Galaxy Note 4: Battery Life Concerns Check Here First

[worwig]

Stats from Gsam app. My phone still continues to run "Index Service" and seems to be the most taxing on my phone.

I had this same problem with my Note 4 when I first got it. I was lucky to get 8 hours of battery life. I fixed that issue, and another, and now I get through a day and have about 60% left.

I have a LOT of work documents (PDFs, Word docs, spreadsheets, etc.) on my phone. They are synced to a cloud service. If I deleted this document directory, the indexing service stopped. Put it back, and the indexing service popped back up and ate the battery. So, my documents directory, which I happen to call "My Documents", I simply renamed to ".My Documents". I put a period on the front of it. That hides directories. So the indexing service believes it is a hidden system directory with nothing to index, and it no longer tries to open it. I never could find exac tly with files caused the problem. It was more than one.
So, I suspect that you have a document, PDF, picture, maybe even album art, that is confusing the indexing service. The trick is to find that file, or files, and delete it or hide it. This is a Note bug. I have even found some references to the issue on the Note 2.

That was the first issue.

Second, I was using PUSH for my two exchange email services. That is how I used my Samsung S4 email for well over a years, and my S3 for over a year before it. It was never a problem on them. But PUSH exchange email on the Note 4 has a bug and it transfers message packets constantly. It consumes a HUGE amount of DATA, and of course eats into the battery life. So I live with a 15 minute sync delay. That is good enough for me. But it is a BUG in the Note 4 email app.

I have now been on battery for over 9 hours today, and it is at 81%. That includes a short time using it as a Hotspot.
Very adequate.

 

[worwig]

So I turned off the phone, pulled SD card, restarted. Weird, as now Gsam doesn't show the "Index Service", but when I go to Battery in settings, it Does still show it.

I believe that you have to be on charge, and over 90%, then remove the charger, in order to reset the 'battery' usage info.

 

[GregMargie]

I had this same problem with my Note 4 when I first got it. I was lucky to get 8 hours of battery life. I fixed that issue, and another, and now I get through a day and have about 60% left.

I have a LOT of work documents (PDFs, Word docs, spreadsheets, etc.) on my phone. They are synced to a cloud service. If I deleted this document directory, the indexing service stopped. Put it back, and the indexing service popped back up and ate the battery. So, my documents directory, which I happen to call "My Documents", I simply renamed to ".My Documents". I put a period on the front of it. That hides directories. So the indexing service believes it is a hidden system directory with nothing to index, and it no longer tries to open it. I never could find exac tly with files caused the problem. It was more than one.
So, I suspect that you have a document, PDF, picture, maybe even album art, that is confusing the indexing service. The trick is to find that file, or files, and delete it or hide it. This is a Note bug. I have even found some references to the issue on the Note 2.

That was the first issue.

Second, I was using PUSH for my two exchange email services. That is how I used my Samsung S4 email for well over a years, and my S3 for over a year before it. It was never a problem on them. But PUSH exchange email on the Note 4 has a bug and it transfers message packets constantly. It consumes a HUGE amount of DATA, and of course eats into the battery life. So I live with a 15 minute sync delay. That is good enough for me. But it is a BUG in the Note 4 email app.

I have now been on battery for over 9 hours today, and it is at 81%. That includes a short time using it as a Hotspot.
Very adequate.

Worwig, Thank you so much for your time to write all that out......I have not created nor have any 'document' folders (not even savy enough to create a new folder) and do not use any of the clouds, other than I do have the Evernote app on my phone. As far as I know, it only syncs when something new is added and only when I open the app and manually hit sync, and I am the only one that adds to it and I usually only upload new docs from my desktop computer. I use it as an office intranet, for our agents to get documents from when not in the office.

