The Glade 4.0

A month or so ago, I sold my Kindle Fire HDX and Google Nexus 7 (2013) and replaced them with a Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4", mainly due to the Super AMOLED screen (my more complete thoughts on the device are here).

My question though is...why does the battery suck so much in standby, and what can I do to prevent it? I'll set it on the nightstand and when I pick it up the next morning, it's dropped a good 20% from where I left it the night before. It burns battery faster than my iPad Air or iPhone 5S during use, certainly, but the standby thing is killing any use I have for it. My Android devices have never held charges quite so well as my iOS ones, but this is ridiculous and renders the device almost unusable.

I've turned off everything I can think of, particularly location updates. Is there some magic bullet solution I'm missing?

You have a defective tablet. My Galaxy Tab S 7" takes approximately 8 weeks to discharge when not in use. I'm not joking; it's battery life is as least as good as my Kindle Paper White, if not better.

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Agreed. My Note 10.1 has an AMAZING battery. I can get by with charging it once a week or so if I'm not using it heavily for reading or whatever. I'll get 10-12 hours or so out of it if I'm just using it for reading on the kindle app.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Defective.

The only thing I can think of is, "is the screen somehow staying powered intermittently?" There's no way it should be sucking that much juice.

The other thing to check, I suppose, might be whether the antenna is searching for a connection vs. already connected.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah, decided to do a test. I put it on the charger last night (it was down to 20% or so), then pulled it off the charger before I went to sleep, and recorded the times and battery power displayed. Note: I did not use the tablet at all today, only opening it up thrice to get these power readings and then immediately closing the smart cover back.

9/2 12:26 AM - 100%
9/2 8:18 AM - 90%
9/2 9:12 PM - 72%

To whom do I talk to about this? I bought the tablet at Best Buy but I think I'm past my 45 days (and I don't think I know where the receipt is anyway). I presume Samsung has a 1-year manufacturer's warranty, but should I go to Best Buy or try to call Samsung? This is a pain in the ***.

Is the smart cover maybe not that smart? Is the screen staying powered up the whole time or turning off?

In settings--> Battery--> usage, what is the top battery drain in the list?

But I would go back to BB first. They should have record of your purchase even if you have misplaced your receipt.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I checked the screen thing, and the cover is turning it off. Here's what the battery thingie shows though.

Checking the battery thingie after 24 hours off-charger of non-use would be the most informative way to do it, though. Is the 42% screen just from that 2-hour block where you were presumably playing Doctor Who, or is the screen sucking juice while you think it should be asleep, too?

The slope of the standby time is steeper than I'd expect, particularly for a beefy battery the likes of which would be employed to power a giant Super AMOLED screen.

I'll admit, though, that maybe your expectations and mine are wildly different; I've always just thrown any devices I use daily on the charger overnight as a rule of habit, and have never had battery life problems with modern battery tech and my variety of Nexus devices. They last the day even with some power-hungry screens, network-searching antennae, and frequent use, often with moderately hungry games and such.

As such, I don't even really notice the standby consumption on them, because a 3-day standby life is the same as a 7-day standby life for my usage patterns: irrelevant.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

31 hours of juice on a 53% charge? This makes you upset? That's cute.

I modify my defective statement to be about your expectations instead! Perform a battery drain test and see if you get anywhere near the review claims of 12 hours.

Well, the last hour or so of that looks to be back on the charger. It was probably on 25-30% after those 30 hours, some of which looked to be pretty heavy use.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I suggest lowering the brightness and less Dr. Who.

I'm not really sure how that's reading...I put it on the charger the night before, used it during the day (draining it to around 20-30%, then plugged it in that evening, ran it back up to 100%, then pulled the charger, took the reading (in my post above), and clicked it to standby and went to sleep. When I woke up, I took the second reading, and put it back to standby. When I got home yesterday evening, I took the third reading. I used it some for DW:L, put it back on the charger for a while (not to 100%), pulled it off, let it sit overnight, and took that screenshot this morning.

My concern is the standby drain. Doctor Who: Legacy is pretty intensive, so it burning up the battery is fine. It (battery life) performs more or less in line with my expectation during actual use, and I don't really have any concerns (though DW:L doesn't burn the battery on my iPhone or iPad Air nearly as much as it burns it on Android, though that might be programming inefficiencies on their end?). But I've never had a device drop so precipitously during standby. I can go days without using my iPad Air (or, for a closer size comparison, iPad mini) with almost no standby drain. Is this a standard Android thing? My old Nexus 7s (2012 and 2013) didn't drop like this; nor did my Kindle Fire HDX.

Perhaps you have some sort of active notification system coupled with an extraordinarily high default brightness setting that's eating up battery.

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Which is why I'd like to see a battery use screenshot after a 24 hour standby-only session from full charge.

Standby-only will rule out normal screen use (if the screen is eating up more than, like, 3% after 24 hours of non-use, it's coming on erroneously and that's what needs to be tracked down), and would provide a better baseline of standby performance unpolluted with Doctor Who use and the unknown share of OS cycles to support Doctor Who.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'll give that a go tonight and report back. Thanks all.

Haven't had a chance to do so, but I think I'm just going to sell it. Hardware's lovely but my frustration level with Android is too damn high.