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Hello everyone.
So I bought this phone this past Friday and been having a blast with it. I bought the 2100mah verizon/samsung extended battery yesterday to have a bit better battery life with it. I have patience with battery life, so I'm ready to try anything.
Here's part 1 of my post (radio): So I'm on 4.0.4. I have the radio that comes with it. I noticed I can only get 1-2 bars (rarely 3) of signal at times. I read that the best way to post about this is in dBm so here are mines: -100 to -120 80% of the time. This is on 3g/4g/wifi. And it's rarely on 4g, it is always jumping to 3g. My mom has a thunderbolt and to test, I saw the thunderbolt had better dBm and always had a 4g signal, 3-4 bars constant, rarely 3g. I'm in Miami, Florida if it matters, which is a strong 4g area. When it's on 3g it gets very good signal, 3-4 bars and -80 dBm. Though sometimes I noticed my wi-fi gets 4 bars for like 10 minutes and returns back to 2 bars.
Anything I can do as far as the Radio, some people have fixed it with a new sim card but before I go get one (are they free?) let's see what I can try? Perphaps a new radio?
Part 2: Alright now as for the battery life. Here are my phone "stats": (screenshots are posted at the bottom of post for battery)
-4.0.4 Stock ROM nothing changed, just an unlocked bootloader.
-WiFi on when at home, off when using 3g/4g.
-NFC On.
-No syncing, everything updates when I open app (twitter, weather)
-Gmail is set to push, atleast I think so. It notifies me of a new email every time.
-48% Screen Brightness
-Signed OFF from Google+
That's it I believe, if anything else is needed let me know.
I have the XDA version of BetteryBatteryStats, so I guess I have the tool to fix it just need to pinpoint what the problem is. I'm draining at 2%-3% per hour with wi-fi, and no usage, just idle. Again this is with 4.0.4 update. I'm seeing people's battery life becoming awesome with some tweaking, so would like assistance on that.
Here are my screenshots:
Day 1 with ext battery on 4.0.4:
Day 2 with ext battery on 4.0.4:
Have you confirmed that you have the new radios installed?
I515.09 V.FA02 / I515.FA02 (or could show as I515.10 V.FA02 / I515.FA02)
You probably did that, but just wanted to be sure.
I have: I515.09 V.FA02 / I5I5.FA02
I appreciate the help!
How far off are you on strength from the T-Bolt? I think it's the 4.0.4 radios and I'll get into why I think that. Note that the following isn't scientific and I haven't really tested it, so don't spread this like it's fact. I live in a really strong 4G area, so in general I haven't noticed a difference with any of the various modems (I've tried them all). I will say that I worked for a week once in an area with poor Verizon coverage, and I noticed that the 4.0.2 radios worked better for me than the 4.0.3. Like, no coverage with 4.0.3 after upgrading to it, so I whipped my laptop out and pushed the 4.0.2 radios and got from zero bars w/ coverage to 1 bar. I don't know how the 4.0.2 radios compare to 4.0.4, but you might give that a whirl.
In general, I think that radio hype is just that, hype, and there's a reason why a slew of radios never make the final cut, but with Verizon trying to patch 3G/4G connectivity, I do think it's worth trying some other radio's out to see what they do in your area.
I hesitate to say the following because I have NOT paid that much attention or done significant testing on our radios, which is something I've done with previous devices. So do NOT take this as gospel, rather with a healthy dose of salt.
In my limited observation with 4.0.4, at least in my neighborhood/area of Birmingham (I have an LTE tower practically in my back yard), the 4.0.4 radios ARE weaker. With 4.0.2 radios for example, I want to say I got -70dBm on CDMA/1X in the house and usually -72dBm to -75dBm on LTE in the house. Right now, typing this thread on 4.0.4 with the phone showing 5 bars, I just checked my strength on LTE and it was registering -94dBm here at the house when I rolled onto CDMA, it showed -75dBm. When I rolled back onto LTE, it showed -75dBm (displaying 5 bars the entire time) then went to -87dBm a few minutes later. This is with the phone sitting on it's normal spot on my desk.
Random, first thoughts with 4.0.4:
1) We know that Verizon requested "updated" display bars for 4.0.4
2) There could be an issue in 4.0.4 with dBm updating/display. I haven't been at the house all day, I have roamed around, but I doubt very seriously that my real signal strength on LTE was really -94dBm here at home. When I say I have an LTE tower in my backyard, I'm literally talking about 1/4 of a mile away, on top of a hill.
3) 4.0.4 is not always registering/reading signal strength correctly, which is causing devices in a weak area to fall off of 4G and onto 3G when the issue isn't really with the tower, physical hardware, or the modem package, but on the way 4.0.4 is interpreting the signal information it's pulling in (based SOLELY on watching the signal range I just observed on LTE). That said, it easily could just be the tower this afternoon. AGAIN, take it all with a grain of salt.
I recommend trying the 4.0.2 radios, at a minimum. I would list them, but I don't know our radios off the top of my head yet (too much Vibrant info is still in my brain). Search for them, they're easy to find. BE SURE to push the CDMA/LTE radios paired together. Like, the 4.0.2 radios together, 4.0.3 radios together. Do NOT mix and match.
Generally speaking for people in good LTE areas, I think the 4.0.4 radio package is GREAT. I've noticed zero slow down. Yeah, -87dBm (which is what I normally see here at the house) IS "weak" and it SUCKS to have wrong bars displayed but I haven't noticed any slow down on the network. I think slightly scaling down LTE strength is what has helped improve battery life. CDMA radio strength does not appear to have been affected, which is what you're gonna be on in rural areas anyway so unless you're on the fringe of LTE signal like the OP, I don't think this radio package is anything to complain or be worried about.
