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battery drain fix - alternate method!

This is a sister-thread to "Battery Drain Fix" for the g2x that lists a factory reset as a possible fix to battery drain issues.
First, let me say that even if you do not currently have battery drain issues with your G2X, that doesn't mean that you're immune. My battery has been phenomenal at times, abysmal at others. I've done the factory reset and that DID help for awhile, but battery problems arose again.
I believe the problem that plagued my phone was the dreaded 50% cell standby problem. If you're unaware of this problem, essentially the issue is that "cell standby" (found under settings --> about phone --> battery use) is at or around 50% always -- in other words, it doesn't matter that the phone has fine reception, is or is not being used, or even has the signal active (that's right, the problem persists even with airplane mode activated).
While I do recommend the factory reset method (assuming that you haven't had your phone too long, as it can be a real pain to reconfigure everything if you've set it up how you like it over many weeks...), I think this alternate method is something we should all do as well. In brief, you'll want to do the following:
-open dial pad and dial *#*#4636#*#* (If Testing menu doesn't come up than click "Call" and it will come up)
-Go to Phone information
-Scroll down and you'll see preferred network type
-click it and switch it to GSM/WCDMA auto
-click back button
After taking these steps, you should see an immediate improvement to your battery drain problems, as well as much faster battery charge times. Additionally, your cell standby % should decrease dramatically.

Isn't the same effect achievable from the Network Settings? No need to go to the secret menu. Unless I'm missing something.

electric33l said:
Isn't the same effect achievable from the Network Settings? No need to go to the secret menu. Unless I'm missing something.
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I thought the samw but in the hidden menu it is set to wcdma preferred
switched will report tomorrow
thanx for this. hope it works
sent from my G2X with no regrets

I just changed it, hopefully it works. If it does work, thanks in advance
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk

Interesting. I've had mine set to 2G networks only, so I hadn't noticed. I'll switch it over as well, and see what happens. I've been getting great battery life though, so this is purely an exercise in curiosity. Regardless, the root cause of this problem has already been determined- the drivers are ****ty. CyanogenMod is liable to fix this up immensely.

I changed mine too and I will report back if I notice any improvements
Sent from my T-Mobile G2x using XDA App

The battery reporting is terrible so cell standby could be nothing really.

I believe doing this also fixes the GsmTracker poll failure in one of the threads. At least mine is no longer red but green (in the logs)

I can personally attest to the fact that this does absolutely nothing different. I have had my phone switched between WCDMA, GSM and WCDMA/GSM auto just to see if there was any difference for the past few days. My device has battery life worse than the HTC Thunderbolt that I returned, and being only 7 days in I'm thinking about doing the same to this device. I'm definitely experiencing buyers remorse.

@TheMightiest -- did you do a factory reset first and then try this method?

Erislover said:
@TheMightiest -- did you do a factory reset first and then try this method?
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Click to collapse
I've factory reset my device 5 times, just drained it, for the 5th time and recharging it as we speak. I still lose between 15-30% per hour if data is enabled...just like the HTC Thunderbolt. At least I got 19mb download with the Thunderbolt, I'm getting an average of 6mb with the G2x, which ain't bad, i'm just saying.

Mine was set on gsm only. I've just made the switch so i'll report back if there is a difference or not.

I've read a lot on the whole philosophy of "drain completely and recharge fully to maximize battery life," and from the looks of it, that method doesn't do anything for Lithium-Ion batteries, which have no memory effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery - not that wikipedia is the ultimate authority on things, but hey, it's a link at least).
Your battery sounds WAY worse than others' batteries...you should seriously consider returning it and getting a new one.

Well, my cell standby percentage has not gone down at all, but still my battery consumption is much improved.
As was stated in this thread, the battery readings may be very off the mark from actual battery life, however, that fact doesn't help explain why some of us only were getting 5-6 hours of battery life with moderate (and sometimes no) use. There obviously is a problem, and CM7 may well fix it, but the method in this thread has definitely helped my phone stay on longer...irrespective of battery readings.

