Issues with recent 4.4.2 update, black lock screen, sluggish, enormous battery drain.

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KatanaMan

Member
Aug 17, 2012
13
3
Boston
I'm bone stock, no root and have recently applied the L720VPUFNAE update. Since taking the update, the phone has had nothing but problems. When awakening 50% of the time I will get nothing but a black screen and will have to hard boot the phone. The other 50% of the time, it's extremely slow to accept my unlock code. Half of my home screen shortcuts are gone, just disappeared. Battery life is terrible, just a few hours of life. I've browsed here for solutions and have seen some people having similar issues on other sites, but no solutions. Is there a way to force the update again to see if that fixes it? Any other solutions aside from factory reset? Often times the phone will ring and I cannot even answer it because it won't wake up properly!
 

daniel4653

Senior Member
Jul 10, 2010
9,404
2,969
Southern California
I would suggest to factory reset the phone then proceed to Odin NAE tar that is available in the development section. Of course back up important things just to be sure. I had bad battery life for a few days. Until I discovered that it was clash of clans that was draining my battery. On Wi-Fi with the screen off it would drain about 4% since using greenify on it my battery now doesn't drains 0-1% under the same circumstances. You might have a rouge app that is draining your juice.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk
 

hshendon

New member
Apr 16, 2008
3
0
Aurora, CO
I am having these same exact issues. Really don't want to do a factory wipe if possible, but I am starting to think I may have to do it.

Also, the wifi issues have not been fixed with this release.

Anyone using anything like Juice Defender since the update -- is it helping with battery drain?
 

daniel4653

Senior Member
Jul 10, 2010
9,404
2,969
Southern California
I am having these same exact issues. Really don't want to do a factory wipe if possible, but I am starting to think I may have to do it.

Also, the wifi issues have not been fixed with this release.

Anyone using anything like Juice Defender since the update -- is it helping with battery drain?

What Wi-Fi issues. So far I haven't ran into a single one on unrooted.

try greenify it works wonders.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk
 

KatanaMan

Member
Aug 17, 2012
13
3
Boston
After the last update to 4.3 a few months back, I also had some serious issues which were only solved by a factory reset. I hate the thought of doing it again, it's so much work getting all the tweaks and settings back the way they were. But it appears that may be my only option. Each OTA patch Samsung has released has been a disaster, it's getting to the point where HTC might be back on the menu for me.
 

w7excursion

Senior Member
Nov 15, 2007
829
246
Bit dramatic there. If a factory reset fixes it there's nothing wrong with the update which you might have to do with an htc update also.
 

chris-allen

Senior Member
Jun 22, 2012
684
133
i can agree on the insane batt drain but other then tbat im error free.. the batt drops even while on the 1.5amp charger..

Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda app-developers app
 

chris-allen

Senior Member
Jun 22, 2012
684
133
probly right.. you should see it off the charger.. drop a percent per min.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda app-developers app

---------- Post added at 12:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:28 AM ----------

i wonder if there is a way to.boost the amp output on my laptop...itz usb2.0 @500ma :(

Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda app-developers app
 

z50king

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2011
813
214
36
Glendale, CA
I got the notification just now. How can I make it go away?

Google services framework is trying to update it.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:

KatanaMan

Member
Aug 17, 2012
13
3
Boston
As a followup to my own post, here's what I tried to fix it:

1 - A full factory reset with data wipe. Unsuccessful.

2 - A visit to the Sprint Store to have them nuke & pave the device to complete stock (it already was, but hey). Unsuccessful.

3 - Remove the Exchange Active Sync account. Successful.

To me this indicates a severe issue with the stock EAS client that comes with Kit Kat. If you are having similar problems to me, where the lock screen takes 20 seconds to appear, battery drain is enormous and the phone has problems "waking up" from screen power-off, try removing your Exchange account.

I might have to give something like Touchdown a try, I'm open to suggestions of a less costly alternative though.
 

chris-allen

Senior Member
Jun 22, 2012
684
133
once i remove it.....what will become unusable??

Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda app-developers app

---------- Post added at 09:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:14 PM ----------

just deleted the exchange services app.....is that ok? i dont use email on this device anyways except the gmail.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda app-developers app
 

KatanaMan

Member
Aug 17, 2012
13
3
Boston
I don't know if it's the same for you, but I had the native Exchange Active Sync email configured on my device with a enforced PIN lock. When my EAS account was configured under KitKat, the PIN lock screen had all sorts of issues, the device would get hot and battery life would go out the window. I deleted the EAS account, not the service.

Since then, I switched to Nine for my Exchange mail and the problem is completely gone. To make sure I configured the native app and deleted it a number of times. Each time the native EAS email was configured and the lock screen set, the phone crapped out. Nine enforces the same PIN lock policy, however my lock screen no longer freezes and kills battery. I am using "device security" with Nine, not "account security".

I'm honestly surprised to be the only one to experience this after combing through this and other forums. It means there's either something unique about my phone hardware/config or my Exchange server that causes the PIN lock screen to crap out. I don't have any lock screen widgets active.
 

insanity213

Senior Member
Oct 2, 2010
455
161
My wife has a bone stock S4 with the same problems. We flashed the stock kitkat tar with odin and wiped data which didn't help. She doesnt use exchange, just gmail. Im trying to convince her to move to a gsm provider and get a nexus. Im Effing done with sprints garbage network and garbage bloated roms. Any suggestions before I set this phone on fire?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
 

viper126

Member
Jul 3, 2008
5
0
I'm bone stock, no root and have recently applied the L720VPUFNAE update. Since taking the update, the phone has had nothing but problems. When awakening 50% of the time I will get nothing but a black screen and will have to hard boot the phone. The other 50% of the time, it's extremely slow to accept my unlock code. Half of my home screen shortcuts are gone, just disappeared. Battery life is terrible, just a few hours of life. I've browsed here for solutions and have seen some people having similar issues on other sites, but no solutions. Is there a way to force the update again to see if that fixes it? Any other solutions aside from factory reset? Often times the phone will ring and I cannot even answer it because it won't wake up properly!

So I had the same problem and this drove me crazy. I tried wiping Cache from OS, from Home key+Up volume+power, I tried a factory reset, I event tried applying the 4.4.2 patch via ODIN. I tried removing the lock screen and company email. The problem kept coming back.

Today however I brainstormed with a coworker who also has a working 4.4.2 S4 on ATT. After comparing settings for the lock screen we noticed the new swipe option and turned that on. What a bad move... that locked the phone up hard to the point I kept getting "com.android.systemui" stopped responding. I had no choice but to pull the battery and reset a few times and it didn't fix the problem. At last I had the idea to pull the SD card and boot the phone. That worked!
Everything worked exactly as snappy as it did with 4.3, so I rebooted a few times, got some texts, turned on the lock screen in order of swipe, and then PIN. With everything working I turned off the lock screen and put the SD card back in.
No problems....
rebooted
No problems...
turned back on the lock screen and all has been running well.

I'll report back if it slows down in a few days but at this point I've come to the conclusion that this problem has to do with the SD card. My thought is the Symbolic link which guides the OS to the SD card stay in the system even after the reset or upon reapplying a Play app. The removal and boot without the card removed the symbolic link and reset all the ExStorage to the new Kernel/OS version.

Hope this helps anyone suffering the same problems!!
 

ACoolGuy

Senior Member
Jan 23, 2009
225
87
Just wanted to throw my 2 pennies of experience in the ring. I'm on MF9 Bootloader and just recently moved to an NAE rom and kernel. I at first left my modem MF9, and everything was fine. Yesterday I flashed NAE modem and thats when the lag/black screen/CPU continuously working began. I cleared cache and Dalvik and still no fix. Being that I had just flashed the modem, I flashed back to MF9 modem and the issues went away. I then repeated the NAE modem flash and same issues came back. I'm back on MF9 modem and back to normal so far. I will also say that after flashing modems, there is a pop-up at boot that says something about android updating(no this is not the normal message when you clear dalvik). I dont know what the exact issue is, but for now I'm going to stick with MF9 modem.

Edit - Before anyone asks, I did check the MD5 of the NAE modem. That was my first thought is maybe a bad download.
 
