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How's the battery life?

If you have gotten your hands on a TB, what kind of battery life are you seeing under various scenarios (3G, Wifi, 4G, etc)? This is the biggest hesitation that I and other folks are having...

Battery life is not that great, but much better than it was 4 months ago. With early firmwares it lasted about 4 hours without even using it. Now it is good for 8 hours of moderate use in 4G coverage. The phone does eat more battery while in 4G coverage than in 3G due to the higher uplink power used by LTE over EVDO. I think future firmwares will help, but the MSM9600 chipset was designed for datacards and not phones like the MSM8960.

need bb said:
Battery life is not that great, but much better than it was 4 months ago. With early firmwares it lasted about 4 hours without even using it. Now it is good for 8 hours of moderate use in 4G coverage. The phone does eat more battery while in 4G coverage than in 3G due to the higher uplink power used by LTE over EVDO. I think future firmwares will help, but the MSM9600 chipset was designed for datacards and not phones like the MSM8960.
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That is such a stupid reason for poor battery life. It was also a problem when 3g stuff was new. The solution seems quite simple to me, automatically turn off the 4g radio when the phone is in sleep mode. There is no reason to have it using a higher data transfer rate when sleeping. The solution could be extrapolated further into an app based solution. Turn on the 4g radio only when certain apps are open and running. Who really needs 14Mb connection to read e-mail? To make everyone happy, allow the users to configure which apps turn on the 4g radio as well as allowing them to leave it on all the time or leave it off all the time. Viola, battery problem solved.

need bb said:
Now it is good for 8 hours of moderate use in 4G coverage.
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Hmm, that's pretty weak. What about 3G?

I have gotten into the habit of turning of 3g on my incredible while I'm at work anyway .. I dont need to be that connected while I"m busy working anyway... and pressing the little widget takes 2 seconds to get back online... that will help you increase your battery by 3 times

Battery life is terrible for me, I an on 3g, charged the phone to 100 when I got it and now after 1 hour of use its down to 60%. This is the first charge so its all up in the air, but def way worse than I am used to.

Not bad for me (Central Dallas area), but it is switching between 4G and 3G a noticeable bit, so I'm sure it could be better. I'm not too worried about it as my extended battery comes in tomorrow.

I don't care about the battery issues ,I just love this phone for what it is. Is there even a 4.3in phone out there that last 24hrs of heavy to moderate use, no there isn't. If u want 48hr heavy usage get a blackberry.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App

This thread is pointless on release day. The battery needs several charge cycles before it performs as it should.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

In theory, LTE should use less power than CDMA as it's on the 850 Mhz spectrum so the TX power needed should be a lot less.
While in LTE mode the CDMA will kick down to 1x and so should also use less power.

I don't care about the battery issues ,I just love this phone for what it is. Is there even a 4.3in phone out there that last 24hrs of heavy to moderate use, no there isn't. If u want 48hr heavy usage get a blackberry.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App

I came from a long line of HTC phones and I wold say that the battery life is better if not on par with the Incredible I had before this.
I bought the phone @ 9am and the battery was at 39%. I almost positive I did not put the phone to sleep until after 1pm. The phone was still at 33%
I am on the fringe of 4G, so it was switching between 3G and 4G, lots of downloads, about 6 calls, lots of texts, surfing/email and only a 6% loss. I'm happy with that.
Tomorrow will be the real test as I have not completed a full charge yet. I did notice that when I did connect it to the charger a little while ago, it charges much slower than my Incredible did.

Battery life is great so far. Better than my Droid X, Samsung fascinate, EVO
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

Unplugged at 3:30pm after fully charged. It's now 7:50pm and it's giving a warning to connect charger (at ~10%). I hope battery life improves after a few full discharge/recharge cycles otherwise may have to look into other options such as extended battery. I guess that's the price to pay to have screaming LTE on all the time. I'm guessing Verizon intentionally left out a way to disable LTE to keep data usage off the 3G network.

Very nice batt here
meXdroid Ghost Chilli

mycomputerisjunk said:
Tomorrow will be the real test as I have not completed a full charge yet. I did notice that when I did connect it to the charger a little while ago, it charges much slower than my Incredible did.
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This is because the USB Port only pulls .5 amperes, and the T-Bolt's charger is rated at 1.0 amperes. This is why the charger charges much quicker than USB. Also, my motorola droid charger was .5 amperes too. So this kinda sucks. Power is definitely going to be an issue for the t-bolt.

