS was at somewhere around 75% usage, where normally it rests cozily below display usage.

I have swapped in my spare battery and things appear marginally better, but I'm not so sure just yet. I'm pondering the possibility that a hard power off might have helped also (vs. a regular reboot)

Check out this article also, it seems very familiar and his was a faulty antenna.

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  • This answer isn't of much help without that link. What happens when that link stops working?
    – ale
    Sep 11, 2012 at 18:41

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