Is GPRS used up much power? - General Topics

I keep my brand new XDA2 always connected GRPS to receive instant e-mail?
However, I found that my XDA2 using power very quickly.
In the past, when I used the XDA1, my GPRS plan is not that much so that I can keep it on-line all the time and the phone battery gone out reasonably.
Any thoughts?

Try a longer interval between checking the email. I originally had my XDA set to check every 15 minutes but I could see that it was sapping the battery strength. I dialed it back to once per hour (this is the longest interval you can choose) and I can go a few days at a time this way (depending on how much I use the XDA otherwise).

That means GPRS really consume too much power.
I will adjust setting to an hour.
Thanks a lot.

let me add small comment on this, it's not the 'alway on' that drain the battary, but any type of data traffic . it would be the same if you use CSD line. I'm not sure, but I noticed that phone calls do not consume that much ... maybe coz data traffic uses lot of buffering and errors handling.

Related

Battery Drain caused by Push Mail on WM5?

Hi guys and gals,
I ve been using pushmail for a week or so now and have noticed from the first day of using it that my battery drains so much faster when im using pushmail on my HP 6828.
My HP6828 used to last at least two days but now with pushmail enabled it lasts just till the evening of each day...
Is this a known bug? are there any fixes for this issue?
Thanks in advance for any help
NR
This is not a bug, it's a feature!
Yesterday I did some googling to find out how push mail works. I found an article (sorry, couldn't find the link again - not in history for some reason) where they found that push mail sends 400 bytes every 120 seconds to keep the connection alive.
Even if those numbers are inaccurate, the principle is the same: your device keeps an open GPRS connection to the Exchange server, and every once in a while sends data (even if there are no changes or new mails) so the radio is draining the battery.
Your bigger concern should be the phone bill, unless you have unlimited data you might get a large charge at the end of the month. In the article they calculated push mail to use approx 12MB per month.
levenum said:
This is not a bug, it's a feature!
Yesterday I did some googling to find out how push mail works. I found an article (sorry, couldn't find the link again - not in history for some reason) where they found that push mail sends 400 bytes every 120 seconds to keep the connection alive.
Even if those numbers are inaccurate, the principle is the same: your device keeps an open GPRS connection to the Exchange server, and every once in a while sends data (even if there are no changes or new mails) so the radio is draining the battery.
Your bigger concern should be the phone bill, unless you have unlimited data you might get a large charge at the end of the month. In the article they calculated push mail to use approx 12MB per month.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BUMP!
and yes im using unlimited EDGE access for 15 USD/month.. so the cost is fixed.. but now my battery wont even last a whole day! bloody microsoft.
Hi Nutdhanai!
I've been using push mail on my Jamin for almost two weeks now, and noticed that the battery drain is almost double the usual. It will last about two and a half - three days on standby and of course any use will reduce that time.
Still haven't seen any solution, but fortunately for me push is not a necessity. I can always set up my account as IMAP and set it to check mail once every hour or so which will reduce the load.
Hope you find a better solution for your self.
I think the best solution is to set a schedule in activesync to check on your email every 30 min, or every hour. you'll save a lot of power that way. hope that will help.
lsnizzle said:
I think the best solution is to set a schedule in activesync to check on your email every 30 min, or every hour. you'll save a lot of power that way. hope that will help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes that way does decrease the amount of battery being drained.. no offense but it really defeats the objective of being pushed mail..if we set it to check every xxx minutes then its really pulling mails not pushed .. argg..
However, what i have noticed is that the battery is draining faster using push mail over GPRS/EDGE because the phone wont go into full power save mode (backlight and screen off) but it only goes to partial power save mode (only backlight is off but screen is still on) when the phone is idle, BUT if you do push mail over WiFi the phone will go to full power save mode when idle. Both tests (GPRS and WiFi) with sync option of 'as items arrive' NOT every xxx minutes.
Maybe there is some bugs on the GPRS/EDGE power saving mode..
(atm, I have set mine to check mail every 15 mins)
The battery drain wouldn't be so bad if the server scheduling worked. But it doesn't; I have tried to configure mails to be obtained 'as they arrive' duing work hours (which means server push) and once every hour outside work hours, but its all or nothing - the push mail doesn't turn off at the end of work hours, so the battery is being drained equally all day.

