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Am i right in thinking the main culprit for wasting battery is 3G? when i use WIFI and am at home, the phones goes easy 2 days and im watching youtube, playing angry bird, chatting on gtalk.
with 3G, lucky to get a full day, normally dies towards the end,
so how come 3G kills the battery so hard is there a remedy to it lol
thanks
3g could be trouble when you have weak or unstable signal. In normal cases wifi uses more juice.
for me, 3g doubles the consumption compared to wifi. (t-mobile uk)
Similar issues here on 3 in the UK using official HTC unbranded ROM with radio 32.44.00.32U_5.09.05.30_2. I can get well over a day with as much use as I wanton WiFi but if I switch it off and move to 3G (HSDPA) I completely flatten a battery in anywhere from 3 to 8 hours, sometimes with minimal actual usage!
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
yh on t-mob too, it could be the signal as iv read weak signals can drain battery, its strange, normally its wifi that drains the battery, but i have it on all day , dont have any inactivity settings on, its full blast all day and the battery stays 70-80% by round 1am when i sleep,
3g, it will be around 20% at that time, it is a strange one
While idle 3G uses more power than WiFi.
While active WiFi uses more power than 3G.
While that may like it seem like WiFi can use more when actively using it. It also finishes quicker and goes back to idling. Which uses less power in the end.
Both use more if the reception/signal is weak, as it's constantly trying to (re)connect.
Friend has a new Desire Z (bell, unlocked). Using it on AT&T network.
When at a house, and we use WiFI (30Mbps DL, 25Mbps UL), the speeds are VERY inconsistent. With my iPhone 4 using speedtest.net, it shows up as 20/15 each time. (WiFi is a little slower than the modem).
With the Desire Z, we get 15/10 (which is fine/acceptable). Then 3 minutes later we do it, we get 5/2. Without even moving the phone or touching the modem connection (not downloading anything on the computer), the connection just gets slower. Then it might be fast or slow, basically it's a toss-up.
The first time we noticed the issue is because when we are outside, we get HSPA speeds of 2.5/1.0, then randomly decreases to 0.1/0.05. HUGE difference. And VERY inconsistent. He is using a microSIM from iPhone 4, with an adapter, so we figured maybe the SIM card is getting loose at certain points? However, the WiFi is also inconsistent in addition to the HSPA, so it's probably not that.
What should I do? Is this the situation where I have to flash a new radio or something? (Please suggest others if I am wrong).
Thanks!
---
Also, his battery is kinda weak. The battery health is apparently clean/healthy. He came from an iPhone 4, where he would have 3G, WiFi, and GPS on at night but not actually using them. Wake up, and 3% battery loss, maybe 5. WITHOUT using them, just having them on.
Now, with the Desire Z, we have the WiFi + 3G on, but NOT the GPS. He is losing 20%-25% in 8 hours without even using the phone.
Information about battery shows a high Cell standby (25%) and Phone idle (25%) percentage. When going into Spare Parts > Partial Wake usage, we didn't find anything really fishy. BUT we had rebooted so perhaps some info may have been lossed. Should he just go to sleep tonight and report the Partial Wake Usage statistics again?
We have a feeling it may be some apps refreshing at night.. But he clears all the apps with Advanced Task Manager except for like Facebook (2 hour interval refresh), GMail, and Google Voice.
I highly doubt a 20% battery decrease overnight is normal.. My mom's Atrix only loses about 5% overnight, with the same parameters I gave before.
I thought it may be a bad battery, BUT the phone idle + cell standby are abnormally high.
Thanks!
Does anyone have an answer? I was wondering this
I have been running CM 6 since November and just recently flashed CM 7. On both ROMs, Cell Standby and Phone Idle have been very high on my list of things that are 'draining' the battery.
For example, today Cell Standby shows as 37% and Phone Idle as 30% for me.
In fact, its very rare that these two things aren't at the top of the list of things that are using the battery for me.... I've seen cell standby as high as 47% before.
I can't speak for the drainage overnight. Definitely doesn't sound normal to me, but my phone is usually on the charger overnight (have enough trouble making it through the day with the stock battery).
Have you tried using Watchdog to monitor CPU usage of apps that run in the background? You could set the notification threshold very low and see what it spits out... Good luck!
gbarayah, thanks for the post, that was helpful.
If anyone can help with the inconsistent data speeds, that'd be very helpful.
