There have been some posts on battery life being terrible lately, and here is a little alternative way to improve your battery life that I found out by accident.
We all know that Sprint 3g speeds have been taking a crapper lately, I don't think I even get 300kbps downstream anymore. I wanted to download a ROM so I quickly toggled on 4g (which I hadn't used yet on my phone) and found I was getting downstream of 2mbps - 4mbps, not great but certainly 10x as good as my 3g.
After my download, I mistakenly left 4g enabled. I come from the OG Evo where if I left 4g on my phone was dead so fast at work due to no signal. However, I found that my MoPho just put the 4g radio on standby and didn't need me to do anything and the battery wasn't draining.
So I came to this conclusion, since the 4g radio management so far seems to be pretty good for the MoPho, if the power consumption by the 4g radio is < than the factor of speed the speeds are over 3g, maybe some Angry birds, I can't remember, then it is probably worth it to leave your 4g on. Save battery + faster downloads = win!
I don't have a screencap for this, but the other day, I was off my charger for about 16 hours, had 15-20% battery left. I streamed some Pandora, downloaded a bit, read some RSS, email, a couple texts, some phone calls and had the 4g enabled all day. Not bad I say.
Doesn't 4G still have to come on every so often to push or pull email and whatnot?
Yea, but the premise is still sound I think.
Sent from my MoPho
Related
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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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.
am i the only one having such slow speeds, that watching a youtube video is not possible unless wifi is enabled?
i can browse the web just fine, but anything youtube related and it falls on its face.
that and my battery lasting a mere 6 hours and i'm beginning to hate this phone. (yes, syncs are turned off, and no live wallpaper exists)
The only fix for this I have found is to return the phone for a refund...
Sad but very true.
Sent from my PC36100 using xda premium
wakdady said:
am i the only one having such slow speeds, that watching a youtube video is not possible unless wifi is enabled?
i can browse the web just fine, but anything youtube related and it falls on its face.
that and my battery lasting a mere 6 hours and i'm beginning to hate this phone. (yes, syncs are turned off, and no live wallpaper exists)
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Well, if you did the Proxy removing trick and you called Sprint to have a "data reset for slow data speeds" and you are positive it isn't just the coverage/local tower saturation. From the sounds of your 6-hour battery you are probably in a low signal area and tower hopping and probably even roaming more than you should. I know mine does that. Mine does all of that even though I usually get decent enough speeds for everything except youtube, which I can stream it just takes an extra 5-10 seconds to buffer.
I'm on my 3rd phone, I've done all of those tricks and they have helped greatly, but, every bit of help it gets just masks the fact that to some of us this phone has terrible signal strength and tower locking and an absurdly low roaming threshold...roaming data is so slow that it's nearly useless for anything but simple web pages.
The only solution I've been able to come up with comes out on Friday I did love this phone, but, I've been in denial for a while now. I wish you better luck than I had.
Sprint 3G is horrible. If you are not on Wi-Fi or 4G watching anything on youtube is impossible. I love how Sprint has the only true unlimited data, but it comes at the price of piss-poor 3G speeds.
Your lucky to get 6 hours of battery use. I can get 6 if I lower my screen brightness to almost 0, turn off gps and sync, and not make any phone calls.
fmedina2 said:
Sprint 3G is horrible. If you are not on Wi-Fi or 4G watching anything on youtube is impossible. I love how Sprint has the only true unlimited data, but it comes at the price of piss-poor 3G speeds.
Your lucky to get 6 hours of battery use. I can get 6 if I lower my screen brightness to almost 0, turn off gps and sync, and not make any phone calls.
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Piss poor 3G speeds? I always use 3G since there is no 4G where I live, and even if I get around 1 bar, the 3G is amazing. It is incredibly fast. Also, the battery life should last about 12-15 hours with moderate (~3 hours screen on, some calls, medium data/streaming) usage. You might need to get your phone replaced.
But yeah, 3G, WiFi or 4G, the youtube buffering was always really slow on my phone and previous phones.
OP: If you have bad signal and cut in and out of roaming, that could be the battery drain problem. The Photon 4G is great with signal and should get around an extra 3 bars of signal than the Evo 3d does. (I have a friend with it and he gets 5 bars where I get around 1-3 bars) If you really need something for signal, you could sell your Evo for around 200 dollars on craigslist and get an around 200 dollar photon from craigslist.
Do the proxy thing. It won't speed up your data persay but for me if i have the proxy in YouTube doesn't work if I take it out it does. I've done it multiple times. It's really easy.
boom!! from my shooter
yousefak said:
Piss poor 3G speeds? I always use 3G since there is no 4G where I live, and even if I get around 1 bar, the 3G is amazing. It is incredibly fast. Also, the battery life should last about 12-15 hours with moderate (~3 hours screen on, some calls, medium data/streaming) usage. You might need to get your phone replaced.
But yeah, 3G, WiFi or 4G, the youtube buffering was always really slow on my phone and previous phones.
