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Galaxy S4 Lollipop Problems: 5 Things You Need to Know

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The Samsung Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 Lollipop update brings tons of new features to the company’s aging former flagship. In addition to these features, it also brings several Galaxy S4 Lollipop problems to those that have had the pleasure of downloading it. With problems swirling, we want to take a look at five things you need to know, right now, about Samsung Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 problems.

Way back in December, Samsung pushed out its first Android 5.0 Lollipop update, an update to the Galaxy S5. In January, Samsung made its next move. In late January, Samsung rolled out the Android 5.0 Lollipop update to the Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy Note 3, two aging former flagship smartphones that were in need of some features and some bug fixes for KitKat problems.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 Lollipop update is the device’s third (and perhaps final) major upgrade. Like Samsung’s other Lollipop updates, it delivers a host of new features, enhancements and, yes, problems.

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Not listed in the Galaxy S4 Lollipop change logs are the Galaxy S4 Lollipop problems that seem to be plaguing some owners of the device. Over the two months, we’ve seen numerous complaints about the Samsung Galaxy S4 Lollipop update. Those complaints have only grown louder as Samsung’s roll out has grown in size.

With Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 problems mounting, we want to take a look at what we think are the five most important things Galaxy S4 users need to know about these problems. This will cover some of the biggest problems and it will also offer some potential fixes for Samsung Galaxy S4 Lollipop problems. Here’s what you need to know if you’re still holding onto a Galaxy S4.

Prepare Your Galaxy S4 for Problems

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Lollipop picked up a ton of steam this week after Samsung finally started pushing out the Galaxy S4 LTE Lollipop update. The Galaxy S4 LTE, also known as the Galaxy S4 GT-I9505, is one of the most popular Galaxy S4 variants and its upgrade to Lollipop is a great sign for owners of that specific model and owners of other LTE variants.

Carriers in the United States and around the world remain quiet about their plans for the Galaxy S4 Lollipop update though that might actually be a good thing considering how many problems we’ve heard about since January.

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Android updates are never perfect and that extends to the Galaxy S4 Lollipop update. While Samsung and its carrier partners are doing their best to snuff out Lollipop issues, it’s virtually impossible to get rid of them all. There’s no way to predict whether you’ll encounter Android 5.0 Lollipop problems but there are some steps to take in an effort to minimize the update’s impact on your phone and your life.

We’ve put together several steps that we think you should take before installing the Galaxy S4 Lollipop update. These steps are simple, basic tips but they’ve worked out well for us in the past. While they’re aimed at novice users, they might come in handy for veteran Galaxy S4 users.

If you prepare ahead of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 Lollipop update, then you’ve pretty much done all that you can to prevent Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 problems from appearing on your device. There is always risk involved so you’ll want to prepare and gather feedback from other Galaxy S4 users before taking the plunge.

Here’s How Bad Things Have Gotten

These delays might actually be a blessing in disguise. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Lollipop update is clearly having problems. We pointed out some of the initial Galaxy S4 Lollipop problems when updates started picking up though it appears that things have only gotten worse in some parts of the world.

A week ago, Samsung Norway announced that it was halting its Galaxy S4 Lollipop roll out due to problems. Users are reportedly seeing bugs and that apparently prompted Samsung’s regional arm to halt the update to the international Galaxy S4 variant. Canadian carriers had to do something similar with their Galaxy S5 Lollipop roll out.

Samsung and its carrier partners are clearly taking their time with this roll out, not surprising when you consider the Galaxy S4’s age, and while it might seem like a bad thing, it’s not. We don’t know about you but we’d rather wait then have to deal with an unstable release. We aren’t sure when Samsung Norway plans to resume its roll out and we’re hopeful that other carriers don’t have to do the same.

Galaxy S4 Battery Life Problems

Those who have received the Galaxy S4 Lollipop update continue to complain about Lollipop problems. In particular, some Galaxy S4 users are complaining about abnormal battery drain, a common problem after major Android updates and an issue that Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 4, and Galaxy Note 3 users have had to contend with after Android 5.0 Lollipop.

As we’ve noted many times, battery life problems are a common smartphone issue though sometimes it’s not the Android update itself that’s causing the problems. More often than not, it’s a rogue app or bad habits from users themselves.

Samsung Galaxy S5 vs Galaxy S3 vs Galaxy S4 - Cameras

In response to these complaints about bad Galaxy S4 Lollipop battery life, we’ve put together some fixes aimed at improving battery after Android 5.0 Lollipop. These fixes are a great starting point for those of you that have encounter battery drain after making the move and it’ll be a good reference for those of you planning to upgrade to Android 5.0 when the time comes.

It’s important to note that not all Galaxy S4 users are experiencing battery life problems. We haven’t seen anyone boasting about huge gains just yet but we have heard from people that are getting the same quality battery life after installing Google’s new software.

