Develop Bugs

Sudden increase in power usage; TP2 gets hot but no obvious reason

My T-Mobile USA (standard ROM) Tp2 behaved very strangely earlier today, but seems to have recovered. Anyone had any similar experience?
a) Battery level decreased rapidly, and unit getting very warm
b) Battery Status today plugin showed > 900ma (and sometimes > 1300ma!!) current draw
c) Unit would not charge from my USB port (message that it wasn't providing enough current)
d) I put flight mode on, no appreciable change in behavior with all radios off.
e) Soft reset - no change
f) Task manager didn't show anything using undue amounts of CPU
In the end, I turned it off (completely), and it would then charge normally. Left it like that for two or three hours, and when I turned it back on everything seems to be ok.
I have a lot of software on there, but nothing installed new in the last few days. It's worked perfectly today - best cell phone or PDA I've had since my trusty Phillips Velo...
While this was happening it seemed slightly sluggish, but certainly not locked up. Only 'unusual' thing - yesterday I let the battery get real very low for the first time (left it with the screen on, and an app running). I almost wonder if somehow there's a power management issue recovering from this. Note - it was never completely dead, just very low.
Anyone had anything similar happen? I assume the problem is in the phone, not the battery (otherwise I wouldn't have seen the current draw)
-Steve

you can try to hard reset and put everything back in...
what i usually do is turn off 3g because it consumes a lot of battery..i'd use wifi as much as possible or edge.
you can try using cleanRam to clean up some excess space on the phone.
not sure about the charge, you might need to restart your PC or reinstall active sync so it can detect the phone.

judicious said:
you can try to hard reset and put everything back in...
what i usually do is turn off 3g because it consumes a lot of battery..i'd use wifi as much as possible or edge.
you can try using cleanRam to clean up some excess space on the phone.
not sure about the charge, you might need to restart your PC or reinstall active sync so it can detect the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He's not talking about ActiveSync or not detecting his phone.
However, I notice this behaviour almost all the time (device runs out of battery within one night) but only see those large power consumptions sometimes.
My device cannot be seen by any PC I tried (after first installing Mobile Center) so maybe there's a flaw in some devices?

Bright.Light said:
He's not talking about ActiveSync or not detecting his phone.
However, I notice this behaviour almost all the time (device runs out of battery within one night) but only see those large power consumptions sometimes.
My device cannot be seen by any PC I tried (after first installing Mobile Center) so maybe there's a flaw in some devices?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes -sorry I didn't make that clear. Phone was working ok (including activesync) - it's just that it was trying to take too much current from the USB port.
This has only happened once (fingers crossed!). I'm sure it's software (rather than a hardware fault), but I'm puzzled given that the task manager showed minimal CPU usage, and the power drain continued in airplane mode
-Steve

Your reception is probably bad. The TP2 will basically go insane if the reception is bad enough, I've seen it drain a fully charged battery in under 3 hours if you have push data turned on and there's 0-1 bars of reception. The battery life is quite good when reception is at least a few bars but once it goes below a certain point I've definitely noticed that the phone goes insane and will get noticeably warm in the pocket and basically die within a few hours.
Turning off push data will get you slightly better battery life in this scenario but unfortunately I still found that the battery would still be dead by the time I needed to use it. And it's not a network issue either since I tested it on different networks and compared it to other smartphones dealing with the same terrible reception-this phone definitely uses an insane amount of power when reception is bad, which isn't a problem if you're just transiently going through a bad reception area (probably helps keep the signal from dropping) but if you're spending a few hours in a place with poor reception it will drain insanely quickly.
Thankfully I'm spending my time in places with better reception now-I basically ended up having to turn off the phone if I wanted it to still have power by the end of the day but now it's still nearly full at the end of the day with just moderate reception.
HTC should really change the phone's behavior when there's 0-1 bars-it's nice that it tries to find a network aggressively when it loses a signal but there should be a timeout on it where it should start checking at longer intervals if there's a long period of no signals unless someone's trying to make a call or something. Really useless when you put your phone down for 2 hours in some overly shielded building and when you pick it up to make a call and it's dead. Not to mention uncomfortable when it starts heating up like crazy.
I'm not sure why you still got battery drainage even in airplane mode though but maybe the phone had already gone into whatever insane mode it goes into when the reception gets bad. Maybe it's one of the apps running the background that freaked out as well? I think my battery life was still kinda bad in airplane mode as well, for some reason I had to literally turn the phone off to get it to stop killing the battery.

