Galaxy S4 won't charge

[IslandGuy]

I think I found my problem thanks to a post about the USB cord being different from others. I proceeded to inspect mine and realized a pin is missing from the end that plugs into the phone. It appears the stock Samsung cord is inferior. I replaced it with one I had from a previous device plugged into the charger that came with the phone and it is working just fine.

 

[Nahian Zaim]

i connected to my laptop....and it shows that its charging yet over time the charge seemed to actually decrease....when i checked the battery consumption in settings some apps which i closed specially from the application manager still seemed to use up my battery....and the heating problem remains...

 

[vasekvi]

I think I found my problem thanks to a post about the USB cord being different from others. I proceeded to inspect mine and realized a pin is missing from the end that plugs into the phone. It appears the stock Samsung cord is inferior. I replaced it with one I had from a previous device plugged into the charger that came with the phone and it is working just fine.

My cord looks the same and charges just fine.




One recommendation I have is this widget called Current Widget that monitors charging current. Extremely useful especially for those having charging issues.


https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ils?id=com.manor.currentwidget&token=sw8z9qdu


Using the white 2amp Samsung charger and cable that came with the phone and also the black spare one I bought to use at work it shows 1900mA when charging.

Using the same cable on a generic brand 1amp charger I get 1020mA



Using a cheap 500mA charger it shows 520mA




Discharging it shows 460mA which I assume is the draw on the battery. Interestingly enough with this widget it doesn't fluctuate. And charging over USB it shows charging and 460mA also. Which I guess means that over usb to computer the device just holds the charge.

Sent from my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk II

 

[Nannygoat5]

The problem I am having with my Galaxy is that when the battery is close to or completely dead, it will not charge. The only thing that works is connecting it to my car charger for a few seconds until I see the charging icon. Then, I am able to bring it in and charge normally. This is not a real problem if you are faithful about charging nightly, but once in a while... Any suggestions???

 

[Nannygoat5]

Plug it into the car charger for a few seconds until the charging icon shows, Bring it in and charge normally. Works for me when the battery is very low or dead and it will not charge.. Discovered this as I was taking the phone back to the store in the car. Not normal, but it works. I just have to remember to charge nightly.

 

[Clancy Lee]

Mine has to be plugged in and detected as a device to charge. It won't charge off a wall outlet, it won't charge off anything that doesn't automatically detect it. I've been through all the buzzing rigamaroll and everything everone on here has been talking about. Annoying to say the least. Any word from Samsung?

This is always, not only when the charge is low.

 

[Sam Cheong]

Samething just happened to me. I just took the battery out and put it back in. Hopefully I don't see that problem again.

 

[Cakewalker85]

Plug it into the car charger for a few seconds until the charging icon shows, Bring it in and charge normally. Works for me when the battery is very low or dead and it will not charge.. Discovered this as I was taking the phone back to the store in the car. Not normal, but it works. I just have to remember to charge nightly.

I was having this problem and this solution worked for me. I don't even have a car charger, I used my car's stereo usb connection. It started to charge for a second, then I took it out and brought it back in, then plugged it into my computer. Charging just fine now.

Edit: Looks like I spoke to soon. My phone was able to charge for a little bit after trying this then went back to the same broken state of not being able to charge. I am currently using the method that puts the phone into the battery icon / vibrate cycle but that is getting annoying real quick. I did notice that when the phone decides to no charge anymore it tells me that it connects to a dock whenever I connect it to my computer. Before it use to tell me the the device was connected as Mass Storage. Could this have something to do with the problem? I can't seem to remember where in the settings I was able to tell the phone to connect as a mass storage device so if anyone could tell me how to do that again I can check that setting.

 

[Cakewalker85]

So I think I've found a solution to my problem. My phone has stayed charging for the past 30 min now and I will keep monitoring and update you guys. But here's the fix I used.

After doing some research people were saying that the micro-usb port on the phone can easily become bent or slanted from its intended position. I looked at the micro-usb connector port on my phone and noticed that the connector part was a little to close to the bottom and should be more centered. I used the tip of a pen to bend the connector back to the middle of the port and then plugged my charger back in. Now it is working just fine. So everyone check your ports and see if the connector is close to the bottom. It should be centered.

 

[natehoy]

For those of you who had your phone shut itself down and are having initial problems recharging the battery (battery gets unusually warm (*), charging indicator is blinking or showing errors, can't get it to start up right away, etc), I don't own an S4 but this is pretty typical of any Lithium battery. What you want to do is leave it plugged in and do not attempt to turn the phone on for a while. After 15 minutes, depending on the phone, the error/trouble indicator (or lack of any indication that the phone is charging) should go away and the battery should start charging normally. After a further 10-15 minutes, it's safe to start the phone if you like.