I came from the fascinate which had a terrible battery but this is much worse. I don't mind though, I have a charger in my car and at my desk. I am very happy with this purchase so far.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

Yeah... I actually bought a car charger for the first time since phones used proprietary connections (read lg chocolate). Good investment

It's ok, fully charged at 5, its 11 and down to 25%, need to cycle through a few times.

gtg465x said:
This thread is pointless on release day. The battery needs several charge cycles before it performs as it should.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
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^This... seriously people... the power manager needs several COMPLETE charges to calibrate... also because it is new most people are using it far more than they will after the calibration is completed (remember display is than #1 battery drain and the hours you spend configuring and playing with it the first day or two gives an inaccurate assessment of 'normal' use)...

Cell STANDBY 83% ??????

Anyone else having this ISSUE? My last phones all had like 4-6% standby time on the battery. But this g2x has been 64-83%. If this can get fixed I think my battery will be much much better!
What can be causing this?

when you say 64-83% how many hours has it been in standby? What else is using the battery? I know the G2X in my office has like 70% standby but that's standby from 14 hours and it's still at 92% battery life. (work phone so pretty much just sitting in the office until we need it)
Standby usually drains faster if you're in an area with no cell signal from what I've noticed.

gqkevyn said:
Standby usually drains faster if you're in an area with no cell signal from what I've noticed.
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This is very important to note. As the signal gets lower, your antenna has to increase power to maintain a connection with the tower. The lower your signal, the more battery required to keep a connection

My cell standby has been alot more then my display and I don't have it in standby. What is odd. My network connection says utms yet I have 4g showing and speedtest is 4-7mb dl. I can unplug my phone leave it on for an hour loose about 15-20% battery with it like at 70%+ cell standby. It's odd...
Maybe it's the 4g cell struggling to connect?
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA Premium App

Do you have a lot of Widgets pulling data?
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

I have the same widgets on the G2x that I have on my Nexus S. I have pure calendar and pure calendar agenda both set to update when the calendar updates. I am still leaning towards more with the 4G struggeling or something.
I've always thought umts was pure 3G while hspa was an update to that which in turn you could get the hspa+. However my connection always says umts, yet I do get way above 3mb dl on the speedtest. It always gets between 4-7mb dl.
The battery life on this android reminds me of when I had the Eris, just blah!!

pinbak said:
My cell standby has been alot more then my display and I don't have it in standby. What is odd. My network connection says utms yet I have 4g showing and speedtest is 4-7mb dl. I can unplug my phone leave it on for an hour loose about 15-20% battery with it like at 70%+ cell standby. It's odd...
Maybe it's the 4g cell struggling to connect?
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA Premium App
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I have the EXACT same issue with cell standby. I think it's the 4g connection as mine is constantly switching between 4g and 2g (never 3G)

I can't remember can you click on the "cell standby" tab in 2.2 to get additional information? It will usually say something like xx% time without signal.

yes you can click on it but that option is not showing. I was thinking just like I could my Eris was place into airplane mode take it out and it would correct the cell standby issue. But the xx% without signal is not showing. Well at least on mine it doesn't.

I don't think it ever says 3G. Mine goes from 4G to 2g. I just traveled to Indianapolis and pulled 6mb down but at home we don't have 4g yet even though it says 4g. My download at home was the same as my nexus one = 700k
So while I see it drop to 2g... I think they replaced the 3G icon with a straight 4G icon.
Plus I thought utms was edge?
-sent from my LG 2Gx

Same here with the cell standby... Battery life isn't that terrible for me though (six hours down to 75 percent). Still this seems to be a big problem. Can we somehow force it to just use 3G for the time being?

Make air plane mode your best friend when your not using it. It could be widgets your using
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk

runderekrun said:
Same here with the cell standby... Battery life isn't that terrible for me though (six hours down to 75 percent). Still this seems to be a big problem. Can we somehow force it to just use 3G for the time being?
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Wish there was that option. But we can only set it to 2g now
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk

Northern Cali has no 4g and mine always says 4g. Same issue here tho... cell standby way to hi
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

I was having the same issue, and battery life was terrible.
Performing a full factory reset as well as completely draining the battery several times solved the issue for me.
Before the factory reset Battery Monitor was reporting heavy battery use even while idle, after the reset it only uses 2-5mA while idle compared to over 150mA before.
Today I went from 5:45 AM to 4:30 PM and am only down to 70% charge left.

same exact issue here. My usage habits have not change from my mytouch 4g which only showed a few percent of cell standy and phone idle. I dont get it, but i think that is what is killing my battery.

