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Battery Issue

Rimv911

Rimv911

Newbie
Hello everyone. I bought this Note 4 about 20 months ago, I like every thing about it except the battery. For the first half of the year with the phone, every thing was quite good, the battery used to last a full day, however practically without any heavy usage. Now about 20 months in, the phone is some times even discharging while plugged in. It doesn't last more than 2 hours while in use (about 1 and a half hour of screen on time). Most of the time the phone just turns off with about 25-30% of charge left and when I try to turn it on, it shows that it has no charge left at all (0% left). Tried calibrating the battery loads of times, nodifference at all. Apps wise, there are couple of background apps like Messenger, but besides that I have a plain black wallpaper, no active sync, Drop Box is even disabled and I don't even have a connected email. I got GSam battery monitor, although it doesn't show any werid activity, however I also have Ampere, which shows that the phone is using 520 mA with the phone being completely idle. I think that's not quite normal as the Ampere app shows that while charging the phone is gaining around 600 mA. It started to act all weird like that about a year ago, but I just lived with it and constantly charged it over and over again.

So did this happen to any of you? Is this normal since the battery is almost 2 years old?
 
Hi, if you have managed to get nearly two years out of your battery I applaud you, I have had my Note for about the same time and am on my third genuine battery! In your circumstances I would get another battery as soon as possible, I think you will find it will transform your phone. As an aside this is one of the main reasons I will not buy a phone that doesn't have a replaceable battery, or I would have had buy three phones instead of just batteries. Phil
 
Thank you for your reply, Phil. :)
In a way, yes, it's nearly the end of a second year with this phone and its original battery. However, I just went with the flow and didn't bother replacing the battery, instead I just charged the phone way more often. Though now I'm quite sure that I had to replace the battery way earlier. :D

Long story short, I'll replace the battery and see how does it perform afterwards. I hope it'll last the whole day again like it used to and it won't be the fault of Android 6.0.1 upgrade.
 
If you will turn off DATA and WiFi when the phone is not in use, you can easily double the life span of the battery charge cycles.

I leave DATA turned OFF all the time, and let a macro program turn off WiFi when the screen locks.
then when the screen is unlocked, it turns WiFi back on....

the difference in battery life is immediate.... nearly double at least.... sometimes more, depends on how long your phone is "sleeping".... when "asleep" and the internet is turned off, the battery draw is only a few percent overnight.

I have done this on every phone that I have had.
I have a Samsung Galaxy 'S' Fascinate that is easily 6 years old now?? probably more. I bought it when it first came out. It still has the original battery that came with it, and it will still give good service... I keep it as an emergency backup phone.
 
Wireless connections wise, I always turn off mobile data or WiFi when I don't use them. I got used to turning it on and off while it's not needed. ☺

Oh and, I guess older phone are kinda better in that aspect, I also have a backup phone, Samsung Galaxy Ace, it does hold for about 2-3 days with one full charge, still with its factory battery.
 
The phone turning off with 25-30% battery left is a sure sign of a weak battery, so a new battery is definitely in your future. Given that the percentage is actually a measure of the current output voltage (i.e. a guess) it cannot really be relied on. However, I don't think this is your only problem: I get the feeling that you have an app (or two) that are consuming too much power. This would explain what you seeing in the Ampere app, the two hour battery drain and the sudden shutdown (since old batteries tend not to deliver linear voltage and a sudden voltage drop off would cause a hungry app to shut down the phone). I speak from personal experience. My Note 4 used to not take flash photos under 40% battery and any attempt would auto shutdown the phone.

I would turn on developer options (if you have not already done so) and look under the "Process Stats" menu point. Anything showing up at the top of that list is suspicious and could do with being disabled or deinstalled. Sometimes just killing a system task (even though it almost immediately restarts) has helped me cool off my telephone in the past. For example, I nearly always have to kill InCall UI once after booting my phone if I want to make it through the day.

Regards,
Eric.
 
Thank you for the response Eric. I've used the phone for few days while in Safe Mode, however, that had no effect battery wise, so I don't think it has anything to do with applications, especially since I did a factory reset about 3 months ago just to see if that would make any difference (it didn't). I haven't bought a new battery (yet), though I turned on Ampere again just to see what's going on, and it showed me -1400 mA, somehow I really do doubt that this is normal. .-.
 
InCall UI is a system task and so would have also caused me problems in safe mode, but you certainly need a new battery. Once you have this, and you still have battery life issues, then I would be happy to help you track down the/any culprit.

Good luck!