OP: If you have bad signal and cut in and out of roaming, that could be the battery drain problem. The Photon 4G is great with signal and should get around an extra 3 bars of signal than the Evo 3d does. (I have a friend with it and he gets 5 bars where I get around 1-3 bars) If you really need something for signal, you could sell your Evo for around 200 dollars on craigslist and get an around 200 dollar photon from craigslist.
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Agreed. Having owned an evo (currently using), photon, and a 3d ill have to say that the reception issue was definitely the phone (3d) and NOT the network.
At work with my evo 4g and I can buffer a HQ youtube video fairly quickly with just one bar of reception. Yet on the 3D I can even buffer a non hq youtube video at ALL. even on wifi it couldn't stream a vid. Piss poor. The mopho was excellent. On par or better than my evo.
I shouldn't have to do all these tweaks to my phone to make it work AS A PHONE. that is the one of the main things on my list that MUST work out of the box.
Sent from my PC36100 using xda premium
yousefak said:
Piss poor 3G speeds? I always use 3G since there is no 4G where I live, and even if I get around 1 bar, the 3G is amazing. It is incredibly fast. Also, the battery life should last about 12-15 hours with moderate (~3 hours screen on, some calls, medium data/streaming) usage. You might need to get your phone replaced.
But yeah, 3G, WiFi or 4G, the youtube buffering was always really slow on my phone and previous phones.
OP: If you have bad signal and cut in and out of roaming, that could be the battery drain problem. The Photon 4G is great with signal and should get around an extra 3 bars of signal than the Evo 3d does. (I have a friend with it and he gets 5 bars where I get around 1-3 bars) If you really need something for signal, you could sell your Evo for around 200 dollars on craigslist and get an around 200 dollar photon from craigslist.
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Then you are lucky. Many of us live in areas with good sprint coverage...I always get 4 or higher bars but download speeds of 50 kps..around there. I only get 200 plus in the late hours..2 am and such. You tube lags and the rest of slow download headaches. Not everybody has good speeds like you and I am not a betting man, but I would think the majority of us get ****ty speeds. Hell, my cricket phone before I went sprint had faster speeds, but service was awful. Not flaming, just stating the truth. Sprint has ****ty speeds, period. Some of us, the majority...have much, much slower speeds then you
I have to agree with everyone else. I get good coverage and I'm connected to sprint's 3G network not 1x and I consistantly get below 100kbs. My phone is basically unusable without wifi connected. Once in a while I'll get like 500kbs and it feels like 4G! So Lame. It's a good thing Sprint doesn't throttle data! LMAO If they did the speeds would be like 10kbs!
maybe the problem is not on the phone but on the carrier.. i have the Evo in Portugal and the youtube speed is normal over mobile data (and not wifi) and my battery always lasts about 48 hours..
i live in the San Francisco Bay area and we have very good 3G and 4G in many areas. but it still sucks. it wasnt this bad when i first got the phone.
can someone send me a link or how-to on the proxy thingy?
what other phone options do i have that either meet or excel in the specs compared to a evo3d?
wakdady said:
i live in the San Francisco Bay area and we have very good 3G and 4G in many areas. but it still sucks. it wasnt this bad when i first got the phone.
can someone send me a link or how-to on the proxy thingy?
what other phone options do i have that either meet or excel in the specs compared to a evo3d?
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The Photon. And in a week or two from Friday check the epic touch 4g forums to see how their reception is
Sent from my PC36100 using xda premium
I have trouble streaming youtube on 3G too. Usually I use 4G.....but yeah its kinda annoying
I haven't had any issues on my Evo...but I know youtube themselves, (streaming from a desktop with 60 megs down...has been painfully slow...and it's only youtube.
I've considered switching to VZW from T-Mo. One of my concerns is battery life with 4G. Can 4G be turned off with something like Juice Defender? Do you really need 4G while your phone is sleeping, pushing e-mails?
You can change it to 3g only in the network settings.
The only time I need 4g is when im showing off.
Yes, there is usually a switch between forcing LTE mode, deactivating LTE, or allowing your phone to choose between 4G and 3G based on signal strength.
Another thing to remember is when you're at home, you can use your wifi connection.
I have had both the HTC Thunderbolt and Samsung Droid Charge, so from my experience keeping 4G on is craaaaazy fast battery drain.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
Yes, but can I do it systematically? Also, can the phone pick up 4G while you are on a call to instantiate voice & data simultaneously? I would use the data speeds regularly, but don't need them while the screen is off.
BUMP......
It probably can be done with smart actions? I haven't taken a good look at it yet, but seems promising.
Bump bump bump
Bump........
there are 4g toggle apps in the market making swapping service very easy.. 2 nights ago i went about 10 hours w/ 4G on with moderate use before getting a 20% battery warning.. last night i tried 4g off, went to work, forgot to plug my phone in at night and woke up to 50% battery, unplugged for 20 hours (both nights i had a full charge before leaving for work).. it's a pretty drastic difference, 4G is blazing fast tho, i'd love to be able to keep it on 24/7..
check out the pic. notice when i went to 3g when i went out for a bit, my battery just dropped... i didn't use the phone that much when I was out, and it still drained that much. hmm.
actually right now I can't upload a pic. anyone else having that issue from the app?