Suprah said:
Wish there was that option. But we can only set it to 2g now
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk
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We do have that option. Settings-->Wireless Networks --> Mobile Networks-->Network Mode --> WCDMA Only (3G & 4G Only)

flak0 said:
We do have that option. Settings-->Wireless Networks --> Mobile Networks-->Network Mode --> WCDMA Only (3G & 4G Only)
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Not the same. We want an option for JUST 3g as the problem (with the cell standby) seems to be a weak 4g signal...
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

I hate Widgets so I'm not using any at all.

Mine was also jumping from 4G to 2G.... Odd
jink25 said:
I was having the same issue, and battery life was terrible.
Performing a full factory reset as well as completely draining the battery several times solved the issue for me.
Before the factory reset Battery Monitor was reporting heavy battery use even while idle, after the reset it only uses 2-5mA while idle compared to over 150mA before.
Today I went from 5:45 AM to 4:30 PM and am only down to 70% charge left.
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I'm glad it worked for you but I am a little confused as to how could this fix this problem?

Lte

I just had the coolest thing happen, I woke up and turned my phone on only to find I have lte at my house now! Has this happened to anyone else in the Atlanta area?

Jealous. I wish they'd work on my area. Upstate sc

gunnyman said:
Jealous. I wish they'd work on my area. Upstate sc
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Your day will come, and when it does.
You will be prepared
Sent from my HTC One

Be prepared to get worse battery life than before. LTE really chews battery life alive. I turn off mobile data when I'm not using it just to get better battery though.

im on LTE and get 24 hours easy...and id consider myself at least a moderate user.

I havent noticed bad battery life when I was using it before but its never been constant so I guess Ill find out soon haha

Ottawa - Canada
Where LTE covered pretty much everywhere. I've used LTE on my device and I get at the most 6hours of usage.
I consider myself very heavy user. Download, online music, browsing, IM+ etc... Switching LTE off and going only on 4G I get an extra 12hours worth of juice but the speed is more then what I need 4G speed here is an average of 8mpbs UP and DOWN. That translate to 800K per second in transfer rate. Just as fast as you regular high speed at home. So no there's no need for LTE personally. It just kills your battery off in no time.

I've consistently gotten over 24 hours with light usage on LTE. Obviously reception and level of usage will make a big difference. But for many people the battery life on LTE is plenty good enough to use all day, then charge when you sleep.

LTE destroys battery, but that's what 3g is for
Hail Cobra!

Shaddy-Z. said:
Be prepared to get worse battery life than before. LTE really chews battery life alive. I turn off mobile data when I'm not using it just to get better battery though.
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I haven't noticed a significant drain on the battery going from HSPA+ to LTE.
I don't use wifi because of the bugs so i'm always using data.

I easily get 18+ hrs with heavy usage, including 3+ hrs screen time on LTE, so not real sure what you are expecting from the battery. It's a high-end Smartphone, use it for what its meant to be used for.
Based on some of the responses, the logic is like buying a Ferrari and only driving it 55 in the slow lane cuz you're worried about not getting good gas mileage.... Com'on people, use the damn phone!
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

Justjusten said:
I just had the coolest thing happen, I woke up and turned my phone on only to find I have lte at my house now! Has this happened to anyone else in the Atlanta area?
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Yes, I never got a LTE signal at my house which is roughly 50 miles from Atlanta, but recently I've started getting a very good LTE signal at home.
I also don't see any of these battery drain issues everyone talks about. I'm on LTE for about 16 hours a day before I plug my phone in at night, and I always have some juice left. This has changed to be even better recently since I tend to need wifi more using AOKP and it's inconsistent mobile data. But my good battery life was consistent with stock and other Sense ROMs using only LTE.
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA

Justjusten said:
I just had the coolest thing happen, I woke up and turned my phone on only to find I have lte at my house now! Has this happened to anyone else in the Atlanta area?
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Click to collapse
Lmfao, me too. I'm in hiram. I now have lte all the way from Atlanta to Paulding county. In fact, I have had constant lte since. I was sitting at the bowling alley, which I use to struggle just to get any signal, and I had two bars, lte.
Really haven't noticed much of a difference in battery drain either. Now I do use wifi at the house but still, been pretty impressed actually.
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

When you get throttled what are typical speeds?? Out of nowhere my speeds went from 16-24mb down and 7-11mb up to about 3-6mb down and 1-2mb up. Checked my usage (unlimited) and i've only used 200+mb so far. Whats up with that?

I suspect that the people complaining about LTE battery drain also have their brightness turned way up, like at full. I know, b/c I'm one of those people. Almost any phone is going to last you an entire day, of even heavy use, if the brightness is down to 10%. Even in the laptop world, the battery life differential going from 10% brightness to 100% screen brightness is double, real world use.

