Generally speaking, my battery life is pretty good. However, at least half the day, I am in areas of poor cellular strength; I am usually in the -120 to -100 dBm range. I know this is eating up my battery, but is there anything I can do about it? I don't really want to manually go in and out of airplane mode, but I guess I will if I have to. I do turn off mobile data and stick to WiFi, but the phone radio is still sucking the battery juice.
Does anyone have any advice on how to save some battery in poor coverage areas?
When I am at parents I have no service (which destroys battery like you said) so I use Google voice and VoIP over WiFi. It greatly helps but a bit of a pain setting up. I know not perfect answer but it's all the help I have to offer
The radio on this device does not eat that much battery... on average my device spends most of the time over -100db signal and gets great battery life.
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Hi I tried looking for a similar thread but couldn't find one. So I was curious if my g2x battery use is normal. When I look it up my battery use is mostly consumed by cell stand by. I'm not running 4g I'm using 2g. Is this normal?
KSauce86 said:
Hi I tried looking for a similar thread but couldn't find one. So I was curious if my g2x battery use is normal. When I look it up my battery use is mostly consumed by cell stand by. I'm not running 4g I'm using 2g. Is this normal?
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It is normal. If you click on it and your time without a signal is high then you may have a poor signal or another issue. Searching for signal will kill the battery pretty quick.
I clicked on it and I don't get any indication of time without signal. All it says its time on 2h 43m 50s. Could it be the battery it self? I've left the phone mostly idling this whole time and its already down to 86% . I've tried all the tips like only use 2g, lowest display, and juice defender. In like 6 hours I'm down to like almost 55 percent.
Normal idle drain for me is between 2% and 4% an hour. In areas with weak reception such as my office, the drain can be much higher due to the radio switching between 2g and 4g looking for a strong signal. I have gotten into the habbit of switching to 2g only at the office. You might try it for a day as a test to see if it helps. I know it is not a great solution, but it is what it is.
Or maybe it should be Reception, Reception, Reception.
Just wanted to post a tip regarding location/reception.
I normally get about 10-12 hours on my battery (stock, unrooted Skyrocket) when local (i.e. work, home, maybe stop out for lunch, etc). Medium to light usage.
This past weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun), went out of town to somewhere where I had pretty crappy reception. Result: ~6 hours of battery life. With light usage.
Nothing changed on my phone, only my location and cell reception.
So for those of you getting really low battery usage, it could be your location/reception quality.
Hope this helps someone.
I think a lot of the battery problems people are having are just from unrealistic expectations. Smart phones aren't going to get the same battery life that the old flip phones were. Sure, through kernel modifications and CPU undervolting we can make a difference; but short of an extended battery, there's not much that can be done.
Excellent point. I get great reception outside my building, but only 3 or 4 bars tops inside usually (and as I'm looking at it right now the 4G symbol has the )) showing that it's looking for a better signal (and eating the battery).
totally correct.
I was out of the country for a week and only used my phone on wifi... loved the battery life when you dont need to worry about towers.
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
I have realised something with all the Samsung Android's I've used over the years.
When one has been in a known area with mobile data on, regardless of wifi state, like home or work, standby battery drain is normal, 1% per 1-3 hrs. However, when one begins to travel, with mobile data on, battery idle drain becomes 1% per 10-20 minutes pretty immediately.
This is regardless of whether Wifi is On or Off (obviously disconnected in both cases).
I have ran so many tests on this with the S3, S5, N2 and N3, and all the results are the same, battery drain goes wild when one begins to travel.
I have tried turning location on/off, syncing on/off and again results are pretty much exactly the same.
It's got to be something to do with how well the phones deal with handshakes from cell tower to cell tower, but it really shouldn't eat the battery so much. The iPhone for example performs much better in this situation.
Has anyone come across this and any ideas?
I will try to explain what may is the problem in simple words. I am studying computer and electronic engineering and we had a class this semester based on phone signals.