i get zero bars at work and no reception. i've noticed that at work, my phone gets destroyed and lags like crazy and barely usable. it gets no reception for 8 hrs so its nice to know that other ppl are experiencing this problem and its not just me.

my tilt did this today, was warm to the touch, idled' didn't use it all day 6 hrs idle with signal, battery drained to 50% made a phone call 13 min duration, put the phone down watched a 2 hr show, phone dead.
not from signal/data.

My Tilt2 stock rom appears to have done the exact same thing today. Yesterday it had low battery for the first time ever... then today, it completely died in my pocket while at work (usually I have about 80% battery left at the end of the day). I noticed early this morning that the phone dropped from 100% to 60% about 2 hrs after it was off the charger. The phone felt hot. No programs were running in the background either. When i saw this, i ran cleanram and it still died a few hours later. Reset the phone and charging it now, hopefully this was a one time thing?

tekdemon said:
Your reception is probably bad. The TP2 will basically go insane if the reception is bad enough, I've seen it drain a fully charged battery in under 3 hours if you have push data turned on and there's 0-1 bars of reception. T....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think this might be it. Reception at work is normally really good (there's a tower in our parking lot!) - but I noticed today they are working on it.
The strange thing is that putting it in flight mode did not stop the power drain - to me that just doesn't make sense. However, I'm thinking that when I first did a soft reset, it probably wasn't in flight mode. So, the complete manual power down, followed by the resulting soft-reset into airplane mode) might be what fixed it.
My phone is often in areas of poor coverage (NW CT) - pretty much every day to/from work, and I've not seen this behavior with the TP2 before. Other GSM phones I've had do noticeably use more phone in areas of poor/non existent coverage, but this was a relative melt-down - I did wonder whether I had an internal short.
It's been ok since, and I'll report any future incidents or findings...

Happened to me two times, I figgured the problem was the GPS connection, improper exit from GPS app (AmazeGPS). Can be related to GoogleMaps or other app too. After restart, everything went back to normal.

slimslim said:
Happened to me two times, I figgured the problem was the GPS connection, improper exit from GPS app (AmazeGPS). Can be related to GoogleMaps or other app too. After restart, everything went back to normal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If that is so, how can we check if the GPS is still running?
I do a reset often, but that won't change a thing...
Besides, when I look, the power consumption often is 'slightly above normal' - 150maH-250maH.
btw: what is considered as normal consumption?

Battery Status plugin
I hate to sound like a fool, but I'm running the stock ATT Rom on my Tilt 2, and I cant find the "Battery Status today plugin" you mentioned. Is that a T-Mobile only thing?
Is there a .cab for it?
To reply to the primary topic though, I've experienced the heat increase/battery drain level thing, but it just started yesterday after I installed a whole bunch of stuff. This weekend I'm planning to hard-reset and load stuff slowly so maybe I can isolate the cause.
I'll post an update if I figure anything out.

FWIW - I've recently been trying to track down a battery drain, too.
For me, though, the drain has correlated with trying out SPB Mobile Shell 3, so that is clearly a likely candidate. However, the drain does seem to be mainly limited to night time.
For example, on Sunday the phone dropped to only around 80% after a full day out and about. However, by Monday morning it was down to 10%.
Similar results on Tuesday night - almost complete drain by the morning.
To see if I could work out what was going on, I installed acbTaskMan yesterday, and set it to log CPU overnight (it periodically logs CPU usage, power drain and the top three CPU users).
Unfortunately, there isn't any *obvious* candidate:
Microsoft "My Phone" kicked in for a couple of minutes and used quite a lot of power (max of 493ma). However, this dropped off once "My Phone" had done its stuff.
A lot of the time, its actually acbTaskMan which is the top user of CPU (probably unsurprising, given it is monitoring and logging).
There does seem to be a bit of residual network traffic - every five minutes (or so) there are a few UDP and TCP packets being sent.
Overall, the average reported power usage was about 113ma (with the max being 493 and the min being 5!). However, the reporting period seems a little odd - most of the time it reports every 5 seconds, but there are a few periods earlier in the night where there are gaps of up to 5 minutes.
What would people generally expect the average power usage to be when on standby?
FWIW The comments in this thread about low signal could certainly be relevant. I do have pretty low signal at home and I did leave the phone in a slightly different place last night (where it could have had a better signal than the two nights before).
My current hypothesis is that
Something in Mobile Shell is causing the network connection to keep alive all night (or is at least turning it on every five minutes).
This coupled with poor coverage in my house is hosing the battery. During the day, with good coverage, the network traffic isn't causing as much of a problem.
Ed

