Help GS4 Extremely Slow Data

[drake87]

So I've had my Gs4 for about a year now (give or take) and recently anything requiring data has been exceptionally slow (its always been fast) so I decided to pull up my handy sped test app and see if its my imagination. sure enough, im getting .38 mbps download, and .56 mbps upload (previous results have shown over 24mbps, so clearly, not my imagination.

so far i have attempted:
1- Clear cache partition
2- Scan Phone for Malware/viruses
3- clear Cache/data of all apps
4- Factory Reset of phone

none of these have had an effect. this has been attempted in multiple locations, on 4g LTE network (ATT) with strong signal. its gotten so bad that it cannot buffer a 30 second youtube video without needing to pause to buffer. WIFI is a slight improvemet, but not by much (about 2mbps download) i did a speed test side by side with my gf's gs4 that we got at the same time, and mine just gets blow out of the water, hers giving me the speeds im used to.

anyone have any ideas? Im assuming that its got to be some form of a hardware issue at this point, but maybe I'm missing something

 

[bobolinko]

So I've had my Gs4 for about a year now (give or take) and recently anything requiring data has been exceptionally slow (its always been fast) so I decided to pull up my handy sped test app and see if its my imagination. sure enough, im getting .38 mbps download, and .56 mbps upload (previous results have shown over 24mbps, so clearly, not my imagination.

so far i have attempted:
1- Clear cache partition
2- Scan Phone for Malware/viruses
3- clear Cache/data of all apps
4- Factory Reset of phone

none of these have had an effect. this has been attempted in multiple locations, on 4g LTE network (ATT) with strong signal. its gotten so bad that it cannot buffer a 30 second youtube video without needing to pause to buffer. WIFI is a slight improvemet, but not by much (about 2mbps download) i did a speed test side by side with my gf's gs4 that we got at the same time, and mine just gets blow out of the water, hers giving me the speeds im used to.

anyone have any ideas? Im assuming that its got to be some form of a hardware issue at this point, but maybe I'm missing something

Sounds like you have too much memory used and not enough for the system to freely operate. Too many Apps? Too many Pictures? Do you have an EXTSD Card? have you tried deleting the thumbnail data in phone memory (DCIM folder) ?

 

[drake87]

I do have a SD card installed. i have ~ 200 photos and a handful of apps. i removed the SD card booted back up and was able to get wifi speeds of approx 7 mbps. 4g LTE was unaffected these issues started 3-4 months after the SD card was initially installed (possibly a little longer).

 

[Hawker]

Your data speed will depend on your network provider
Try and find out if they are experiencing problems recently.

Also check what the current data connection is (E/G/3G/H/H+/4G) etc by looking at the icon on the statusbar, and/or settings>about phone>status>mobile network type. The closer to 4G the better

 

[drake87]

Your data speed will depend on your network provider
Try and find out if they are experiencing problems recently.

Also check what the current data connection is (E/G/3G/H/H+/4G) etc by looking at the icon on the statusbar, and/or settings>about phone>status>mobile network type. The closer to 4G the better

I am on the 4G LTE network currently, at work it isnt 'full service' but i have tested this at multiple locations, and compared to my gf's phone, who is on the same network, also using a gs4

 

[Rukbat]

Your wifi and phone radios are different hardware, so I suspect 2 problems, due to wifi speeds increasing when you removed the SD card:

1) The SD card is bad or corrupted. Copy the card to your PC (don't copy the entire card at once - that usually fails - copy a folder at a time or, if a folder contains many folders with many files, create the folder on the PC, then copy each subfolder to that folder, one at a time)) and format the card in the phone (boot into recovery or use AParted (free at Play). You could also use a card reader to mount the card in the PC, then run h2testw to test it (but it will wipe all the data on the card, so back the card up first). (If the card is defective, and it's a SanDisk card, contact them. They're very good to deal with if you have a defective card (unless you physically broke the card, as I did with one of mine - I didn't even waste time calling them).

2) You probably have a hardware or firmware issue with the modem. (Both the radio used for connection to the phone network and the firmware are called "the modem", so it can get confusing.

Take the phone to a Samsung Experience Center in any Best Buy and ask them if they think reflashing the modem might help. (Reflashing is usually free.) If that doesn't bring your data speeds back to normal, it's most likely a hardware problem.

As far as having "too much memory used" (memory can mean RAM or RAM) you can't have a speed problem due to lack of available RAM (the Android memory manager will kill an app to make room) or lack of available storage (the download will just fail, but it will either fail before it starts (if the app tries to allocate storage for the file before downloading it) or download at full speed, then fail when the app can't get any more storage for the next block it's trying to download. (Mega is an outlier - it keeps trying to download the same block, over and over, as if there was a download error, it doesn't report a lack of space as the problem and end the download, as it should,) About the only possible way lack of memory could slow download is if some area of system RAM is unavailable, and that would more likely crash the kernel than slow a download.