Gingerbread OTA and battery life issue
longplaypg
Enthusiast - Level 3

I received the Gingerbread OTA update. I am still working through testing everything to see if the phone is now the way it should be, but I keep stumbling on 1 issue with the battery life.

 

Yes my battery is now over a year old of occasional use.

 

When I first got the gingerbread update I had 100% battery and applied the update.

That day I got over 9 hours straight of MP3 playback over Bluetooth using the stock music player.

I charged the battery to full that night and left it on the charger overnight.

The next day I got 4 hours straight of MP3 playback over Bluetooth using the stock music player.

I charged it up 100% at work and proceeded to get another 4 hours straight.

 

Since that day I have never seen the 8 hours again.

 

One interesting note is that in the 4 hour increments the music player will stop when the battery hits the orange low warning. I can switch over to streaming music videos and play for another hour till the battery fully dies.

 

I have tried to recondition the battery using some information I found.

I have factory reset the phone and updated stock apps only.

I have factory reset the phone and never logged into the market place to keep apps from auto updating.

 

I have noticed on my factory resets things are different. It wants to erase the SD card. You can do the factory reset without erasing the SD card. I am not sure exactly what the difference is there and why the default is to erase the SD card. Sadly both factory reset are not behaving as the previous one did. Normally after the factory reset the setup wizard would start and help you activate your phone. It seems the new default is to not run that process or I got a bad update on my phone.

 

I have also noticed as a user here suggested that after the phone reaches 100% charge, even though it is plugged in, the phone seems to switch over to using battery mode draining the battery and never topping it back up since it still plugged in.

 

Shouldn't a year old battery last longer? Shouldn't I be able to stream music for longer than 9 hours? I don't have the screen on, all interaction is through the Bluetooth headset, doesn't mater if email is on with push mode or totally off and not even activated, no calling, no text messages, and just solely trying to listen music like a mp3 player.

 

Suggestions?

Is your Samsung Fascinate Gingerbread OTA doing the same things?

 

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Re: Gingerbread OTA and battery life issue
longplaypg
Enthusiast - Level 3

Update...

Today is the exception since I posted about my issue.

The phone has been up 8 hours and 54 minutes so far on a single charge.

I have streamed Bluetooth music for 8 hours straight so far.

The battery is currently reporting

25% capacity

3690mv for the voltage

according to OS monitor

 

I have not seen anything abnormal through OS monitor  so that is probably why I got the 8 hrs play time today.

 

No solution to fixing this yet and apparently others are not having a similar issue or playback time with streaming mp3s...

 

 

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Re: Gingerbread OTA and battery life issue
tereztaylor07
Newbie

I am also having battery issues.  I let it charge while I am sleeping, and then when I take it off charge, I only get a few hours use.  I have changed nothing on the phone besides the update.  It used to last me two days, now I am lucky to get six hours of standby with little usage.  I have also seen very little posted about it, so not sure why so few of us are having problems.  Would love to see it fixed though, pretty much just makes the phone an expensive paperweight.

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Re: Gingerbread OTA and battery life issue
Not applicable

To those of you having battery issues, we want to get that resolved A-S-A-P! To be very honest, the feedback about the Gingerbread update has been great.  I looked to see if we had any reports of diminished battery life, and I haven't found any. Here is a video with some great battery-saving tips to get started: Battery Tips.

 

If you check the battery usage statistics, what is the main battery life sucker? Settings> About Phone> Battery User. If the main culprit is an application, I recommend uninstalling it. Has anyone attempted a master reset to see if that resolves the issue? Would anyone be willing to give that a shot and report back with results.

 

Please post any news, updates, or fixes you may encounter.

 

Regards,

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Re: Gingerbread OTA and battery life issue
Chris1967
Newbie

The reply from the Verizon tech isn't especially helpful. It's just been a few days since you pushed out the update, and you've already got three posts about battery issues. Make this #4. So yes, there just might be a problem.