When an Android phone is powered down, a small piece of bootstrap software takes care of the charging. This software is not all that sophisticated, but is very good at "recovering" a battery from extremely low charges, which are very bad in general for Lithium-based batteries. During this recovery process, often an error will show or the phone will look like it's not doing anything. When you try to power it up, that software exits and the bootloader starts. During the boot-up process, charging the battery is not possible, and unless you have a 2A charger hooked up with a proper charging cable, the startup process will be depleting battery. So if you have a very low-power situation in the battery, you can actually ruin the battery by trying to force it to start up prematurely.

Plug it in and resist the temptation to touch it for as long as you can manage.

(*) By "unusually warm", I mean "warmer than you are used to". If the battery becomes actually HOT to the touch as in "ouch, I feel like I might actually get a burn if I hold this or I cannot hold it for more than a half second", unplug it, remove the battery, and get thee to the store from whence it came. You do not want to experience a Lithium battery going into full meltdown. You just.. don't. It's rare, but it does happen.

 

[benhmadison]

For those of you who had your phone shut itself down and are having initial problems recharging the battery (battery gets unusually warm (*), charging indicator is blinking or showing errors, can't get it to start up right away, etc), I don't own an S4 but this is pretty typical of any Lithium battery. What you want to do is leave it plugged in and do not attempt to turn the phone on for a while. After 15 minutes, depending on the phone, the error/trouble indicator (or lack of any indication that the phone is charging) should go away and the battery should start charging normally. After a further 10-15 minutes, it's safe to start the phone if you like.

When an Android phone is powered down, a small piece of bootstrap software takes care of the charging. This software is not all that sophisticated, but is very good at "recovering" a battery from extremely low charges, which are very bad in general for Lithium-based batteries. During this recovery process, often an error will show or the phone will look like it's not doing anything. When you try to power it up, that software exits and the bootloader starts. During the boot-up process, charging the battery is not possible, and unless you have a 2A charger hooked up with a proper charging cable, the startup process will be depleting battery. So if you have a very low-power situation in the battery, you can actually ruin the battery by trying to force it to start up prematurely.

Plug it in and resist the temptation to touch it for as long as you can manage.

(*) By "unusually warm", I mean "warmer than you are used to". If the battery becomes actually HOT to the touch as in "ouch, I feel like I might actually get a burn if I hold this or I cannot hold it for more than a half second", unplug it, remove the battery, and get thee to the store from whence it came. You do not want to experience a Lithium battery going into full meltdown. You just.. don't. It's rare, but it does happen.

This is spot on....It is not good to run these batteries down below 10 percent and especially down to zero. I never let mine get below 20 percent and I have never had an issue.

 

[Shreya nair]

i too have a similar problem with my s4 mine also doesn't charge................. dont know what to do

 

[erinsadam]

My SGS4 is completely dead. The battery won't charge at all. It also seemed to be triggered by letting the battery get too low which sounds strange but I have had it for a few weeks and this was the first time I did not charge it overnight and now it won't charge at all. Just has a vibrating/pulse every 5 seconds or so. What a real pain. I also tried a factory reset/took battery out, moved it from different charging stations but nothing... Hope someone has a fix for it soon.

 

[ram15x]

I just bought the S4 on sunday. everything seemed to be fine, on my way home i charged the phone in my car with the cable it came with. and everything was fine. I left the phone charging with the wall charger over night. woke up to the phone being dead. i tried other outlets in my house and the usb connection on my computer. they were not charging the phone very well. it wasnt untill i had to go somewhere using my car that i tried charging the phone in my car, the phone actually started to charge. when i got home i connected the phone to the wall charger and it said it was charging but the percentage was went down instead of up when i checked it again. i thought it was weird. I went to the verizon store where i bought the phone and explained what had happened, they thought it was must me not connecting the phone correctly. so i told them to charge my phone in the store, they left it connected. the guy told me that the phone was charging. i had told him well lets leave it charging if the percentage goes up ill leave. It was at 64% when we left it charging, some time later we came up to the phone and it was at 61% while charging. they told me it might be the battery, so they ordered me a new one. i didnt believe it was the battery because it would charge in the car just not when it was connected to the wall. so i went to the store and bought a 2.1 amp wall charger. took it home tried it and there it was. the phone was actually charging now. so my advice is try a 2.1 amp wall charger.

