My girlfriend recently got the AT&T GS3 and was having big battery issues - the battery was constantly hot and the phone was constantly draining fast and would be done in 4 hours. Personally I don't believe people should have to solve this issue with gimmicky crap like turning data off when the phone sleeps, setting the brightness so low you can barely see things, etc. The phone battery is designed to last a day+ with normal use, so issues like the battery crapping out in 4 hours point to something deeper. I took a look around and found the following:
(I can't post the link but it is an ATT forums post called "Samsung Galaxy S3 Battery Drain (sudden drop)" and the steps are on the second page)
I followed these steps from user "erickb1800":
There was no Samsung Account under Accounts & Sync so I did not have to delete that. But I did disable those 5 apps listed in step 3 and it basically made the problem go away. One of them was using CPU constantly in the background (it only showed up as "Android OS" in the battery page tho) and disabling them seems to have solved the problem.
Awesome guide.. We thank you
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium
Proof that these things work. Stock battery by the way. Sorry for the huge pix. I'll tag them with a Hide Parse for better viewing real estate.
Battery screenshots as of 12/13/12
Change Log:
12/13/12 - Added more battery screenies
11/2/12 - Initial Post
***********
If anyone has any tips or tricks that they want to share, by all means post them in here and I will link it in the OP. We are all in this together.
Stock battery, no UV. I do it all the time. It really isn't hard to get 3-5 hours of screen on time if you pay attention to what you are doing. 6 was pushing it just to do it, but I can repeat if necessary, which I won't. I easily average 3.5-4hours daily, as I do a lot on Tapatalk, Gtalk and a few other apps that I use all day long.
One thing that eats my battery is the media scanner. Specifically when I am streaming a baseball game through MLB At-Bat. I've had that app for 4 years now and it is the same every year. So if I want to listen to a game, I better have a full charge or be plugged in at my desk.
the problem is, people want to believe that they can save battery without changing their usage habits. this simply is not possible. no rom or kernel will realistically do this for you. if you remove 1 brick from a bag full of 15 bricks, the bag will be lighter, but still very heavy. you need to download "spare parts" or "process monitor" from the market and start analyzing the way your apps are acting. also look into data syncs that are happening in the background. apps that stay open behind your back/what they are doing 9an app called "autostarts" can prevent apps from self-running under certain scenarios). animation speed. polling for notifications. gps. wifi scans. overclocking. cpu/ram usage. proper sleep. widgets. brightness. 2g/3g. data usage. call time. text volume. - THESE are the things that really affect your battery life.
bottom line is, if you truly want to save battery you are going to have to get your hands dirty...there simply isnt a one-click (or one-flash) solution.
Just thought I'd share my settings:
Governor: InteractiveX
Custom Settings:
go_hispeed_low = 95
screen_off_maxfreq = 486000
Scheduler: ROW
Min: 192 MHz
Max: 1512 MHz
Frequency Lock: ON
MP-Decision: OFF
Multicore Power Saving: 1
GPU Governor: On Demmand
GPU Max Frequency: 480
Voltages:
192 MHz = 775mv
384 MHz = 800mv
486 MHz = 800mv
594 MHz = 825mv
702 MHz = 850mv
810 MHz = 900mv
918 MHz = 950mv
1026 MHz = 1000mv
1134 MHz = 1025mv
1242 MHz = 1050mv
1350 MHz = 1075mv
1458 MHz = 1100mv
1512 MHz = 1125mv
Enjoy
Sent from my SGS III
liltitiz said:With my new settings I can get up to 5-6 hour of screen on with a discharging time of around 24 hours. Before I start playing with cpu1, I couldn't get more than 4hours of screen on with a discharging time around 15hours since the Linux 3.4 kernel
Note that I also use greening to hibernate apps and Tasker to turn on things like gps, data, wifi, auto rotate only when I need them.
