Does anyone else seem to have terrible wireless signal? Using Wireless N, the highest reported link speed (from android wireless settings) I have seen is 58mbps. But, averages around 35-40. Seen as low as 1 being only 20ft from the router. Wifi Analyzer reports signal strength at -83dbm from about 15 feet away. The signal seems so terrible that I normally switch to 4G just to browse the internet.
My old incredible was always pegged at 65+.
What gives?
Yeah, I don't know what's up the WiFi in the Charge. I had a Sammy Vibrant before and it always had 3 full bars of WiFi in my house, while my charge is only showing one or less. I wonder if they put that low-power WiFi in our phones, the same one that was put in the Nexus S 4G. They've had a lot of signal issues with those also.
Sent from my GummyCharged SCH-I510
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I have a huge battery drain, and i think that is because i have low signal (look at the picture).
I tried to recalibrate battery for two times, and use it for 2-3 days, but it's alway the same.
I get maybe 7h with normal use. 50% of the time with 3G/EDGE, 50% with WIFI. screen time 1h, and turned off Auto sync.
Can someone help me? I need my phone whole day, not 7h. :S
EDIT: I'm using stock 4.0.4 with matr1x kernel
Bump?
Can't really help you as cell reception is based on the quality of the carrier. I normally experience -95 dBm and I believe it is a cause for such high drain too.
The only thing I could recommend is try flashing a different radio and see if you get a better signal?
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA
BetterBatteryStats can let you know if it's not the radio. To test if it is the radio, try switching to 2G only.
Well, it was 3G-s fault. I switched to 2G and now there is no battery drain.
BUT, i still don't know why is there no 3G network in my house.
I have SGSII on my shelf, with the same carrier and it has 3G.
There is 3G at your house. It is just weak, much like me. A few too many concrete walls where i'm at.
Cell signals are done through waves which have to penetrate through walls and other solid objects, this vastly weakens the signal. Once you hit the ~-100dB mark your phone will start throwing more power into it's antenna to compensate, much further and it ditches 3G and goes to 2G assuming it has better coverage. Around the 100dB mark it tends to stay with 3G if data is on though which can start chewing through battery. It would be able to play around with the parameters but i don't see this happening anytime soon.
Compare the dB reading on your SGS2 and Nexus S. If it's much worse on the Nexus S, try flashing a different radio.
I have the same problem, i just switch back to 2g when i get back home and at night. for some reason, 2g networks tend to always have stronger reception
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
same problems here
Scrappy1 said:
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
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Click to collapse
I have the same problem. Have went through many sim cards and factory resets. After 5 phone I finally have one that holds the signal a little better and does not go into this "funky mode". With the previous 4 (white 32gig) verizon phone I would burn through a battery in 6 hours at work. It would start with a drop in signal strengh at around -93 or so. Nothing would fix it. I finally got a blue 32gig and it seems to hold the signal to around -99. I don't know if I got a better batch of phones. But it seems to help me get through a day at work.
Scrappy1 said:
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not normal. Where I work I get 3g primarily but also 4g in the front of the building.....in the far back I get 1x. I have had my phone totally drop data for a while (like the radio sleeps or something) but never had the radio stick between 4g and 3g. I also live right on the edge of a 4g/3g line and my dbm right now is 111 on 4g LTE......If this was normal I would have had the situation your having since my signal is basically identical to yours. I would return it or at the very least contact Samsung. I'm sure Samsung will tell you to send it in for repair.
I have very weak signal at my house also. S3 switches from LTE to 3G and 1X and sometimes loosing signal completely downstairs but upstairs usually I get solid LTE with around -99dBm and ~10Mbps transfers. During this network jumping my battery drains very fast also but I never had my radio constantly locked at one frequency or signal strength. And I can directly compare signal reception to my wife's Fascinate and S3 loses this competition badly. Fascinate never completely lost signal at our house and it rarely jumps to 1X.
