Galaxy S4 battery draining after NG6 update

[vstjames]

Nor will doing a FDR work for this problem. It might fix other update issues such as sudden multiple reboots (not a problem I've had, thank God!) but not this particular battery draining issue if it's related to the GPS/Location issue. Verizon (and maybe Samsung) really blew it this time and based on Verizon's history, I don't expect any fixes coming out anytime soon. I doubt those in Verizon who could make a difference pay much attention to these forums.

[anotherhaus]

Disabling Support and Protection does not help in my case. I've done that and I still get the battery drain. The only thing I can do to get it to stop is to disable master sync. I've turned off GPS/Location and it still drains.

I guess it's time to root and go back to NC5. This update didn't even fix the Bluetooth issue I was having (random headset disconnects). Verizon clearly doesn't care and it doesn't seem enough people are affected by this for them to do anything about it or even acknowledge there are issues.

I would love to know if any testing was done on this release at all before they started pushing it out. If so, how could they not have caught something so obvious as the phone getting hot and the battery draining more than 10% an hour with the screen off.

Edit: I'm trying safe mode on and master sync on for the next few hours to see what happens. My battery is at 38% right now; it has never gone this low through normal usage - ever - and it's only 4:30pm here.

[Katl]

My battery was down to 68% after about 2 hours of doing nothing this morning.  Unbelievable.  I don't even know that I have Support & Protection installed...  This is about to force me to root the phone.  Absolutely unbelievable that an update would be pushed with this severe of a problem.

[anotherhaus]

Just for kicks, since Verizon seems keen on telling people to run in safe mode to see if the problem still happens...the thin black vertical line is where I rebooted into safe mode. That's about 40% to 11% in just a couple of hours, in safe mode.

[joonhyuk]

It's ok just a new unannounced feature for this latest and greatest firmware.

Luckily for us, we are stuck with this awful firmware until Samsung/Verizon hurry up and push 4.4.4 AND THEN 5.0 to our S4 devices.

If we had unlimited money we would have already purchased an S5 or a Note 4 in order to received Android 5.0 this year, however, we are forced to sit and wait around for 5.0 while people who have an S3 and below are screwed out of seeing any update prior to KitKat.

*Thumbs Up*

[szurlo]

I'm having the same issue. After almost a year of trouble-free operation with this handset, within a couple of days of the NG6 update I started having runaway battery consumption.  This occurs once every couple of days and I have not been able to identify the trigger. Rebooting the phone fixes it for a a day or two.  When it occurs the battery may discharge 10 percent an hour or more even while not being used and the display off, and the top 1/3 of the phone gets very warm, almost hot to the touch.  Battery monitor shows the OS as the highest consumer.  The last time it occurred I had a process viewer running and it showed a process called krtccd using a constant 25%-30% of the CPU time. All other running processes were 0 or in the low single digits. I don't know if that 25% is enough to explain the heating etc but after a reboot krtccd did not go back to consuming 25 or 30 %. Now shows 0-1%.

[Jruiz29]

Hi bbonz001,

I charge my phone all night and in the morning I have 100%. I disable a few app from Verizon and use my phone during the day with a few call. See the image how my battery going down with only 15h 48m 38s. Is much better compare with the day before but is not like before the update.

Thank you,

Jruiz29

[anotherhaus]

I have a short term solution - after another hard reset, I did not connect my phone to Google with a Google account (skip that step). Since "Android OS" appears to be the culprit, I figure maybe something is going on with Google's servers that is causing this. I also noticed under "Add Account" from the settings screen that I had a phantom "blank" account with no name; selecting it just made the app crash and go back to the settings screen. So after a reset and no Google account, so far my phone is working fine and there's no battery drain. I can't install any apps, but I have working phone/SMS/email and (it appears) a battery that will last more than a few hours now. After half an hour it's cool to the touch, too.

[anotherhaus]

I can't edit my previous post - that didn't seem to help. After another half hour or so my phone started getting hot and the data arrows have been lit constantly.

[szurlo]

There is another thread here that discuses this issue and a couple of others with NG6 that suggest that changes to the way the device now handles GPS/location services my be responsible for the battery drain.  If/when mine goes into the rapid drain/heat-up mode again I'm going to try disabling all location services and see if there is any effect.