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Questions about 3G/umts connection

A work colleague is using a sim free touch cruise on the vodafone network but vodafone don't have any support for this device (mind you neither does HTC ). We got the vodafone settings for billpay vodafone off the internet and input them and can now surf, download gmail etc over HSDPA (H icon shows) and then it automatically reverts to 3G when not in use.
The problem is that the icon for 3G/umts in use is always on (ie the small 3G over the signal strength) and when the bigger 3G icon is touched it shows how long connected to 3G and as the device is still connected it keeps counting time even though the application using 3G is shut down.
My questions are as follows:
In this state (big 3G icon showing and small 3G icon above signal strenght) is this costing anything being constantly connected to 3G but not using it?
How can it be set to automatically disconnect?
My own touch cruise is on the 3 network but I don't have this difficulty.
My thinking is that it might have something to do with "vodafone live" but not sure what is happening or possibly have selected the wrong set of settings for vodafone ireland as there is a few different sets.
Sorry this is a bit long winded but any advice much appreciated.

The always ON connection is general behaviour... it doesn't matter which network is the device on.
The big 3G/H icons only represent the available network (G(PRS)/E(DGE)/3G/H(SDPA))
The smaller is the signal strength...
The cost of the always ON connection depends on the dataplan being used... if it's an unlimited or a fairly large one like 5GB, it won't matter... but it realy depends on the data recieved....
In my case the avarage hourly traffic is around 1 MB, but i have a little e-mail traffic going so... whith a few mails and every 30 minute checking the traffic should be around 500 KB or lower...
As for the Auto-Disconnect, please search the forum... there are several threads about this in both subforums.

Thats great gnick666 thanks for your reply.

I know the Advanced Configuration Tool has an auto disconnect feature, but I had some issues with it and never went back to go play around with it.
You can also hold down the End button and a menu pops up and you can end data connection there. Or alternatively you can configure it so that holding down the End button always disconnects your data connection.
I have an unlimited data plan so not worried about data, I'm not sure however what the impact to battery usage is so I disconnect "just in case".
As for the 3G / H icon behaviors. Depending on which part of the country I'm in, I get different icons. Sometimes I get 3G and it switches to H when doing data. Othertimes it's always H whether disconnected or connected. (This is assuming that I'm in a 3G location) and not switching back to Edge.

Mine mostly shows the bigger 3G icon and the signal strenght icon with the little antenna icon (I'm on the 3 network which is 3g) but when I download data the small icon changes to 3G and then both change to H as required. Once finished it disconnects and reverts back to 3G. I have Schapps Advanced config tool installed.

[REQ] Can I stop data when roaming?

Hi all,
I know this is probably a strange request and so I'll have to give a bit of background. Recently I changed my mobile provider to 3. 3 have their own telephone coverage in certain areas and if you are outside those areas you go on roaming with Telstra. The issue is 3 charges huge $$ when roaming on Telstras network for data (voice and SMS is fine).
My question is that my TP obviously knows when I'm roaming as it displays the service provider as 'Roaming'. Is there a program that will stop my data (and only data) use when I change over to the 'Roaming' service and activate again when I am in the 3 network?
Thanks for you help!
Trent

Hi, another aussie 3 user here...
I agree with the TS as this is one of the major problem we as 3mobile user face, is there any kind soul out there that could help us with this as my knowledge on PDA is limited.. Thanks for any1 who is willing to help in advance.

With the Sprint TP, I can go to
Settings>Phone>Services>Roaming
and set an option called "Data roam guard" that allows me to choose whether or not data connections will be allowed while roaming. I'm not sure if this option is available for you, but give it a try.

I myself would like to have an automated function for this. Until then I will have to manually switch to my dummy data connection.

Normally it doesn't connect on roaming.
and if it will, it asks first.
isn't this the case with you?

