MAN Pax

I've just been "upgraded" by work to a new Samsung S4 and have handed over my (personal) Nexus 4 to my daughter.

I'm finding I'm struggling to get through the day on a single charge if I use the phone for Mail, Text and What's App messaging. Even checking the train times at the station as I left home saw me on 92% charge.

WiFi is normally off, as is Bluetooth and Location Services. I'm not sure what else I can cull to make it last longer. Is this normal, or have I got a broken phone?

ScottC

Go into settings > battery and check to see what is causing the drain. Normal use should have it last well over a day, especially as you described.

pseudoswede

What's App has always been a massive battery hog for me.

WIRunner

There was just an article about this that identified what the biggest draining apps are, I'd take a peek at the list and what you have running.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/reveale...phone-battery/

When I had an S4 it easily made it through the day with fairly heavy usage.

tentseller

I would check the manufacture date of the unit. S4 is not exactly the latest so some "new" units might have been sitting around brand new while the battery is aging.

I had this happened with some other old new stock electronics and had to return them or buy new batteries due to the battery being "out of warranty period".

HawaiiTrvlr

I have a S4 too and I was talking with someone about how fast the battery dies now. It definitely used to last a lot longer and I figured it was some OS update that was done in Oct/Nov that was the cause. I also turn off a lot of apps when not in use.

MAN Pax

Android OS 23%
Screen 15%
Android System 14%
Google Play Services 11%
Device Idle 5% (To do nothing)

It's the end of the day. I've been in my office, hardly used the thing. Battery saver is on. 30% left.

Just ordered the OnePlusOne for £269 in todays open sale and this heap of cr@p is going on Ebay when the replacement arrives. Didn't like the Samsung imposed bloatware after the clean Nexus 4, either.

(If you're reading this from Ebay, this S4 is a two week old bargain with incomparable battery life)

DYKWIA

You can root the S4 and get rid of the Samsung stuff. I put SlimKat on my S3 (I assume there is a version for the S4 also). Battery was a lot better after that. There should be some Lollipop ROMS out there also.

glob99

How can you sell a work issued phone?

MAN Pax

It's an "upgrade" from Vodafone - should I change employer in the next two years, I will need to source another S4 to hand back. Or lose it and pay the price - whatever is cheaper.

osamede

In my experience with the S4 when I bought it early last year, I felt the battery was draining fast, but then after a firmware update it settled down.

But over time, I see that certain apps drain a lot eg could be:
- your screen timeout settings
- are you using auto screen mode or photo mode etc
- email sync/push
- newspaper apps eg Economist/Guardian etc if you set them to autosync download
- any podcast app is a huge drain as long as it is on pause even
- if you subscribe to a lot of podcasts and update daily, thats a huge drain too
- dropbox uploads as well

And then there are external bits like if you are in an area with very marginal 4G coverage, that sucks battery life majorly too...

So it could be the hardware but equally could be other reasons too...

HDQDD

That's normal for all Li-Ion batteries. Over time they lose capacity. After say 500 charging cycles they only hold 80% of the power as when new. It continues to drop off over time.

Of course there are other factors that can damage a Li-Ion battery...Heat, running it completely dead, storing it full for a long time, etc.

ou81two

Get work to get you an iPhone instead of some cheap Korean knockoff.

DougDons

The Clean Master app is what killed my S4's battery life, I downloaded it from the Play Store thinking it would help with the battery life, but I was wrong.

Paul56

When I had my S3 I used to regularly clear the memory
which helped with power consumption.