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8 ways to extend your Samsung Galaxy phone's battery life
Settings you can change to reduce battery drain on your Samsung Galaxy device
Smartphones come with larger battery capacities than they did a few years ago. Samsung’s Ultra smartphones, for example, have cells so massive that you rarely have to worry about draining to zero before you can recharge. However, the same can’t be said for regular Galaxy flagships and mid-range devices. Depending on your usage, you can get anywhere from poor to decent battery life. If you’re looking to improve this, there are a few actions you can take.
Google extends Pixel 4 XL warranty past 1 year in some countries for specific issues
If you run into one of a handful of power-related problems a uBreakiFix tech tells us are pretty widespread
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Google is extending the warranty for the Pixel 4 XL by an extra year. Before you get too excited, the extension only covers a handful of specific power-related issues, including charging, faster-than-expected drain, random restarts, and being unable to power on the phone. It's only valid for Pixel 4 XL's purchased in available markets previously limited to a single year of warranty support — specifically, in the US, Singapore, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan. Warranty eligibility for these issues as part of the extension can be verified online or in person at uBreakiFix.
Over the weekend, we spotted some reports that Play Services was eating more than its fair share of folks' batteries. I know, there's a continuous low-level static of Play Services-related battery complaints out there, but the volume and severity of reports picked up substantially, and a COVID-19 contact tracing app is allegedly the cause of the problem. Most of those affected appear to be in Ireland, and the Ireland Health Services Executive (HSE) claims a fix is rolling out now, with 70% of Irish Android devices already updated, and full rollout expected in the next few days.
Google could face yet another class action lawsuit, this time over Pixel 3 issues
Owners asked to aid investigation into possible battery drain and camera defects
Law firm Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP (CSK&D) just made it public that it's beginning to investigate for a potential class action lawsuit against Google. With a consistent outcry from Pixel 3 users concerning battery drain issues, poor photo and video quality, and app crashes all around, CSK&D is now looking into whether these defects are hardware-related — which would warrant a lawsuit.
Samsung Pay Framework, as the name implies, is an application bundled on Samsung phones that provides some functionality for Samsung Pay. It's intended to work quietly behind the scenes, but lately, the app has caused major battery drain issues for many users.
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- A representative for OnePlus said the links were removed because the company was switching from oneplus.net to oneplus.com, as we covered here. The builds were not pulled intentionally, and they will be restored soon.
OnePlus frequently releases 'Open Beta' updates, where users can try the latest changes before they are ready for widespread use. The builds are usually pretty stable, but since they are intended for testing, issues occasionally crop up. It appears the latest Open Betas have a nasty bug, as OnePlus just pulled them from its website.
Over the past few weeks, many owners of the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL have reported battery drain problems. The February security update appears to be the likely culprit, but since so many Android components are updated outside of system upgrades, it's impossible to know for sure. Regardless of the cause, it has certainly made plenty of Pixel owners frustrated.
If you've flashed Android N's second developer preview and ventured into the battery section of the settings, you may have noticed something odd happening with the History details screen (the one what shows up when you tap the graph) which normally has the expanded battery drain graph with the different components' usage. The latter part is nowhere to be seen in Dev Preview 2.
The Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P are packed with a number of cool hardware improvements over previous generations, like a shockingly fast fingerprint reader and a fast-charging USB Type-C connector. During today's presentation, Dave Burke spoke about a brand new piece of hardware dubbed Android Sensor Hub that can significantly extend battery life and allows even more inventive features to these phones. It's a dedicated low-power processor designed to efficiently manage sensor data so the main processor can go to sleep for longer periods of time.
Wireless charging is perhaps one of the best examples of true convenience. The simple act of setting your phone down meant its battery would begin refilling. No need to hunt for the end of a cable, no more time spent clumsily aligning plugs, and no more hassle with loose cords. When the Nexus 4 was announced, its stylish charging orb was supposed to spearhead a movement of wireless bliss. While the orb certainly had its advantages, it was a bit late to launch and carried a premium price. Nevertheless, Qi-compatible chargers began to find a home with Nexus 4 owners. Unfortunately, the update to Android 4.2.2 brought with it a wakelock bug that could seriously eat away at the battery life of Google's flagship phone after it had charged wirelessly.
If we could take a universal count across all platforms asking users what more they want out of their devices, we would probably hear better battery life pretty frequently. As something that many users (myself included) obsess over, we're always looking for ways to get more juice from our devices and find out what processes are keeping us from the illustrious all-day charge. Enter a new app that should somewhat help on the war against bad battery life: My Battery Drain Analyser.
When it comes to high tech, downsizing is often looked at as a sign of progress. Microprocessors meant whole computers, for the first time, could fit on a desktop. LCD displays made them portable - in the form of laptops. Moore's law proved that chips that once would have been classified as capable of enterprise-level computing now occupy devices that easily fit in your pocket. And advanced lithium-ion batteries meant you could finally take yourself off the AC teat for an appreciable amount of time, and you could charge your gadgets over and over without worrying about the ridiculous cycling fatigue that plagued earlier rechargeable systems.
If you have the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer and keyboard dock, there's a chance that you've noticed the dock's built-in battery draining quicker than it should. This is a problem quite a few users are experiencing, and a member of the Transformer Forums by the name of ASUSFAN001 set out to get an answer to the issue directly from ASUS itself.
Certainly makes sense (get it?), doesn't it. Nearly every EVO owner I know has, at some point or another, complained about the fact that their battery life drops about 5-10% as soon as they unplug it. Well, it turns out that's because of there's an overcharge protection chip inside Li-Ion batteries.
A few days ago, we reported that the Facebook app had been updated, and now included “less suck”; turns out we may have been wrong (that pun will make sense in a minute). Flipz, the developer behind the awesome Fresh ROM’s, has done his homework and found that the updated Facebook App has a wake lock bug that drains the battery fairly significantly.