Other Galaxy S4 Lollipop Problems

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Lollipop release hasn’t been too active lately and the Galaxy S4 LTE update is still limited to users in the United Kingdom. That hasn’t stopped complaints about Lollipop from flowing. Users are complaining about battery life but we’ve also seen users complain about issues with the TouchWiz launcher, app crashes, problems with the keyboard disappearing (an issue that we’ve heard Galaxy Note 3 users complain about too), general sluggishness, and problems moving apps around.

Galaxy S4 problems are isolated for the moment but that’s because the Galaxy S4 Lollipop update itself is isolated. Even with the update only available for a few devices, we’re already hearing about issues and that’s a sign that the flood gates are probably going to open once Samsung starts pushing this update out at a more rapid pace.

Fixes for Galaxy S4 Lollipop Problems

In response to these issues, we’ve put together a list of common problems and fixes for those common Galaxy S4 Lollipop problems. These fixes will work for a lot of people but they aren’t guaranteed to fix every single issue.

Those fixes are a great starting point for Galaxy S4 users dealing with Lollipop problems though we also suggest digging deep into carrier forums and Android-centric forums for help. The Android community is massive and the Galaxy S4 is a popular phone. Galaxy S4 users on XDA-Developers and other sites are likely already looking for fixes for these issues.

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You might also want to think about downgrading. It’s a lengthy process but it’s a process worth investigating if Android 5.0 Lollipop isn’t what you wanted from an update.

Galaxy S4 users dealing with issues will need to be proactive because we don’t know when the next bug fix update will come or if Samsung will choose to roll out Android 5.1 Lollipop, Google’s new Lollipop bug fixer. And with the Galaxy S4 turning two next month, software support could certainly be coming to an end for some devices in the near future.

46 Comments

46 Comments

  1. Gale

    03/20/2015 at 8:04 am

    Wow that was difficult to read. Maybe try not to just repeat the same thing over and over throughout 3/4 of the article next time.

    • Fifty Shades of Pink

      03/22/2015 at 11:23 pm

      Gayle, exact same thought I had as I tried reading through it.
      By the end ny thought was ‘Wait… Did this article actually inform me of anything???’… No.

  2. andersson

    03/20/2015 at 10:24 am

    that was the worst text i have read in a long time. i gave up reading it. put a bullet list in the beginning with the problems :) instead of repeating that there are problems problems but what are the problems??

    • Gale

      03/20/2015 at 10:27 am

      Thank you. I’m glad I’m not alone.

      • ea

        04/01/2015 at 6:27 pm

        Haha. Glad I wasn’t alone in thinking that. Kept thinking “other S4 problems” would imply that there were more than one problem listed before but I only saw the ‘battery’ drainage issue.

        Terrible formatting and content

  3. tony

    03/20/2015 at 1:10 pm

    This article sets a new record for the most words delivering the least information. The author never gets to the point or provides any value, and has written a silly waste of time.

  4. jorge

    03/20/2015 at 7:13 pm

    Wow, diarrhea of the mouth, constipation of the mind.. Possibly one of the most useless “articles” I have ever read

    • Warrick

      04/28/2015 at 2:45 am

      The Samsung Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 Lollipop…
      The Samsung Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 Lollipop. ..
      The Samsung Galaxy S4 Android 5.0 Lollipop. …

      Half of this uninformative article consists of these words being repeated in every second sentence, followed by a statement of users reporting problems.

      The author of this article should be made unemployed. And suffer hot, uncontrollable diarrhea.

  5. George

    03/20/2015 at 10:07 pm

    Having NONE of these issues, in fact especially my battery duration is much much better than on KitKat! I’ve posted on numerous sites as to why this update is the best that Samsung has released! Apps etc are opening and closing exceptionally fast as is the general usage. Maybe their phones could be old and has original hard and software as I bought mine new last summer nearly 5 month’s after the S5 was released (I never buy new models until they have been out for 5-12 months to avoid later issue’s.

  6. WTF

    03/21/2015 at 4:00 am

    Whoever wrote that piece of s… needs to be given a drugs test, urgently.

  7. cbap

    03/21/2015 at 6:27 am

    I thought it was me. I got nothing out of that! Nothing. Unreal how poorly this article was written. It has to be a joke.

  8. HabibiMo

    03/21/2015 at 9:18 am

    Hi.. Peole who wrote comments are write. It is a very long text but just repeatedly about the battery life. If you have updated your phone regularly from your provider – not rooted and bla bla – you are OK. I have updated two Galaxy S4 phones at the same time (UK), and after Restarting several times over two days everything was OK. It is definitely better than KitKat even a better battery life. I do not have any problem with it.

