what is up with this phone

stepaul8

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Just got the s4 and I conditioned it. Lasted me some good hours until recently. I have been struggling to get 13 hours of battery. I have spent around 3 hours on screen some with lte some with wifi but mostly wifi by a large margin. Yesterday I went out on a walk and I have cell wifi on switching between lte and 4g, playing spotify. My phone completely tanked in battery for a 45 minute trip with my phone just playing music while in my pocket. The phone overheated a crap ton like while on my walk I felt it through the case and pants. It usually overheats after use when I charge it though. What do I do? I feel like there is no point in the samsung s4 because you have to turn off all the cool features just to get battery!

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madlaw1071

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Just got the s4 and I conditioned it. Lasted me some good hours until recently. I have been struggling to get 13 hours of battery. I have spent around 3 hours on screen some with lte some with wifi but mostly wifi by a large margin. Yesterday I went out on a walk and I have cell wifi on switching between lte and 4g, playing spotify. My phone completely tanked in battery for a 45 minute trip with my phone just playing music while in my pocket. The phone overheated a crap ton like while on my walk I felt it through the case and pants. It usually overheats after use when I charge it though. What do I do? I feel like there is no point in the samsung s4 because you have to turn off all the cool features just to get battery!

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Sounds either like a bad battery or bad phone. Most users and reviewers report excellent battery life, with or without features turned on.
 

MaccaBird

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Im in the same boat. Just got the phone yesterday from verizon. I suspect it didn't launch with the new update that att got, because my batter is not very good yet, its a little laggy and 1.08gb of my ram is used up on idle. I charged my phone too 100 and then unplugged it overnight. In the morning it had 75 battery left, and for some reason Maps used the most of it. I haven't even opened the maps app yet. In addition my phone gets hot on slight use (like now). I wouldn't say its overheating, but it's getting hot. I want to love this phone. Coming from the DROID 3, it's so much better, but it shouldn't have these problems.

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joeyvaz

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My battery isn't that bad, but my phone does get hot while using it. I was on a 25 minute call and my face was hot! Very annoying coming from an iphone 5 that didn't exhibit this. I know there are some kinks to iron out, but I doubt they will happen within the 14 day return period from Verizon.
 

Almeuit

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Just got the s4 and I conditioned it. Lasted me some good hours until recently. I have been struggling to get 13 hours of battery. I have spent around 3 hours on screen some with lte some with wifi but mostly wifi by a large margin. Yesterday I went out on a walk and I have cell wifi on switching between lte and 4g, playing spotify. My phone completely tanked in battery for a 45 minute trip with my phone just playing music while in my pocket. The phone overheated a crap ton like while on my walk I felt it through the case and pants. It usually overheats after use when I charge it though. What do I do? I feel like there is no point in the samsung s4 because you have to turn off all the cool features just to get battery!

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Switching between LTE and 4g... Sounds like your area doesn't have the best signal since you are constantly hoping from the LTE to HSPA (4g). This could tank your battery pretty fast.

Sent from my Sprint S3 using AC forums.
 

Calidoc

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I'm still confused as to what people are considering "excellent battery life" with this phone. The iPhone 5 battery blows this one away. I'm lucking if I get 2.5 hours of screen time on a charge with nearly everything turned off (wifi, gps, all air and view features, nfc, sbeam). My ONLY complaint about my S4 is the battery life. What good are the features if I have to turn everything off?
 

20blks

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Switching between LTE and 4g... Sounds like your area doesn't have the best signal since you are constantly hoping from the LTE to HSPA (4g). This could tank your battery pretty fast.

Sent from my Sprint S3 using AC forums.

It's amazing that more people don't know this by now

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nj1266

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But my iPhone 5, same carrier, used in the same locations, never had any problem.

This is very well known when it comes to Samsung phones. Samsung uses poor quality radios. In strong signal areas your reception is fine, but once the signal is slightly worse, the Sammy radios cannot hold on to the signal. The radios switch between LTE and 3G and the battery suffers. It does not happen to you 5 because it uses better quality radios. It does not happen with Motorola either. I do not know about HTC first hand.


Sent from my iPhone 7
 

planoman

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I'm still confused as to what people are considering "excellent battery life" with this phone. The iPhone 5 battery blows this one away. I'm lucking if I get 2.5 hours of screen time on a charge with nearly everything turned off (wifi, gps, all air and view features, nfc, sbeam). My ONLY complaint about my S4 is the battery life. What good are the features if I have to turn everything off?

I must disagree. You have been having issues with your battery from the first week if I remember correctly and I am not sure if you got a new phone but I recall your GPS always running. I have the ATT S4 and a Verizon iphone 5 and in my experience, they are not even close in battery life. I usuallly charge my phones every night and I am routinely above 40% on my S4 and below 40% on my iphone. I am certainly not using my iphone more...not sure about a GSM iphone but my Verizon LTE model gets smoked by my ATT LTE S4.
 
