My son has the S3. We downloaded juice defender (free) because the battery life wasn't that hot. It made quite a difference. After about a week of use his battery life vastly improved. Unless he is sitting there viewing video for hours on end his battery barely gets lower than 60%.

I've got Juice Defender Pro. Also use Titanium backup to freeze all unnecessary apps. I've disabled everything possible. Still isn't near what I got from iPhone.

And no, I'm not going to get one of those ridiculous battery case contraptions or worry about carrying around a second battery. I think that's just silly. I just use my phone a lot less than I'd like.

Every battery test I have seen places the S3 between the iphone 4s and iphone 5 in battery life. And of course the S4 beats them all by a good amount. Are you using the ROM that came from your carrier?

s4 battery is great.

i had the nexus S.....that battery was ****ing terrible.

I've tried several different ROMs including stock, several different kernels, and many combinations of each. And I know every single service running. I've got Juicedefender turning off services by location and everything. Still disappointing. Not awful enough to hate the phone or anything, it's a great phone. I was just expecting performance closer to what you described, but that's not been the case.

I don't blame you there. I wouldn't either. I've had my S4 for about a month and have had only one day where I used considerable battery life. I worked 6AM to Midnight that day and used it a lot. Got it down to the 20% range. Never have come close to that before or since. Love the phone.

Maybe I'll try complaining to the Verizon store and see if they'll throw me a new battery..

Weird. I trust your judgement over the various benchmark sites so that is a bit disappointing. Luckily I am skipping the S3 and going straight to the S4 so hopefully it will be better.

If anyone is wondering why the S4 over the other phones... I actually am picking it mostly because of the IR emitter. That's simply too cool to pass up. (and yes I plan on using it to **** with the TVs in my favorite bars)

Yeah it could simply be the battery itself. My old S2 had decent battery life than went completely screwy at one point. Switched battery and solved.

It's hard to complain, because I like just about everything else about the phone. But there are occasions where my daughter wants to play a game during a long car ride, and ~2 hours of gaming at the absolute lowest possible brightness setting with auto turned off and other functions like bluetooth/wifi/GPS turned off, will still drain the battery dead. And I know this phone well enough to rule out any other odd battery draining issue. I don't know...

I'll see if I can get a replacement battery...

That is such a cool option. I've used it several times already. It's not a gimmick.

I never thought about the bar TVs. ROFL

Love my S4!

Oh I'm definitely gonna screw with it. I could even write a simple app to do it while my phone sits innocently on the bar... muahahahaha

The HTC One has an IR Blaster as well - It is by far one of my favorite features of the phone - that and the dual front facing speakers really sold me

I've always preferred HTC products to Samsung - This year is no different.

Last phones Ive had in the last 2 years: HTC One <---LG Optimus G <---- Galaxy Nexus <----Photon 4G <---- Evo 4G ( I could keep going but should I?)

Damn... Smart phone whore.

I'm still using my one and only smart phone... the HTC Aria but its just now starting to show its age. The power button is starting to crap out and doesn't work every time you push it and I couldn't upgrade my apps because I didn't have enough space, and I only have Gasbuddy and Weatherbug (excluding all the preloaded AT&T bullshit).

The damn Google Play Store seems to be what tries to suck my battery down more than anything else anymore, I just have a LG Venice on Boost, but it is a fun phone overall and works well.