I have an app called NoData
Works really well and lets you enable/disable any data connections

raveenash said:
I have an app called NoData
Works really well and lets you enable/disable any data connections
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know about the NoData. However, you still have to enable/disable data connection manually. I'd like to have it automatically disabled when I am roaming.
For example my IM client (QIP) does not ask me whether it should connect or not. So it is very easy to have an "accident" with data connection :-(

I'm another Three user in Australia, looking for something like this as well. I often use my phone while on a tram and it might switch from 3G to Roaming while I'm browsing the web. I'd like for it to warn me so I don't download heaps while roaming (I think it's $1.65 per MB or something crazy like that).

Hi, another 3 Australia user here...and yes, I've been waiting on this sort of function for years now.
Part of the problem here is that 3's "roaming" is not actual roaming in the traditional sense. Normally, the phone detects a roaming signal when on a foreign network and displays a roaming indicator (looks like a little triangle) at the top of the screen. You'll find this is the case if you ever take your phone overseas and use International Roaming. Telstra's network does not give you this signal, and hence even the few roaming aware apps we have (e.g. pocket outlook) don't detect when you're on Telstra's network and turn off their automatic schedules.
The best way I could think of to do this automatically is with an app that detects either Telstra's network ID values (the phone detects these and translates them to the text "Roaming" at the top right of today, much as it translates the real value "3Telstra" to plain old "3" - 3 and Telstra share the 2100MHz network in a joint venture, much as Vodafone and Optus share theirs...you will see the real value if ever you use a non-3 rom) or the network connection type and then runs that NoData app (I haven't seen that before...credit to the guy who posted it).
I've often though some sort of even responder app would be useful. Something like Gyrator, except that read network status instead of physical hardware status. Anyone know of anything like this?
Then you could set up something like:
* On detect EDGE/GSM switch off data connections
* On detect HSDPA/3G switch on data connections
OR
* On detect network ID of Telstra's GSM network switch off data
* On detect network ID of 3's/Telstra's 2100MHz 3G network switch on data

Look at phoneAlarm.

caeci11ius said:
Part of the problem here is that 3's "roaming" is not actual roaming in the traditional sense. Normally, the phone detects a roaming signal when on a foreign network and displays a roaming indicator (looks like a little triangle) at the top of the screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My HTC TP says 'H' up the top when I'm in 3 coverage and 'E' when I'm roaming. Just near the top it says '3' when I'm in a Three area or 'Roaming' when I'm not...
Don't you have the same phone? What does yours say?

Vanstra said:
Look at phoneAlarm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that perhaps paying 15+ pounds (around AU$40) just to switch off a data connection is a bit steep...any other suggestions around?

grandinferno said:
My HTC TP says 'H' up the top when I'm in 3 coverage and 'E' when I'm roaming. Just near the top it says '3' when I'm in a Three area or 'Roaming' when I'm not...
Don't you have the same phone? What does yours say?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My point exactly. You will not see the real roaming indicator in Australia as you never actually roam here. While three call it "roaming" when your phone is on Telstra, the way they have set it up prevents the phone from knowing this is the case so the few roaming aware programs will not be able to adjust for it.
The phone shows G/E when on Telstra as Telstra provide a GSM/EDGE network. It shows 3G/H when on Three's network as Three are providing a 3G/HSDPA network. Hence, you can work out if you're roaming by looking at this even though it's not actually a roaming indicator.
If you look at your home screen though you will see either a "3" in the top right corner of the clock or "Roaming". That's what I was talking about before. It's not a roaming indicator either; it simply shows the network name (with a translation applied from the actual network ID in this case).

thanks caeci11ius, I'm glad you could explain this is better detail then my original statement. I am presuming that this form of roaming and charge to customers is quite rare.

caeci11ius said:
I think that perhaps paying 15+ pounds (around AU$40) just to switch off a data connection is a bit steep...any other suggestions around?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You wanted a program which can automatically switch band when roaming.
This is the only program I know which can do that.

