Galaxy Note 4 battery percentage is not accurate, other issues

Whether you’re looking for an answer to your own #GalaxyNote4 issue, or simply trying to know more about your device, we think that this post will be of help. Here are four more issues that some members of our community shared to us. If you want to look for more Note 4 troubleshooting, don’t forget to visit this page.

  1. Galaxy Note 4 battery percentage is not accurate
  2. Galaxy Note 4 losing battery power faster than before
  3. Galaxy Note 4 won’t remain powered on if not plugged in to a charger
  4. Galaxy Note 4 unable to send a text copied from the internet

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page, or you can install our free app from Google Play Store.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.


Problem #1: Galaxy Note 4 fast charging issue | Galaxy Note 4 battery percentage is not accurate | Galaxy Note 4 random reboot issue

I have been experiencing very frequent problems with my battery.

  1. Fast charging doesn’t work. When I connect the cable to my phone, the notification pops up that says the fast charger is connected. However, it does not charge fast and charges normally which will take hours to fully charge my phone. When I charge with my phone off, I can tell whether it’s fast charging or not by this little lightning icon below the battery image. If the icon is there, it fast charges. If the icon isn’t, it doesn’t fast charge. This issue occurs 50% of the time and I have no way of telling whether it is fast charging or not when my phone is on, only time will tell. I guess this issue is a problem with my charger since I have tried other fast charging chargers and they fast charges my phone 100% of the time.
  2. Battery percentage not accurate. I have had several instances where my phone died at low percentages, ranging from 20% to 50%. When I rebooted my phone, it says 0%. This happens more often when I start playing my game application, but happens for different game applications. There was once when it died but when I went to charge it, is says 19%. All the other times were charging from 0%. I usually kill my background apps by clicking the multi-tasking menu key to the left of the home screen button and clicking on the close all button at the right. I do this several times a day especially when I have a few game apps running.
  3. Phone on infinite reboot. Sometimes my phone will go on an infinite reboot mode and this happens at random, even when I am not playing games. The battery is not dead either, but when it reboots it just does another reboot without even showing the lock screen and keep continuing until I remove the battery. — Victoriah

Solution: Hi Victoriah. Some conditions must be met in order for fast charging feature, also known as Samsung’s Adaptive fast charging, to work. For example, fast charging does not happen if you use your phone during a charging session. The device or screen must be off in order for fast charging to kick in. Also, charging rate may decrease significantly if the ambient temperature goes up. Try to charge the phone in a cool dry place to optimize fast charging feature. These things however are not the problem. Actually, you’ve already answered the number one question yourself. If other fast chargers work fine on your Note 4, then clearly the other one may be faulty so simply replace it!

To answer the second question, let’s first understand how your phone measures battery level. A Lithium-Ion battery uses a special integrated circuit (IC) to determine its charge and discharge activity. The same IC takes into account other factors that might affect the approximate capacity of a battery including things like temperature, self-discharge, and discharge rate in order to provide a time-to-empty information to the user. The IC is designed to recalibrate or learn battery capacity after a full charging cycle (going from 100% to 0%). Think of it as a fuel gauge of a car that tells a driver the amount of fuel left.

Now, sometimes the IC may get confusing information resulting to inaccurate time-to-empty information. To resolve the issue, one must recalibrate the battery so that the IC can create a benchmark for its approximation task. To do that, you must charge the battery until it’s full (100%). Then use the phone until the battery says it’s fully depleted. Do this charging cycle at least twice. After that, your battery should be able to give you accurate percentage. If the issue remains though, be sure to replace the battery as it may have simply lost significant capacity over time.

The second and third issues may be related and that the problem may be due to a bad battery. Try using another known, working battery to see if it makes a difference. Some random reboot issues can be caused by software or app issues but since your phone appears to be showing inaccurate battery percentage, we suspect that the battery is more likely to blame in this case.

Problem #2: Galaxy Note 4 losing battery power faster than before

I have Note 4 for like 1 1/2 years. My phone works so good at first but these past months and weeks, my battery drains so fast. A 100% for 1 hour usage, insane! And it doesn’t display right battery percentage when charging and sometimes when I plug in the charger when the battery is at 15-35%, the battery is decreasing like in seconds. The moment you plugged in the charger instead of staying at 35% it will immediately turn to 34 then it will go down to 0 then charge up…and this moment when i plugged my charger at 15%,my phone died and it shows the battery logo while charging it says 0%. Please help me. I was wondering if I’m gonna buy a new one or if there is another way for this. Thanks very much. God Bless. — Rj

Solution: Hi Rj. The idea of buying a new battery sounds right in this case. The Lithium-Ion battery of your Note 4 is not designed to run forever. The longest time that you can use it before it shows a problem like yours is one year, assuming that you charge only once every day. Blame chemistry for it. A Lithium-based battery loses capacity after a few hundred charging cycles. If you’re a heavy user, chances are you charge the phone at least twice a day, which further accelerates capacity degradation. Getting a new battery should easily fix the problem.

