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Ok. Android phones are not blackberries, and I'm well aware of that. This Thunderbolt is not my first android device, so I am very familiar with setting it up and using it in such a way to make the battery last.
I'm not posting this to complain of the battery life sucking. I'm complaining that the battery is fine one day, and horrible the next.
So here's what happens. Yesterday, i unplugged my phone at 730am like i do every day. By 3pm with light usage, i was down to 40% or so. Charged it up before I left work, no big deal, lasted the rest of the night.
Today, unplug the phone at 730am, phone is completely dead, as in, won't even boot by 11am. Same apps, same usage, same location, same strong 4G signal, same everything. It has happened multiple times on consecutive days when i was rooted on the stock rom, and still on VirusRom. I just dont get why this happens. I am doing nothing different and my phone either lasts all day, or a few hours. It's getting to the point where I am finding it very hard to rely on this phone when i'm out and about. It makes no sense. Especially if i'm not really using my phone, just checking for texts once in a while, there is no reason why it should die. What if i need it? I couldn't even call or text my gf tonight while I was working because my phone battery was ZERO only a few hours after leaving the house with a 100% charge.
Is anyone else experiencing this?
yesterday I had abnormal drain on my battery. I get 18 - 24 hours on a charge normally, but yesterday I went from 100% to dead in 5 hours. Called VZW and they said it was a documented problem and they were working on it.
IDK, they are pretty good about pushing updates. Also, yesterday I kept dropping out of data. bizzare....
I burned through the extended battery in 9 hours yesterday, really hope they figure out some better power management soon,
Switch it to 3G cdma rev.a and see if that helps. The 4G radio is always being searched for. I love the tb so I can deal with no 4G til they get the bugs out.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
You have to use current widget and see how much power draw your phone is pulling. Then use system panel monitoring to track apps using the highest CPU.
Definitely an issue and I'm glad that Verizon is aware of it. I've had this unusual drain happen four times now, all on 4G. Last time I noticed it (seeing the battery percentage drop like 2% every five minutes or so), went to the Market and snagged System Panel.
The offending process is "system." Had my CPU spiked at 100% for over an hour before I rebooted, which does fix it, at the cost of another 10% of your battery, of course.
Hope they get this ironed out soon. Love my Thunderbolt, but this is a major issue and seems to be happening to a lot of people.
The best thing to do is dial *#*#4636#*#* and turn the radio to CDMA auto (PRL) mode.
I am already seeing much better battery life, as I am in a non 4g area.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to give that a try. I got into the radio settings, and after flashing VirusRom, my phone defaulted to LTE mode only. I put it to cdma/lte auto, to see if that helps. If not, i'll just disable LTE unless i really need it.
No need to dial all of that crap. TeamAndIRC has a toggle app called "LTE OnOFF TeamAndIRC" that allows you to toggle between CDMA and CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto.
I found out two things dealing with my massive nighttime battery drain. One, wifi doesn't seem to work correctly. I've never had the problem before but for some reason it doesn't sleep correctly. What I've done is changed the sleep policy to "15 minutes" which allows it to switch back to 3G fifteen minutes after I turn off the screen. That allows me to have wifi while I'm using it but 3G while it's idle. This has seemed to fix my problem along with... Second, I am on the fringe of 4G/3G here on the outskirts of Cincinnati. At work I am solid 4G but at home it can't make up it's mind. Well, that has certainly played into the battery issue as it is constantly searching. So, what I do is as I walk in the door from work I use the app listed above to switch to "CDMA auto (PRL)" and it sticks to 3G. When I get to work I switch to "CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto".
So, to summarize:
I have eliminated my nightime drain by doing two things:
1) I use the Y5 app to automatically start wifi as I walk in the door but have changed the sleep policy to "after 15 minutes".
2) I use the app above to switch from 4G/3G auto to 3G only.
ridobe said:
No need to dial all of that crap. TeamAndIRC has a toggle app called "LTE OnOFF TeamAndIRC" that allows you to toggle between CDMA and CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto.
I found out two things dealing with my massive nighttime battery drain. One, wifi doesn't seem to work correctly. I've never had the problem before but for some reason it doesn't sleep correctly. What I've done is changed the sleep policy to "15 minutes" which allows it to switch back to 3G fifteen minutes after I turn off the screen. That allows me to have wifi while I'm using it but 3G while it's idle. This has seemed to fix my problem along with... Second, I am on the fringe of 4G/3G here on the outskirts of Cincinnati. At work I am solid 4G but at home it can't make up it's mind. Well, that has certainly played into the battery issue as it is constantly searching. So, what I do is as I walk in the door from work I use the app listed above to switch to "CDMA auto (PRL)" and it sticks to 3G. When I get to work I switch to "CDMA + LTE/EvDo auto".
