Solved Can't update galaxy s4

[dezymond]

I've done all the tricks in the book to get the most up to date radio, reset radio signals, etc. Fact of the matter is, Samsung decided to be cheap with their radios as usual. A friend of mine has an s4 on Verizon as well, and we both run into the same weak signals when our friends are getting pretty solid signal compared to ours.

And a friend of mine on AT&T has one and he too says the signal isn't so great either compared to some of his work colleagues on the same network with different model phones.

 

[KaosMaster]

Have you done a complete reflash with clearing the EFS?? I had to do this to correct my issue as well. You can download the .md5 for NK1 from my Sig. Then select repartition, NAND erase, clear EFS, and update Bootloader. This should help stabilize the issue!

 

[dezymond]

I wouldn't say it's so much an "issue" anymore. It's just the fact that the radios that Samsung uses are subpar compared to their competitors. I gave the Galaxy Nexus some slack as it was a first generation 4g device, but by the s4 they should've put in a higher quality radio. I've compared dBms and asu (yes I know it's not completely accurate scale, but it's about as accurate as I can get) with other devices and the fact of the matter is, the s4 performs much lower to a few competitors.

Don't get me wrong, the s4 is still a great phone and has performed just the way I wanted it to since upgrading it to 4.4.2. It doesn't freeze on me like it used to, doesn't do random restarts, and it wakes up from sleep. Everything has been running smooth, I just find it annoying how some phones (not even direct competitors of the s4) get better signal than this phone, which was once a top tier flagship phone.

I appreciate your help and advice though @KaosMaster. As for my next solution, next upgrade I'm moving on from Samsung.