Galaxy Note 4: Battery Life Concerns Check Here First
- Thread starter hdhuntr
- Start date
Flashfox
Well-known member
Sorry for the delay but I was kind of "off the grid" (on a cruise in the Caribbean). My Note 4's battery drain IS tied to the device and to the use of uSD cards (micro-SD card... cheating by using "u" 
.
During the shore visits and with extensive data usage (thanks to T-Mobile's free international data roaming), my Note 4 could last 20+ hours every day (I would charge it after 16 hours and it still had ~40% left). When I got back home, I re-inserted a freshly FAT32 formatted 32GB Class 10 uSD card and 4 hours later, the battery was almost dead and the phone was hot. "indexService" was consuming over 75% of the phone's processor time.
I know that it's not happening across the board but it seems to be a fairly common issue tied to the Note 3 and 4. Unfortunately, I have not found any post from Samsung telling us how to resolve this. By the way, it's NOT Wi-Fi as on my Note 4, Wi-Fi is always OFF unless I want to connect.
So, my action plan is:
Test 1: Test the uSD card formatted to exFAT.
if that fails...
Test 2: As I did NOT perform a new "factory reset" and this is something I will try after my next busines strip.
With regards to exFAT, I did NOT think that Samsung's Note 4 supported the exFAT format. Additionally, that format is typically mandatory for 64GB+ uSD cards/sticks so I didn't try to use this format with just 32GB. My nVidia Shield tablet uses 32GB FAT32 formatted cards without any problem.
. During the shore visits and with extensive data usage (thanks to T-Mobile's free international data roaming), my Note 4 could last 20+ hours every day (I would charge it after 16 hours and it still had ~40% left). When I got back home, I re-inserted a freshly FAT32 formatted 32GB Class 10 uSD card and 4 hours later, the battery was almost dead and the phone was hot. "indexService" was consuming over 75% of the phone's processor time.
I know that it's not happening across the board but it seems to be a fairly common issue tied to the Note 3 and 4. Unfortunately, I have not found any post from Samsung telling us how to resolve this. By the way, it's NOT Wi-Fi as on my Note 4, Wi-Fi is always OFF unless I want to connect.
So, my action plan is:
Test 1: Test the uSD card formatted to exFAT.
if that fails...
Test 2: As I did NOT perform a new "factory reset" and this is something I will try after my next busines strip.
With regards to exFAT, I did NOT think that Samsung's Note 4 supported the exFAT format. Additionally, that format is typically mandatory for 64GB+ uSD cards/sticks so I didn't try to use this format with just 32GB. My nVidia Shield tablet uses 32GB FAT32 formatted cards without any problem.
Flashfox
Well-known member
godzillinois
Well-known member
Looks pretty good, start the next reading at 100% and take screen shots when you're close to 15% battery
My wife is getting 6+ hours of SOT with location running all day... But my signal is not the greatest in my office and no wifi, while she is at home (excellent signal and wifi) and very low brightness.
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if you have to remove you're sd card in order to have better battery then something is not right. that is certainly not normal.thats just putting a bandaid on the real problem
I have had Note 4 for a month now. Have never put in a SD card. For the first three weeks the phone ran great and battery was amazing. The last week my battery drains so fast. Last night I charged it to 100% before going to sleep and woke up with it down to 40% with zero activity from me. Searched the battery option to find index services as the culprit over 50% usage. After reading many reviews it seems like bad or old SD cards was the fix. With mine not having an SD card what else could be the issue. I find it odd it worked great with good battery life up until a week ago.
It could still be trying to sync with something else outside the phone. It's definitely your problem...
One of the issues with the indexing service is pdf files. If the pdf file is not perfect (and many aren't) it will get stuck on them. One thing that helped me is making the index service ignore the directories where my pdfs reside. You do that by putting a .nomedia file in the directory. (yes, the file name is [dot]nomedia) You can find .nomedia files in the android folders, just copy and paste it into the directory you want to ignore. This will also ignore all the subdirectories.
Note that this will keep some apps that rely on the index from finding your files, but you can always open them from the Open dialog in the app itself.
If this is a problem for you, you can do a search for pdfs and try to isolate the problem. If anything, you can try this and see if it solves the problem, you can always remove the .nomedia file later.
Alex
Note that this will keep some apps that rely on the index from finding your files, but you can always open them from the Open dialog in the app itself.
If this is a problem for you, you can do a search for pdfs and try to isolate the problem. If anything, you can try this and see if it solves the problem, you can always remove the .nomedia file later.
Alex
Well, disregard my message about the .nomedia file. I was still having some problems with index service, even after placing the .nomedia files (on the recommendation of another website). So I deleted the folders I had with the pdf files, and the problem is now gone. Don't have time to figure out which pdf file was bad.
GregMargie
Well-known member
This continues to be very discouraging, hearing this from many people......once I finally removed my old SD card from my new note 4 waaaay back in this thread, my phone dropped the Indexserving and performed beautifully. My intention was to buy a brand new SD card (go from a 32 to a 64) which I haven't done yet in all these months, because I keep seeing others saying they have put in a brand new card and still have the same "Indexservicing" issue and battery drain! I called Samsung just recently and they are truly no help other than to say, "Send in your Phone".
I really want to add an SD card again so I can push pictures to that rather than my phones internal storage......
spotnjack
Well-known member
I, also, had been reading similar threads about battery life and how it related to SD cards. I had my Note 4 for about a week when I put a brand new Samsung 64 GB card in it. I let the phone format it, and I have had zero issues, and phenomenal battery life. I had an old 32 GB card that has traveled from phone to phone for 3 or 4 years, and decided I didn't even want to tempt fate. No regrets...
GregMargie
Well-known member
Thank you for posting your positive results with a brand new Samsung 64GB card. Great to hear and I might just go ahead and order the same one after all and hope for the same results!
I used to feel the same way but especially with things like pictures I am comfortable using all the free storage out there. There are dozens but I use One Drive. And if you don't like to trust it completely you can download the one drive stuff to PC periodically. I don't even have an SD card anymore... I mean I have one but it isn't in the device. I just don't need it. I have heard Lollipop will fix these SD issues but I don't have them without the card mounted. Haven't seen an indexing problem with One Drive.
GregMargie
Well-known member
Thank you as it is definitely a good thought and alternative. I would however like to have this feature of my phone work for me. So we will see, as I haven't ordered the new SD card as of yet.
spotnjack
Well-known member
I also have a One Drive account, and all of my pictures automatically back up to it. I could probably get by pretty easily without an SD card, but I'm a creature of habit. I also, almost never, remove my pictures from my phone, as well as storing music on it. Even so, with 32 GB of onboard storage I could live without the card, but I choose not to.
I totally get you and GregM both... I am saving my "peeve" for trying to get those nasty "enhanced bookmarks" out of my Chrome Beta browser. If you don't know these yet consider yourself lucky ;-)
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