I readjusted my settings yesterday to test something out if you got no loss in performance yet you can try them out:
Ktoonservative setup to input in ktweaker:
Boost 2nd core on button:0
Boost cpu:540
Boost gpu: doesn't matter
Boost hold cycle :0
Boost turn on 2nd core:0
Cpu down block cycle:0
Down threshold:75
Down threshold hotplug:60
Freq step:3
Ignore nice load:0
No 2nd cpu screen off:1
Sampling down factor:3
Sampling rate: 25000
Sampling rate screen off: 45000
Up threshold:94
Up threshold hotplug:96
---------------------------------------------------
Command lines to apply my asswax settings on cpu1 :
echo asswax > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo 135000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/awake_ideal_freq
echo 200 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/down_rate_us
echo 189000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/interactive_ideal_freq
echo 95 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/max_cpu_load
echo 65 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/min_cpu_load
echo 250000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/ramp_down_step
echo 50000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/ramp_up_step
echo 81000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/sleep_ideal_freq
echo 135000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/sleep_wakeup_freq
echo 5000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/asswax/up_rate_us
---------------------------------------------------
If you set your ktoonservative to turn off 2nd core(cpu1) when screen is off, then it doesn't matter because your cpu1.will be off so only your ktoonservative(cpu0) settings matter. Personally I use 486 as my max freq when screen is off.
Dianne Hackborn - Jan 12, 2012 - Public
Today's myth debunking:
"The battery indicator in the status/notification bar is a reflection of the batterystats.bin file in the data/system/ directory."
No, it does not.
This file is used to maintain, across reboots, low-level data about the kinds of operations the device and your apps are doing between battery changes. That is, it is solely used to compute the blame for battery usage shown in the "Battery Use" UI in settings.
That is, it has deeply significant things like "app X held a wake lock for 2 minutes" and "the screen was on at 60% brightness for 10 minutes."
It has no impact on the current battery level shown to you.
It has no impact on your battery life.
Deleting it is not going to do anything to make your more device more fantastic and wonderful... well, unless you have some deep hatred for seeing anything shown in the battery usage UI. And anyway, it is reset every time you unplug from power with a relatively full charge (thus why the battery usage UI data resets at that point), so this would be a much easier way to make it go away.
This is long INFO post from real chip designer that help to create CPU/GPU and other chips for the living for 14 years now, so respect
He sent me PM, for now he cant post that by him self.
Vikas is monitoring our thread and want to say his professional stand about UV/OV and why it's works for some and why not for others.
==================
I am calling Vikas(vikas.mishra) to the speech stand
Hello people.
Let me introduce myself - my name is Vikas Mishra and I am a chip designer by profession. .
I have worked on critical parts of design of TI OMAP4, OMAP5, Nvidia Tegra 3 etc and have been doing this for the last 14 years.
Of late - I have seen a lot of folks posting BUGS about undervolting of the GPU/CPU.
I think I can explain what are the possible issues with undervolting/overclocking in a laymans language.
It is a little long winded but I think the length is needed for providing the appropriate context.
* What is inside your Cellphone
Your cellphone is an amazing device. It is a full fledged computer
that fits into your pocket. They have all the standard components
that a computer has - except that they are all usually soldered on
the motherboard directly and are not meant to be user-servicable.
The chief components inside your cellphone are
1. Application Processor (AP)- this is the heart of a modern
cellphone. These are manufactured by many companies - the main
ones are Qualcomm, Nvidia, Samsung and Apple. The other not so
well known ones are made by Texas Instruments, ST Ericsson,
Marvell and Broadcom.
A modern AP has logic to control the camera and process the image
that it generates, to do video encoding (video recording) and
video decoding (movie watching), Audio processor etc. in addition
to the well known CPU and GPU.
2. Power Management Controller - This is the chip that is
responsible for generating and regulating the voltages that are
used by all the components on the board.
3. DRAM - not very different from the DRAM found on a PC (except
that it is lower voltage)
4. Flash - for storage
5. Touchscreen controller
6. Logic for microphone, speaker
7. Battery
One of the most complex piece of circuitry on the phone is the AP
and the power management controller.
