bad battery life in Lollipop 5.01 - excessive swapping

This issue was finally fixed by the VRU2BOK3 5.1.1 update. No factory reset was ever performed or needed. The phone performs great again, with less battery use and reduced lag. I blame a combination of Google (the system bugs) and Verizon (took how long to deploy?) for the fiasco.

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Is there any comment from Verizon on this issue yet?

We want to make sure your phone is in working order The_Sim! I know how important it is to have a long lasting battery life. Are you using the original charger for the device? I appreciate you doing a system cache wipe. I know doing a factory reset can be a big deal especially when we have our phones personalized. Do you get any error messages when you do plug in your charger?

AmberF_VZW
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Hi Verizon, yes I am using the original charger. It has always worked perfectly, however since updating to Lollipop, on a few occasions, the phone does not properly detect that it is in fast charge mode, and only goes into a low-power USB charge mode (which is not even providing enough charge to overcome the battery drain) -- there is no error message, only in the battery settings you can see that it is showing USB instead of Fast Charging. However, eventually it goes back to working properly in Fast Charge mode on a later charge cycle. I am unable to reproduce this consistently.

In addition, the excessive swapping problem seems to be related to lollipop 5.01, so I hope you will provide at least a system update as soon as possible with more fixes. I will avoid doing a factory reset for the time being until then. Thanks.

The_Sim,

I certainly understand wanting to avoid that! Most things can be backed up but it still takes time to get everything back the way you like them. Let's see what we can do to get this working better now though. Can you try the phone in safe mode? http://vz.to/1FAi4nG Does it run any better there?

AndrewT_VZW
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Kev48us

I have had similar problems I uses to get on average 12 to 13 hours on 1 charge so I tryed calling verizon to see what tear 2 tech support had to say and I all I got was bs from 2 reps and all they told me was that it takes 2 weeks for updates on the back ends to finish and that should help wich I don't think it will

Also on a side note about a week after I got lollipop I got a small update not shure how big just saw my phone rebooting and updating one app I am figuring it was a small pack but it's hasn't fixed any thing that I have noticed

buzzeswoman2008

ive noticed with my phone that since lolliflop my phone no longer charges on any outlet or my usb port on my computer. i have only one outlet in my house that will charge my phone properly and that is not acceptable. we all need phones that work and that hold a proper charge.

It isn't a global problem, my Note 4 upgrade went off without a hitch (as did another friends) and my battery life is easily 24-48 hours depending on use which is better than I was getting with KitKat. I had some issues for the first 3 days and then it was only occasionally not solidly. I did clear the cache but have not factory reset it.

Kev48us,

We definitely don't want you to have issues after a new update. Updates should solve issues, not cause them! We're absolutely here to assist you with getting this working.

Since the update, have you been able to make sure all of your apps are up to date through the Play Store? Do you notice any specific apps you are using when issues start? How long ago did you do the update?

AndrewT_VZW
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buzzeswoman2008,

Let's make sure we turn this around and get your phone back to full power! What happens when you try to charge on other outlets? Are you using the same charger you use with the one outlet that works? Do you have any other chargers you can try?

AndrewT_VZW
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buzzeswoman2008

i use the charger that comes with the phone and when i plug it into anything but the one outlet that works...which is actually an extension cord everything is fine. but when i plug it into my computer or any other outlet in my house it connects and starts charging and then after a min or less it disconnects and tells me to plug it into a charger.

based on some additional research and some advice from xda forums, the battery burn seems to have something in particular to do with sd card usage in lollipop, or especially having installed some apps to the sd card (which I have in kitkat).. I wonder if the folks who report having no issues are NOT using sd cards? I tried moving the apps back to the main device, but it seems like it still uses some aspect of the sd card for now and thus I remain still having excess battery usage unless I attempt to factory reset (which I am still refraining from, as that is not really clear whether it will 100% improve the problem anyhow). I will attempt to experiment with safe mode for an extended period and see if there's any improvement (although it doesn't seem really a fair test since most of my apps will not be available in that mode).

I have a micro sd card but do not put apps on it, only pictures and music.

My battery today with moderate usage has used 17% in just over 7 hours.

Haven't really disabled anything or done anything out of the ordinary like I used to have to do on my S4 just to make it through a day.

Just curious (if you are running Gsam at least, since built in battery usage doesn't show you everything) if you see unified daemon using much battery, mine only shows 4s of cpu and 0.1% but I have seen elsewhere that that process was killing other samsung devices (S5 for instance) but a few chimed in with older Note models with the same report.

Update - I tried removing the sd card for a few days, but it made no noticeable difference in battery usage performance. Overall battery usage is still noticeably worse than KitKat. Based on all the reports about poor S6 battery life, I suspect it is just a Lollipop issue in general!

It isn't globally an issue though, I know of many including my own that have upgraded to Lollipop and have had no issues after the first few days in fact mine has improved in battery life since Lollipop. Have you tried running it in safe mode for a while to see how the battery does? If in safe mode it operates significantly better then there is an app that isn't Lollipop happy.

will try that next, although all my apps are up-to-date and it's not exactly apples-to-apples test if most apps are not running.

testing in safe mode for a couple of hours

- battery usage is somewhat better, but not dramatically so

- safe mode isn't very useful (as most apps aren't available), nor safe (as some non-internal apps come up anyhow via notification - can't access them directly from the home screen, but can bring them to the front by clicking the notification and then switch back via the app switcher)

- most apps aren't running, so it's not really a very interesting test anyhow. the main point still being that we never had any battery issues under kitkat even with all apps running.

jrey03

Battery drains consistently overnight with no use by me. Note 4, after clearing the cache and factory reset.

It is an interesting test because running in safe mode proves that it isn't lollipop directly it is an application that is causing the problem, usually when this happens especially when it is only select phones it comes down to an application that isn't behaving correctly under lollipop, an app that you are using that others aren't using.

Also apps being up to date doesn't matter if the app maker(s) haven't updated the apps for lollipop, sometimes it takes days, weeks or even months for that to happen.

Ann154

Where's the blame for Samsung. They are the ones who wrote the code as well as how much resources to use in writing it.