So, to summarize:
I have eliminated my nightime drain by doing two things:
1) I use the Y5 app to automatically start wifi as I walk in the door but have changed the sleep policy to "after 15 minutes".
2) I use the app above to switch from 4G/3G auto to 3G only.
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LTEonoff is just a shortcut to the menu. In essence, it saves no time because you have to download it. If you're flipping it on and off all the time, then yeah, it might behoove you to just dl the app. But, as a one time thing, it's unnecessary.
^You are correct. I switch daily but I didn't see earlier that you were not in a 4G area.
I would highly suggest this to anyone who sees their data connection switch back and forth as I was in my house.
Battery life has been strong the past couple days now. I haven't had any unusual drains since i switched from LTE only mode to EVDO/LTE auto mode. I dont know if this was for sure the issue, but it seems to have made a huge difference. I haven't been plugged in for 2 hours and i still have 92% battery left.
Here's my interpretation of the issue:
There seems to be some kind of problem or bug with the radio which makes it drain an enormous amount of power from some towers (700mA+ is shown on current widget). Even with good signal, I'll repeatably drain a lot of power in certain areas. The "fix" is to disable mobile data or switch to wifi. This lowers the power usage back down to (slightly lower than) normal levels.
For some reason, the radio will not admit to drawing practically 90% of your battery in the battery use menu (nothing does, in fact ... it just looks like normal battery use).
I'm glad to hear that they are aware of an issue that maybe causing this.
I can't stand the battery life either other than that I love the phone
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
Yeah i'm still at 83% battery after being unplugged for 4 hours, light usage.
Another thing i noticed is that when my battery was draining stupid fast, the phone would be warm to the touch even when it was just sitting on my belt clip. All seems well for now.
Mine is good
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App
My battery life has recently become terribly inconsistent. Last week I was actually getting through a 16 hour day with light usage, but this weekened I must have installed something because now the phone is lasting 3-4 hours with hardly any usage at all.
The battery information is pretty worthless because it's not showing anything except display using the battery and the display has only been on maybe 8 minutes.
Checked the partial wake info and nothing seems to be running in the background. The battery is just discharging like crazy all of a sudden. Guess Ill start uninstalling stuff to see what might be causing it
I am also having a weird battery experience today. I am rooted running Adrynalyne 1.9. Last few days I was doing great, moderate usage and was staying charged for 16-18 hrs. Today my phone has died twice during my 8hr shift at work. I KNOW something is wrong there. Hopefully a fix is found soon.
On all my Androids (4 of them currently in daily use), I've found that Words With Friends is often a HUGE battery killer...and I don't mean because you play it a lot, I mean leave it running and put your phone down, walk away a while, come back to the phone and it is HOT to the touch! Obviously killing the battery. Something to look at for sure.
I've got the extended battery and just went over 48 hours, with moderate to heavy use by my standards on a single charge. Pretty amazing and I guess I'm not in a bad radio area.
hammer4203 said:
Switch it to 3G cdma rev.a and see if that helps. The 4G radio is always being searched for. I love the tb so I can deal with no 4G til they get the bugs out.
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The only thing I love about the TB is the 4G...everything else on it, been there, done that. I wouldn't keep the TB if 4G had to be turned off to make it usable in terms of battery life. Hopefully it will be fixed quickly!
Zshazz said:
Here's my interpretation of the issue:
There seems to be some kind of problem or bug with the radio which makes it drain an enormous amount of power from some towers (700mA+ is shown on current widget). Even with good signal, I'll repeatably drain a lot of power in certain areas. The "fix" is to disable mobile data or switch to wifi. This lowers the power usage back down to (slightly lower than) normal levels.
For some reason, the radio will not admit to drawing practically 90% of your battery in the battery use menu (nothing does, in fact ... it just looks like normal battery use).
I'm glad to hear that they are aware of an issue that maybe causing this.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for that analysis. With that in mind, if it's accurate, could a Tasker app profile be set up that does your fix if the drain works that high? Would be a nice safety feature for those who aren't willing to have to look at their phone frequently to check battery life.
You have to use the current widget to record your idle power readings, its the only way to know what's going on. Then use system panel monitoring to see which app CPU is highest.
So i tried what you guys suggested. I rooted the phone, bought setcpu, using anttek to freeze running services, and used the battery calibration app still NOTHING. I just woke up and my battery was at 0 before i went to sleep it was at 62%!! How can it die in idle with no running servislces wi fi off gps off BT off i mean it has to be the battery right?
