The first week of December, 2013 I bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini. The phone worked wonderfully for the first three weeks--the battery life lasted all day, generally from 12-18 hours. Right after Christmas, my battery would drain . . . the phone would get very hot like a hand-warmer. I took the phone back to the Victor, NY Verizon store -- the salesperson checked my phone and replaced it with a new one. I was pleased and for two days the battery life was excellent -- lasting 18-20 hours.
After only two days, the phone again lost all power after only 6 hours -- I had all services turned off; wireless, mobile data, bluetooth, and the phone would drain 20% each hour on standby. I went back to the Victor Verizon store and a different sales person told me that a six or seven hour battery life is what I should expect -- because the phone is 4G there are much greater demands on the battery. When I explained that for three weeks my phone worked just fine, that I regularly got 15-18 hours of battery life, the sales person told me that he didn't believe it. He did a battery check and said that the phone and battery were in working condition. I took the phone home and in 7 hours the battery was dead (I had all services turned off and made only two phone calls in that time) and had to recharge the phone.
The next day I talked with my IT guy at work. His first question to me was "did the phone do an operating system upgrade". I told him yes, right after Christmas it had updated the system from 4.2.2 to 4.3 . . . and again right after I got the replacement phone it upgraded to 4.3. The IT guy told me that there were issues with the Android 4.3 -- he found that the recommended fix was to do a hard reset of the phone -- this reverted the phone to the factory settings and reinstalled Android 4.2.2. This has fixed the problem -- I again have gotten 15-18 hours of battery life on the phone.
My question to Verizon management is, why don't your sales people know about this problem with the Android 4.3 upgrade? I am sure that I am not the only customer that has gone back to the Verizon store with the same complaint and concerns -- excessive battery drain, locked phone, and a hot phone. And what is up with insulting your customers by telling them that a 6-7 hour battery life is all they should expect -- and that they don't believe that for a period while you had the new phone that you were getting 15 hours on each battery charge?
Your sales people need better training . . .
