Cell Phone Professionals, Advise Me

[Jester]

Cell phone professionals, I need your advice. Not only do I trust and value your opinion, you are not trying to sell me something, unlike the people at my local Sprint shop at Radio Shack.

Here's the deal. I got my Samsung Galaxy S3 in October of 2012, almost three years ago, and for the most part, it's been great. In the last week, though, the battery has dropped dramatically faster than normal. Now, don't get me wrong, there have been times in the past when the battery would drop quicker than normal, but this is far, far quicker. On an average shift at work, by the time I am done, even if I had done almost nothing on my phone, the battery is usually somewhere between 65-85%. The last week or so, though, the battery has been dropping so rapidly that by the end of my shirt, the phone is completely or almost completely dead.

The local Radio Shack said they don't stock the battery for that phone anymore. The local Sprint store said they can order the battery, but in most such cases it's the phone, not the battery. I don't want to doubt them on that, but I did get the strong feeling from the reps that they are more interesting in selling me on an upgrade and a new phone.

New battery would cost me $50. New phone (S6) would cost me $5 more per month on my bill, with my upgrade credit, as apparently now they lease you the phone rather than sell it to you. It would also be a royal pain in the ass, as I have tons of info on a couple of apps (virtual checkbook and notebook apps) that eventually I know I'd have to find a way to transfer, but don't necessarily want to do it yet.

My question is simple: how often is it actually the phone that is dying, rather than the battery? Were the Sprint reps being honest with me in this? Is it a better gamble to simply buy a new battery for the short term?

Also, on a separate note, if I got a new phone, would I have to pay once again to download apps I've already paid for on my old phone?

[Seanette]

My S3 is also getting greedy about battery, even on my extended (about $35 on Amazon, IIRC). Not sure what's causing it.

There are backup utilities that could salvage your app data.

No, Play Store does not require another payment to download an app you've already purchased once.

[Jester]

No, Play Store does not require another payment to download an app you've already purchased once.

So, if I got the new phone (and I'd rather not at this point in time), what would be the process for getting the purchased apps on to the new phone? My S3 is my first and so far only smart phone, so this would be the first time I'd done this sort of thing.

[Kanalah]

I am having the same problem with my S3. If I take it off the charger - as long as I don't do anything but check what time it is - the battery might last 5-6 hours. If I get a phone call and I try to answer it - phone dies. Try to take a picture - phone dies. Get a text and want to respond to it - phone dies. Worst part is - the battery will say it's at 99-85% and die anyway. Last night I was checking my email with the phone on the charger - it died.

I know I need to get a new phone, and I am due for an upgrade, I'm just stubborn and I don't want to have to transfer everything over.

[Jay 2K Winger]

This is one reason I got my new phone (Droid Turbo) last week. My old phone (also a Droid) had been getting buggier. Slower to load apps, chewing through battery charge, and so on. If I wanted to play music over the Bluetooth connection in my car, I had to make sure no other apps were running, or the music would stutter or stall at times.

And then, the day before I upgraded, the charge port became super finicky, so it wouldn't charge unless the cord was inserted just so. (And it was the port, not the cord, because the same thing happened with any cord I tried.)

[wolfie]

Jester, is your phone getting warm when sitting idle? Here's something I found out the hard way about the smartphone I was issued as a dispatch device: If I allow the battery to run completely flat, when I charge it up it will get warm when sitting idle, and have short (i.e. get into the red before I finish a 14 hour "on duty" shift) battery life.

If I force a cold boot (remove and re-insert battery), it doesn't get warm, and has normal battery life. Apparently the "soft boot" that happens by running it down all the way and then charging turns something on inside that draws a lot of "juice", and the cold boot turns it back off.

How easy is it to R&R the battery in your phone? In the dispatch device, it's a simple matter of sliding off a cover and popping out the battery. The opposite extreme would be the PhrootFone, which (I've heard) can only be opened using special tools which are only available to technicians at the "idiot savant" bar. If it's something you can DIY, it wouldn't cost you anything to try.

Do you have a friend with the same model of phone? If so, you could temporarily swap batteries to see if the heavy drain follows the phone or the battery.

[mathnerd]

We're having the same issue with the Galaxy we have. It's gotten so bad that I made the girl child and my youngest son switch phones, because my son has access to an outlet more often than the girl child, as he doesn't go as many places or spend as much time away from the house/dr's office/hospital.

As for getting all your apps, it doesn't seem to be too much of a problem. My boys also have a couple Android tablets and most of the things they'd downloaded on the tablet carried over to the phone fairly easily. It was just a matter of the time it took to download it all. Annoying, but not a big problem.

[Jester]

Mathnerd, the bigger problem for me is not re-downloading all the apps, but figuring out how to transfer the data on two of my most used apps, a virtual checkbook and a notebook app.

[purple]

My S3 is refusing to hold a decent charge these days. Was contemplating a new battery but am instead inheriting an edge is September.

For the apps, do they allow you to back up to email or sd card in them? The only app I store important data on has a back up option in the menu.

Once you log into your google play on a new device and go to your apps you can redownload from there.

[Javarod]

Cell phone professionals, I need your advice. Not only do I trust and value your opinion, you are not trying to sell me something, unlike the people at my local Sprint shop at Radio Shack.

Here's the deal. I got my Samsung Galaxy S3 in October of 2012, almost three years ago, and for the most part, it's been great. In the last week, though, the battery has dropped dramatically faster than normal. Now, don't get me wrong, there have been times in the past when the battery would drop quicker than normal, but this is far, far quicker. On an average shift at work, by the time I am done, even if I had done almost nothing on my phone, the battery is usually somewhere between 65-85%. The last week or so, though, the battery has been dropping so rapidly that by the end of my shirt, the phone is completely or almost completely dead.

The good news is you can save money and get the battery from Amazon.
The bad news is that it prolly won't help you. If a high capacity battery is available, that will offset the problem somewhat, but its only a stop gap solution. My G3 Rugby Pro did the same thing, and since there's no high capacity battery, i got a regular one with no luck.
Moving data between apps depends on how its stored, phone or SD card or cloud. First one is most difficult, last one is easiest. I'm lucky, for my checkbook, me and my were use a Google spreadsheet as a ledger, so its accessible everywhere, and there's no data to move.
Funny you should ask about this, my solution was a new phone purchased outright as i'm tired of contracts. More about that here.

[EricKei]

Just out of curiosity -- would the battery in this phone be the sort which has a "memory," where you're *supposed* to let it drain completely before charging, so the maximum capacity won't drop over time, or another type, where it's best to never allow it to drain completely?

[BlaqueKatt]

Just out of curiosity -- would the battery in this phone be the sort which has a "memory,"

Ah, the conflating of discontinued Nickel-Cadmium batteries(which did have this issue) with Lithium Ion(which most certainly do not). cell phone battery myths


Jester, it's a common enough problem that various solutions are on a lot of forums, this is one example(a lot of times it's background apps running)

[EricKei]

Precisely why I asked ^_^ I've never really looked into what battery types phones use.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Re: cell phone/app data

When I got my new Droid, because both phones were Motorola make, I was able to download an app to my old phone called Migrate (from Motorola). Then I load up the app on the new phone so it shows a QR code, then load up the app on the old phone, scan the QR code, and it transfers all my files to my new phone.

I know Jester's phone is a Samsung, but it might be worth looking to see if Samsung has a similar kind of app.

[Javarod]

They do have a migration app, a replacement for Kies, but it didn't work right for me, it expected that I wanted to set up a new phone, and wouldn't allow anything else. I switched to Android manager or something like that, a simple Windows Explorer style program.