And any additional info on the battery would be great too. I recently calibrated it, and will post any additional stats.
Damn it, I forgot to try Watchdog. However, I re-calibrated the battery, let it die, charged it up, let it die, charged it up. I followed the instructions to the letter and all that.
It was at 100% when I went to sleep. Woke up 8 hours later, 74%.
Settings > Battery shows nothing high 40% for cell standby and phone idle. Everything else (Facebook, etc.) REALLY low.
Then I went to Spare Parts > Battery Usage, Partial wake usage, everything incredibly low as well..
I will try Watchdog, but could it just be a bad battery? Or maybe should I try a different ROM?
Thanks!
Not sure if 26% drain over 8 hours is normal or not... Maybe someone else can shed some light on that. My phone is usually on the charger overnight.
The only other thing I can think of that would drain the battery is if you have a bad/weak cell signal in your area. I've experienced that with some job sites where my cell signal is very bad and my battery suffers excessive drain from trying to get a better signal or connect to 3G coming from Edge.
On my week old desire Z running virtuous unity sense3.0 rom and streamlined kernal i very rarely see phone idle and radio burning battery lik you say. Radio occasionaly gets high but only wen in bad coverage areas other than thats its ok.
Battery is still rubbish though due to fact even on 2nd lowest brightness setting screen seems to burn 80%-90% battery
Just checked: phone idle:2%
Cell stanby:8%
Screen (lowest setting):70%
Not this isnt a great example as its taken over a short period of havy use but it still reflects the relative proportion of the battery draining elements in question.
Also a question, if you have a live wallpaper set where is its battery drain shown? Screen, or launcher?
Not sure what to say about the high variable speeds.
Sticking to just GSM(2G) rather than AUTO will in some cases increase the signal and battery life at the expense of slower connection speeds. As mentioned when the phone struggles to get signal the battery gets drained alot faster.
Lower the refresh intervals of all the apps to the maximum period of time or a reasonable amount like 12 hours for FB for Sense, HTC Sense and Weather and 4 hours or Never (to make it on-demand) for Facebook.
Setting the Wi-fi sleep policy to "Never when connected" may make it on-demand too - when an app needs to update Wi-fi gets turned on again
If they have "Use wireless networks" checked to allow the clock-weathers mini-widget to update then they should try removing said clock and re-adding it, but search for the city when doing so. It'll provide them with a general outlook for their entire city and not force it to download and update the information for wherever they are whilst out and about. E.g if you were in London and went from Westminster to Peckham, it may update as you pass through each borough.
Live wallpapers and masses of widgets that need to constantly update are nice and everything but they can also drain the battery.
Think of these suggestions as ways to cycle the battery as well as save it.
I can't think of anything else to add.
I'm using Cyanogenmod 7 and it's pretty damn good. What do you think is the best ROM with Gingerbread if it's more lightweight and easier on the battery? (I honestly don't think the ROM accounts for the 25% battery loss but we'll see)
MIUI or mexiDroid for me?
By the way, could it just be a bad battery? I was thinking about picking one of these up:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=940263
$8 and people said it's okay.. What do you think?
Thanks, and I JUST calibrated recently, so once again I will leave phone off overnight and report.
-----------------------
As for the network issues, I FIGURED IT OUT!!!
I believe it was the Speedtest app itself that was messed up. Like I said earlier, I don't have live wallpapers (just info) on, and also NO GPS unless using Navigation.
Well, Speedtest was connecting to WICHITA, KANSAS. I AM IN NEW JERSEY. WTH??!!
Anyway, so I'm going to keep GPS (satellites) on, it connects to NJ, and Voila, GREAT SPEEDS!
HSPA about 3.5/1.0 DL/UL
HOORAY! Network problem fixed!!!
Only issue is battery still D:
Honestly, I think it may be a bad battery. Partial wake usage doesn't show any app going nuts.. Every refresh interval is like 4 hours. And I use Advanced Task Killer to kill all apps before going to bed. I downloaded "Watchdog," let's see
gyromanx55 said:
Friend has a new Desire Z (bell, unlocked). Using it on AT&T network.
When at a house, and we use WiFI (30Mbps DL, 25Mbps UL), the speeds are VERY inconsistent. With my iPhone 4 using speedtest.net, it shows up as 20/15 each time. (WiFi is a little slower than the modem).