Program to disable Data when E or G is shown on taskbar
caeci11ius said:
My point exactly. You will not see the real roaming indicator in Australia as you never actually roam here. While three call it "roaming" when your phone is on Telstra, the way they have set it up prevents the phone from knowing this is the case so the few roaming aware programs will not be able to adjust for it.
The phone shows G/E when on Telstra as Telstra provide a GSM/EDGE network. It shows 3G/H when on Three's network as Three are providing a 3G/HSDPA network. Hence, you can work out if you're roaming by looking at this even though it's not actually a roaming indicator.
If you look at your home screen though you will see either a "3" in the top right corner of the clock or "Roaming". That's what I was talking about before. It's not a roaming indicator either; it simply shows the network name (with a translation applied from the actual network ID in this case).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is Exactly What I need Also. I have looked everywhere? I Dont believe anyone else has come across this issue before and has written something to fix it.
Need a program to detect when the Phone is in 3 or H area (displayed at top) and disable DATA ONLY when G or E is displayed. My work around at the moment is to select HSDPA only connection but this makes the Voice Calls dropout whenever I cannot recieve Three's Network. Can anyone help. There is many people who would be in this same boat.
Wombat

Introducing WombatPhoneRoam
I just wrote a script to keep you connected to 3G or HSDPA networks only. Tryout
WombatPhoneRoam
I hope it is what your looking for
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3076932&postcount=1
Wombat

[App Idea] GSM/WCDMA Switcher

Hey guys,
As the radio stack is the second cause of battery draining after the display, I was thinking about a way to save battery life by reducing the impact of the 3G connection. Most of the energy saving apps on the market are only disconnecting the phone from the APN, but this isn't a great solution as each app could be set to update at different times and thus being unable to download data even if the user sets some exceptions. So I thought that an application which operates in the following way could be great to save power:
- The phone uses the 3G network while the screen is on;
- It switches to 2G when phone is in standby mode;
- It disconnects the APN data connection while the phone is using a WiFi Network;
Obviously to avoid possible issues during the switch between 2G and 3G the following rules are applied:
- If there's an incoming call or a phone call is being performed, there won't be any radio switch until the phone call is ended;
- If there's an incoming SMS/MMS, there won't be any radio switch until the text message is fully received.
Unfortunately as I'm not a Java developer I can't code anything like this. But let me know what you guys think about my idea and if it's technically feasible... Maybe some developer could be interested into further exploring my thoughts and will try to create such an app
Cheers

I'm not a developer but I think it sounds like a great idea. I go into settings and switch it to 2g when I'm in spotty areas outside of town. I have to work a bit to keep my N1 battery alive all day...

Hello I'm new here.
I don't know if your suggested profiles are the best case scenarios. You would need to calculate your data throughput, not just the radio power.
If you need to send 100 packets, your radio would be on the longest for edge > 3g > wifi. So, even though wifi uses the most power, it would be for a much shorter duration.
A profile for "place calls only" would work somewhat like airplane mode, but still keep track of towers. Your phone just wouldn't register on the network unless you wanted to place a call. You would miss your incoming calls, have no data connection, or sms. But, you could have it check at an interval for voicemail or sms. This would be most useful for "ringer off" situations like class or meeting.

Afaik Android is always connected to the APN even if the phone is not downloading anything, consuming a lot of battery power. On other platforms, i.e. Windows Mobile, the connection can be terminated by user and re-established when an app needs that.
The amount of data downloaded by widgets, Google mobile applications or apps which operates in background like eBuddy or Facebook should be quite low, so downloading the required data by using GSM or WCDMA while the phone is in standby would be pretty much the same. The only difference is that downloading stuff using GSM/EDGE should take much less energy power.
So that's why I thought about the app I described before: the phone can save a lot of energy power while in standby and be back to its full horsepower when there is any kind of user intervention. Pretty much the same thing that the system already does for CPU usage. It scales to the less consuming protocol (or, in the case of CPU, frequency and voltage) to save power