Regards,
Eric.
 
Thank you for all the help. :) I'll get a new battery ASAP and see how it'll do. If it'll still act funny, I'll be sure to post it here. Anyway, thank you for all the responses, I'm going to order a new factory battery in the upcoming days. :D
 
a word of warning about ordering batteries online.

they will all be shipped via FedEx SmartPost, which means they will be shipped via the slowest ground method possible, and will bounce all over the USA until it is finally delivered to your local US Post Office.... once it is there, and can be moved to you via a postal carrier, or just placed in a PO Box, you will finally get it.....

How long is that? about 3 weeks, just did it twice for the same battery order.
FedEx lost the 1st order about 1 mile from the local Post Office, and I had to get that order replaced....

Took me 7 weeks to get my battery.

If you can, only deal with a vendor that only uses the brown van, United Parcel Service.... at least that way, you will get it in about 10 days and it won't be lost.
 
Well, firstly I'm from Europe. :D
Secondly, I just bought it from my local online shop, I'll get it in 5 days of time. I bought an original one, though they had a different one, if think it was made by BlueStar or some thing similar to that, it holds 3400 mha instead of regular 3220 and is a tiny bit cheaper, though since it's not made by Samsung, I didn't want to get it, I don't trust 3rd party manufacturers when it comes to batteries since they tend to explode. o_O
 
Well, to be fair, Samsung have been having a few problems with exploding batteries lately ;)

Also, there are a lot of 3rd party batteries that look like originals. Make sure that your NFC functions work after you swap batteries and, if so, there is a good chance you got an original. I am currently using an Anker battery (with NFC function) and have had no problems with it. That said, batteries seem to be a lottery.

Regards,
Eric.
 
Hi Eric, I usually find that if you go to a long established traders site with a good feedback, that if they advertise them as genuine then you can be 99.9% sure that they are. Phil
p.s. I think the exploding batteries are Samsung's new idea, instead of a user removable battery it ejects itself!:eek:
 
^LOL
I'll see how it goes with the new battery, in the mean time thank you for all the useful information, much appreciated!:D
 
Well, after getting a factory new battery, nothing has changed. Battery dies out as fast as the old one. The weird thing is that I don't have any apps installed that could drain it that quickly, nor do I have sync options enabled. Unless it's a system app fault, I have no idea what causes this.
 

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Ok, first of all, I would try to turn off all radios (airplane mode would be the easiest way) and see if you still have rampant drop off. If you still see the drain, check in developer options under "Process Stats" as I mentioned before. If you see a process showing up at the top of that list then try to disable it.

Regards,
Eric.
 
Well, under the developer options, all I can find is Running services and no "Process Stats" to be found there.
 
I am still running Kit Kat so you could have a different layout. Try searching in the settings for "running". This will hopefully turn it up for you.

Regards,
Eric.
 
Tried that, only brings up same "Running Services" tab. I'm on android 6.0.1, which is most likely the cause of all this battery life nonsense. Though there's no way to go back to android 4.4.4 without rooting, so I guess I'm stuck with what I got. Unless I would take it to warranty and maybe then they would make a difference, which I highly doubt.
 
Hi, I sincerely doubt that Marshmallow is the root cause of your problem, if that was the case all Marshmallow users would be similarly affected, it is more likely that something on your phone is not getting on with Marshmallow. Unfortunately the only way to find out is to do a factory reset. Phil
 
You said that you are in Europe, so you probably have an unlocked boot loader. As a result you can quite happily flash an older version of Android on your phone. I have the SM-N910F model and I managed to successfully return to Kit Kat after having upgraded to Lollypop. Also, so long as you flash stock firmware, you don't trip the Knox flag.

Regards,
Eric.
 
Phil, I did a factory reset already, no change what so ever.
Well, I got the phone about a month or two after it came out, so I got the N910C version, which doesn't even support 4G+. Only after 2 more months the carrier started selling the F model of the Note 4. Nevertheless, it's in deed unlocked.
 
In that case you can download your firmware of choice from here. There may even be some mileage in re flashing the same firmware version to see if something didn't just corrupt itself. I used odin to flash my phone by the way. There are many guides out on the net that will help you through the process.

Btw: if you are nervous, you could also go to a service center and have them reflash the phone.

Regards,
Eric.
 
I'm more or less familiar to flashing firmware, shouldn't be too hard. :)
Alrighty then, I'll see what will happen with the old 4.4.4 KitKat version (since Lollipop was similar in terms of battery life). Thank you guys so much for all the info. :D
 
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