[Nasir Jones]

good or bad?

[Marty_LK]

I find it to be actually quite good for an Android. I believe I could get through 2 days on a charge. Maybe more. In standby it could maybe get several days...4, 5 or 6 even.

[aNYthing24]

Varies. I'm able to get 4-5 hours of screen time with the stock battery though, and that's pretty good.

[jivegirl14]

I find it to be actually quite good for an Android. I believe I could get through 2 days on a charge. Maybe more. In standby it could maybe get several days...4, 5 or 6 even.

Hmm I can get about a day and a bit, nearly two on mine. I'd love to get more, so any tips are welcome. Certain things drain the battery I find - any of my With Friends, which I'm addicted to right now, but at least I know that. My nice display can be a battery hog as well. I do have my email set up to synch but don't have my social networking stuff synching at all. I just discoverd my weather widget synchs and I'm making that manual and I do close apps I'm not using.
I don't have that many widgets enabled at the moment but that may change. It's not bad battery life but if I could improve it (without rooting it) I'm keen to know. If I can't without rooting it then I'd also like to know.

[Marty_LK]

Hmm I can get about a day and a bit, nearly two on mine. I'd love to get more, so any tips are welcome. Certain things drain the battery I find - any of my With Friends, which I'm addicted to right now, but at least I know that. My nice display can be a battery hog as well. I do have my email set up to synch but don't have my social networking stuff synching at all. I just discoverd my weather widget synchs and I'm making that manual and I do close apps I'm not using.
I don't have that many widgets enabled at the moment but that may change. It's not bad battery life but if I could improve it (without rooting it) I'm keen to know. If I can't without rooting it then I'd also like to know.

I can't say with certainty that mine would get a full 2 days out of a charge, just correlating the amount of power left at bedtime. I'm not a heavy user either. As far as tips for better battery life, I try to make sure I disable any redundancy. Like the weather apps - I use Weatherbug Elite as my weather source for Fancy Widgets and disable the built-in weather from Samsung. Anything that I don't use I disable. I also disabled the cool lockscreen news & info functions. I like them but can't justify their power consumption enough to keep them while I have perfectly viable news and info apps on homescreens. I also make sure anything that syncs background data does so at a wider rate than default. Email syncing, for instance, will usually setup with a default syncing rate of 15 to 30 minutes. I set mine to 1 hour. My weather and news apps likewise sync data at 1 hour intervals.

The main issue Android has with power consumption that iOS doesn't have are the widgets. An iPhone can achieve outstanding battery life because of the lack of battery hogging widgets. It's likely the main reason Apple hasn't altered iOS to something new and different. Once they start adding widgets into the mix, the battery life would suffer.

[DX9]

I charge every day. I use my phone for everything. I text a lot, phone calls, emails etc. I own 2 businesses so It is a big part of my day. I have 3 email accounts synced also. I listen to music and browse the web also a good amount. I roughly get about 4.5 hrs of screen time on a charge.

[jivegirl14]

I am pretty much going to disable any widgets l don't really need. With Home screens I am finding I don't really need several of them. I have my weather widget set to update hourly.
I did have power saving on but turned it off.
To be honest I don't find the battery life that bad considering what the Samsung S3 does and offers. My 9900 had awful battery life and I did far less with it.
Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk 2

[jivegirl14]

I checked out weather bug elite but was a bit leery of the poor overview from users. I did find an Accuweather app though and I got that. Might try Weather bug later.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk 2

[Marty_LK]

I checked out weather bug elite but was a bit leery of the poor overview from users. I did find an Accuweather app though and I got that. Might try Weather bug later.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk 2

Yeah, it doesn't matter which weather app you use - use the one you like best - but make sure it is the only one syncing. I use WB Elite because it's the paid app that Amazon made free for a day a long time ago. Accuweather is a really nice one as well as a few others.

[OniBerry]

I have no complaints regarding battery power. Easily get two full days out of it. No more making trips to my office to charge my device during the day.....awesome!

[tedzone]

Phone is fantastic. I've never used an android as my main phone for more than two straight days...until this one--been on it for almost a month and still going strong. I love it. I'm sure I'll go to the iPhone 5 when it comes but that's just me...nothing against the s3

[jivegirl14]

For anyone who would like some tips for maximizing their SGIII battery life here are some things I did. I posted this on the Android Central forum in response to a thread. I've seen marked improvement in my battery life already which is great.

I had a Blackberry 9900 which had relatively poor battery performance. The SG3 does a lot more so I was expecting the usage to be higher, however like you my screen typically showed 55%-60% usage of battery power... seemingly even when it wasn't on for most of the time. I wondered why and if I could get even more from my battery so I've been checking and testing I now have it down to 36%! I think I can get it even lower... with time.
I've reduced battery drain quite a bit. My Samsung Galaxy S3 is not rooted.

Here are some of the things I've done (and am testing):
Limit Background Processes to no more than 4 (it's in settings > developer options> limit background processes. By default it's set at standard... and that has over 50 processes running on my phone by default.

I turned on power saving mode, but as I did not like the black screen in my email unchecked this option and have the screen white still.