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
I was just getting on here to rant about this. It seems that whenever I use the phone the battery gets warm and declines quickly. Lost over 40 percent battery over 2 hrs mostly playing mp3s
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
This may or may not be related...just something to think about. For years I've placed my phone in the top drawer of my nightstand when sleeping. What I noticed when switching to Android is if I leave syncing on it will drain my battery. My theory is...in the drawer my data signal is very week or non existent. The phone dutifully tries to sync on that weak signal...searching for signal...fails and retries...or succeeds and transfers at a snails pace. Result dead battery. I've found that disabling data before bed results in less than a five percent drop. Just my experience.
If not then I'd suggest a phone swap.
Also...Why in the world did you start another thread? If we scatter all these x is wrong with my phone posts across multiple threads it really hampers the effort to solve the problem.
greengoldmello said:
I was just getting on here to rant about this. It seems that whenever I use the phone the battery gets warm and declines quickly. Lost over 40 percent battery over 2 hrs mostly playing mp3s
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
Did you look for a solution before deciding to "rant"? Just curious...
greengoldmello said:
I was just getting on here to rant about this. It seems that whenever I use the phone the battery gets warm and declines quickly. Lost over 40 percent battery over 2 hrs mostly playing mp3s
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
I've also noticed this. In the morning my battery life is decent but by the after noon I can do light web browsing (10-20) mins in an hour and loose over 15% tmobile told me that isn't good lol I have a new battery on the way. They shipped it out yesterday we'll see if that helps. Also my battery was dead when I got my phone did anyone else get one that couldn't even power the phone on?
bdkinney said:
Did you look for a solution before deciding to "rant"? Just curious...
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Yes. Like the OP, I tried the solution of the person that is so called getting 20hr battery life under medium usage. Just doesn't seem feasible at all. And its really annoying to have to cut the data off completely to keep the phone from getting warm...
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
greengoldmello said:
Yes. Like the OP, I tried the solution of the person that is so called getting 20hr battery life under medium usage. Just doesn't seem feasible at all. And its really annoying to have to cut the data off completely to keep the phone from getting warm...
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
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If you researched the problem and tried the solutions offered, then the logical next step is to contact T-mobile for a replacement. This is an early release of a new phone; there will be defects. And you don't have to settle for a defective device/battery. I can assure you, I get battery life on par with my previous phone (8-20 hours depending on my usage)..so, bad battery life isn't a problem inherent to the phone. And my phone doesn't get warm with data usage. It sounds like you might have a defective battery or phone. If you aren't satisfied, don't settle...make 'em make it right.
I get about 5-10% battery drain overnight most nights and I am not mindfull of what apps are running or what is on. My experience obviously differs from yours. I do get great service in my bedroom where the phone is overnight. The other night I did experience a bout a 60% drop when I left the phone in my daylight basement (underground). I get crappy 2G service in my basement and it looses signal a lot. I think it adds some credibility to the searching for service slowly killing the battery. maybe try putting the phone in airplane mode before going to sleep. That should give you some indicator.
I'm now are 28 percent after 3 1/2 hrs with the display only using 13% if that..
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
greengoldmello said:
I'm now are 28 percent after 3 1/2 hrs with the display only using 13% if that..
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
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Just curious, does your phone feel hot right now?
You might have a bad battery or something. My first g2x rebooted constantly and drained the battery and got hot.
New one goes 8am to midnight with 20% battery left, on moderate usage. And even at the 20% left i can leave it overnight and it'll still have power in the morning.
greengoldmello said:
I was just getting on here to rant about this. It seems that whenever I use the phone the battery gets warm and declines quickly. Lost over 40 percent battery over 2 hrs mostly playing mp3s
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
The phone is going to get warm is use because the CPU is under load and that produces heat. As long as its not overheating this is normal.
Have either of you tried the factory reset? That fixes the idle drain for most people.
Also... Your phone is going to drain battery faster while actually in use no matter what you do. The LCD and data connection are the biggest battery drain for smartphones. Until battery technology improves, there is nothing that can be done about this. But like I said try a factory reset and you should see your idle drain improve dramatically.
Sk8trfred said:
I've also noticed this. In the morning my battery life is decent but by the after noon I can do light web browsing (10-20) mins in an hour and loose over 15% tmobile told me that isn't good lol I have a new battery on the way.
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Click to collapse
Were you on wifi? Because if you weren't that much drain is within the norm. Web browsing = constant data connection = more power consumption = faster battery drain.
