Final Galaxy S9 Pie update may have a serious battery drain issue
The final version of the Galaxy S9 Android Pie update is impressively stable, or so it seemed. Yours truly still stands by his opinion that the update is quite stable overall for such a quick release, but it looks like a battery drain issue may have slipped past Samsung’s bug checking team. Battery life has been better on Pie than Oreo in general, but I just saw my Galaxy S9+ go down from 10 percent battery to 5 percent in a matter of seconds, without the phone reporting any app going haywire in the background.
No random reboots, but Samsung may have a battery drain issue at hand
Even when an app does too much background activity, battery charge does not go down so quickly, so this is likely one of those pesky bugs that always show up in the first official release of an Android OS update. It’s unclear if I’m the only one affected; I saw one comment on our site that the Galaxy S9’s battery is draining quickly after the Pie update, but we’ll need more reports to be sure if this is a widespread issue. If it is, it may be why Samsung hasn’t yet released the update in more than a handful of countries. Well, that or the company has no idea this is an issue, in which case one can hope it will be fixed before the update becomes more widely available.
And it could be a while before that happens. The company did say both the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9 would get Pie in January, and with no official announcement about the Galaxy S9 update, the Christmas rollout could have been a limited release to test the waters. The Galaxy Note 9 beta program is still ongoing, and it’s possible Samsung will simply wait until it has the Note 9 update ready before beginning the worldwide rollout for either flagship.
I’ll be keeping a close eye on my Galaxy S9+ to see if this issue pops up again. Do leave a comment if you have noticed something similar on the final version of Android Pie on your Galaxy S9 or S9+.
- Model: SM-G960F
- Dimensions: 147.7 x 68.7 x 8.5mm
- Display: 5.8” (146.5mm) Super AMOLED
- CPU: Exynos 9810
- Camera: 12 MP, CMOS OIS (F1.5/F2.4)
- Model: SM-G965F
- Dimensions: 157.7 x 73.8 x 8.5 mm
- Display: 6.2” (158.1mm) Super AMOLED
- CPU: Exynos 9810
- Camera: 12 MP, CMOS Dual OIS (F1.5/F2.4) & Telephoto: 12MP AF F2.4)
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Here the same issues. even when i don’t use the phone the battery is really bad
Same problem with my s9 a bit laggy ui and battery life is really bad after the update
Yes i have same battery drain and UI lag issue after updating to pie on my galaxy s9 plus
Yes, it does have a problem, my S9 updated this morning, usually I would have 70% at this time, today, the phone just turned off because the battery ran out.
I barely used the phone today.
And It kept sending the same notifications over and over, like that facebook notification that it’s friend’s birthday today, usually when you access it, it stops, not today…
Hey guys,
I need your help.
When i try to download the pie firmware I get the message invalid user.
I’ve tried everything from logging from another device/browser, clearing the cache of my browser to log out and in again, or try to download again a day later.
Please help!!!!!!!!
Hey Abhijeet
Take a look at this stupid bug and see if you have it as well
https://www.sammobile.com/forum/threads/42933-One-UI-Android-Pie-S9-bug-report-strange-bug
also my battery life has been better for most of the time but sometimes, something drains the battery at background or while the phone is locked but it’s not like going from 10 to 5. Also i realized that having lift to wake sometimes increase the standby battery usage.
The thing is that these problems are random so i can’t really tell what is causing them without any root access.
I blame the Gear VR/Oculus service.
Hello,
I didn’t see you guys mention the “Adaptive Brightness” feature!
Is it available on the Samsung’s Pie update?
Ah, you’re right, it’s now called Adaptive Brightness, wasn’t expecting Samsung to adopt that considering how their auto brightness algorithms have quite good already.
It’s basically samsung approach taken from google (another samsung feature that was copy-paste into stock). So I guess nothing will change.
Thank you for your quick response.
So Samsung did in fact add this feature “Adaptive Brightness” to the Pie update?
Or did they skipped it?
They did, it mentions that it will keep track of how we adjust it and then use those in various lighting conditions. Should help Samsung’s already excellent auto brightness feature.
