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[App Idea] GSM/WCDMA Switcher

Hey guys,
As the radio stack is the second cause of battery draining after the display, I was thinking about a way to save battery life by reducing the impact of the 3G connection. Most of the energy saving apps on the market are only disconnecting the phone from the APN, but this isn't a great solution as each app could be set to update at different times and thus being unable to download data even if the user sets some exceptions. So I thought that an application which operates in the following way could be great to save power:
- The phone uses the 3G network while the screen is on;
- It switches to 2G when phone is in standby mode;
- It disconnects the APN data connection while the phone is using a WiFi Network;
Obviously to avoid possible issues during the switch between 2G and 3G the following rules are applied:
- If there's an incoming call or a phone call is being performed, there won't be any radio switch until the phone call is ended;
- If there's an incoming SMS/MMS, there won't be any radio switch until the text message is fully received.
Unfortunately as I'm not a Java developer I can't code anything like this. But let me know what you guys think about my idea and if it's technically feasible... Maybe some developer could be interested into further exploring my thoughts and will try to create such an app
Cheers

I'm not a developer but I think it sounds like a great idea. I go into settings and switch it to 2g when I'm in spotty areas outside of town. I have to work a bit to keep my N1 battery alive all day...

Hello I'm new here.
I don't know if your suggested profiles are the best case scenarios. You would need to calculate your data throughput, not just the radio power.
If you need to send 100 packets, your radio would be on the longest for edge > 3g > wifi. So, even though wifi uses the most power, it would be for a much shorter duration.
A profile for "place calls only" would work somewhat like airplane mode, but still keep track of towers. Your phone just wouldn't register on the network unless you wanted to place a call. You would miss your incoming calls, have no data connection, or sms. But, you could have it check at an interval for voicemail or sms. This would be most useful for "ringer off" situations like class or meeting.

Afaik Android is always connected to the APN even if the phone is not downloading anything, consuming a lot of battery power. On other platforms, i.e. Windows Mobile, the connection can be terminated by user and re-established when an app needs that.
The amount of data downloaded by widgets, Google mobile applications or apps which operates in background like eBuddy or Facebook should be quite low, so downloading the required data by using GSM or WCDMA while the phone is in standby would be pretty much the same. The only difference is that downloading stuff using GSM/EDGE should take much less energy power.
So that's why I thought about the app I described before: the phone can save a lot of energy power while in standby and be back to its full horsepower when there is any kind of user intervention. Pretty much the same thing that the system already does for CPU usage. It scales to the less consuming protocol (or, in the case of CPU, frequency and voltage) to save power

I know on the google api it isn't possible to do this, but I don't think that isn't the problem.
At the moment you have 3 options. GSM only, WCDMA only and GSM/WCDMA. Whenever you switch between the 3 of them, the phone will lose signal for 10 seconds before it can find the best network. So the switcher here is not the best as you will lose connection, and what if you are downloading something at the same time...
What you need is when the phone is on GSM/WCDMA that it knows the best network to pick from depending on the phones lifecycle. GSM/WCDMA loses battery power because it always tries to find the best network to connect to, so for example if you are on GSM it will constantly try to find a 3G network etc (as far as I understand it).
What we need is the ability for the phone to stay on GSM when the phone is idle and then when the phone is woken up to automatically start to search for a WCDMA network and then gracefully switch over like it does now. For this I have no idea if it is possible as I don't know how the scanning of the network works. If it is possible then that would be wicked. But this is what we need.

my preference would be if the phone would stay on 3g as long as any possible even if there would be a more reliable 2g connection and only switch to 2g if there really is no way to connect to 3g. turn of apn if the screen us turned of for longer then 1 or 2 minutes and only check every 15 minutes or so.
most of the time I'm on 3g only mode . since I live in a city I got good coverage almost all over the city. only problem is that when there is no 3g available also my phone is unreachable. I don't really miss data connectivity when there is no 3g since 2g is so slow that I rather have no internet at all but not being sale to be called or texted is a major disadvantage...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

[Q] Cellular data usage when Mobile data is disabled

Hi there.
I have been recently working outside my home country and I disable my mobile data as soon as I reach the airport.
My Nexus 5, now with 4.4.3 reports 0 bytes of data when I am in roaming and I never got a notification or any sort of activity that may point to a data access being made, yet my service provider sent a big bill with many 10KB accesses during the time I was in roaming.
The same problem might exist while at my home country, but since I have a few hundreds of MB to use each month, I can't really tell.
Anyone else is facing the same problem?
I will temporarily ask my service provider to block my data access while in roaming, but I would like to understand if that is some sort of Android bug or a service provider charging what it shouldn't.