I did a factory reset yesterday and so far so good... I''ll update as time goes on.
As far as signal strength goes in general,my wife's Droid Charge always pulls in a few more LTE dBm's than my GS3. Based on general public feedback, GS3 is below average on signal and radio issues. It's too bad because the rest of the phone is above average.
It's been 2 days after the factory reset and no problems with battery drain or radio lock up.
The only app that I could maybe try and blame is Elixir 2's create widget feature for signal strength. This always returned bogus values and may have embedded itself at an unholy level. Simply uninstalling elixir 2 didn't fix it.
If anyone still cares... I found my radio lockup and battery drain issues returned only after I reinstalled Better Battery Stats. I again removed it and will see if I stay good.
I stay in a hotel room often without free wifi. Most of the rooms I get 1-2 bars, occasionally 3. A decent amount of the time I get no 4g and sometimes signal is so weak no internet at all. I notice this destroys my battery life. Is there someway to lower the extra strain on the battery when I know I will have a weak signal anyway without using airplane mode? I wanna lower the power being used by my phone to search for stronger signal while still being able to receive texts and calls. Would prefer to keep 3G on as well when it works.
On a related note, are there any products I can buy to boost my signal that work? And is there a rom or roms that are known to have great signal strength compared to the rest out right now? Thanks for any help.
sfetaz said:
I stay in a hotel room often without free wifi. Most of the rooms I get 1-2 bars, occasionally 3. A decent amount of the time I get no 4g and sometimes signal is so weak no internet at all. I notice this destroys my battery life. Is there someway to lower the extra strain on the battery when I know I will have a weak signal anyway without using airplane mode? I wanna lower the power being used by my phone to search for stronger signal while still being able to receive texts and calls. Would prefer to keep 3G on as well when it works.
On a related note, are there any products I can buy to boost my signal that work? And is there a rom or roms that are known to have great signal strength compared to the rest out right now? Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should be fine disabling Mobile Data... You should get texts just fine and use the WiFi for all data purposes.
Im not using the wifi ever unless really important to get it, $15 everyday is too much. So i am trying to rely on mobile data.
Go download the free app "Phone Info", it will allow you to shut off 4G, shutting off 4G stops it from searching and draining your battery.
Once installed, click "Device Information" and scroll about half way down and change the drop box from "LTE/CDMA/EvDo" to "CDMA only"
Hope this helps!
I use phone info already, 3g over 4g definitely helps, but am I wrong in assuming that the phone is still destroying battery when the signal is weak even with 4g off?
I know 4g is a battery hog, however how would you rate the following with regards to which uses more battery from most to least:
3g, 4g, weak wi-fi, medium strength wi-fi?
I'm guessing
1. 4g
2. weak wi-fi
3. 3g
4. medium wi-fi
I ask because right now I'm waiting on a new usb port for my nexus and in the meantime I am fortunate to have a spare charger, however it takes 3 hours to fully charge so I'm keeping data turned off unless I need it because my samsung galaxy nexus only lasts 2.5 hours w/ heavy use and auto brightness turned on...rooted w/ Sourcery and Lean 43.
Thanks in advance
otter34 said:
I know 4g is a battery hog, however how would you rate the following with regards to which uses more battery from most to least:
3g, 4g, weak wi-fi, medium strength wi-fi?
I'm guessing
1. 4g
2. weak wi-fi
3. 3g
4. medium wi-fi
I ask because right now I'm waiting on a new usb port for my nexus and in the meantime I am fortunate to have a spare charger, however it takes 3 hours to fully charge so I'm keeping data turned off unless I need it because my samsung galaxy nexus only lasts 2.5 hours w/ heavy use and auto brightness turned on...rooted w/ Sourcery and Lean 43.
Thanks in advance
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Click to collapse
my personal opinion is that wifi uses the least battery, regardless of 4g or 3g.
4G uses more battery than 3G than wifi
4G>3G>wifi>2G:laugh: wifi is best than 3g and 4g
4G drain more
Thanks.
