Giving up on my s4

[neils0911]

Hi everyone I'm looking for some advice. I've become increasingly frustrated with my s4 so I am now giving it up. Tomorrow I have the opportunity to trade for a HTC one and just wondered whether other people think it is a good idea?

I have owned every Samsung flagship since the s2 and I have to say the s4 might be the worst in terms of choppy performance . Even after all the updates it still lags, touchwiz is still filled with bloatware and gimmicks. I had thought about rooting and flashing to stock android but now I am thinking about giving it up altogether. The few things that I didn't like about sense have now been fixed (mainly black bar syndrome) so I am seriously thinking about making the switch.

If any HTC one owners could give any bad points they have found with the phone since launch that would be appreciated as it would help my list of pros and cons

 

[limitbreak09]

Can you handle of not having a removable battery? thats the question

Sent from my LG-E980 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[malikshuman]

Honestly I have nothing bad to say about this phone. It's perfect for me. The only gripes I see other people complain about is no removable battery and no expandable storage but mine lasts a whole day and 32 gigs is a lot of memory

Sent from my HTCONE using AC Forums mobile app

 

[shoii]

I've never encountered any of the problems you have. If you're looking for opinions of the HTC One that's where you should have posted this thread.

 

[jimbo1mcm]

For OP: Have you gone into Developer Options and turned off animations, etc? My S4 is not laggy in any way. Also, turn off apps you will not use. I routinely have about 1.3-1.5 GB of RAM available.

 

[Prosty]

Whenever my phone is laggy I always clear the ram, close all applications and if that doesn't work I restart, but the One is a solid phone too.

Sent from my Verizon Galaxy SIV using Tapatalk 4

 

[neils0911]

I've already turned off animations but found it didn't help much, the main lag is in the gallery and the time it takes the lock screen clock to refresh when you wake up the phone is horrendous for a flagship phone . I always thought not having a removable battery would annoy me (that's why I always stuck to samsung) but when I have thought about in all the Samsung phones I have had I never bought an extra battery. I am torn between making the switch or rooting and flashing a custom romantic in the hope that it will rid the phone of the lag.

 

[Craig Rogers]

I agree completely with the op, touchwiz on the s4 is laggy in some places. Please, before you make the switch, try out a custom rom like CyanogenMod. I hate touchwiz, but a custom rom prevented me from returning my s3. Hardware is great for the s4, but samsung needs to hire some new programmers

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[neils0911]

I agree completely with the op, touchwiz on the s4 is laggy in some places. Please, before you make the switch, try out a custom rom like CyanogenMod. I hate touchwiz, but a custom rom prevented me from returning the phone. Hardware is great for the s4, but samsung needs to hire some new programmers

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using AC Forums mobile app

You think it would make that much of a difference? I've never rooted an android phone before but the more I read the more it sounds appealing. The only thing I would miss is camera features but the lag on touchwiz is making me hate the phone altogether

 

[smooth4lyfe]

Hi everyone I'm looking for some advice. I've become increasingly frustrated with my s4 so I am now giving it up. Tomorrow I have the opportunity to trade for a HTC one and just wondered whether other people think it is a good idea?

I have owned every Samsung flagship since the s2 and I have to say the s4 might be the worst in terms of choppy performance . Even after all the updates it still lags, touchwiz is still filled with bloatware and gimmicks. I had thought about rooting and flashing to stock android but now I am thinking about giving it up altogether. The few things that I didn't like about sense have now been fixed (mainly black bar syndrome) so I am seriously thinking about making the switch.

If any HTC one owners could give any bad points they have found with the phone since launch that would be appreciated as it would help my list of pros and cons

Try factory resetting....Factory Resetting refreshes the OS back to its original clean state...when you update OTA or via Kies, it just overwrites the previous software
If its not too late, get a new device....it shouldn't be acting like that

 

[shoii]

You think it would make that much of a difference? I've never rooted an android phone before but the more I read the more it sounds appealing. The only thing I would miss is camera features but the lag on touchwiz is making me hate the phone altogether

It makes a WORLD of a difference. I haven't rooted this phone yet because I haven't had the need yet, but I've rooted a low end phone before and you will be in android heaven.

 

[starbuckk]

I doubt youll see less bloatware on another phone. Some of it comes from the carrier.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 2

 

[neils0911]

Thanks, may just keep this phone and root it then. Is cyanogenmod the best rom out there?

 

[sharpehenry]

before you make any decision, have you tried "force gpu rendering" on developers mode? you do not need rooting nor custom ROM to do it. I enabled it a month after frustration of choppieness of the phone and everything changed. Battery life doesn't seemed to be affected by it either. it just leaves all rendering visual effects/transitions from CPU to GPU. I want to say it's near iphone smooth. I suggest you try that if you haven't.

To enable it: go to Settings -> About Device and scroll down to the "Build Number." and tab the build number 5 or 6 times. you'll get a notification and back out of the "about device menu" and you'll see the developers menu.

 

[garublador]

Try factory resetting....Factory Resetting refreshes the OS back to its original clean state...when you update OTA or via Kies, it just overwrites the previous software
If its not too late, get a new device....it shouldn't be acting like that

I'll second that. My S4 has performed extremely well since the last update and a factory reset.

 

[Craig Rogers]

You think it would make that much of a difference? I've never rooted an android phone before but the more I read the more it sounds appealing. The only thing I would miss is camera features but the lag on touchwiz is making me hate the phone altogether

Yes, I do. As soon as I went custom, I never went back. I love the features of touchwiz, but the lag is unbearable. CyanogenMod will solve all of your issues, it's a wonderful rom with many features. And yes, CyanogenMod is the best vanilla android rom out there currently for its updates, ease of use, and most importantly features

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[neils0911]

before you make any decision, have you tried "force gpu rendering" on developers mode? you do not need rooting nor custom ROM to do it. I enabled it a month after frustration of choppieness of the phone and everything changed. Battery life doesn't seemed to be affected by it either. it just leaves all rendering visual effects/transitions from CPU to GPU. I want to say it's near iphone smooth. I suggest you try that if you haven't.

To enable it: go to Settings -> About Device and scroll down to the "Build Number." and tab the build number 5 or 6 times. you'll get a notification and back out of the "about device menu" and you'll see the developers menu.

Thanks I'll give that a try. If I keep this phone I'll still probably try rooting, this phone has far too much bloatware and the clean look of stock android looks good when you have pages and pages of samsung crap on your app menu lol

 

[Craig Rogers]

Thanks I'll give that a try. If I keep this phone I'll still probably try rooting, this phone has far too much bloatware and the clean look of stock android looks good when you have pages and pages of samsung crap on your app menu lol

Just make sure to root before samsung releases a 4.3 update. Google has kinda screwed over the rooting community with its "security fixes" in 4.3

Sent from my wonderful completely customized galaxy s3 running CyanogenMod 10.1.2

 

[llfloyd79]

I had the One and went to the S4. One thing I can say is Sense 5 looks great and works great....phone is amazing. One negative is that out of the box you really only get about 24 - 25GB of space. I just think Touch Wiz has more functionality than Sense 5.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Faloogs]

I didn't root my S4, but am temporarily using the Go ex launcher which does stop many of the touch wiz features. It allows for amazingly large amounts of customization, but I do like many of the touch wiz features. .so I'm not sure if I'll use go launcher for the long haul..

Posted via Android Central App on my awesome Samsung Galaxy s4