  9. Sam Herman

    03/21/2015 at 9:28 am

    All I got out of this article is that the new update may come with a battery draining problem. This article definitely took 5 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

  10. Snedden

    03/21/2015 at 12:39 pm

    This article’s awesome….I bet this guy may be doing the same while writing essays during his schooling no matter which grade he may be in… :)

  11. pomp

    03/21/2015 at 4:56 pm

    What kind of shit was this article !

  12. pomp

    03/21/2015 at 4:58 pm

    Oh yeah. It was everyone look at me bullshit.

  13. Fifty Shades of Pink

    03/22/2015 at 11:27 pm

    What in the absolute hell???

  14. vet

    03/23/2015 at 2:50 am

    Wow what a useless article. So poorly written

  15. Freddies Father

    03/31/2015 at 4:20 am

    WOW how did they did they do that? Masses and masses of words however I feel I know even less than I knew before I started. Thats 5 minutes of my life I will never get back.

  16. jane tremper

    04/14/2015 at 4:00 am

    Nothing informative but it did drain my battery from 56 to 45 percent. If the battery life wasnt low before you started reading the article, it was when you finished. I think I will go read useless emails, at least I can skip over most of the b.s. iPhone might be in my future. Ugh. Worse problems I am sure.

  17. evelina

    04/26/2015 at 5:21 am

    That new update completely ruined my phone. The battery drains in less than an hour which was a problem i had never experienced until yesterday. Also,my s4 keeps freezing and takes veryyyy long to open apps. nothing i regret more than gettinf this lollipop update. Do yous think if i went to the old version it would fix the problems?

  18. Jan

    04/28/2015 at 8:37 am

    I can’t possibly say how much I HATE this OS. >:(

  19. Johnson

    05/11/2015 at 9:27 am

    As poorly as this article is written, I hate the new update far more.

  20. reuben cogburn

    05/14/2015 at 2:16 am

    I think this was written as a search engine magnet.

  21. Christine

    05/15/2015 at 7:27 pm

    In regards to….You might also want to think about downgrading. It’s a lengthy process but it’s a process worth investigating if Android 5.0 Lollipop isn’t what you wanted from an update.

    How do you downgrade? roll back to an earlier update. My phone is a useless brick since the update. Very upset.

  22. Randy

    05/25/2015 at 7:10 am

    Yes, its a magne. Google lists it 6 times! And there is NO content. Our payback is that these pieces of dreck have our emails and we have nothing. Our get back is to not go to this site again until they use our emails for a personal apology.

  23. Lawrence bishop

    06/09/2015 at 11:52 pm

    Problems that have occurred on my Galaxy S4 since the Lollipop shite, won’t connect to wifi properly, slow, apps crash, keyboard disappears or is extremely slow while typing, phone just randomly turns itself off and the only way I can get it on again is by removing the sim and battery which is ridiculous! Goes through stages where if it’s updating something the phone goes into spaz mode and unlocks, locks, unlocks , locks, unlocks, locks, unlocks and locks all by itself, the speaker on the phone all of a sudden stopped working so I couldn’t take a phone call because I can’t hear anything on the other end, takes a decade to send texts then sometimes says message unable to send because no network could be found when I clearly have 4G along with complete full bars of signal, the list goes on but the update has completely destroyed my phone

  24. Donna

    06/13/2015 at 5:41 am

    Normally I try to stay away from leaving any negative feedback, but I agree…that was EXTREMELY difficult to read through. Lots of words and very little information.

  25. gin

    06/14/2015 at 10:45 am

    I hated this “upgrade” since lollipop my S4 sucks. Spent better than a week onlpne chats with both samsung & verizon. 2 Factory Resets!!!!! What an fing pain.

    Both told me there was no way to go back to kitkat so just how are we to downgrade???

    After everything nothing works. Was told to go to Verizon & look into their Edge plans where I can early trade inour two phones.

    I may switch to iPhone sincq I was sitting 4 feet away from a gal using her phone… asked her how her signal was 3-4 bars 4g. I had NO SERVICE both of us using Verizon only diff mine S4 hers iphone. Boo samsung for putting out such s shi….y product & making us trouble shoot it. Ever heard of beta testing

  26. Deborah

    06/14/2015 at 1:41 pm

    I am hating this new update and wish I never did it. I ended up with extra apps that I didn’t want so I unistalled them. I already don’t use half the apps that came with the ph. I’m hating the new white pages snd the layout, prefer the old black layout. I’ve lost a couple of apps which I had to unistall only to install again. Google keeps dropping out and I need to reload it. My screen savers are gone and the photos I did have for the screen savers have since been deleted off my ph. The only good thing about this new update is the connection with the WiFi. I’m not having to reconnect every 20sec. I did love my ph and never had any problems until now. Can you please do another uodate to take everything back to the way it was. I’d reset the ph back to factory condition but I’ve got too much stuff on it now that I’d loose all my info. All the info above wasn’t any help at all!