I had 10 hours of heavy use yesterday and had 25 percent left... 2.5 of those were in airplane mode cuz I was flying from Phoenix to Atlanta but I watched a movie during the flight and had music playing the rest of the time... during my layover which was 4 hours I browsed the web, watched a stream of the Celtics vs heat for a bit, more music... I plugged back in with 25% left and had 3h20m of screen on time... this battery is freaking awesome! I had drain issues initially but they went away and now I'm golden
when i did a factory reset, my phone was getting hot until i remember about the *#*# thing and changed that to wcdma/gsm auto. then my battery life got better.
Get juice defender. Its work wonders for me and my buddies thunderbolt actually makes it through the day now
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
Battery Drain is mostly Cellular radio
I too am have been looking for a way to have this phone last at least 8-12 hours with normal usage, but I don't think its going to happen unless there's some major update to the radio firmware coming in 2.3 Gingerbread..
All the evidence seems to suggest two culprits... for battery drain.
- First is the 4G radio, look around at almost ALL 4G enabled phones (whether on GSM at&T Tmo or Verizon), all eat your battery, from the very beginning EVO 4g, Verizon Thunderbolt, Mytough 4G every single one of those phones has the users complaining about horrid battery life. You can confirm this by looking at the battery usage on the G2X and you'll see that the number one use is Cell Standby (that's the cellular radio) on my phone its anywhere between 35% to 60% of total power used.... on kmy nexus one it used to be the display.
-Second, Tegra 2 is more power hungry , granted its a mobile SoC but its mainly designed for Tablets and such with beefy batteries, this is the reason that the Atrix comes with a 1950MaH battery, you can try and use SetCPU to lower the speed, but I have had minimal success.
Here's a test , when you don't need your phone put it on Airplane mode, for 24hours and watch HOW LITTTLE the battery drains.. reason the cellular radio isn't on..
bdkinney said:
This may or may not be related...just something to think about. For years I've placed my phone in the top drawer of my nightstand when sleeping. What I noticed when switching to Android is if I leave syncing on it will drain my battery. My theory is...in the drawer my data signal is very week or non existent. The phone dutifully tries to sync on that weak signal...searching for signal...fails and retries...or succeeds and transfers at a snails pace. Result dead battery. I've found that disabling data before bed results in less than a five percent drop. Just my experience.
If not then I'd suggest a phone swap.
Also...Why in the world did you start another thread? If we scatter all these x is wrong with my phone posts across multiple threads it really hampers the effort to solve the problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. These battery threads are driving me nuts.
Go in the other million threads and read
The thing that is strange to me is how quickly these phones charge. It seems to go from 0% to 100% in well under an hour. Was thinking I should try charging it while off (well, screen w/ battery only).
What???? Having the phone on makes my battery drain? WTFO?!?!?!
Seriously though, I have not experienced bad battery life on this phone. Last night I left my phone off the charger, gps, wifi and wifi calling on, and when I went to bed at 1030 I had 64% battery. At 700 this morning I had 54% battery. Only a 10% drain for me overnight, or a little more than 1% per hour.
All I've done to achieve this is the following (and I realize that supposedly you no longer have to condition Li-ion batteries):
-when I got the phone, I didn't charge it but instead let the battery die completely to where I couldn't even turn the phone on.
-charged the phone overnight w/o turning it on.
-let battery die completely again.
-charged phone overnight w/o turning it on.
-let battery die completely again.
-charge and use phone normally.
I've also rooted the phone and used Ti Backup to remove most all of the bloatware except wifi calling, but otherwise it's the stock rom.
I typically get an entire day of my normal use on this phone. If I use it alot, I have to top off the battery w/ my car charger on my way home from work. This isn't unusual. I had to do this w/ the blackberrys I owned and my evo when I was on Sprint. The battery life doesn't seem any better or worse for me than any other smartphone I have owned, and it's certainly better than my evo or my wife's evo, and both of those were rockin' custom roms and uV kernels.
jayohwhy said:
when i did a factory reset, my phone was getting hot until i remember about the *#*# thing and changed that to wcdma/gsm auto. then my battery life got better.
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forgot about doing this lolz
...also you can also change it in the mobile network settings
i just installed the OTA update yesterday, and noticed that my battery life has been better today.
i'm wondering if it's the 3G reception that's better and in turn causing less battery strain to search for a network - i previously had a hard time getting any coverage at all at my work, and now i'm getting 1-2 bars with 3G.
also, no faulty reboots at all thus far. (knock on wood).
anybody else experiencing better battery life with this new update?