eepyaich said:
FWIW - I've recently been trying to track down a battery drain, too.
For me, though, the drain has correlated with trying out SPB Mobile Shell 3, so that is clearly a likely candidate. However, the drain does seem to be mainly limited to night time.
For example, on Sunday the phone dropped to only around 80% after a full day out and about. However, by Monday morning it was down to 10%.
Similar results on Tuesday night - almost complete drain by the morning.
To see if I could work out what was going on, I installed acbTaskMan yesterday, and set it to log CPU overnight (it periodically logs CPU usage, power drain and the top three CPU users).
Unfortunately, there isn't any *obvious* candidate:
Microsoft "My Phone" kicked in for a couple of minutes and used quite a lot of power (max of 493ma). However, this dropped off once "My Phone" had done its stuff.
A lot of the time, its actually acbTaskMan which is the top user of CPU (probably unsurprising, given it is monitoring and logging).
There does seem to be a bit of residual network traffic - every five minutes (or so) there are a few UDP and TCP packets being sent.
Overall, the average reported power usage was about 113ma (with the max being 493 and the min being 5!). However, the reporting period seems a little odd - most of the time it reports every 5 seconds, but there are a few periods earlier in the night where there are gaps of up to 5 minutes.
What would people generally expect the average power usage to be when on standby?
FWIW The comments in this thread about low signal could certainly be relevant. I do have pretty low signal at home and I did leave the phone in a slightly different place last night (where it could have had a better signal than the two nights before).
My current hypothesis is that
Something in Mobile Shell is causing the network connection to keep alive all night (or is at least turning it on every five minutes).
This coupled with poor coverage in my house is hosing the battery. During the day, with good coverage, the network traffic isn't causing as much of a problem.
Ed
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you might want to try this.
Under MyPhone, disable the Current Location.
Under HTC Settings->Location, disable all the location information.
See whether this helps?

Thanks - this is a good idea.
However, I think I may have uncovered a more fundamental (and dumb) cause. Somehow (probably user error, but I'd like to think some nefarious impact of installing the SPb stuff), my "peak" times for Activesync had been changed from 8am to 6:30pm, to 8pm to 6:30pm. This completely explains why my connection kicked in every 5 minutes overnight (as this is what my "peak" exchange sync is set to).
Having fixed that (!) I'll see whether my power usage is miraculously better tonight! If not, I'll give the location stuff a go too!
Ed

Checking mail all night is not a good idea!
Ahh yes - much better now. I went to bed at 80% battery and woke up at 70%.
The task manager log has logged far fewer points (only 300 logs over 7.5 hours, as opposed to the 5400 that I'd expect if it were logging every 5s), which I guess indicates that most of the night my phone was in "deep standby", or whatever one might call it.
FWIW I certainly recommend acbTaskMan as the logs it produces are very handy to spot what is going on for this kind of thing. For example, even in a low battery drain night I can spot exactly when various services are using the network (e.g. checking mail, Google Maps updating its latitude stuff, etc.)
Ed

I noticed somethin strange last night.
The battery was still for 63% full when I turned the device off (Yes, really turned it off!) and still next morning the battery was completely empty!
Now how is that possible? I do have two batteries, which do exactly the same, so I could test this with the other one, but this seems to be seriously wrong!

