Updates to battery drain on F62

[John J]

I had created a thread to describe the issue of high battery drain back in May. I got the phone back on 11th August. The authorized service center had run some tests and updated the Rom during that time. 

The battery drain has some huge improvements based on initial observation. Skip the details...

11/08 Afternoon Day 1, No sim card, no SD card, no wifi, no samsung or google accounts, no 3rd party apps. Battery was charged to 100% in the afternoon, disabled auto update on wifi. No gps. Left on power saving mode, adaptive power saving.

Day 2, Battery was at 99%. 1% drop was unexpected compared to the 13% drain when the device was first used in May. My Galaxy and many other bloatware was uninstalled. Noticed in developer settings that the OEM boot unlock was switched on, switched it off and Knox was enabled. Configured to use wifi on 5GHz. Browsing the settings window, no drop in battery compared to 3% drop for few seconds in May. Switched off power saving mode. Disabled edge panel, google and samsung discovery. No fast charging, no adaptive power saving. Used Chrome for a while. Lots of built in app running in memory.

Day 3, Over night battery drop was 1%

Day 4, No google account, used youtube and chrome. saw some drop but very low battery drain.

Day 5, Signed in samsung account, samsung pass was configured, samsung cloud was enabled, disabled ads and some options related to marketing, drop in battery. Worked on PC with Link your phone, took screen shots. 1% drop in half an hour use. 30% battery stats at night.

Day 6, 3% drop in battery by morning (27%), 2% drop by afternoon (25%). By 5.30pm it was 21%, a 4% drop from afternoon.

Battery stats so far is SOT 11hr 45mins, 5 days 2hrs.

Used mostly Chrome (4hrs+) and Youtube (2hrs+), interpret it as 1 hour daily continuous use of the phone.

Battery drop was more pronounced when youtube was used for first time and samsung account was signed in.

About 35 in-built apps are running anywhere between 700MB to 1GB. Unconfigured apps like Samsung Pay, Find my Mobile, Game booster and many others are running. Would seek expert user's opinion on how to disable few of these services like find my mobile, game booster etc (if possible).

Comparing with the first time use for a few days in May, this battery drain is a huge improvement. I haven't had the interest to note down the battery drain at regular intervals per day but as mentioned this is just running off on wifi 5GHz, with no power saving mode, no location services, use of (mostly) chrome and youtube for some time, samsung account is signed in, pass and cloud is configured.

Will update further more on the battery performance after installing whatsapp, adding google account, inserting sim cards (in this general order one day at a time).

[John J]

I can't recommend to reset the phone after an update, its time consuming to get back the apps, pics, docs, contacts, sms, configure the necessary settings per app. (Comparing with Realme phones that I have)

I would look forward to using a phone that works properly on the first switch on. Have spend considerable time just checking these things. 

After inserting the sim cards and installing 3rd party apps, turning on location services  I can truly confirm for battery improvement meeting expectations.

[sfxut03]

Use Smart switch with an sd card for Reset...it is very easy and after reset jast install smart switch and back up your data from tour sd card....no data loss

Use deep sleeping apps
Avoid using power saving mode

[John J]

F62 formats the sd card automatically on every insert. Even the card used in it previously. So the backup is on PC now.

Usually I take out the sims and sd card before a reset. 

Considering a worst case scenario where there is no internet connection  after a reset, don't want to be dependent on an online backup copy. Retrieving from sd card was the practice.

I will try your suggestion next time a reset is done.

[sfxut03]

Then this is a problem regarding your sd card...not phone...try check it
And smart switch backup techniques is offline

[John J]

Don't think its a sd card issue. 

One security practice is not to have unknown 3rd party apps or code saved in accessible storage. Having the SD card to be easily taken off and inserted would compromise security. 

Had a tracking software used on my old Windows mobile 6 pro HTC phone and a Nokia Symbian (can't remember the version) which required the software just to be copied, not installed. 

F62 with Knox enabled formats the SD card automatically, without  warning or requests, after inserting it. This is my experience before the July update. 

I don't consider this security feature a problem. 

At  first time use it was not expected having used many phones before where at least it would prompt a format or accepts the sd card. Had to use data recovery since data was not saved on PC.

[sfxut03]

If you are asking the secuirity purpose about Smart switch sd card backup then I want to tell you that, the backed up data is rotally encrypted and only decrypts when you give smart switch your sansung account password...and the explanation you told above about knox is not true...my friend has A51 abd He performs reset many times...but he don't have an issue like you....hence, it may be the problem of your sd card or you may not know about this process properly...I will give you a youtube link fir the 2nd problem
https://youtu.be/tK6GrWtF-KU

[John J]

Was not commenting on smart switch app. In the youtube video, the user has the device powered on while inserting the sd card. The user does not interact with the prompt. You can see the sd card icon on the top left corner of his device screen. His focus was how smart switch works. 

I am talking about the auto formatting by F62. This happens when I do the following...

Irrespective of any device brand, I always take away the card before a reset. So after the phone is setup, switch it off, insert the card and turn on the device.

F62 reformats it without notice when powering on. My Realme, Asus, Spice and HTC phones don't do this.

So right now for testing, while F62 is powered on, I used two sd cards one at a time. One formatted with windows OS and the other formatted on an android jelly bean device. F62 refused to accept the SD cards and asked for formatting. While the cards were perfect for use even when interchanged on windows or the android device. 

Asus phone has this operation if the card was encrypted. 

This is a good security feature on this F62 device and prefer this behavior over others. But defeats the purpose of the backup made through smart switch on the sd card. If the sd card is never removed it would be fine.  Will need to check out if there is a PC version to this.

If you are a user with F62 with Knox enabled, you can confirm what you are experiencing of how the sd card is treated. How does F62 work for you?

[salty_abs]

Nice info. Really appreciate that.

Indeed all the trackers and background services (by Google and OEM/Samsung) drain hell lot of battery. Absence of them really helped you.

Also, I noticed that you're using single SIM? That's another big battery booster.

But I've stopped caring about battery life about my phone and started to exploit it as much as I can. Feels great. Everything running in the background all the time.

[John J]

F62 shows that sim icon in spite of not having a sim card. Yet to use sim cards on this device.

As you mentioned about the trackers and background services, I haven't done anything different from prior to July update and now. The same old options and settings.

As per user experience and understanding on turning off features, the expected outcome should be less operations for the UI or services.

As for yesterday night, I drained battery from 20% to 6% using youtube. Battery stats suggested it will last 2 hours. Turned on power saving mode, with wifi. By morning it showed 6%! 

Other users in this forum still haven't confirmed to have a longer usage time like I am having now for their F62 after July update. 

I don't know what the service center has done extra.