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How to Fix Bad Galaxy Note 10 Battery Life

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If your Samsung Galaxy Note 10 battery isn’t lasting as long as you expected here are several tips to fix bad Galaxy Note 10 battery life and other problems. Whether you’re dealing with new Android 10 issues or just want better results we’re here to help. This applies to the Note 10+ and 5G models as well.

Thanks to big 3,500 mAh and 4,300 mAh batteries in Galaxy Note 10 phones, Samsung claims you can expect “all-day battery” life. So while these phones last plenty long and recharge fast, things can always be a little better. So, here are some options, tips and tricks to improve things.

How to Fix Bad Galaxy Note 10 Battery Life

  • Check for Apps Using Too Much Battery
  • Reboot Your Galaxy Note 10 Often
  • Disable the Always-On Display (or lift to wake)
  • Turn Off Features You Don’t Need/Use
  • Use a Black Wallpaper or Night Mode
  • Adjust WiFi, GPS & Bluetooth Settings
  • Watch Your Screen Brightness & Sleep Timer
  • Use Battery Saver or Power Saving Mode

For starters, remember that your battery life will improve over time as the phone software learns from your usage habits. On the flip side, in a year or so it’ll start to degrade as the battery cell ages. For now, you can fix a lot of little problems. Let’s get started.

Check for Apps Using Too Much Battery

First things first, when you’re getting battery drain or experiencing something weird, it’s usually an app misbehaving. This can be a software incompatibility, a glitch, or just a random occurrence. If you have Galaxy Note 10 battery drain issues keep an eye on running apps in the settings menu. Look for a little orange circle on the settings button, which will signal that something’s wrong.

Apps you use the most will drain the battery the most. Or, a widget that’s constantly checking the weather will use a lot too. At the same time, some situations occur where an app uses an abnormal amount, and that’s a problem. These can be Samsung’s apps or one you download from the Play Store. We see this often with Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp.

Honestly, I’ve never had a phone get 8 hours of “screen on time” from regular use throughout the day, until I got the Galaxy Note 10+. If you’re not averaging at least 4-6 hours of “screen-on time” or even more early on, something isn’t right. Go to Settings > Device Maintenance > Battery > Battery Usage to see what’s going on.

Read More: The Best Galaxy Note 10+ Cases

You should see the screen or display at the top, like our image to the left, along with the Android OS or Android System. If something else is at the top, that’s bad. Uninstall the app, reboot your phone, or check the app to see what’s going on. This is especially true after the Galaxy Note 10 Android 10 release. Check for app updates on the Google Store and Samsung Galaxy app store both.

Reboot Your Galaxy Note 10 To Improve Battery Life

Seriously, you’d be amazed by how often a simple reboot fixes any and all problems or improves battery life. This should probably be our first tip. Plus, most people don’t think to reboot the phone if the battery is draining too quickly, but you should.

Additionally, Samsung has a setting that will automatically reboot your phone once a week, at night. Go to Settings > Device Care > Tap the 3-dot at the top > and select Auto restart. You can choose the day of the week, the time (like at 2:00 AM Sunday night) and other things.

Doing this will optimize performance by restarting the device and giving it a fresh start every week. Don’t go months between reboots. Pull down the notification bar and tap the power button by settings, and reboot your Note. You’re welcome.

Disable the Always-On Display

With a big 6.8-inch screen showing beautiful colors or streaming videos, the battery can drain quickly. In fact, the screen is likely the biggest cause of poor battery life. And while most people love the Always-On display feature, turning it off may improve things. The small clock, date, notifications and battery level on the screen at all times, even when the screen is off, is the always-on display.

Samsung claims the always-on display only uses roughly 5% battery during an entire 8-hour workday. So while it’s a small difference, if you’re looking for every advantage possible turn it off. Head to Settings > Lock screen > and disable the Always-On display.

Additionally, you can change some of these settings to prevent the screen from turning on in a pocket or purse, and just be better prepared for your day.