very basic battery question

I'm not new to the world of ppcs by any stretch of the imagination...but i have one question which has always puzzled me. How much strain does checking email every 5 minutes have on my battery? I have a gsm touch and can't seem to hold a charge for more than a day with very minimal usage. A typical day for me is 2 or 3 short phone calls and several texts..in addition to checking for new email every 5 minutes. Would I be correct in assuming that to check for email my touch is awakened from standby..thus causing the drain?
Js
You are correct, but also consider that when it connects to check email it is using the radio to connect to the network. So essentially you are having the radio on almost ALL DAY. Similar to a voice call all day. Battery is then drained by the radio usage to talk to the network.
does the same apply to a push mail setup?
well...am i essentially doing the same thing by having GPRS always on? In other words, is this going to drain my battery at the same rate whether i'm checking for mail every 5 minutes or every hour?
No it is not the same for Push email. Push email wakes the device and delivers the mail when there is some. As opposed to the device connecting and querying for mail, the device gets woken (sp?) up and gets delivered the mail for Push. Push is a much more effective way of getting your mail... I forward all my mail to my hotmail account which then gets pushed to my device via Windows Live.
Regarding the always on GPRS... yes and no. Yes you are connected and draining the battery but just being on doesn't use as much as actually pulling or sending data. The difference is negligible and really irrelevant. I would say that you turn off GPRS all the time if you are trying to save on battery life.
Make sense?
You may want to install Battery Status and turn on the current drain option. While a bit of a catch 22, considering the screen has to be on for you to see what the drain is, thus causing a higher than idle drain. At least you can get an idea of what your device is draining and see if changing settings makes a difference.
Link to Battery Status (not sure if this is the current version)
http://www.chi-tai.info/cs_BatteryStatus_XDA_Neo_WM5_iM_cs.htm
The other suggestion is to consider changing ROMs. I have a GSM Touch and the factory ROM was really poor on battery life. I have been using the Blue Touch ROM version 2.10 (not the newest version) listed in the Elf upgrade section. I can now go more than one day without charging the battery, with push e-mail activated.

Auto-disconnecting data connection when not in use?

Hi,
My Raphael is set to poll for email every so often. This is fine, but it always keeps the data connection open...
Will this have a negative impact on battery life? (As it is just using the mobile signal) ?
If so, is there a way of making the connection shutdown automatically after inactivity, so it can be started again only when actually needed?
I use bandswitch to close connection. Used it on my tytn and now touch pro. A great piece of software
http://www.commmgrpro.com/jsp/main_frame.jsf;jsessionid=2F30C7CCFABAB708C39B06DAD6E91839
Matt
Mewcenary said:
Hi,
My Raphael is set to poll for email every so often. This is fine, but it always keeps the data connection open...
Will this have a negative impact on battery life? (As it is just using the mobile signal) ?
If so, is there a way of making the connection shutdown automatically after inactivity, so it can be started again only when actually needed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Providing you are not transmitting any data, it should not have an impact on battery life. I leave my data connection open all the time as it speeds accessing the internet up as it doesnt have to re-negotiate with the network. Also if you are using hotmail with the sync period set to "as mail arrives" or using imap ilde (gmail) then leaving the connection open reduces data traffic as it does not have to "sign in " each time to receive mail (sorry gone off topic!)
ardsar said:
Providing you are not transmitting any data, it should not have an impact on battery life. I leave my data connection open all the time as it speeds accessing the internet up as it doesnt have to re-negotiate with the network. Also if you are using hotmail with the sync period set to "as mail arrives" or using imap ilde (gmail) then leaving the connection open reduces data traffic as it does not have to "sign in " each time to receive mail (sorry gone off topic!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree...I leave mine open at all times, and it has minimal impact to batter life (when compared to my wife's unit, which doesn't really pull data except once or twice a day as she updates weather). It does make any data needs easier to get up and running. Running it this way doesn't really make me sad that I don't have 3G on this phone.
I have tested on my HTC Touch Pro, when my data connection is on, on a night I loose more than 10% of battery on a night.
When the data connection is off, I loose less than 1%. (battery is still at 100% on the morning)
So to me it has a significant impact...