---------- Post added at 03:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:06 PM ----------
Also, in my experience as someone that travels all over for work, the only time that "weak" signal drains battery is when you're on the fringe of no connection and the OS is boosting power to the cell antenna's. On the old/real signal indicator, this was when you had a connection to Verizon with 0 bars and it was boosting you to 1 bar. I'm not comfortable stating a -dBm range because I can't remember what I observed and I didn't write it down. If you already have 1 or 2 bars (again, on the "old" signal indicator) you really don't see a boost given to the radios. By "boost", I mean you can click on the battery graph and see where signal strength went up and battery consumption did too, while your phone sat in the same place. I have a screen shot of this that I will try to find, and update this post with.
Looking at your screen shots, I don't see that affect. In general terms, your battery life looks "fine" "normal", whatever we want to call it. Bear in mind that our LTE GNex's don't get the same life as our GSM counterparts.
Edit:
Found the screen shot I was talking about. This was on stock 4.0.2 in my hotel room one night in a rural area. The night before I had data/sync on and noticed that when I woke up my battery was about dead. I knew it was due to signal strength since I was used to losing about 8% over night. So the following night I turned off data/sync and let it run over night, not wasting the opportunity to watch what would happen to battery life with and extra boost to the radio to get improved signal strength along with removing app/data activity from the battery consumption mix by keeping data/sync off. If I remember correctly, I went to bed @ 100% and woke up 7 hours 44 minutes later with something like 72% battery. Not only did the phone boost the power to the cellular antenna, but this activity also kept the phone from sleeping properly. I'm GLAD smart phone's can do this, but at a minimum, it turned a roughly 8% battery drain over X period of time into a 28% battery drain.
I hope my info/experiences haven't confused things further for you.
CDMA Input
So what have others found about CDMA battery life?? Mine is poor no matter what ROM or Kernel I seem to try to run. I also have attempted under voltages in SetCPU to see if that helps. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Peace.
photolarry said:
So what have others found about CDMA battery life?? Mine is poor no matter what ROM or Kernel I seem to try to run. I also have attempted under voltages in SetCPU to see if that helps. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Peace.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to define "poor". Everyone's use is different as are their apps. If you truly have poor battery life no matter what, look at the three things that are always probably the same. 1) Your physical battery. Is it defective? 2) The apps you use. Perhaps you have an app that is acting up and syncing like crazy or wasting CPU cycles. 3) The area you live in. Do you have poor signal strength?
The biggest drain on your battery is ALWAYS going to be your screen, and data/sync. In my personal use, my biggest drain is: Screen Brightness 100%, Netflix running, Audio 100% through the speaker. This equals about 30% per hour with the Verizon Extended Battery depending on what all else syncs in the background...with a live wallpaper.
Undervolting is a misleading thing. People will disagree with me, but when you look at power consumption tables, undervolting does very little. When our phones display battery % remaining, it's not based on the actual juice left in the battery. It's a calculation based on charts that the phone manufacturer (probably Google in our case) took from the hardware manufacturer and put into play that basically says that at this Processor Speed (X), this Level of Power Consumption Occurred (Y). It happened for this Amount of Time (Z) and then it compiles that data and solves for an amount of power used giving us a percentage of remaining battery life. In general, this is VERY accurate. However, there are no values programed in to account for undervolting...or OVER clocking for that matter. For example, if you're overclocked to 1350MHz, then Android is going to use the values for 1200MHz. If you put a timer on your battery life, you'll see a longer run if you run your phone until it shuts itself off. But it's not THAT big of a difference. All the while when your watching how quickly your battery bar drops with your use, you can't see a a measurable difference.
In my experience with undervolting, doing so got me maybe an extra 5% boost in battery life. I can't equate that to a time because again, usage is different. In general, a 5% swing in a charge cycle can be easily accounted for by other things. Does your processor use more juice @ 1200MHz with normal volting compared to 1200MHz undervolted? Absolutely, but undervolting isn't going to get someone hours of extra battery life, especially when our screens usually account for 60%+ of our battery consumption. All said and done, undervolting results in gaining us very few percentage points in terms of what percentage of battery life our processors consumed.
Seems like the kernel and rom do make some difference not just apps. I use AutoStarts to prevent a mess of them starting upon boot. I am sure the screen takes a ton of it. But I am convinced that it depends on voltages and kernels too. Since I notice differences.
I recommend trying the 4.0.2 radios, at a minimum. I would list them, but I don't know our radios off the top of my head yet (too much Vibrant info is still in my brain). Search for them, they're easy to find. BE SURE to push the CDMA/LTE radios paired together. Like, the 4.0.2 radios together, 4.0.3 radios together. Do NOT mix and match.
Generally speaking for people in good LTE areas, I think the 4.0.4 radio package is GREAT. I've noticed zero slow down. Yeah, -87dBm (which is what I normally see here at the house) IS "weak" and it SUCKS to have wrong bars displayed but I haven't noticed any slow down on the network. I think slightly scaling down LTE strength is what has helped improve battery life. CDMA radio strength does not appear to have been affected, which is what you're gonna be on in rural areas anyway so unless you're on the fringe of LTE signal like the OP, I don't think this radio package is anything to complain or be worried about.
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Click to collapse
Ok KWK, but there's a trade off here. If I try the 4.0.2 radios, that some people reported bad battery life on, it's just because it had a bad trade off for SOME
people right? So that means 4.0.2 radios could be good for me and result in better battery? Can I be on 4.0.4 and have the 4.0.2 radios?
Anyone know where to find these 4.0.2 radios and how to flash?
As for the battery life part of my post, what do you guys think I should try doing in betterbatterystats? A recent thread on here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1483829&page=3 (Go to page 3 and last post) He got his life fixed. So that's nice to know there's tweaks that can be done. Any suggestions? Look at the http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1488680&page=6 thread too. "draining at 1% per hour in sleep mode & how are you doing it?"