I had a similar problem with Sprint. after several trial errors, I traced the problem to the Verizon radio (2.23) I used after SIM unlocking. I went back to sprint 1.96 and voila. Since then now I have moved to Sprint 2.32WU and it works even better.
Another battery saver is this trick "disconnect network when idle for 1 min timeout":
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=69185

Had same thing happen...new tilt (1 month old) got hot and drained battery in 3 hrs with no use! I believe its a GPS program such as googlemaps or Trapster that caused it. A soft reset and im golden. Hate having to soft reset all the time

see this often, almost always because gps is running and did not shutdown when the program using the gps was closed. Chartcross GPS test will show you if the gps is running or not and usually will allow you to exit, and stop the gps induced battery drain. I have gotten in the habit of doing soft reset after using tomtom or google maps, to ensure that GPS is off.
At least for at&t devices, gps is the culprit for huge battery drain, hot to the touch. I will add that little or no signal to the phone will do the same thing. When I am in marginal coverage area, I turn off 3G and that seems to stop the excessive drain and heat build up due to low signal strength.
Not straightforward, for sure and one has to pay attention to the device, or when you need it most, the battery is done.

My battery problem - poor signal

When I'm at home and getting -80 to -70 signal, I lose like 10% battery in 4 hours. When I'm at work and getting -120 to -100 signal, I lose like 50% battery in 4 hours.
Sucks....
Neither ROM nor CPU speed or scheduler or running apps or anything makes that big of a difference. The only single factor I know that can kill the battery faster is the screen.
I keep a charger at my desk, but I'm wondering if I can do anything to improve this situation. I tried JuiceDefender for a while. In theory it would help a lot, but it seemed to cause some problem where Grooveshark and some other apps kept trying to hit the internet and couldn't which seemed to kill my battery just as badly. Maybe if I get the pay version it would allow enough tweaking to help.
Any advice?

I'm noticing the same thing. Was at a bar the other night with really poor reception. I was only there for about 2-3 hours. Without really using my phone at all the battery dropped from about 75% to 15%. Meanwhile, at home where I get good reception I can routinely get 15-20 hours.
I definitely think signal quality substantially impacts the life.

My signals been crap since I updated my PRI. Don't know it its related just been doing it since then.

I moved recently and am in a little 'deadzone' area where I don't get very good 3G or 2G signal (thankfully its a short stay). When I leave my phone on, I found that I lose a tremendous amount of my battery (phone indicates that I am without signal 95-97% of the time typically) -- I had a blackberry curve before my evo and even that phone and its otherwise kickass (only good feature...) battery life would go down significantly or die from sitting over night.
What I have found that I can do to minimize the damage is turning off data and connecting to my local wifi and running some setCPU profiles locking the processor at 245mhz. Last night my battery decreased about 12% doing this.
Its funny because last week I was on vacation in south florida where I had awesome signal and if I turned my data off and connected the wifi, my battery literally would stay the same for 10 hour or so before ticking off a percent.
I'm running a stock rooted odexed ROM with Herver's #2 Kernel. I do not use a task killer or juice defender.

liamaa said:
I'm noticing the same thing. Was at a bar the other night with really poor reception. I was only there for about 2-3 hours. Without really using my phone at all the battery dropped from about 75% to 15%. Meanwhile, at home where I get good reception I can routinely get 15-20 hours.
I definitely think signal quality substantially impacts the life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well yes, because you phone is continuously searching for a better quality signal.

Draining battery very quick with 3G on

I got a DINC with CM7, radio 2.15 and 2.6.38 incredikernel.
I personally felt battery drain was bad for the phone, the problem is that I had a kind of similar problem with Droid X devices. I am starting to believe it has to be with my carrier, but well I'll let you guys decide.
I flashed this rom, radio and kernel, because I read of battery draining issues. But I still feel is a huge battery drain for me with 3G on.
I have to keep disabling and enabling my 3G only when I need it, when I have seen other phones with 3G always on lasting about a day.
Just to give you an example, I wake up in the morning, unplug it, turn on 3G, listen to a radio station with screen turned off for 30 minutes, turn the screen on and battery percentage goes 20% down, so I'm left with 80%.
That would mean, if I listen to online music for 3 hours online, my phone would be dead.
Is this normal for you guys?
I appreciate any comments and experiences, thanks.

