Galaxy S3 rendered nearly useless by Kit Kat update.

I updated my phone to 4.4.2 a couple weeks ago when Samsung prompted me to do it.

It was okay at first, but now my phone shuts off randomly and the battery is totally out of whack.

When idling my battery only gets about half the life it used to.

When using apps, the batter can go from 50% or 60% charged, to 1% in a matter of minutes. The phone randomly shuts down sometimes when using apps (has now happened with default internet browser, baconreader, instagram, and candy crush). If the battery was some where to the tune of 50% to 80% when the app launched, suddenly, when I try to turn the phone back on, it comes on at 1% to 5%. When I plug the charger into it while the phone is off, the battery indicator promptly jumps up to 30% or so.

Have been looking online and I know I'm not the only one with this problem. Since Verizon, in their infinite wisdom, decided to not allow their phones to rollback to previous operating systems, I want to know if anyone has found a fix for this? And will Verizon do something about this?

While I understand the reasons behind planned obsolescence, my phone hasn't even made it through a single contract cycle yet. This is beyond ridiculous.

Accepted answers

Verizon_Support

ecase727 We appreciate you trying the safe mode and sharing the details. If you noticed the phone lasts significantly longer while in Safe Mode, this could mean there is an app causing the draining. Because we don't a way to know which app is potentially causing an issue the next step would be to backup contacts,music and photos ( to the Verizon cloud or anyother backup app) and master reset the phone. Here are the steps for the reset. http://vz.to/1lF5fRSAft Once you reset the phone test without adding 3rd party apps for a few days. Add apps back one at a time and read reviews before installing.

Sheritah_vzw

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Verizon_Support

Hello ecase727,

We want you to love and enjoy your wireless device. Allow us to partner with you and get your S3 working properly again. May I ask have you completed a factory reset after the software update? This is recommended to resolve the issues that you are experiencing? If you haven't done so yet then please back up your info prior to the reset. Steps on how to do the reset can be found in this link, http://vz.to/SwQHIF.

Thank you...

ArnettH_VZW

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ecase727

Did that. Didn't work.

While setting up apps, battery was at 49% (after only being unplugged from charger for 2 hours).

Then while putting in log in info for facebook app, almost done setting the whole thing up, screen goes black.

Turn phone back on to discover battery "critically low" at 2% juice left. Phone then immediately shuts off... guess 2% actually means 0%.

ecase727

Just want to clarify, it went from 100% to 49% in a span of two hours, then from 49% to empty in a span of a few seconds.

Verizon_Support

ecase727,

Oh no, sorry to hear your phone is dying so quickly even after the hard reset. After the hard reset did you re-install the same applications? Have you tried putting it in safe mode and testing how long your battery lasts? http://vz.to/1mB6oLv

KarenC_VZW

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ecase727

I definitely think part of the problem is the phone is incorrectly estimating its battery life. I'm wondering if the phone shuts down not because it suddenly discharges half its battery (which you'd think would start a fire or something) but instead, the phone "thinks" it's out of juice and shuts off. That could also affect how much power it has at 100%, if it thinks its full before it actually is.

The other day, after my last post, when it shutoff with 2% battery. I plugged it into a charger for less than a minute, and turned it back on and it came back at 20% battery. It quickly dropped to 15%, but then after idling in my pocket for 20 minutes, it revised up to 18%.

===

Ran it in safe mode yesterday.

Battery lasts 12 hours in safe mode, but that's largely because, with no apps, I'm not really using it, so its laying around idle for hours. Frankly, given how little use it got in safe mode, and how nothing was running, it should last longer than just 12 hours. Android System took 20% of power, Android OS took 8% of power. Android

Now today, not in safe mode, but idling, it has lost 30% of its battery life in approximately 2 1/2 hours. Haven't been using many apps today since I've been busy, so I don't know if it is going to do the battery-drain-crash thing that it does when I'm using an app.