I disagee with your comment about old 4.0.2 radios since 4.0.4 (FA02) radios have improved signal reception. It is possible that maybe it affects battery, but I kind of doubt it. Based on all the research so far, seems mostly screen eats it a lot as well as how you use all the apps on the phone as mentioned above. I mean isnt this a matter of some electrical engineering info (ie voltages etc) and how to tweak such things? I have CS degree but admit my hardware knowledge is not greatest.
Ugh, I'm in a mess now, lol. I called Verizon yesterday and followed their usual "signal solution" got me to 4 bars of 4g. Turned on WiFi - 2 bars, turned it off, back to 1-2 bar 4g that last for 30 seconds.
I'm starting to think it's the sim card.
Any suggestions for battery life? Seems my phone can't sleep. It's down to 83% after 5 hours. And all I've done is send 2-3 text messages. Do I turn off NFC for a start?
edit: Now I'm at 4 bars wifi. Goddam radios, they are so random, we'll assume the phone is trolling and continue to the solution.
bump for the night scary how fast it got to page 2.
let's get these issues fixed!
If your phone is searching for signal, then your battery life is already sucking it up. A "stronger" radio that uses a little more juice won't cause more drain than your phone will cause by throwing everything it can at the phone antenna. Just look at my screen shot from before...28% battery drained in 8 hours...an additional 20% due to the phone trying to keep a signal.
Like I said about your original screen shots, your battery life doesn't seem to be that "off to me". Just push different radios, and try them for at least a day.
Okay will do. Where can I find these other radios and how do I flash them?
Lastly, anyone here an expert on fixing phone isn't sleeping? Seems to be my major idle battery drain.
Icey34 said:
Okay will do. Where can I find these other radios and how do I flash them?
Lastly, anyone here an expert on fixing phone isn't sleeping? Seems to be my major idle battery drain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can find the radios here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1481095
If you have the 4.0.2 radios, you can flash that ZIP in Clockwork Recovery Mod.
It will take a few minutes so leave it be and don't do a battery pull.
Well I have the 4.0.4 radios, does that change anything?
edit: after looking at that link you provided, are those even radios only? Seems like a bootloader & radio update from 4.0.2 -> 4.0.4. And I'm already on 4.0.4. But with horrid signal.
I have had the best results with the 4.0.4 radios but you mention you are already on them.
You can try flashing some older radios but I am not sure that will help your signal issues.
As far as finding out why you are having deep sleep issues, you can use Better Battery Stats to narrow down wakelocks.
With that said, if the phone is constantly in an area with poor signal, that will cause unnecessary battery drain as well.
Where can I find these older radios?
edit: I'd like to try the 4.0.2 radio.
Update 1: So today I powered it on after having it off from 7:00 AM to 2:45 PM. It's been idle, checked email for replies on this post and this is my battery:
Something is eating up it's idle time.
I noticed on the way back to my House it picked up a strong 4G signal for 5 minutes or so. Still looking to find where the 4.0.2 radios are. Noticing a stronger WiFi signal though, and the usual 4bar 3g. All I can find is the post from adranalyne about the radios from 4.0.2 -> 4.0.4. Something I was thinking about: If I flash 4.0.2 radios, say they are bad and I need to go back to 4.0.4 would that require a whole new flash of 4.0.4 or are there seperate radios?
Here are the betterbattery screenshots: (I have for last unplugged and charged not sure where it needs to be)
I too have an LTE Galaxy Nexus and have been switching from franco's and lean kernel in an attempt to gain battery life. I have a feeling you're not going to get much better battery life with LTE turned on. I've turned off sync and LTE overnight and the best I've gotten in deep sleep is about 1-1.5% an hour. That's all after hunting down all my unnecessary wakelocks and shutting them down (GTALK_asnyc, etc) and keeping my running programs to a minimum (email, lightflow, and weather1 are the only ones ever running besides stock apps with sync on weather1 on a 6 hour cycle)
All of the two day battery life posts I've seen all seem to be GSM phones, and typically I've been getting a full day pretty comfortably...
8 hours while sleeping + 8-13 hours of light to moderate usage (1-3 hours of screen time generally)..all with about 10-25% remaining at the end of my long days
That's excellent. But one problems: (1) I can't even get a 4g signal, at most for 5 minutes in an area that I regularly get it. I have a thunderbolt next to me running 3-4 bars. I know the GNex has a bad radio, but sheesh I atleast want to have SOME 4g.
Been trying to find a radio, can't find one though, if you can link one that'd be appreciated.
Anything you see there in betterybatterystats I should shut down, and do they start backup after boot? I see the GTALK thing you were talking about on mines too, how do I get rid of it?
edit: just a few hours after my first post today:
I'm at a loss here, but I know something is wrong for sure. I'm familiar with the low signal strength 'problem' on LTE networks as described at rootzwiki's thread entitled "This is why your Verizon Nexus signal "sucks" " I do not understand it inside and out, but I know enough to be at least 80% sure that this is not my issue. That thread describes a low signal strength, as in the dBm, but my problem is actual performance. I'm not comparing numbers (at least not on LTE networks), but results.
The problem is pretty bad, and pretty consistent. Without fail, my signal strength will be butchered, and with it data and even voice/text service will be unreliable or non existent inside any building. Not just some buildings, but any building. If I'm in a 4G area, I almost always lose the 4G, and it's switched to 3G with very poor performance (even for 3G standards). If I don't loose the 4G, the speed test results are horrid. I've had several cases where inside a building I still have 4G but the speeds might be 500-700 Kbps down/up or even worse, but when I step outside into the parking lot, 10-15 Mbps down 5-15 Mbps up. I realize structures absorb wireless signals and sometimes it can be pretty bad, but this is too much and too frequent to just be normal wireless signal degradation. It also doesn't seem to be the area because I've traveled through these areas before with my droid charge and I've never experienced issues anywhere close to this bad with my charge.
