Why Can't They Fix This?

[LEXXIUS]

4 minutes ago, transformdbz said:

Apparently it does use some battery even if the phone is kept in pocket or face down. Well atleast it does on the Exynos one.

This sucks big time for Exynos users.

[Phil Lane]

Could this be down to old fashioned radio power ? The radio will use more power in poor reception areas. Get Linus to carry two identical S9's and use a third phone for audio calls.

[LEXXIUS]

4 minutes ago, Manan2208 said:

Um lab tests don't account for the fact that a lot of times ppl  use and charge as well and phones also become hot something I seriously doubt happens which also degrades battery

Sure, but limiting the maximum charge and minimum discharge does reduce the wear of the battery.

[LEXXIUS]

5 minutes ago, Phil Lane said:

and use a third phone for audio calls

 I pictured Linus carrying multiple high-end phones around but when making a call he takes out a flip phone (or an 80's brick, which might be even funnier)!

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, yourbiggestfanStan said:

 

The best wearable for fitness is by far the Garmin Descent or Fenix. Battery life typically can go 3-10 days depending on use. The descent is a diving computer which is waterproof to 100 meters.

but I don't dive or need the extra battery life?

[PeterBocan]

This is why LTT sucks a little. If there's a deep problem with the software/hardware they are not capable of getting into it like a chad, plugging a phone in a debug mode and record the performance. I know, swapping $10k worth of processors is fun and easy, but not everything is in life...

https://elinux.org/images/8/83/Finding_performance_and_power_issues_on_android_systems--eric_moore.pdf
https://developer.android.com/studio/profile/battery-historian

[Streetguru]

1 hour ago, GabenJr said:

 

@LinusSebastian

Do you have android wear device/smart watch connected to your daily driver but not the other phones?

[Cakeman]

@LinusSebastian Have you looked into your sync settings such as email? Since you're such a busy guy, you probably receive a gorillion emails every day. If you have your sync setup like every few minutes, your daily driver could be pulling in a huge amount of email checks every few minutes, causing battery drainage. 

[ChronoGawd]

I’m glad I’m not the only one. I’ve had 30-40% of the battery life than anyone I know, on any phone OS, any phone or laptop... even after clean installs after a while.

 

What I figured is you’re probably an avid app switcher which often causes the OS to NOT background apps properly. For example, on iOS, if you don’t use an app for a while it will background the process and then eventually close it. But if you’re constantly switching and using a bunch of different apps, the OS doesn’t know what apps to close and which to keep open. Which means no apps close and all apps remain backgrounded at some level. 

 

See what happens on a cold boot, and force close every app and always on apps in the background.

 

Also, I’d see how your battery health is. As you know, when the phone gets hot, the battery cells die quicker both permanently and general battery life.

 

I’d suspect your battery health is significantly lower than your buddies due to its constant hot to touchiness.

[klein648]

Well, now where you have a perfectly working S9+, you could simply refund your other S9+ and simply use that one, right?

At least that would be the easiest way.

Otherwise I would check the energy options: If it is in the performance mode, it keeps the CPU clock high, even in standby.

This results in a power consumption in standby, as it would be on full power.

So maybe switching it off would help.

Trying out the energy saver modes could help making the problem more precise: when the processor clock is more restricted, does it heat up less?

If yes: It is still something running in the background

If no: Reset your android completely

 

does it still occcur?

if no: here you go

if yes: probably something broken with the phone. Maybe the battery is broken or the processor clock control is not working at smooth performance. 

 

Then send your phone back. Let it be a business of samsung and let it be a part of guarantee on your brand new phone.

[honna1612]

----THIS IS THE ANSWER---

a) Your sim card is physically faulty and has a low internal resistance, get a new one to test

 

b) your sd card is physically faulty

 

c) your samsung account is in an invalid broken state and it tries to sync all the time

 

Has to be one of those 3 since sim/sd handling is vendor specific and problem persists between samsung devices.

 

----THIS IS THE ANSWER---

[CyphirWrath]

I had this exact problem shortly after I bought my S8. In my case, it turned out to be Avast antivirus that was causing the drain. More recently, I have found my phone gets hot in my pocket. It turns out that if I place my S8 in my pocket with the screen facing my thigh, it heats up. Perhaps something to do with the Always-on-Display feature. This has only occurred within the last 2 months or so, after a software update I believe.

