Apologies if this belongs in Themes & Apps, but I thought it seems more like programming at the OS level than a new app.
I had an idea while driving home after a long day in a location that had low 3G signal, and my phone was dead:
Latedroid's Juicedefender helps save battery by turning off the APN every x minutes, and we know that using 3G/EDGE data eats up a lot of battery, especially when in a low signal area (takes more power to transmit).
How feasible would it be to create an app/build in code in Android for the functionality to turn off/disable the APN when the signal level is below a certain threshold?
Of course, you would need to build in some sort of manual override for times you really want to use data even if you are in low signal area. Perhaps if the device is NOT in sleep, do not disable the APN regardless of signal strength. But if the device is sleeping, disable APN if signal is lower than x dB.
What do you all think? Problems I already foresee is that switching APN on and off would have a delay upon first wakeup, or possibly interrupt data transfers in progress when device goes to sleep.
Thanks,
--Hans
Very interesting
Actually, this sounds like a very good idea. Now, just need to find a dev capable of producing such results. Maybe contact the developer of Juice Defender/Plotter and see if it is feasible. I like where this could go though. Battery is the ONE complaint I have about my otherwise sexy and powerful device!
Great idea.
I have thought about this as well.
this would be too difficult to implement i would think. even in strong signal areas, the reception bounces all over the place sometimes. the phone would constantly be bugging itself out i would think as the signal dips below, then goes right above, the threshold level.
RogerPodacter said:
this would be too difficult to implement i would think. even in strong signal areas, the reception bounces all over the place sometimes. the phone would constantly be bugging itself out i would think as the signal dips below, then goes right above, the threshold level.
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Nah, I don't think so. With some clever programming and it watching maybe an average signal level over some period of time, I think it could do pretty well. The idea is to avoid HUGE battery drains over a moderate amount of time.
For example, if i'm at work in my office building, i get 0-1 bars of signal strength for 8 hours. It would be great if it detected after, say...10 minutes that my signal strength was in the crapper, and turned off the APN (or at least, account syncing) so I won't leave work 8 hours later with 5% battery life. But, if I wake my phone up, it will automatically turn the APN on so I can use data as I see fit.
But let's say I go out for lunch. The phone would either detect that I'm changing position/location via cell towers, or it would just regularly poll signal level and when it found that my signal level had increased by some delta amount over say...5 minutes, it would turn the APN back on.
I find that most of my frustration with this phone is with battery drain, and most of the drain comes from sitting in low signal areas for extended periods of time. If this could be accomplished (with configurable thresholds and stuff about time to average the signal over, etc) I think it would be an excellent addition to the customization-ability of android!
Good thoughts.
THATTON said:
Actually, this sounds like a very good idea. Now, just need to find a dev capable of producing such results. Maybe contact the developer of Juice Defender/Plotter and see if it is feasible. I like where this could go though. Battery is the ONE complaint I have about my otherwise sexy and powerful device!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But yeah, this may requires a good dev.
Thanks for launching the discussion!
dyndragon said:
Nah, I don't think so. With some clever programming and it watching maybe an average signal level over some period of time, I think it could do pretty well. The idea is to avoid HUGE battery drains over a moderate amount of time.
For example, if i'm at work in my office building, i get 0-1 bars of signal strength for 8 hours. It would be great if it detected after, say...10 minutes that my signal strength was in the crapper, and turned off the APN (or at least, account syncing) so I won't leave work 8 hours later with 5% battery life. But, if I wake my phone up, it will automatically turn the APN on so I can use data as I see fit.
But let's say I go out for lunch. The phone would either detect that I'm changing position/location via cell towers, or it would just regularly poll signal level and when it found that my signal level had increased by some delta amount over say...5 minutes, it would turn the APN back on.
I find that most of my frustration with this phone is with battery drain, and most of the drain comes from sitting in low signal areas for extended periods of time. If this could be accomplished (with configurable thresholds and stuff about time to average the signal over, etc) I think it would be an excellent addition to the customization-ability of android!
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Click to collapse
good points. you're probably right. i also sit at work all day at my desk, and i only get 1 bar of 3g signal. stupid building blocks reception.
Posted this in the Google Dev Group from Latedroid... Dont think he will work on it in the near future though, as a new JD version will come to the market very soon
Very nice idea actually. After some beta versions, could be really really useful.
The paid version of Juicedefender has an option that can disable the APN whenever the screen is off. I don't use it because it interferes with Pandora.