 

I'm not a heavy phone user, and I know how to conserve the battery. On a daily basis, I mostly text, check e-mail and news, and keep my schedule and contacts. I often make it to the end of the day with 80% plus still showing on the battery. This morning after I got the Gingerbread update, I was below 75% before I even made it to the office -- and no wifi, GPS, Bluetooth, or optional apps running. I hadn't even checked e-mail yet.

 

I'll be checking back here after a few days to provide an update and see whether others are having similar problems or a solution has been found. This is making me nervous.

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Re: Gingerbread OTA and battery life issue
rfomaha
Newbie

I too have noticed increased battery drain since the GB update.  Additionally, I have begun getting an error when attempting to install or update apps stating insufficient memory on the device, yet I have over 1 GB available on the hardware and the majority of my SD card is empty. I've migrated every app I can to SD, and I continue to get the error. I have noticed that if I restart the phone and immediately update, I can usually sneak one install or update through, then I have to restart again. I believe that there may be a background process running that is sucking up both memory AND battery and that the issues may be linked. Again, the issue magically appeared when GB pushed out.

 

 

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Re: Gingerbread OTA and battery life issue
longplaypg
Enthusiast - Level 3

A master reset definetly did not solve the issue for me.

 

On my last and most recent reset I noticed it did execute the setup wizard like it had done prior to gingerbread. This time I did not configure anything on the phone and just left it sit. I never opened the market either. About an hour later i got tired of no phone and started the wizard on my own so that the phone was at least activated. I did not configure any additinal email accounts just the standard single google account for my phone withthe gmail program.

 

I charge the battery to 100% with the phone on

Unplug the ac charger from the phone

ask the phone to power down

wait another 2 minutes after the screen goes black and the buttons are no longer lit

plug in the ac charger and it will top up the battery to a full 100% and not the OS 100% that it thinks it should be

Most nights i just leave it off charging to that last 100% since i have seen problems with trickle charging after it reaches 100% int he OS and then starts using the battery the rest of the night!

Next morning unplug the AC charger and ask the phone to boot

 

I got 8-9 hours playing mp3s streamed over bluetooth, 1 text message in and 1 text message out, but no phone calls and no other activity on the phone. Not bad but i feel it should do better!

 

I actived 3 exchange email accounts in push mode. I had heard push mode was supposed to be the best battery saver. Well with the included email (not gmail) app my battery went down in less than 4 hours! Today i have forced the email to manual mode instead of push for peak and off peak times. I will see if i get 8-9 hours again.

 

The rest of the phone is all factory defaults, boring, and pretty much useless. So much for a smart phone being smart and handy. Guess i need to buy about 3 batteries to get through a day and find a way to charge them as i run around throughout the day without ac or a way to charge.

 

 

 

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Re: Gingerbread OTA and battery life issue
Not applicable

Rfomaha, for the memory issue you are having, try clearing cache from some of your large files like Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc. Also, clear emails from your trash folder. Check to see what applications are running in Settings>Applications>Running Services. The phone may be showing a lot of internal memory available, but application memory can be affected by running applications, high amounts of cache in applications, etc. 

 

Also, I will report the battery issue to our product team for further investigation. 

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Re: Gingerbread OTA and battery life issue
rfomaha
Newbie

Well, I don't use FB or Twitter.  I use the Gmail app for my email and I'm not sure I understand how deleting a web based trash folder would help, so I am reluctant to do that unless someone can explain why it would help.  Having said that, I previously tried clearing cache, etc. to no avail.  Magically the memory issue has gone away. I did nothing different, but I haven't seen the issue for over a week (knock on wood).

 

Now, the battery issue continues. Yesterday I ran my phone connected to power all day at work.  I unplugged it and within 90 seconds I had a measurable drop in my battery bar at the top of the screen.  I didn't check the actual percent, but that bar should be full 90 seconds after I disconnect. By default wifi, bluetooth and GPS remain turned off at all times, i activate them only when needed and in use.

 

VZW - are we getting any resolution on the hideous battery performance?

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