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GMJeff

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Switching between LTE and 4g... Sounds like your area doesn't have the best signal since you are constantly hoping from the LTE to HSPA (4g). This could tank your battery pretty fast.

Sent from my Sprint S3 using AC forums.

^^This exactly.

I have seen the same thing at work. One bar of LTE means battery drain. It switches beyween 4G and LTE so much, you could fry an egg on the back of the phone. Batter loses 1 -2% every few minutes

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk 2
 

Calidoc

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I must disagree. You have been having issues with your battery from the first week if I remember correctly and I am not sure if you got a new phone but I recall your GPS always running. I have the ATT S4 and a Verizon iphone 5 and in my experience, they are not even close in battery life. I usuallly charge my phones every night and I am routinely above 40% on my S4 and below 40% on my iphone. I am certainly not using my iphone more...not sure about a GSM iphone but I Verizon LTE model gets smoked by my ATT LTE S4.

Yes, it WAS always running. A reset fixed that. Now I am lucky if I get 3.5 hours of screen time on a charge. With everything turned off, that's pretty bad (at least I think it's bad). That seems on par with what many others get, also. For that reason, I haven't taken it to att for a switch.
 

TheyStoleMyName

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^^This exactly.

I have seen the same thing at work. One bar of LTE means battery drain. It switches beyween 4G and LTE so much, you could fry an egg on the back of the phone. Batter loses 1 -2% every few minutes

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk 2

Can anyone provide a technical article on how a cellphones signal gain increases when its receiving a low tower signal. I hear this all the time i cant find any support to back it up. Even in the detailed phone settings it does not give a signal gain for the phone, only a rating for the signal strength from the tower its connecting too.

Sent from my LG-E970 using Android Central Forums
 

planoman

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Yes, it WAS always running. A reset fixed that. Now I am lucky if I get 3.5 hours of screen time on a charge. With everything turned off, that's pretty bad (at least I think it's bad). That seems on par with what many others get, also. For that reason, I haven't taken it to att for a switch.

3.5 hours of screen is pretty good if you ask me. And your iphone gets more? iphone 5 on LTE? Does iphone measure battery stats like screen time?
 

nj1266

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I usuallly charge my phones every night and I am routinely above 40% on my S4 and below 40% on my iphone. I am certainly not using my iphone more...not sure about a GSM iphone but my Verizon LTE model gets smoked by my ATT LTE S4.

Battery usage is highly subjective. I get great battery life from my iPhone 5. It lasts me 24 hours between charges. Having said that, Anandtech did standardized testing on the S4 and the iPhone 5 lasted longer in 2 out of 3 tests:

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1369445095.839177.jpg
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1369445114.888211.jpg
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1369445134.238283.jpg

Your personal experience is not supported by scientific testing methodology.



Sent from my iPhone 7
 

fantom305

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I'm still confused as to what people are considering "excellent battery life" with this phone. The iPhone 5 battery blows this one away. I'm lucking if I get 2.5 hours of screen time on a charge with nearly everything turned off (wifi, gps, all air and view features, nfc, sbeam). My ONLY complaint about my S4 is the battery life. What good are the features if I have to turn everything off?
For sure you have either a bad battery or a bad phone. ... My phone is been up for 9hrs and 45 miutes with 4 hrs of wifi, heavy internet and about an hour of phone calls. The only things that are not on are GPS and BLUETOOTH and my battery is at 74%. Now I don't play any games in my phone, for that I have my computer.
 

Calidoc

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3.5 hours of screen is pretty good if you ask me. And your iphone gets more? iphone 5 on LTE? Does iphone measure battery stats like screen time?

Yeah, iPhone 5 got way better screen on time. (And yeah it does measure screen time)

For sure you have either a bad battery or a bad phone. ... My phone is been up for 9hrs and 45 miutes with 4 hrs of wifi, heavy internet and about an hour of phone calls. The only things that are not on are GPS and BLUETOOTH and my battery is at 74%. Now I don't play any games in my phone, for that I have my computer.

Wow, that's amazing.

You are wasting your time ......... go back to AT&T and get a new one. ...

I feel like I'll just get a speech on how things kill your battery (turn off GPS, Bluetooth, etc). How can I be sure to get a switch?
 

return_0

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I don't own an S4, so I can't speak from personal experience, but this is what I'm thinking:

Nexus 4 - 2100 mAh battery - my average screen time is 4hrs
GS4 - 2600 mAh battery - if you get anything less than 4hrs screen time, one of three things is probably happening:
  • you have everything on and full brightness
  • you are spending most of your times on games
  • you have a defective device
 

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