Related reading: Why a Galaxy Note 4 battery suddenly loses charge

Problem #3: Galaxy Note 4 won’t remain powered on if not plugged in to a charger

I have had my Note 4 for almost a year now. it’s the second one. I’ve had the first one and I had no issues with it before it was dropped and I was sent a replacement.

When i first received the phone there was an issue with the battery and it would not turn on unless it was plugged in and then would randomly shut off. I tried a friend’s battery it and it came on just fine. I used this phone daily for about 5 to 6 months with no more issues until right after the Lollipop 5.1 update.

The phone started turning off randomly again and wouldn’t charge unless I turned it off then plugged it in and then turned it on. After a while it wouldn’t charge at all. Sometimes it won’t recognize being charged most of the time. It says it’s charging but isn’t. It died about 4 months ago and never came back on until the other day it did good for 2 days working like it should then started not charging again.

Right now I have it plugged in with the original cable and its showing the icon that’s its charging and the red lights on. However it stays at 0 percent. it will not come on at all.

I have factory reset the phone, tried 3 different batteries, countless chargers and everything else you can think of. I cleaned the charger and port, cleared system cache, turned on the something dump ( I can’t remember what it’s called), I’ve disabled many apps.

The phone has never got wet. It has been dropped but has no physical damage. I’m no longer with Sprint and this phone is not connected to any service but I still play games on it ( when it works) and really don’t want to lose it. Could you please give me any suggestions to try I am at a loss. — Ashley

Solution: Hi Ashley. There’s only so much that you can do to resolve an issue like this on your end. There may be a problem with the contacts between the battery and the phone, or may be an entirely different main board issue. All the software troubleshooting you did demonstrates that the problem is not software in nature. There’s nothing more that we can add though. Our advice for this problem is limited to purely software troubleshooting. If you want to have the hardware checked, let a professional or Samsung do it for you.

Problem #4: Galaxy Note 4 unable to send a text copied from the internet

I sent a text message that contained a small sentence from the internet. The message didn’t get through. It keeps on the “sending” mode. I suspect that this small sentence I copied from the internet does not have permission to be resent to others and this is why the message  keeps in the send mode.

I now wish to cancel or recall the message at all without sending it.

My questions are:

  1. How can I recall this message so it doesn’t go through at all?
  2. If I leave the message, would the message eventually get through? Reason for this question is that I wish to make some changes to the message and send it again, but then I don’t want the old message to get through and get embarrassed by this. Thanks for your assistance. Regards. — Alice

Solution: Hi Alice. The easiest way to do what you want is by deleting the messaging app’s cache and data. Here’s how:

  • Go to Settings.
  • Proceed to Applications.
  • Select Manage Applications.
  • Tap the All tab.
  • Look for the Messages app or the third party app you’re using and tap it.
  • From there, you will see the Clear Cache and Clear Data buttons.

Clear Cache clears out the temporary files of an app that are possibly causing its erratic behavior. It is very safe to do since it retains your app settings.

If clearing the cache fails to solve the problem that you are encountering in an application, the next thing that you have to consider is to clear the data of your app. Accessing the Clear Data button involves steps similar to finding the Clear Cache button.

Although clearing the data is more effective than simply clearing the cache, it has a huge trade off. Doing this will set your app to its default settings or to its original state like when you first installed it. Its effect is similar to uninstalling and reinstalling the app cleanly, meaning it will delete all your messages in that app.

If the message was never sent successfully by your device, you should be notified of it in the conversation thread. Try to check the thread before doing the Clear Data option.


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4 thoughts on “Galaxy Note 4 battery percentage is not accurate, other issues”

  1. This should be the most stupid publication of all times, promising “solutions” but using the space to just talk your ridiculous ideas out and making the user waste time. No wonder why this site is going down with this type of bs. Absolute FAIL.

  2. I own a note 4, N910-C purchased from Middle East for the past 5-6 months its been showing inaccurate battery percentages on power OFF/ON. When plugged in it says 30% and when I turn it off and power it back on it says 92%. I’ve done the wipe cache partition, factory reset and even kingo root. All this and still the problem continues, I’m thinking its hardware but I am a layman so what do I know?
    Plus the phone turns off with one call or application- tried to uninstall apps in the Safe mode but it still does zilch. What else can be done

  3. This is my third battery. When it gets to 65% it shuts down. It was working fine for the first few weeks that I replace the battery with a Samsung battery. It started with about 26% shutdown then went to 35% and now it is random %50 to around 75%. It just shut down at 78% and won’t start up unless I plug in the charger. It will just loop. I took battery out and it said it was only 28% and then dropped quickly to 24%. I charged it all night and used it very little throughout the day. (2 Calls and viewed my email) By 1:30 it just shut down. How can I drain the battery if it starts shutting off at 78% or random %? I was having the same issue with the old original battery. When I replaced it with a compatible battery, it worked for about a week and started doing the same thing. I got another battery that is Samsung and it worked for about 2 weeks and now it is doing the same thing.

  4. Your answer does not work. When one charges to 100 % then leave to 0% phone shuts off when the display says much more than 0%

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