When you stay at home your phone is connected on the phone company's antenna. To connect you need to exchange some info so i think this will consume some power. Also one you are connected the amount of data receiving and sending are the minimum possible.
When you travel your phone has to keep connect on an other antenna and keep searching for signal. Many connecting tries may fail due to bad signal and based on the phone and the company, if your phone keep change on 3G for better signal this "change" is that consumes much power.
This is probably the reason. I may be wrong because we did only some base things over the wireless communications signals.
Different phones operate different on the signal density. Good density better signal = better battery life
Hello,
I recently picked up a OP6 and I'm really pleased with it overall but SOT has been a little disappointing. At least I think it has depending which battery app I consult!
Accubattery Pro thinks I'm getting an average 8h 16m of SOT (this is definitely not correct!).
GSM Battery Monitor PRO reckons 4h 46m of SOT (which still seems a bit high).
In the battery tab of the Settings menu it reckons having used 65% of my battery I've had 2h 50m SOT (ie. from 100% after 2hr 50m of SOT I'm now sitting on 35%). I think this equates to about 4h 30m of SOT if I continued at the same pace. I guess this tallies pretty closely to the GSM Battery Monitor PRO so maybe this is about accurate.
I've followed the guide here to get the most SOT but 4h 30m seems on the low given that I don't game or stream, don't have FB installed etc. This is purely webbrowsing, a bit of YT and a podcast app (listening to downloaded podcasts rather than streamed if that makes a difference).
Nothing in the battery stats seems that unusual (please see attached). What does seem a little odd is that I'm not in a great spot for mobile reception but looking at the stats it doesn't look like the radio is draining the battery.
Any advice on how to delve deeper? I'm 100% stock and not rooted.
Any advice for a OP newbie is much appreciated
Hmmmm Better Battery Stats seems to tell a rather different story especially around the radio reception.
Again any advice much appreciated!
The poor signal is killing you. When the signal is poor it pumps out more juice trying to stay connected. If you will be in an area with poor signal and won't be using your phone I suggest putting it in airplane mode or maybe setting it to 3G as a proof of concept. If your battery is much better then you found your issue
Also wifi scanning is turned on,which is a battery killer. Turn it off and you can see a great difference
spartan268 said:
The poor signal is killing you. When the signal is poor it pumps out more juice trying to stay connected. If you will be in an area with poor signal and won't be using your phone I suggest putting it in airplane mode or maybe setting it to 3G as a proof of concept. If your battery is much better then you found your issue
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Thanks Spartan! The problem is poor indoor reception with the signal constantly cutting in and out. As such airplane mode may be the ultimate option but obviously it's a bit of a bummer as a long term solution! I'm going to try another provider which claims to have better indoor coverage in my area.
Question #1 - you mention trying setting to 3G as a proof of concept. Is that because a 2G/3G uses less power to connect than searching for a 4G connection? Should I try the 2G only option before the 3G one?
Question #2 - if I do try 2G/3G (before trying airplane mode) should I turn off mobile data too or does that make a difference?
Question #3 - I'm guessing having 2 sims installed makes the problem even worse as both are constantly calling for signal? I typically use one for data and one for voice.
Question #4 - when some folks post their battery graphs they have a picture which shows the mobile and wifi signal (see attached as an example). I don't seem to be able to find this. Was it removed from the latest update as the battery section seems to have changed a bit.
Thanks again!
hasan4791 said:
Also wifi scanning is turned on,which is a battery killer. Turn it off and you can see a great difference
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Click to collapse
Thanks for taking the time to reply!
Strangely I don't think I do have wifi scanning on (please see attached screenshots)! Location services are also off.
Are you thinking I do because the wifi is on 100% of the time?
Could this be because an app is somehow keeping it awake?
Hmmm can't see an option to check if "keep wifi on during sleep" is enabled. Has this been removed from 9.0.2?