[Q] Question about rooting my Note 3 for better battery life

[cdogg44]

I've had an AT&T Note 3 since January. The phone is great but since the update to 4.4.2 I have been experience horrendous battery life, to the point that I'm having to charge it throughout the day.

I work construction and use my phone for several hours per day, resulting in 2-3 hours of voice calls and 2-3 hours of screen time. My last Note 2 and the current Note 3 used to be able to handle my workload while being unplugged from 7AM to 10PM at night.

If I was to root my phone, could I gain back my battery life? I have never had the need for my phone to be anything other than stock but I am desperate at this point.

Thanks

 

[nitrous²]

Rooting your phone will not result in having better battery life. What you can do is detect apps that keep your phone awake. Another method is to flash a custom kernel with lower voltage or one on which you can undervolt yourself. Be aware that by rooting and/or flashing custom recoverys/kernels or firmwares you'll trigger the Knox counter. This will void your warranty. There is no way to revert it.
Please use the Q&A section next time you have a question. Hope I could help you a little.

Gesendet von meinem SM-N9005 mit Tapatalk

 

[cdogg44]

Rooting your phone will not result in having better battery life. What you can do is detect apps that keep your phone awake. Another method is to flash a custom kernel with lower voltage or one on which you can undervolt yourself. Be aware that by rooting and/or flashing custom recoverys/kernels or firmwares you'll trigger the Knox counter. This will void your warranty. There is no way to revert it.
Please use the Q&A section next time you have a question. Hope I could help you a little.

Gesendet von meinem SM-N9005 mit Tapatalk

I appreciate the reply. I was hoping that rooting would allow the phone to run off of custom firmware and not have the horrible battery drain many Note 3 users are experiencing after the 4.4.2 update.

I have installed GSam Battery Monitor for over a month and been monitoring it daily. I'm consistently seeing Android System and Kernel (Android OS) using 40% of my daily battery life and Media using another 15%-25%. Other than that I've been unable to determine much else. I do not play games or Facebook, I just talk and text all day.

Is the warranty on the phone one year? If so, I'm 2/3 through it and would be willing to void it for better battery life.

I have looked through all I could find before posting, but honestly am somewhat overwhelmed by all the information on XDA. This is magnified by the fact that there are many versions of the Note 3 and different carriers.

I have a N900A Note 3 and am looking to get my all day battery life back and appreciate the help.

 

[nitrous²]

I appreciate the reply. I was hoping that rooting would allow the phone to run off of custom firmware and not have the horrible battery drain many Note 3 users are experiencing after the 4.4.2 update.

I have installed GSam Battery Monitor for over a month and been monitoring it daily. I'm consistently seeing Android System and Kernel (Android OS) using 40% of my daily battery life and Media using another 15%-25%. Other than that I've been unable to determine much else. I do not play games or Facebook, I just talk and text all day.

Is the warranty on the phone one year? If so, I'm 2/3 through it and would be willing to void it for better battery life.

I have looked through all I could find before posting, but honestly am somewhat overwhelmed by all the information on XDA. This is magnified by the fact that there are many versions of the Note 3 and different carriers.

I have a N900A Note 3 and am looking to get my all day battery life back and appreciate the help.

Don't worry, it's normal to suffer infoglut the first time looking through xda. You'll get used to it =)
So you have the AT&T version of the Note III aka hlteatt or SM-N900A. You're device has a Qualcomm chip built in like most of the Note III variants out there. There's also a Note III variant which has an Exynos chip built in but I think you won't confuse Exynos firmwares with those dedicated for Qualcomm variants. The ROM threads ususally have pretty good descriptions about that. AFAIK most custom ROMs are compatible with any Qualcomm variant. E.G. any AOSP/CM ROM for the Qualcomm Note III has a unified build carried by the name "hlte". Meaning, that as long as you don't flash an image meant for the Exynos variant, you should be good.

40% for Android-System and Kernel isn't normal at all. I also use GSam Battery Monitor. Android-System and Kernel only use about 19% of the battery on my phone. Something that helped me when I had the exact same issue was to switch locating method from high accuracy to power saving. You can find this setting by long-pressing the GPS icon in the notification drawer. The location settings menue will pop up. Under "Mode" you can change to "Power saving". I'd be happy if you could report if it did work for you.
You're welcome =) Just hit the thanks button.