It also has a 1x1 widget for manually enabling/disabling the APN.
connery916 said:
The paid version of Juicedefender has an option that can disable the APN whenever the screen is off. I don't use it because it interferes with Pandora.
It also has a 1x1 widget for manually enabling/disabling the APN.
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That's an entirely different thing, entirely.
I miss those movies.
I did have another idea, and its to remap the brightless on the N1. Most of us probably use 100% brightness, but I have a funny idea that somewhere between 85-90% brightness there is a sweetspot which pretty much looks identical, but uses a reasonable amount less power. Unfortunately without a multimeter, I am unable to test
dogiedogie said:
I did have another idea, and its to remap the brightless on the N1. Most of us probably use 100% brightness, but I have a funny idea that somewhere between 85-90% brightness there is a sweetspot which pretty much looks identical, but uses a reasonable amount less power. Unfortunately without a multimeter, I am unable to test
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Click to collapse
100% brightness? You're crazy. Must of us have it cranked way down.
dogiedogie said:
I did have another idea, and its to remap the brightless on the N1. Most of us probably use 100% brightness, but I have a funny idea that somewhere between 85-90% brightness there is a sweetspot which pretty much looks identical, but uses a reasonable amount less power. Unfortunately without a multimeter, I am unable to test
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I find that if we can conserve power while in low signal areas, that is a much greater gain than even dimming the display...anyway, totally off topic!
Send some requests to Mark at latedroid if you want them to consider it! I think Juicedefender is closest to this feature set, really.
dyndragon said:
I find that if we can conserve power while in low signal areas, that is a much greater gain than even dimming the display...anyway, totally off topic!
Send some requests to Mark at latedroid if you want them to consider it! I think Juicedefender is closest to this feature set, really.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But wouldnt doing that just leave us with NO signal? We all know about the N1's 3g 'problems' to begin with.
Hook PhoneStateIntentReceiver with notifySignalStrength and pull phoneStateReceiver.getSignalStrength();
The development ain't hard to do. The rules are.
Aka on what threshold do you disable, do you enable once every X minutes anyway etc. Do you force keeping one state for X minutes to avoid enable/disable spam.
nurre said:
Hook PhoneStateIntentReceiver with notifySignalStrength and pull phoneStateReceiver.getSignalStrength();
The development ain't hard to do. The rules are.
Aka on what threshold do you disable, do you enable once every X minutes anyway etc. Do you force keeping one state for X minutes to avoid enable/disable spam.
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Click to collapse
Well being a developer on other platforms and having watched a lot of sessions from Google I/O 2010, I have a feeling that calling these APIs too frequent might actually drain more battery than this would conserve, but without a test I might be wrong, just sharing what I feel here, no flames, thank you
tazzix said:
Well being a developer on other platforms and having watched a lot of sessions from Google I/O 2010, I have a feeling that calling these APIs too frequent might actually drain more battery than this would conserve, but without a test I might be wrong, just sharing what I feel here, no flames, thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Another problem you'll face is even if you balance it perfectly for you, so your saving power, chances are at least half the users will see a DECREASE in battery because of the signal conditions they have in their area.
dyndragon said:
I find that if we can conserve power while in low signal areas, that is a much greater gain than even dimming the display...anyway, totally off topic!
Send some requests to Mark at latedroid if you want them to consider it! I think Juicedefender is closest to this feature set, really.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my battery stats, display is always number one offender.
Automatic brightness is probably the way to go
I am considering switching from the charge to the tbolt. is the 4G radio the main drain on the battery? 4G is not available where I live, so I am wondering if I could get away with the stock battery until it is available in my area. Could I get battery life at least comparable to the DX until it is?
Unless I'm on business, I'm presently in an 3G-exclusive area, and with CM7 my battery drain is 50% cell standby. That said, on BAMF 1.6.3 (Froyo) I didn't experience this much cell standby drain. To be sure, 4G does draw a fair amount of current, especially if the signal is weak.
Not that I can tell. From everything I'm seeing its the half acre of glass on the front of the thing that sucks the battery dry. 4G signal strength shouldn't have any effect at all on the battery because it doesn't use code division multiple access technology which requires the signals from all devices on that tower to have signal strength reaching the tower to be equal. Instead, it requires an advance be built into the signal transmission so that the phone addresses the tower within its time slot. This has no effect on battery drain at all. What will still drain the battery in 4G areas is the connection needed for voice and text, which still uses cdma, if my understanding is correct.
nerozehl said:
Unless I'm on business, I'm presently in an 3G-exclusive area, and with CM7 my battery drain is 50% cell standby. That said, on BAMF 1.6.3 (Froyo) I didn't experience this much cell standby drain. To be sure, 4G does draw a fair amount of current, especially if the signal is weak.
