Samsung S3 battery replacement - any recommendations?
 

I want to try a new battery in my S3 to see if it improves battery life. When I got the phone I could get 2 days use out of it, 15 months later and it just about lasts the day.

It's either the battery or battery drain from apps/sd card. It's running stock 4.1.2 and rooted but no other changes to the stock rom. I use battery doctor for killing off heavy draining apps such as gmail and google+ but they don't heavily drain every day.

What standard size battery is recomended? I am thinking of just getting another official Samsung one (or so they say) off ebay for £6.99 and see how it compares for very little cost.

I have seen batteries like ZeroLemon and Anker with huge mAh capacities but they turn the phone into a brick which i'm not interested in. I just want to keep it the original size with back cover on.

I've got the Zero Lemon one and it's surprising how quickly you get used to, it hardly even notice it my jeans pocket anty more.

one bad thing is they tend to "bend " in the middle and after a couple of mishaps dropping mine it stopped working and replacing became a problem as there is no longer a UK source I got stung import tax for the replacement

Ive got a brand new, genuine Galaxy S3 battery you can have for £8 posted.

My S3 done this aswell and I bought a new genuine samsung battery and it made no difference at all, I just think they have a shelf life and usually by the end of your contract theyre done

It's not so much of a shelf life but they need a factory reset like a pc being rebuilt after a couple of years. However i've done the factory reset and wiped cache etc and it still will only last a day with light use.

The battery doctor app shows me apps causing heavy draining and this seems to be one of the issues. Apps like gmail and google+ do it most often but it can be any app out of the blue.

I think I may try a custom rom and see if that helps as the stock rom clearly has issues with apps getting stuck on a loop and then draining the battery.

Mines not in contract either I bought it payg and its only 15 months old so can't afford to just write it off yet.

Thanks but i'm not getting a new battery just yet.

Thats pretty much the norm with the S3, it was when i had mine. The screen is the biggest culprit in battery drain, what % do you have the screen set at ? Wi-Fi is another battery drain, check what apps are live and turn off the ones you don't need to constantly run.

The advantage that the majority of android phones have over apple is you can change the battery easily, you can carry a spare battery around in your pocket, they are only small and take up no space at all.

Thats what i bought the spare battery for which i never used in the end as i changed to the Galaxy Note 3

Thanks. When I first got it I would get 2 full days out of it with light to medium use.

I have the screen set to auto with the slider set to the darkest setting. Wifi is on all day as I work from home but on the flip side I have mobile data turned off.

The issue is definitely linked to heavy draining apps which are reported by battery doctor. The worst 2 are gmail and google+ but they are an integral part of android so can't be uninstalled. I don't even use google+

I've searched the web about heavy draining apps in android and there are hundreds of answers/theories/suggestions.

Have you turned off the location reporting for google? Also select the battery saving option under location as GPS can drain the battery. If you're not using gmail, it shouldn't be using much battery, have you turned off auto sync - under the settings/accounts menu.

I had an S2 with the larger battery, just managed to last me through the day, I've now got an LG G2 and the battery life is incredible, I thought the nexus 5 was good, but the G2 is in a different class.
Just replaced my wife's S3 with an S4, the S3 just seemed to get slower and slower, not one of samsungs best phones in my opinion.

Yes had location reporting turned off for google. However just opened google+ and it went through some steps and then I went into settings and was able to turn it off. I've then been able to uninstall it fom apps so at last the bloody thing has gone.

Gmail however I use as my primary email so I have autosync on for that but only for last 7 days but hasn't made any difference to when I had it set for all mail.

I saw the G3 mentioned today and that looks a very nice phone and possibly a Note 3 beater - I really wanted the form factor of the Note 3 but was put off buying Samsung again after how i've seen my S3 decline after a year. I expect longer than that from a phone. Thing is I really like my S3 when it's working well and the camera is excellent, I just want more battery life and 32gb onboard storage oh and to lose the cheap plastic feel.

On my Note 3 i'm getting around 1 half days from the battery from a full charge, i do a fair bit of web browsing, i use google maps for navigation, emails, watch the odd youtube clip, use various apps etc etc

The battery is top drawer on the Note 3, i'm sure if you did some web searching you will get similar opinions as i read them myself before buying one.

I've read about it ever since it came out having wanted the Note 2 and know everyone who owns one loves it. I still don't like the casing which lets the Note 3 down and so wanted to wait and see what the Note 4 brings and what else comes out this year. If the Note 4 keeps the low quality feel of previous models i'll give up on Samsung.

The LG G3 really is looking a contender for this years top phone.

I have a Note 2 and it still looks like the day I took it out of the box. It is very hard wearing and well built.

Only the polycarbonate back is cheaper material but it makes it lighter and thinner.

Upgraded the battery to a 4200 mah from ebay as I play a game that saps power.

I know this isn't very relevant, but my S5 can do 2 days easily with moderate/heavy use. Like you with the same usage my S3 lasted a day at most the whole time i had it. Maybe time for an upgrade?

I've only had it 15 months though having paid £350 for it (was the cheapest by far at that time) and so for me I should be keeping it at least 2 years before changing it. I use a sim only deal in it which is unlimited everything and to go contract with a new phone and get unlimited everything would cost a fortune which I won't sign up to.

There are deals to be had but i hear you, of course some of that contract cost can be offset by getting a free handset. You end up paying either way you go really. I'm paying £38/mnth for unlimited 4G, texts (who uses these anymore?) and 2000mins, but the S5 was free and i got £150 back for the S3 on ebay, which was also a free upgrade.

I'm paying £15 a month for just the sim, and its a rolling month contract so no tie in at all which is what I like. The idea was to get a minimum of 2 years out of the S3 which would work out at £14.58 per month for just the phone meaning I was paying less than £30 a month for unlimited everything and no 2 year tie in.

At least on the upside the S3 charges very quickly so when the battery does run low plugging it into a usb3 port for 15 minutes gives it a big boost.

Try fully cycling the battery a few times, all the way from 100% to 0% without topping it up and then give it a full charge on the oem charger.

Partial cycles used to kill my RC helicopter batteries (in reality just housebrick sized mobile batteries) and cycling them often helped.

I have the S3 too and have noticed the same decline in performance and battery life, back to apple come the iPhone 6 me thinks.

I think a lot of it will be around the version of android too. Being stuck on 4.1.2 is a joke, 4.3 is an S3 death trap as Samsung screwed it up so can't move to that. I think many of the issues around apps getting stuck and causing heavy draining is because of the old version of android and if it had been updated to 4.4.2 it would be working a lot better but Samsung have dropped support for the I9300 so it won't ever get KitKat.

That's leaning me towards trying a 3rd party KitKat rom but only if a stable one exists and it isn't missing a host of features.

http://www.ibtimes.com/android-44-ki...axy-s3-1584365

Those clever chaps at XDA are having a go and I will keep an eye on it as it looks promising.

Samsung dropping support on the basis 1gb ram is below spec is nonsense when KitKat was designed to run on devices with 512m ram and it's another reason why i'm put off buying another Samsung phone.

You can and i recommend you do. I updated my S3 to 4.3 a couple of months before i sold it, i didn't have any issues at all. I have about 200 apps. The problems with 4.3 and the S3 were when it was initially released, but they were fixed.

I must admit kitkat is a major improvement, its a shame they wouldn't release it for the S3.

Thanks, all i'd read was 4.3 on the S3 was to be avoided at all costs. I'll look further into it, will mean unrooting and getting back to stock before Kies will do it though so a load of faffing about.