Some examples; the first time I noticed it was in the Greensboro, NC 4G area. Specifically at the Travel Centers of America about 10 miles east of the greensboro's border. When I first pulled into the truck stop (I drive a strait truck with a sleeper) I was pissed because my phone was on 3G, and I looked this area up before I came here on verizon's detailed 4G coverage map. This very truck stop was sitting in a dark maroon 4G area, NOT an extended 4G area. So I was angry, but I figured that there was an issue with the network, or the storm coming through was causing problems. Later the storm passed and I noticed (while walking back to my truck) that I was getting a strong 4G signal and good speeds, 5-10 Mbps down and 5 ish up. But as I sat back in even just the driver seat the signal strength dropped, and so did the speeds. I did a lot of tests later outside. I was performing speed tests at different locations all over the parking lot and I noticed the closer I got to the trucks, the poorer the performance. When I was inside my truck, and back in the sleeper, 4G was gone completely, taken over by a very poor 3G signal with slow speeds. I found that if I had my phone mounted on the windshield I was able to get reasonable 4G speeds, but still only a fraction of what I was able to get outside in the parking lot.
Another similar case happened in the Washington DC area at a walmart (Landover, MD). This time the 4G stuck even in the sleeper, but speeds were 2-3 Mbps down and about 700 Kbps up. While outside, however, 15 Mbps down and up.
Here I sit at another truck stop. This time, however, I'm in an extended 4G area (which of course means I have 3G) and I'm comparing my 3G signal strength to my Charge's signal strength. I know what I said earlier, but from what I understand about that "issue", gingerbread phones and earlier would give the CDMA signal strength because they couldn't read the 4G signal strength, but ICS and later can and so it displays the LTE signal strength. So wouldn't that mean that if you are in a 3G area, you can, in fact, accurately compare signal strength since they should both be displaying the CDMA signal strength? If that's the case, then what I'm getting is -100 dBm on my Galaxy Nexus and -87 dBm on my charge.
Something is most definitely wrong with my phone, but I don't know if it has anything to do with the Vicious JB stock rom I installed or not.
Vicious JellyBean 4.1 V5 is the version I installed, and I realize now that I did not install the latest (4.1.1 V1) but nonetheless I could not see it reported anywhere in the changelog, or any of the replies to the thread that there were very noticeable problems with the radio performance. I'm just at a loss and I really hope someone's reading this going "ah, I know exactly what that problem is". Although I'm never lucky enough to have a well known problem happen that there are fixes readily available for
Thanks very much for your time and help!
Bippity, boppity, bump!!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app
I suggest you upgrade to the AOSP version that was released a couple of days ago. I have been running it for about 20 hours with very good results.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1797996
JB issues?
Soundfx,
I've noticed some strange data problems as well. I've only had my nexus for 3 days. The first thing I did was throw a JB ROM (actually, about 9 of them to try them all out) on the device. (Vicious was one of them) What I noticed was that pretty consistently, about 5-10 minutes after the flash, my phone would go from having 4 bars of LTE to no signal at all. My connection would drop completely. Although I didn't figure this out until the latter flashes, I did remember having connection issues when I tried going to the play store or the internet on all the ROMs. I'd have to switch of LTE, and then I'd start working again. At first I just figured that I'm in some sort of LTE dead zone or something. But it seemed strange that my connection would drop completely and I couldn't get it back for 30-60 seconds.
SO, this morning I took my device back to stock. Unrooted ICS from Verizon. And although I wasn't at home for more than a minute to do testing, it appears that my connection problems have gone away. So I'm wondering if it is a radio issue for JB roms. All that to say that I don't think your problem is just the vicious rom. If you wouldn't mind, I'd suggest you trying another ROM and seeing if you have the same issues.
I figure it could be a few things for my own issues, which could be similar to yours:
1. Toro JB roms just have radio issues. (Seems like more people would be clamoring on this forum though if that were true, and I haven't seen any other than you)
2. I have a bad piece of hardware. (Running my stock ICS rom should shake that out.)
3. I live in a verizon dead zone and will experience drops no matter what ROM I use. (Again, stock ICS should shake that out for me.)
4. Gnex has inferior radio hardware, and there is nothing to be done about it. (Doesn't seem likely.)
ALL that to say that, while I don't have an answer for you, I seem to be experiencing similar problems, and I'm trying to figure it out too.
I'll keep you updated as I hone in on a culprit of my problems. (IF I can)
JR
stickerbob said:
I suggest you upgrade to the AOSP version that was released a couple of days ago. I have been running it for about 20 hours with very good results.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1797996
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You say "the AOSP" version that was released, but what exactly does AOSP mean? I know what it stands for, Android Open Source Project, but every jelly bean rom I've seen (or most) has AOSP in it and I guess I don't grasp it's actual meaning.
The only thing I know for sure is that I want stock stock stockity stock stock! When devs build roms they tend to always have some sort of a bug or two, and I just never feel like they are stable enough. So I want as stock as I can get! Which is why I installed Vicious Stock JB.
I just really don't know though...I know the nexus apparently has radio problems anyway, but...I guess I can just try the latest roms and see what happens. Are there any radios that I can install maybe that would fix this? :\
whozamazinka said:
Soundfx,
I've noticed some strange data problems as well. I've only had my nexus for 3 days. The first thing I did was throw a JB ROM (actually, about 9 of them to try them all out) on the device. (Vicious was one of them) What I noticed was that pretty consistently, about 5-10 minutes after the flash, my phone would go from having 4 bars of LTE to no signal at all. My connection would drop completely. Although I didn't figure this out until the latter flashes, I did remember having connection issues when I tried going to the play store or the internet on all the ROMs. I'd have to switch of LTE, and then I'd start working again. At first I just figured that I'm in some sort of LTE dead zone or something. But it seemed strange that my connection would drop completely and I couldn't get it back for 30-60 seconds.