DarkWolfx said:
I got a DINC with CM7, radio 2.15 and 2.6.38 incredikernel.
I personally felt battery drain was bad for the phone, the problem is that I had a kind of similar problem with Droid X devices. I am starting to believe it has to be with my carrier, but well I'll let you guys decide.
I flashed this rom, radio and kernel, because I read of battery draining issues. But I still feel is a huge battery drain for me with 3G on.
I have to keep disabling and enabling my 3G only when I need it, when I have seen other phones with 3G always on lasting about a day.
Just to give you an example, I wake up in the morning, unplug it, turn on 3G, listen to a radio station with screen turned off for 30 minutes, turn the screen on and battery percentage goes 20% down, so I'm left with 80%.
That would mean, if I listen to online music for 3 hours online, my phone would be dead.
Is this normal for you guys?
I appreciate any comments and experiences, thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Streaming is battery intensive, you are basically downloading the entire time.

I have to say battery life is one of the most subjective aspects of smartphones let alone android devices. For one, your signal strength relative to nearby towers will affect battery drain. Secondly, everyone uses different batteries ranging from stock to extended so there is little consistency. Our phones with the stock battery do not last longer than 3-4 hours with 3G on, so what you stated is not unusual.
From what I remember, of the droid phones that came out last summer the Droid X and Evo 4G are said to have "better" battery life fresh out the box compared to the Incredible and that's maybe by an hour at best. You should expect to see a lot of "use wifi" or "my battery life is impeccable because of ..." type posts in response to yours to be blunt.

DarkWolfx said:
I got a DINC with CM7, radio 2.15 and 2.6.38 incredikernel.
I personally felt battery drain was bad for the phone, the problem is that I had a kind of similar problem with Droid X devices. I am starting to believe it has to be with my carrier, but well I'll let you guys decide.
I flashed this rom, radio and kernel, because I read of battery draining issues. But I still feel is a huge battery drain for me with 3G on.
I have to keep disabling and enabling my 3G only when I need it, when I have seen other phones with 3G always on lasting about a day.
Just to give you an example, I wake up in the morning, unplug it, turn on 3G, listen to a radio station with screen turned off for 30 minutes, turn the screen on and battery percentage goes 20% down, so I'm left with 80%.
That would mean, if I listen to online music for 3 hours online, my phone would be dead.
Is this normal for you guys?
I appreciate any comments and experiences, thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
when was the last time you updated you PRL? if you havent done it in a while dial *22899 after its done reboot. VZW claims it helps with battery drain.
This was pulled off there site.
Updating your Preferred Roaming List (PRL)
Verizon Wireless is constantly making advancements in our roaming technology to provide you with superior roaming capabilities. By updating your Preferred Roaming List, you will have access to these enhancements, which may include:
Longer battery life
Fewer dropped or blocked calls
Clear, crisp connection in even more areas across the United States
Ability to connect to the digital network in more parts of the country

how about emulating JD in tasker?

First of all, I'm not in Verizon, it's actually a mexican carrier.
I do understand 3G is very battery demanding, I just do not understand how is it that you guys can last a full day with 3G, I've never or heard very little of users turning off their 3G so it can go for at least a day.
I mean, if you guys run a quick test for 30 minutes of listening to some radio station in 3G, could you see if your battery drains really quick?
I've seen GSM users with 3G always on, and they never ask for a charger like I do.
I'm always looking for ways to charge my phone and they just go all day without a charger.
It makes me feel bad haha.
haroldo_psf said:
how about emulating JD in tasker?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What's a JD? And what would this do?

synisterwolf said:
when was the last time you updated you PRL? if you havent done it in a while dial *22899 after its done reboot. VZW claims it helps with battery drain.
This was pulled off there site.
Updating your Preferred Roaming List (PRL)
Verizon Wireless is constantly making advancements in our roaming technology to provide you with superior roaming capabilities. By updating your Preferred Roaming List, you will have access to these enhancements, which may include:
Longer battery life
Fewer dropped or blocked calls
Clear, crisp connection in even more areas across the United States
Ability to connect to the digital network in more parts of the country
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I recently did this after updating from stock .28 radio to .07.07 and have noticed a HUGE battery life improvement. I understand that these results vary quite a bit but beforehand I was experiencing what you describe: big battery drain while 3g was on at all. Also running stock+ 4.06.605.3 ROM by jermaine.