I know on the google api it isn't possible to do this, but I don't think that isn't the problem.
At the moment you have 3 options. GSM only, WCDMA only and GSM/WCDMA. Whenever you switch between the 3 of them, the phone will lose signal for 10 seconds before it can find the best network. So the switcher here is not the best as you will lose connection, and what if you are downloading something at the same time...
What you need is when the phone is on GSM/WCDMA that it knows the best network to pick from depending on the phones lifecycle. GSM/WCDMA loses battery power because it always tries to find the best network to connect to, so for example if you are on GSM it will constantly try to find a 3G network etc (as far as I understand it).
What we need is the ability for the phone to stay on GSM when the phone is idle and then when the phone is woken up to automatically start to search for a WCDMA network and then gracefully switch over like it does now. For this I have no idea if it is possible as I don't know how the scanning of the network works. If it is possible then that would be wicked. But this is what we need.

my preference would be if the phone would stay on 3g as long as any possible even if there would be a more reliable 2g connection and only switch to 2g if there really is no way to connect to 3g. turn of apn if the screen us turned of for longer then 1 or 2 minutes and only check every 15 minutes or so.
most of the time I'm on 3g only mode . since I live in a city I got good coverage almost all over the city. only problem is that when there is no 3g available also my phone is unreachable. I don't really miss data connectivity when there is no 3g since 2g is so slow that I rather have no internet at all but not being sale to be called or texted is a major disadvantage...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

[Q] Change 2G/3G switching treshold

Generally my sensation has a decent reception. Most of the times i`m able to get a decent 3G/HSDPA signal without any problems.
The problem is, that I live outside the city and at home my (3G) reception sucks. My Sensation seems to suffer from this poor reception a lot more then my previous Desire-Z.
The 2G connection is fine. When the phone switches to 3G however, I only get one bar and the connection frequently drops so that I have no service at all. When i set the phone to only use 2G, the connection stays stable and since I have wifi, having only GPRS at home is no problem.
I don`t want to leave my phone on 2G only because when i`m not home, the 3G connection is usually fine. I was wondering if there is a way to manually change the 2g/3g switching treshold so the phone will only switch when it has a decent 3G signal. I tried to set GSM Auto (PRL) at the #*#4636#*#* menu, but this doesn`t do the trick.
Thanks

You might have already found an answer to your question, but in case you haven't, you might wanna check out WMLongLife.
It has the ability to automatically disable 3G when you have access to a WiFi network.
Hope this helps

I would be quite interested to see the trick how you are running such a deep system tweak application from Windows Mobile on a Android phone ...
Best regards,
dingolino
But there is a possibility with Tasker
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=739530
Psycho_dad_rules said:
You might have already found an answer to your question, but in case you haven't, you might wanna check out WMLongLife.
It has the ability to automatically disable 3G when you have access to a WiFi network.
Hope this helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I used tasker to achieve this, when it notices my wifi ssid, it switches off 3g. The down side is that wifi needs to be on ask the time. You could also use "show and switch 2g/3g" from the market, with this APp you can switch with one button or use a schedule.
Guy from reply #2, this is an Android forum not winmo. Winmo it's dead.

[SOLVED] 3G consumes more battery than LTE, how this happens?

Hello XDA Community!
When my new phone (Huawei P9 Lite Mini) is on 3G/2G auto network mode, it consumes more battery than LTE/3G/2G auto mode even mobile data off.
I do not understand how this happens? For example, while 3G consumption at overnight is %10-15; LTE is only %2-3. This problem is the same in daytime too. Mobile data is off, unneccesary services/apps disabled, and no extra application installed while this happens. I tried all "wipe/factory reset/update firmware/factory reset/wipe/no app install" procedures, enabling all battery saving options, but it did not work. This is a problem for me when I'm in non-LTE areas.
This problem occurs the same result in different locations. There was no problem with my previous phone and I use same nano sim card.
I tried the following but it did not work:
- Wipe cache, factory reset, wipe cache,
- Wipe data/factory reset over recovery menu,
- Update latest firmware, wipe data etc. again.
How this happens and where am I doing wrong? Thank you for your help, best regards!
EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED!
I changed my mobile carrier (provider) and the problem is gone. This is very interesting! I worked for hours and days to solve the problem, but this problem is neither caused by the phone nor by the software...

