# Samsung S4 Issues **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 12, 2016, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944 "2016-02-12T16:09:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2016, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/21 "2016-02-15T14:52:31Z")
I’d get one of the battery monitoring utility programs, and run that for a while; most of them can give you a lot more insight into what’s eating your battery and/or causing the overheating. Personally, I have GSam Battery Monitor installed, but the Google Play Store is lousy with them, so pick your favorite. What it lets me do is monitor power usage for a period of time, and show a graph of power usage over time, power usage vs. heat, a list of applications by power usage, sorted by highest percentage to least, along with some other stuff. That ought to give you an idea of what’s causing the problem. Plus, I’ll second the notion that you ought to get a new battery. Lithium-ion batteries gradually crap out over time even if they’re not used, and high charge/low charge excursions accelerate that, as do high temperatures. So smartphone use is probably pretty rough on a battery, as they’re often being cycled from nearly empty to entirely full, and operating fairly warm. The good news is that batteries for S4 phones are cheap and easy to replace. $12 buys you a top of the line aftermarket battery as good as the OEM version. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2016, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/22 "2016-02-15T15:33:35Z")
Check and see if in your google settings you have it enabled to look for wifi at any time; not the wifi settings themselves but in Google settings\*. How comfortable are you rooting your phone, and/or putting a custom ROM on it? - In Marshmallow that would be Settings\>Google\>Location\>Three Bars under scanning. Disable WiFi scanning. I have an S4 Mini and just this one step gave me about 50% more reserve because my phone wasn’t constantly checking location. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/23 "2016-02-16T16:30:59Z")
I had an S4 that had the same thing going on, _sometimes_. My best guess as to what was going on: The rapid battery-draining and heating up always happened on Wednesdays when I was in court here. Now, the courtroom here is on the third floor of the courthouse, all concrete walls, no windows. Cell phone reception in that location was horrible. I think that the phone was getting a very spotty connection to home base, such that it would lose its connection a lot. That meant that it was almost constantly switching from the home network, to roaming, finding home again, losing it and going back to roaming, over and over again. The constant switching from one radio signal to another heated up the phone and sucked the battery dry in about 4 hours. I would see if the problem persists in airplane mode as step one. Try it for a couple of hours. If your battery doesn’t drain, you might try disabling the background processes of as many apps as you can, then seeing if the drain still happens with airplane mode off. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/24 "2016-02-16T20:00:40Z")
At the moment I have a completely dead phone and two completely dead batteries. On Sunday I tried to charge them both, but with each , the phone went directly to overheating and shutdown inside of a minute. I can do nothing with it at the moment but set my drink on it. I am expecting a new battery from Amazon tomorrow and I’ll see how it works, but my hopes are not high. From everything I’ve read, there is no way it’s a problem with the battery. We shall see where the chips fall. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/25 "2016-02-16T20:22:32Z")
Try plugging it into a wall charger, turning it on, and putting it in Airplane mode to see if that prolongs the battery. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/26 "2016-02-16T20:26:49Z")
When I say dead, I mean dead. As in door-nails, disco and Elvis. I plug in the the wall charger and it’s still just a really expensive coaster, with a wire attached. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/27 "2016-02-16T21:25:47Z")
> [@Macca26](#): > > The phone is hot because it is using a lot of CPU. The battery drains quickly as a result of the CPU using up the energy stored in order to work. So the phone does not get hot as a result of battery drain, the battery drain and heat are both a symptom of a CPU running at full capacity. Yahoo Mail will use a lot of CPU downloading information for mail and the news section (which you can’t disable separately, which I have complained to them about). > > You can disable a lot of built-in apps if they give you trouble, even if they don’t let you uninstall them. Due to the nature of phones and push notifications and automatic services, it’s normal for many types of apps to start without you telling them because they run in anticipation of you using them (and mind you, computers are not mind readers, so if it’s an app you don’t actually use, it has no way of knowing that. It is going to continue merrily preparing itself to help you because it’s been programmed to prepare itself for use). Usually they never let you disable or uninstall apps critical to your phone working, but do be conscientious of what you disable or uninstall so that if you mess up one of your services, you know what to undo. I’m a microprocessor designer, and I collect tons of information about processor temperatures and current (for processors much, much bigger than the ARM cores in a phone) so I know all that. I don’t think our OP does. Like I said, I have no battery usage issue. The big problem with S4s, for Verizon ones at least, is that you’d have to root the phone to uninstall the crapware they install, and that isn’t worth doing. Much of the stuff that is running are apps I do use sometimes, and thus don’t want to disable, but do want to kill. I have a Task Killer app to do that, there are plenty around. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/28 "2016-02-16T21:34:40Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > The rapid battery-draining and heating up always happened on Wednesdays when I was in court here. Now, the courtroom here is on the third floor of the courthouse, all concrete walls, no windows. Cell phone reception in that location was horrible. > > I think that the phone was getting a very spotty connection to home base, such that it would lose its connection a lot. That meant that it was almost constantly switching from the home network, to roaming, finding home again, losing it and going back to roaming, over and over again. The constant switching from one radio signal to another heated up the phone and sucked the battery dry in about 4 hours. > > I would see if the problem persists in airplane mode as step one. Try it for a couple of hours. If your battery doesn’t drain, you might try disabling the background processes of as many apps as you can, then seeing if the drain still happens with airplane mode off. I’ve had a similar experience. But that shouldn’t kill the phone that quickly. If the new battery doesn’t fix the problem, I bet there is a short somewhere in the phone. If that is true it will still fail after a factory reset (and airplane mode won’t help.) ---
**Author:** ![SeaDragonTattoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@SeaDragonTattoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeaDragonTattoo)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/29 "2016-02-17T01:46:23Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > When I say dead, I mean dead. As in door-nails, disco and Elvis. I plug in the the wall charger and it’s still just a really expensive coaster, with a wire attached. Yeah, I think the factory reset needed to happen a while ago. Hopefully a new battery will get it going long enough to do that. I agree it’s not the battery, though. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944/30 "2016-02-18T20:52:03Z")
My phone issues have been resolved. However, I have no clue what was wrong. And I pretty much got half-fucked in the process. Considering the unit would no longer turn on, I could not pay out the upgrade fee of $110. Instead I had to rely on the insurance I have on the phone to have it replaced … of course I had to claim I dropped the phone in order to get this done, which I wasn’t really comfortable with, but fuck it, what’s done is done. The half-fucked part is that the deductible on my insurance was $150. So now I’m out 150 clams, but I have brand new phone, with none of my apps, or passwords, or text histories. All in all, I’m not very satisfied with this shit, but there’s really not much I can do about it. I think I may opt out of the whole smart phone thing altogether when my contract is up. I’m gonna go full luddite - flip-phone, rabbit ears on my TeeVee, butter churn in my kitchen … the whole nine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samsung-s4-issues/745944.md?page=1)