SO, this morning I took my device back to stock. Unrooted ICS from Verizon. And although I wasn't at home for more than a minute to do testing, it appears that my connection problems have gone away. So I'm wondering if it is a radio issue for JB roms. All that to say that I don't think your problem is just the vicious rom. If you wouldn't mind, I'd suggest you trying another ROM and seeing if you have the same issues.
I figure it could be a few things for my own issues, which could be similar to yours:
1. Toro JB roms just have radio issues. (Seems like more people would be clamoring on this forum though if that were true, and I haven't seen any other than you)
2. I have a bad piece of hardware. (Running my stock ICS rom should shake that out.)
3. I live in a verizon dead zone and will experience drops no matter what ROM I use. (Again, stock ICS should shake that out for me.)
4. Gnex has inferior radio hardware, and there is nothing to be done about it. (Doesn't seem likely.)
ALL that to say that, while I don't have an answer for you, I seem to be experiencing similar problems, and I'm trying to figure it out too.
I'll keep you updated as I hone in on a culprit of my problems. (IF I can)
JR
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you kindly sir, and I will give a few other roms a shot just to see what I can find out and report back!
I tried flashing a few different roms; Liquid TORO Alpha 6, Vicious CM10 Toro, and Vicious JB 4.1.1 v1. All three of them as soon as the phone booted up showed the exact same poor 3G signal quality in the back sleeper while I'm in a dark maroon 4G area. Although I don't think I did a proper rom installation. They roms definitely installed, but it upgraded and installed over what I had...which I didn't realize it would do at all. I'll try doing it properly rom installation with a JB toro rom and then I'm going back to stock ICS to see what it looks like. I'm actually, right now, back at the truck stop that I originally noticed this problem. I'll post back.
I tried flashing back to stock 4.0.4 ICS build with the most recent radios, then I tried EK06 EK05 radios. It was the same across the board. No matter what rom/radios i use, the signal quality was the same. I lost service completely inside the building and in the sleeper it drops to 3G with incredibly poor signal quality :\ -100 dBm -120 dBm I'm going to try and get a new SIM card. if that doesn't solve it...then I guess it's time to look for a new phone :\
It seems like the developers are in a holding pattern until new radios are leaked. If it's that bad, there's no real harm in sticking w/ ICS until we get radios. Some really sweet things have been done by the community in the meantime.
Sent from my Xoom using xda premium
well I already had vicious 4.1 installed with my apps and all that stuff and it's the same across the board. So I'll be sticking with this until something pops up I guess :\ I'm still definitely going to check about getting a new SIM card; it's the only option, short of another phone, that I can try at this poing. -shrugs- :\
I just got upgraded to LG8 (finally), and while I am experiencing faster data speeds (usually 3x faster than previously), I have some other issues.
1) Music Hub doesn't work, unlike what the log says on sprint.com
and
2) Battery life is terrible!! It drops 6% battery life in one hour, completely idle!
Is anyone else having similar issues? I called Sprint, and they said that they have never heard of either of these issues for the GSIII and told me to take it to a Sprint Store (conveniently, it is $35). Anyone that has issues with the LG8 update needs to call Sprint. That way that can't simply tell us that there is no solution and that no one else is reporting an issue.
I am unrooted and completely stock.
Yes, I did notice after LG8 my battery life was worse... and the phone was a lot more laggy...
I live in Central Jersey and My 3G speeds have always been garbage so I havent notice anything with that.
It seems like everyone has different results with the different radios. If you don't have a good signal in your area, then the two lg radios can drain more battery. If you need more battery life then you could try going back to lfn.
sparko2010 said:
It seems like everyone has different results with the different radios. If you don't have a good signal in your area, then the two lg radios can drain more battery. If you need more battery life then you could try going back to lfn.
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Everyone has different results with radios because everyone attributes everything to the latest thing they installed. Further, almost no one is willing to do any kind of even remotely scientific testing. They just use the phone, check it, science.
Which is why everytime anything is released, you get this huge range of things that, in most cases, can't even occur.
I flashed and had trouble with all 4 radios, lg8 seems imo, to be the most stable, less loss of data connection to my Airvana for sure.
this message brought to you by my GalaxyS3 running Phantom's Blazer
Hello, I I'm using the stable version that was just released and my phone keeps switching from H, H+, to 3G every 20 seconds or so?! What am I missing here? I have flashed all of the AT&T modems and the problem still exists and drains my better! I cleared everything before installing and everything else is working fine! Just not the data connection. Please help!
Sounds like a problem with AT&T. Some quick things to try when your connection is wonky like that is to toggle airplane mode on and off. I'm in Canada, so I'm not entirely familiar with AT&T, but I have read on a few other posts that they are a little sketchy right now as they roll out LTE to more areas. Also try running with just 3g for a bit, then try LTE and see if anything changes.
Tried doing that Still having issues.
I don't have LTE in my area, so that's not the issue. I do have the HSPDA+, so I get why I see the H+.
It seems to only be with the Cyanogenmod 10 Stable ROM that was just released 2 days ago. Doesn't seem very stable to me
I even just tried installing the nightly update that came out last night to see if there was a fix, and nothing.
Hmm, okay, well, then if it was me in your shoes, what I would try would be flashing back to stock with Odin and start over from scratch again. I find that's easier than messing around with radios and modems and everything. You can find a good stock image in the android development thread that already has root injected into it. Obviously make sure you grab the right image, yadda yadda, yadda.