I've looked a bit more into this issue and I suspect that it was the Google Location Services that try to obtain the positioning from the cellular mobile network.
I've installed the Network Monitor Mini and it showed me a few times that process has a residual network usage.
Since I'm on Wifi most of the time, I assumed that network usage was on the WiFi but now I understand that being connected to the WiFi doesn't mean that the phone cannot use cellular data.
Can anyone that uses little Mobile Data (disabled in the Settings most of the time) confirm that the eventually you get some cellular data charged if you have the Location Settings set to use the mobile networks?

Sorry for the monologue, but this might be useful for someone that may face this problem in the feature.
After being more attentive to the network usage pointed by Network Monitor Mini, I think I found the culprit.
I've spent the last weeks with mobile data completely off, using only WiFi, yet on a couple of occasions I noticed Network Monitor Mini reporting minimal network usage being made when no know network WiFi was around.
As the screenshot shows, the WiFi is not connected to any known access point, yet some data was being uploaded by one of those processes.
I think the phone is trying to ping the cellular antenna for a location, thus accounting for mobile data access.
I've disabled the location and I will keep monitoring the data usage to see if that is the real culprit. Also noticed that Network Monitor Mini has a traffic breakdown mode per interface. I'll use that to distinguish wifi and cellular data.

why not just disable data complete, a data signal wont even appear because it wont be connected to data? go to main settings, more, mobile networks, data enabled.. now uncheck it and your data connection will disappear, but your phone connection will stay.
edit.. and if you have root, you can install the disable service app, then you can disable the 5 differing types of location services that your phone uses.

Hi simms22.
Like I said on the first post, that was the first thing I did in the airport. I'm not saying simply disabling roaming data, I disabled data completely.
The point I'm trying to show is that even with mobile data disabled, in roaming I still got several tiny chunks of data registered by my operator and I occasionally noticed Network Monitor Mini showing 0.1KB upload, as shown in the screenshot.
Regards.

VuDuCuRSe said:
Hi simms22.
Like I said on the first post, that was the first thing I did in the airport. I'm not saying simply disabling roaming data, I disabled data completely.
The point I'm trying to show is that even with mobile data disabled, in roaming I still got several tiny chunks of data registered by my operator and I occasionally noticed Network Monitor Mini showing 0.1KB upload, as shown in the screenshot.
Regards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, a little bit of data can be transferred through the phone signal(sms). do you have disabled in wifi settings, bottom right three dots, advanced, scanning always available? that uses the wifi to scan for location even when wifi is off, maybe they do that with the mobile signal as well. anyways, about a month ago, google location services kept waking my device non stop, so i completely disabled them in the google play services using the disable service app(i have root). now google never checks for my location unless i let it.

Hey.
I disabled the Location services in Settings, restricted the background data and so far it has been three days with no data accesses registered by my provider.
I don't think the background data is responsible for the traffic so I will wait a couple more days and then re-enable it.
I think the Location services are useful and I do like those small things it offers like weather prediction for where you are, where you parked the car, time to go home/work and movie times near you. The only problem is that it doesn't seem to respect the Mobile data status.

Just raised an issue in the AOSP tracker
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=72332&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
If you share the concern on this problem, please star it to give visibility.

VuDuCuRSe said:
Just raised an issue in the AOSP tracker
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=72332&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
If you share the concern on this problem, please star it to give visibility.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It also happens with me but I have a Galaxy S4. It's a huge defect to alow location to consume mobile data even with the data roaming and mobile data disabled.

