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Will keeping GPRS EDGE connection constantly on drain battery?

Hi,
I'm running Crossbow Reloaded 1.5 ROM on a G3 8125. I use T-Mobile (USA) 's GPRS data with Windows Live, however I have noticed that when Windows Live is set on the homescreen my Wizard attempts to stay connected to GPRS constantly. If i disable it from Comm manager, it simply reconnects automatically in a few seconds. Now, I have no problem with GPRS being on constantly, but I just wanted to know if it would have a significant effect on battery drain?
I know Wi-Fi does for sure, but wasn't too sure about GPRS. My question is, if I kept GPRS on 24/7 would my battery die faster? The majority of the time the connection is connected but idle, I only need it to check mail every few hours. Also, I walk around a lot from place to place. Would this cause my GPRS to disconnect/search /reconnect constantly, as with wifi (cause this would drain the battery really fast). Thanks.

I've never really tried looking at battery drain between having it on all the time and not, but before I put the fix into Crossbow Reloaded 1.5, it would disconnect and not be on all the time. I really have not noticed a difference in battery life between the two versions, so my gut is that GPRS does not drain the battery (definetly not like keeping WiFi on). I leave Bluetooth active 24 hours a day and don't notice extra battery drain with that either. YMMV.

Battery Drain and Wifi problem

I have battery drain issue when I use wi-fi for few min and then turn it off. After this the battery drains crazy but if I never turned on Wifi battery drain is normal.
Another issue is when Today Touch plugin's weather is updated by Wifi then it won't update with Active Sync connection?
Did anybody see these problems? Anybody has solutions?

I probably cannot help you other than to remind you that the gurus here will need more information so that they can help you. What device do you have, what ROM, what programs you've installed, etc. Also, these issues have been discussed numerous times with various ROMS, so searching will probably yield a great deal of information. Good luck.

My device is on XDAR2a release. Touch stuff and that is all nothing fancy. I am sure we are all talking about HTC wizard/cingular 8125.

dhanamjay said:
I have battery drain issue when I use wi-fi for few min and then turn it off. After this the battery drains crazy but if I never turned on Wifi battery drain is normal.
Another issue is when Today Touch plugin's weather is updated by Wifi then it won't update with Active Sync connection?
Did anybody see these problems? Anybody has solutions?
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Wifi always takes alot of battery, make sure it's off, and also turn off incoming beam option in setting.

if you're reading the drain info from a program like batterystatus...give it some time after you turn off wifi for the information to refresh. wifi has a large drain on the battery...so it just might be residual information.

Email polling / extending battery life

I'm looking for any utilities that would help extend the battery life of my Polaris - obviously aware that use of Wifi, 3G, etc. hits battery life.
I've got my device set to bring down emails every hour (useful during office hours), but I don't want this happening all through the night - and don't want to have to turn phone off completely. Anyone know of a util
/way to control the messaging/email polling schedule ?

What really helps is closing the data connection after email check or surfing. This is what costs battery. I've managed with a registry edit that the connection will be closed after 2 minutes of idle. This does a lot for my battery life. First i had 1 till 2 days with a battery, now it runs for 4 days or so.

Cheers, yep via the KaiserTweak util I've already got it dropping the data connection after 2 mins, but I'm still looking for other ways of improving battery life a bit further.

MonkeyWorld said:
Cheers, yep via the KaiserTweak util I've already got it dropping the data connection after 2 mins, but I'm still looking for other ways of improving battery life a bit further.
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Click to collapse
I have a quite opposite problem in TC. I don't want data connection to get disconnected after some idle time. I am not that much concerned abt battery life. Is there any registry edit that needs to be done so that, data connection never gets disconnected untill i want to disconnect it.

Does being connected to 3G eat up that much battery even if the connection is idle?