 

[vasekvi]

I just bought the S4 on sunday. everything seemed to be fine, on my way home i charged the phone in my car with the cable it came with. and everything was fine. I left the phone charging with the wall charger over night. woke up to the phone being dead. i tried other outlets in my house and the usb connection on my computer. they were not charging the phone very well. it wasnt untill i had to go somewhere using my car that i tried charging the phone in my car, the phone actually started to charge. when i got home i connected the phone to the wall charger and it said it was charging but the percentage was went down instead of up when i checked it again. i thought it was weird. I went to the verizon store where i bought the phone and explained what had happened, they thought it was must me not connecting the phone correctly. so i told them to charge my phone in the store, they left it connected. the guy told me that the phone was charging. i had told him well lets leave it charging if the percentage goes up ill leave. It was at 64% when we left it charging, some time later we came up to the phone and it was at 61% while charging. they told me it might be the battery, so they ordered me a new one. i didnt believe it was the battery because it would charge in the car just not when it was connected to the wall. so i went to the store and bought a 2.1 amp wall charger. took it home tried it and there it was. the phone was actually charging now. so my advice is try a 2.1 amp wall charger.

I know my comment gets buried and I keep saying it over and over and over again. But use this widget and you can see what your rate of charge is. You don't have to wait to see if your phone is getting a charge. A 2amp charger will show in this widget that it is drawing 1900mA.



Use it use it use it especially if you've had charging issues..

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ils?id=com.manor.currentwidget&token=nyQGR84s

Sent from my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk II

 

[xx760xx]

I know my comment gets buried and I keep saying it over and over and over again. But use this widget and you can see what your rate of charge is. You don't have to wait to see if your phone is getting a charge. A 2amp charger will show in this widget that it is drawing 1900mA.

View attachment 71479

Use it use it use it especially if you've had charging issues..

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ils?id=com.manor.currentwidget&token=5j3wYEqA

Sent from my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk II

Well, my phone claims it's charging when I plug it into the computer. But according to that widget I'm receiving 0mA .__.

 

[Tentcell]

Same thing happened to me about two days ago. When I went to charge it (battery was at 20%, but I let it get quite low a few nights before) it wouldn't recognize that I was charging it. I tried it with my friends charger, my charger, tried charging through the computer, different power outlets, but nothing. Now, like most, since the phone will not charge up, it come up with a charging symbol as it vibrates, then the symbol goes away and comes back maybe 10 seconds later.

I called AT&T and they sent me another number to call, so I did. After struggling through thick indian accents and being transferred to nearly every person in Bombay, an hour and a half later a man said he would send me a new battery for the phone. he said it would be expressed to my house via FedEx by the next day between 3-5pm. He also said that he would call back and check how the new battery worked out and if it didn't we would try something different.

So here I am, after the time specified when the battery is supposed to be here... Suprise suprise, it isn't here.

Received my S4 the day it came out on AT&T, so around 4/27/2013. Love the phone, not so much anything else about Samsung.

Will keep posted.

 

[vasekvi]

Well, my phone claims it's charging when I plug it into the computer. But according to that widget I'm receiving 0mA .__.

And with the wall charger?

Sent from my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk II

 

[Graham Radetsky]

Sadly its a well known issue, the problem is not the battery, its the charger, in many units they sent out cheap chargers that are good typically for most cell phones but for the s4 the power it uses is larger than the charger can handle by default, and this is an unintentional mistake that I will tell you how to fix very shortly.

1. the easiest fix is to get a charger self sufficient enough to maintain the charge. The ones that can do this is the 5 pin data and charging, usb chargers, just connect the usb chargers into the wall to usb charger that came with the phone. The 5 pin chargers are more capable then the 4 pin that came with your phone. To get these either look for a charger that is advertised for data transfer as well as charging at usb 2.0 to 3.0 speeds, or go with these 3 charging companies I have found that work, either the most expensive and most durable for 25 dollars at radioshack for ifrogz, or i-sound about 8 dollars at tj-maxx (oddly not at marshals). These 2 are the best I have found.

2. fix the freaking reason why the heck the phone is using so much power. These chargers are great because even if you find them actually less necessary after you fix step 2, you will find that they can totally charge the phone up 100% in about 1:20 hours. The phone was tested before it was sent to the reseller, but some of the resellers have bad firmwares and is causing google maps to run 100% of the time. Do a factory reset, sadly this means you will loose your apps and the problem usually is fixed. This should be done if you are seeing in your battery menu google maps always running at 10% or more of your battery and never closing. Even with the chargers I recommended that will be able to charge it with this bug. The phone will drain withing 10 hours on idle doing nothing to 0 and in 5 hours in hard usages. Refreshing to factory stock will fix this glitch. The phone should by 69 hours idle, and about 10 hours of hard gaming use. Its not the most efficient piece of hardware but its more efficient then what a large chunk of what people are getting out of it right now. I am sorry for your pain, I delt with it too just a couple days ago as well.

 

[xx760xx]

And with the wall charger?

Sent from my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk II

Wall charger doesn't even charge at all, surprisingly enough. It's so peculiar that it charges through the computer, but not the wall.