[REQ] A Better Solution for Data Auto-Disconnect... with Peak Time/Push Mail

Hi folks
I've searched around the forums and have seen a couple of solutions out there for automatically terminating data connections (Bandswitch, WMLongLife, the registry tweak) but each seems to lack some of what I need and do a lot that I don't need.
Here's the lowdown:
- I've already tweaked the Comm Manager to add the 3G on/off switch so I don't need something that messes with that
- I use push email for business so I need the data connection to stay on during the "peak times" that I've set in Activesync (for me, that's 8am-11pm)
- Outside of peak times, I've got the phone checking email every hour. Right now, it seems to be leaving the connection on afterward.
- I want to keep the automatic updates for HTC Sense's weather and stock tabs. Not every 5 minutes, of course, but at least a couple of times a day. Also tends to leave the connection going when used outside peak hours.
As I understand it, the registry tweak won't work for the Sense tabs. Bandswitch and WMLongLife mess with the 3G radio and, as far as I can tell, don't let you set a timeframe (re: the latter - I suppose when you've got push mail going it pings the Exchange server regularly so in theory it shouldn't consider the connection idle, but why mess with it?)
So, in short, anyone got a solution that could switch off an idle data connection outside of the peak times set in Activesync?
If you just want to kill connections during certain times (ie, night time) try G-Profile. I have it set to kill data connections during the night, works fine for me although I am using a new beta version which is available from their site.
Looks interesting but reading through the manual it looks as if you can only set a profile to disable the data connection during certain hours. I'd like to leave the data available, just switch on auto-disconnect.
Plus, again, there's a lot of extra stuff in there that's really not necessary. I'm looking for something more lightweight...
I haven't tried it, but you might want to take a look at CommMgrPro.
It's also from the creator of Bandswitch.
PhoneAlarm can do this.
I had PhoneAlarm installed on my previous phone. True, it can do this.
But again, it's like using a tank to kill a fly. Sam with CommMgrPro.
Is there no lightweight solution?
+1 for this. It has to be possible, everyone just seems to lump the functionality in with a load of other stuff I'm not interested in.
Up, I'm looking for this also
+1
This kind of app is missing...
SO.... last night I left my charging cable at the office and I only had around 20% of the battery left at 11:00pm. For some reason, the thing kept opening the data channel even though it was outside of "peak" hours for push! I had to reset and turn manually turn off all data... couldn't have the phone die overnight as it's my alarm clock!
Any ideas here?
DialUp Enabler Disabler v06
What about this one
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=610657

Request: Scheduler for connection manager

I think this is a long shot but here goes:
I have an unlimited data plan so during peak times I've got Exchange email arriving 'as it arrives' and Gmail sending/receiving every 5 mins.
To help preserve the battery during off-peak times Exchange syncs only every 4 hours.
In addition to this I've also got Bluetooth and Wifi on pretty much 24/7.
Obviously this doesn't help the battery life, so I'd like to be able to configure when (i.e. what time of day) my connections are 'on' and when they are 'off'.
I'm aware of tweaks, mods and apps to cut the data connection after, say, 5mins. But that's not what I want. I want something which will schedule the data connection to turn off at a certain time, and reconnect at a certain time.
In addition it would be good to have the same thing for Bluetooth, Wifi ir any other item in Connection Manager for that matter.
Any bright young thing out there that can help?
Update: See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb416391.aspx for Connection Manager API description and architecture

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