If you're saying that its switching between 3G, H, and H+ in succession then its doing exactly what it should be doing. Think about it. If your devices data was constantly stuck on the highest speed (the most battery draining one) your phones battery life would be horrible. What aosp based ROMs do is show the true value of your data connection. What's happening is your device is switching to the lower level data (3G) when you're not using data services and then ramping up to the higher level (H+) when you're using data services. Touchwhiz based ROMs don't do this. They lie and always show the highest level data as always being used when in fact the data levels are actually switching back and forth like you're seeing right now.
task650 said:
If you're saying that its switching between 3G, H, and H+ in succession then its doing exactly what it should be doing. Think about it. If your devices data was constantly stuck on the highest speed (the most battery draining one) your phones battery life would be horrible. What aosp based ROMs do is show the true value of your data connection. What's happening is your device is switching to the lower level data (3G) when you're not using data services and then ramping up to the higher level (H+) when you're using data services. Touchwhiz based ROMs don't do this. They lie and always show the highest level data as always being used when in fact the data levels are actually switching back and forth like you're seeing right now.
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Yeah, what Task said!
Thanks, dude. I looked at it as a problem that needed fixing - but I guess if that's what it's supposed to be doing then it's not a problem at all. For some reason, I never see my data type drop from 4G.
GladdBag said:
Yeah, what Task said!
Thanks, dude. I looked at it as a problem that needed fixing - but I guess if that's what it's supposed to be doing then it's not a problem at all. For some reason, I never see my data type drop from 4G.
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If you're in an area with a really strong 4g signal it will stay on 4g. I've noticed that at work it stays on 4g the whole time but at home where my 4g isn't as strong it will switch back and forth.
task650 said:
If you're saying that its switching between 3G, H, and H+ in succession then its doing exactly what it should be doing. Think about it. If your devices data was constantly stuck on the highest speed (the most battery draining one) your phones battery life would be horrible. What aosp based ROMs do is show the true value of your data connection. What's happening is your device is switching to the lower level data (3G) when you're not using data services and then ramping up to the higher level (H+) when you're using data services. Touchwhiz based ROMs don't do this. They lie and always show the highest level data as always being used when in fact the data levels are actually switching back and forth like you're seeing right now.
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Click to collapse
yup, that makes sense
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app
task650 said:
If you're saying that its switching between 3G, H, and H+ in succession then its doing exactly what it should be doing. Think about it. If your devices data was constantly stuck on the highest speed (the most battery draining one) your phones battery life would be horrible. What aosp based ROMs do is show the true value of your data connection. What's happening is your device is switching to the lower level data (3G) when you're not using data services and then ramping up to the higher level (H+) when you're using data services. Touchwhiz based ROMs don't do this. They lie and always show the highest level data as always being used when in fact the data levels are actually switching back and forth like you're seeing right now.
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Click to collapse
Are you ABSOLUTELY certain about this? I will just let my phone sit there (not doing anything) and the icons go 3G, H, H+, back down to H in literally 3 seconds.
This doesn't seem right. Especially with my battery draining about 20% in a matter of 20 minutes. I figured it was because the data connection was jumping all around.
Can everyone else confirm that their phone is doing this too (jumping between all sorts of connections) that is running Cyanogenmod 10 Stable?
Oh, and I'm in a really strong "4G" area downtown Minneapolis, etc.
PowerMan572 said:
Are you ABSOLUTELY certain about this? I will just let my phone sit there (not doing anything) and the icons go 3G, H, H+, back down to H in literally 3 seconds.
This doesn't seem right. Especially with my battery draining about 20% in a matter of 20 minutes. I figured it was because the data connection was jumping all around.
Can everyone else confirm that their phone is doing this too that is running Cyanogenmod 10 Stable?
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not sure why you would think that i would give information like this without knowing. either way. thats how its supposed to be. its flipping back and forth like that when you're not doing anything because of email syncing and things like that in the background. whether you think youre in a "strong 4g" area or not. your device knows better than you. if its switching in an area the you think its strong in, it's probably not as strong as you think if your device is saying otherwise.
task650 said:
not sure why you would think that i would give information like this without knowing. either way. thats how its supposed to be. its flipping back and forth like that when you're not doing anything because of email syncing and things like that in the background. whether you think youre in a "strong 4g" area or not. your device knows better than you. if its switching in an area the you think its strong in, it's probably not as strong as you think if your device is saying otherwise.
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Alright, thanks for the explanation. I might try it one more time tonight, but on the way to work today the data connection was flipping back and forth constantly, draining my battery as well too. I've been around the Twin Cities today (not just sitting in just 1 spot) and still happens. So I doubt the entire cities is not as strong 4G as I think :fingers-crossed:
Keep you posted.
WIFI Issues
Hi All:
I'm not sure if this the same issue as whats listed here but on CM10.0.0 Stable, wifi seems to fail to reconnect after the phone goes into sleep mode. In stock ROM, I could bring up the wifi menu by dialing *#0011# however on CM10 it doesnt work.
I know others have listed this issue on the web (not just xda) but wondering if any one has a fix? Thanks.
task650 said:
not sure why you would think that i would give information like this without knowing. either way. thats how its supposed to be. its flipping back and forth like that when you're not doing anything because of email syncing and things like that in the background. whether you think youre in a "strong 4g" area or not. your device knows better than you. if its switching in an area the you think its strong in, it's probably not as strong as you think if your device is saying otherwise.
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Click to collapse
Okay, I'll admit when I'm wrong. Had some patience tonight and my mind wasn't playing tricks on me now that I got an explanation. Battery life is fine, and Internet connection doesn't go out when I'm on the browser ^_^
Thanks for your explanation!
hey...i know this might be a bit late but I'm on a rogers sg3 running CM10 stable as well and i mine is doing the same thing. I can understand where you are coming from because it seems that mine started doing this after i lost IMEI and restored. i think it's purely a case of me noticing things a little bit more after that whole ordeal. can't really confirm if it was doing this before but it seems to be working fine right now. recently i was in a very strong 4G(LTE) area and phone didn't switch at all...just stayed on LTE constant. At home on the other hand(rural ontario) my phone jumps around like crazy. I've even seen it go right down to E lol! So I, like yourself was a little skeptical and decided to switch back to stock and sure enought it just stayed right on H+ makiing me think that i was getting "better" service on a stock rom lol. but when i went into phone settings/about phone/status the mobile network type kept swiching even though it showed H+.
anyway...just my 2 cents. hope this puts your mind at ease
Hey guys. I rooted my AT&T S3 recently, using the guide on GalaxyS3Root.com. However, I'm still rather unsatisfied... namely because the performance--especially battery and wifi performance--of this phone isn't that good.