So regardless of how strong the wifi signal is, using it will eat up less battery than 3g?even when it takes 30 seconds for a Web page to load? I would have thought it would be better to use 3 in cases like that.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
pradeepxtremehacker said:
4G uses more battery than 3G than wifi
4G>3G>wifi>2G:laugh: wifi is best than 3g and 4g
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Click to collapse
I agree
4g just drains your battery than the other
Thanks for the replies
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
just background data tasks, mobile gaming, streaming
1. 4G
2. 3G
3. Weak Wifi
Big Download
1. 3G
2. 4G
3. Weak wifi
Reversed the differential on big download because the difference in 4G speed is very significant and you may very well waste battery on 3G by engaging in extended radio transmissions to and from the tower that 4G would have ended long ago. 3G will use much less at continuous tasks at a fixed/slightly variable(but well within 3G's capability) such as gaming and streaming. Both should be fairly equal at idle aka not tranmitting/receiving data, provided your phone is indeed going to sleep and not transmitting data every 2 seconds. But if you got apps waking it up every n minutes, expect 4G battery drain to go up. The moral, leach wifi where you can and make sure your phone isn't talking about you over the air all day.
So currently wifi kills more battery than 3g!
its been on an hour and already accounts for 13% of todays power use.
anyone know how to fix this bug?
irzero said:
So currently wifi kills more battery than 3g!
its been on an hour and already accounts for 13% of todays power use.
anyone know how to fix this bug?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this is hard but it could be many things, even other devices on your network in fact that's where I would first look, some sharing setting or some powersaving on or off setting in your router
irzero said:
So currently wifi kills more battery than 3g!
its been on an hour and already accounts for 13% of todays power use.
anyone know how to fix this bug?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
5Ghz or 2.4Ghz?
Supposedly 5Ghz would drain more if you aren't close enough to the source!
Sent from my SM-G925F
2.4 and my edge has no problems
Sent from my SM-G928F using Tapatalk
Check for am app that's throwing lots of wakelocks or alarms when on Wi-Fi. Some apps think they have free reign to check in all they want when you're not using cell data.
@OP
Had the same issue beginning 5.1.1. Turned out keeping the phone only on 5GHz instead of both 2.4 & 5GHz wifi did the trick for me. Try it out if you also have a dual-band wifi router.
Sent from my SM-G920I using XDA Free mobile app
What's the best way to find out with out root
Sent from my SM-G928F using Tapatalk
Many Playstore apps exist to measure wifi strength & effectiveness. "Wifi Overview 360", "Network Signal Info Pro".
My Sammy S6 has a much better wifi hardware than my cheap, old phones. But my home wifi routers are the same.
Wifi transmissions are bothered by:
1) poor hardware (old, cheap phones, etc), which drains battery with weak signals.
2) radio interference rubbish between the main sender, and your wifi receiver.
3) orientation of the two aerials, in relation to each other; horizontal, angled, vertical, ... (especially if 1), 2) above are bad
4) Whether the receiver unit is facing the main unit, sideways, backwards, frontwards, etc. On poor quality hardware, this is very important.
Being very crippled myself much of my time is just lying in my (nursing) bed. My Samsung Note Pro 12.2 floats above my head, in bed. Smartphones are affected if my head gets between the unit and the main unit.
My main wifi unit is about 20 yards/ meters away, but transmitting diagonally through a thick, metal-rod reinforced, load bearing wall. So I have a hardwired ethernet cable linked to another wifi unit under my bed, getting a faster, less power-wasting signal.
I have this on my work WiFi it drains the battery really quickly even idle it is about 1% per 5mins whilst connected to WiFi. On 3/4g it is significantly less drain.
But at home I don't have the issue battery life is good even on wifi.
It'd be nice to resolve it, have had it since I got my s6 in may so following this thread closely.
I opened my own thread back then which explains my experience a bit more:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=3106313