WCDMA (aka 3G with support for 2G/Edge) is in always-on mode on most phones, because that's how you receive and emit phone calls and, for most phones, SMS (in some more recent phones, LTE takes care of sending and receiving SMS/MMS), so if you're in an area where 3G/2G reception is poor, your phone has trouble locking on a cell with enough power to maintain contact, hence the battery drain.
4G/LTE only works for data, and voice if you have VoLTE (Voice over LTE) enabled, but works on a on-demand mode, even with cellular data constantly enabled. In other words, the 4G modem on your phone will memorize the latest position and IP address the nearest 4G tower/cell allocated it, and connect to it using the memorized settings when you need it to.
Not so with 3G, where DHCP doesn't exist, at least not the way it does in 4G: it uses PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol), where an ad-hoc IP address is attributed to each new connection, based on a pool of existing addresses allocated to the tower and its owner (carrier) by the authorities.

UglyStuff said:
WCDMA (aka 3G with support for 2G/Edge) is in always-on mode on most phones, because that's how you receive and emit phone calls and, for most phones, SMS (in some more recent phones, LTE takes care of sending and receiving SMS/MMS), so if you're in an area where 3G/2G reception is poor, your phone has trouble locking on a cell with enough power to maintain contact, hence the battery drain.
4G/LTE only works for data, and voice if you have VoLTE (Voice over LTE) enabled, but works on a on-demand mode, even with cellular data constantly enabled. In other words, the 4G modem on your phone will memorize the latest position and IP address the nearest 4G tower/cell allocated it, and connect to it using the memorized settings when you need it to.
Not so with 3G, where DHCP doesn't exist, at least not the way it does in 4G: it uses PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol), where an ad-hoc IP address is attributed to each new connection, based on a pool of existing addresses allocated to the tower and its owner (carrier) by the authorities.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your reply!
When I googled about 3G vs. LTE battery consumption, everyone says that LTE will consume more batteries. That's make sense on first thought. So what I've been through is very interesting to me.
I think about is there a problem with my phone's 3G antenna. (footnote: I don't know about that 3g and LTE antennas are same or seperate?)
But I understand that you say this is normal, right?
Edit: I found a forum that this problem may be due to the operator (carrier). I'm still investigating...

3G and 4G operate on basically the same principle: receiving and sending "information" via radio waves.
The difference lies in the frequencies each standard uses, the way the data sent over them is modulated and demodulated, and how handsets make and maintain connection, so if you stay in the same location, and set your phone to 3G-only, then switch Airplane mode on then off, it'll take your phone longer to reconnect to the 3G cell/tower with the strongest signal (not necessarily the closest to you), because it'll have to go through the whole getting-acquainted process again, whereas in 4G, it'll go straight to the "Hey, how do you do? Long time, no see".
Now, if your phone antenna has a problem, you could be standing a few feet from the tower, in line of sight, and still get a crappy to non-existent signal. How many bars are showing on your screen is just an indication of how well your phone is receiving the signal from the tower; it doesn't mean that this signal is consistent and steady, hence the bars coming and going in real time.
If I were you, I'd download and install the Hidden Settings app from the Play Store, and run it; there, you go to RadioInfo, and you'll get a lot of information about how your phone modem actually works. It's a bit technical, but it would give you an indication.

I will try and looking for a new carrier. Thank you again. See you.

I changed my mobile carrier (provider) and the problem is gone. This is very interesting! I worked for hours and days to solve the problem, but this problem is neither caused by the phone nor by the software...