The Samsung Galaxy S24
omrebel's profile

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206 Messages

Monday, December 2nd, 2013 8:10 PM

Galaxy S3 4.3 - battery drain

Is anyone else experiencing a severe decrease in battery life after getting the 4.3 update? My battery now only lasts about 60% as long as it used to. Also, I am seeing some other annoying things happening. There seems to be initial delays when waking the device up from sleep. I think that is due to how memory is being handle, and a possible bug there. If I have Chome open, turn off the display, then turn it back on, Chrome's page is completely black unless I scroll on it. This seems to be an issue with how memory is being utilized. But, I can live with that. I cannot, however, deal with this horrible battery life of this phone now.

Scholar

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104 Messages

10 years ago

The AT&T Tech Support person I talked to hadn't heard about the issue until I called, so I guess they aren't all in the loop. Anyway, here's what I did to help with the 4.3 excessive battery drain issue.  First, turn off Smart Stay and Smart Rotation in the Smart screen settings. Next, go in to your Google account settings and disable Sync App Data. You don't need that on all the time. Lastly, turn off your data connection when not using it, just remember your apps need it when in use and for updates. I have done these things and noticed that my battery has impoved substantially. It's close to where it was prior to the update to 4.3. Sucks to have to do all of that, but I believe those features are draining the battery faster under 4.3. Also, I have noticed standby time is excellent now, but the screen being on really affects the drain, more than prior to 4.3. I'm using an extended 4000 mAh battery so I don't have it quite as bad, but I immediately noticed the rapid drain when I first updated. The problem is that this 4.3 firmware is conflicting with the bloatware and the older processors are working harder to balance things out, hence the increased drain. Hopefully, a fix will be on the way soon or AT&T can expect to lose a lot of customers when their contracts are up. 

Scholar

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70 Messages

10 years ago

so basically disable everything on the phone and the battery last longer. That's not a solution that's a workaround. This is pathetic I will never and I advise everybody else to do this by a an AT&T phone again and a product from Samsung. If you want Google go directly to Google and buy a Nexus phone. Samsung will never support this phone or any phone since all they want is new suckers.

Scholar

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104 Messages

10 years ago

I agree,  it isn't a solution,  just a workaround, but it will work for now.  I heard that a fix is being worked on.  For the record,  this isn't Samsung's fault.  They stopped the update when they found out about the issues caused.  It was AT&T that pushed the update. 

Scholar

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206 Messages

10 years ago

Over a month later, and still no solution in sight from AT&T.

 

FWIW - a Factory Reset doesn't fix this problem. I believe it's more likely due to the AT&T bloatware that they cram into the phones that are causing this. 

Teacher

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10 Messages

10 years ago

I have been experiencing the battery drain issue. Whenever it happens, the phone gets very hot. I usually turn off the phone, pull the battery, let the phone cool off, re-insert the battery, clear the cache partition, and then reboot.

 

The last thing that should ever be done is to perform a factory reset. These devices should receive updates without any or a minimal amount of issues that can be easily resolved.

 

I had first realized the 4.3 update was flawed when installed apps kept crashing when started. The only means to resolve the issue was to re-install the apps.   

Scholar

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104 Messages

10 years ago

I think the bloatware is indeed a strong part of the problem. Some are having it worse than others. Only issue I had is battery drain. I had the download bug as well immediately after the update, but cleared my app and download cache and that was fixed. I was informed AT&T is working on a fix, but who on earth knows when it will come. I see why people buy Nexus devices and Google Play versions. I would too if I could afford it. I'll see what happens for a while longer until I lose patience. If I do have to get another deviice because of this, it won't be Samsung. Even though they stopped the update when they were made aware of problems, I believe that their bloatware was causing issues initially, especially overseas. I haven't heard of LG or Motorola having isssues with 4.3 and my Nexus 7 (First Edition) certainly didn't have any issues. The one thing all three have in common is lack of a lot of bloatware. Heck, on the GS4, about 9 of the 16 mb storage is all you have access to because the rest is occupied by bloatware. If the Moto X had a removable battery that would have been my device of choice hands down.

Scholar

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70 Messages

10 years ago

So amazing how poor att customer support is compared to other carriers, they at least monitor thier forums.

Scholar

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206 Messages

10 years ago

FINALLY!

 

AT&T finally acknowledged this problem on chat today. I was told that they are working on an update that will fix the battery drain issue along with other bugs in the 4.3 update. 

 

I asked for an ETA, and was told it should be by the end of this month to early next month.

 

Hopefully, they guy wasn't blowing smoke, since Samsung support today told me that they weren't aware of any reported problems with the 4.3 update. 

Scholar

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104 Messages

10 years ago

omrebel, I'm glad that you can confirm AT&T working on the issue as well. Hopefully, it will be done sooner rather than later. I think The Samsung person you spoke to was either out of the loop or full of sh&t, because Samsung knew about the problem with 4.3 when it was rolling out the first time and people were having issues so Samsung stopped the update. It was than that individual carriers like AT&T decided to put it out anyway and we see how well that went.  🙂

Contributor

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3 Messages

10 years ago

Is it only happen after upgrade to 4.3?

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