Erislover said:
I've read a lot on the whole philosophy of "drain completely and recharge fully to maximize battery life," and from the looks of it, that method doesn't do anything for Lithium-Ion batteries, which have no memory effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery - not that wikipedia is the ultimate authority on things, but hey, it's a link at least).
Your battery sounds WAY worse than others' batteries...you should seriously consider returning it and getting a new one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not the reason people on these forums recommend draining completely and charging fully. The reason is that in order for your phone to get a semi-accurate idea of what percentage the remaining battery life is at. With this particular phone, however this is probably still a lost cause as the driver will never give an accurate approximation of remaining life.
At any rate, the full drain, full charge is a one time thing. This will also in no way extend battery life (but I haven't seen anyone on the forums claim this either). You can, however, extend battery life by keeping the charge at ~80% and keeping it as cool as possible.
On a side note, great to see yet ANOTHER battery thread

MWBehr said:
This is not the reason people on these forums recommend draining completely and charging fully. The reason is that in order for your phone to get a semi-accurate idea of what percentage the remaining battery life is at. With this particular phone, however this is probably still a lost cause as the driver will never give an accurate approximation of remaining life.
At any rate, the full drain, full charge is a one time thing. This will also in no way extend battery life (but I haven't seen anyone on the forums claim this either). You can, however, extend battery life by keeping the charge at ~80% and keeping it as cool as possible.
On a side note, great to see yet ANOTHER battery thread
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Click to collapse
It's amazing right - we have dual core 1Ghz processors in our smartphones with 1GB of RAM and high res screens, 4G data, etc. etc. yet battery technology hasn't advanced in years. Whoever improves battery tech is going to be the richest person in the world. Think about it.
Edit: Btw, mine was set to WCDMA preferred although in Network Settings it was on Auto so I changed it to Auto.

mobilehavoc said:
It's amazing right - we have dual core 1Ghz processors in our smartphones with 1GB of RAM and high res screens, 4G data, etc. etc. yet battery technology hasn't advanced in years. Whoever improves battery tech is going to be the richest person in the world. Think about it.
Edit: Btw, mine was set to WCDMA preferred although in Network Settings it was on Auto so I changed it to Auto.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought 512MB of RAM?
Can someone explain to me what WCDMA is? I am in a 2G only area. Should I select GSM only?

Erislover said:
I believe the problem that plagued my phone was the dreaded 50% cell standby problem. If you're unaware of this problem, essentially the issue is that "cell standby" (found under settings --> about phone --> battery use) is at or around 50% always -- in other words, it doesn't matter that the phone has fine reception, is or is not being used, or even has the signal active (that's right, the problem persists even with airplane mode activated).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay. I read the original thread and it sounds like the 50% is refering to the "Time Without Signal" value when you actually click on Cell Standby. Not the value of Cell Standby itself.
My G1 running FroYo last month had at least 50% Cell Standby with only ~1% Time Without Signal and the battery lasted about 2.5 days with moderate use.
I'm not an EE so obviously, I could be wrong about this.

You sir have just received a thanks, because this could also be the cause of some of our data issues and how the phone picks up on 3G vs 4G signal. Im doing some testing regarding APN and now with this hidden menu. Have noticed my speeds are a little bit better then they were. Battery drain was not a problem for me before.

Thank you! i did this to mine and my husbands g2x's last night. seems to have fixed the switching issue

Wifi - Battery life

Interesting observation, perhaps the coding Guru's can take into account. I noticed that at home where I seem to have perfect 4g signal, my battery lasts nearly 20+ hours and seems great.
My wife, who works at a hospital also noticed that at work she barely gets 6 hours and has to swap batteries constantly. Her phone also seems to always been warm and the battery info reports the same data that it always does(Blaming the screen). She's been complaining to me for a while, threatening to want to go back to the iphones and I've been trying to look for a solution.
So fast forward some time, I notice that when I go to an area with spotty service(an Office in Delaware that I occasionally visit), I'm lucky to get 6 hours of life on my phone. It also was exhibiting the same luke warming heating that my wife had been complaining about. I disabled data and got it to straggle by, but then I also experimented with wifi.
The wifi in that office is super strong and when I connected to wifi with my phone instead of having it constantly search for Edge/3G/LTE, it would just sit on wifi and never bother searching for signal.
This boosted the life from the 6 hours to 14 hours. I also recommended the same to my wife and she went from 6 hours to 18 hours(Better Wifi signal and no 4 hour train ride with spotty signal searching)
So, perhaps the radio logic is way too aggressive on these phones and if there was a way to make them just calm down and not look for 5 minutes if it doesn't find signal, perhaps they wouldn't burn themselves out.
Is there a way to reduce the radio aggressiveness? Cause quite frankly, if I don't have signal the second I walk out of the subway, I could really care less. Polling every 5 minutes is totally fine by me and it would be even better if it was configurable.
Anyways, perhaps others who are suffering with terrible battery life could experiment and see if enabling wifi extends their battery longetivity.
Cheers!

