Related
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
same problems here
Scrappy1 said:
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem. Have went through many sim cards and factory resets. After 5 phone I finally have one that holds the signal a little better and does not go into this "funky mode". With the previous 4 (white 32gig) verizon phone I would burn through a battery in 6 hours at work. It would start with a drop in signal strengh at around -93 or so. Nothing would fix it. I finally got a blue 32gig and it seems to hold the signal to around -99. I don't know if I got a better batch of phones. But it seems to help me get through a day at work.
Scrappy1 said:
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not normal. Where I work I get 3g primarily but also 4g in the front of the building.....in the far back I get 1x. I have had my phone totally drop data for a while (like the radio sleeps or something) but never had the radio stick between 4g and 3g. I also live right on the edge of a 4g/3g line and my dbm right now is 111 on 4g LTE......If this was normal I would have had the situation your having since my signal is basically identical to yours. I would return it or at the very least contact Samsung. I'm sure Samsung will tell you to send it in for repair.
I have very weak signal at my house also. S3 switches from LTE to 3G and 1X and sometimes loosing signal completely downstairs but upstairs usually I get solid LTE with around -99dBm and ~10Mbps transfers. During this network jumping my battery drains very fast also but I never had my radio constantly locked at one frequency or signal strength. And I can directly compare signal reception to my wife's Fascinate and S3 loses this competition badly. Fascinate never completely lost signal at our house and it rarely jumps to 1X.
I did a factory reset yesterday and so far so good... I''ll update as time goes on.
As far as signal strength goes in general,my wife's Droid Charge always pulls in a few more LTE dBm's than my GS3. Based on general public feedback, GS3 is below average on signal and radio issues. It's too bad because the rest of the phone is above average.
It's been 2 days after the factory reset and no problems with battery drain or radio lock up.
The only app that I could maybe try and blame is Elixir 2's create widget feature for signal strength. This always returned bogus values and may have embedded itself at an unholy level. Simply uninstalling elixir 2 didn't fix it.
If anyone still cares... I found my radio lockup and battery drain issues returned only after I reinstalled Better Battery Stats. I again removed it and will see if I stay good.
Hi
I tried searching Google, but get a lot of different answers.
I live in an area with a very bad cellular coverage. I always have 1 out of 5 bars and when I turn mobile data on, it is mainly LTE, but jumps a bit between LTE and Edge and rarely H and H+.
Can that cause a lot of battery drain? As I just factory reset my phone to get rid of every change I did. I enabled Stamina Mode, surfed the web for 15 minutes and my phone was at 95%. Is that normal? Because if my math is right, that shouldn't give me more than 5 hours of screen time, while I heard people getting 8+ without Stamina Mode.
Am I missing something or is their some very needed settings to be changed? Sync off, GPS off, bluetooth, Brightness is as low as possible, NFC off, black background (less power consumption), Wifi off and Wifi constant searching off.
U can easly check urself how cell signal draining battery ,first Check how it is with normal H+/LTE then charg it again for 100% and use ur smartphone with plane mode acivated ,now subtract result from 2 "experiment"
Also of note is that black backgrounds mean diddly on our displays. We aren't on OLEDs.
Also, if you ARE in wifi area it's better to be connected to wifi. Wifi is closer than the cell tower and data disconnects when wifi is connected.
On AMOLED/OLED black background helps because each pixel is individually lit (Black means those pixels are off). In LCDs there is a backlight providing illumination for the entire LCD so as long as your screen is on it won't make a differrence what colors are on your screen.
I'm having a similar issue. I have very low cell reception at work, and I can get maybe 4-5 hours SoT throughout the day and am at 10% when I get home. I've tried uninstalling/disabling apps that use a lot of battery, so hopefully it helps. I'll update if by the end of today I'm able to get 7+ hours SoT (which it seems it's on track to doing).
Edit: For clarification, the apps I've uninstalled that I believed to be using a lot of processing power/ram/battery were Facebook, [Facebook] Messenger, and Words with Friends.
festizzio said:
I'm having a similar issue. I have very low cell reception at work, and I can get maybe 4-5 hours SoT throughout the day and am at 10% when I get home. I've tried uninstalling/disabling apps that use a lot of battery, so hopefully it helps. I'll update if by the end of today I'm able to get 7+ hours SoT (which it seems it's on track to doing).
Edit: For clarification, the apps I've uninstalled that I believed to be using a lot of processing power/ram/battery were Facebook, [Facebook] Messenger, and Words with Friends.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just use an app like Greenify to block apps running in the background when not in use so you dont havr to uninstall them.
Brightness can have a lot to play on this one. I tend to go with manual brightness so there's no ambient sensors working all the while the display is on, and if you are doing anything where you can cope with lower brightness then drop it.
Keep an eye in battery stats for "google play services" as this can go nuts. When this happens sometimes clearing data can help.
I also found that using google+ to backup my photos caused a lot of battery drain.
I have not found facebook or whatsapp etc to affect my battery much personally. I use stamina mode when i'm out and about to keep the phone at sleep while the screen is off.
ssj_jaypee said:
Just use an app like Greenify to block apps running in the background when not in use so you dont havr to uninstall them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No root. WIthout Greenify is just annoying.
Jonathan-H said:
Brightness can have a lot to play on this one. I tend to go with manual brightness so there's no ambient sensors working all the while the display is on, and if you are doing anything where you can cope with lower brightness then drop it.
