Basically my Galaxy S4 gets bored and does stupid things, for example uses 90% of its battery overnight in flight mode. Resets the contacts list and all linked apps (bye bye phone numbers) and now it will randomly lock or start playing music and it doesnt like WiFi. That and i have to charge it 2-3 times a day Its been to EE about four times had upteen new batteires and ive been told numerous times there are no faults with it. As no one seems to want to offer a replacement phone etc im left with two options, root it hoping a different ROM will cure its ill's or lob it into Cex or similar and pick up a new handset, moto G ASUS Xenphone or similar. Any suggestions which way to go? Ive well over a year left on the contract so upgrading would be silly money at this point.
Yea I would say backup your stuff, and root the hell out of it. at the worst it wont help, but it will more than likely sort it esp if you go for a rom with a custom kernal as i found they really improve battery life. If it doesnt help reverse the root and but stock back on and get samsung to fix it under the warranty or get a new device
Cyanogen is the one ive been trying to install but im getting the classic "We couldnt talk to your phone" issue. I updated the USB drivers etc but it wont play ball so far, im going to run Odin 3 along side see if itll keep in contact while i run the process. Its the click and go install they offer. Factory resets been done in fact it decided to do that a couple of days in a row for me which was annoying to say the least. An long beard, if i do i get another S4 which knowing my luck will have the same problem.
Rooting will possibly cure some niggles but offer up others, it will not help if there's a hardware fault. Had a S4 briefly and must admit, did not have any of the issues you've mentioned and mine was an early revision. Hope its sorted soon.
Root it for sure, it couldn't hurt. If you're considering a new phone, try rooting and buy a new phone if you're still not happy. But rooting and installing new roms and features is so fun and useful it has to be done to every phone at least once. Cyanogenmod isn't always the best choice though. I have an S3 as well as Moto G and a Nexus 7 tablet, all rooted. Paranoid android for me is the best balance between performance, stability and battery life. Battery life isn't dictated by your OS or Rom, it's the kernel. If you root and flash a new rom, like cyanogenmod or PA etc. you can flash a new kernel, some are optimised for performance, battery life or both. You can undervolt or overclock to get better battery life or performance. For S4 I recommend the 'S4 Google edition' rom, which is built upon the nexus design. It gives better battery life because it doesn't have all of the extra crud like touchwiz and unnecessary features. However, it is worth knowing that some of the early S4s (as well as some mini versions for some reason) had a bad battery which was cured by buying a replacement battery.
Yeah ive tried a few new batteries even used on of my friends who said they had decent battery life, in mine it was terrible so it seems to be more the kernal than a physical fault with the battery. Also a lot of the bloatware ive binned of best i can through dev mode. ROM wise im pretty open Cyanogen seemd tempting mainly from a packaging point of view ill look at the google edition skin wise im not massively fussed how it looks more the functionality of it.
I've had similar issues when trying to use a USB 3 port to talk to phones. Switching to a USB 2 one sorted it. Was a pain as the USB 3 were easily accessible at the front and the USB 2 were round the back
Cyanogen is preferred because is a barebones android interface with no bells or whistles. It's essentially stock android with root. But paranoid android has some nifty little features to make life more pleasant. Look it up, better yet, surf XDA developers forum. You should have a preference on what goes on your phone; after all, you are the one that has to use it.
By factory reset I mean wiping everything to an out of the box state. If it has done that by itself something is very wrong. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
My S3 developed a similar issue, though it didn't wipe anything. It slowed down massively and the battery was lasting a day or two at most on flight mode, even with the screen switched off most of the time. Backing up and doing a full factory reset, and then re-updating to the latest update, solved the issue completely. As dancingbear says, I doubt your phone has done a factory reset by itself, you'd have to reinstall updates and it takes a little while to do as well with multiple restarts.
Thats exactly what it did, reset to factory or rather vanilla android 4.4.2 no user data on the handset memory card though was intact. I think though i have nailed the failed ROM upload, even though rooted Knox appears to be interfering preventing any OS changes. Off to try and remove Knox and its linked process.
...and after all the hassle you can always just get bored of messing about and get a windows-phone or an iphone
Haha no chance Jipa, had both prefer Android. Looks like Knox is now preventing me even rooting it that or i need a different pit file on there first. <ID:0/006> Added!! <OSM> Enter CS for MD5.. <OSM> Check MD5.. Do not unplug the cable.. <OSM> Please wait.. <OSM> CF-Auto-Root-jflte-jfltexx-gti9505.tar.md5 is valid. <OSM> Checking MD5 finished Sucessfully.. <OSM> Leave CS.. <ID:0/006> Odin v.3 engine (ID:6).. <ID:0/006> File analysis.. <ID:0/006> SetupConnection.. <ID:0/006> Complete(Write) operation failed. <OSM> All threads completed. (succeed 0 / failed 1) <ID:0/006> Removed!!
