Your Samsung Galaxy Note 3’s capacitive buttons aren’t broken, it’s just saving power
Although I’ve been really impressed my battery life in the three weeks I’ve owned the device, there’s still a part of me that wishes my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 would last just a little longer. Luckily, Samsung includes a power saving mode that you can access from the notifications tray that will turn off unnecessary, power-sipping features of your phone to save a little extra juice. Wanting to see how long it would extend the battery, I turned it on this morning. But while I turned on power saving mode, my device turned off a lot of its features – including the haptic feedback of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3’s capacitive buttons.
In fact, before I had realized that power saving mode shuts off so many features of my phone, I thought it was broken. The buttons still worked, but there was no feedback to tell me that my fingers had registered on the device. It was a shock to my muscle memory, if anything; I was watching the phone function perfectly, but there was none of the vibration I had come to know and love.
There are a plethora of other things that power saving mode does in an effort to save power – and for what it’s worth, it’s doing its job. Normally at 3:00 P.M., I would have about 50% battery left; with power saving mode, I was able to squeeze out an extra 10% of life, putting my indicator at 60%. Considering that I went to bed with an 80% battery and have been using the device frequently throughout the day, I’d say that’s an excellent tradeoff for the lack of haptic feedback.
This post is really just a warning for my fellow Note 3 owners. I had quite the freakout today when my phone wasn’t acting normally, but I hadn’t even considered the possibility that power saving mode was just doing its job. Heck, I even forgot I turned it off!
Stay tuned to Pocketables for continuing Samsung Galaxy Note 3 coverage. There will be a lot more of it in the coming weeks!