I was thinking the same thing. Not rooted, stock battery. Updated last night and today was the first time I have ever gotten more than 24hrs out of it. Not much more, but a milestone just the same. Uptime 24:35, awake time 2:55, 13% left. 4G all day, no reboots.
my battery life is actually worse, hard to believe....
im using cm7 beta. im not even going to think about the ota until i see that most users report it works. i bought an extended battery and its not perfect but much more tolerable
Sent from my ThunderBolt using XDA Premium App
Mine improved after ota.
-sent via 1.21 giggawatts of android.
getsoutalive said:
I was thinking the same thing. Not rooted, stock battery. Updated last night and today was the first time I have ever gotten more than 24hrs out of it. Not much more, but a milestone just the same. Uptime 24:35, awake time 2:55, 13% left. 4G all day, no reboots.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
More than 16 or 18 is just a luxury anyways, depending on how many hours per day you sleep.
Yes, I can think of situations where you can't charge overnight while you sleep, but for the vast majority of users and situations, as long as the phone lasts from the time the user wakes up to the time they go to bed, that's all the battery life they need. I don't see why people get so upset that they have to charge a battery powered device overnight while they sleep.
Along the same vein, not sure why people are so adverse to adding a little juice while in the car, or at the computer or at home.
All that said, I don't disagree that battery life is a serious bummer on the TBolt. Even with undervolted custom kernels if you're on the stock battery and actually use your phone a lot throughout the day, you're going to run into worries if you're not able to boost charge a time or two. I've got the extended battery and it makes a world of difference, but it's ugly and awkward and heavy. I much prefer the phone's look and feel with just the stock battery.
omniskye said:
i just installed the OTA update yesterday, and noticed that my battery life has been better today.
i'm wondering if it's the 3G reception that's better and in turn causing less battery strain to search for a network - i previously had a hard time getting any coverage at all at my work, and now i'm getting 1-2 bars with 3G.
also, no faulty reboots at all thus far. (knock on wood).
anybody else experiencing better battery life with this new update?
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Click to collapse
Yeah I tried posting about this before, and people called me crazy, but even with LTE on, if your phone is having trouble finding 3G, it will destroy your battery life.
I had this happen when eHRPD when down, and my phone wasn't forced to the standard 3G network and kept searching for eHRPD and it killed my battery. I switched to the standard 3G, had a signal, and was fine since, then turned eHRPD back on before it was back up, and had 4G on, but my phone died in 2 hours, with 98% battery was it trying to find a signal. Switched back to standard 3G and back to perfect battery life.
SO I agree if they fix 3G it will help with the battery issue.
Same silly battery life for me. 4 hours "awake time" and I'm down 35% of my battery. With it just sitting on the arm of my couch. maybe 10 texts, no phone calls, no internet surfing, no email, no facebook, nothing. 11 hour battery life with no use? Absolutely amazing.
I'm currently out at a client site, but it's super bad reception here in the conference room they stuck us in. First of all, no 4G in colorado springs, so i disabled LTE, and hit CDMA in the network settings.
3G is near impossible inside, so i usually get 1X, and voice connection is next to impossible also.
So i noticed that from unplugging in the morning at 7:30am. at around 2pm, my battery was already down to 10%!
And i didn't even use it.
I did see from my battery usage, that Android system was ABOVE screen in power usage.
Anyone have the same issue?
I've had the same problem with EVERY phone ever, even non-smartphones have this problem. The lower the signal, the more the phone will scan for a good signal. If it has no service, it scans very frequently. If you're on a smartphone, it's even worse because then when the phone does get service, all the data apps attempt to use what little bandwidth you do have all at once. If you're in an area with poor coverage, put your phone into download mode or disable the data connection. Nothing short of putting a network extender or new tower will solve this.
Yes, but this is typical of most phones really. Searching for a signal, acquiring it, losing it, etc, uses a lot of battery. You just have to disable data. If there is wifi available, then use that, if not, just have to wait until you go outside. I have no reception in my building at work, if I leave data on, my battery is dead in a couple hours, on wifi I can go all day
Yes and my phone got very hot in my pocket at the time as well.
got_rice64 said:
I'm currently out at a client site, but it's super bad reception here in the conference room they stuck us in. First of all, no 4G in colorado springs, so i disabled LTE, and hit CDMA in the network settings.
3G is near impossible inside, so i usually get 1X, and voice connection is next to impossible also.
So i noticed that from unplugging in the morning at 7:30am. at around 2pm, my battery was already down to 10%!
And i didn't even use it.
I did see from my battery usage, that Android system was ABOVE screen in power usage.
