Galaxy Note 4: Battery Life Concerns Check Here First

[Axr6]

I had the exact same problem on my 2 days old Note 4. Index Service was responsible for up to 75% of the battery usage. Thanks to all the posters here and their advice, I pulled my SD card and the drain stopped. With the SD card installed my phone would lose nearly 10% charge per hour even without the screen being ON. Now, it has been over 2 hours and it still sits at 100 percent.

It must be something peculiar about how the Note 4 interacts with the older SD cards as the card works perfectly when I put it back into my S4. No battery issues there. BTW - my SD card also begun duty in an HTC Thunderbolt, then an S3 and an S4. No issues with any other phones.

 

[GregMargie]

I had the exact same problem on my 2 days old Note 4. Index Service was responsible for up to 75% of the battery usage. Thanks to all the posters here and their advice, I pulled my SD card and the drain stopped. With the SD card installed my phone would lose nearly 10% charge per hour even without the screen being ON. Now, it has been over 2 hours and it still sits at 100 percent.

It must be something peculiar about how the Note 4 interacts with the older SD cards as the card works perfectly when I put it back into my S4. No battery issues there. BTW - my SD card also begun duty in an HTC Thunderbolt, then an S3 and an S4. No issues with any other phones.

Glad this thread helped us, because my Note 4 is fantastically perfect now! I have not put the card back into my old Note2 to test, but before going to Note 4 I had no issues with it. LOL on your Thunderbolt!

 

[Brandwin]

I lost 20% while sleeping... I have two Batteries I switch, so it's something on my phone causing poor battery.



My screen is never at the top.

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[Brandwin]

Can anyone help? Maybe my battery is fine? I really have no idea. I don't know what I am even looking at coming from iPhone.

Here are screen shots from GSam and Greenify

Thanks!

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[dpham00]

Fyi, the note 4 is one of the top ranked for smartphone battery life. I know that there are many variables that affect battery life but it is good to see that the note 4 does well in benchmark

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 4

 

[Jon Jackson]

Replaced my SD card. 8 hours off charger and at 93%...and yes, I have used my phone during that time.

 

[TeaEss87]

I've been reading through various forums trying to pinpoint the "Index Service" battery drain on my Galaxy Note 4 and this looks like the best place so far. I got my Note 4 and was ending the day with ~80% battery after using it consistently all day. I installed my 32GB SanDisk microSD card that I used in my old Galaxy S II, then I found my battery draining in about 8 hours with Index Service using ~50% of my battery. I thought maybe a new SD would fix it so on Black Friday I bought an even larger 64GB Samsung microSDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card from Best Buy and transferred my old files to it.

Now my battery life is draining from 100% to 12% in ~4 hours. I did put my old files on that new card but I've been having this issue for over 3 weeks, so Indexing should be finished by now. It has to be a bug. I read somewhere to remove the card and format the SD as FAT32, also remove .pdf files, and any files over 200MB. I haven't tried any of this yet, but I thought I'd post my pics and say that Samsung brand cards DID NOT fix my issue.

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[TeaEss87]

I forgot to mention my phone has been running really hot ever since I put any SD card in with my old files. I can feel the heat through my pant leg to where my phone will make that area of my leg sweat. Definitely not good for a battery.

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[worwig]

I've been reading through various forums trying to pinpoint the "Index Service" battery drain on my Galaxy Note 4 and this looks like the best place so far. I got my Note 4 and was ending the day with ~80% battery after using it consistently all day. I installed my 32GB SanDisk microSD card that I used in my old Galaxy S II, then I found my battery draining in about 8 hours with Index Service using ~50% of my battery. I thought maybe a new SD would fix it so on Black Friday I bought an even larger 64GB Samsung microSDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card from Best Buy and transferred my old files to it.

Now my battery life is draining from 100% to 12% in ~4 hours. I did put my old files on that new card but I've been having this issue for over 3 weeks, so Indexing should be finished by now. It has to be a bug. I read somewhere to remove the card and format the SD as FAT32, also remove .pdf files, and any files over 200MB. I haven't tried any of this yet, but I thought I'd post my pics and say that Samsung brand cards DID NOT fix my issue.

When I had this issue, it had NOTHING to do with the type of card, or the formatting of the card. In fact, the files that caused the issue were in the phone internal storage.
I never did narrow it down as to which file it was. I carry hundreds of PDFs, DOCs, XLSs, etc. So I added a single period to the front of my document directory name. That hides the files from most things, but I am still able to open them with my viewers and editors. Perfect. In fact there were a few pictures in those directories that were part of the documentation, that used to show up in the gallery. Now they are also hidden.
I have not seen the indexing service since. Now the exchange service, that is another issue......

