Why is my Galaxy s3 no longer charging to its full capacity?

[Trixielolo77]

As of the past week my month old S3 is no longer charging 100%. Before I was able to have the phone in use while it charged with no problem and it actually charged without losing any battery power but now it significantly loses battery charge whether I am on it or not. My provider wants to do a factory reset to solve this software problem but I am apprehensive. Any suggestions to this problem? How exactly can a factory reset solve battery charging issue?

[Spencer]

The most likely answer is that you installed some software that runs in the background and drains the battery. I know that when I installed Skype and let it run at startup, it drained the battery much faster than previously even when the phone wasn't being used. Any widgets added to the home screens are also apps that run constantly in the background, as well as apps that do any sort of monitoring or accept communications - chat, Twitter, Facebook, dialers, IM, etc. A factory reset would get rid of any software you installed after getting the phone, but that seems a drastic measure just to remove software.

The charging process is also regulated to some degree by software, so if the battery is actually not fully charging rather than just depleting quickly, a reset may fix the problem. You should back up all your important data and apps to external media before doing this. This may or may not fix the problem, as its always possible there is an issue with the hardware, not the software.