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S21 Ultra Battery life really bad compared to all the youtube video review

(Topic created on: 28-04-2021 07:01 PM)
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daribeiro
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So I bought the new S21 Ultra on the pre order the day it was announced. I was one of the lucky ones to get early so I could leave a review. 

 

Coming from a Note 10+ that I had for a year and a half, I was really excited for the S21 Ultra, but was really disappointed with the battery life. I've had the phone for 5 days now and since the very beginning I've not been able to use the phone for the whole day on a single charge. It's been giving me screen on times comparable to my Note 10+ (4/5 hours) which is a much older device, but I thought maybe this was the way all S21 ultra's were behaving, just not very good battery life.

 

BUT, yesterday all the youtubers started to publish they're videos comparing batteries with older S devices and Iphones and their S21s were doing amazing, giving them screen on times of up to 13 hours! 

I contacted support but they said this would be normal as my phone was still learning user patterns... but I'm not sure if that would affect it as bad as it is at the moment. 

 

What do you guys think? Should I send the phone back? I'm really concerned that I just spent all this money on a new phone for it to be so bad with battery. 

972 REPLIES 972
lee815
Pathfinder
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mad_penguin
Apprentice
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Hey lee815, thanks for the suggestion, but no. I've not tried any Cyanogen Mod times boot loader dalvik cache wipe tricks. It makes no sense, you see? We are throwing some crazy money on a brick with a battery and display. We (or the most of us) had our time spent on hacking, trying, testing and what not in XDA Devs site. 
I want to be a user for once, not a beta tester, not a dev, not a brainstormer. Just a simple user what i was while i used my Mate 20 Pro. No issues - no questions - no time lost in forums discussing why TF my 1.5+K purchase is not behaving as expected. It is a f...ing flagship *****!!!

 

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mad_penguin
Apprentice
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Just for the lulz, i have some 15 appliances made by Samsung in my house so far. The most of them are working perfectly for some year over the warranty term so far. TV's, washers, dryers, smart things, tablets and what not. As far as it comes for everything different than a mobile/tablet device (ergo connected to the grid) it just works flawlessly. I adore my Samsung side by side fridge. But... when it comes to mobile/tablet devices... I have two Galaxy tabs 6 and 7 and my phone now S21U. Also i have 2 Huawei tablets (M5 Lite or so) and 2 Mate 20 Pro phones. A week ago i had to do some cable re-arrangement and some changes in my living room setup, so, i've just pulled the plugs out of the Samsung tablets and the Huawei ones and throwed them all on the shaft. This evening i needed to look up something, and since the Samsung ones were on top, grabbed one of them first. Dead. Second one - dead too... First Huawei fired up immediately and had some good 38% power left. For a week of no use. What more can i say?!

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qcmut
Student
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Ok this is the way to solve accu problems. First of all Smart switch has nothing to do with a low SOT. My SOT was in the beginning (first week) less than 4 hours. But there is a learning curve for US S21 ultra users. First of all (and that is really important) only recharge the battery from min. 30% to max .80 %, never drain the battery till 0% and only drain it below 30% when really needed (not more often than once a month).  Performing in between charging (between 30 and 80%) when you have the opportunity helps to increase the life time and SOT (check SOT with a full charge to ca. 10%  but not often else you will kill the lifetime of your accu). Using dark mode, 120 Hz, QHD, WiFi or data gives me a SOT of more than 11 hours. Only switch on  bluetooth, location, NFC, .... when needed. I use the smartphone as phone, for banking apps, stock exchange app, email, sms, viber, whatsapp, messenger, web browsing, making pictures, scarcely video recordings. I never play games (which really drains the battery like the camera) because i am not interested in gaming (use a desktop computer with ultra wide display if you are a gamer). Remember it stays a phone with a computer in a very small package !! By the way I have the exynos 2100 version and not the better SD 888 version.

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sailord
Journeyman
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Now I had my  S21U for 7 days.  the battery life is not improving after finishing learning usage patterns.

I saw the camera drain the battery at 0.23% per minute. I have record a test yesterday on Apr 27. Can everyone tell me this is 'fair' or not good. compare with all other reviews and also iPhone 12 Pro Max, I am thinking to return/exchange this.

Usage Type start time end time duration battery usage % eod percentage percentage per minute
  10:59       100  
YouTube     30 3 97 0.1
YouTube     41 3 93 0.073170732
Idle   28 0 1 92  
gaming     22 5 87 0.227272727
browsing     19 4 83 0.210526316
camera     32 10 73 0.3125
camera     30 7 65 0.233333333
idle   50 0 1 64  
tiktok     25 4 60 0.16
IG     10 2 58 0.2
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daribeiro
Pioneer
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Mine definitely got better and from what I've seen online from average daily usage you're meant to get about 6 hours of SOT and that's what I've been getting. Hope it improved for you too
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sailord
Journeyman
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thanks. I am now turning on the battery saving mode to see what I will get.

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Juan greenfield
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@sailord Thats not much time that you waited, my battery took about a month to finally settled. The first month was improving very very slow, but after that time im having amazing battery life with SOT, so give it some time, I know is frustrating to spend a lot of money on a device to wait for this kind of stuff. But it's worth it.

First weeks: 

1 week.jpg

 after 1 month:

After a month.jpg

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mathy07
First Poster
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I bought it a month ago, and still having the same SoT, between 4 and 4:30hs maximum, i didn't see any improvement.

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sailord
Journeyman
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thank you and that's very encouraging. I will wait then. I am using either a USB wall charger or iPhone charger to charge this phone in standard mode. Hopefully, this should be fine without purchasing a Samsung charger.

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