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Click to collapse
I completely agree. If your 4g signal is somewhat weak, your battery will drain fairly quick. You might also notice your battery getting up to 103 degrees Fahrenheit because it keeps trying to get that weak 4g signal.
You could always change it to CDMA prl. That will save your battery and prevent it from drawing current to get a weak 4g signal.
I work in an office which is a level below ground in central Sydney so most of my work day I am out of reception.
Now I do venture into reception areas so every now and then so don't want to turn aeroplane mode on and off all the time.... So please don't suggest this.
With my previous phone (i8000) I didn't have such a drain on battery when out of reception all day from what I remember. I used to get really long standby times but I didn't use the screen anywhere near as much.
Now I know the phone will use more power in low reception areas because it needs to turn the sensitivity up to get clear signal. But the i9100 seems to drain much more than all my other phones I have used.
I am on stock I3 firmware with CT Root kernel. I have a high level of 44% Cell Standby with only being on for 6 hours (and out of reception for 3 of them) even though I have used the screen for 1 hour and that only shows 37% of usage. I don't remember it being this bad on H3 but to be honest I didn't really check for comparison of usage.
Is this normal? My old O2 phone on win mo used to go into a state of sleep for searching for reception when at work because it used to take a few minutes sometimes, after I got into reception zone, to realise I had reception. The i9100 seems to get it straight away which makes me think is it polling all the time I am at work and draining the battery more because it tries so hard?
Hope I made this clear.
So it appears like from research this high drain is fairly common on android devices when in no reception areas. I could understand why it would happen in low reception areas where the phone uses more power to pick up a weak signal. But why would the phone continually do this in a NO recpetion area. I thought samsung would have made the phone relaise it has no reception and only try every 5 minutes or so...
I never noticed this on my i8000 or any of my win mo phones before it. I assume they realsied there was no reception and stopped polling at full strength the whole time I was at work. This would have been indicated by the slight delay of leaving my bilding before getting messages sometimes where now its instant. But without the battery usage stats I can't compare.
I have tried to find an app that automatically puts the phone into aeroplane mode when NO signal for 30 minutes or something. And keep s turning aeroplane off every 5 or 10 minutes or so. But I have yet to find anything.
I realise there are programs that will use GPS and do it automatically but this is not ideal. I only want it to happen when I have no reception.
Any ideas of ways to fix this without me manually putting my phone into aeroplane mode when I'm in my office and remembering to take it back out when I know I should have reception? I don't want to use location based because this doesn't work when I go up one level.
Just bumping my ancient thread.
After an app that will recognised NO reception for long periods and automatically put flights mode on. Then turn flight mode off briefly every 5 minutes or so to check if reception is back.
In my office I have no reception but if I go up two levels I do. So time based automation does not suit nor does location based unless it knows what level I am on.
See above for the long story
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
Hi all!
When I'm at home, I get about 3 bars of 3G signal. I have had this phone for about 3 days and the battery life is really bad, using basic apps drains my battery really fast. Should I change the network to 2G? Does the poor 3G signal affect the battery life significantly?
Much appreciated!
If 2G is enough for you, change it. It uses less battery even with good 3G signal...
And yes, a poor signal always uses much more battery life than good signal, no matter GSM/2G/3G/4G...
Yes, I have noticed that in areas where signal is poor (1-2 bars), battery drains significantly faster. It's quite irritating since this issue is non-existent on iPhones. I wonder if a software update can fix this.
Sharpshooterrr said:
Yes, I have noticed that in areas where signal is poor (1-2 bars), battery drains significantly faster. It's quite irritating since this issue is non-existent on iPhones. I wonder if a software update can fix this.
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Click to collapse
It's the technique of every phone, even on iPhones... the amount sure can vary, but it's not inexistent...
I have about 1-2 bars at home and over night it takes about 2-3% of charge, very similar like iPhone I had before...
it does on mine. at work i get full signal and though i use it a fair bit, it doesnt seem to use too much battery but at home where i get terrible battery life it seems to use more battery