With the Desire Z, we get 15/10 (which is fine/acceptable). Then 3 minutes later we do it, we get 5/2. Without even moving the phone or touching the modem connection (not downloading anything on the computer), the connection just gets slower. Then it might be fast or slow, basically it's a toss-up.
The first time we noticed the issue is because when we are outside, we get HSPA speeds of 2.5/1.0, then randomly decreases to 0.1/0.05. HUGE difference. And VERY inconsistent. He is using a microSIM from iPhone 4, with an adapter, so we figured maybe the SIM card is getting loose at certain points? However, the WiFi is also inconsistent in addition to the HSPA, so it's probably not that.
What should I do? Is this the situation where I have to flash a new radio or something? (Please suggest others if I am wrong).
Thanks!
---
Also, his battery is kinda weak. The battery health is apparently clean/healthy. He came from an iPhone 4, where he would have 3G, WiFi, and GPS on at night but not actually using them. Wake up, and 3% battery loss, maybe 5. WITHOUT using them, just having them on.
Now, with the Desire Z, we have the WiFi + 3G on, but NOT the GPS. He is losing 20%-25% in 8 hours without even using the phone.
Information about battery shows a high Cell standby (25%) and Phone idle (25%) percentage. When going into Spare Parts > Partial Wake usage, we didn't find anything really fishy. BUT we had rebooted so perhaps some info may have been lossed. Should he just go to sleep tonight and report the Partial Wake Usage statistics again?
We have a feeling it may be some apps refreshing at night.. But he clears all the apps with Advanced Task Manager except for like Facebook (2 hour interval refresh), GMail, and Google Voice.
I highly doubt a 20% battery decrease overnight is normal.. My mom's Atrix only loses about 5% overnight, with the same parameters I gave before.
I thought it may be a bad battery, BUT the phone idle + cell standby are abnormally high.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well... can't be that odd. Mine are
cell standby: 8%
Phone idle 6%
display 51% (highest)
dialer 11%
wifi 10%
....
about conn. speed. I haven't used speedtest yet but downloading speed on the phone is slower than on PC remarkably using the same internet connection
barclays said:
well... can't be that odd. Mine are
cell standby: 8%
Phone idle 6%
display 51% (highest)
dialer 11%
wifi 10%
....
about conn. speed. I haven't used speedtest yet but downloading speed on the phone is slower than on PC remarkably using the same internet connection
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WiFi will always be slower than wired connection, probably about 50% if not more.
Also, what setting do you have your display on and how much would you say you use your phone/have the screen on and how often do you talk (hrs/day)
noneabove said:
WiFi will always be slower than wired connection, probably about 50% if not more.
Also, what setting do you have your display on and how much would you say you use your phone/have the screen on and how often do you talk (hrs/day)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have auto brightness but I stay in office and not turn it on much (have to work though ) so the display isn't on much (when i said HIGHEST, it means highest in the list )
I have to phone connected to wifi all day but rarely use it
Mainly use the phone to text and talk less and 1/hr/day
Just try left the phone unused (stand by - airplane mode) for one day, drop about 20% or so
Its seems like its getting a little better.. only lost 10% overnight. Guess its calibrating
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using XDA Premium App
Hi, I have a S4GT with Calks 2.9.1 w/EL29 installed. I've been reading over and over that Wifi is without a doubt the more battery efficient radio out of the 3 (Wifi, 3g, 4g). However, while I believe that I have great battery life, I've noticed that my battery drains noticeably faster with Wifi turned on. At home I get a great Wifi signal and a terrible 3g connection. I would say on idle, the battery drain is twice as fast with Wifi. Wifi is set to Never turn off when activated.
I also did some testing, and turning off 3g data while Wifi was on didn't show any noticeable improvement. I also tried turning on Wifi in Flight mode, and noticed that the drain is actually worse than it is on the normal mode with 3g activated.
I would like to keep my Wifi on while at home or work. Any ideas what's going on here? I've been searching for answers without luck.
This is weird indeed. Wi-Fi uses around 1/3 the power of 3g. I know I get great battery life with my Wi-Fi. You could always try flashing a new modem
Sent from my iPhone killer.
Thanks for your reply. Before I do anything too drastic, I will try to do a little testing on my wife's stock E4GT during the weekend. This has been bothering me for quite a long time.
Definitely do that. Good luck!
Sent from my iPhone killer.
I was having the same issues. I resorted back to the EL26 and battery life is better than stock.
Sent from the blue"Sammy ET"
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.