* Circuit Basics
A modern AP has millions of circuit units called (Flip
Flops). These flip flops have two parameters associated with them
called Setup time and Hold time. More details on what a flip flop
can be found on the wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics) . This is a
nice bit of bedside reading if you are interested.
A setup time roughly indicates what frequency you can run a design
or an AP at before it becomes unstable.
A hold time roughly indicates the maximum voltage till which a
design is stable.
A fully technical analysis of what is involved in these timing
parameters requires a degree in electrical engineering but in broad
terms the problem is described below.
Chip designers diligently ensure that all of the millions of the
flip flops in a chip meet the setup and hold time across a broad
range of voltages and silicon parameters. They do a pessimistic
analysis to ensure that a chip will run reliably across a wide
range of voltage/frequency combinations.
However, contrary to the popular belief, chips vary widely in their
silicon parameters. Even chips on a the same wafer and different
flip-flops within the same chip can have widely different silicon
parameters. This is why what works on one particular chip will not
work on the other chip.
Your silicon manufacturer provides a range of voltages and
frequencies across which the device can work reliably. The phone
manufacturer will further narrow down the range depending on the
other components they choose within the phone board.
* How does voltage affect the design
Reducing voltage makes the design slower and increasing voltage
makes the design faster.
So can I keep on increasing the voltage for ever and make the
circuit faster and faster. The answer is no - a point will come when
the circuit will become unreliable. This becomes unreliable because
the "hold time" of one or more of the flops will start
violating.
As you reduce the voltage of the design, the circuit will start
becoming slower. However typically it will continue to work till at
apoint it starts failing - this failure occurs due to violation of
"setup time" of one or more flops in the design.
So what happens when the setup time or the hold time of a design
fails - the answer is that it is unpredictable. Meaning suddenly if
you ask the processor what is the value of 2+2, the answer it will
provide could be unreliable - in some cases it could be 3, in some
cases it could be 4 in some cases it could be -2349783297 (a random number).
I am of course oversimplifying but I hope you get the picture.
* How does undervolting affect your phone processor
The reason undervolting is so appealing to people because they
thing that undervolting will save power and improve battery
life. While this is true in theory, in practice there is a caveat.
It will reduce the power of the chip, but the power consumed by the
phone as a whole will not improve. In some cases in fact it can
deteriorate. Let me explain.
The most power hungry part in the phone is not the AP - it is the
LCD screen. All of these screens consume a ton of power. So even
though your AP is now consuming lesser power, the overall impact to
the phone as a whole is not that much.
If you accompany undervolting with a frequency reduction (which you
should), the total time taken for doing a web page rendering (for
example) would increase. During this time the screen is on and it
has more than compensated for the power that you saved in the
AP.
You could of course come up with examples where this wouldn't
happen - but on a whole, IMHO, you should leave the voltage of the
AP/GPU/CPU to the guys who know the system best - the guys who
designed the chip and people who manufactured it.
* How does overvolting/overclocking affect your phone processor
If you want that last drop of performance from your phone and you
over clock it, at a point some of the design flops will start
violating the hold time and the design will stop working reliably.
Again, in some anecdotal cases this would work - but this is not a
reliable means/mode of working. Just because your friend's or your
first cousin's girlfriend's phone works - doesn't mean yours will
work as well.
* What are the user observable impacts of undervolting/overclocking?
It is hard to say - simply because there are so many of flops in
the design.
In some cases - you wouldn't see anything wrong with the phone
until one day you do. In some cases it will result in a SOD
immediately. In some cases it will result in your phone not waking
up reliably.
IMHO the risks of issues with undervolting/overclocking far
outweighthe potential gains you may get out of it. Usually there
is no lasting damage to the phone/AP if you overlock/undervolt but
it is possible to do it. For example, You run the phone at such a
high frequency that the chip temperature becomes more than what it
was designed for and the Silicon just fails.
So "Just say No" . Don't overclock or undervolt your phone -
leave it to the guys who really understand what they are doing.
Thanks,
Vikas