Phone running SUPER hot and rapid battery drain

[Niotic]

Hello everyone!

Within the past day and a half my galaxy s4 has been on the fritz. I've barely used the phone yet its battery is draining from full charge to powering off within around 6-8 while being idle around 90% of the time. The phone is also running SUPER hot, mainly on the upper portion of the phone. The upper half of the screen are incredibly hot to the touch and upon removing my thin case and the back cover-plate I've discovered the parts of the phone around the camera are around the same temp if not a little cooler.

I've done some research and looked into other people's problems but have not found any solutions. I've seen suggestions of it being applications stored on the sd card but I've removed the sd card (which contains most of my apps) so it would not get damaged due to the heat. After doing so, nothing changed. I also tried putting the phone on airplane mode but that didn't change anything. I don't believe it's the battery, however. For when the phone is off and charging, the temp is normal and not hot whatsoever. It only does this when powered on.

I installed GSam Battery Monitor today to see what was going on. Its stating the phone is around 98 F and that 95% of batter usage is coming from Apps, specifically the "Phone" app. According to the app my current battery life is 5 hours with around 2 minutes of screen on time.

At this point the phone is practically unusable since as soon as I begin to use it, the temperature shoots up at least 10 degrees. At that point the phone would most likely shut itself off due to over heating or become damaged in some way.

Does anyone have suggestions as what to do?

EDIT: It am doubtful the problem is the battery itself, for as I stated the heat is coming from the upper part of the phone where the battery is not. I also doubt it is the phone showing its age for that would most likely happen over time and not randomly out of the blue one day. Getting a new phone is not an option for me as I do not have the money to, nor should it be an option. I'm not simply jumping to a new phone because this one has a bug that I'm sure can be fixed.

 

[Morty2264]

If your phone is overheating, and may even shut off, I feel like it may be almost dangerous to use. Have you had this phone for a while? Are you on a fixed contract? You could think about buying a new battery if it is purely a battery issue; but if it is software or if the phone is showing its age, it may be best to consider getting a new phone.

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[Laura Knotek]

How is your signal strength? If the device is struggling to find coverage from your carrier's towers and the signal is weak, then that will cause heating and battery drain.

 

[Niotic]

Signal strength is normal. Nothing out of the ordinary. I've attached some graphs the GSam Battery Monitor produced showing phone signal vs battery % along with cpu vs battery % and temp vs battery %. In the phone signal figure you'll see a drop, this is because I suspected the signal being the problem and turned on airplane mode to see if it changed anything. As you can see, it did not.

 

[nahoku]

There are many reports of updates to apps causing battery issues. Basically, some of the apps are constantly running in the background even when their battery stats show low percentage of use. Can you post screen shots of the Battery stats showing all the apps that are currently running? Please also scroll all the way down the page and capture those too.

In the meantime, try starting your phone in Safe Mode to only allow the phone to load pre-installed apps. Keep in mind that Google updates has also been recently identified as one of the culprits of background issues and since Google apps are pre-installed, they may still run in Safe mode. I can't say for sure if they will though, but if issues still persist, you may need to force stop and turn off all Google apps that have recently been updated. In any case, at least your other apps shouldn't start up in safe mode.

 

[Niotic]

I've heard of those issues cause by some of Google's stock apps, I typically try to disable most of them and keep them from updating. Attached you'll find the photos you requested:

 

[nahoku]

There were reports on Snapchat causing issues of late, although I don't know if that's what the problem is. I was also looking to see if you were using Facebook, but it seems you're not. Have you tried Safe Mode yet? Try running in Safe mode for a while to see if it makes a difference with the heat you're experiencing. If Safe mode runs cooler, then you're going to have to isolate which app might be causing the issue... unfortunately, it means you have to uninstall each app one at a time until you find the culprit. The opposite recommendation I've seen is to back up all your apps, and then uninstall all of them... then, reinstall them one at a time until you start seeing your problem reappear. Either way you do it, it's a big PITA! By the way, someone is bound to mention that your might also try removing your SD card (if one is in place) in case something is corrupted on it and the media scanner is just running rampant.

LOL! Morty2264 just changed her avatar! ;-)

 

[Niotic]

I removed the SD card early yesterday for that reason along with avoiding it being damaged by the constant heat. The problem persisted after removing it.

On the bright side, I put the phone into safe mode last night and everything is back to normal now. The heat has subsided and the phone is at room temp now! Yay! Also, my battery life is better than it was before all of this started. 3rd part apps must really drain battery, never noticed before!

I will definitely try isolating the problem app but the odd thing is I haven't really updated any of them recently due to the small amount of storage I have left on my phone. I'll do some trial and error today and get back to you with any findings!

 

[nahoku]

I'm glad the phone runs as it should in safe mode. You might Check Google Play Services... it's updates have been reported many times as being a problem. Perhaps Google Play Services is still messed up as they've been trying to fix it over the last few months. I'm not sure if that's the issue in your case though. Also, Facebook (which you're apparently aren't running), as an example, was updating outside of play store on it's own. Maybe one of your apps is doing the same without your knowledge. In any case, you have some work to do, and yes, please let us know what your find. Thanks!