Anyone have the same issue?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have this issue at work. I get anwhere from 10-15% battery drain an hour. I have determined that it is NOT because of the data signal though becuase I can turn that off and still get about the same excessive drain. It appears to be because of the voice signal. It varies anywhere from -85dm to -115dbm and is constantly changing. When I get outside of work environment, everthing is fine again and battery usage returns to normal. My Droid X did not have this issue.
-115db? How do you have signal at that rating? lol. Phone gets to about 1 bar when it reaches 101 for me.
I have the same issue in my office. I just barely get voice/text service. My solution is to turn off mobile data and plug my phone in to balance out the battery drain from the weak signal. I know it is bad to have my phone plugged in all of the time but it is better to be able to have sms and not have a dead phone when I am done at work.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App
Samsuck said:
-115db? How do you have signal at that rating? lol. Phone gets to about 1 bar when it reaches 101 for me.
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Yeah. Tell me about it. I am using Mobile Signal Widget to measure this. When It gets that bad, a little android face appears in the widget and it is crying.
YES! easily drains 10-15% an hour at a local pub that has 1 bar of signal.
It makes perfect sense... Your phone is fighting hard for that signal.
Sent from my Droid Charge running GummyFroyo 1.9.1
I drive 50+ miles to get to work and I always notice it drains a lot during my commute even when not used. I figured it was because of all the cell site swaps and searches bc I'm sure there's some spotty areas.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App
Same experience. Dropped to 5% in 9 hours yesterday when I forgot to turn off data while at work. Today, I'm still at 75% after 9 hours with data off.
Juice defender solved this on my fascinate. It turned data on only once every 30 minutes. But, I can't get it to turn my data back on with this phone.
I really wish data signal aggressiveness was managed better by the operating system. It could be a real boon to the average battery life. Perhaps a smart developer could come up with some sort of "conservative" governor for 3g/4g connections. Rather than increasing power draw, it could just "sleep" until a stronger signal is detected... Imnuts? Is this even possible or just a pipedream?
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA App
I can't reach my dad on his cell phone while at the pentagon for obvious reasons. He has to turn his phone off during the day or it'll die in a few short hours, as a previous poster mentioned searching for a signal is a huge battery drain.
Strange. I did not have this problem with my OG Doid or Droid X in the same environment. Maybe the Moto phones simply have a better radio than the Charge.
Yeah for some reason, the samsung radio are junk. I have my Droid Charge (personal) and an Lg phone (business) and the lg blows the sammy out of the water. Now i am in 3g fringe (forget about 4g), and the sammy loses data all together while my lg still has the signal. I hate when i am trying to search for something on the charge and it says connection failed or network unavailable retry. Even when i call verizon, they all have me do a reset and stuff, and nothing works. The best answer i get is that iam in a 3g fringe area. When i tell them that my lg works and still has signal, all i get is silence or hmmmmmm. Gota love it. Yes they exchanged the phone with a new one and it still does the same thing. Forget about battery life. I actually carry 3 batteries with me and on a good day i only use 2 but usually it is 3. Before anyone says use wifi, unfortunatly we do not have free wifi where i work. anyway that should not be the answer to this problem. We are paying for a service that i can barely use.
end rant.
91point6 said:
Strange. I did not have this problem with my OG Doid or Droid X in the same environment. Maybe the Moto phones simply have a better radio than the Charge.
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galaxyuser88 said:
Yeah for some reason, the samsung radio are junk. I have my Droid Charge (personal) and an Lg phone (business) and the lg blows the sammy out of the water. Now i am in 3g fringe (forget about 4g), and the sammy loses data all together while my lg still has the signal. I hate when i am trying to search for something on the charge and it says connection failed or network unavailable retry. Even when i call verizon, they all have me do a reset and stuff, and nothing works. The best answer i get is that iam in a 3g fringe area. When i tell them that my lg works and still has signal, all i get is silence or hmmmmmm. Gota love it. Yes they exchanged the phone with a new one and it still does the same thing. Forget about battery life. I actually carry 3 batteries with me and on a good day i only use 2 but usually it is 3. Before anyone says use wifi, unfortunatly we do not have free wifi where i work. anyway that should not be the answer to this problem. We are paying for a service that i can barely use.
end rant.
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I went through the whole VZW customer service thing both on the phone and in person. They weren't much help but they gave me a brand new phone and it does the same thing. Then there were a lot of suggstions on different forums suggesting apps killers, turning data off, turing on 3g only data, rooting, trying different ROMs, battery clalibration, etc. None of this helps. The kind of drain I am seeing goes way beyond any benefits I would see out of any of these things. For example, I am at work now. When I left the house, it takes about 15 minutes for me to get to work. The rest of the time I have been inside my work building. I have been on battery for 2 hours & 24 minutes and I am at 76% already. Thats >10% drain per hour. When I am outside the building it is more like 3-5%. VZW customer service never suggested this as a problem. They DID suggest that 4g uses more battery but that is not the problem. I have proved that time and again by simply turning data off.