OPO - Data usage (Cellular) restrictions for calls and data separately

Hi Guys,
I am here with a..I hope possible to solve situation.
I have switched to our local carrier, which provides only 2G and 4G connection, but... I have 1GB of data for 4G, but my OPO is sometimes switching to EDGE, which makes me fury, because I am paying for anything transferred through 2G (separately as it is not in the data package I have), but all calls are on 2G, which makes restricting the connection to "LTE-only" impossible, becuase it would result in no access to the calls/text messages.
I have found this article
http://editorsean.com/articles/how-to-force-three-to-use-3g-and-4g-only/
which is really great, but with those options I am forced to use GSM/LTE and such..
Is there any chance of letting my calls and text messages just using 2G network as usuall, but forcing my internet access using just LTE ? There is of course an option for disabling "national roaming" (I hope, it is called the same in english), I have it disabled, but it is still connecting to the 2G and draining data from it...
Is there a chance it is a problem from my side ? I did not factory reseted the phone since buying, doing just OTA upgrades and such, so I was thinking, if the system is not kind of bloated...I had some weird things happening with it too in the past - recently I have seen that in the battery saving mode I could see some like various screen brightness jumps while playing a game for example.

Can apps bypass disabled Data Transmission?

Is it possible for applications to bypass Data Transmission switch and Roaming block?
I have been traveling abroad recently and even though I have Roaming Data disabled and Data Transmission disabled in the system I still got charged for data transmission.
I have travelled with it before last two trips and have not seen the problem.
Since I had similar situation last time I was traveling, I made sure that those settings are off couple of times over the course of the trip.
When I check data usage (Settings -> Data Usage) for that period is practically zero, but there are some Google apps listed for that period: Internet, Kids Mode, Youtube, Smart Remote, and Google Movies BUT they all list 0kB for usage and I'm not using neither KidsMode nor Smart Remote.
It does not look like operator related since I got charges from several countries.
Any ideas what might be going on? I will file a complaint for the charges with my operator (not counting on positive response there), but I still would like to use my phone when travelling, but if blocking data transmission is not enough to prevent roaming charges - what is?
For reference my phone is European Galaxy S5, running Stock, not rooted, 4.4.2 Android
thanks in advance,
Kubak

Data off from settings will surely off any transmission. No app is allowed to bypass that setting. Dont know if you are talking about check on data roaming, you should just off the data.

There could some problem with the data switching. Since your phone is not rooted it shoudn't happen but some apps may be doing this. Try flight mode/airplane mode. If problem still does not go OR if you want your data on Try the app permission management.
Settings-->Security-->App permission management.

Thanks for the replies guys!
To clarify - I have been always using the Roaming data off setting when traveling. And it worked until my last two trips.
On previous one I did not disable data since the setting always worked before. When I got charged for data, I made sure I additionally switch off the Data and keep it off during my trip.
The data usage meter on the phone shows 0.0 kB with several Google apps listed (as mentioned initially) they are all set to restricted mode - no background data.
It looks that IF there was any transmission it was small - one of the operators on route charged just 1kB, but ATT was happy to charge me 50kB up and down every time this happened?
The Airplane mode can be a solution but will pretty much "kill" the phone - I would still like to be able to be reachable under that number.
I was a bit suspicious of Llama app fiddling with data, but even that should not bypass the Roaming setting (and there would be a lot of data being transferred)
And the problematic part is I don't think I can check data usage with my operator in real time - I just learn from my monthly bill...
So it looks like "something" is bypassing the "no data in roaming setting" - but what?
Any suggestions are welcome

I had the same experience recently and I've figured it out. Even if your roaming function is turned off there are VOIP apps that can bypass your roaming and you will get charged for data. Facebook calls, Whatsapp calls and IMO calls are a few. I noticed the last time when I was travelling through the States (with my roaming off) that when a fb call rang my phone (I did not answer), every frickin' fb notification for the week came through during the duration of the ringing (remember ... I did not answer / connect to call), and I got dinged for 4 bucks for every one. The only way to get around it is to have phone on airplane mode or delete / uninstall the apps while you are away.

[SOLVED] 3G consumes more battery than LTE, how this happens?