Go to Settings > Display > and scroll down and flip the accidental touches switch to on. Then, go to Settings > Advanced Features > Motions & gestures > and disable Lift to Wake along with turning off the Double-tap to Wake feature. Again, only do this if you’re having problems with the screen turning on when it shouldn’t, like in a pocket.

Turn Off Features You Don’t Need/Use

As we all know, Samsung phones have a ton of software features, almost too many. Some of them are extremely helpful, but most of them we never use yet they waste a ton of battery life. We’re talking about the Edge Panel, Edge Lighting, or all those gestures and palm swipe control “features”.

Head to Settings > Advanced Features > and start turning things off. We recommend disabling Smart Capture, Palm Swipe Capture, Direct Call, Easy Mute, Smart Stay, and others. These all need power and sensors inside the phone for things we rarely use.

If you use them, good for you, but if not go ahead and disable everything.

Use a Black Wallpaper and/or Night Mode

With Android 9 Pie and Samsung’s latest “One UI” software experience the company finally delivered a powerful and useful Dark Mode. And for those unaware, dark mode saves a significant amount of battery life. If you can get used to the changes, we suggest using it 24/7. Go to Settings > Display > and turn on Night Mode.

While we’re on the topic of the display and dark colors, did you know using black wallpaper makes a big difference too? Samsung’s AMOLED screen technology is different from a typical LCD display. It’s easier and more efficient at showing black, instead of colors. Plus, the pixels don’t need to turn on individually — or as high — to display a black image. And when the screen is the biggest battery drain, a change like this makes a big impact on Galaxy Note 10 battery life. Try some dark wallpapers from Zedge.

Adjust WiFi, GPS, Carrier & Bluetooth Settings

Most savvy tech users know that WiFi is more efficient than the internet connection from Verizon or T-Mobile. When you’re at home, always be connected to your home WiFi instead of a carrier network. This makes a significant difference in how long your phone lasts, especially at night.

However, if you’re not going to use things like WiFi or Bluetooth at all, turn them off. It’s rare that we don’t use WiFi these days, but it does happen. You don’t want it scanning for a connection all day long, right?

Next, anything that uses GPS like Google Maps or Facebook Messenger can and will destroy battery life. And while some apps or games need GPS, and maps are more accurate with it, you can actually disable the GPS chip in many circumstances. Head to Settings > Privacy & safety > Location > and select Location Method, then choose “Battery Saver” or the middle WiFi and Mobile networks option.

More importantly, turn off any and all network carrier enhancement or diagnostic tools. The June and October update for the AT&T Galaxy S10, S10 Plus, and Note 9 added something called “AT&T mobile network diagnostics” and turned it ON by default. This little change made battery life take a huge hit, and it’s already enabled on your Note 10. Turn it off!

It’s a tool that collects network info and performance from your device and shares it with AT&T, or Verizon. That constant communication drains the battery. Head to Settings > Connections > Mobile Networks > and flip the switch off at the bottom of the page as we’ve shown above. You’re welcome.

Watch Your Screen Brightness & Sleep Timer

Did you know most people turn their phone on over 140+ times a day? Typically that’s only to check the time, date, or a notification. Then, once you’re done checking that notification you probably just set the phone down, and the screen stays on for 1, 2, or even 5 minutes until it times out. This is known as the Sleep Timer and changing it to 30 seconds can save you a TON of battery.

Samsung calls this the “screen timeout” which is how long the phone stays on after each use before the screen dims and turns off by itself. We recommend 30 seconds or 1-minute at the most. And while the Always-On display makes us turn on the screen less, you’ll still want to adjust the sleep timer and your screen brightness. Seriously, do you really need that big screen set at 90% brightness, scorching your retinas? I use mine around 35% indoors or out.

Use Battery Saver or Power Saving Mode

Samsung has a powerful new battery optimization system thanks to Android 9 and One UI. The two work together to keep our devices lasting longer than ever before. However, using the battery saver mode, power-saving modes, or downloading battery usage apps can still be beneficial.

Under Settings > Device Care > Battery you’ll find a few Power modes. These will change the screen brightness and resolution or even slow down the processor to extend battery life throughout the day. Click here for more information.