Hmm..sounds like a bad phone..I am in a fringe area at work and it definitely kills by battery faster but..it's only like 8% and hour so I still get 10 hrs a day or so...in a bad area. In a good 4 G area..I will get 24 hrs or so out of the phone.
galaxyuser88 said:
Yeah for some reason, the samsung radio are junk. I have my Droid Charge (personal) and an Lg phone (business) and the lg blows the sammy out of the water. Now i am in 3g fringe (forget about 4g), and the sammy loses data all together while my lg still has the signal. I hate when i am trying to search for something on the charge and it says connection failed or network unavailable retry. Even when i call verizon, they all have me do a reset and stuff, and nothing works. The best answer i get is that iam in a 3g fringe area. When i tell them that my lg works and still has signal, all i get is silence or hmmmmmm. Gota love it. Yes they exchanged the phone with a new one and it still does the same thing. Forget about battery life. I actually carry 3 batteries with me and on a good day i only use 2 but usually it is 3. Before anyone says use wifi, unfortunatly we do not have free wifi where i work. anyway that should not be the answer to this problem. We are paying for a service that i can barely use.
end rant.
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Wow, that is the complete opposite of my experience. I've never had good signal with any LG phone - from flip phones to smartphones. Samsungs in my experience are middle of the road - not great, but not bad either. Motorolas usually do well, but there are certainly exceptions. HTC seems to be fairly good, but again, there are exceptions. Oh, and I did have one Audiovox phone on VZW, and it was garbage.
Haha you can whine about it in my rage thread
Sent from my Droid Charge running GummyFroyo 1.9.1
OK, so my wife and I both have GS3's through T-Mobile and our batteries last very long. I'm a heavy user and get a fully day while my wife is a light user and easily get's two days. My Mom on the other hand has her GS3 through Verizon and her battery is dying in roughly half a day. She is not a heavy user at all. In fact, her old Droid 2 would last longer than her GS3 which really has her frustrated.
I think it may be due to the fact she doesn't get a good 4G signal at work and at home. In fact, she gets 1 bar at work if she's lucky. She also said the phone is constantly bouncing back and forth between 3G and 4G while at work. She took it to Verizon today and they swapped SIM cards to be sure that wasn't the problem. Obviously that didn't work because I'm posting here. I will see her on Thursday and she want's me to look at her phone.
Do you guy's think this is most likely the reason as to why her battery is draining so fast? Also, if it is. Would there be a way I can show her how to disable 4G so her battery lasts longer?
It's most likely 3G and 4G switching back and forth or a rogue app. For to turn off the 4G it can't be done without rooting I'm pretty sure.
No, it's because you have task running. I had the same thing happen to me. If you exit an application by pressing home, the program will continue to run in the background. I had gallery take up 38% of my battery life. If you press the back button, it will FC the application.
Good bye HTC Rezound, hello Galaxy S3!
jrwingate6 said:
OK, so my wife and I both have GS3's through T-Mobile and our batteries last very long. I'm a heavy user and get a fully day while my wife is a light user and easily get's two days. My Mom on the other hand has her GS3 through Verizon and her battery is dying in roughly half a day. She is not a heavy user at all. In fact, her old Droid 2 would last longer than her GS3 which really has her frustrated.
I think it may be due to the fact she doesn't get a good 4G signal at work and at home. In fact, she gets 1 bar at work if she's lucky. She also said the phone is constantly bouncing back and forth between 3G and 4G while at work. She took it to Verizon today and they swapped SIM cards to be sure that wasn't the problem. Obviously that didn't work because I'm posting here. I will see her on Thursday and she want's me to look at her phone.
Do you guy's think this is most likely the reason as to why her battery is draining so fast? Also, if it is. Would there be a way I can show her how to disable 4G so her battery lasts longer?
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I'm on verizon as well and I find that my battery dies extremely fast. Full charge in the morning and by bedtime its just about dead, that's with moderate use. Some things that I have found to help is I generally keep bluetooth, and gps off unless I need either. I keep power saving mode on, and really minimized what Sync's through my accounts.
It's not exactly the answer you were looking for but it should help you until a more long term solution can be figured out.
Does anyone know how to turn 4G off?