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tripleoptic

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2007
64
6
Did you end up fixing your issue? I tried the SD card thing and it seemed good for 12 hours or so and then started having issues again. Thanks.


So I had the same problem and this drove me crazy. I tried wiping Cache from OS, from Home key+Up volume+power, I tried a factory reset, I event tried applying the 4.4.2 patch via ODIN. I tried removing the lock screen and company email. The problem kept coming back.

Today however I brainstormed with a coworker who also has a working 4.4.2 S4 on ATT. After comparing settings for the lock screen we noticed the new swipe option and turned that on. What a bad move... that locked the phone up hard to the point I kept getting "com.android.systemui" stopped responding. I had no choice but to pull the battery and reset a few times and it didn't fix the problem. At last I had the idea to pull the SD card and boot the phone. That worked!
Everything worked exactly as snappy as it did with 4.3, so I rebooted a few times, got some texts, turned on the lock screen in order of swipe, and then PIN. With everything working I turned off the lock screen and put the SD card back in.
No problems....
rebooted
No problems...
turned back on the lock screen and all has been running well.

I'll report back if it slows down in a few days but at this point I've come to the conclusion that this problem has to do with the SD card. My thought is the Symbolic link which guides the OS to the SD card stay in the system even after the reset or upon reapplying a Play app. The removal and boot without the card removed the symbolic link and reset all the ExStorage to the new Kernel/OS version.

Hope this helps anyone suffering the same problems!!
 

dpotter38

Member
Sep 6, 2012
24
1
Just wanted to throw my 2 pennies of experience in the ring. I'm on MF9 Bootloader and just recently moved to an NAE rom and kernel. I at first left my modem MF9, and everything was fine. Yesterday I flashed NAE modem and thats when the lag/black screen/CPU continuously working began. I cleared cache and Dalvik and still no fix. Being that I had just flashed the modem, I flashed back to MF9 modem and the issues went away. I then repeated the NAE modem flash and same issues came back. I'm back on MF9 modem and back to normal so far. I will also say that after flashing modems, there is a pop-up at boot that says something about android updating(no this is not the normal message when you clear dalvik). I dont know what the exact issue is, but for now I'm going to stick with MF9 modem.

Edit - Before anyone asks, I did check the MD5 of the NAE modem. That was my first thought is maybe a bad download.

Same thing happened to my S4. Moved to an NAE ROM and also installed the NAE firmware. Could not figure out why this slow down was happening. After some googling I ran across something that suggested installing the MF9 firmware again. After flashing 3 times to actually get it to stick, my issues went away.

I don't understand why some phones don't like the NAE firmware, but I just chalk it up to technology is weird sometimes and have accepted it. It works fine and good signal with the MF9 firmware, so I'm not worried about getting NAE to work.
 

daniel4653

Senior Member
Jul 10, 2010
9,404
2,969
Southern California
I did just notice about 3 days ago that my battery life was dropping a lot without even using it. This is on stock unroofed NAE. I used to average 15 hours with 3.5hrs screen time. Now I am lucky if I can get 7 hours with 2 hours of screen time. It might be my phone so I might go to A sprint store to see if my battery is failing. It isn't a rouge app that is affecting it , not low signal( have an airwave). I go.to sleep with 90% and wake up 6 hours later with around 50% or less.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk
 

tripleoptic

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2007
64
6
Same thing happened to my S4. Moved to an NAE ROM and also installed the NAE firmware. Could not figure out why this slow down was happening. After some googling I ran across something that suggested installing the MF9 firmware again. After flashing 3 times to actually get it to stick, my issues went away.

I don't understand why some phones don't like the NAE firmware, but I just chalk it up to technology is weird sometimes and have accepted it. It works fine and good signal with the MF9 firmware, so I'm not worried about getting NAE to work.

When you say MF9 firmware do you mean you are running NAE rom with MF9 modem like the other poster? Thanks.

---------- Post added at 11:55 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:16 AM ----------

When you say MF9 firmware do you mean you are running NAE rom with MF9 modem like the other poster? Thanks.

Well my wifi broke flashing modem to MF9... guess I'll need to flash back.