As far as email app (PUSH) someone suggested I set to Push, but the stock app doesn't even allow for that option. I was using K-9 email app on my Note 2 because the stock app, only synced a month worth of emails and I didnt want it to delete emails I wanted to keep on my phone from longer ago. That is why I went to K-9 because it would keep "all" if I wanted. When I got the Note 4, it looked like the stock app would now allow to keep all, so I chose to use it and have it set to check every 15 minutes, because I could always hit refresh to bring in new. I thought that all my pictures and videos I take were saving to the SD card, but now that its removed, I still see all or most of those still in my gallery! I did delete Google+ and today realized and stopped pictures syncing to Picasa and all the other Gooogle stuff that was syncing.

From your second post: I put my phone on charge right after my last post and will let it charge to 100% and then check to see if the "Battery" stats change. I am soooo hoping that as you said it might need to be at 90% before refreshing the list....that the "Index Service" stops and is gone.....as I Never see it in anyone else's stats when they display their battery stats. I am just soooooo 'over' this craziness of having to do all this to a brand new phone that should be way better than my previous Note 2! It should just work, as I have never had to do this on any of my Android phones!

Truly I am very grateful to you and everyone here who continues to go out of their way to help me!!!! Thank you and I will report back after I am charged up.

 

[worwig]

I may be one of the Evernote documents.
I would try removing Evernote to see if that helps. You would need to find and delete the storage directory also.

 

[GregMargie]

I may be one of the Evernote documents.
I would try removing Evernote to see if that helps. You would need to find and delete the storage directory also.

The second part of this is waaaay over my head! LOL! Unfortunately the very experienced and knowledgeable users here who are so gracious to help are so above the novice level, sometimes they think we know more than we do......and I don't feel comfortable diving into files I have no business opening or deleting in the workings of my phone, in fear of doing the wrong thing. I'm sure you know what I mean.

 

[GregMargie]

Worwig , you were right about charging before battery stats changed. So I charged up to 100% restarted and the Index Servicing is now gone! So I think maybe it 'was' the SD card like you said! Funny thing is before I restarted battery was 100, when phone came back on it dropped to 97% and now all I have done is take screen shot and wrote this post and am down to 95% so lost 5% in 5 minutes.

 

[LaTuFu]

Based on the screen eating 40% of the battery in that time, my guess is your brightness is set pretty high.

Kudos to you for your persistence, despite your lack of experience. You're doing a great job.

 

[GregMargie]

Based on the screen eating 40% of the battery in that time, my guess is your brightness is set pretty high.

Kudos to you for your persistence, despite your lack of experience. You're doing a great job.

Thank you very much, I really appreciate that!

Well, I have had the screen at 50% the last several days and that is actually the highest I've seen it register. I used to have it even brighter, as my eyes are probably a little (just a little! LOL!) older than yours. I do see a big improvement since removing the SD card, including my phone not feeling as hot when I'm using it.... Down to 75% in a little over 3 hours now. Thank you for all your help!

 

[LaTuFu]

Get a new SD card. I didn't realize that you were using one that was a couple years old.

A new high speed card will be very helpful.

Glad you are making progress.

 

[GregMargie]

Get a new SD card. I didn't realize that you were using one that was a couple years old.

A new high speed card will be very helpful.

Glad you are making progress.

Yes, I will definitely be getting a new micro SD! It does appear that was the major problem. Will see how it goes now. Thanks again for your help!

 

[GregMargie]

Looking for a new SD card.....does this look like a good one for my Note 4? Seems like a good price and I also have a 50% coupon to Samsung that should work. Whats the difference between "Pro" and "Evo"????

MicroSDHC MB- 64GB EVO Memory Card MB-MP64DA/AM | Samsung Memory & Storage

 

[hdhuntr]

It looks fine to me but I haven't priced them in forever. I like Blue Mail better than K9 and way better than stock. There WAS a setting for Push in stock but I don't remember where. I also do the 15 minute delay. If I check it then it automatically syncs then so it's like push from a practical standpoint. I don't need emails I am not looking at. That Picasa is a booger. I love most things about Google but they are too insistent about holding my pics contacts and calendar. I use other stuff. Glad about the indexing. Worwig's right. It could be just a single file.

Good luck!