[REF]ELFin battery drain stays high after data channel disconnected

Hi all,
I also posted this in the Onyx thread.
Not sure if anybody's experienced the same problem, but I am running Onyx Jr 4.1.4 on my ELFin, and had absolutely no problem with the battery life. I didn't use Outlook at all to check email, because I didn't have a data plan, and just did some light web browsing with Opera Mini. My battery could easily last through a 10 hours day and I would have over 50% battery life left even with moderate use.
Recently I got a data plan, and setup Outlook to poll email every 30 min, and that's when I started getting serious battery issues. My battery cannot make it through a work day, and after ~ 6-7 hours I'd get a low battery warning with 15% battery left. I cannot make it home without charging my battery, or turning my phone off towards the end of the day.
I was surprised by how much additional power email polling drains, even when it's as infrequent as every 30 min, so I installed acbPower Meter, and ran some tests on it. My finding is ...
Phone off, BT off, EDGE off ~ 120 mA
Phone on, BT off, EDGE off ~ 132 mA
Phone on, BT on, EDGE off ~ 132 mA
So I think that's pretty expectable numbers. It shows turning GSM on only drains a bit more power, and BT on/off makes almost no effect. I'm not really using any BT service at this point, obviously.
Now, as soon as I turn EDGE on I see a whole different story ...
Phone on, BT on, EDGE on ~ 326-360 mA
Phone on, BT on, EDGE on, Outlook polling ~ 450-550 mA
So as soon as the data channel is on, even before any data is being transmitted or received (I also use spb wireless monitor to check throughout rate), the drain shoots up from ~ 130 to over 300. And when data is being received, it goes up to 450-550mA!
Fine, even then, an Outlook update only takes ~ 3 min. I setup a program (PhoneAlarm) to disconnect my data channel within 5 min of inactivity, and I thought that should fix the problem.
But it didn't.
So doing a bit more homework, I find what happens is PA DOES turn EDGE off within ~ 5 min of inactivity, but somehow the battery drain stays high (above 300mA) even though EDGE is already off.
I double-checked on SPB Wireless Monitor to make sure EDGE is off, and no data is being transmitted or received. However, battery drain remains above 300mA.
Worse, over time, the 300mA battery drain heats up the battery, to ~ 34-36C, which kills the battery even more. All this without any actual wireless data being transmitted or received.
It seems like the ROM continues to drain the battery even after the data channel is disconnected ... has anybody experienced similar issue?
I ran similar test with WLAN and same result - with WLAN connected, and data received, battery drain goes up to over 400mA. But even after I turn off Wifi the battery drain stays high.
I am not sure if it's a ROM issue, an Outlook issue, or if it is caused by some application on my phone? Has anybody else seen this issue?

You have noticed a very significant difference between Blackberry device and WM, that's why WM is never good at it, no matter comparing the data amount flow as well as the battery usage, it is just not up to the expectation.
The AS is a battery killer, ever since the WM 6.0 and I do not see there is any improvement over the WM6.5 either, hence a even less hope for the WM7, by then, the Android and Symbian will have something to knock it off anyway.

Well, is AS really the problem here though? I have ASynckiller installed and it closes AS when the USB port is not connected.
Not to mention, AS has always been in the picture even before I started using Outlook to check email regularly, and battery usage was perfectly fine, so not sure about that theory.
If Outlook is the problem, I could switch to another email application (say, Flexmail) ... I just don't know if Outlook is the problem here. If Outlook is constantly polling in the background, despite I've set it to update only every 30 min, I should see a higher CPU / memory usage by Outlook, but that's not the case. CPU usage is well below 10% most of the times when it's idling, and memory usage is minimal too, yet the phone continues to drain 350+ mA. It seems like more of a ROM thing to me than anything else.

I have almost the same story as number16's.
I m using onyx, too. though its WM6.5 and that's generally very much of a battery eater.

[Q] Battery life with Wifi/2G/3G toggling

Hello there guys ..just wanted to post a quick question / add some findings i've seen with respect to the effect of toggling edge/wifi / 3G
I've had my phone for just around 10 days now, and have been noticing how quickly my battery life drops..
Until now, I had kept 3G + Wifi switched on (wifi toggled automatically with Y5-battery saver app), and, no matter how hard I policed background applications, my battery life would automatically fall at the rate of about 1% every 5 minutes (even if I were not using the phone, and it was just lying idle)...
Today, I tried switching off Wifi altogether, and forcing my network data to 2G ...my (probably flawed ) logic being that push notifications can happen even over edge/GPRS, and when I need to use more internet heavy applications, I could switch wifi/ 3G back on for the duration I needed it ..
I have been seeing pretty decent results over the past few hours ... battery has dropped just about 4% in the last 2 hours...i've attached a (crude) image of my battery usage screen, and on it, you can see the usage curve changing to a lower rate from about the same time I turned wifi off completely..
Could anyone with more knowledge about wifi/edge/3g battery usage pls let me know if this is a genuine improvement, or if its just some placebo effect
I'll continue monitoring it over the day and keep you guys posted

I believe battery usage from most to least goes:
3G
EDGE
Wifi
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk

Thx hfm ... i think that's generally the order in which battery is consumed as well - EXCEPT when wifi reception is spotty..
I think what was happening until now was that the 'Y5 Battery saver' app was recognizing my 'home' as a location with a known wifi connection..and was constantly switching on / searching for wifi connections whenever I'm at home..
but the problem is that in some parts of my home, wifi reception is a bit spotty...so all that 'scanning' would happen for no good, and no connection would be fixed..
the battery saver didnt really save much battery then