So, I've done some research about ROMs, but I think the best way to do this would be to simply ask more experienced Android users about their advice. Two main questions (I'll bold them in case you don't care about my explanation):
Does anyone know a ROM that has a better "WIFI radio", and has lower power consumption than the stock? Well, no, the battery life part is mostly a no-brainer, I guess, since I'm pretty sure other ROMs do. The main thing is Wifi.
Particularly, the way the WIFI is so unreliable on my campus (GA Tech) is quite annoying. While my iPhone 3GS would seamlessly transitioning to closer wireless hubs in a building, this thing waits until the one that's like half the building away is fully out of range (it stopped being able to use the signal from it a long time ago). Someone on another forum mentioned that some ROMs may use a better WIFI radio ("the software controlling your 3G/WiFi receiver chip"). That's why I'm interested. Unfortunately I don't see any of the ROMs outright stating this information...
Battery life... well, honestly I should probably weed out more bloatware, but I have heard certain ROMs do this better. So before I go picking out weeds, I figured I would ask.
If the answer to the first question is yes, then does anyone have any guides to recommend for getting a ROM up and running easily (ie minimal hassle) and properly (ie nothing left to chance)?
Sorry if this is wall-of-text-ish, and thank you for your assistance.
WiFi is controlled by the kernel. Try anew kernel first
Sent from my A510 using Tapatalk 2
WiFi is kernel level. Try ktoonsez kernel, it has the newest WiFi drivers from Samsung. Also has tons of options to tweak your phone to optimize performance and battery life. Also if your on the stock ROM I recommend you flash a jellybean ROM immediately lol
Thanks for the replies, guys. Is installing a new kernel any more difficult than installing a ROM? Any recommended how-to's?
Also, for that ktoonsez kernel:
Will it work on my 4.0.4 phone? Also, the only thing I found was a code repository. Is there a precompiled version of that kernel? I mean, I've done plenty of C/C++ compiling here and there, but I still kinda don't wanna mess anything up and end up bricking my phone.
Thanks
Download from this thread. Make sure you download the right one (tw ICS)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1756776
If you don't have a recovery installed download ROM manager from the market and install cwm.
Then follow the directions in that thread. General kernel flashing procedure is flash kernel, wipe cache & dalvik, fix permissions.
jefferson9 said:
Download from this thread. Make sure you download the right one (tw ICS)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1756776
If you don't have a recovery installed download ROM manager from the market and install cwm.
Then follow the directions in that thread. General kernel flashing procedure is flash kernel, wipe cache & dalvik, fix permissions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright, I went ahead and did it. Installation went pretty smoothly (booting into CWM was the most trouble, just took a few tries..). The device is a bit warm right now, but it may be because I'm charging it. I hope this kernel doesn't eat my battery up more because of some random bugs. I do notice it has some clocking settings, though, which is really good. Namely, being able to set the maximum clock while the screen is off sounds like a pretty nifty power management thing.
Well, I'll be trying it out more over the next few hours.
Thanks a lot for your help.
Next issue:
As for improving battery life in general, does anyone have any app suggestions (app killers, bloatware to get rid of, etc). I already killed allshare (very happily I might add...). I think I saw a list somewhere on these forums, of bloatware it's safe to get rid of, but I'm not sure which particular apps have the most effect.
xshadowinxbc said:
Alright, I went ahead and did it. Installation went pretty smoothly (booting into CWM was the most trouble, just took a few tries..). The device is a bit warm right now, but it may be because I'm charging it. I hope this kernel doesn't eat my battery up more because of some random bugs. I do notice it has some clocking settings, though, which is really good. Namely, being able to set the maximum clock while the screen is off sounds like a pretty nifty power management thing.
Well, I'll be trying it out more over the next few hours.
Thanks a lot for your help.
Next issue:
As for improving battery life in general, does anyone have any app suggestions (app killers, bloatware to get rid of, etc). I already killed allshare (very happily I might add...). I think I saw a list somewhere on these forums, of bloatware it's safe to get rid of, but I'm not sure which particular apps have the most effect.
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Click to collapse
Titanium backup is a good app for removing bloatware. Also check out this thread for tweaking the kernel to save battery life http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1886233
xshadowinxbc said:
Alright, I went ahead and did it. Installation went pretty smoothly (booting into CWM was the most trouble, just took a few tries..). The device is a bit warm right now, but it may be because I'm charging it. I hope this kernel doesn't eat my battery up more because of some random bugs. I do notice it has some clocking settings, though, which is really good. Namely, being able to set the maximum clock while the screen is off sounds like a pretty nifty power management thing.
Well, I'll be trying it out more over the next few hours.
Thanks a lot for your help.
Next issue:
As for improving battery life in general, does anyone have any app suggestions (app killers, bloatware to get rid of, etc). I already killed allshare (very happily I might add...). I think I saw a list somewhere on these forums, of bloatware it's safe to get rid of, but I'm not sure which particular apps have the most effect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kernel's have governors and I/O schedulers that you can tweak to get better battery life. As a start since you're on KT747, I suggest Ktoonservative and noop. You can look more into those on the KT thread.
DarthDerron said:
Kernel's have governors and I/O schedulers that you can tweak to get better battery life. As a start since you're on KT747, I suggest Ktoonservative and noop. You can look more into those on the KT thread.
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Click to collapse
I agree with this suggestion. The largest increase in battery life happened when I changed my governor to conservative and i/o scheduler to noop.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
Hmmm.... well, that kernel didn't solve my wifi problem at all.