  27. Reichj

    06/14/2015 at 7:20 pm

    Wow just wow….worst update ever and another BS article to go with it, Funny how that works…tips for getting the most out of your straight jacket. The only issue I was having from my S4 pre update was that the reminder for lollipop kept popping up at bad times…go figure.
    NOW….1. Every app lags or crashes even after reinstalls and updates. (This is attempt #2 writing this…for F!#$ sake) 2. Same with calls lag or drops. 3. Useless changes to user interface, it just added more you gotta do for the same function. I personally prefer android. If I wanted flashy and complex I’d buy an apple product. My wife and I were recently saying how impressed and satisfied we are with our s4…….were

  28. Lorraine

    06/22/2015 at 1:49 pm

    I hate it. I wish we had a choice to update or not. Why can’t they leave well enough alone?

    • jane tremper

      06/22/2015 at 3:25 pm

      Bad update, new phones on the market, loyal customers get fed up, hate the iPhone so they purchase new phone. Samsung not so stupid. We condone this because we continue to buy the products. Grrrr

  29. Robert

    07/16/2015 at 1:34 pm

    I thought the “upgrade” was horrendous, but this article, including all its linked portions, is one of the most poorly written I’ve seen. I couldn’t begin to finish it. It’s repetitive, over-uses words (just two examples, how many times do I have to read “aging” and “flagship” to get your point?), talks in circles. Whatever it says, it could have been said in one-tenth the space.

  30. ed

    07/17/2015 at 8:28 am

    Curious…after getting my OTA update my keyboards Spacebar is smaller and NOW my left thumb keeps hitting the , instead of spacebar on my sprint s4….any idea how to make spacebar longer so i quit havin commas between almost every word. No big deal just annoying. Also my Ram is now VERY full after update,but thats due to huge,firmware, download…erghh. ,, thanks

  31. viqie

    07/26/2015 at 1:54 am

    So frustrated with this new update.. not just me but 3 friends of mine have the exact problems. The lock screens numbers are all squares, super slow for; sending texts, closing apps, opening apps, typing. I have my icons all decorated and i cant change certain icons back to its decorated icon ( not sure if that made sense). Took so much memory from my phone to just be complete crap. Its been 4 days and every time i go in my cell i just get pissed off that i have to deal with such a messed up phone.

    Also just like everyone else, i have to add that this article is horrible. NO help at all, repetitive. This website really needs to take this article off, its just awful.

    Love how i search for information because im mad about the update and this article just sets me off and gets me more frustrated and angry. Thank you Adam Mills :)

  32. Howard Wearmouth

    07/31/2015 at 12:58 pm

    my S4 worked great before the lollipop update made my mobile device near useless. My provider said they could not do anything to fix it, although they tried, and said it was samsungs fault, and I agree with that. Samsung knows of this tsunami of problems and I will give them a couple of weeks to fix it. After that if the label on anything says Samsung… it will not be purchased at least by me. Come on Samsung.. you broke it, you fix it.

  33. Danielle

    08/28/2015 at 12:09 pm

    So annoying!!!! Need to charge my phone twice a day. It bloody upsets me when the weather haddign icon appears after a few hours even though I disabled it.

  34. James Stapleton

    08/31/2015 at 8:20 am

    I am more confused over reading this heap of horse dung
    Quality writing my ear

  35. Paresh

    11/11/2015 at 7:51 am

    What the hell is article is this . . . .
    Providing third class info instend of upgrade disadvantage. .. . .
    Writer hv …… knowldge of upgrade

  36. Kelly

    11/24/2015 at 6:42 pm

    Why does my Samsung Galaxy S4 always say i don’t have my sim card in when

  37. Dianne

    02/12/2016 at 3:19 am

    I HATE the update….also now HATE the phone, can’t wait for the s7 to be released ao i can get a new phone! Why do you need to FIX things that aren’t broken.

  38. Shibin Benjamin

    03/20/2016 at 3:27 pm

    The update brought battery draining issues and overheating. I only had the device for a year and the issues only appeared after the update. I ended up getting a s6, I don’t plan on updating to marshmallow when it becomes eligible for my device under my career. Not taking any chances and certainly not worth the trouble of trying to argue over it with my carrier.

  39. Frankie

    03/24/2016 at 3:02 am

    I hate the lollipop update and hate the look and colour of tabs on my S4 now. If I get an S6 will that stupid update be on there too? I don’t want to have to go back to the iPhone.

  40. Saabite

    03/29/2016 at 9:58 pm

    I think Samsung fudged the compilation of this realize on the S4 to intentionally mess it up…. So all the zombies will go out and buy a newer model. Just take a little time to learn how to root it and replace the software with something like Cygenomod.

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