Hello XDA Community!
When my new phone (Huawei P9 Lite Mini) is on 3G/2G auto network mode, it consumes more battery than LTE/3G/2G auto mode even mobile data off.
I do not understand how this happens? For example, while 3G consumption at overnight is %10-15; LTE is only %2-3. This problem is the same in daytime too. Mobile data is off, unneccesary services/apps disabled, and no extra application installed while this happens. I tried all "wipe/factory reset/update firmware/factory reset/wipe/no app install" procedures, enabling all battery saving options, but it did not work. This is a problem for me when I'm in non-LTE areas.
This problem occurs the same result in different locations. There was no problem with my previous phone and I use same nano sim card.
I tried the following but it did not work:
- Wipe cache, factory reset, wipe cache,
- Wipe data/factory reset over recovery menu,
- Update latest firmware, wipe data etc. again.
How this happens and where am I doing wrong? Thank you for your help, best regards!
EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED!
I changed my mobile carrier (provider) and the problem is gone. This is very interesting! I worked for hours and days to solve the problem, but this problem is neither caused by the phone nor by the software...

WCDMA (aka 3G with support for 2G/Edge) is in always-on mode on most phones, because that's how you receive and emit phone calls and, for most phones, SMS (in some more recent phones, LTE takes care of sending and receiving SMS/MMS), so if you're in an area where 3G/2G reception is poor, your phone has trouble locking on a cell with enough power to maintain contact, hence the battery drain.
4G/LTE only works for data, and voice if you have VoLTE (Voice over LTE) enabled, but works on a on-demand mode, even with cellular data constantly enabled. In other words, the 4G modem on your phone will memorize the latest position and IP address the nearest 4G tower/cell allocated it, and connect to it using the memorized settings when you need it to.
Not so with 3G, where DHCP doesn't exist, at least not the way it does in 4G: it uses PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol), where an ad-hoc IP address is attributed to each new connection, based on a pool of existing addresses allocated to the tower and its owner (carrier) by the authorities.

UglyStuff said:
WCDMA (aka 3G with support for 2G/Edge) is in always-on mode on most phones, because that's how you receive and emit phone calls and, for most phones, SMS (in some more recent phones, LTE takes care of sending and receiving SMS/MMS), so if you're in an area where 3G/2G reception is poor, your phone has trouble locking on a cell with enough power to maintain contact, hence the battery drain.
4G/LTE only works for data, and voice if you have VoLTE (Voice over LTE) enabled, but works on a on-demand mode, even with cellular data constantly enabled. In other words, the 4G modem on your phone will memorize the latest position and IP address the nearest 4G tower/cell allocated it, and connect to it using the memorized settings when you need it to.
Not so with 3G, where DHCP doesn't exist, at least not the way it does in 4G: it uses PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol), where an ad-hoc IP address is attributed to each new connection, based on a pool of existing addresses allocated to the tower and its owner (carrier) by the authorities.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your reply!
When I googled about 3G vs. LTE battery consumption, everyone says that LTE will consume more batteries. That's make sense on first thought. So what I've been through is very interesting to me.
I think about is there a problem with my phone's 3G antenna. (footnote: I don't know about that 3g and LTE antennas are same or seperate?)
But I understand that you say this is normal, right?
Edit: I found a forum that this problem may be due to the operator (carrier). I'm still investigating...

3G and 4G operate on basically the same principle: receiving and sending "information" via radio waves.
The difference lies in the frequencies each standard uses, the way the data sent over them is modulated and demodulated, and how handsets make and maintain connection, so if you stay in the same location, and set your phone to 3G-only, then switch Airplane mode on then off, it'll take your phone longer to reconnect to the 3G cell/tower with the strongest signal (not necessarily the closest to you), because it'll have to go through the whole getting-acquainted process again, whereas in 4G, it'll go straight to the "Hey, how do you do? Long time, no see".
Now, if your phone antenna has a problem, you could be standing a few feet from the tower, in line of sight, and still get a crappy to non-existent signal. How many bars are showing on your screen is just an indication of how well your phone is receiving the signal from the tower; it doesn't mean that this signal is consistent and steady, hence the bars coming and going in real time.
If I were you, I'd download and install the Hidden Settings app from the Play Store, and run it; there, you go to RadioInfo, and you'll get a lot of information about how your phone modem actually works. It's a bit technical, but it would give you an indication.

I will try and looking for a new carrier. Thank you again. See you.

I changed my mobile carrier (provider) and the problem is gone. This is very interesting! I worked for hours and days to solve the problem, but this problem is neither caused by the phone nor by the software...