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium
Low tower signal will kill the battery very fast. Frustratingly fast. I have Verizon GS3, have very low signal at work, and I burn 8% battery per hour when phone is idle. With almost no use, my battery is down to 30% by time I go home.
At home I have good tower signal and my battery drops very slow in idle, maybe 1% per hour. At both work and home I have WiFi connected and set to keep WiFi on during sleep always. Therefore I don't think it's data traffic / sync causing the issue. Instead its hyperactive radio hardware or firmware killing itself as it constantly finds/loses tower connection. The only thing I've been able to find to reduce the drain is going into airplane mode... which is obviously a terrible option.
Hope Samsung can improve this self devouring nature in the future!
jrwingate6 said:
Does anyone know how to turn 4G off?
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium
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go to the playstore and download "phone info" open it and go to device information
Swith the " lte/cdma/evdo" into cdma auto (PRL)
I also turn off 4g at work due to weak signal
VERIZON GALAXY S 3
I believe its a signal search at where she spends most of her time. At my work the signal is very bad and the phone goes from 100% to 20% in 10 hours without even touching the phone. Now I turn on airplane mode and it never drops the battery.
She can disable the data and find out how much that would save her
First make sure it's not a rogue app by going into Settings -> Battery, your top 2 battery usages should be Screen and Cell Standby. As long as you don't have some random app eating away at your battery then it's definitely signal strength related. Does she have Wi-Fi available at work? If so make sure she connects to it. I have a Verizon S3 and the battery life on this phone is better than any Android phone I've ever owned (and I've had a lot). I leave GPS and Bluetooth on all day and can easily get a full day with mid to heavy usage. The biggest thing would be to get her on Wi-Fi if available. This will stop the phone from constantly trying to poll data off a poor signal and significantly increase battery life. If no Wi-Fi available, then the above post would come into play, Phone Info app and switch into cdma to keep it locked into 3g will help, but only if there's a decent 3g signal. If the 3g signal is weak also, then you're not going to help anything, and she will just need to remember to turn data sync off while she's at work.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
Try switching batteries to see if she has a defective battery. If thats not the case, then make Verizon give her a replacement S3.
Add me to the list of people who think its the signal search in low service areas.. I disabled 4G with the Phone Info app and my phone lasted way longer than before..
Since you pointed out she has a low signal, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the culprit..
Sent from my Commodore 64..
READY.
load"*",8,1
Pagaldesi4life said:
Try switching batteries to see if she has a defective battery. If thats not the case, then make Verizon give her a replacement S3.
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This is what I did, kept the old battery too...then they swapped me for a w S3. My battery is doing much better now.
The5Venomz said:
This is what I did, kept the old battery too...then they swapped me for a w S3. My battery is doing much better now.
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Ahhh so it wasn't the battery itself?
When you got a replacement S3, did you go back to the same store where you had originally purchased them from or tried a different store?
I disabled 4G today at work with my stinky cell signal and my battery nose dived like usual. Therefore, if you have no signal, 3G/4G doesn't seem to matter. The radio hardware will still destroy itself happily.
Anyone know of a widget my Mom could use to disable data completely while she is at work?
jrwingate6 said:
Anyone know of a widget my Mom could use to disable data completely while she is at work?
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Pull the task drawer down and uncheck mobile data. Why do you need a widget?
You might have a system process called "gsiff_daemon" draining the battery. I have that problem and others have reported that process has been draining their battery as well. Or it could be other have mentioned already, signal switching, rogue programs, etc.
Today at work I ran with mobile data off. I still had a really bad battery drain. Therefore the voice 3 g radio must be responsible. Not much we can do about that unless a new firmware comes out.
Another battery tip...
Scrappy1 said:
Today at work I ran with mobile data off. I still had a really bad battery drain. Therefore the voice 3 g radio must be responsible. Not much we can do about that unless a new firmware comes out.
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There's also an option in the settings>developer options to restrict how many processes are running in the background, and to kill an app after leaving it. The only problem I've noticed with the second option is that the fb app won't allow you to post a status, I think because it causes it to start a new activity, which kills the main fb activity when you leave it. But limiting the background stuff seems to have saved some more juice on top of only using 3g.
getheart mcliar said:
There's also an option in the settings>developer options to restrict how many processes are running in the background, and to kill an app after leaving it. The only problem I've noticed with the second option is that the fb app won't allow you to post a status, I think because it causes it to start a new activity, which kills the main fb activity when you leave it. But limiting the background stuff seems to have saved some more juice on top of only using 3g.
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Naw man, at home I have good cell signal and have almost no idle drain. At work I have terrible signal and it drains like nuts. It's not an issue with apps, processes, services, etc.