I close tasks from task manager when I'm not using them (and clear RAM)
Turned off automatic brightness and haptic feedback.
Turn off smart stay... I rarely use it.
Set the screen shut-off time to after 1 minute of inactivity.
I also clear the memory...from task manager. It frees up ram as it closes stuff that really doesn't need to be running.

The most important thing I've done - is get Juice Defender (Ultimate) and I can see the improvement in battery life already. If you get it you will see why and you can see what saps the battery... seeking wi-fi/mobile network signals is the worst battery sapper there is. Try the free versions of Juice Defender, you will probably see a marked improvement. JD also gives many tips for maximizing battery on the phone and the paid version offers tons of customizations. It's great.

I also make the phone sleep when not in use (switch off the screen not power down) and I have my email synch every 15 mins. Widgets drain battery so any auto-synching I've disabled (including Facebook). Using social networking sites makes the screen use lots of battery. I manually synch my weather app.

What else? Oh yes, I removed Google Plus and Social Scopr beta and in Battery saving mode limited max CPU.
Also be sure to turn off location/gps apps auto synching or altogether, as they eat battery.

Juice defender is still training my phone to spot wi-fi and connect/disconnect as needed. I believe when this is done the battery life will improve even more. You can even configure apps. Apps don't really use up my battery but that awesome screen takes the lion's share so best to be aware of how to maximize the battery.

Note that if you limit background processes and then restart the phone the phone resets the background processes back to standard, which is rather annoying. And I have not noticed any degradation in performance so I ensure I limit background process.

Hope this helps.

[Marty_LK]

For anyone who would like some tips for maximizing their SGIII battery life here are some things I did. I posted this on the Android Central forum in response to a thread. I've seen marked improvement in my battery life already which is great.

I had a Blackberry 9900 which had relatively poor battery performance. The SG3 does a lot more so I was expecting the usage to be higher, however like you my screen typically showed 55%-60% usage of battery power... seemingly even when it wasn't on for most of the time. I wondered why and if I could get even more from my battery so I've been checking and testing I now have it down to 36%! I think I can get it even lower... with time.
I've reduced battery drain quite a bit. My Samsung Galaxy S3 is not rooted.

Here are some of the things I've done (and am testing):
Limit Background Processes to no more than 4 (it's in settings > developer options> limit background processes. By default it's set at standard... and that has over 50 processes running on my phone by default.

I turned on power saving mode, but as I did not like the black screen in my email unchecked this option and have the screen white still.

I close tasks from task manager when I'm not using them (and clear RAM)
Turned off automatic brightness and haptic feedback.
Turn off smart stay... I rarely use it.
Set the screen shut-off time to after 1 minute of inactivity.
I also clear the memory...from task manager. It frees up ram as it closes stuff that really doesn't need to be running.

The most important thing I've done - is get Juice Defender (Ultimate) and I can see the improvement in battery life already. If you get it you will see why and you can see what saps the battery... seeking wi-fi/mobile network signals is the worst battery sapper there is. Try the free versions of Juice Defender, you will probably see a marked improvement. JD also gives many tips for maximizing battery on the phone and the paid version offers tons of customizations. It's great.

I also make the phone sleep when not in use (switch off the screen not power down) and I have my email synch every 15 mins. Widgets drain battery so any auto-synching I've disabled (including Facebook). Using social networking sites makes the screen use lots of battery. I manually synch my weather app.

What else? Oh yes, I removed Google Plus and Social Scopr beta and in Battery saving mode limited max CPU.
Also be sure to turn off location/gps apps auto synching or altogether, as they eat battery.

Juice defender is still training my phone to spot wi-fi and connect/disconnect as needed. I believe when this is done the battery life will improve even more. You can even configure apps. Apps don't really use up my battery but that awesome screen takes the lion's share so best to be aware of how to maximize the battery.

Note that if you limit background processes and then restart the phone the phone resets the background processes back to standard, which is rather annoying. And I have not noticed any degradation in performance so I ensure I limit background process.

Hope this helps.

Wonderful tips, and thanks. I would like to add to them this one thing: Smart Stay. Set the display timeout to a minimum - I have mine at 1 minute - and enable Smart Stay in the system's Display menu. Smart Stay keeps an eye on the user's face to detect if the user is watching the phone display or is away and turns the display off at the set timeout if the user isn't watching the display. It will keep the display on indefinitely if it sees the users gaze. This combined with all those great tips you provided should really make a long lasting charge.

[peargood]

I've been tempted by the S3 but have a few concerns:

1. For heavy usage, eg Email, Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Path, etc, how long can the phone last? (Meaning how long can I use the phone until it dies if I'm running all of the above?
2. Is the email as fast and reliable as a BB?
3. How readable is the screen under sunlight?
4. How easily is it to touch-type? I've been so used to the Bolds keyboard and touchtype on iOS drove me nuts. I need something which is extremely easy to type on, cause I'm constantly on Whatsapp and Emails.
5. Can we customise the LED alerts like how we can on BB? (I've been using BeBuzz for the past 3 years)

All in all, I do not want to lose any bit of the functionality of my 9900 when switching to Android. At the same time, I do like the apps offering and awesome camera on the S3.

Appreciate any help on the above questions.

Thank you!

xx