Battery Drain while using 4G data...

I've been working on improving my battery. I've noticed a big improvement by using cpu-editor and super saver app. I've also noticed that battery lasts a lot longer on WiFi than it does on 4g Since 8:30 this morning (7 hours), I've used 33% mostly on WiFi and I think that's pretty good.
So, I was wondering... what can be done to improve battery life when on AT&T? I've tried the new radio, I'm not sire that's made a difference. Maybe it has, hard to tell.

shgadwa said:
I've been working on improving my battery. I've noticed a big improvement by using cpu-editor and super saver app. I've also noticed that battery lasts a lot longer on WiFi than it does on 4g Since 8:30 this morning (7 hours), I've used 33% mostly on WiFi and I think that's pretty good.
So, I was wondering... what can be done to improve battery life when on AT&T? I've tried the new radio, I'm not sire that's made a difference. Maybe it has, hard to tell.
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If you're on LTE, you will inevitably use more power than just WiFi, that's just how it works.
If you can kick down to HSPA+ or UMTS you will see significant battery savings.

Hunt3r.j2 said:
If you're on LTE, you will inevitably use more power than just WiFi, that's just how it works.
If you can kick down to HSPA+ or UMTS you will see significant battery savings.
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Click to collapse
Thank you for your reply.
I'm in Albany, NY. I've been told we have one LTE tower here, but I've not experienced it yet. I should locate it and drive to it just so I can get a taste of how fast it is.
That said, I use HSPA+, unless I'm on WiFi.

shgadwa said:
Thank you for your reply.
I'm in Albany, NY. I've been told we have one LTE tower here, but I've not experienced it yet. I should locate it and drive to it just so I can get a taste of how fast it is.
That said, I use HSPA+, unless I'm on WiFi.
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Click to collapse
HSPA+ uses more battery than WiFi when actively using it for data, the change just isn't as significant compared to when using the phone on LTE.
Some things you'll want to do to really get battery life savings is to eliminate partial wakelocks, and turn down screen brightness either by using a custom ROM or managing settings manually, as HTC's autobrightness is terrible out of the box and doesn't properly turn down brightness when you need it to, or turn it up when you need it to.
After that, if you don't need to have push email all the time then you can turn off always on mobile data, or manually turn off mobile data when you aren't using it.

Our Russian LTE testers of HTC One XL reports about 1.5-2 hours of LTE tethering. Make your conclusions.

Hunt3r.j2 said:
If you're on LTE, you will inevitably use more power than just WiFi, that's just how it works.
If you can kick down to HSPA+ or UMTS you will see significant battery savings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can someone explain to me how to go from LTE to HSPA+ to EDGE? I've tried looking in the settings but all I can find is a "Mobile network" on/off toggle. There is no option to turn on/off LTE, or HSPA+ or EDGE. It's a bit frustrating. Then in my status bar, the 4G icon is always displayed even when "Mobile network" is off. No data but it still shows up. Is this how it is supposed to be?
BTW, I'm using the stock ROM with Apex Launcher. I do not want to root or use a custom ROM.

[Q] disable mobile signal while on wifi

Hi all
Im trying to find a way to make my nexus 5 automatically disable my 3g connection when i connect to my home WiFi, as i have horrendous 3g signal in my home and i think its affecting battery life.
Any ideas?
Thanks

You can always shut it off manually. I personally use Llama, to automate it everything
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

You can turn it off manually. I believe it stops you from sending pictures and receiving pictures through text though.
As for battery life, I don't think it would change anything since it's using WiFi for data as a Primary.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

if you are in WiFi, battery drain shouldnt be a problem.. all data will be routed via wifi and only voice and SMS/MMS would come via cell tower...
i suggest wakelock detector to see whats using the most battery

As suggested... If WiFi is on, a week signal won't drain your battery. WiFi off, then of course it will.
Sent from my N5, N7, Moto X, G Tab 3 or S2.....

This actually happens automatically. However doing it yourself does seem to be a quick fix for some WiFi related issues. Tasker or Llama if you think it will help.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

As mentioned: mobile DATA is turned off when wifi is connected.
You don't want to turn off the mobile radio entirely, as then you cannot receive phone calls or texts.
If you're in a low signal area, you'll have a small hit to battery life from this, but it's not anywhere near as bad as not using wifi.

but changing the radio to Edge or 3G when on WiFi should be better for battery life right?
I use the smart radio setting in cataclysm and I think it actually helps a little (indoors I get 2 bars of LTE on average vs 4 on 3G).
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

raul90 said:
but changing the radio to Edge or 3G when on WiFi should be better for battery life right?
I use the smart radio setting in cataclysm and I think it actually helps a little (indoors I get 2 bars of LTE on average vs 4 on 3G).
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
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No, as it's not using the data services. It's only maintaining base voice capability.