DarkWolfx said:
First of all, I'm not in Verizon, it's actually a mexican carrier.
I do understand 3G is very battery demanding, I just do not understand how is it that you guys can last a full day with 3G, I've never or heard very little of users turning off their 3G so it can go for at least a day.
I mean, if you guys run a quick test for 30 minutes of listening to some radio station in 3G, could you see if your battery drains really quick?
I've seen GSM users with 3G always on, and they never ask for a charger like I do.
I'm always looking for ways to charge my phone and they just go all day without a charger.
It makes me feel bad haha.
What's a JD? And what would this do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I last a day and a half with 3g consistantly on. I am not running a sense rom though. I've found sense rom's drain battery a lot faster due to how many Widgets are used and constant syncing. If you can I would try an AOSP rom and see if there is a difference.

synisterwolf said:
when was the last time you updated you PRL? if you havent done it in a while dial *22899 after its done reboot. VZW claims it helps with battery drain.
This was pulled off there site.
Updating your Preferred Roaming List (PRL)
Verizon Wireless is constantly making advancements in our roaming technology to provide you with superior roaming capabilities. By updating your Preferred Roaming List, you will have access to these enhancements, which may include:
Longer battery life
Fewer dropped or blocked calls
Clear, crisp connection in even more areas across the United States
Ability to connect to the digital network in more parts of the country
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was download and updating then rebooted . War is this suppose to do ? And can u do this on any Rom ? Bcuz I did it on newtoroots sense 3.5 Rom
Sent from my Droid Incredible HD using xda premium

DarkWolfx said:
I got a DINC with CM7, radio 2.15 and 2.6.38 incredikernel.
I personally felt battery drain was bad for the phone, the problem is that I had a kind of similar problem with Droid X devices. I am starting to believe it has to be with my carrier, but well I'll let you guys decide.
I flashed this rom, radio and kernel, because I read of battery draining issues. But I still feel is a huge battery drain for me with 3G on.
I have to keep disabling and enabling my 3G only when I need it, when I have seen other phones with 3G always on lasting about a day.
Just to give you an example, I wake up in the morning, unplug it, turn on 3G, listen to a radio station with screen turned off for 30 minutes, turn the screen on and battery percentage goes 20% down, so I'm left with 80%.
That would mean, if I listen to online music for 3 hours online, my phone would be dead.
Is this normal for you guys?
I appreciate any comments and experiences, thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is completely normal for a CDMA based device. GSM based phones suck power at a fraction of the rate per MB downloaded because signal strength isn't linked to the broadcast power required. Broadcast power is static. I've seen my dInc go flat dead sitting on a table inside 4 hours. In ideal circumstances, it might go 8 or 9. A GSM devices utilizing data on the same levels will achieve uniform battery life regardless of signal strength and outperform CDMA devices on battery life by twice, if not triple the time. However, CDMA will provide higher data rates. LTE is unquestionably the most efficient megabytes/watts used. To perform the same function on an LTE device (your radio app), it would have consumed between half and a quarter of the power. A GSM device would have been about half the power.

3G electric charges

I know what the OP is talking about. I had DInc1 running OMGB, and it would last 10-17 hours depending usage with 3G on all the time. Now, I have a DInc2 running Condemned CM7.2 v1.6, but it can only last like 8 hours idle with 3G on. If anyone has a solution to this, it would be nice to know. I also tested if it's 3G by turning off mobile data; without 3G, the phone lasts a long time, so it's not an app or battery issue.

Just gotta email from sprint

They were sayn that wifi saves batt up to 50%. Ive always been told the exact oppisite. Wifi kills batt life. Wtf
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

harley1rocker said:
They were sayn that wifi saves batt up to 50%. Ive always been told the exact oppisite. Wifi kills batt life. Wtf
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Depends on distance/strength of wifi signal...
It's a good way for them convince you to not use your data connection for a while and slow down the network.
Sent from my Super Galaxy'd SPH-D710

I got an email/text or statement insert saying the exact same thing. Funny thing is ever since that statement I have always made sure to have wifi on when home.
I know it sorta turns off when disconnected but then it scans and picks up wifi networks so I just turn it off when I leave the house.
On my OG Evo I did not notice any change in battery life with wifi on.

Searching for WiFi is what really kills the battery which is why I turn mine off and on manually rather than leaving it on. If I'm in an area with WiFi available and my 3G signal is low, then I'll turn on my WiFi, also when I'm at work or home my WiFi is always on but if I'm out and about then I keep WiFi off rather than have it drain my battery constantly looking for signal.