And don't worry too much about hurting the phone. If you only mess with files that have no DOT in front of them you can't do much damage. Stay out of Android and Data and you might lose a file or a doc or have to reinstall an app but otherwise you are probably safe.

Looking for a new SD card.....does this look like a good one for my Note 4? Seems like a good price and I also have a 50% coupon to Samsung that should work. Whats the difference between "Pro" and "Evo"????

MicroSDHC MB- 64GB EVO Memory Card MB-MP64DA/AM | Samsung Memory & Storage

 

[GregMargie]

hdhuntr, Thank you. I did try Blue Mail once and if I remember correctly, I didn't keep it because, it will only store a months worth of emails. I need to have the choice to keep all. If I am working on a transaction it could go on from 1-6 months. LOL on "That Picasa is a booger" I agree! I really thought I had checked that to make sure it wasn't syncing.

I have to say that since I removed the SD card, stopped Picasa, my phone has been sooooooooooo much better. Today was a pretty quite day so I didn't task it heavily at all, but I left the house at 2:00pm today with 100% charge, took a few calls, sent a few texts and emails, checked AC forums and now at 6:43pm I am at 93%!!! Will see how a full work day goes tomorrow! Thanks for all your help and input!!!

 

[GregMargie]

Battery

 

[hdhuntr]

Looks great! I moved to Exchange a couple years ago so I had forgotten about the 30 day thing. I don't need it all on the device. There are others out there of course. If you aren't on MS Exchange you might look at it. Everything is on the server and searchable and it works well with Outlook and OneNote etc. Any, glad the battery is better.

hdhuntr, Thank you. I did try Blue Mail once and if I remember correctly, I didn't keep it because, it will only store a months worth of emails. I need to have the choice to keep all. If I am working on a transaction it could go on from 1-6 months. LOL on "That Picasa is a booger" I agree! I really thought I had checked that to make sure it wasn't syncing.

I have to say that since I removed the SD card, stopped Picasa, my phone has been sooooooooooo much better. Today was a pretty quite day so I didn't task it heavily at all, but I left the house at 2:00pm today with 100% charge, took a few calls, sent a few texts and emails, checked AC forums and now at 6:43pm I am at 93%!!! Will see how a full work day goes tomorrow! Thanks for all your help and input!!!

 

[LegalAmerican]

Check out how often something is waking my device. I have zero games on my phone, I have gone through all my settings and I cannot for the life of me determine what is doing this. Our home is up for sale so I have my laptop in storage to keep the house clutter free, so I cannot download the non-rooted Wakelock Detector files. Anyone have any ideas? I was having great battery life on this device for the first 6 weeks or so, and just recently it's been getting worse and worse and the only change I can think that I did, was to enable the AT&T Backup and Sync service, which I just disabled this morning... Any ideas?

 

[GregMargie]

Wish I could help, but I am sure someone more knowledgeable will respond to help you!

 

[worwig]

Looking for a new SD card.....does this look like a good one for my Note 4? Seems like a good price and I also have a 50% coupon to Samsung that should work. Whats the difference between "Pro" and "Evo"????

MicroSDHC MB- 64GB EVO Memory Card MB-MP64DA/AM | Samsung Memory & Storage

I really doubt that the problem is the card itself. I suspect the problem is a FILE that is on the card.

 

[LaTuFu]

I really doubt that the problem is the card itself. I suspect the problem is a FILE that is on the card.

I disagree, if the card is old enough, it can certainly be the actual card itself. I've seen too many threads similar to this one, and my own experience as well, where a new card resolved an issue that reformatting of an older card would not.

It is certainly not an absolute, but it is always a possibility.

 

[LegalAmerican]

I'm wondering if the latest AT&T update messed something up with my battery. I wasn't having these issues before and I have no apps downloaded that would be the culprit. The battery hog is the Android System. Right now I am at a battery level that I would normally be at 6 hours from now. I've used it a bit more than normal as i've tried to find the problem, but that would still put me off by about 5 hours in terms of where my battery should be.