[Kindontheoutside]

I have been dealing with this exact problem since the s3. I've tried everything everyone is suggesting on here and in YouTube. I've rooted my phone, run all the battery stats apps, used the battery saving apps like Greenify, pretty much you name it, I've tried it. 

 

This last go-round, I ended up with an s7. I decided against rooting this one because the methods were iffy at best and were error-prone anyway.  So Greenify didn't do any good when I noticed the phone getting hot in my pocket.

 

I installed BetterBatteryStats and granted it "root" privileges using Android Development tools. This method identified a couple of problem apps (Facebook, Messenger, etc) so I installed those.

 

Things got better for a little bit and my phone wasn't getting hot as often, but then the battery started dying early again after a few weeks. That's when I discovered Samsungs in-house battery and app management software. 

 

Though I couldn't pinpoint an exact application using up the battery but background data or CPU usage, I knew it had to be one of those causing the phone to heat up. Using the Samsung software, I disabled background data usage for every app I deemed to be non-essential, which basically meant everything that wasn't SMS, launcher or system. Then I went through the battery settings to toggle always sleeping mode on these same apps.  After doing that, I was back to 20-30% at the end of the day.

 

Every once in a while I have to check these two settings to set any apps I may have installed to the correct settings.  Also, I have recently found an app called AccuBattery that monitors app usage and recommends when to disconnect the charger at around 80% to prevent excess cycling on the battery. As an aside, this app also analyzes battery health and shows that my battery has about 66% of it's stock capacity due to my bad habit of charging overnight every night. Shame on me. But at least I know what to do next time around!

 

Hope this helps someone. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. And what's great is that I don't notice any difference between in terms of notifications and keeping in the loop but I have a faster performing device that lasts all day without heavy usage.

[w3bb]

Exact same issue with my Note 5. I got it around launch, and after 6 months my battery just pooped. I'd be able to charge it in an hour or so when I woke up. So I'd leave at around 8AM and it would die between 12-3 in the afternoon. It varied a lot but it leaned closer to 12pm.

[Bassopt]

Posting a list off apps installed on Linus phone could be a start . But from the video, I assume all apps were also installed and configured on the second phone ? Make sure ALL , and I mea ALLL apps are exactly the same. Even unsuspectious things like using gboard keyboard or not can make a difference. For exemple when I get my note 9 I installed gboard and it was getting my phone warm idle. And battery was draining like crazy. Still no evedince of gboard on battery consumption graphs (apparently some apps simple don’t show there for some reason ) 

 

it can be also a probem with either WiFi or cellular.

I assume he imports all saved WiFi networks when he changes from one Samsung to another? Ex. From s9 to note 9? That can lead to a lot of problems if there is an issue how WiFi networks were saved. (I’ve seen that happening before ) 

it can also simply be a problem with celular provider. Were the SIM cards you guys bought for testing from the same network Linus uses? 

Going to settings and resetting all network configurations ( there’s an option there )  can solve a lot of these idle heating problems . I would start from there.

 

so anyway... pretty sure is not a Samsung  problem by but something you have installed and how it’s configured, since the same happens in two different devices. 

( do you use Samsung account? Have you checked if it’s not trying to sync endlessly and falling (seems to happen a lot for no reason ) .

 

 

 

p.s do you have any sd card on you phone? I once had a problem with note 8 using a Toshiba sd that was making the phone almost burning my leg. 

 

[Thaldor]

I don't know if this helps at all, but there might be some corruption in the bootloader or Android itself.

 

I had similar problems (fast battery drainage, phone getting warm without use) when I was playing around custom ROMs for Galaxy S3 4G back in the day. First time it happened reinstalling the custom ROM didn't change a thing but reinstalling the bootloader and installing the exactly same ROM fixed it. Second time reinstalling the ROM fixed the problem. I would remember I was using TWRP as bootlaoder and LineageOS (IIRC). It just seemed like there was something wrong with the OS that caused the phone go pretty near hand warmer and I would guess it was just a bad install and something went not that much wrong but wrong anyway (didn't even install any apps before the phone started to warm up).

[Claesfranhjo]

All I can think of is that the mobiles have been made different factories. Different mother cards and different batteries.
The cards may have different chips and other things that can take power.

And the batteries may differ from different factories.

If this is not the fault, pray to God.

[Bassopt]

4 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

I don't know if this helps at all, but there might be some corruption in the bootloader or Android itself.