Keep an eye in battery stats for "google play services" as this can go nuts. When this happens sometimes clearing data can help.
I also found that using google+ to backup my photos caused a lot of battery drain.
I have not found facebook or whatsapp etc to affect my battery much personally. I use stamina mode when i'm out and about to keep the phone at sleep while the screen is off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Deleted Messenger and Facebook just for the sake of it. I don't have the need to be online all the time and the people that want to contact me, have my number.
Faspaiso said:
it is mainly LTE, but jumps a bit between LTE and Edge and rarely H and H+.
Can that cause a lot of battery drain?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
At my house I get just enough LTE to cause our S3 to constantly switch to LTE then loose it and switch back to H+. Battery life couldn't make it thru one day. ATT removes the screen that let's you control network mode but I found a backdoor method to lock the phone out of LTE. The phone now stays on H+ and battery life easily jumped 40%. That's the primary reason I held out this time for an unlocked non-ATT-crippled phone--so I can easily turn LTE off.
Well, tried have my phone on over night (for a change to test it).
Everything off (mobile data, gps etc).
Used 7% of my power and every app was closed. When I looked at battery drain, 55% was from cell standby and 40-45% was from Phone Idle.
Tonight I will try charge it to 100% again and then let it be in Flight Mode to see.
I struggled to flatten the battery on my phone the first day 70% of the day with the screen on, no wifi enabled or stamina.
Another test would be to change mobile settings to 3G or 2G to see what difference that makes. Under settings, wireless & networks, select more, mobile networks, then network mode.
I would try the above first before making your phone completely unavailable, especially the 2G.
danw_oz said:
I struggled to flatten the battery on my phone the first day 70% of the day with the screen on, no wifi enabled or stamina.
Another test would be to change mobile settings to 3G or 2G to see what difference that makes. Under settings, wireless & networks, select more, mobile networks, then network mode.
I would try the above first before making your phone completely unavailable, especially the 2G.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just did the tests.
Flightmode - 100% after 8 hours (sleep)
Edge - 99% after 8 hours (sleep)
4g - 93% after 8 hours (sleep)
Faspaiso said:
Just did the tests.
Flightmode - 100% after 8 hours (sleep)
Edge - 99% after 8 hours (sleep)
4g - 93% after 8 hours (sleep)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice, thank you! Care to check hspa too?
Fruktsallad said:
Nice, thank you! Care to check hspa too?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is that? H/H+?
GSM - Edge
WCDMA - H/H+
LTE - 4g
But I think 4g uses less power than edge, but it is more than in my area there is 1/5 in 4g coverage, 3-4/5 in H/H+ and 5/5 (always) if using edge.
As I see an better connection gives better batterylife, but 4g uses way less than 3g/edge if same cell signal.
But is going to try it next time I get down to my dad. He got 5/5 in LTE signal. So gonna see if it can stay at 100% over night.
Faspaiso said:
What is that? H/H+?
GSM - Edge
WCDMA - H/H+
LTE - 4g
But I think 4g uses less power than edge, but it is more than in my area there is 1/5 in 4g coverage, 3-4/5 in H/H+ and 5/5 (always) if using edge.
As I see an better connection gives better batterylife, but 4g uses way less than 3g/edge if same cell signal.
But is going to try it next time I get down to my dad. He got 5/5 in LTE signal. So gonna see if it can stay at 100% over night.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hehe, ok I understand. But HSPA = 3G. [emoji4] I haven't done any rigorous testing, but I think my stand by times are much better using edge (2G) compared to 3G.
Fruktsallad said:
Hehe, ok I understand. But HSPA = 3G. [emoji4] I haven't done any rigorous testing, but I think my stand by times are much better using edge (2G) compared to 3G.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see. But if you change between those, you probs have an better cell signal with 2g (in your area), right?
Faspaiso said:
I see. But if you change between those, you probs have an better cell signal with 2g (in your area), right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, coverage is about the same. Generally speaking though, 2G > 3G > 4G when it comes to battery life. That's been the rule for years, but as of late, newer radios have become more efficient with 3G and 4G, thus making the difference less noticeable. YMMV. Would be interesting to see your drainage on 3G as well. ☺
Fruktsallad said:
Nope, coverage is about the same. Generally speaking though, 2G > 3G > 4G when it comes to battery life. That's been the rule for years, but as of late, newer radios have become more efficient with 3G and 4G, thus making the difference less noticeable. YMMV. Would be interesting to see your drainage on 3G as well. ☺
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well could try it tonight.
I've noticed that when I leave my phone idle at work, it will drain about 2% an hour even though my signal is stronger (usually around -95 dB). At home, I have a fairly weak LTE signal (usually -100 to -105), but my device will not drain nearly as quickly when idle.
I've been sitting at my desk for the last 3 hours, with maybe 2 or 3 minutes of SoT and it's gone from 90% down to 84%. At home, I'd see about 1-2% drop in the same amount of time.
Are there any engineers out there who would know why this thing would happen? Is it because the phone is switching back and forth between different towers?
This didn't happen with my G3 as the behaviour and battery drain was consistent amongst the two locations.
Do you use wifi when at home and not at work?
flu13 said:
Do you use wifi when at home and not at work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm an idiot. This is probably it. I'll leave wifi off tonight to make sure.
Though, this now leads me to another question - Is the S6 really that bad when on LTE? As I mentioned in my prior post, my G3 did not drain this much and I didn't use wifi at work with that one either.