Er...I think everyone knows that WiFi increases your battery life substantially. However, user defined polling times might not be a bad idea.
Sent from my Droid Charge running Humble 1.4

I know wifi increases battery life, and and on the flipside if you don't have a strong wifi signal it will keep trying to find one... But my question is how much drain?
I drove to work in Queens from central new jersey (about an hour and a half and the battery drained about 60% with the wifi switched on. Is this the fault or do I have another problem?
Running latest humble fe
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App

I want to say that it drained purely because it was trying to find any signal, even if Wifi was off, I'd be willing to wager that it would have still lost that much battery life on the drive in.
All this still makes me think that if the devs could find the logic that controls the radio probing and allow it to be set based upon configurable options, our battery lives would be tremendously better.

superslow said:
I want to say that it drained purely because it was trying to find any signal, even if Wifi was off, I'd be willing to wager that it would have still lost that much battery life on the drive in.
All this still makes me think that if the devs could find the logic that controls the radio probing and allow it to be set based upon configurable options, our battery lives would be tremendously better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So it is reasonable to assume the wifi search drained it that much? I I doubt it was general lte/data searching -new york is pretty covered
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App

[Q] Battery life?

How is the battery life on the MT? If it's poor (stock), have you found a good utility app to help it last longer?

I usually get about 24 hours of battery life on mine. I have gps turned off most of the time and I'm on wifi a lot with light to moderate usage. I did notice that if I have the GPS on, that the battery does go down much quicker. I assume that's because it keeps trying to get a location even when I'm indoors and it's having a hard time.
Although, I've read a lot of people complain about poor battery life so YMMV.

It depends greatly on whether data is working or not. Usually, I'll have around 90% battery 2 hours into the day. But if data isn't working, like today, I'll go down to 80% in as little as 20 minutes.
Usually, I'll have around 20% after 12 hours. Been giving it a charge in the afternoon, and it hasn't been an issue.

I use Juice defender, and it does wonders for my battery life.

I've found battery life to be comparable to other Android devices; with effective battery management, mine gets me through the work day. My wife has the Optimus V and I have coworkers, one with a Droid X, the other with an Evo; my battery life is no better and no worse than any of those devices. With any smartphone you're going to have to turn off unused radios and turn down screen brightness if you're going to be away from a charger for a long period of time.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using Tapatalk

Heavy use is the real killer on the Triumph. With just the screen on (minimal brightness) and network on (bad coverage), I can drain the battery by about 1% every minute. And that's no exaggeration -- Battery Indicator Pro keeps track for me. I'm working on a spreadsheet to help chart battery drain during different scenarios.

Thanks for all the replies. Basically what I was expecting, but like to have confirmation
Now to find a good place to buy one. Will probably hit Bestbuy due to return convenience and policies.
Edit: Purchased at Bestbuy, and actually ran into Sprint rep who had one I could look at. We exchanged a few geek tips.
One thing I noticed: I have an LG brand microUSB charger, and the phone would not charge from it when turned on, tho it would charge when turned off. I had an older Motorola microUSB charger and it works fine either phone on or off.

I am getting a whole day of battery life with heavy use. I turned off the background data and turned off all sync. Using the email client with one hour pull with imap instead of the gmail client... Couldn't be happier with the phone...
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using Tapatalk

Yeah, I have also found that turning off sync can get you through the day with less battery used.
Depending on how much I use the Triumph, I can run the battery down in about 2-3 hours (with constant use) or have it run all day long and in to the next day (if I only use it for 1 or 2 short calls during the day.)