 

I had similar problems (fast battery drainage, phone getting warm without use) when I was playing around custom ROMs for Galaxy S3 4G back in the day. First time it happened reinstalling the custom ROM didn't change a thing but reinstalling the bootloader and installing the exactly same ROM fixed it. Second time reinstalling the ROM fixed the problem. I would remember I was using TWRP as bootlaoder and LineageOS (IIRC). It just seemed like there was something wrong with the OS that caused the phone go pretty near nuclear and I would guess it was just a bad install and something went not that much wrong but wrong anyway.

Same problem happens on two different phones s9 and note 9 so that rules out bootloader. 

[Daniel644]

DON'T USE CAR CHARGES, especially don't have the charger plugged in when cranking the car, this sends a feedback spike into the phone damaging the battery, everyone I know that uses car chargers has shit battery life, while my phones last a full day with like 4-5 hours of screen on time and still have 30% and can go 2-3 days with lighter use.

[masamoto]

Wow I can't bother reading through all this since most posts don't seem relevant to the topic but here is my solution.

I actually had this problem with the S7. Try installing Simple System Monitor and check the CPU clock speeds and how many cores are active.
The problem I had is that when I use some Software that is CPU Intensive the Clockspeed and Active cores won't throttle down and stay stuck at high afterwards.
The S7 should idle in 4 cores @442Mhz and 2 cores @ 9-700Mhz with 2 cores switched off. But what I got was all 8 cores stuck @2Ghz+ while having no workload and the phone starts to get hot and draining the battery doing so.
The only way to fix it was by installing a custom Android version on it since Samsung is really slow with their Firmware Updates.
There where no active software in the background that drained the battery but the hardware acceleration itself was stuck in high that drained the battery.
I could follow up on the XDA forum what had to be changed to ensure that the clock speed would throttle down but that's something Samsung can figure out.
If you are willing to give it a try just install vanilla Lineage OS 8.1 with OpenGApps Pico and give the phone another spin.

[Lasse Bo Jensen]

Hi Linus Tech Tips.

 

Samsung Authorized Technician is writing.

 

Just to make it all clear, have you ever experienced this with a clean phone. There can be many reasons for this. But to eventually find the problem if it's something app related. Start with a totally factory resettet phone, and then download one app, test again, then the next app test again.. Is a long process but it can be one app there is bugging out and draining the battery.

 

Best Regards Lasse Bo Jensen

[Angela]

I have exactly the same problem. I seem to kill Samsung batteries while all my friends never have a problem. It starts out great and then plummets a little while in. I always buy a few generations back, so I've had an S3, an S5, and now an S7.

[Thaldor]

31 minutes ago, Bassopt said:

Same problem happens on two different phones s9 and note 9 so that rules out bootloader. 

With my experience with Samsung Gear S3 Classic I would say the problem can be anywhere and while it doesn't seem to affect Pixel it may very well be in the bootloader or OS also. Just to point out that Samsung had quite a problem for a good time with Gear S3s where they would overheat during charging (mine was around 5-10 minutes after putting it on the dock) and really not charge without being cooled in the middle and that was 100% problem with the OS/other firmware.

[RobinD]

12 minutes ago, Lasse Bo Jensen said:

Hi Linus Tech Tips.

 

Samsung Authorized Technician is writing.

 

Just to make it all clear, have you ever experienced this with a clean phone. There can be many reasons for this. But to eventually find the problem if it's something app related. Start with a totally factory resettet phone, and then download one app, test again, then the next app test again.. Is a long process but it can be one app there is bugging out and draining the battery.

 

Best Regards Lasse Bo Jensen

Hi Lasse Bo Jensen, 

I think it is suggested that the apps on the new Samsung device and Linus's device are the same. And presumably the setting were the same across the board as much as they could tell. 

If the above conclusions are correct. Then I conclude it is either;

Sorfware - A non app software issue (IE malware) or change in hidden settings (if that is a thing?)
or
Hardware - The battery is crap 

But I guess your opinion would be more insightful in this area, what would you think?

Regards
Robin

[RetroLogic]

Hi Linus, 

For my experience with Samsung phones, happens the same as you, they heat without any reason, or so I thought...

Turns out that now since I'm stuck with S7 (not edge) it would only heat if I ever keep a game in standby on the background, with wifi or 4G on... if I keep all apps closed, it would not drain as fast. Hope my comment helps you to determine the problem and come up with a permanent solution.