Factory reset brought back my cell phones battery life!

[Tripplebeards]

I’ve been struggling with my cell phones battery life for a good year plus now. I had enough yesterday and did a factory reset. I forgot to do a back up in Google drive to save all my contacts and photos before I did it so I lost everything but I can tell you my battery life is back to like it was when I bought my old samsung galaxy 3 straight talk phone years ago. Yes I’m cheap and I like my phone. I’ve had it for a good 5+ years and paid a couple hundred bucks for it at the time and don’t want to upgrade if I don’t have to. Before I did the reset as soon as I unplugged the charger it seemed like every three seconds or so I could watch the battery countdown drop and within probably an hour and a half it needed to be charged again as it was completely drained. After the reset yesterday morning I left it unplugged. I was happy to see my battery was over 3/4 charged when I checked it this morning so problem solved. The only bad part is straight talk has texted me a few times saying that I need to upgrade my phone because my old model that I have will not work properly and drain faster with their new updated system. I wonder if there was something that straight talk downloaded in my phone causing the fast drain that I have now fixed? Either that or there had been programs that were running nonstop. I removed Facebook messenger and that seemed to help quite a bit with the drain about a month ago.

The only other thing I need to figure out now is why my phone does not want to charge properly with a car charger but charges fine when it’s in the house.

[nun2kute]

"The only other thing I need to figure out now is why my phone does not want to charge properly with a car charger but charges fine when it’s in the house. "

try a different charger, I have one in the house that is speedy and one that I have to baby sit because if it gets bumped it'll quit. the one in the truck I drive daily is slow but steady. not sure if it is the wires or a connection but all chargers are NOT the same

[Tripplebeards]

"The only other thing I need to figure out now is why my phone does not want to charge properly with a car charger but charges fine when it’s in the house. "

try a different charger, I have one in the house that is speedy and one that I have to baby sit because if it gets bumped it'll quit. the one in the truck I drive daily is slow but steady. not sure if it is the wires or a connection but all chargers are NOT the same


I had a lot of cords that wouldn’t charge my phone and we’re wiggling loose with a loose, poor connection and beeping on and off. I figured the phone port was shot I didn’t care if I broke it so I ended up taking it completely apart. I took a pliers and squeezed the metal “female” prong down that held my “male” charging end into the phone. It seem to fix it as it as the make end now went in with a tight, firm push and was charging fast again. I have to do this every few months. I tried about six different chargers in my truck with no lock and I have two different cigarette lighters I’m wondering if my alternator isn’t pushing as hard or if the cigarette lighters themselves just aren’t the greatest? I can charge it just fine in my dad‘s brand new car that actually has a port to plug the cord in direct.

[JBinMN]

I have found that turning off a lot of the apps that came with the phone & I do not use helps with battery charges. Another thing I do is leave the background light real low and just turn it up as I need it. I have also deleted some apps that I woulfd never use. with all of that I have seen a reduction in battery dying sonner than before.

G'Luck!


P.S. - If you want you can search the internet & look for tips that others recommend for your particular phone to help with keeping the charge up. Like: A lot of the apps use location services & run in the background, so if you turn them off in your "system" app, they will not be using the battery in the background & you don't realize it...

[Handloader109]

I know on my Samsung 8, if I don't restart it about once a week, there is enough junk in the background to eat up my battery in only a few hours. I usually get 12 to 16 hours depending on how much I use it.

[MaryB]

Sounds like the car charger isn't providing the 1 amp most phones use(some newer phones use 3 amps!).

[Tripplebeards]

I know on my Samsung 8, if I don't restart it about once a week, there is enough junk in the background to eat up my battery in only a few hours. I usually get 12 to 16 hours depending on how much I use it.
Now you tell me... It’s been draining the battery for almost two years like this and I just got to the point where it was getting extremely fast. Live and learn. I even bought two replacement batteries and it didn’t help.

I was pretty excited today. I unplugged it this morning and probably talked a good two plus hours on it and texted nonstop along with sending about 20 pictures while I was bow hunting in my stand today and still had over half battery life when I got home. Before I did this my phone would’ve been dead on the 25 minute drive to my property.

[Mr_Sheesh]

Another possibility is that any malware that got onto the phone would have been eating battery power, the factory reset threw it off there so its fixed now.

Malware tends to be really badly written garbage, anyone good enough to write good code gets paid better for the good stuff!

[Bookworm]

Most of the time, when one purchases a phone from the service provider, it comes preloaded with dozens of garbage apps. Most of those apps you will never use, and don't even want, but it's impossible to remove them from the phone.

I quit buying from the service provider (ATT, Verizon, Sprint, whatever) and I now purchase phones directly from the manufacturer. Motorola in my case.

The phone comes with a clean Android system, and nothing else. That means, of course, one needs to find and install whatever apps one uses.

Generally,the friendly person at the service provider store will help.

[Tripplebeards]

It’s still going strong after a couple of days of testing. The battery life is tremendous!

[MrWolf]

Tripplebeards thanks for the post. Mine just started doing the same thing after almost three years. Backed it up and gonna try a factory reset today.

[Lloyd Smale]

my flip phone is probably 15 years old and still on the original battery and holds a charge just fine. Ive left it on the table for 2 months and picked it up and it was just fine [smilie=1: The real cool thing about it is I never had to learn to type with two fingers or text, snap chat or facebook and don't have to check it every two minutes to see if something new is on it. 8-)

[fecmech]

my flip phone is probably 15 years old and still on the original battery and holds a charge just fine. Ive left it on the table for 2 months and picked it up and it was just fine The real cool thing about it is I never had to learn to type with two fingers or text, snap chat or facebook and don't have to check it every two minutes to see if something new is on it.
Aha, another dinosaur out there! The only time mine gets turned on is to make a call. The last thing I need is a "smart"phone. I spend enough time on a computer screen as it is. I can see where a fellow could get hooked very easily.

[SSGOldfart]

All of those apps nobody wants are running in the background so before you put away your phone manually turn off these apps and your battery life will increase 3 times as long as before it got longer. I just tap home and cut them off before closing my phone. Your mileage may very.[smilie=1:

[Lloyd Smale]

ill give that an amen. Had to go to camp by myself and do some work that involved a bit of ladder work so I took it along. First time this year it left the house in my pocket and still was never turned on.
Aha, another dinosaur out there! The only time mine gets turned on is to make a call. The last thing I need is a "smart"phone. I spend enough time on a computer screen as it is. I can see where a fellow could get hooked very easily.

[MrWolf]

Factory reset didn't work. I hate non-removable batteries.

[Tripplebeards]

I went to the dollar store and bought a new cigarette lighter cell phone charging plug to install the Dollar store cord into and it’s charging great...knock on wood.