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using XDA App
No problems on my end bro!
VZW has had problems with their data system for the last 3 or 4 months. Your issues are probably related to to the problems all 4G phones are experiencing these days. You will see people in all the 4G forums complaining of losing data and low signals killing batteries. Saturday I was in a low signal area and kept losing 4G down to 1X and that also heated up my battery for the first time since I got the phone.
Sent from my HTC
LTE 4G Rezound
i just have nothing to compare it to, because everywhere i go, i use wifi all the time lol....i haven't used just 3g in SO damn long, so i don't have a basis to compare with the rezound
Idling on 3G doesn't seem to hurt me too bad (I usually let juice defender keep it off to mitigate the risk), but actually using it is way more draining than wifi. I can sit online all night at home on wifi, but only get about two hours of solid use when I'm out and about.
Going to a 4G city this weekend for the first time. Bringing backup batteries.
I think what may be happening is that once it drops to 3g or 1x it tries hard to get back to 4g and that is what hurts more than anything.
Try forcing it to 3g only and see if you have the same drop in battery under preferably the same conditions.
NilsP said:
I think what may be happening is that once it drops to 3g or 1x it tries hard to get back to 4g and that is what hurts more than anything.
Try forcing it to 3g only and see if you have the same drop in battery under preferably the same conditions.
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Yes,that is what happened to me Saturday,it dropped to 1X and overheated trying to get back to 4G.
I did force it to 3G and it still stayed hot. But I had that happen once with my Thunderbolt, so I feel it is the vzw data signal not the phone.
3G kills battery compared to wifi.
i shut off 4g the day i got it lol...yeah, i think 3g just uses noticably more battery tahn wifi
staticx57 said:
3G kills battery compared to wifi.
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definately. i can sit at home, connected to my wifi, and i can get like 2 or 3 days out of the battery. with light usage that is. on 3g though, with light usage, i'm lucky if i can get a full day.
3g actually saves my battery, somehow 4g and WiFi take more battery for me
Sent from my HTC Rezound (Beast phone) Using XDA Premium
lmao, awesome username.
searched Google, Google Play and XDA. cant find a toggle widget or even a manual method to switch to 3g that works. anyone got any ideas?
the LTE is stupid fast in my area, highest i got so far is 47.7Mbps down and 14.5Mbps up buuuut.... its murdering my battery even at idle.
when i jump on WiFi battery life seems awesome. thinking 3g will be some ware in the middle?
thanks
EDIT
currently best answer : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=28597188&postcount=7
40 views and not 1 reply?
I'm curious as well!
I would love to be able to toggle my LTE on and off.
I really hope someone figures this out soon.
Don't see anything out there yet...the Thunderbolt app doesn't work, either. I guess patience is our only option at this point.
Would be very interested in this as well. I used 3g on my thunderbolt 99% of the time to let it last all day, this is a necessary option to have.
yea. dont get me wrong. im really loving how fast the 4G network is. its literally the fastest network ive ever been on hands down.
but... i dont really need that much speed 90% of the time. for general stuff like email and random background data services its just not worth the hit on battery life. even at idle, when im away from Wifi i watch my battery % go down the tubes...
http://www.droid-life.com/2012/07/10/how-to-turn-off-4g-on-verizons-galaxy-s3/
incubus26jc said:
http://www.droid-life.com/2012/07/10/how-to-turn-off-4g-on-verizons-galaxy-s3/
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that worked. thanks!
Thanks for link. Tried that method out, seems like all i get is 1X and never see 3G... Not sure if coverage would play a role in that cuz I have 2 bars at the moment where I work.
try toggling airplane mode to get in to 3G.
so far so good. 4G must have been why my battery was draining so fast. been 30min off the charger @ idle on 3G and still i have 100% battery left. on 4G it would already be down to about 96%.
if someone makes a toggle app that works for the VZW SGS3 i would gladly pay a few bucks for it. :good:
s0me guy said:
try toggling airplane mode to get in to 3G.
so far so good. 4G must have been why my battery was draining so fast. been 30min off the charger @ idle on 3G and still i have 100% battery left. on 4G it would already be down to about 96%.
if someone makes a toggle app that works for the VZW SGS3 i would gladly pay a few bucks for it. :good:
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Tried that and it worked after couple minutes but it keeps going in and out of 3G and sometimes goes into only 1X
must have something to do with the service in your area maybe?
mine seems to work pretty easily. going back into 4G is almost instant. but when i switch into 3G it does take about 30sec or so. sometimes i see it flash the 1X icon but its very quick and only seems to be doing it when i switch it, after that it just stays in 3G.
1hr 20min off the charger and down to 99% this is a HUGE difference from what ive been seeing on 4G. :victory:
maybe. The area is kinda crappy here where I work. Even on my Nexus i was getting 3G but it would go out. We'll see what happens when I leave