S4 terrible battery life (tried everything)

[Lamborghini392]

I have a galaxy s4 and have had battery issues with it since I got it. The time it took me to sign up for this site, my battery has drained 6%. It lasts maybe an hour of screen time in general. Now, you might be thinking there's background apps sucking away the battery, but I've tried everything. I factory reset, clear cache partition, disabled all the bloatware, installed gsam to monitor the battery and nothing is unusual. No apps with excessive wakelocks, no apps with high cpu usage, just nothing. After using it down to 10%, the screen had the highest drain at 70% with maybe about 50% brightness and android os had the second most at just 10%. Been typing this with the brightness all the way down and battery has drained another 7% in under 10mins. Verizon sent me a replacement battery, same problem. Sent it into them for diagnosis, they said it worked fine for them. I have no idea what's wrong with it and I've about had it. The antutu benchmark drains the battery completely in about 20mins. Charge time is pretty fast, haven't experienced any slowdown in charge time. Any help?

Edit: Just installed a battery widget and it says the battery discharge is just under 2000ma per hour. The per app discharge leaves 1600ma unaccounted for, strange.

 

[extraclass]

Next I would remove your micro sd card. There has been some reports of a problem here. Do a search for "battery" in this forum and you will find a lot of info from others with the same problem.
If you are draining a good battery that fast your phone would have to be getting hot! Any signs of overheating? I assumed you are charging the battery overnight and see 100% at the top of the screen. It should fully charge in 3 to 4 hours!

Try a new charger and charging cable. A free app named Galaxy Charging will tell you how fast it is charging and should be charging around 1000 mah or higher with the proper cable and charger.

Let us know what you find!

 

[Lamborghini392]

Thx for responding. I updated to the stock lollipop firmware today. Did a factory reset after and battery life has improved maybe slightly. As for the SD card, I just removed it so I will play with it tomorrow and reply back with the results.

I was using a 2 amp iPad charger and a basic micro usb cable because it charges faster than the stock Samsung one.

Also my phone gets really hot, can't even touch the back by the camera without a case on, the battery gets warm but not hot. Assumed it was normal, got used to heat after having a Droid RAZR Maxx HD previously.

Also like I said, CPU usage and also GPU usage is low even when in Google chrome so no idea why the phone is getting so hot near the CPU. Airplane mode on (cell radio off), still burning hot. It's too bad warranty is up, because I honestly think it's a hardware problem.

 

[RAvEcREAToR23]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CXZI3DQ...ag=hawk-future-20&ascsubtag=UUacUvbUpU4742233 i will buy soon as on s3 it was perfect!

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Lamborghini392]

Yeah removing the SD card didn't help at all. Discovered the power saving mode last night too but the battery seems to drain at the same rate... very disappointed.

 

[extraclass]

IPads used to use a different battery charger and I tried one that would not work with my Tab-2. They used a different way of telling the charger to go to a high speed charge. Not sure about the newer iPad chargers. That may be your problem! Be sure the lightning bolt is visible in the battery icon!

If all this fails it may be time to replace or exchange your S-4 for a new one!

 

[Lamborghini392]

I have used many 2.1 amp chargers in the past and never made a difference. Keep in mind the phone had bad battery life since I got it, but maybe in the last month I can't even make it half way through the day. The whole 1-2% drain per minute of screen time (even idle on the homescreen) seems really odd. I would replace it but I can upgrade in another month or two so I'd rather not spend money for an out of warranty replacement.

There is another active thread just like mine and he found touchwiz was the problem and that installing a OEM google ROM fixed it. I always use nova launcher though so doubt touchwiz is causing my problem. I might try a custom ROM, kinda worried since I've never installed one before and only have experience with rooting.

 

[Rbrown3012]

Just a thought, even a brand new battery can be bad. By a quality replacement and try that.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[extraclass]

I just purchased 2 Samsung OEM Batteries on Ebay for $5.50 each! Wife"s and my S4 getting about 18 months old and seem to be losing power. About $29 at Radio Shack and Verizon!