My motorola Triumph's Battery Life
I have waited months to post my reviews. I had a Virgin Mobile Intercept and upgraded to this the day after it came out.
Battery life is HORRENDOUS. Not sure how anyone can possibly say its "OK". Sure if you are sitting at home or in the office all day, You can continually have it plugged in and charged. My lighter socket doesn't work in my car ATM so thank GOD I don't drive a lot, and for long periods, I would be SCREWED.
Essentially yes if you turn off GPS, Wi-Fi, Syncing your emails and such, etc etc, then your battery will last longer. But what good is the phone then? I have owned many other androids and they worked for almost a full day with moderate usage with ALL of those things turned on and sync'ing (including Latitude and automatic check-ins). I have lost all of that. I have google talk catching up for hours-old conversations whenever I hit a wifi spot that's saved in my phone.
Juice Defender was my "solution" But it has rendered my phone practically useless for anything besides just having a phone handy when needed. No apps, no moe use of all the bells and whistles that I loved about android in the first place!
I am dealing with it. It just sucks. Sure there are other smartphones with similar issues, and poor battery life, but this has to be possibly the worst or one of the worst. It just is highly unfortunate that this is the case.
Also: Bluetooth syncing works 50% of the time. Constantly have to turn it off and on to get my jawbone(s) to sync. God forbid you answer a call and want to switch over to bluetooth. In those cases it works about 20% of the time.
This is not a good phone for people who are out and about all day or drivers of any sort, unless you have it plugged in the entire day. Forget about using it as a GPS unless its plugged in either, that will drain you battery to 0% in less than an hour.
People say this is due to poor design and rushed to market with crappy signal reception and GPS reception, same with bluetooth antennae. This might be the case, I ALSO have mine suddenly have NO BARS for no reason and I have to power off and on the phone to get a signal back.
ALSO half the time I am out and about and need data connection over 3G, even with bars I get NOTHING. It's very frustrating not to be able to use the phone for what I want to use it for.
I will be getting rid of this puppy as soon as possible and I would do it sooner if I didn't want to avoid a 2year contract.
The good part about the phone is it is MUCH faster and responsive than the Intercept and Optimus. Much better camera (has a flash - FINALLY!) and HD video. Front facing camera is nice to have but of course weaksauce in the resolution dept. Overall A+ for effort, D- in execution.

kneel said:
I have waited months to post my reviews. I had a Virgin Mobile Intercept and upgraded to this the day after it came out.
Battery life is HORRENDOUS. Not sure how anyone can possibly say its "OK". Sure if you are sitting at home or in the office all day, You can continually have it plugged in and charged. My lighter socket doesn't work in my car ATM so thank GOD I don't drive a lot, and for long periods, I would be SCREWED.
Essentially yes if you turn off GPS, Wi-Fi, Syncing your emails and such, etc etc, then your battery will last longer. But what good is the phone then? I have owned many other androids and they worked for almost a full day with moderate usage with ALL of those things turned on and sync'ing (including Latitude and automatic check-ins). I have lost all of that. I have google talk catching up for hours-old conversations whenever I hit a wifi spot that's saved in my phone.
Juice Defender was my "solution" But it has rendered my phone practically useless for anything besides just having a phone handy when needed. No apps, no moe use of all the bells and whistles that I loved about android in the first place!
I am dealing with it. It just sucks. Sure there are other smartphones with similar issues, and poor battery life, but this has to be possibly the worst or one of the worst. It just is highly unfortunate that this is the case.
Also: Bluetooth syncing works 50% of the time. Constantly have to turn it off and on to get my jawbone(s) to sync. God forbid you answer a call and want to switch over to bluetooth. In those cases it works about 20% of the time.
This is not a good phone for people who are out and about all day or drivers of any sort, unless you have it plugged in the entire day. Forget about using it as a GPS unless its plugged in either, that will drain you battery to 0% in less than an hour.
People say this is due to poor design and rushed to market with crappy signal reception and GPS reception, same with bluetooth antennae. This might be the case, I ALSO have mine suddenly have NO BARS for no reason and I have to power off and on the phone to get a signal back.
ALSO half the time I am out and about and need data connection over 3G, even with bars I get NOTHING. It's very frustrating not to be able to use the phone for what I want to use it for.
I will be getting rid of this puppy as soon as possible and I would do it sooner if I didn't want to avoid a 2year contract.
The good part about the phone is it is MUCH faster and responsive than the Intercept and Optimus. Much better camera (has a flash - FINALLY!) and HD video. Front facing camera is nice to have but of course weaksauce in the resolution dept. Overall A+ for effort, D- in execution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This post is harsh. But I agree with most of it. Overall, the Triumph fits with a prepaid phone reputation: niggly bugs, poor battery life, poor service quality when compared to a higher end device.
The main problem here is that you'll be totally dependent on the community for real bug fixes. Every phone has bugs. But the bugs on the Triumph affect core usability and are on a totally different level. I would not count on Motorola to fix these bugs. If you're the tinkering type and a patient person, this may be worth it. But anyone who thinks that they are getting "something for free" is sadly mistaken. You are paying $25 a month for cell phone service, which is great . But all these bugs will make you pay with your time. How? Time looking for new roms, apps to fix bad battery life, time wondering why the touchscreen response is poor, time working around the bugs in every day life. If that is fun to you (and it may be for most people on this forum), fine. But you are paying with your time. Lesson learned is not to be so quick to fall for the specs. The company offering the phone and their track record of pushing out updates should play a large part in my decision next time.