raul90 said:
but changing the radio to Edge or 3G when on WiFi should be better for battery life right?
I use the smart radio setting in cataclysm and I think it actually helps a little (indoors I get 2 bars of LTE on average vs 4 on 3G).
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
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I'm not sure what others are talking about but from personal experience changing from 3g to 2g whilst on wifi did help battery life. People in this thread appear to forget the fact that even without data enabled, poor 3g/LTE signal will still drain more battery compared with having a strong 2G/3G signal as your phone's radio requires more power to maintain connection for base functionality (calls, texts).

daniel.kusy said:
I'm not sure what others are talking about but from personal experience changing from 3g to 2g whilst on wifi did help battery life. People in this thread appear to forget the fact that even without data enabled, poor 3g/LTE signal will still drain more battery compared with having a strong 2G/3G signal as your phone's radio requires more power to maintain connection for base functionality (calls, texts).
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Click to collapse
If the phone is on WiFi, battery life is not affected much by whatever you switch your connection to. On data, then sure...signal issues are a big factor.
Switching from this to that to this while WiFi is on is really a lot of trouble for maybe a slight difference in battery life. ?
Sent from my N5, N7, Moto X, G Tab 3 or S2.....

kj2112 said:
If the phone is on WiFi, battery life is not affected much by whatever you switch your connection to. On data, then sure...signal issues are a big factor.
Switching from this to that to this while WiFi is on is really a lot of trouble for maybe a slight difference in battery life. ?
Sent from my N5, N7, Moto X, G Tab 3 or S2.....
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Click to collapse
I completely agree with you on the fact that with data enabled on a poor 3G connection, your battery's gonna drain pretty quickly. After doing more research I found that changing from 3G to 2G can reduce power usage of the radio quite considerably (apparently up to 50% when in voice/sms mode only). Now as great as that all sounds, that's only around 50% power usage of the radio and I have no idea how much battery the radio actually uses during idle.. Looking at google's specifications it seems like the radio uses a pretty insignificant amount of battery when in idle (300 hours or so) so a 50% saving in idle radio probably wouldn't make nearly as much difference as say a more contributing factor to battery drain like screen on time or cpu usage. So yeah, I guess I gotta agree with kj2112 here, It's pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things if you're actually using your phone with wifi connected.
Interesting source if anyone was curious and wanted to learn more about radio affecting battery life: http://www.speedguide.net/faq_in_q.php?qid=362

daniel.kusy said:
I completely agree with you on the fact that with data enabled on a poor 3G connection, your battery's gonna drain pretty quickly. After doing more research I found that changing from 3G to 2G can reduce power usage of the radio quite considerably (apparently up to 50% when in voice/sms mode only). Now as great as that all sounds, that's only around 50% power usage of the radio and I have no idea how much battery the radio actually uses during idle.. Looking at google's specifications it seems like the radio uses a pretty insignificant amount of battery when in idle (300 hours or so) so a 50% saving in idle radio probably wouldn't make nearly as much difference as say a more contributing factor to battery drain like screen on time or cpu usage. So yeah, I guess I gotta agree with kj2112 here, It's pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things if you're actually using your phone with wifi connected.
Interesting source if anyone was curious and wanted to learn more about radio affecting battery life: http://www.speedguide.net/faq_in_q.php?qid=362
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Click to collapse
If it did make a big difference on WiFi....I'd have terrible battery life at home. There is no 2g on my carrier and my signal at home is horrible. But, I get over 24 hours and 6 plus screen hours always, whether at home (on WiFi always...and usually one bar of radio inside) or at work on LTE.
So for me, the weak signal does next to nothing to my battery.....while on WiFi. WiFi off, I get half those times at home.
Sent from my N5, N7, Moto X, G Tab 3 or S2.....

kj2112 said:
If it did make a big difference on WiFi....I'd have terrible battery life at home. There is no 2g on my carrier and my signal at home is horrible. But, I get over 24 hours and 6 plus screen hours always, whether at home (on WiFi always...and usually one bar of radio inside) or at work on LTE.
So for me, the weak signal does next to nothing to my battery.....while on WiFi. WiFi off, I get half those times at home.
Sent from my N5, N7, Moto X, G Tab 3 or S2.....
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I'm not doubting you there, I pretty much summarised why in my previous post. When the radio is idling (connected to wifi) it's using a very small amount of power. Hence why it doesn't make much of a difference reducing an already very small power draw.