One observation spreading on the internet as a “huge issue” due to a speculative, click bait title. Maybe it’s not even an error, but ongoing re-calibration of battery and the adaptive battery tech. Samsung takes any battery-issues very seriously and there hasn’t been an outcry from upgraded users about it so far. There will of course always be people complaining about battery “drain” / usage. To answer the question why the S9 Pie rollout hasn’t started in most regions yet: It’s because of the Christmas holidays, staff usually has off from work till after New Year. You wouldn’t expect such… Read more »
Battery calibration will never drop your battery from 10 percent to 5 in a few seconds and then continue going down, no matter how big an update might be. If it stuck to 5 percent I would have less of an issue with it, but it was still going down quickly. And some people do seem to have the same problem. And I don’t understand why they’d release the update in some countries during Christmas, especially those in Europe where Christmas is much more of a deal than in India or Asian markets. Didn’t intend the title to be clickbait,… Read more »
Actually android can report the battery level wrong ly on software/OS side in the first few charges after updating/flashing ROM. Happened to me more than one time and one phone (all with healthy and still working like a charm batteries).
Do a full charge, restart the phone, top it out again and enjoy. Tho till now the battery indicator and hardware level should be in sync and reported properly. Ofc keep an eye on it and report to samsung if anything strange happens again.
It was happening once this issue? Please check this 3 times and come back.
Yes, exactly why I say Pie “may” have an issue, not that it does have an issue. Also mentioned that I might be alone, so not confirming anything from my end.
Please reset your smartphone and the comment for safe side😊
I have battery drain too with the stable Pie update.
I have a s9 plus with Exynos.
i have some problems with this update too !!! The battery don’t charge so fast like in Oreo !! 🙁 maybe fast charge don’t work properly !!
When I had battery issues with my S6, I contacted Samsung and they said that 50% usage in 3 hours is acceptable if you have things like Bluetooth and WiFi turned on, if I used it with everything off, it should last all day.
Haha, S6’s small battery was so poor that they must have made customer support say that to everyone with poor battery life.
I had very poor battery life on my S6 too,but it was because the phone was too powerful for that small battery
I had the same problem with my S9+ (exynos) yesterday, i let the battery go down to 0% restarted the phone on charge and went to recovery mode, wipped the cache, and turned the phone ON again. i’m right now at 50% and 3H17min SOT after 15H on battery.
4G always on, 50 to 75% brighness, GPS on, sync on, bluetooth on.
it’s much better than Oreo, and the 3H30mn-4H SOT beforce wipping cache.
Hope it helps.
UNBELIEVABLE
I agree with that. At stand-bay drain is 7 persents for 7 hours, wifi and 4g off. With Oreo was still 2 pesents…
battery is much better on my S9+ after update
I had this issue in Oreo and right now I have battery drain bit faster than oreo during normal usage. I did factory reset, but still the issue is same. Hope there will an update in future to fix the battery drain.
After clean Pie install on my S9+, everything seems OK. Battery life is surprisingly better.
I wonder why you guys havent posted anything about performance issues on One Ui Pie. There is animation and Ui lag everywhere much more than Oreo even after factory reset. Recents using gestures lag like everytime with extremely weird and laggy animation and scrolling in general has become a bit worse than Oreo yet no one mentions it.
Thanks for the heads up Abhijeet, though my wife’s S9 plus has actually been getting better battery life by about 20% I’d say, she’s using night mode permanently though. No sudden drain to report though she usually has 30% left at the end of the day when she pops it on the wireless charger. It could be the algorithm recording the battery power too. Possibly it was draining to 5% but the indicator stuck at 10%. Happens with iPhones sometimes. Or maybe it’s drain. Keep us informed if you can!
yeah same happening on my s9.
battery is slightly better for me :S weird.
My wife’s phone also has increased battery life. This sudden decrease might not be happening. The indicator might be stuck, hence the seemingly sudden drops. It’s happened on other phones.
Battery drainage so fast in my s9+ after update
Don’t panic and do a factory reset. It’s always good to do after a major OS update. Having said that our S9 plus has a 20% increase in battery life though we did no reset. I think though, that a factory reset will fix most things.
Remember that the F models are Exynos and not Snapdragon so the issue could well be isolated to the Euro market and not affect the US, Canada, China and Latin America.
The Pie update only came to Exynos phones. No Snapdragon phones have Pie so it’s obviously not affecting them.
people should reset their phone after big update