My wife and I both have Note 4s. The Marshmallow update seems to have wrecked our phones. I have done everything on mine, to include a factory reset which did not seem to do anything. Our list of problems:
Battery life. This was the big reason I did the update. I wanted better battery life, and the update said that it would improve it. It did the opposite. I used to be able to go 2 or 3 days of sporadic use on a single charge. Now, my phone will go from 100% battery to about 65% in 5 or 6 hours of sitting with no use at all (I am asleep). When I am driving and using google maps for navigation, I must use the fast charge cord or the cord I used to use can't even keep up with the battery drain (the phone slowly drains power, despite being plugged in without the fast charge).
Call volume. As a matter of fact, there seems to be all sorts of sound related issues. The phone will randomly drop the ring volume to silent (had to get a volume lock ap to stop this). My wife's alarm turns silent (volume lock is on, but it still won't go off at times). My wife's phone actually seems to have more sound issues than mine does (maybe because I did a factory reset?). But even so, both of us have sound issues. I have been using Rhapsody to listen to music and in the middle of a song, the sound volume will drop to zero. Once, I was able to turn the sound up while it was trying to turn it down and I could see the sound volume go up and down as I was holding the up button and it was trying to turn it down.
Not receiving phone calls. This seems to be more of my wife's phone issue. She won't get incoming calls. The caller gets the rings and eventually voicemail. I have been sitting next to her and tried calling her from my phone. Her phone won't light up, ring or give any sign of a call. Sometimes it won't even show a missed call on the phone call records. It has done this with and without the volume lock ap.
Speed of operation. Since the update, it is like bloatware times 10. The phone is noticeably slower in everything it does. From connecting to my wifi, to looking stuff up, to opening aps.....everything. It is much slower.
Phones randomly reboot. Not sure how often, but on average I would guess at least once a day. Some days it does not, other days it does it several times. It has done it when the phone was not being used, when in phone calls, while playing games.....lots of different actions and it rebooted. I can tell it reboots when not in use because I use fingerprint access and when it reboots, it makes you use the backup password for the initial entry.
Things I have tried (on my phone, not the wife's)......
=First, I tried a data reset (the one that does not wipe the phone), and it did nothing.
=Next I did a complete factory reset that seemed to do nothing.
=I removed almost every ap on my phone, turned off bluetooth, location services, and wifi to try and help the battery life and it did nothing. On a recent trip to Nashville, I even tried to turn the phone off when not in use and the battery still drained at a horrific rate! (as in I went from full battery to almost dead in about 5 or 6 hours with limited use and turning the phone off when not actually using it.....I even turned the screen brightness down to the point that it was difficult to see to try and save power).
=My volume lock ap beeps when it 'fixes' a volume. It will go off when my phone is just sitting, in the middle of the night, while I am using it ......there seems to be nothing that I do to trigger a volume change. It just does it at random. (my phone just beeped too....sitting next to me on the desk, screen dark and the phone has not been used in about 30 minutes).
=Gone to a Verizon store a few times. The data reset stuff was done thru at their suggestion. Generally I get blank stares and claims of not hearing about these issues from other users (but I find many people post online about the problems).
I have been a Verizon company for a lot of years. They are by far the most expensive service. They have the worst data plans. But, I have valued the coverage areas that allow me to get cell phone service in a lot of areas where Sprint did not (my previous provider......probably 10 years ago). A trend that seems to be building is that my phone will work just fine. Then an update to 'improve' operation comes out. I ignore the update as long as I can and eventually it forces me to do it. Then my phone has issues. I try and fix the issues to no avail. I muddle along and deal with it until I get tired of it and get a new phone. The conspiracy nut side of me adds 2 and 2 and gets 4. It is like the update is designed to make a current working phone worse to drive new phone sales. I don't want to believe that Verizon is stupid enough to do something like that, but then I see so many companies that do stupid things that they don't think anyone will find out (such as the emissions software that Volkswagen did to dupe the testing procedures). I hope that this is not the case with Verizon.
For the battery, there is a tool under SETTINGS that will give a breakdown as to how much power is being consumed by the various processes. What does it report for the two devices?
For my Samsung Galaxy S4, the display and Internet browser are the biggest drains on the battery...which is the one that came with the phone almost three years ago.
Right now, since last full charge:
Bluetooth is 43%
Android OS is 2%
Android System is 1%
Cell standby is 1%
System UI is 1%
It was fully charged when I went to bed last night. The phone was used a few minutes before going to sleep and then sat dormant for about 7 hours. It was used briefly this morning when I got up. The battery went from full to about 65% while I was asleep. It lost about 3% while using it for a few minutes when I got up. It was at 61% a bit over an hour ago. I went to do a workout and it is now down to 50%. Right now, I am at 50% battery and it has been almost 10 hours since it was fully charged (with almost no use).
I routinely turn off bluetooth and wifi to try and save battery life (but not normally at home). When I was on my Nashville trip, I remember that the screen use was the vast majority item, which is when I turned the display brightness way down.
So while the bluetooth is the high item right now, it is the first time I have ever seen it be the high item (I sporadically check to see what is using my power up). I am paired to 2 devices, a car and a headset. The car was off all night and is not here now. The headset is drained right now (I don't use it very often).
Prior to this update, I kept my screen pretty high on the brightness, and never turned off bluetooth or location settings. I did not have the battery issues then.
Bro I am experiencing all of the issues you state. Virtually identical issues. Issues seem to have gotten worse as time moves forward. Cache partition deletions, factory resets, apps one at a time, etc. Cache partition deletion probably helped the most, but issues always return. Only thing I haven't done is a flash. Oh and I haven't gone into a Verizon store and had a comeapart, yet. But I'm about to.... and it's going to be when there are tons of customers in there.
base311, software updates are supposed to make your device work better, not cause additional concerns. Let’s get your device back to functioning as it should. When did you complete the software update? How long have you been dealing with these issues? Also, I see you did quite a bit of troubleshooting yourself. Have you tried using the Software Repair tool? http://vz.to/2ckwXWO
MarkP_VZW
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I too started getting the random freezing and then rebooting on its own at least 5+ per day, tried the data reset, did nothing and am now trying factory reset as last gasp.
Very disappointing to hear that didn't help you and it has been an hour+ downloading the Android updates. Did yours take that long before you could even try to start changing all the setting back to where they were?
With all the constant app updates, who knows which app is the issue if it isn't the Verizon/Samsung/Android recent updates. Very frustrating and like you, wonder if they don't need a sales boost, but I would leave Verizon, not accept this issue.
I was even considering a Note 7, but obviously that is off the table 😞
I have the same issue with my Note 4. I try not to update and the last update marshmallow I accidentally or it updated itself but it destroyed my SD card and my phone is so slow and freezes. I can't or can believe that u never got a response for this and they say we are the best part of Verizon what a joke
Trent
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