Help Galaxy S4 crashing problem

[ThePoundDollar]

Can anyone help me solve the reason why my S4 keeps crashing? For some reason it just decides that it'll turn off and I've noticed that this happens quite a lot whenever the device falls just below 70% battery life. It's really starting to annoy me now so any help would be appreciated.

 

[Rukbat]

Without actually having the phone in hand to test things, I can only make an educated guess, but that would be a bad battery. At about the 30% discharge point it's forming a short (called a dendrite), which does 2 things - it causes the phone to turn off and it burns the short out, so when you turn the phone back on it works.

If you have a spare battery, another S4, a friend with an S4, etc., try another battery and if it gets past the 30% point (say discharged down to 60% or 50%), that's the problem. It's actually a manufacturing defect, so it should be covered under warranty, but considering the price of a good quality replacement battery, it's probably not worth the hassle of trying to get them to cover it. (Batteries are consumables, if you mistreat a battery it can go bad in as little as a few months, batteries aren't covered under warranty ... they have a book full of excuses why "manufacturing defect" doesn't include a manufacturing defect in the battery, and a dendrite forms if there's dirt in the battery that gets in there during manufacturing.)

An Anker battery is $15. A pair of them and a charger (that will charge a battery out of the phone at the same time it's charging the one in the phone) go for $24 ($27 if you need NFC). Having a spare in your pocket (have it in a plastic bag or envelope of some kind - keys shorting a battery with that much discharge capability will hurt when the melted key drips down your leg) is handy if you use a lot of battery, and it helps to keep the battery lasting longer. (The longest battery lifespan comes if you charge the battery around the 40%-60% discharge point.)

 

[BRAINZ2013]

Sounds like your battery is failing . you may want to get a new battery and do a factory data reset

 

[ThePoundDollar]

Without actually having the phone in hand to test things, I can only make an educated guess, but that would be a bad battery. At about the 30% discharge point it's forming a short (called a dendrite), which does 2 things - it causes the phone to turn off and it burns the short out, so when you turn the phone back on it works.

If you have a spare battery, another S4, a friend with an S4, etc., try another battery and if it gets past the 30% point (say discharged down to 60% or 50%), that's the problem. It's actually a manufacturing defect, so it should be covered under warranty, but considering the price of a good quality replacement battery, it's probably not worth the hassle of trying to get them to cover it. (Batteries are consumables, if you mistreat a battery it can go bad in as little as a few months, batteries aren't covered under warranty ... they have a book full of excuses why "manufacturing defect" doesn't include a manufacturing defect in the battery, and a dendrite forms if there's dirt in the battery that gets in there during manufacturing.)

An Anker battery is $15. A pair of them and a charger (that will charge a battery out of the phone at the same time it's charging the one in the phone) go for $24 ($27 if you need NFC). Having a spare in your pocket (have it in a plastic bag or envelope of some kind - keys shorting a battery with that much discharge capability will hurt when the melted key drips down your leg) is handy if you use a lot of battery, and it helps to keep the battery lasting longer. (The longest battery lifespan comes if you charge the battery around the 40%-60% discharge point.)

Finally managed to get the crash on camera. If it is a dendrite then how can I prevent one from forming again?
Here's the video:
Galaxy S4 won't start after crash - YouTube

 

[ironass]

Try starting it in Safe Mode and running it as per #1.1 of the Update Problems - Dummies Guide

Failing that, go on to Wiping the Cache Partition in #1.2 of the above, to see if that helps.

 

[Rukbat]

1) The reason there would be a dendrite forming is because there was some speck of dust in the clean room in which the battery was made. You'd need a negative-pressure clean room, a very good microscope (electron-type), decades of time, anti-corrosive measures (clothing, workbenches), etc., to open the battery up and find that speck of dust (and replace the separator the dendrite's been punching holes in). Total cost - in the millions at least.

Or you could buy a new battery for about $15. It never hurts to have a fully charged (and in a plastic case or bag of some sort) in your pocket.

3) When you kill power to a computer (which the phone is), as opposed to telling it to do its normal shutdown routine, nothing is guaranteed. Bits can flip all over the place. So your volume went from zero to some positive value. Could be the result of a sudden power shutdown (look at the battery graph and see if it all of a sudden went almost to zero, then came back almost fully when you powered back up - that's what a dendrite would cause). Or it could be the result of bad hardware in the phone (like a cracked motherboard). As I said, without having the phone in hand, it's all guesswork.

Safemode might keep it from happening. If it does, you have a bad app. (Safe mode starts the phone without any of the apps you've installed.)

Clearing the cache might help, although it doesn't look like a cache problem.

Doing a factory reset might fix it although, again, it doesn't look like that kind of problem.