I usually have WiFi turned on all day, and sync. I use the phone on my breaks and at lunch. When I get home I troll forums heavily and watch netflix occasionally. Not to mention Pandora for at least an hour per day. The battery will last if I dont plug it in until the next morning. Bottom line is that a lot of these issues can be fixed with quality software, and a battery cycle of 18-24 hours is something I can definitly live with. Compared to my Ascend, the Triumph is soooo much better in battery dept.
Sent from my rooted Moto Triumph

Battery issues
I am not sure why a lot of people have issues with battery, I unplugged my phone over 7 hrs ago and right now have 57% battery left, now before you hang your head at this look at my usage:
-Over 1 hour of talktime out of 7 hours.
-50+ texts back and forth
-10+ emails back and forth
-5-10 youtube videos
-5-10 pages of web browsing
-dl and install apps
-facebook at least 2-3 times every hour
And some more fiddling around so basically I have been on the phone non stop for 7 hours and its lost only 43%
That said, most of that usage came from the first 4 hours where it lost 36%(1+ hour of talktime, youtube videos im not really shocked there)
6th hour i texted and browsed etc only 5% battery used.
7th hour I just sent back and forth a couple of texts and only 2% battery used.
All this when i dont use any applications like task killers etc..i just let them run the way they want. Also no wifi, everything over 3g.
so imo if it gives that kind of battery its good enough for me. I was really scared when i bought cuz people were complaining so much about its battery but im fairly surprised. One factor that could be though is that I am not running the GPS, no need for it yet, when I do ill update what kind of usage i got.

I get 23 hours battery life with HEAVY usage and 30 if mostly idle. Many may disagree but if you live or work in a Wifi zone, keeping wifi on and setting it to never sleep greatly INCREASES battery life. 3G radio uses more juice especially if low signal or always searching. If you click on Battery Use and see your "time without a signal" is anything over 20% then you will most certainly see increase on battery life if you leave wifi locked on while in a wifi zone.
Also, side note: I have a 1500mah Anker battery that also increases juice time I recommend it!
Sent from my Rooted MOTWX435KT using XDA App

23 hrs with heavy usage? Unless yours came with a 2300ma battery and not the paltry 1380ma battery, there's NO WAY you're getting 23 hours under heave usage.

I'm using a 1500mah calibrated battery and yep, its true I leave wifi on and set to never sleep when I'm at home or work. If not, 3G absolutely murders my battery. My phone drops between 3% and 5% per hour.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using XDA App

Well today I am having less luck with battery life. I watched two movies on Netflix and constant Facebook. I unplugged at 10:30am and it is now 4:48pm and I am at 52%.. still using 1500mah battery.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using XDA App

troll somewhere else

I just came from a Samsung Epic 4G. I have to say battery life it at least the same but probably better on the Triumph. The battery is also quicker to swap out on the Triumph. Between the already better battery life and ability to quickly swap, I'm more than happy.

garrmack said:
I just came from a Samsung Epic 4G. I have to say battery life it at least the same but probably better on the Triumph. The battery is also quicker to swap out on the Triumph. Between the already better battery life and ability to quickly swap, I'm more than happy.
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As horrible as the Triumph batt life is then I'd hate to think how bad the Epic 4g's life was...wow!