The battery life (when idle) went up by a tremendous amount, though, which is great. Android Kernel now hardly ever shows up in my battery monitoring app as one of the largest app drains, and that part is great. Opera seems to be a bit "heavy" on the battery lately, though... may just be Adfree.
I'm not actually sure what the wifi drivers solved. My wifi didn't really seem to perform too much different with them either way, and it certainly didn't improve the GS3's ability to keep a signal with multiple hubs around. I guess Apple is just that far ahead of Samsung when it comes to both their wifi drivers and their wifi hardware (which is sad, because I'm comparing a GS3 to a 3GS). Sigh. At least I'm graduating this semester anyway.
Does anyone have a different suggestion?
Again, thanks for all the help.
In the advanced wifi settings there is an option to ignore weak wifi signals you could try that although I havent had much luck with it, I have three wifi routers in my house to cover the whole house. Also see the below link to deal with tbe bloatware.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=27878819
xshadowinxbc said:
Hmmm.... well, that kernel didn't solve my wifi problem at all.
The battery life (when idle) went up by a tremendous amount, though, which is great. Android Kernel now hardly ever shows up in my battery monitoring app as one of the largest app drains, and that part is great. Opera seems to be a bit "heavy" on the battery lately, though... may just be Adfree.
I'm not actually sure what the wifi drivers solved. My wifi didn't really seem to perform too much different with them either way, and it certainly didn't improve the GS3's ability to keep a signal with multiple hubs around. I guess Apple is just that far ahead of Samsung when it comes to both their wifi drivers and their wifi hardware (which is sad, because I'm comparing a GS3 to a 3GS). Sigh. At least I'm graduating this semester anyway.
Does anyone have a different suggestion?
Again, thanks for all the help.
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Click to collapse
Exactly what problem are you having with WiFi? I believe once your phone connects to a router, it stays connected until you disable it or go out of range. I've never heard of any type of computer that keeps scanning for better signals. This would just waste battery life. There may be a 3rd party app out there to do this but I wouldn't be interested in that.
As far as improving reception, there's no software upgrade you can do to improve WiFi reception. I think the only benefit new drivers have is faster to establish connection time. Some cases (including my speck candy shell) ive noticed have interfered with signal strength slightly.
jefferson9 said:
Exactly what problem are you having with WiFi? I believe once your phone connects to a router, it stays connected until you disable it or go out of range. I've never heard of any type of computer that keeps scanning for better signals. This would just waste battery life. There may be a 3rd party app out there to do this but I wouldn't be interested in that.
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So you say, but that seems to be what my 3GS did, and the battery life on it wasn't bad at all. For instance, I could keep Skype on while talking to my friend throughout a large building with multiple wifi hotspots without hardly any interruptions (elevator aside.. well no sometimes it even worked in there)... and it had an Otterbox case on (a fairly bulky one). Heck, sometimes it even kept Pandora going while I was walking around campus, not even inside of any buildings, and pretty far away from the nearest wifi. On the other hand, the data speeds capped out a bit faster than the GS3... but that wasn't an issue since it was still well over 1-2MB/s.
Compare this to my GS3, which can't even keep Anime Radio playing within that same building. Hell, it can't even Pandora going... which is much more bandwidth-friendly and probably even caches a full song while playing it, so you don't get interruptions during outages. Don't even think about Skype.
I guess the GS3 just has a much weaker WIFI reception, both hardware and software. I think it could be improved if the software controlling it tried to at least immediately jump to another hotspot when the signal started getting too weak.
As far as improving reception, there's no software upgrade you can do to improve WiFi reception. I think the only benefit new drivers have is faster to establish connection time. Some cases (including my speck candy shell) ive noticed have interfered with signal strength slightly.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, I was just in a bit of a state of denial, I guess. I paid that much money for a "future tech device" that has worse wifi than something that was released well over a year ago. It's a little pathetic... exacerbated all the more by the fact that I'm still using that minimum data plan (~200MB/month) that I was using on my iPhone. I'm not trying to be an iPhone fanboy or anything. It's just that considering the evidence, this is just how it is. I might try getting it back to Best Buy since I'm still under there insurance, and try getting a new one to see if it has better WIFI reception, but it's difficult to do full testing without a control. I'd need to find someone else on campus that has an GS3 and then compare our signals.
Also, I am using a case. It's just an Otterbox Commuter.
In the advanced wifi settings there is an option to ignore weak wifi signals you could try that although I havent had much luck with it,
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It's worth a try. Where is this at? I can't find it.
That is interesting that you get much better performance on an old iPhone 3gs. Not really sure I've seen enough evidence to say the iPhone 3gs has better WiFi hardware than the gs3. Apple has been known to use top of the line hardware everywhere (that's why they're so expensive) so it wouldn't surprise me.
On a more productive note, why not use your mobile data?
jefferson9 said:
That is interesting that you get much better performance on an old iPhone 3gs. Not really sure I've seen enough evidence to say the iPhone 3gs has better WiFi hardware than the gs3. Apple has been known to use top of the line hardware everywhere (that's why they're so expensive) so it wouldn't surprise me.
On a more productive note, why not use your mobile data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me and my mother have about 1 GB shared between us now, and that just happened recently. Until now, I was pretty much using a 200MB/month (or was it 250... whatever) plan, like I said in my last post. 200MB/month gets raped fast, even trying to use it minimally. Daily usage is pretty much impossible with that little per month. 200/30 is about 6.7 megs maximum per day. That's about 2 songs in Pandora.
I'd try flashing another ROM. Make a nandroid and try aokp, cm10, or slimbean. Its worth a try. I haven't been on the stock ROM since July and I've never had a problem with WiFi.
Advanced wifi settings are located here
Settings...press on wifi...capacitive menu button on phone....advanced. Should be in there.