At the bottom of this menu is Google’s Adaptive power saving which will automatically adjust things like battery and performance based on your usage patterns. It’s actually pretty useful, and that’s on top of Samsung’s own optimizations. Try one or both if you’re not happy with battery life. We use both with great results, and the update to Android 10 with One UI 2.0 made it even better.

Other Battery Tips & Tricks

In closing, just know that everyone uses phones a little different so your mileage will vary with our tips. This info will simply help you fix problems or extend battery life. Additionally, we recommend users try the app BetteryBatteryStats to learn more about your battery usage habits and how to improve them.

Another thing to consider is Bixby, Samsung’s virtual assistant. Don’t use the always-listening wake commands, as that’s one more thing always-on and listening. In fact, we recommend you completely disable Bixby.

Another tip is to use Airplane mode when you have no reason to use your phone. This setting turns off all data, radios, services and more and most phones can last 4-5 days with it enabled. You can turn on airplane mode while you recharge your phone too, to top it off even faster. If you’re traveling or in a pinch for extra juice give it a try.

What’s Next for the Galaxy Note 10?

In closing, we want to talk about what’s coming next and what owners can expect. The Galaxy Note 10 is still fairly new, and for the first 6-months or so the company usually refines the experience. Owners got a big update in October, and now another with Android 10 in December.

As more people buy Samsung’s latest Galaxy the company will find issues, fix them, and rapidly deploy software updates. Then, you can start looking ahead to the first 1-2 updates in 2020 that improves on Android 10 and the latest One UI 2.0 software experience. Furthermore, what’s actually next will be Android 11 sometime in 2020 following Google’s Android R beta in March.

That’s about it for now, but we’ll keep an eye out for more info on Samsung’s new Galaxy Note 10 line. If you have the Note 10+ get a 45w faster charger. And if you’re still experiencing problems, give this helpful guide a try.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Bertram Moshier

    09/25/2019 at 12:19 pm

    Hello,

    I have a Note 10 plus (512GB Black Unlocked). Media and media.extractor are the two system apps taking up 80% of the battery. Even with all the above suggestions the battery lasts between 2-3 hours with use and 9 to 10 hours without usage. You can’t sleep or turn off either of these two system applications at least according to Samsung.

    I got a replacement phone (using Samsung Premium Care) and the second phone had the exact same issue.

    I finally found a work around, but it is NOT acceptable. Removing the SD Card (I tried both a 256 and 512GB card). It is not acceptable, as I got the Note 10 plus for the micro SD card slot.

    As for both cards being bad in some way, I put them both in two different Note 9 and there was NO ISSUE WHAT SO EVER with either card or either Note 9. Put the cards into either of the Note 10 plus phones and back comes the battery drain issue.

    Also the Note 10 plus reports the charger (came with both phones) is weak, when you try to charge and use the phone at the same time. NOTE: I have to charge the phone several times a day. I doubt this is good for the phone or expected by the designers.

    The other related issue is the “My File” application on the Note 9 finds all of the “items” on both SD cards. On the other had, “My File” on the Note 10 plus only finds a small fraction of the files.

    IMHO, the problem is a software issue. Several people at Samsung agree, but they have NO method to report a software issue and sending it to the repair center (per those employees) won’t help (as it is not a hardware issue).

    Samsung, they say, has no formal documented method to report and fix a customer finding any software defect or issue. I offered to try to help by letting them have access to the SD card, but they (again) do not have a procedure for dealing with this issue.

    A supervisor took “pity” on me and agreed to have the phone sent to the repair center and report the SD card reader is affecting battery life. She was not exactly hopeful on what the repair center will do to fix it. I included a letter pointing out the SD card works find in different Note 9, but not different Note 10 plus phones.

    I want the Samsung repair center to be successful for myself and every Note 10 plus user. Personally, I love the Note 10 plus and have no desire for a buy out what so ever.

    Your thoughts?

    Only time will tell the tale.

  2. Kevin

    09/25/2019 at 7:08 pm

    When I pay $1000 for a phone, I should not have to start disabling things for it to work as advertised.

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