Ten Most Common Samsung Galaxy S4 Problems, Solutions & Workarounds Included

Samsung Galaxy S4 is one of the most powerful smartphones available in the market today. But despite its power and popularity, it is not free from problems and errors. In fact, thousands have already been complaining about some pressing issues they have encountered just weeks after they have bought their phone.

We did a little digging about those issues and ranked them to be able to come up with a top ten list of the most common problems Samsung Galaxy S4 owners were complaining about.

#1. Galaxy S4 Storage Problem

If you’re an owner of 16GB variant of Galaxy S4, you would understand why there is a problem with the phone’s internal memory. Basically, there was barely half the storage left for owners to use, which is very depressing considering Samsung natively disabled the “Move To SD Card” function for third-party apps.

One of the workarounds many were using was to ‘disable’ a bunch of applications (mostly bloatware) that were seldom used. But that means you would handicap the phone by disabling some of its native functions and features. To do so, you have to go to Settings => More tab => Applications Manager => All tab => find apps to disable and tap on it => Tap Disable button.

Good news, Samsung already rolled out an update in Europe that brings a handful of new features, improvements, fixes and the ability to move apps to SD card. This is based on the report published by Sam Mobile.

There is no specific date as to when the update would reach owners in the U.S. but since the problem is universal, we can surely expect to receive it sooner or later.

#2. Galaxy S4 Home Button Lag

Had you not changed any setting in your phone, you would notice the Home button is not as responsive as you would expect it to be. It’s normal. However, others were bothered by the phone’s behavior so they started finding solution to an issue that couldn’t even be considered a problem.

If you were bothered by the lag in the Home button and don’t have any clue why the phone acts that way, here is the explanation. When the user presses the Home button, the phone would wait if the user would press it again so it could launch S Voice. It would take a second or two before the phone would bring the use to the Home screen for that very reason. That is why owners would think the phone lags.

The best thing to do to make the phone as responsive as it should be when the Home button is pressed is to unbind it from S Voice feature.

1. Double-press the Home button to launch S Voice.
2. Press the Menu key and choose Settings.
3. Uncheck ‘Open via the home key’.
4. Now press the Home button and you will be brought immediately to the Home screen.

#3. Galaxy S4 Lags

According to some developers, there is this new feature in Galaxy S4 that majority of the owners don’t know about– S Lag. It is because the device lags more often without apparent reason.

Many agreed that the lags were actually caused by bloatware that causes TouchWiz to freeze from time to time. One way to fix the problem is to disable those useless apps and services: Settings => More => Applications Manager => All => tap apps one by one => Disable.

It would also make a difference if disabled animations in your phone by going to the Developer Options. But where can you find the Developer Options?

#4. Enable Developer Options

Galaxy S4’s Developer Options were hidden by default but it doesn’t they’re not anymore. Any owner who would want to change some settings in it can actually do it given that they were enabled first. To do so, here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Scroll to and tap About Phone.
3. Scroll to the bottom to find the Build Number.
4. Once found, tap on it (yes, on the Build Number) at least 7 times.
5. Now go back to Settings and you will now be able to find Developer Options.

#5. Galaxy S4 Gallery Freezing

After you’ve captured or saved a lot of pictures in your phone, the Galaxy S4 has a tendency to hang or freeze whenever the Gallery app is opened. Common knowledge would suggest to clear cache and data of Gallery but it wouldn’t help. The problem will keep coming back. The bad thing is that, it wasn’t acknowledged by Samsung if the problem was caused by a bug or something. Thus, as of this time, there is no resolution to the problem.

The common workaround would be to use a third-party photo-management app. One that’s on top of the list of the most recommended apps is Quickpic, although there could be other apps that’s better out there.

#6. Galaxy S4 Battery Drain Problem

Keeping the default settings in Galaxy S4 would result to this problem because it was set to be interactive and ‘smarter’ than any other phones out there. Therefore, Samsung enabled all necessary features so as to make its flagship as attractive as possible when tested for the first time the user.

It is only after a few days or a week that the new owner would start complaining having to recharge the phone after every few hours of use. Galaxy S4 drains battery faster than any other smartphones in its category. Samsung already knew about that, that is why it gave the phone a monster battery with 2600mAh capacity, though it’s not enough to keep the phone alive the entire day given that all its features were enabled.

Here are the things you can do to remedy this problem:

1. Adjust screen brightness to a low level.
2. Don’t use wallpaper as much as possible.
3. Turn the Power Saving Mode on.
4. Disable WiFi, mobile data, GPS, Bluetooth, etc. if no in use.
5. Disable syncing.
6. Set screen timeout duration shorter.

#7. Can’t Connect To WiFi Network

In the US, many Galaxy S4 owners complained not being able to connect to their home network. It has been found out that majority of those who complained were using D-Link routers. Both Samsung and D-Link acknowledged that there is a communication problem between their devices. Samsung promised to look into the matter closely while D-Link said they may consider releasing a firmware update for their routers affected by the problem.

If you have control over the network your connecting to, there are a few steps you can do to work around this problem.

1. Go to WiFi Settings.
2. Tap on the Network you often connect, ‘Forget’ it.
3. Let the phone scan for available network.
4. Reconnect.

You can also change your router settings to 802.11 channel.

#8. Galaxy S4 Deletes Email After Reading

Many new owners of Galaxy S4 reported that their email messages were deleted right after they have finished reading them. Others say once they close the email app, all messages would be gone by the time they open the application again. It didn’t make sense at first, but after several complaints, things became clearer and clearer that the problem wasn’t in the Galaxy S4 per se.

This problem only happens when the email account is also setup in other machines like a computer where the email client was set to download all emails without leaving a copy on the server. Depending on what kind of email client you use in your computer:

1. Go to Account Settings.
2. Advanced Settings.
3. Under Delivery section, make sure you checked ‘Leave a copy of messages on the server‘ option.

Emails on Galaxy S4 were automatically deleted simply because there were no messages left on the server for the phone to fetch.

#9. Galaxy S4 WiFi Keeps On Dropping

This problem is also common. In fact, it was also very common on the previous flagship, Galaxy S3. Fortunately, the problem is not serious in Galaxy S4. There are two potential solutions to this problem:

Turn Off WiFi Power Saving Mode

1. Launch Phone Dialer.
2. Dial *#0011#
3. Choose Menu, then WiFi.
4. Set WiFi Power Save Mode to Off.

Keep WiFi On Always

1. Go to Settings.
2. Choose Connections, then tap Wi-Fi.
3. Tap the Menu key.
4. Set Keep Wi-Fi On During Sleep to On.

#10. Certain Apps Keep Freezing

The Galaxy S4 is undeniably powerful with its octa-core (for Exynos variant) or quad-core (for Snapdragon 600 variant) processor. However, there were reports that some apps keep on freezing or hanging every time they are used. The most common type of apps that keep having this problem are third-party music and video players.

The best thing to do is to clear cache and data of these apps to see if the problem would be fixed. It is also advised to check the Play Store to see if there is an available update for the app. If so, don’t hesitate to update it because more often than not, bug fixes are included. Otherwise, reinstalling the app might just solve the problem.

Send Us Your Questions

If you have problems with your Samsung Galaxy S4, don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected] and we will help find solutions for them. Just be detailed as possible so we can easily understand what your real problems are.