Technically, I think Wifi takes up less battery than, say 3G when actively used.
Just a guess o-0

MochaCharok said:
Technically, I think Wifi takes up less battery than, say 3G when actively used.
Just a guess o-0
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would think this is true, especially if you're sitting close to the router like at home or work rather than pinging off a cell tower however far away.

It goes both way guys. When idle, wifi consumes more battery than an active cellular data connection.
By virtue of simply being more efficient, wifi consumes "less" when actively using it. This is, however, because of the generally increased data speeds: it takes less time to accomplish a task (I.e. downloading a file), thus providing battery savings. In this regards, even 4g consumes less battery, even though it technically takes more juice to run 4g.
The way to really look at it so it becomes clear is say, hypothetically, you had a wifi connection whose internet side connection was very slow. In this regards, wifi doesn't save you any battery, and will probably end up consuming more, simply because its gain in efficiency is now gone.
Of course sprint wants us to get off cell data as much as possible, but in a lot of real world situations, it will save someone battery. Take my typical work day for example:
I wake up at home, drive to work, stay at work all day, then go home and probably stay there. I have good wifi connections both at home and work. Now, if I was the kind of user that didn't auto sync anything, I would probably end up using more battery life than I need to if I left wifi on all day, simply because I'm pumping juice into a radio that isn't being used.
However, I DO use a lot of auto sync functions, which means that my phone is actively using data a lot throughout the day. In this case, the battery drain due to the time in which wifi is left idle is out-weighed by the gain in battery life I get by the times my wifi is now being used instead a cell connection.
In a nutshell, as I said at the beginning, cellular data connection is more efficient at being idle than wifi (provided it's a good connection), and wifi is more efficient at being actively used (again, provided it's a good connection and the internet-side speed is sufficient).
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

My battery last far longer on wifi than 4g, not even close in my book.

Since I have wi-fi at work and home I can say there is a HUGE difference - especially since at home and work the 3G/4G signals are so weak that the phone burns quite a bit of battery just searching for a signal. Hoping that this will change as NV completes in the area but it might be the frequency that we're on is not too friendly with the newer building materials.

Yes, using wifi will save you more battery life than using your 3g/4g

Pastie13 said:
My battery last far longer on wifi than 4g, not even close in my book.
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4g is a completely different animal than 3g when it comes to battery drain. So far when on 4g your battery life is sucked out of your phone. The email Sprint sends out I would safely say is comparing 3g to wifi.

That same tip is on Sprints website when you log into your account. It is on the right hand side.
As for battery life my findings have been WIFI uses less juice when the signal is good. 3G uses less juice when the throughput is good. So when I am on 3G in an area that has good speeds I can hit near 30 hours of battery.
I can do the same on WIFI when the WIFI signal is good, but if the WIFI signal is on the lower end the throughput slows since the quality has been lowered.
So in essence the better the throughput the better the battery, because when the phone wakes to check on any sync items setup the longer it takes to make that check the longer the CPU is at max and the more battery drain occurs. And I'm not talking signal strength for 3G since you'll get more drain on the battery in lesser areas because the phone is naturally going to have to boost the transmitter power. I'm talking best signal and crappy 3G network throughput. That is where the drain comes from.
I have tested this in my house with my WIFI and my Airave. On WIFI if I go outside my WIFI range is really bad and my battery drains a lot quicker. If I turn off the WIFI and use the Airave, which has a much higher transmitter power, I can get great battery. I have also seen this in over night testing. My WIFI is in the living room which is 5 walls away and the signal is pretty poor. If I leave my WIFI on over night and not charge my phone I loose 50% battery and when trying to use my phone for internet I get super bad throughput since I am on the edge of the signal. But turn off my WIFI and ride on the Airave I only loose 15% over night and the internet is great, but limited to 1.5m since it is 3G. So if you download a 1meg attachment. 3G takes 2 min and WIFI take 4 min then 3G will use less battery. This also goes vis versa. Whoever is maxing the CPU the longest is your battery killer because both are always on and always ready when they are selected.
Hope I didn't go into to much detail, but transmit power is not the big thing here it is throughput quality of the signal. The worst the throughput the more time it takes to transmit and thus more battery as the CPU is maxed till the job is complete.