 

[pete4k]

If I may add my own comments here:
1. you should go to note 3 ATT forum and there find proper method to root your phone, we have towelroot program that can root phone very easily without breaking knox warranty, albeit I don't know if it works on your version, it worked perfectly on mine (t-mo)
2. While it is true that root by itself won't do anything about your battery usage, many programs that really help need root
For example greenify, titanium backup or android assistant require root to disable many useless (useless for you that is) programs that drain your battery
3. I totally disagree with Nitrous that GPS is the culprit for high battery usage. It is my experience that GPS all by itself does not work at all unless the location info is requested by some other programs. Google maps for example only run GPS when screen is on, when screen is off, GPS is off also. However some badly behaving programs can keep requesting location even in the middle of night, but IMO those programs are the problem, not GPS itself. I have GPS, BT and WiFi on 24/7 and with light use my phone could last 4-5 days. If GPS was draining battery as many people think, phone would never last that long.
What you should do is go to ATT forum and find towelroot method, root your phone and freeze, or disable apps you don't use. For example I don't use Bloomberg, Yahoo, Facebook, Hangouts, indexing etc (your list may be different, since different provider) so I have them frozen (won't start up) . If I ever change my mind, I can unfreeze them later.
You can also run programs to tell you which apps use most battery, or wake the phone from sleep and then decide if you need them or not.
BTW sometimes full reset and cache clear can fix some of the problems, so maybe that should be the first step.
Once you find which program /s cause problems your phone should last whole day. I could easily get 6 or more screen hours on my Note3, unless playing some intensive games, so should you and it just took couple hours to identify and disable all the bloat and there is a lot.
I also experienced increase in battery usage after updating to KK, but I have not found a time to look over the bloat and redo my program freezing efforts yet.

 

[nitrous²]

I know that GPS doesn't drain battery that much. But trust me, it is very likely to cause that type of behavior. I'm in this forums since a couple of years. In most cases, when Android-system and Kernel drain unusual amounts of battery it was location services that was causing it. But not because they were using GPS, but because they kept the device awake the whole time. And there you see my point of switching locating methods. In 90% of the scenarios where people described this kind of behavior of their devices, this solved the problem. But you're right in saying that it's not a permanent solution. I agree to your first two points.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

 

[uf21]

I know that GPS doesn't drain battery that much. But trust me, it is very likely to cause that type of behavior. I'm in this forums since a couple of years. In most cases, when Android-system and Kernel drain unusual amounts of battery it was location services that was causing it. But not because they were using GPS, but because they kept the device awake the whole time. And there you see my point of switching locating methods. In 90% of the scenarios where people described this kind of behavior of their devices, this solved the problem. But you're right in saying that it's not a permanent solution. I agree to your first two points.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

I always have GPS off and only turn it on when I need it though Android still has the higher or second highest battery usage.

 

[maxilick]

I agree, root and uninstall /freeze bloatware. You'll be surprised.

Sent from my U30GT 2 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

 

[jdomadia]

If you have external sd card in phone, remove & use phone for couples of the day.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app

 

[pete4k]

Just to give quick update, after I wrote my comments here, I fully charged my phone and went to sleep. In the morning battery was down to 80% and that finally prompted me to action. I freezed some apps, cleared cache and did some "housekeeping". I don't know what did the trick, but this time overnight my phone went from 100 to 98%, 10 times better than a night before. Now, after 18 hours of some light use like few calls, couple games, light internet use etc it is still at 80%, so it's pretty much back to what I had before update. I wish I wrote down what I did to track particular culprit in my case, but it is amazing how couple bad apps can ruin battery life, but at the same time killing them turns things around so much. All in all, out of some 340 apps and services on my phone, only 21 are frozen and about 30 are stopped from starting at boot up, but are able to start later if needed.

 

[nitrous²]

Just to give quick update, after I wrote my comments here, I fully charged my phone and went to sleep. In the morning battery was down to 80% and that finally prompted me to action. I freezed some apps, cleared cache and did some "housekeeping". I don't know what did the trick, but this time overnight my phone went from 100 to 98%, 10 times better than a night before. Now, after 18 hours of some light use like few calls, couple games, light internet use etc it is still at 80%, so it's pretty much back to what I had before update. I wish I wrote down what I did to track particular culprit in my case, but it is amazing how couple bad apps can ruin battery life, but at the same time killing them turns things around so much. All in all, out of some 340 apps and services on my phone, only 21 are frozen and about 30 are stopped from starting at boot up, but are able to start later if needed.

:victory::victory:

Last question; 340 apps system-wide, or 340 PlayStore apps?