My Mom's GS3 is dying fast. I think it's LTE but I may be wrong.

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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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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Click to collapse
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.

[Q] AT&T and T-Mobile battery life differences?

I've been using both AT&T and T-Mobile (StraightTalk and T-Mobile) contract free for several months now and regardless of what my signal is on the two, I always seem to get worse battery life with StraightTalk/AT&T. Has anyone else played around with using both in the same places for an extended period of time and had the same results?
I'm trying to decide which I'm going to go with and so far even though I get LTE service in less areas with T-Mobile, I'm almost tempted to stick with them just because 1) when I do have LTE service, it's a ton faster then AT&T and 2) I get much less battery drain on T-Mobile then I do with AT&T.
Even in places where I had worse reception with T-Mobile (which less face it, is very often), I still get less battery drain then when I switch to AT&T and have a much better signal. Not sure if I'm hallucinating or if anyone else has experienced the same.
For example, at the hotel I'm currently at, while on T-Mobile my signal isn't quite as good as it is with AT&T but it takes several HOURS before my battery % drops below 90%. On AT&T I have a much better signal but yet I'll be within the low 80s after 3 or so hours.
Has anyone else tried this and if so have you noticed the same thing?

battery life is dependent on how you personally use the phone, how you set it up, and, most importantly, the quality of your phone/data connection. the quality of your phone/data connection could make or brake your battery life, by 1 or 2 screen on hours. thats a huge difference.

simms22 said:
battery life is dependent on how you personally use the phone, how you set it up, and, most importantly, the quality of your phone/data connection. the quality of your phone/data connection could make or brake your battery life, by 1 or 2 screen on hours. thats a huge difference.
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Oh I realize all of that. When home and not on travel I pretty much utilize my phone at two locations. Home and Work. In both locations I used each network for about 2 weeks checking cell signals etc and using the phone the same way the entire time. During this time I've noticed one constant, my phone with AT&T always drains the battery much faster. To be honest I thought I was crazy but I double checked and ran for another couple of weeks..this time basically logging battery life with usage and connection quality. AT&T on average had a better signal but also drained the battery faster...usage was about the same through the test. So I did the same thing while basically sitting in a hotel for a few days and just letting the phone sit as I was mainly using a separate phone on Sprint. Same thing..the time I had the phone sitting there with AT&T it had almost a perfect signal but the phone drained quite a bit faster then T-Mobile with practically no utilization. Obviously I rebooted prior to each.
I realize this doesn't make any sense at all but it's something I'm noticing.

I just found your post, and I'm experiencing the exact same issue. To quote a post I just made on reddit:
I've been a T-mobile prepaid customer (the $30 5gb plan) since I've had the N5, and recently I decided to switch to Straight Talk for the better coverage (I got the AT&T compatible SIM). I've been using the Straight Talk SIM for the past week, and I've notice two very odd things:
1. Battery life is significantly worse on Straight Talk. Unfortunately I don't have any before and after screen shots, but to provide context, a typical day of usage on T-mobile would leave me with ~50% battery life at the end of the day. Now, with Straight Talk and that same usage, I'm down to 10-20%.
2. With Straight Talk, I consistently have 4-5 bars of LTE, but oftentimes when I try and load a web page, there can be about a 5 second delay before the page starts loading. Even when running the Speed Test app, when it's testing the download speed, it will sometimes completely stop mid-download for a few seconds.
Have you found any solution to the battery issue you cited in your post?

I knew I wasn't nuts!
http://bgr.com/2014/08/06/best-smartphone-battery-life-t-mobile/

ParadingLunatic said:
I knew I wasn't nuts!
http://bgr.com/2014/08/06/best-smartphone-battery-life-t-mobile/
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again, it still fits right in, its the data/phone signal quality that decides the battery life, as i wrote earlier. lowered quality = lowered battery life, period.