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Samsung S4 - Battery life sucks!


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Fellow AAers,

 

I am having issues with my phone and I am not sure why.. The 1st battery expanded.. not sure why but the phone was getting hot as well. So I bought another. Things seemed fine until this battery was draining really fast. It would not last a day. I main problem that I am having is that when I make phone calls the call will connect but neither party can hear each other. I can make calls when on messenger however. SMS and the net work fine.

 

I seem to be able to make calls when the battery has been charged and or when I turn the phone on and off. But yeah I have no idea why I cant 1: make calls no matter what the battery life is and 2: why the battery is draining so quickly. Any help would be much appreciated.

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I have an S4, it doesn't have the problems with calls, but the battery life is TERRIBLE. With normal usage, I am lucky to get 1.5 days out of it. This is standard for the phone, there is nothing wrong, it's just an old 2600mah battery, trying to power a phone that is basically too powerful for the battery to handle effectively. There is a power saving option in the menu which I leave permanently switched on, it doesn't seem to do a godamn thing.
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In settings > More > Battery > Battery Usage, you should be able to see whats using the most power. Could be a dodgy app.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I have an S4, it doesn't have the problems with calls, but the battery life is TERRIBLE. With normal usage, I am lucky to get 1.5 days out of it. This is standard for the phone, there is nothing wrong, it's just an old 2600mah battery, trying to power a phone that is basically too powerful for the battery to handle effectively. There is a power saving option in the menu which I leave permanently switched on, it doesn't seem to do a godamn thing.

 

Smart Phones pretty much need charging overnight, as they are essentially a computer in your pocket. Not like the old Nokias where you'd only need to charge them once a week :)

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Smart Phones pretty much need charging overnight, as they are essentially a computer in your pocket. Not like the old Nokias where you'd only need to charge them once a week :)

 

Yeah, I know that. But my brand new Galaxy S4 (well, like 6 months old) has worse battery than my old iPhone 4 did. I used to manage an easy 2.5 days out of my 4 year old iPhone 4, the Galaxy S4 is laughable in comparison.

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Fellow AAers,

 

I am having issues with my phone and I am not sure why.. The 1st battery expanded.. not sure why but the phone was getting hot as well. So I bought another. Things seemed fine until this battery was draining really fast. It would not last a day. I main problem that I am having is that when I make phone calls the call will connect but neither party can hear each other. I can make calls when on messenger however. SMS and the net work fine.

 

I seem to be able to make calls when the battery has been charged and or when I turn the phone on and off. But yeah I have no idea why I cant 1: make calls no matter what the battery life is and 2: why the battery is draining so quickly. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

Known issue with batteries expanding. I demanded and received a replacement battery from Samsung and then also got onto Telstra (as they supplied me the phone) Got 1 month credit from them.

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Li-Po batteries expand and blow up. Catch fire also with dramatic effect!

 

This is a feature not anything unusual. With every battery technology comes problems.

 

The manufacturers won't sing from the rooftops about expanding or catching fire batteries rather they will tell you how light they are, how much power they pack and how fast they can be recharged without any memory effect.

 

There are many many Youtube videos of particularly model aircraft Li-Po's catching fire and with horrific results. This is a fire that cannot be extinguished by the way as the battery produces oxygen so you cannot smother the fire.

 

This is the reason they are all but banned from the holds of commercial aircraft.

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if youre into tinkering , install standard android onto the phone , gets rid of all the bloatware on the phone. install only essential apps on the phone,

 

for example tapatalk is not required , your smartphone works fine on aa full site

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Yeah I could rip through the battery in mine in 10hrs and that was AFTER I rooted it and got rid of all the bloatware and installed Greenify which definitely helped. Install a good Battery Monitor (some of them are bad and use heaps of battery themselves) and learn what is using your battery and why, I once found that Google Services was sucking my battery but after an update it was OK. There can be many reasons and fixes, but you will never get good battery life out of an S4, the only answer after checking everything is to get and expanded battery pack that nearly doubles the thickness of your phone but at least it won't run out before you get home from work. I either used one of those, or I used a standard battery and had a spare battery on hand to swap out.

 

When I upgraded I nearly didn't buy an S6 because the battery is not removable, but I'm glad I still did as after rooting and installing a custom ROM with all the crap removed and stripped back (The ROM is literally half the size of the original) and again running Greenify I now get much better battery life than my S4 was, but it's still not great. I would have preferred a slightly thicker phone with better battery life but most manufacturers are not listening.

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One of the easiest ways to conserve battery in any device is install quick and easy toggle widgets for your 3/4g and wifi, bluetooth. Leave mobile data or wifi on all the time is the quickest way to drain your battery. Search curve fish in google play for one touch widgets and reclaim your battery life.

 

I have an s4 too and get 1.5-2 days from a charge. For a 5" display high power device, that is actually good, these days. [Rant] until a company makes a phone with a screen that doesn't crack or shatter when dropped, i see 0 point investing in the latest and greatest (for me). My S4 cost me $175 as a refurb on eBay so if i do kill it by being ham-fisted (and i will, that is how my S1, s3, Note 3 all died) i don't care so much. [/rant]

 

Sounds like your unit has more than battery problems, though.

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  • 1 month later...

I too have an S4 and get great battery life out of it ....

 

There are a couple of thing you can do, but over time they become a PITA (but it will extend the running time of the battery)

 

Firstly, make sure you have the "active apps" shortcut on your home screen.

 

 

1. After I use an app, I hold down the home button and end the app, or apps if I forget.

2. Open the active apps shortcut and on the top menus, click on "RAM" and clear the memory .... this alone can close down up to 40 applications.

 

The other thing that drains the battery quickly is that when you use an app, even doing the above doesn't shut it down completely. To do this is the PITA part but it really works and only has to be done on a semi regular basis.

 

1. Go into the settings menu and under "more" you will find "Application Manager"

2.In here, swipe over to "ALL"

3 Here is the pain part ..... tap on any file in there that has an icon that doesn't look like it's a system file. They will be obvious as they will look like an app icon.Once you are in there, click "force stop" to completely end the operation.

You can also stop things like all of the Samsung app that you never use .... There are tons of things in there that will always run in the background that will NEVER be used. Force stop them all.

4. If you never use the apps that you stop, "disable" them as well to stop them from starting.

 

By doing this, I can almost guarantee that your battery will be totally different. Your phone will also run faster due to not so much crap running on it.

 

Occasionally (maybe once every 6 -8 weeks something won't stop and will drain the battery really quickly ..... just turn the phone off and it will fix itself.

 

I am completely illterate on computers and technology, so if I can do it, anbody can.

 

Hope this helps .....

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Good advice on killling the extra processes and freeing up RAM etc but there's a HEAPS easier way to achieve the same end result.

 

Just install ES TASK MANAGER app. once installed, add the widget for it to your homescreen. From then on, a single tap of the widget kills all stray processes and frees up heaps of RAM.

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Yeah a while ago I did a full restore and the battery was fine after that, but I still had problems with making calls. The call could be made but I could not hear the receiver and they could not hear me, yet I can make calls on messenger. I went to the shop that specializes in repairs of smart phones and he said that S4's can have issues with the chip... He said there were like 40 wires that fed into the chip and that one of them shat itself and that was the reason why I had problems making calls.... There is no way to repair it... grrrr
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