[Q] Fast battery drain

My battery was doing well, had about 70+% remaining after about 5-6 hours on battery, then in a one-hour stretch it dropped 30%. I'm running battery doctor, but it really isn't telling me what could have caused that. Even after a half-hour con-call this morning, the battery was still at 80% or so until noon.
It seemed to fall off the cliff when I left the house for about an hour to run some errands. But 30% when you're not doing a lot with it in an hour's time frame seems like an issue.
Anyone have any ideas on how to debug this?

mikecico said:
My battery was doing well, had about 70+% remaining after about 5-6 hours on battery, then in a one-hour stretch it dropped 30%. I'm running battery doctor, but it really isn't telling me what could have caused that. Even after a half-hour con-call this morning, the battery was still at 80% or so until noon.
It seemed to fall off the cliff when I left the house for about an hour to run some errands. But 30% when you're not doing a lot with it in an hour's time frame seems like an issue.
Anyone have any ideas on how to debug this?
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I'd like to know as well. I'm at 33% at 7 hours usage.
Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk

Were you using GPS? That's killer on the battery when you combine it with other drains

Also perhaps you ventured into a low signal area, so the phone was straining the battery to connect to a poor signal?

Samething here ... even after a factory reset & disabling a bunch of bloats.
It idles fine @home but really sucks @work ... I lost 30% (last 3hr idling) with the screen off (wifi off too, location is off, greenify running).
Phone barely lasts 2 days (with ~1hr scrren on, 1-call/2-TxtM a day, no emailing ... minimal usage).
One thing I notice... data signal @work is pretty bad (3G) while better @home (LTE).
This is a Verizon phone. My G2 was much much better, same exact setup.

This might sound like the opposite of what is intuitive, but your battery life at work may *increase* if you turn *ON* the wifi.
The reason is that you have poor 3G signal strength. So every time your phone updates anything data related, even just checking that you have an email, the phone burns a lot of battery trying to squeeze data over the poor signal from the cell tower.
But, if you turn on wifi, the phone can check all the data stuff using the wifi, which is far less battery intensive compared to trying to talk to the cell phone tower far away.
So try that, just turn on wifi *particularly* when you are in a poor cell phone reception area. Even though you now have an *extra* radio turned on in the phone, it should greatly help while at work or in any low signal area that has wifi available.

when did you get the phone? you have to do a few full charges and disable some Google bloat for the battery to last. and remove batter doctor. don't use apps like those task killers that keep themselves in the background like avast security. i just use lookout since it doesn't overly do it's job like avast.

What carrier are you on? If its T-Mobile, then its probably the My T-Mobile app. Drained my phone like crazy, T-Mobile also knows its an issue, but haven't said anything on fixing it.
Just uncheck all the boxes in the settings and it should stop, if not try the debloater tool.
Sent from my LG-H811 using Tapatalk

KingFatty said:
This might sound like the opposite of what is intuitive, but your battery life at work may *increase* if you turn *ON* the wifi.
The reason is that you have poor 3G signal strength. So every time your phone updates anything data related, even just checking that you have an email, the phone burns a lot of battery trying to squeeze data over the poor signal from the cell tower.
But, if you turn on wifi, the phone can check all the data stuff using the wifi, which is far less battery intensive compared to trying to talk to the cell phone tower far away.
So try that, just turn on wifi *particularly* when you are in a poor cell phone reception area. Even though you now have an *extra* radio turned on in the phone, it should greatly help while at work or in any low signal area that has wifi available.
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This will still drain it heavily even on wifi. It will continue to struggle to get good bars and will do what it takes in order to achieve good reception.
At work I always have wifi on and my drain is very high.
A weekend at home and I easily got SOT of 4 hrs+.
Work day, I struggle to get SOT of 2 hrs+

Very interesting approach, and it seems to work. I tried this overnight, and the falloff didn't seem nearly as great as when the wi-fi setting is off.
Many thanks.

I'm on verizon and when my phone switches to 3G it gets super hot upper middle area of the screen and the battery drain is outrageous. I have to disable data otherwise it would probably burst into flames. My previous unit did not have these problems. Wish I would have kept it.