 

[GregMargie]

Once I removed my old SD card my phone has been great. I did not order a new one yet, but when I do I will not transfer my old files as I think as others suggested that it may be the files as well as the card. So I will start with a fresh card and see how it goes.

 

[LaTuFu]

I forgot to mention my phone has been running really hot ever since I put any SD card in with my old files. I can feel the heat through my pant leg to where my phone will make that area of my leg sweat. Definitely not good for a battery.

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Run your phone without a card at all for a day, see what kind of battery life you get.

Copy your files from your card to another location (backup drive, Dropbox, whatever) and reformat your card. Don't reload the files, just run it in the phone reformatted.

Run the phone for a day like this.

Is there a difference in performance or battery life? 5% +/- isn't significant enough to worry about. More than that probably so.

 

[TeaEss87]

I took my SD card out for the entire day today, also was running pandora non-stop for about 6 hours. It was only at 76% after that. Going to format and try loading individual file types one day at a time to try to pinpoint the issue. Removing SD fixes it for sure though (not really a valid solution)

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[GregMargie]

I took my SD card out for the entire day today, also was running pandora non-stop for about 6 hours. It was only at 76% after that. Going to format and try loading individual file types one day at a time to try to pinpoint the issue. Removing SD fixes it for sure though (not really a valid solution)

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Ya, I don't understand why so many of us are finding our old SD cards to be an issue or perhaps corrupt files on it..... Since I removed mine, huge difference in my phone.

Running Pandora 6 hours straight and 76% left, Wow! Also, I noticed you are charging by USB. I know others have said that you get a much more solid and faster charge on Wall outlet.

 

[godzillinois]

The real question is, how are people seeing battery life times like this?:

http://imgur.com/yC5jPCA

http://imgur.com/8ZwLSUY

I don't have indexing taking up any battery so I don't think it's my SD Card. I use gsam battery monitor and Greenify, and I even set it to UPSM while I sleep. Still can't get more than 4.5 hours screen time on my phone.

 

[ColbyJvonBrown]

Right!! I have a Motorola Moto G on Boost Mobile and always have 5 to 6 full bars on Sprint. But I only get around 3 hrs. OST!! But when I had the Verizon variant I could go a whole day and had 5 to 6 hours OST. So something is really wrong and I've seen one persons google play services on constantly just like mine and I've disabled g+ and anything I don't use and still have horrible battery life I just don't understand! And if you ask why I'm hear cause no one can seem to help me in the moto g 2013 forms. So help would be great! And I just installed Greenify and wanted to know how to use it, this is what I have so far.

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[ColbyJvonBrown]

Also I see that my device is only 1 down from the galaxy note 4.

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[ColbyJvonBrown]

Sorry it didn't post with the other comment!

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[hdhuntr]

This should have been part of my original post. It's a great thing for everyone with battery problems to begin with. I just saw a popst in another thread from a former iphone person who "feels like it is a Verizon issue" and is going to "give the battery some time". It gets frustrating after the first few hundred posts like that.

Sorry it didn't post with the other comment!

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[Sasha Kaplan]

Thank you very much

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[Flashfox]

Brand new Note 4 from T-Mobile, brand new 32GB Class 10 SanDisk and 32GB Class 10 Samsung EVO uSD cards. Both cards were (full) formatted FAT32 on my computer.

With any of the two cards in the Note 4 and nothing added to the card except for telling the Note 4 to store the pictures it takes there, by battery lasts around 5 hours MAX while the phone gets very hot and "IndexService" is responsible for 85% of the consumption.

Pull the uSD card out and battery life is what I expect.

As noted by many in this thread, "IndexService" is running amok when a uSD card is installed. It seems to be in a constant indexing loop even if the only information are the pictures it stores there. "IndexService" went from 85% to not even showing up in the usage AFTER the uSD card is pulled.

This seems to point to a definite glitch with Samsung's firmware. The oddity is that a friend of mine who also has a Note 4 w/32GB uSD card is NOT experiencing this issue? Could it be the card itself? (i.e. Note 4 is VERY picky?).

It's happening after reformatting to FAT32 both of the brand new (unused) SanDisk and Samsung EVO class 10 cards (the two brands I have).

Note that this problem does NOT exist on other Android 4.4.4 or 5.0.1 devices I have which accept a uSD card.